Pine4Pine

Dear creator,

There are few things I like better than the angst fest that comes with pining. For most of these, I’ve requested ‘pining never requited’, but even for the one where pining is eventually requited, feel free to get as miserable and angsty as you like. No holds barred! Make all these wonderful characters suffer~ Equally, characters having sex with their object of pining but it still not being requited is fine by me, as is infidelity. Whatever works for you!

I had a hard time choosing between tags. Feel free to combine any you like, or steal from a different request; I mostly went with those that seemed best suited for the ship or scenario, but I’m open to other stuff.

I think the tags speak for themselves, mostly, as prompts go, and my likes have a lot of jumping off points, hopefully. But if you do want more specific prompts, I have requested most of these ships in the past (or at least the canons), so I’m happy to have past letters pillaged. Please, though, only adhere to the DNWs featured in this letter, as it is the most up-to-date and my tastes do tend to change over time.

General Likes
Smut Likes
DNWs
The Folk of the Air
DCU Comics
Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Hamilton
Pretty Little Liars

General Likes

- Casefic
- Darkfic *
- PWP
- Angst, all the angst, there is seriously no such thing as "too much angst"
- Hurt/comfort & whump **
- Second Person POV
- Pining, including unrequited even for requested ships
- Bathing/washing, being dried with a towel
- Power dynamics being explored
- Forced proximity setups: snowed in, trapped/stranded/handcuffed together, huddling for warmth, too sick to move, captivity etc.
- Being emotionally overloaded or overwhelmed
- Height differences
- Touch-starved or stoic characters
- Sad or self-destructive or angry or self-loathing characters, suffering for any reason but also possibly for reasons they brought on themselves
- Bisexual characters
- Ghosts
- Cooking and food, especially food sharing
- Enemies and annoyances to lovers, rivalries especially flirty ones
- Lotsa repressed feelings
- Regrets, rejections, repression, all those angsty things
- Soulmate AUs especially words/last words, especially when this trope is plumbed for angst or twisted to be horror
- Horror ***
- Nonsexual intimacy
- Guilt-laden infidelity
- Messy characters in extremely messy situations

—

Things I opt-in to: mentioned past relationships or background ships, major character death, experimental formats inc. interactive fiction, pregnancy (but not breeding kink, that’s a DNW), graphic violence, sad or ambiguous endings, suicide, ships breaking up or one/both of them dying (or killing each other)

—

All of the below are non-exhaustive lists to illustrate what I like in some of my broader likes — but feel free to go off-script if you think it’ll fit a ship well. As long as it doesn’t hit my DNWs, I’m pretty open!

*Things I like in darkfic: noncon and dub con; Came Back Wrong; Something Made Them Do It; betrayal; grief; dealing with past trauma or receiving the trauma within the fic; suicide or dealing with suicidal thoughts (or being gaslit into suicide); being haunted (figuratively or literally) by past wrongs they committed; actions motivated by self-loathing or loneliness; torture; revenge; non-consensual non-sexual actions; boundary violations, and anything appropriate from any other list :D

**Things I like in hurt/comfort: whump; sickness; injury; comfort from the enemy; being severely bloodied or beaten; overworking to the point of sickness; touch-starvation; emotional hurt heaped high; feeling dead inside; feeling undeserved of comfort; bathing/washing; comfort applied by the person who hurt them; being embarrassed about their hurt; the comforter being embarrassed or guilty that they are attracted to or aroused by the hurt party; pregnancy and related sickness or discomfort; sex as comfort; all the pining possible; being hurt trying to protect the person they care about; forced proximity; crying when you’ve been trying so hard to hold it in

***Things I like in horror: please see my Holiday Horror and Multifandom Horror lists for both horror tropes I like and horror canons I enjoy and wouldn’t mind seeing emulated or pastiched.

Smut Likes

Rough sex, vanilla sex, hand kink, enthusiastic cunnilingus, public use and gangbangs, being held down, biting/scratching, bittersweet sex, noncon, dubcon, accidental stimulation, heat cycles, face-fucking, extremely emotionally charged sex, spanking, casual D/s, first times, humour and awkwardness, aftercare, femsub, fingerfucking, shoving fingers into mouths, public and semi-public sex, Bad Guys Made Them Do It, pining while fucking, sex pollen inc. only one partner doused, affectionate use of the word "slut/whore" (like "you’re a good little slut"), showing trust through sex acts, voyeurism, masturbation (solo, mutual and guided), frottage, clothed and semi-clothed sex, handholding while fucking

I’m okay with either come/cum as spelling and with pussy, cunt or vagina as terminology for vaginas.

DNWs

- Anyone under 16 involved in explicit sex
- Unaroused victim in noncon (but arousal can be a fear response or induced rather than real arousal)
- Noncon involving trans characters
- Scat, watersports, emetophilia, belly kinks (inc. feeding & inflation), pussy slapping, fisting, oviposition, breeding kink
- CSA in anything more than mentions (other kinds of CA are fine to be featured)
- The phrase “to the hilt”
- Mpreg
- Readerfic

The Folk of the Air

>>>Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar (Cardan pining)
>>>Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar (Jude pining)

I love these two in all of the books but, what can I say, I imprinted pretty hard on their dynamic in The Cruel Prince and love all that angsty, self-destructive, terrible pining. I love to see both of these characters suffer, and suffer terribly. I like the way Cardan leans into his suffering and, in the first book, makes others suffer in retaliation. I like the way Jude struggles against it and is defiant until the last.

I’m also open to stuff happening during The Wicked King, especially early, when Jude has the ability to "command" Cardan. There is some power play fuckery there that I would love to see explored further, as while it provides tension and conflict in the second book, it isn’t drilled into as far as I might have liked.

I’m happy for them to actually be mutually pining (although one or both can be in denial), but I don’t want them to end happily in fic. I want them to fuck each other up, fuck themselves up, fuck any chance they had up. I want them to do terrible things to subvert their pining, to try and gain control over the situation again and to hurt everyone, including themselves, up in the process. Ooooor if you have other ideas, I’m also open to it!! I just want an angst-fest really.

Tags:
⁃ Character A would rather die than admit to having feelings for Character B
⁃ Character A's Pining For Character B Fuels Curse Placed On Character A By a Witch [but I don’t mind the alternate tag, where Character B is cursed, being used instead!]
⁃ Conversations with double meanings due to pining
⁃ Dub/noncon - dub or nonconning the object of their pining
⁃ forced to fuck or die with the object of their affections
⁃ Object of pining goes into heat around pining character [note: for this one, and "Pining while in heat", either of them being able to go into heat, or having A/B/O dynamics, would work for me]
⁃ Pining A thinks about B while having sex with others
⁃ Pining and enjoying the feeling of want even with it’s pain
⁃ Pining while in heat
⁃ Sex Pollen - object of pining rejects pining character after the effects of pollen have worn off
⁃ Sex Pollen - pining character is unaware that object of pining is sex-pollened
⁃ Sex While Pining - Something Made Them Do It

DCU Comics

>>> Edward Nygma/Harley Quinn (Edward pining)

At the end of Gotham City Sirens #10 (link is to scans of it, free to read), after Harley, Ivy and Selina have used the Riddler as bait, Harley kisses him and he shrugs it off because he’s so hurt. Annnnd, 11 years later, I still think about that incident way, way too often. It wasn’t even a good issue! But there’s something about him being betrayed, and just how much it hurt him, that cemented some unrequited shipping feelings into me.

I’m happy for this to take place during any era of DC, although I do have a particular soft spot for periods where Edward is trying to make it as a PI or is in a real bad way. I’m also happy for them to have a casual sex relationship, just one that Edward hopes for more from.

I think Harley is the kind of person who gives affection freely, and Edward (as he says at the end of GCS#10) doesn’t even have friends, let alone lovers. I love him crumbling under the attention she gives him, even when he knows it isn’t real and he’s being used. I also prefer if Harley does care a little about him, just not as much as he does. I don’t mind whether she’s aware of his intense pining or not (or knows and pretends not to).

Also, I really like that she calls him Eddie and would prefer to keep to that nickname! For any where she’s dating or marrying someone else, I don’t mind who that is. I do like Poison Ivy/Harley Quinn and (fucked up) Joker/Harley but I’m open to anyone.

Tags:
⁃ Attending Object of Pining’s Wedding to Someone Else
⁃ being forced into faking a relationship with your crush
⁃ Character A tries to convince themself that a platonic relationship is enough
⁃ Codependency - Exacerbated by Pining
⁃ Helping object of pining get ready for a date with someone else
⁃ Hurt pined-for character turns up on pining character's doorstep (didn't know where else to go)
⁃ Piner is happy being used if it gets them affection or attention from object of pining
⁃ Pining Character A Settles For Meaningless Sex From Character B But Wants More
⁃ Pining Character knows and accepts that their feelings will never be returned (but still pines)
⁃ Pining character will never love another
⁃ pining for someone pregnant and single
⁃ Tiny Acts of Affection that Doom Pining Character to Ardent Love
⁃ Trying (and failing) to fall out of love with someone who doesn't love you back
⁃ Character pines for someone who thinks nothing of undressing casually in front of them

Star Wars Sequels

>>>Rose/Hux (Hux pining)

I have a thing about hands, and so that hand-bite in the deleted scene was always going to sink me. And I love seeing Rose through the lens of someone obsessed with her even when he shouldn’t be, even when he has no right to be, even when he should crush her beneath his boot like he wishes he had the strength to. (There’s also a joke about rose-tinted lenses in here somewhere, but I’m too tired for that.)

I love this both happening during the actual canon (pining from afar, maybe some canon divergence that keeps her on the Starkiller longer, or he captures her another time, or she becomes his handler as the spy, even if she never comes to trust him, especially given his motivations for becoming a spy) — and happening post-canon, if you wanna play with a Hux lives AU, maybe when he’s either imprisoned by the Rebellion or spared as someone who spied on their behalf, even if his heart was in the wrong place. Them walking together uneasily post-war (or having a drunken one night stand!) would be great too.

Don’t be afraid to make Hux exactly as petty and waspish as he is in the canon, with that inferiority complex and bitterness towards Ben dialled to high. But if you want to tap into his more vulnerable sides, I want to go on that journey with you! And I love Rose as a fighter, defiant and not here for any of Hux’s shit.

Tags:
⁃ "Casual" Sex Ends up Being Much More Intense and Full of Pining than Expected
⁃ A pines for B after B refuses to kill A when they ought to
⁃ Character A has never been in love before and so doesn't immediately recognize the feeling
⁃ Dub/noncon - dub or nonconning the object of their pining
⁃ kidnapping your crush and forcing them into marriage
⁃ Object of pining goes into heat around pining character [note: A/B/O or just general, other-kinds-of-heat are both great!]
⁃ Revealed Feelings While Mortally Injured/No Hope but Whoops! They Were Rescued Now It's Awkward
⁃ Sex Pollen - object of pining rejects pining character after the effects of pollen have worn off
⁃ Sex Pollen - pining character is unaware that object of pining is sex-pollened
⁃ Sex While Pining - Something Made Them Do It
⁃ Soulmate AU - soulmates but object of pining still doesn't want them
⁃ Trying to Ignore Feelings While Forced to Work in Close Quarters With Person of Their Affection

>>>Ben/Poe/Finn (Ben pining)

As will also become clear in my PLL request, I am a complete sucker for OT3s where one character is pining desperately for an established couple. I don’t actually need Poe/Finn to be together already in any fic written for this request, but just them being able to be friends, where Ben still feels like he’s on the outside, is good shit.

In Ben’s case, I love him feeling not good enough for them, or thinking it’s all pining for nothing. Post-TROS (with a Ben lives AU) is perfect. I would also be super interested in canon divergence where Kylo is in love with them from afar, maybe obsessively and a tiny little bit murderously? I’m not sure exactly on the specifics, but if you have any ideas for during-canon stories, just feel free to run with it!

This is the only couple I’ve asked for eventually requited feelings from, because I’m just a sucker for Ben getting some love, no matter how fraught, but I’m more than happy with him being denied that love too. If you also want to go in the direction that Finn and Poe are willing to make it work platonically, even if they can’t make it work romantically, that would great too! Or one of them wants him romantically, but the other does not etc. Etc. Basically, any way configuration or way of getting them together or not, I’m always here for more angsty content for this ship.

(I picked some A/B tags as there were limited poly tags, but assume I mean A/B/C)

Tags:
⁃ A burns bridges with B thinking feelings aren't mutual - they are
⁃ Caretaking And Kind Gestures For Pining Character Who Isn't Used To Them
⁃ Character A pining silently so Characters B & C won't feel guilty for not returning their affections
⁃ Enforced Proximity Between Pining Characters
⁃ forced to fuck or die with the object of their affections
⁃ Hanahaki Disease
⁃ pining after both members of an established couple
⁃ Pining character punishing themselves for their pining
⁃ Pining Character Uses Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms to Deal with Their Feelings
⁃ pining for someone who will come home to them [note: but also "pining for someone to come home to" works here!]
⁃ Pining Touch-Starved Character A Only Wants B To Touch Them
⁃ Travelling together while hiding pining
⁃ Trying to Ignore Feelings While Forced to Work in Close Quarters With Person of Their Affection

Hamilton

>>>Hamilton/Burr (Burr pining)

If I had to build my perfect character from scratch, I think Burr would be it. Bitter and riddled with an inferiority syndrome, I love how desperate he is to match up to Hamilton, who is brilliant and energetic and so damn sure of himself. And if that isn’t the best basis for unrequited pining, I don’t know what is.

I like seeing this ship at any point in its journey. Maybe at the beginning, there is casual sex (or maybe there is still some near the end of Hamilton’s life, too, it’s just more fraught and complex in feeling) or a fling. Perhaps there was never anything physical because Burr didn’t know how to ask for it, much less what to do with it if he got it. Or perhaps, it’s after they’ve soured towards each other completely, when Burr is at his most riled up, and yet still, somewhere deep within him, wriggles a tiny seed of desperate pining, desperate need to be seen and accepted and celebrated by Hamilton, which motivates all this shit. I’m also open to post-death stuff with ghosts, if you want.

I’m happy for Hamilton, like I said, being interested in only a physical relationship, or not at all. But I like for him not to realise the consequences of his actions towards Burr, completely oblivious to the extent in which Burr pines.

I really like the trappings of the historical period, particularly in dress and definitely in regards to the repression, but I’m not hugely knowledgeable about the time period past the wikipedia pages, so take any liberties you want. I don’t mind either way.

Tags:
⁃ A Pining While Adjusting B's Shirt Collar/Cuffs
⁃ Character A pining after brief fling years ago while Character B has moved on
⁃ Hurt pined-for character turns up on pining character's doorstep (didn't know where else to go)
⁃ Jealousy - Feeling Like They're Being Replaced and/or Unwanted
⁃ Pining A thinks about B while having sex with others
⁃ Pining Character A Settles For Meaningless Sex From Character B But Wants More
⁃ Pining leads to fights and guilt
⁃ Soulmate AU - A is pining B’s soulmate but B is not A's
⁃ The Most Ardent Pining Self-Hating Unrequited Love Imaginable
⁃ Tiny Acts of Affection that Doom Pining Character to Ardent Love

Pretty Little Liars

>>>Caleb/Hanna/Mona (Mona pining)
>>>Caleb/Hanna/Mona (Mona & Hanna pining)

"After all this time?" "Always." - Me about PLL, and Mona in particular. I love, love, love Mona/Hanna and the motivations it provides Mona with. But in S7x10 (around 28:10), the mid-season finale, where we see Mona and Caleb putting together each other’s coffees without saying a word? That lived-in feel, that knowledge about each other, coming off the back of the moment in S6 where she smacks him down in the lift over the time they kissed way back in season 2…I had some ~~feelings awaken in me.

I especially love that Caleb is dedicated to Hanna, but so is Mona (though, sometimes, in a pretty twisted way). I like when they try to bridge the gap between them to try and help her (like the stakeout session in S7). And I love how much Hanna loves them both and works so hard to keep both of them in her life. Her undying loyalty to Mona, even when everyone else turns on her, even when it turns out Mona has been doing these awful things? I love it so, so much. Also, if you want them to have had a romantic relationship pre-canon (or even during!), I’m here for that. It only adds to the delicious messiness!

I chose "Feelings never requited" only here, but as my tags suggest, I don’t mind them trying to make it work and maybe hatching an uneasy partnership as a threesome. I would just rather it not to be fluffy or easy or without conflict/the suggestion that it might all fall apart if any of them misstep. I want fraught relations!

(As with my other OT3, I picked some A/B tags as there were limited poly tags, but assume I mean A/B/C)

Tags:
⁃ A pines over both B and C and they try to make it work for A's sake
⁃ A pines over both B and C but it won't happen because B and C don't like each other
⁃ A Pining for B also Starts Pining for B's Partner C
⁃ A Pining While Adjusting B's Shirt Collar/Cuffs
⁃ Character A pining after brief fling years ago while Character B has moved on
⁃ Character will follow the object of their pining into danger or towards certain death
⁃ Enforced Proximity Between Pining Characters
⁃ Hurt pining character turns up on pined-for character's doorstep (didn't know where else to go)
⁃ Jealousy - Feeling Like They're Being Replaced and/or Unwanted
⁃ Pining Character A Deviously Tries to Trick Taken Character B Into Falling In Love
⁃ Pining Character Murders Potential Rivals
⁃ Pining leads to fights and guilt
⁃ Undercover as a Couple While Pining