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Hold Me: a comfort promptfest
I think we really need some comfort right now.
In the comments, please leave prompts about people being comforted, patched up, or healed; or supporting each other, or just generally making each other a little happier. Hurt/comfort of all types is obviously great, also anything like cuddling, cheering someone up after a bad day, showing up to someone's event to support them, doing fun things together, comforting with puppies/kittens - whatever this means to you, I'm not going to be picky about it.
It doesn't have to be pure fluff. Angst and blood are fine.
Leave prompts like this:
Fandom, character or pairing, prompt
All fandoms and pairings are welcome. "Any" or original work prompts are also welcome.
Fills can be any length or medium. You can fill your own prompt. Prompts can be filled as many times as you want. Non-fill comments on prompts are also fine, e.g. commenting to say that you liked a prompt.
You don't need to use subject lines on prompts. Subject lines on fills would be helpful for compiling a master list, e.g. "Fill: Agent Carter, Peggy/Daniel, bubble bath." Warnings for upsetting content are not required, but would be courteous.
Please, no prompts about specific real-world events happening now. Fictional versions of similar things are fine though.
Feel free to link to this!
Go forth and prompt!
Edit: Roundup of posted fills #1 | Roundup of posted fills #2
There is an AO3 collection now:
https://archiveofourown.org/collections/holdme_comfortfest
You are welcome to add your fills if you like, but you don't have to.
In the comments, please leave prompts about people being comforted, patched up, or healed; or supporting each other, or just generally making each other a little happier. Hurt/comfort of all types is obviously great, also anything like cuddling, cheering someone up after a bad day, showing up to someone's event to support them, doing fun things together, comforting with puppies/kittens - whatever this means to you, I'm not going to be picky about it.
It doesn't have to be pure fluff. Angst and blood are fine.
Leave prompts like this:
Fandom, character or pairing, prompt
All fandoms and pairings are welcome. "Any" or original work prompts are also welcome.
Fills can be any length or medium. You can fill your own prompt. Prompts can be filled as many times as you want. Non-fill comments on prompts are also fine, e.g. commenting to say that you liked a prompt.
You don't need to use subject lines on prompts. Subject lines on fills would be helpful for compiling a master list, e.g. "Fill: Agent Carter, Peggy/Daniel, bubble bath." Warnings for upsetting content are not required, but would be courteous.
Please, no prompts about specific real-world events happening now. Fictional versions of similar things are fine though.
Feel free to link to this!
Go forth and prompt!
Edit: Roundup of posted fills #1 | Roundup of posted fills #2
There is an AO3 collection now:
https://archiveofourown.org/collections/holdme_comfortfest
You are welcome to add your fills if you like, but you don't have to.
no subject
FILL: Band of Brothers, Bull & Johnny & Bill, covered in kittens.
A man could usually find one of them by finding the other—Bull being the easier of the two to spot, Johnny to hear—and failing them being together, count on them knowing where the other was, so Bill was surprised when Johnny shook his head slightly.
"Aid station?"
"Nah, just came from there," Bill said. "Docs said he skipped out an hour ago."
"Course he did," Johnny grumbled, but not without fondness. "Didn't report to me." They both looked at Lieutenant Peacock, sitting on a twisted remnant of blown rail and fussing with his bootlaces, a perfect target for any German sniper their sweeps hadn't picked up, and mutually concluded not to bother asking the officers.
"Your boys sacked out over there?" Bill pointed to a half-collapsed barn with a tilt of his head.
"I told 'em it was gonna fall on 'em, but then the lieutenant said it looked okay. Guess who they listened to." Johnny sent Peacock another sour look.
"Well, if you're looking for a hayseed," Bill said, and pushed himself up. He reached down to offer Johnny a hand, and was ignored, so he bumped their shoulders together instead. Johnny shot him a look, and Bill followed up by clapping his hand on the back of Johnny's neck and squeezing lightly.
Johnny didn't answer, but Bill saw him close his eyes for just a little longer than it took to blink. It had been a fucking shit show of a couple of days, even without spending most of the previous night thinking Bull was either dead or a PoW, and Bill knew that Johnny hadn't gotten much in the way of sleep. None of them had.
It wasn't that Bill didn't have enough to worry about with his own boys, but it seemed like someone had to look out for the other sergeants, too, and if Bill didn't, he didn't know who would. Bill gave the scrap of skin between Johnny's helmet and collar another squeeze before letting his hand drop.
Johnny didn't say anything to that, but sort of hummed low in his throat, and looked sideways at Bill for a second, corner of his mouth twitching up, which was about as good as it got with him.
The barn had taken a couple hits, and the roof was slumping badly, but otherwise it wasn't as bad as Johnny had made it sound. Inside, most of first platoon were sprawled across the floor, some on dismantled hay bales, others just flat on the floor or on top of other boys sleeping flat on the floor.
Bill's eyes followed Johnny's as he did a headcount, and knit his eyebrows together as his frown deepened. Bill didn't see Bull either, and didn't know where to look after this.
Hoobler was resting nearest to the door, half sitting with his arms wrapped around his M1 like it was a teddybear, helmet tipped forward to half-cover his eyes. Johnny kicked his ankle to wake him, and from the way he blinked up at them instead of starting, Bill guessed he hadn't really been out yet.
"Hoob!" Johnny demanded, then scowled when Hoobler put his finger to his lips. Still, he dropped his voice a fraction when he asked, "You see Randleman?"
Finger still to his lips, Hoobler pointed across the barn to the back corner, where a couple of the hay bales had survived the pillaging.
Bill squinted into the shadows, not able to see much past loose straw, but Johnny was already picking his way across the floor, mostly not tripping on the boys, so Bill rapped his knuckles on Hoobler's helmet and started to follow.
By the time he got back there, Bill's eyes had adjusted to the dim light, and he could make out a sizable blanket-wrapped lump curled up in the middle of the hay. There weren't a lot of guys in the unit that size, and none of the others had curly blond hair like was poking out of one end of the bundle.
Bull lay with his back to them, his bad arm curled against his chest while his head rested on the crook of his good elbow, helmet and rifle set within reach. Someone had given him their blanket, as he had a couple draped over him.
The barn was filled with the sound of sleeping men, most of them grumbling, snoring or farting, but even so Bill could hear Johnny hold his breath as he watched Bull, studying him until the rise and fall of his back was clear enough to show he was breathing.
"See," Bill said, and Johnny nodded, letting out a long sigh. Neither of them were going to forget the previous night and the terror of not knowing, probably not as long as they lived, but for now the third of their little pack was sleeping peacefully, as safe as any of them could be. "You should sack out too, while we got the chance."
"I will in a minute," Johnny whispered back. Seemed like he wanted to just stand there and watch until he had the image properly in his head. Bill watched as something shifted in the set of Johnny's shoulders for the first time since they'd touched down. "In a minute," Johnny said again. Then scowled sharply.
Bill followed his gaze, and it took a minute to work out what was wrong.
Something inside the blankets was moving. It was down by Bull's ankle, just above where the toe of his boot poked out. At first Bill thought it was just Bull shifting in his sleep, but if it was, he'd grown an extra foot.
Johnny pulled his trench knife out of his belt and used the tip to flip the edge of the blanket back. "Oh, for crying out loud," he muttered.
Bill blinked at the wide green eyes staring back up at them. "What the..."
It was a scruffy orange kitten, just old enough to have its eyes open, but not yet steady on its feet. It brought its paw up to bat at the tip of Johnny's knife, and Johnny jerked it away so the little thing would cut itself. As he did, the guard snagged on the blanket, pulling the whole thing back off Bull's legs.
Bull grunted, and shifted in his sleep, and Johnny froze, glaring at the kitten like he dared it to move and wake Bull up.
It opened its mouth noiselessly, and put its front paws on the ankle of Bull's jump boot, almost managing to climb up before tumbling onto its back. Its tiny paws waved briefly in the air, and Johnny started to reach down to right it. Bill batted his hand away, and a moment later the kitten managed to catch its tail between its front paws and chewed fitfully on the end.
Bill was about to say something about the first kitten when a second poked its nose out from under a fold of the blanket, and started to toddle towards its sibling. It'd gotten about half way there when a long tawny leg reached out from under the blanket and hooked it back in.
The first kitten, either knowing what was good for it or having gotten hungry, flipped back onto its stomach and followed, disappearing into the cave made by the tuck of Bull's knees and the folds of olive drab wool.
Johnny glanced at Bill, who shrugged, and swept his hand to the side. Johnny nodded and inched the blanket back over Bull's knees, revealing the space against Bull's stomach. Five pairs of small green eyes and one pair of large green eyes stared up at Bill and Johnny. The queen cat hissed, low and menacing. Johnny dropped the blanket back into place.
"I wouldn't try move her," Bill whispered, and got one of Johnny's "No shit!" looks. Bill wondered if they should worry about Bull rolling onto his stomach and squishing them all, but he didn't think Bull would shift much with his bad shoulder. "Guess she wanted somewhere warm, huh?"
"Yeah." Johnny looked down at Bull and his nest of kittens with a more gentle expression than Bill had seen since Johnny and Pat's wedding day. "Know how she feels."
"You better get some shut eye," Bill told him. When Johnny stayed fixed in place, Bill reached over and lifted his rifle sling off his shoulder. "Come on. They'll have us on the road again soon."
"Fine, all right." Johnny took the M1 back from Bill and leaned it against the hay bale before slumping down with his back to it and his legs stretched out in front of him. He folded his arms across his chest, and tipped his head back so that the back of his helmet rested on the curve of Bull's back, moving slightly with each of Bull's breaths.
Bill stood there watching until Johnny's face smoothed into sleep. He shed ten years when he was conked out like that, and Bill wished he saw it more often.
Unable to help himself, Bill reached down and put his hand on top of the blanket where it draped over Bull's knees. He drummed his fingers lightly, and felt a small pressure in return: a tiny paw batting at his fingers through the wool. Bill drew his hand back, brushing over Bull's hip and pausing for a moment to soak in how warm and solid and alive he was.
Then he straightened and stepped away, leaving his friends to sleep while they could.
Re: FILL: Band of Brothers, Bull & Johnny & Bill, covered in kittens.
I could also seriously hug Guarnere here. <3 Not that he'd let me, but the thought is there.
One minor but important thing? The line where Johnny jerks his knife away so the little orangie *won't* cut itself says would.
Re: FILL: Band of Brothers, Bull & Johnny & Bill, covered in kittens.
Bill needs all the hugs.
Thanks. I'll fix the typo if I post to AO3.
Re: FILL: Band of Brothers, Bull & Johnny & Bill, covered in kittens.
FILL: Happiness Is a Cold Nose (Warner TV Westerns Universe, gen)
"Well?" Tom Brewster asked anxiously as Bronco Layne rode into the barnyard on the abandoned homestead.
"I got a few answers," Bronco hedged and dismounted. "How is he?"
Tom sighed and glanced over his shoulder toward the barn, where their friend Cheyenne Bodie lay wounded and withdrawn. "Not much change. I mean, the fever's come down, an' I got 'im to eat some, but he still won't let me move 'im into the house. Won't talk to me, either, 'cept to say it ain't our fault an' he's sorry he ain't been in touch."
It had been over a year since Tom and Bronco had last seen Cheyenne and three awful months since they'd each read the news of the Battle of the Little Bighorn and, knowing Cheyenne had been recalled by the Army to serve as a civilian scout under Custer, feared the worst. The fact that they'd managed to stumble upon him here, dangerously ill from the infected gash in his side and wracked with horrible fever-dreams, could only be chalked up to Divine Providence. The nearest town was half a day's ride away, so the pair of them had had to doctor him themselves as best they could. But however he'd been wounded, something seemed to be haunting Cheyenne--something that he couldn't or wouldn't talk about. When Tom had declared the day before that Cheyenne was healing well enough for him to handle alone, Bronco had gone to town to get supplies... and wire Fred Benteen and Marcus Reno in search of answers.
"I ain't seen 'im like this since his pa died," Tom concluded softly.
Bronco nodded. "Well, Benteen couldn't give many answers by wire. He said he'd mail us a copy of Bodie's testimony from Reno's hearin' so's Bodie won't have to tell us the whole story of what happened at the Little Bighorn. Reno said the last time he saw Bodie, two things happened: Bodie found out for sure that Miss Travers was plannin' to marry Reno after all, an' when Bodie left the fort, he swore he was gonna track down the scout who betrayed Custer for Sittin' Bull."
Tom let out a low whistle, and not just because of Cheyenne's vow of vengeance. When the three of them had ridden together from Judas Basin to Fort Abraham Lincoln the year before to investigate the sale of arms to Crazy Horse, Cheyenne had told them about his love for Irene Travers, his rivalry with Reno for her hand, and her refusal to understand his respect for the Sioux and for the Fort Laramie Treaty. At the time, he'd still seemed to hold out some hope that he could win her over, so for her to go back to Reno after the Little Bighorn must have added heartbreaking insult to metaphorical injury.
"Benteen said more about the hunt for the scout," Bronco continued. "Apparently Bodie knew he wouldn't have to go far to find 'im 'cause the scout had repeated the same lie durin' the hearin'. So Bodie waited outside the fort until the scout left an' then gave 'im a choice: go back an' stand trial or die there in front of his wife. The scout attacked, so Bodie overpowered 'im an' took 'im back to the fort, beat up but still breathin'. But I reckon the scout got Bodie with a knife or somethin'. Whether he didn't know it was as bad as it is or whether he just didn't want to stick around the post while Reno an' Miss Travers were there...." He sighed and shook his head. "Stubborn cuss."
"Bronco, he's grievin'."
"Don't change the fact that he coulda died out here."
"I know, I know. I just... don't be too hard on 'im, all right?"
Instead of answering, Bronco pulled his saddlebags off Buttons and onto his shoulder, then took Buttons' reins in one hand to lead the horse into the barn. But both men were stopped short by squeaky noises from inside the barn, followed by a quiet bass rumble that could only be Cheyenne's voice, then more squeaks and more rumbling. Tom and Bronco exchanged a confused look before resuming their walk to the barn door... where they stopped short again and exchanged another look of relieved amusement.
Whatever had caused the homesteaders who'd built this place to leave, they hadn't taken their dogs with them. Tom and Bronco had seen at least two dogs but had heard others fussing quietly somewhere in the barn, although they hadn't tried to look because Cheyenne had needed their full attention when they were awake. The dogs had evidently sensed Cheyenne's sorrow, however, because while the adult dogs stood watch beside the hay bales that were serving as Cheyenne's bed, the big man's chest was now thoroughly buried under a wriggling, yipping, face-licking, tail-lashing mess of puppies. And given the ghost of a smile on Cheyenne's face and the way he was crooning (there was no other word for it) to the puppies in his first language, the puppies were already having the desired effect.
As Tom and Bronco entered the barn and Bronco led Buttons to a stall, one of the adult dogs trotted over to Tom, sat down, and put one paw on Tom's knee with an anxious whine. Tom understood the implicit question--he was still mighty worried about Cheyenne himself--but there was only one answer to give under the circumstances.
"Good dog," he whispered and reached down to give the now-grinning dog a scratch behind the ears.
Re: FILL: Happiness Is a Cold Nose (Warner TV Westerns Universe, gen)
Re: FILL: Happiness Is a Cold Nose (Warner TV Westerns Universe, gen)
Re: FILL: Happiness Is a Cold Nose (Warner TV Westerns Universe, gen)
I'm picturing a bunch of farm dog Labradors here. It's the happy tails, and the licks, and the empathy. :)
Re: FILL: Happiness Is a Cold Nose (Warner TV Westerns Universe, gen)
Fill: Mass Effect, Garrus/FShepard, covered in kittens
Shepard smiled. “It’s a very old tradition. They’d have cats on sailing ships to catch the rats.”
“Does the Normandy have a rat problem?”
She shook her head. “No. But I’d like to keep it that way.”
Garrus frowned as his mind set to calculating the probability and logistics of a rat infestation coming aboard the Normandy, but he put those thoughts aside as they walked into the shelter and were escorted back to where the cats were kept. Shepard let out a long, sustained gasp as she crouched down next to six tiny, fuzzy babies in various combinations of orange and white.
“Garrus, look,” she whispered, picking up one in each hand and nuzzling them to her cheeks. “They’re so little.”
“‘Little’ seems bad for an active war ship,” Garrus said.
She lifted one of the kittens up toward his face, and a tiny cold nose bumped against his cheek. “Loooooook,” Shepard repeated.
He resisted pointing out that he couldn’t very well look at it if it was in his face. Shepard gently placed the kitten in the cowl of his armour, and the little orange cat curled up next to his neck. It made a small rumbling noise, not unlike a contented turian. Garrus chuckled, reaching up to stroke the creature with a finger nearly as large as the kitten was.
Before Garrus realised what she was doing, Shepard had placed all six kittens in his cowl. “Ow,” he muttered as needle-sharp claws dug into his back. Tiny, high-pitched noises combined with low rumbling purrs surrounded him, and the effect put Garrus in mind of a turian nursery. One of the kittens jumped on his head, and he looked up through a fuzzy tail in front of his eyes to see Shepard holding up her omnitool interface.
“Are you taking a picture?” he asked.
“No,” she said, clicking a button.
-
Shepard’s sensibility reigned, and they acquired a calico dubbed Artemis who prowled the decks with predatory grace and wound herself between the legs of anyone cooking in the mess hall. But the little orange kitten who had so quickly settled in Garrus’s armour could not be moved, and despite his concerns about such a small creature on such a dangerous ship, they also took home little Jonesy. Luckily, Jonesy seemed to have no interest in joining Artemis on her explorations, and spent most of his time—even, unfortunately, as he grew into an adult-sized cat—in a ball against Garrus’s neck, rumbling contentedly as the turian quietly worked in the battery.
Re: Fill: Mass Effect, Garrus/FShepard, covered in kittens
I'd have kept the cuddly orange shoulder-kitten too, probably, in addition to the beautiful calico lady. And ooh, that's a reference to the Alien franchise I spy! Ha!
Re: Fill: Mass Effect, Garrus/FShepard, covered in kittens
Re: Fill: Mass Effect, Garrus/FShepard, covered in kittens
Re: Fill: Mass Effect, Garrus/FShepard, covered in kittens
Re: Fill: Mass Effect, Garrus/FShepard, covered in kittens
Re: Fill: Mass Effect, Garrus/FShepard, covered in kittens