#There's a Harringrove August collection on Ao3
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harringrovesummerbingo · 5 months ago
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Harringrove Summer Bingo still running!
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We've already received tons of amazing Harringrove fan works from the participants 🧡
Please go and check them out from links below and give them some love - and remember to reblog too! That gives the works the visibility they deserve 🧡
AO3 collection >>
Fics on tumblr (some are links to AO3) >>
Art work on tumblr >>
Posting ends on 31 August 2024.
PS. Didn't make it on this run? Prepare for Harringrove Winter Bingo that takes place on 1 Jan - 31 March 2025 by joining the mailing list to be notified when sign up opens!
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medusapelagia · 5 months ago
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Harringrove Events - August Update
Harringrove Summer Bingo ( @harringrovesummerbingo) Sign up are closed and the bingo has officially started! Summer bingo takes place 1 Jun - 31 Aug, 2024 Event info
Harringrove microfic and art ( @harringrovemicroficandart) Suspended for the moment Event info
Harringrove Winter Bingo ( @harringrovewinterbingo) The bingo takes place 1 Jan - 31 Mar, 2025, more info soon!
As always feel free to reblog and add other events!
Under the cut past events
Harringrove Relay Race @harringrove-relay-race is over but our incredible creators gave us 48hours of content Here is the AO3 Collection but check their Tumblr page as well!
Harringrove Flip Reverse ( @harringrove-flip-reverse-it), masterpost
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platypanthewriter · 3 years ago
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Lazerbeamy Strongman
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Day One of Harringrove AUgust, prompt: Superhero AU
Steve Harrington, newly hired reporter and resident Wholesome Nice Guy, kept sidling over to Billy’s desk to read his interview questions. It was hard enough coming up with questions for a superhero who could fly, hold up falling skyscrapers, and shoot lasers from his eyes. The memory of the pulse of blue light blowing out the engine block of the armed robber’s getaway car made Billy shudder.
‘Are the lasers under complete control,’ he typed. ‘Could you be startled into vaporizing the city?’
Directly behind his chair, Harrington snorted a laugh.
“Shut up, Hawkins Indiana,” Billy told him.
Harrington didn’t move.
“Cut this shit out, or I’m squirting you with a bottle,” Billy told him, through a bite of ham’n’rye sandwich. “You keep climbing all up in my business, you’re gonna get Lysol between the eyes.”
“Sorry,” Harrington said, looking abashed, but his eyes still strayed to Billy’s screen, and Billy grabbed the Lysol, spraying a whole cloud as Steve dove back to his own desk. He ducked his head as the editor of the Planet walked by.
A few hours later, Billy caught him staring at the list of questions again, from way too far away, really—it wasn’t like Harrington could actually read Billy’s screen from the coffee machine, but he looked suspiciously intent, so Billy stalked over.
“Can you see my questions from there?! Are those huge nerd frames telescopic, or—just—what the fuck, dude,” he muttered, squinting over at his desk. He could make out that Microsoft Word was open, maybe. Maybe. “How the hell,” Billy growled, turning his glower on Harrington, who stared innocently out the window, sipping his coffee.
“How could I possibly,” Harrington said, not meeting Billy’s eyes as he drank the last of his mug of coffee, and Billy took the last of the coffee in the pot just to spite him, and stalked off.
Ten minutes later, he scooted his chair back and hit Harrington’s jeans with his elbow, and Harrington stumbled back, like he hadn’t been reading over Billy’s shoulder. “Are you a fucking cat?!” Billy hissed. “I’m gonna get one of those invisible fences and shock you every time you try to sneak my interview questions—”
“You’re better at interviews than me,” Steve told him, shrugging and rubbing the back of his neck in the annoyingly ‘aw, shucks’ way Billy was fairly sure couldn’t be sincere. “Just interested.”
“I don’t think you’re gonna have the opportunity to use these questions again,” Billy said drily. “Unless you’re gonna ask the next CEO you write up which planet he’s from, and how his clothes don’t burn off when he pulls people out of burning buildings.”
Harrington shrugged, grinning. “Um, I was actually gonna ask, what are you doing tonight? After wor—”
“Staking out the roof of the police department,” Billy told him, walking away to his desk—backwards, so he could yell. “He keeps leaving criminals up there. With notes! Thirty-percent higher chance on Friday nights!”
When the spandex-clad hero landed, cape aflutter, Billy leapt out. “To whom am I speaking?” he asked, in a breathless but calm professional voice.
“Just a moment, citizen,” said the hero, running his fingers through his hair and winking at Billy, and it was the first time he’d seemed like a real person, albeit a pickup artist, and not a comic book cliche.
He bent to handcuff three unconscious bruisers to the roof, prodding a muscled, fishnet-stockinged leg back towards the woman it belonged to. “Ah,” he said, when he stood back up, his hands on his hips like he’d practiced his dumb hero pose in the mirror. “I must go! Crime never waits!”
“What the hell,” Billy shouted after him, waving his notepad.
The next morning, Harrington looked smug. “How’d it go?” he asked, like he knew, and Billy sat on the asshole’s desk and drank, in turn, from both mugs of coffee. “Hey, isn’t that one mine?!” Harrington asked, and Billy stuck his tongue in it, swishing it around.
“Not anymore,” he said sweetly, and Harrington stared at him. “And it went great, obviously. He totally listened to his public and didn’t just fly off after acting like a shithead.”
“Wait, what’d he do?!” Harrington yelped, staring. “I—I read he, uh, he brought in the leaders of three different gangs!”
“Yeah, like a shithead,” Billy repeated, draining Harrington’s favorite mug, licking it, and handing it to him, empty. “And I froze my nuts off for four hours waiting for him to come back. That’s how it went. Shithead.”
“Oh,” Harrington said, frowning into his empty mug, as Billy wandered back to his desk with his own, ignoring Harrington’s mumbled “I mean, maybe—maybe he’s got to keep, like, his identity secret—”
“I didn’t ask for his goddamn alter ego, I was asking general shit,” Billy shot back, growling, and waving the hand without coffee in it. “Or I was going to!”
The next time Billy saw the shithead, he ran straight at him, dodging the falling debris, until abruptly he was flying.
“What are you doing,” the shithead hissed, his arms warm and strong as they carried Billy to the top of another damn building. “We’re under fire.”
“That’s your job,” Billy hissed at him. “My job is this damn interview. What kinds of disasters are you most likely to help with? Does Search and Rescue have your number?”
“Stay here,” the shithead commanded, and flew off, leaving Billy stranded on the top of a skyscraper. He spent the next hour trying to pinpoint the name of the building on Google Maps, before finally finding a number to call to let him in.
“I heard you ran right into the wreckage,” said Harrington, like he was worried, and Billy scoffed.
“I’ve worked warzones,” he said. “I can handle a car accident.”
“The viaduct collapsed,” Harrington said weakly, like a coward. “You were almost crushed by a flaming bus.”
“I also didn’t get even one question answered,” Billy muttered, glaring at the list on his screen, and Harrington stared from him to it. “I’m gonna have to grappling hook that shithead.”
“Um,” Harrington said, wincing. “He seems kind of...busy, usually, when he’s—”
“So am I,” Billy told him, reaching up and prodding his coworker’s shoulder. “I have won Pulitzers, I have better shit to do than spend my nights shouting questions at some shithead who can’t be assed to tell anyone his name, let alone answer some basic peace-of-mind questions like—” he made air quotes, “—‘to what degree do you feel obligated to help humanity?’”
“He’s kind of new,” Harrington said, wincing. “Maybe he doesn’t have, a um, a super...name, yet? Maybe he doesn’t want to say, like, ‘hello, good citizen, I am Lazerbeamy Strongman’—”
“Oh jesus,” Billy snorted, choking on his coffee.
“Hello, I’m Captain Awesomesauce,” Harrington groaned, his cheeks red for some reason. “I’m Rad-Dude.”
“Oh fuck me,” Billy coughed out, cackling. “So you’re saying he’s a moron.”
“I did not,” Harrington huffed, and Billy grinned at him.
“Are you a fan, Harrington? I saw you run right over to look at the latest pictures of him. That why you’re trying to edge in on my interview?”
“No!” Harrington groaned, rolling his eyes. “I just think you put all this...thought into this, and maybe he’s just helping out, you know, like anybody. Like if somebody calls the police on a purse snatcher, you don’t ask them why, or like, how much help they’re gonna be in future—”
“He wears a cape,” Billy pointed out. “He put a goddamn cape on, and he’s wearing some kind of themed onesie, and he says stuff like ‘Hello, innocent bystander,’ and that’s all weird as hell, so he better answer some questions. This isn’t somebody who was just there—he came on purpose, and he doesn’t want people to know who he is, or he’d talk to me—”
“Heroes wear capes!” Harrington argued, rolling his eyes again. “Maybe it’s a little creepy when you ambush people. On the roof of the police station.”
“We gotta call him something,” Billy told him, rolling his eyes. “He can answer my questions, or he can have every investigator in three cities trying to figure out his angle. He’ll be a police file five inches thick by this weekend.”
“Oh no,” Harrington said, wide-eyed, and Billy snorted.
“The hell d’you care?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “You think he’s a moron who calls himself Lazerbeamy Strongman.”
“No,” Harrington said quickly, grimacing. “No, I just, uh. It’d...it’d suck if he’s just...trying to help.”
“If he’s just trying to help, he can give me something reassuring to publish, even if it’s just that he’s calling himself ‘Mr. Neato McCheeto’. People need to hear that he’s not going to use those laser eyes to shoot planes out of the sky.”
“Fuck you, he’s helping,” Harrington said sullenly, covering a snicker.
When Billy left for lunch, he bought the guy one of the badly painted caped bobbleheads already circulating the city, and left it on his desk.
“Oh no,” he heard Harrington say in horrified tones when he found it.
The third time Billy caught the new superhero, he was flying everyone to the tops of buildings. “Oh, fuck you,” Billy groaned, his body held in strong arms while his hands investigated the texture of the cape.
“She turned the ground into actual lava,” the shithead hissed at him. “I’ll get you down when you can walk without turning into a pillar of flame.”
“You better be back within the hour, or I will step off the edge,” Billy threatened, and the shithead groaned. “What’s your cape made of?” Billy yelled after him.
“I’ll come get you,” the shithead yelled back, and Billy sat down to wait, and write some preliminary scene setting. Metropolis’ newest hero shuffles a street of pedestrians onto the roofs of buildings in under a minute, before emptying the cars. Below him, Shithead was dodging around, trying to talk to the small child waving a wand and spraying lava.
Shithead did reappear, though, within the hour. He wasn’t even panting or sweating, and Billy eyed him with extreme dislike. He took the other people down, and Billy yelled threats after him, fully expecting to get stranded again, but Shithead flew back up and floated in front of him, his arms folded like Billy was supposed to be impressed.
“I’ll answer your questions,” he muttered, glowering.
“What’s your name,” Billy asked, wasting no time, because the wind on the skyscraper was sliding through his coat like he was naked. He shivered, turtling deeper into his scarf, and Shithead reached out, his hand twitching towards Billy.
“We—I can take you somewhere else? Somewhere warmer,” he offered awkwardly.
“Somewhere there’s coffee,” Billy growled, and the shithead laughed, grinning at him, and then stepped close to lift Billy again, but didn’t do it.
He just stood so close Billy could feel him breathing, holding his arms up like a scarecrow, and Billy groaned and turned to put his arms around the neck of a goddamn superhero and got scooped up like he was a damsel in distress. He sighed, disgusted, as Shithead took them back to the Daily Planet, dropped down past the roof, and landed them on the glassed-in balcony where Billy went when it was a choice between 1) smoke or 2) commit homicide.
Billy stared. “Have you been watching me,” he hissed, and the damn hero raised his hands.
“There’s coffee here,” he said, grimacing, and Billy stalked past him, by Harrington’s desk—the slacker was missing, and Billy snorted dismissively, and then remembered not everyone had had a ride back through the freezing wind. He shivered so hard as he poured the coffee he nearly spilled it, and whispered a brief prayer to Saint Drogo, patron saint of coffee and the insane, for his intervention in saving Billy’s water of life. The first sip told him it had been sitting on the burner, and his tongue curled in his mouth, his nose wrinkling, but he could feel it warming his veins and brain.
Shithead was still waiting on the balcony, frowning out over the city, and Billy watched him, taking another sip of the acrid coffee.
“Why d’you float like that,” he asked, and the weirdo blinked at him.
“Oh, um,” he said, frowning down, and reddening. “Uh, is this...on the record?”
“...not if you say it isn’t,” Billy said, leaning back into a creaky plastic chair, and putting his feet up on another.
“This outfit is sturdy enough to not burn up, but the feet get dirty if I walk,” Shithead said, grimacing.
“Your footie pajamas get dirty if you walk outside,” Billy said flatly, sighing. “This is an amazing start. On the record now—what’s your name, hero?”
“Oh! Ummm,” he said, wincing.
“Christ,” Billy groaned, pinching his brows together.
“"I'm...very...strong...ness..." the moron trailed off, and Billy stared at him.
“Try again,” he said.
“My sidekick—”
“You have a sidekick,” Billy interrupted, holding his pen up. “Nobody’s seen a sidekick.”
“He tells me when things happen, so I can help. He doesn’t go out there,” Shithead said, looking horrified, and for once sounding reasonable.
“Ah. Carry on,” Billy said, writing sidekick?? in the margin to address later.
“He thinks I should go by Encyc—oh, no,” he slapped a fist into his hand in realization, “It was Atlas,” the unnamed hero said, and Billy narrowed his eyes.
“Fair enough,” he said, about to ask why that didn’t out-rate ‘Very Strongness’, but the shithead crossed his arms with a huff.
“It makes no sense, I’m not a book,” he said, and Billy stared at him.
“You’re exactly the moron he thought you were,” he said disbelievingly. “You’re an idiot.”
“Hey! I—I just—I saved you from lava,” Shithead protested. “I saved you from a falling bus!”
“We gotta workshop this,” Billy said, groaning into his hands. “I’ll help you, because you did do all those things. And more to the point, I can’t make every news agent in the city say something that stupid every time you’re in the news.”
“What about Superguy,” the hero asked, leaning in enthusiastically. “Great...dude? Mister Awesome!”
“Fuck my life,” Billy sighed, laughing in despair. “What about something based on your powers—”
“Muscle-lasers! Musclasers?” the idiot suggested excitedly, and Billy smacked himself in the face again.
“What about just like...Knight Errant. You’ve got that kind of...shield shape on your chest—”
“Oooo,” Shithead said, floating closer, and Billy put a foot up and nudged him further away. “Because just Knight could get confusing, huh, like on the radio,” he said, and Billy wondered whether he did have a brain, and it just shorted out, like, most of the time. Maybe it was the lasers.
“D’you want to see the sunset,” Knight Errant asked, and Billy blinked at him. “You’re off work, right? I promise I won’t run, I’ll answer your questions,” he said, grimacing. “But...do you? The sunset over the city?”
As a career reporter in Metropolis, Billy could hardly refuse, and he tried to remind his libido of that while he lay cradled in strong arms, warm against Knight Errant’s chest, watching the sun set and the lights come on all over his city.
He was close enough to hear the hero’s stomach growl, and they got sandwiches from a street cart to chomp on during the interview. After that, Knight Errant flew them to a small loft apartment on the edge of the industrial district, and Billy wandered around trying the faucets, fascinated by how normal it all was.
“My apartment’s off the record, right?” Knight Errant asked, with belated nervousness.
“Yeah, sure,” Billy laughed. “I protect my sources. So. You...get hungry?” Billy asked, watching him put away enough food for four people.
“I’m just a person,” Knight Errant muttered, wiping mustard off his chin. He’d taken his cape off, and pushed the onesie down to his waist. In the dim light of the city, he looked familiar, though Billy couldn’t place him—and attractive, the shadows on his abs and arms making him look like he’d been painted in chiaroscuro.
It felt like a date, was the thing.
“Search and rescue does have my number, or a way to get ahold of me, anyway.” Knight Errant sighed. “There’s nowhere in the outfit for a phone. I mean, it’d melt, anyway, first time I flew into a burning building,” he pointed out, and Billy nodded slowly, talking to a hero about his revealing costume, and wondering whether he’d been sucked into the Twilight Zone.
“There sure isn’t anywhere to hide anything,” he agreed, remembering.
“Sometimes I don’t help them,” Knight Errant confessed. “—but I can’t—I help where I can. I have to sleep too.”
“You sleep?” Billy asked, cocking his head at the shadowy king-sized bed in the corner. He wondered whether the moron had different-patterned footie pajamas to sleep in, possibly with sheep on them. And a woolly sheep cape.
“I sleep. I have a job,” the man sighed.
“Thanks for saving me from the lava,” Billy said, belatedly. “And I...probably would’ve been crushed by that bus.”
“Anytime,” the hero of Billy’s city said, stepping close with a grin. “You have to be more careful. I’d hate to lose my favorite reporter.”
“You talk to all the others already?” Billy asked, laughing, his heart pounding as he stepped closer.
“Nah. I know it’ll always be you,” the moron said, grinning with an incomprehensible mixture of mischief and sweetness, and Billy kissed him.
The next morning, Billy hitched a ride to work in the arms of his superhero. He took the time to straighten his jacket and tie after the wind, and found Harrington at his desk, holding a mug of coffee, his eyes huge and weird in the absurdly thick glasses.
“Had a good night?” he asked, smugly, and Billy shot him a suspicious glare, and flipped him off.
Here’s the rest of my Harringrove (and everything else)
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harringrovesummerbingo · 10 months ago
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Frequently Asked Questions
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What is Harringrove Summer Bingo?
Harringrove Summer Bingo is a low-pressure, fun fandom challenge with the goal of creating summer themed fanworks for Harringrove ship.
You can fill just one prompt from your card or all of them - it's up to you! As long as your fanwork meets the minimum requirements, you're good!
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So how does this bingo thing work exactly?
Sign-up by 19 May, 2024
Get a 3x3 bingo card with 8+1 prompt squares (sent between 20-29 May to all who signed up by 19 May)
Create a fanwork that fills a prompt in the card and post it between 1 June - 31 August (must be new!!!)
Each time you post a prompt fill, submit it to the organiser as instructed and get your bingo card stamped
When bingo is closed on 31 Aug 2024 create a masterpost of all your bingo fills
Everyone who filled at least one prompt by 31 Aug 2024 will get a virtual badge to brag with about participating /pf (note: our badges have nothing to do with tumblr badge system)
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Can I join if I'm not on tumblr?
Yes! You can join if you have an email account and either AO3 or Bluesky account.
We have a collection for the event on AO3 (revealed on June 1) where fan works there are being posted. On Bluesky we will repost the post you post on your Bluesky account to our Bluesky account (note: repost on bluesky equals to tumblr reblog)
If your fan work is something else than a written fic, it still can be added to AO3 too! We're happy to help with setting that up.
Also, if you don't have an AO3 account, we can send you an invitation for one. You can register now to Bluesky without an invitation!
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How close to the prompt does each fill have to be?
As close or as far as you want!
All the fill has to do is to include somehow are the three things: 1) Harringrove, 2) summer and 3) the prompt
Somehow is the key. We don't want to give direct guidelines of how exactly to do that to give as much freedom as possible to the creators.
All of the following are samples of types of works that are acceptable:
Billy and Steve doing something together in the summer
One of them pining for the other from close or from afar for example at their summer job
One writing a letter to the other one on a rainy summer night where they tell the other goodbye
One of them as an old man on their last summer visits the other one's grave and confesses that the other one was the love of their life even thought their relationship didn't work back when
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Can I use a WIP for the bingo?
If you have a WIP that fits a prompt and is collecting dust in your drafts, feel free to use it.
If it's already published or parts of it are, then no.
This bingo's goal is to create new content for the fandom, so all works must to be new and unpublished.
-🍦🛟 -
What are the type of fan works you allow?
We allow all types of creative fan works:
Fan fiction
Fan art
Fan videos
Podfics
Moodboards
Playlists
Rec lists
The rating, genre, and type of fanwork you produce are decided by you as long as the work is tagged accordingly.
AI generated works are not allowed in the bingo.
-🍦🛟 -
What are the minimum requirements for fan works?
This is a low-pressure event where we hope everyone will have fun and let their creativity bloom. You can fill just one prompt from your card or all of them - it's up to you!
As long as your fanwork meets the following minimum requirements, you're all good!
Fan fic - Minimum of 500 words
Art - Minimum 300 x 300 pixels in digital form (no matter if the original is digital or traditional art)
Fan videos - 30 seconds
Pod fic - Minimum listening time 7 minutes
Moodboards: minimum 4 images
Playlist - Minimum 10 songs + cover art
Rec lists - 3 completed fan works + explanation why you're recommending these works specifically. Free free to gush your heart out!
-🍦🛟 -
Can I use two or more of the prompts in one fill?
If you're not planning on using the other prompt(s) in any other fill than in one, then no.
If you use the other(s) in some other fill too, then you can of course combine them as best you see fit.
The bingo card is stamped one stamp per fan work.
So, if you use several prompts in one fic, only one of them is stamped in your card and the rest are left unstamped.
-🍦🛟 -
How do I submit a fill?
You'll find guidelines for fill (=prompt) submission here >>
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What is a masterpost?
You should make a masterpost with links to all of the fanworks you created for this bingo. It works as an easy link list to all of your fills.
You'll find guidelines for creating a masterpost here >>
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I finished my card and want a new one! How?
Fill out the New Card Form >> and request a new card.
You can request as many new cards as you want as long as your previous card is already fully filled and stamped!
-🍦🛟 -
What badges can I get?
Depending on how many squares you fill you get different kinds of badges. Everyone who filled at least 1 prompt will receive a badge!
Bingo: Fill a row or column
One Square: Complete one square
Four Corners: Complete a square in each corner
Diagonal: Fill three squares diagonally through the center
Well done: You filled at least six prompts from your card by Aug 31.
Blackout: Fill all squares
Our badges are images you can post on your social media. They have nothing to do with tumblr badge system.
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What if I want to go for all the badges?
Just go ahead!
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Do you allow Cross-Posting between events?
Cross-posting is allowed as long as
The fill is still formatted as outlined in the Posting Guidelines, and
You have gotten the explicit permission of the other event mods to use it for both events.
-🍦🛟 -
Do you have a Discord server?
There's a mutual discord server with our siblings events @metalsandwichbingo @harringrovewinterbingo! The server is open to those who sign-up for the bingos. Joining the server is not mandatory.
Invitation to the server is sent with the sign-up confirmation email.
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Do you allow third-party sharing of information (incl. AI model training) in your blogs?
No, we don't allow it in any of our blogs.
-🍦🛟 -
Who organizes this bingo event?
Harringrove Summer Bingo, Metalsandwich Bingo and Harringrove Winter bingo are all organized by @harringrovebingos.
Head mod is Suo @suometar who's fandom old, has been participating on all kinds of bingos and bigbangs for a few years now, and irl has extensive experience on organising events. Also, loves coffee way too much and, based on the number of pink items in her office, everything pink.
| Rules | FAQ | Schedule | Ask us anything | Guidelines
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platypanthewriter · 3 years ago
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Homme Fatale
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Day Six of Harringrove AUgust!  Join us and post your lovely stuff on the Harringrove AUgust collection on Ao3!  Prompt @ihni​ gave me:  Detective/Crime AU Film Noir-ish, with Billy as the grumpy world-weary detective and Steve as the homme fatale
Billy stumbled through his office door at three am, drenched from the rain.  His bed was across the room behind the file cabinets, and at the idea of hauling himself the twenty feet to collapse in it, he slumped back against his door instead.
His desk lamp switched on.
Billy staggered back to his feet as his desk chair rolled into the light, propelled by long legs in a fine tailored suit.  The man’s tie was loose, and his shirt partially unbuttoned to expose tanned collarbones.  His jacket stretched around muscled arms, and across broad shoulders, and Billy swallowed a mouthful of saliva, wishing he’d had sleep enough for his brain to work properly.
“What are you doing in my office,” he asked, his voice harsh from exhaustion.
“It was unlocked,” his uninvited guest said, which Billy was...fairly sure was untrue.  He reached behind himself and rattled it, and it fell open with a creak.  
“...did you break my door,” Billy snarled, and the guy laughed.
“I’ll send someone ‘round to fix it,” said the man, in the airy tones of somebody who rang a bell for breakfast, and didn’t sit in the same diner for hours just for the refills on coffee.
“...you better,” Billy told him, edging closer.  He turned on the overhead bulb, and recognized the man’s face from the papers.  “...Harrington,” he said, and Harrington smirked.  He smelled of motor oil.  Seeing the spots on his sleeve, Billy registered with a dull rage that Harrington must’ve checked the oil on his car while wearing a suit that cost more than Billy’d ever seen.  
It probably hadn’t even occured to someone like Steven Harrington that he might ruin something valuable.  “Whatever you need, you won’t find it here,” Billy told him, clenching his jaw.  “Get out.”
“I need to know what your investigation has turned up on the man Nancy Wheeler shot,” Harrington said, which was unexpected—but something niggled at Billy’s mind, and then he had it.  
“I'm not working for you,” he told Harrington, stumbling over to the hot plate, and pouring some milk and Ovaltine into a pan.  “I’m definitely not helping you send your ex-fiance to prison.”
“I’m trying to help her,” Harrington huffed, like anyone in the Harrington family had ever helped anyone.  “It was self-defense.”
Billy’d come to the same conclusion when he talked to her across the table in the prison, but hearing it from a Harrington, he had doubts.  “What’s it to you?” he asked, looking around for something to stir the Ovaltine, and settling for the handle of a dirty fork.  
“They said you might be willing to talk to me,” Harrington said, meandering closer.  He loosened his tie further as he flipped through a file on Billy’s desk.  As Billy stalked over to smack it shut again, Harrington slid his jacket off and stood very close.  He smelled of expensive cologne, and the low light of the desk lamp shone over his shirt, soaked to transparency from the rain outside.  
Billy shivered, licking his lips, and pulled his gaze off the way the silk clung to Harrington’s muscles.  He stared down at the Ovaltine.
“I owe Nancy,” Harrington said softly.  “She was seen everywhere with me for over two years, as a favor.  Kept the press off my back,” he said, reaching out and sticking his finger in Billy’s pan of Ovaltine.  He pressed it into his mouth, and Billy stared at the drip of Ovaltine that ran down his arm.  “She was never my fiance.”
“What in the hell do you think I care,” Billy said, narrowing his eyes at him, and Harrington smirked a little bitterly.
“I was given to understand you’d...be understanding, of the company I keep,” Harrington said, his mouth so close to Billy’s ear Harrington’s breath felt warm on his neck.  
“...what,” Billy whispered, then glared, feeling his face heat, and wondering who’d told Steven Harrington that Billy had a type, and it was more Steven than Stephanie.  He’d have to ask around, he realized tiredly.  “Look.  If Wheeler’s innocent—”
“She is,” Harrington said.
“If she is, I’ll find the evidence that proves it.  She doesn’t need help from your family.  It’d only make things worse, having a bunch of your—” he cut off, narrowing his eyes.
“Gangsters?” Harrington asked, licking the Ovaltine off his forearm, and unbuttoning his cuffs.  “That would be the other reason I’m not at the police department, and why I came to you.  I have...resources.  I can—”
“I wouldn’t help a Harrington up to his own gallows,” Billy muttered, snorting a laugh.  “Get out.”
“You’d be helping your own client,” Harrington pointed out, with an edge to his voice.
“My mother grew up near your father’s...seat of operations,” Billy said, softly.  “She made deliveries for them, or kept a lookout.  She kept her head down,” Billy said, turning off the burner under his Ovaltine.  “But when she—she had to borrow money,” he said, laughing a little, and Harrington jerked, and turned to look at the gold lettering on Billy’s office door.  
“Hargrove,” he said.  “Hargrove.  I know that name.  The parking garage massacre.”
“I wouldn’t put you out if you were on fire,” Billy told him, wiping out a whisky glass, and pouring the Ovaltine in.
“I think you don’t have the whole story, here,” Harrington said, stepping around to get in his way again.  “I’m the child of a chorus girl he knocked up and abandoned.  I’m not—”
“You’re a Harrington,” Billy told him, eyeing the silk tie loose around Harrington’s neck, and thinking of stuffing it into the man’s mouth as he pushed Harrington back into his office chair, and—Billy shook his head, grimacing, his ears hot.
“I’m a Harrington,” Steve Harrington said in his ear, “—and that means I could get his accounts.  What could you do,” he whispered, “—with all my father’s accounts?”
“...I could put him in jail.  Him and—and all of them,” Billy said, dumbly, staring into space before yanking himself out of it, and staring Harrington down.  “You’d never.”
“I bring his accounts to you,” Harrington said, inches away, his smirk warm and inviting in the dim light, “—quietly, secretly—is that enough that you’ll let me pay my debt to Nancy Wheeler?”
“...what’s in it for you?” Billy asked, feeling like a moth near a flame.  
“I have a debt to pay him too,” Steve said, narrowing his eyes.  He licked his lips, and Billy licked his own, automatically.  
“...I’ll believe it when I see it,” Billy said, weakly.
 The next morning—or rather, afternoon—Billy woke to the creak of his bedsprings.  He shoved the blanket off his face to see Harrington, again impeccably dressed, with circles under his eyes.  
“Accounts for the last four years,” he said, patting the dusty books leaving greyish-brown marks on his tailored slacks.  “I left the current one.  It’s in his safe.”
Billy stared, accepting the stack, and flipped through as Steven Harrington crawled over him and dropped alongside him in bed.  
“Good night,” he whispered.  
“These will be the end of your tailored suits.  The government will seize his assets,” Billy told him, flipping through.  The books looked real.
“I pay my debts,” Harrington said, grinning, and Billy stared at him as he fell asleep, curled in Billy’s bed.
 When he awoke, Billy made him Ovaltine, and when he wouldn’t shut his mouth, Billy tied him to the office chair with his tie.  
He shut Harrington’s fool mouth with his own.
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