Labour of Love

[vamp_ress]

Title: Labour of Love
Author: Michelle
Email: michelle [at] waking-vision.com
Summary: Orlando is home early, but something isn’t right.
Pairing: Viggo/Orlando
Genre: slash, h/c
Warnings: AU, medical condition, epilepsy
Rating: Teen
Disclaimer: I certainly do not know what’s going on in their lives. And as is often the case with my fics: I hope it isn’t this.
Author’s Note: Written for the vo_bday_bash, using the prompt anniversary. This little ficlet is set in a world and setting that I’m developping at the moment, which means there is a lot of backstory to this, but it should be able to stand on its own. I didn’t want to bog this down with endless exposition, which is why there are no further explanations or spoilers apart from the warnings. To keep this as accessible as possible I avoided any and all medical language. If you need/want more context in terms of warnings, please choose the AO3 version, which I tagged more extensively even if none of those medical terms make an actual appearance in the story.

Read on AO3 || DW

(Heed the warnings on this one. It's not overly graphic, but it deals with topics not everyone might want to see both in fiction and in reality. If you need/want more context in terms of warnings, please choose the AO3 version, which I tagged more extensively even if none of those medical terms make an actual appearance in the story.)

Comments

[noalinnea]

Oh, I love this! Partly because it's V/O, but also because I work with people with epilepsy and this is just so accurate and captures so very well what both the person with epilepsy and their loved ones go through on a regular basis. Kudos for picking such a topic!

I have also recently read your vampire series (which I meant to comment separately on, but then RL got in the way), I enjoyed that so much, it kept me glued to my screen! :)

[vamp_ress]

Thank you so much for this comment - it means the world! I agonised a lot whether I should even post this. (I never agonised over the question whether I should write it - the moment this idea hit I went down the deep end.) It's a very tough topic and doesn't make for happy-go-lucky fanfic fare (not even for your usual h/c tropes), but I wanted to explore this world so very much. That you'd find it accurate made me feel so relieved and - dare I say - happy. I wanted this to be intimate, but I didn't want it to be exploitative. I'm so glad it worked for you. There will be another ficlet in this universe next Monday, but this one will actually be 100% fluff. Because people with epilepsy are allowed to have a good time, too!

Also thanks for the With-Verse feedback! It has a totally different tone (and a totally different Viggo) and hope to get back to it eventually. I'd love to finish this series and write a happily ever after for them!

[noalinnea]

I can understand your hesitation regarding posting. But as much as I like a good dose of fluff with a happy ending now and then, the fanfiction works that tend to move me and stay with me usually are the ones that deal with more serious topics.
I particularly liked that you chose a focal seizure (also because not enough people know that they exist), and the little details, most of all the repetition of the dogs name.
Needless to say- I'd love to read more like this, and I hope that I find time to comment on the "With verse" focus individually!

[vamp_ress]

Yeah, I'm the same. I do read (and occassionally write) fluff, but I mostly go for the angst. I need to be "in the mood" for the really heavy stuff, though. I can't always stomach it. There are fics (like there are movies, books) that I read only once. They totally destroyed me the first time around and I have them saved to my harddrive though I'm pretty sure I'll never re-read them, because of the emotional trauma it would cause. Well ...

I just finished an 80k first draft of a multichaptered story in this universe, so there is plenty more if I ever manage to edit this. Despite my initial expectation there are actually two people willing to read this - that's enough for a story that I basically wrote for myself, LOL. There's nothing of the actual seizure in this little ficlet here, but with all the different kinds of seizures out there I tried to "develop" one for Viggo that makes sense for the type of epilepsy he has. Because even though there are certain symptoms that point to certain seizure types, seizures also seem to be very individual things and look different for different people. Yeah, well - just shows I thought about this ways too much. And Charlie is a fixture in this universe as well. I simply love writing animals.

Feel free to jump into the With-Verse whenever you like. It still amuses me that this started out as a PWP oneshot. It certainly developped into a little more *coughs*.