I’ve come to a pretty tardy realization lately that I might be one of the few people disinclined to write smut — not because I’m embarrassed by it, although reading it out loud is MORTIFYING — but because I genuinely believe that most times a story doesn’t need it. And smut appended to the end of a story is almost always lame in my opinion, and reads as forced. Of course, I also do things like write really long stories wrought with sexual tension that don’t even have a kiss at the end — for which I’m sure many people hate me. But I’ve always been more about the journey than the destination, once the car stops moving, the scenery stops rolling by, and half the fun is over, if that makes any sense at all.
Anyway, snapshots below — in the following order:
(1) Naruto HS AU (No, I don’t have a title, and no, I will not call it, “Oh, Sensei!” despite how tempted I am by the sheer horribleness of it all to do exactly that.)
(2) SGA Earthside John Sheppard Discovers There Are More Astrophysicists Than Rodney McKay and Sam Carter And Realizes That They Are Also Super Fun And Rodney Realizes He Needs To Kill A Bitch.
(1) Naruto HS AU (No, I don’t have a title, and no, I will not call it, “Oh, Sensei!” despite how tempted I am by the sheer horribleness of it all to do exactly that.)
There had been rumors, of course, but Kakashi had dismissed them as exaggerated, ridiculous, that it was just everybody trying to scare the new guy. But then he’d found himself looking at an ocean of broken furniture at the end of his first day at Konoha.
“So,” he said cheerfully, crossing his arms over his chest and surveying the overturned desks and utter chaos in the room, “could either of you explain how you managed to destroy my classroom, again, in the—” he checked the wall clock “—five minutes I stepped out to make a phone call?”
The dark one made an aggressively disinterested noise, hands stuck into his pockets.
The blonde one paled, dark blue eyes rounding in absolute horror, “Ah, Hatake-sensei—you didn’t, did you?”
“Didn’t what?” Kakashi asked, raising his brows. “Call your guardians?”
“I’m dead,” the Uzumaki kid wailed, clutching at his hair, already sticking straight up at odd angles.
Uchiha, finally proving he was actually capable of speech, said, “Good.”
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” Naruto shouted, balling up his fists and leaping to his feet, and Kakashi was reaching over to the chalk board for an eraser to throw when the door to the classroom burst open and somebody shouted:
“NARUTO, I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU. IT’S YOUR FIRST DAY.”
*
That first time, Kakashi had been so busy being bowled over by the extreme loudness and fearfulness of the many and sundry threats being cast in Naruto’s general direction that he’d hardly had time to study the person shouting them. And then, in a whirl of suddenly-polite apologies, he’d been abandoned in his classroom, honor-bound to clean up after all. The second time, he’d been prepared, and the raving, furious man who’d stormed in turned out to be dark-haired and olive-skinned, dressed in a pair of jeans and a neat black sweater—and best of all, when he’d dragged Naruto and Sasuke out of the classroom, both of the punks had looked terrified for their lives.
The third time, Kakashi took some time out of the dressing-down the man was giving them to introduce himself.
“Hatake Kakashi,” he said, bowing slightly. “I’m the new teacher.”
Suddenly embarrassed, the other man had blushed, saying, “Oh! I’m Umino Iruka. I’m sorry for all of the trouble.”
“Oh, no,” Kakashi purred, looking at the delicate skin over Iruka’s halfway-exposed collarbone, “it’s no trouble at all.”
*
(2) SGA Earthside John Sheppard Discovers There Are More Astrophysicists Than Rodney McKay and Sam Carter And Realizes That They Are Also Super Fun And Rodney Realizes He Needs To Kill A Bitch.
“And,” John said, beaming, “then! Then he let me drive the replica moon rover.”
Rodney stared at him, fingers frozen on one of his cufflinks. “Excuse me?” he asked.
“The lunar rover!” John repeated, still grinning. “Go-cart for outer space. It rocked.”
Rodney was torn between shouting that in all his years with the Stargate program, hadn’t John driven slash flown slash crashed slash piloted with his brain things much cooler than a moon go-cart? But the more important question that filtered in was:
“Who’s he?”
John was sitting on Rodney’s bed, shoes kicked off and bow tie undone, the first two buttons of his tuxedo-shirt undone. John looked slightly drunk and happy, loose and shaken out, like if Rodney ran a finger down the curve of his spine now—all John would do was purr, indulgent like a cat. Rodney pulled off his tuxedo jacket; that was an interesting hypothesis that deserved further research, he decided.
“Dr. Tyson,” John told him, smile going a little blurry. “He runs the joint.”
“Neil?” Rodney said. “DeGrasse Tyson?”
John snapped his fingers and pointed at Rodney. “That’s the one. Very cool guy.”
Smirking, Rodney said, “Yeah, you’re drunk.”
“Oh yeah,” John agreed, and reached out his arms, making grabby hands—and Rodney went, without resistance and laughing, because he’d realized years ago he and John were opposite polarities. There was no reason to fight physics.
*
Dude, slash *and* Neil DeGrasse Tyson? Awesome.
I don’t necessarily think there needs to be sex, but when you look at some of the most well put together, amazingly done stories, the kiss – and the sex, if it’s there – is the glue that cements the whole thing together. A well written kiss is a little like a magnifying glass – of course it’s there, love and commitment and human emotion, but the kiss brings it all into focus so that *everyone* can see it. It’s the characters seeing it, for the first time, and taking that first, tentative step in the right direction. Kisses are sort of a universal human currency – in that one moment, right there, when they kiss, every reader understands *exactly* what they’re both feeling. A kiss makes you certain, that things are going to go the way you’ve been hoping for them to go all along, but it also opens hundreds of doors and hundreds of futures. It’s not an ending, really, when the story is that good – it’s a beginning, it’s the knowledge that even if you’re coming to a stopping point, there’s always going to be a set of car keys and the open road.
Yeah, I have to say I am ALL about the sexual tension, and when it falls apart too early, or they resole things too soon, I tend to just get… twitchy.
So no complaints. Also, YAY for kakashi purring, even if I still make little whining “naruto! sasuke!” noises.
I know what you mean about being reluctant to write smut for reasons of a story’s integrity. When one of my friends drop-kicked me into fandom, it was into a network where most of the stories were pretty saturated with sex — which I loved in some ways, but it took a while before I knew that non-romantic, non-sexual fanfic even existed. And I’ve definitely gone through a shift in my own writing in the last year or two, where instead of trying to fit smut into every piece of fiction, I’m starting to figure out when a story really ought to be gen, or when the sex needs to happen in a few short sentences or be entirely off-screen.
In reading your stories, I’ve noticed that a lot of them don’t have any explicit sexual content, and that the sex scenes you do include are often short and soft-focus when it comes to the tab-a-slot-b, but it doesn’t impact my enjoyment of your writing. Even when I’d wished I had the opportunity to read the sex scene we don’t get, I don’t think I’ve ever felt like you’d omitted one where the story required it. I think you do a good job of knowing what a story needs, and what it doesn’t.
grabby hands. I love the image of grabby hands.
I had to look up Neil DeGrasse Tyson, but I can see it. I can so see it.
Totally unrelated and maybe you’re already aware, but just in case: evangelical bacon goodness.
OMG I LOVE THIS IRUKA/KAKASHI AU!
I’m a complete sucker for any good I/K fic that includes Naruto. (I adore his relationship with Iruka;) Bonus points for Sasuke! So just in this snapshot, you won the universe. Yay you!