if he hasn't blown the whistle then it isn't quite the end

[sailor]

dear author/artist,

hello, and thank you so much for writing/drawing for me!! ♥ i'm SO excited for this exchange and can't wait to see what you cook up. if you want to stalk me elsewhere, my ao3 is brampersandon and my tumblr is lukacharms.

in general, i'm not picky at all and am super easy to please, so no need to stress over anything. i am much happier to read a story/see art that you wanted to write/draw and enjoyed writing/drawing than giving stringent guidelines/dos and don'ts!! however, i have learned throughout years of doing exchanges that it is way easier when your recipient gives you some concrete details to bounce off of, so i do have a short list below of particular things i really love and things i avoid.

things i love: found families, 5 things fics, banter/lots of dialogue, aus of almost all kinds (exceptions below), character studies, intense friendships, slice of life, codependency/loyalty kink, reincarnation, soulmates (including identifying marks/soulbonds/etc.), reunions, friends to lovers, enemies friends to lovers, telepathy (touch or otherwise), porn with plot, role reversals, pining (seemingly unrequited or actually unrequited), team dynamics, hurt/comfort, age difference, size difference, domesticity, dubcon, i stopped here because putting one after the other made me laugh really hard. domesticity AND dubcon at the same time!! why not.

do not wants: kidfic, issuefic, scenes of rape or self-harm, a/b/o, pwp, hard kink (scat/watersports/guro/etc.), genderswap, werewolf/vampire/other mythical creature aus, royalty/regency aus. as far as wags in stories go, please no vilification or focus on infidelity.

i've included suggestions-that-could-possibly-be-considered-prompts for each of my requests, but once again, please don't feel like you need to adhere to those if they don't spark anything for you.

above all else, have fun!!


claudio marchisio, paulo dybala

hear ye, hear ye, paulo dybala has a thing for older men.

okay but seriously, these two are my personal nightmare. FUN FACT, claudio was the first person to welcome paulo to juventus and help him settle in with the rest of the squad — literally from the very day paulo flew back with them from their champions league final loss to barcelona. ANOTHER FUN FACT, they then went on holiday together this summer, because of course they did.

so they're clearly close, which is hilarious to me because claudio is such a quiet, mature, even-tempered kind of guy and paulo is... uh, a youthful terror to say the least. their unlikely relationship is adorable and just perfect for further exploration!!

potential prompts:
- they have a tendency to get knocked out of commission at the same time, weirdly enough. they both missed the ucl match against bayern due to injury, and then both were left out of their respective summer tournaments. commiseration! hurt/comfort! or just claudio imparting the wisdom of an older, wiser player! i'm all about it!
- these two lend themselves particularly well to aus, if you're into that! like, the teacher/student dynamic is so real, it's insane. but really, any kind of au that preserves the age difference is good with me.
- so like i mentioned before, they totally went on holiday together. here, just have a smattering of links: little dinner parties! shirtless football! whatever the hell this is!! I'M JUST SO INTO IT. why did they do this. did paulo follow him there (because claudio is the biggest instagram queen and liveblogs everything he does) or did they plan it? did they kick their feet up and watch the euros and carefully prod at the summer transfer drama? just how thoroughly did paulo ruin claudio's entire life with blowjays? you know, normal fun holiday stuff like that.



david villa, jack harrison

I PROMISE I CAN EXPLAIN.

i just... look. i have such a weakness for hero worship, and age difference, and trope subversion when it comes to the two. so, enter this rickety little mls clubhouse called nycfc with me and let me spin you a tale!!

in the waning twilight years of his career, david captains nycfc, which is about as thankless as it gets in mls (though they are at the top of the eastern conference right now, so HA). meanwhile, young jack was entered into the 2016 mls superdraft and picked #1 overall by the chicago fire. nycfc then swooped in, threw the #4 pick and a ton of money at chicago fire, and took jack for their own. so he's obviously in high demand — and for good reason, because that kid is ABSURDLY good.

turns out that jack is a super fanboy of david (and all the other legends he plays with — he loves pirlo and lampard too, it's adorable). also, turns out that david seems to feel the same. also, they link up incredibly well. also, they're being painted as this great inter-generational meeting of the talented minds by the club itself. also, seriously please just light me on fucking fire. "THE BOY," DAVID? REALLY? COOL!!

so, in conclusion, this hits all of my "older player finding a great talent in a much younger player and taking him under his wing but also maybe getting a little too invested if you know what i mean" buttons.

potential prompts:
- like i said, trope subversion is a HUGE thing for me, and i especially love it in age difference/hero worship. i love when the younger one is the pushy one and the older one is baffled by it, i love when the legendary player finds himself fanboying for the young upstart even more than it happens the other way around. OH MY GOD I LOVE THAT SHIT. i love it played straight too of course, but to me they're so rife with potential for the trope subversion. BASICALLY ANYTHING WITH AGE DIFFERENCE/HERO WORSHIP WILL DO ME IN FOR GOOD, my life is in your hands, please be kind to me.
- or, honestly, anything slice of life would be so cute to me too. david and jack exploring new york city together! david helping him settle into the team! doing dumb publicity videos together! anything at all, even the smallest fluffiest thing for them would make me so happy.



gareth bale, toni kroos

hello, and thank you for joining me for my rarest of real madrid pairs. tell it by yourself.

toni and gareth are hilariously well-matched to me. they're both dry, sarcastic guys who live for the banter, they're both a little more buttoned-up and reserved than their touchy-feely teammates, they're both just a touch awkward. okay, more than a touch. and yet they're constantly teasing each other about stuff like the dumb missed high five and how neither of them can speak spanish and how far they'd get in the euros. I JUST LOVE THEM TOGETHER SO MUCH.

i'm a pretty big sucker for characters who seem stoic and reticent on the outside secretly having a ton of hidden depth but only being comfortable showing it around certain people, and they lend themselves SO WELL to that. learning more about themselves through each other! connecting in ways they usually don't! all that good stuff, i just love it.

potential prompts:
- gareth seems to have really finally, FINALLY hit his stride with both club and country, which is such a relief. it took a lot of perseverance to get there though. meanwhile, toni is just this unflappable font of quiet confidence. if you want to take a step back to the not-so-distant past when gareth was on shakier ground with real madrid and explore toni helping him through that, i would probably drop dead from happiness.
- as always, if you're into aus, i'm into aus! i know they can sometimes be less daunting to write than season-compliant fic, so if you want to go that route, i'm all for it. like i said previously, i love basically all aus with few exceptions, so i am happy for toni and gareth in just about any setting — i'm so desperately head over heels for this pairing, literally anything would make my day. i particularly love aus involving robots, space, ghosts, non-football professions, theatre/film, reincarnation, on and on and on. aus of all kinds! go crazy!!
- (quietly but with feeling) i am all about surprise dominant toni and gareth being unexpectedly super into it. it's gross, i am gross, but THAT'S MY JAM. so if you felt like going down the filth route, you know, there's that!!



gianluigi buffon, iker casillas

it's always baffled me that there's little fic for gigi/iker because their relationship is so unique. the two most capped players for their national teams, captains who've met each other head-on time and time again and built up such a mutual admiration society, immortal heroes of club and country who just get each other. i have a soft spot in my heart for relationships like that — two characters who largely weather their circumstances alone but come to find a rare confidante in someone going through the exact same thing.

also, iker said he sometimes sleeps wearing a pair of gigi's shorts, which is a lot for me to handle personally.

i really, honestly, truly would love anything exploring their relationship, romantic or platonic or any weird gray area in between that tickles your fancy.

potential prompts:
- so, they made a retirement pact. the circumstances of it are pretty heartbreaking to me — iker obviously has de gea waiting primed and ready in the wings to take his place for spain, but gigi doesn't have that same situation with italy. gigi's already said the 2018 world cup will be his last major tournament, but there's no question he'll be the one playing for italy. iker? he doesn't have that same security. anything about this little pact they have would totally make my day. how did they come to it? how are they going to see it out? (although i mentioned de gea for context, i would prefer if he wasn't a focal point in the fic itself.)
- apparently while álvaro morata was at juventus, they each asked him for the other's phone number. (also, much later during euro 2016, this happened. SO THAT'S COOL. ANYWAY.) that's so cute? they've played against each other for so much of their careers and yet they didn't breach that divide until they had a little go-between in morata? KILL ME?? mutual respect as a thin disguise for pining! slow long distance burn! my JAM!!
- in filthier news, boy, nobody knows the eternal stress of a keeper-capí like another keeper-capí, right?? i'm so into gigi/iker because it's a rare ship dynamic where somebody else gets to take care of iker. the usual power dynamic is shifted and i'm SO INTO IT. so hey, if you feel like writing something proper filthy about all the myriad ways gigi could get iker to relax and let somebody else take control for once, i am suuuuper down for that.



gianluigi buffon, leonardo bonucci

so here we are, circling around to my hero worship thing again. but slightly different this time, i swear!!

gigi and leo have played together for juve and italy nt for six years now, and to say leo is completely obsessed with gigi would honestly be doing it a disservice at this point. i'm just going to lead with the most egregious offense in my book: that time leo talked about how lucky he is to be able to watch gigi constantly and breathe him in. SO IT'S LIKE THAT.

goalies/their defenders is suuuuch a thing for me — i love the symbiotic relationship they have, for better or for worse. gigi/his defenders is particularly bad for me — i mean, this is the keeper who wrote a love letter to the goal he defends, can you imagine how poetic he gets for the last line of defense that's always in front of him? on top of that, when leo plays in front of another keeper, commentators have a habit of talking about how he looks a little lost without gigi behind him. yikes!!

potential prompts:
- any further exploration of that goalie/defender dynamic would be so, so good. nobody drives a goalie crazy and saves their life like a defender. WHOO CODEPENDENCY. and gigi and leo have been through so much together, highs with juve and lows with the national team, there is just a lot there to work with if you wanted to!
- by that same token, further exploration into leo's insane hero worship(/CAPTAIN KINK??) would be my jaaaaam. does he play it cool around gigi and only drop the occasional obsession bomb in interviews? does he TRY to play it cool and fail miserably? DOES HE NOT EVEN BOTHER TRYING AND EVERYBODY KNOWS HE'S HEAD OVER HEELS FOR GIGI? does gigi feed into it? THERE'S SO MUCH THERE.
- imagine me gesturing expansively, vaguely, uselessly before blurting out I DUNNO, PORN?? it's just. god. the dearth of juve smut is the biggest mystery to me because it's basically orgy fc but anyway. ANYWAY. the point is, if you feel like getting into bianconeri smut with gigi and leo, i would just be thrilled. gigi is such a magnetic, enigmatic guy and leo is all wild reckless aggression so there is just so much potential there. SCUDETTO VICTORY BONING? POST-EUROS ELIMINATION CONSOLATION BONING? THE CHOICE IS YOURS, I'M GOOD WITH LITERALLY ANYTHING.



luka modrić, vedran ćorluka

this is me desperately throwing a vatreni message in a bottle out into the open sea and hoping somebody else out there knows and cares for these two and their life-ruining best friendship to end all best friendships. but if not, here's the cliffsnotes!

luka and charlie (a nickname vedran picked up during his time in epl that's just kind of stuck) met when they were teenagers playing for dinamo zagreb. the story goes that charlie dragged luka out for drinks two days after meeting him and they became best friends from there. they played together at dinamo, inter zaprešić, tottenham hotspur and just about every level of the croatia national team. they have an intense decade-long playstation rivalry, they exclusively room together, they're basically inseparable any time they're reunited.

and it's funny because charlie is MASSIVE and TATTOOED and TERRIFYING. he's basically a caricature of a defender, huge and not super quick and prone to getting into fights. and luka is... well. we all know luka is basically a forest sprite in a tiny man's body. THEY'RE JUST HILARIOUSLY MISMATCHED WHEN YOU LOOK AT THEM TOGETHER, but they love each other so much?? they've been undyingly loyal to each other since they were kids. it ruins my life.

potential prompts:
- i have a HUUUUUGE WEAKNESS for the "best friends in love" trope. like, the kind where they're in so deep with each other that there's no real lines drawn and it's a real gray area between best friends and something more. best friends who kiss sometimes. best friends who didn't even realize they spent most of their life pining because the other one was always right by their side!! APPLY THAT TO THESE TWO AND I AM JUST A GONER.
- and i mean, if you're DEEP into vatreni like i am (first of all, let's be friends) then you should know i love meta about this damn team. like. so much. luka and charlie grew up worshipping the 1998 golden (bronze) generation and pressure has always been on them to surpass those guys — charlie even said during euro 2016 that he doesn't think they can, which is just. WILD. anyway. meta! about the pressure they're under, about being on a national team that has all the spectacular parts but can never quite find their footing, about getting too old to keep their dream alive, ANYTHING. I LOVE ANY AND ALL IN-DEPTH VATRENI STUDY AND ANGST. I AM PROBABLY THE ONLY ONE.
- EDITED TO ADD 8.29.16 LUKA IS OFFICIALLY VATRENI'S NEW CAPTAIN, CHARLIE IS HIS VICE-CAPTAIN, I THINK I AM DYING??



mario mandžukić, sami khedira, stephan lichtsteiner

HELLO POOL BOY!!

so i've been into this weird random threesome basically from the moment they all first appeared together, but their post-scudetto interview really sealed the deal. seriously, just watch it the video. it includes steph blowing smoke into sami's face, both of them making fun of sami's holidays, and steph's famous phrase that truly ruined my life: "i feel very good, because i can make party with you two together." I HAVE NEVER BEEN THE SAME.

juve is a super group-oriented team, but the little cliques they split off into are fascinating to me, and none moreso than this one. it's interesting because sami is such an affable guy, steph is such a snarky hothead, and mandzo is super buttoned up and awkward. it seems like none of them should fit together, but they DO, and PERFECTLY AT THAT. they balance each other out and just seem to genuinely love being around each other.

potential prompts:
- anything exploring how steph helps both of them settle into their first season at juve (and how both of them help draw mandzo out of his seemingly impenetrable shell) would be GOLDEN for me. steph's already stitched into the fabric of the club, but sami and mandzo couldn't have arrived under more different circumstances, so i'd love anything about how they all strike the balance and come to know one another.
- AND IF THEY ALL HAPPEN TO KISS, THAT IS SUUUUPER OKAY WITH ME TOO. i love a good "oh shit i love both of you and now i've accidentally fallen into poly hell" trope, i really do.
- since they have such an interesting team dynamic and all bring something so different to the table, any other kind of team-based au would work great for them, i think! by that i mean things like spies, mafia, etc. (but as my general likes say, i'm totally into just about all types of aus if another kind strikes your fancy instead!!)



medhi benatia, miralem pjanić

this is a new transfer window-supplied pairing for me so i don't have as much to go on, but i'm already SO enamored that i couldn't help myself.

mira and mehdi only played together for one year at roma, but they apparently became fast friends. best friends, even. then mehdi went off to bayern in 2014, and it looked like they were doomed to be cruelly separated forever, never reaching their full potential together... until the unlikely tides of fate brought them back together at juve!!

seriously, they've only been reunited for a little over a month now and they've been completely inseparable that whole time. I AM VERY INTO IT.

potential prompts:
- I LOVE REUNIONS. i am just such a sucker for separations and reunions as a narrative trope — i adore the way distance can make characters realize what they appreciate in the person they miss (or conversely, what they're grateful to be without!) and the revelations that come with that and how they play out in reunion. OOH I LOVE IT SO MUCH. if you want to delve into that, my god be my guest, i will be pleased as punch. (bonus, albeit a bit of a bummer one: mehdi's is sadly only on loan at juve, so there is a ticking countdown on their time together. i do love good angst over the future!!)
- i also love fish-out-of-water type stories, and both of them being new at juve but having that familiarity with each other that they can anchor against is just (italian chef kissing fingers gesture) to me. how do they deal with coming into a new team, both separately and together?


and that about sums it up!! whew. again, thank you so much. i can't wait to see what you create and inevitably gush all over it.

have fun and i'll see you on the other side!!

♥ caitlin