Shayheyred

Fan
Name:	Shayheyred
Alias(es):	Shay; Shay Sheridan
Type:	Fan writer
Fandoms:	Bleach, C6D, due South, Kyou Kara Maou, Man from UNCLE, Naruto, Samurai Champloo, The Professionals, The 10th Kingdom
Communities:
Other:
URL:	Shayheyred on the AO3
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Shayheyred has been a writer in the due South fandom since 2002 and has also written Slings & Arrows in C6D. An original Man From UNCLE "first cousin," Shay has written extensively in that fandom, as well as a dozen anime/manga fandoms, including Bleach, Princess Tutu, Samurai Champloo and Kyou Kara Maou. She has posted nearly 200 stories to the AO3 in other fandoms ranging from Sherlock (BBC) to Shakespeare. Although primarily a slash writer, she has numerous gen stories and a smattering of het and femslash.

Writing style

mergatrude says in ds_profiles:

" Shay's first due South fic was the epic gen thriller Wait Until Dim. Then she discovered slash and we have not looked back. She writes hot porn, hysterically funny crack, and the odd dark tale that makes us shiver. Shay is also a supporter of the love between Wolf and Turtle."

Notable Works

due South

• Objects in the Rearview Mirror. (Fraser/Kowalski) It's the people who love Fraser, who want to love Fraser; those people he won't allow himself to love until it's almost too late. "So, you want to grab some food when we're done here?" I hear Ray as if from a great distance. The side window is fogged now, as the cool air within wars with the humidity outside. The condensation obscures the rearview mirror, just as a whiteout in the Territories obscures the terrain. You can be lost there so easily.

This time I shake my head, trying to rouse myself from the hypothermia of my heart. "I guess I'm just a little tired." Lie. Liar. "So, no."

"Oh." He sounds...disappointed, and I look at him, pulling myself back, despite my desire to withdraw. I've been avoiding him since the incident with the jogger. He's looking out his window, perhaps studying his own mirror. His shrug this time is a capitulation that says "I don't care," but he does; his defenses are transparent. "Thought maybe we'd get some dinner afterwards, that's all. But if you're tired we don't have to." I've known him a year. He's often prickly, and being undercover, doesn't have many friends. He knows I've been keeping away and doesn't understand why. He'll never say so, but it hurts him. I've hurt him, when all I wanted to do was protect myself. Well hurrah for you, Benton Fraser, you've succeeded. You've kept him at bay.

I wonder...Did I do the same to Ray Vecchio? Did I limit our friendship out of fear that he'd see my true nature, or the fear that I'd feel too much? Did he leave because I wouldn't let him in? Dear God, is even simple, honest friendship too much for me to bear?

• It Was a Very Good Year
• Stop Me If You've Heard This One (Kowalski/Volpe, NC17) The stop-start narrative, the narrator's voice and language are all classic examples of how Shay can twist genre to make a great tale even greater.

• Ritual (Fraser/Kowalski) Two men, one mirror. And then the cool razor was sliding effortlessly up the underside of his chin, slowly stroking up again, gently, painlessly removing the golden stubble there. He could hear the faint scraping sound, and for some reason that sent an electric current up his spine. He struggled to remain still, but a thread of excitement remained, the thrill at the ever-so-slight possibility that something could happen, that Fraser might press too hard, or he himself might quiver slightly and cause the razor to slip. The thought made his heart beat a little faster, and the warmth inside him intensified and spread.

• The Vecchio File. (Fraser/Vecchio, Fraser/Kowalski, Vecchio/Kowalski, NC-17). An epic-length AU where Vecchio's a politician, Kowalski's a P.I. down on his luck, and Fraser's the guy both of them want. Fascinating, complex, plotty and hot. I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised that Vecchio played for both teams; after all, like Woody Allen said, it doubles your chances of scoring on Saturday night. Ray was into scoring. Balding and big-nosed, the guy wasn’t what you’d call handsome, but he dressed nice – obsessed about clothes, almost – and he had this voice he could turn into velvet when he wanted to charm you. Plus there was his "Rico Suave" attitude, which he had down pat, which actually worked on more people than you might suppose. It’s not that everyone dropped at his feet, but when he went after you, he was like something out of one of those nature documentaries – you know, "Observe the hungry cheetah as it fixes on one particular antelope and runs it down until he gets it." Sure, sometimes the antelope got away, but more often than not that particular Italian cheetah would end up with some nice hot antelope for dinner.
• Detachment Published in the e-zine Lavender, Issue 1 (2003)

Man From UNCLE

• Phoenix (Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin, NC17). A novel-length story about what makes Illya Kuryakin who he is, and how Napoleon unravels the mystery that is his partner. There were a number of adjectives that Illya Kuryakin might apply to himself, if he were so inclined, but "emotional" was not one of them. "Intelligent," "capable," "dedicated," "relentless" — all these he would have acknowledged. It bothered him not at all that some of his colleagues found him intractable and obsessive, or that adversaries thought him bloodthirsty and cruel. To his way of thinking, the actions that spurred such conclusions were merely expedient and practical. Though some people distrusted his Soviet background, his socialistic leanings rarely manifested themselves. He was not political, nor was he particularly patriotic, either to the country of his birth or the one in which he resided. He was a citizen of the world, the passport of his personality stamped by a half-dozen nationalities. He took his tea and spoke English as if he were British, judged wines like the French, ate anything and everything with the gusto of a starving Russian peasant, and valued personal freedom like an American. He had no religion, but imagined that under different circumstances he could have been a Buddhist.