Buying Trouble by Layna Andersen Original poster: gloriana
Title: Buying Trouble
Author: Layna Andersen
Rating: NC17
Pairing: Q/O
Warnings: ( Read More - includes spoilers )
Author's LJ id, e-mail, and/or website: lj id: ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
darthhellokitty
email: darthhellokitty@livejournal.com
website: http://www.squidge.org/~foxsden/layna/laynasindex.html
Link to story: on M-A: http://www.masterapprentice.org/archive/b/buying_trouble.html
Buying Trouble was also published as a zine, in which it was accompanied by 11 further stories by other MA authors, writing new bits of background to the original AU. Layna's site includes these other stories, plus a link if you want to buy the zine, which is still available.
Reasons for recommending: Layna began this ancient Roman AU with the description: "Quiaius, a widower living alone with his cats and books, goes shopping for a housekeeper, and instead buys a starved, filthy and badly abused wild Celt who would otherwise have been sent to the Coliseum." Little did we in our innocence then, beginning the first chapter so many years ago, realise the extremes of tears, joy and sexual suspense Layna would drive us to. And least you young ones (she says bitterly) don't have to wait for the next episode to land in your mailboxes.
The characterisation is consistent and concise: this is Qui as the gentle, somewhat bewildered scholar; Obi-Wan as the courageous, if battered young pagan priest; and a delightful array of familiar faces sprinkled in the appropriate places. But Layna uses all the rest of the 200k to wrack our emotions. Reading Buying Trouble is to be wound around the writer's little finger, and played with like a yoyo; but the experience is irresistible.
Quote from story: ( 'A Celt, you say? I've never seen one...' )
Extra comments: ( Read More, with mild spoiler )