Fanfic Recs by coprime

Three Bouquets (Ino/Sakura | PG | 1,153): Neji and Hinata come to buy some flowers from Ino's shop. This is a nice vignette at the moment Ino comes to some realizations.

Excerpt:
Ino looks at her decapitated flower- though it's not a flower now, just a stick of thorns- and wonders just what the hell she thinks she's doing here. Sasuke doesn't like her. Sasuke will never like her. And Sakura will never forgive her.

That hurts the most.

She watches through dull eyes as Hinata "rescues" the rose's leaves and head, asking, "C-can I please h-have these, I-Ino?"

You won't get better till you're worse (Foggy/Matt | PG | 6,021 words): After the dissolution of Nelson and Murdock at the end of Season 2, Foggy tries to live his life. THere's just something about fics where Foggy and Matt reconcile that I love. This one really lets us see how Foggy is both handling and not handling Matt being gone from his life. It's angsty without feeling over dramatic, to me.

Excerpt:
"You are good," Foggy says. He can't help but wrap an arm around her, giving a fond squeeze. "Lois Lane and Vicki Vale ain't got nothing on Karen Page."

Karen tips her head onto his shoulder, long hair brushing his collarbone. He can hear the smile in her voice. "Damn straight."

Foggy smiles into her hair. He needed this, he realizes. He can't say Jones was wrong about him being maudlin, not after Josie's. His sigh ruffles the top of her head and Karen shifts back to look at him, raising her eyebrows expectantly.

"Show me what you're working on," he says, instead, because they've got a schedule for these things, damn it. Or a routine at least. Drunken commiseration can happen when there are no deadlines afoot.

Karen frowns. "I'm tabling this because I feel like it's a vodka conversation," she says, "but I need you to know that was the worst deflection of all time and you're fooling absolutely no one."

Inner Nature (Zuko | PG | 2,032 words): Zuko and his daemon. This is a great look at Zuko and his growth as a person via this daemon AU.

Excerpt:
"I am the Avatar's firebending teacher. I am not here to make friends," he said.

"Uncle was right. You just like being miserable."

The mention of Uncle struck like a barb to his heart. "What is your problem?!" Zuko snapped, and it came out louder than he intended. He saw a couple of glances thrown in his direction from across the temple common area, and Zuko looked away, his cheeks hot.

His daemon couldn't have been less concerned. She sat up, cleaning her whiskers. "I thought the idea for us to come here was to join the good side."

"None of them trust me."

"They will. We will just have to prove ourselves."

Go Forever (Sai | PG | 442): Nothing can stop Sai from playing Go. Ahah, this is a wonderful little crack fic, short and sweet with a perfect kicker of an ending.

Excerpt:
Sai stared through the fence at the Go board like he did every day, everyone thought this was odd because they had no idea of what he was staring at, much less why he was just standing there not moving. This went on for a long time, Sai staring at the Go board, and the family staring at Sai.

In Passing (turtles ensemble, OCs | PG | 7,233 words): Four people the turtles interact with and how their lives are changed for it. Aw, turtles! Doing what they do best and helping people! This is a fantastic set of vignettes about how the turtles help the people they come across. I love how, despite not giving any identifying details, the author still writes each brother so well that it's easy to tell which one is in each vignette. They're each kind in their own ways. This is one of the roots that makes the teenage mutant ninja turtles so eternally enjoyable (for me, at any rate), so I loved reading something that focuses on that.

Escerpt:
'It's okay,' he says to me. 'He's not dead, he's just been knocked out.'

I nod. I've still got my hand over my mouth. He gently prises it away. That's when I notice his hands are green and that he only has two fingers. Two fingers and a thumb.

My thought won't stick together properly, they keep falling a part, but I manage to think – oh, that's why he's so covered up, he's deformed. I don't care though, not at all, not when my Dad's bleeding on the ground and this man's just saved both our lives.

All's Fair in Love and War (Wat/Chaucer | PG | 1,114 words): Chaucer keeps stealing Wat's food. Hee, the pigtail-pulling method of courtship is always fun.

Excerpt:
He's good at cunning, whatever Chaucer might say about his hair being only marginally less blazing than his lack of subtlety. There are quite a few deer belonging to the King that would disagree with Chaucer, or at least they would if they weren't dead.

Wat knows all about stealth.

Chaucer doesn't, because Chaucer is -- shamelessly, right there in broad daylight, in front of God and all His angels, without fear of retribution -- stealing Wat's food.

2.5 Years (ensemble | PG | 607 words): Scenes from the time skip years. Each scene is short, but together they paint an intriguing picture about the lives these characters lead.

Excerpt:
The enemy's blood on Ino's kunai is redder than she expected. Redder than poppies, redder than roses, redder than any flower in her family's shop.

The Gladiator's Honour (Ford/Arthur | PG | 1,907 words): Ford and Arthur meet when, while visiting a gladiator planet, Ford buys Arthur. Hee! With a nice bit of Adams-y ridiculousness.

Excerpt:
When you're wandering through the slave markets of life, innocently minding your own business and hoping against hope that your bloody semi-cousin will hurry up and pick a gift for his tertiary mother sometime this Altrarian solar cycle, there are certain things you don't want to hear the semi-cousin in question say to or about one of the sale items. Third on Ford's personal list was "Have we, ah, met?"

A Payphone, Somewhere in Norway (Mickey/Jake | PG | 464 words): Mickey calls Jake while in Norway. Aww, Mickey and Jake are familiar and playful with each other.

Excerpt:
You bin to see Gran?

Did she? Again?

It's 'cos she reckons you're too skinny.

A Sorta Fairytale (Professor Zei, Wan Shi Tong | PG | 2,313 words): What happened to Professor Zei after he got trapped in the Spirit Library. This is awesome for the same reasons the show is, because even characters that show up for only one episode have a story.

Excerpt:
Weeks pass. He notices that the foxes are watching him. One night, as he pretends to sleep, he even sees one sneak off with his canteen, only to return an hour or so later, its slender neck straining against the weight of the now full canteen.

Zei makes a note of this, and decides that at some point he ought to follow the foxes one of these days, in case he needs to find a way out of this place. Just... not at the moment. He's in the middle of an alternate telling of the founding of Omashu, and he's discovered some intriguing parallels to some Air Nomad legends.