Buffyverse1000 ficlets
Because I amused myself a lot this weekend, and because half of you were at WriterCon, and thus should now play with me:
Buffyverse 1000 - "Because our fandom is the smuttiest of them all." They're aiming for 1000 ficlets and/or drabbles of different Jossverse pairings-- canon, AU, subtext to smut -- and right now they're at about 170 or so. Join the fun, read the fic, help a worthy cause. :>
Here's the three I wrote:
She propped her chin on his chest, only inches away from his eyes. "Hi. And? Welcome back."
Giles waited for his breathing to return to normal before he spoke, but couldn't hold back a tentative, delighted smile before that. "Mmmmm... I should say so." He curved an arm around her waist. "Welcome, indeed."
Kate grinned, then licked a quick stripe across his lips before he could catch her tongue, apple-tangy and warm. "I'm glad you stayed."
"So am I."
His gaze was soft on her face, and very slightly amazed. How had this happened? She was going to wait longer. She was going to tell him things. Her screw-ups, her new career, the darkness she hunted, her father, Angel, the drinking... instead, she'd blurted out, "Do you want to come in?" And, well. Here they were, two a.m. and wide awake, the sheets kicked to the foot of the bed.
Kate was the same age as Jenny. The only real similarity, aside from stunning looks. All the things he'd wanted to give Jenny, all the things he'd missed the chance to say, Kate had now heard. And she didn't know about... anything. Not Buffy, not Ethan, not the meaning of the tattoo she'd kissed as she'd stripped off his shirt. Olivia had known more, and look how that ended when she finally understood his stories. Maybe because she'd finally understood him.
Oh, she was going to break his heart.
He was going to say she was crazy, and once he did....
Giles pulled her closer just as Kate shut her eyes, and laid her head within the hollow of his chest.
He smelled delicious. Pain and fear, loneliness and regret, and that shiny, shiny steel underneath it all.
"I can hear your heart hammering, kitten. Knock, knock, knock." Drusilla clicked her tongue and leaned into the breathing-space of the man held captive between her outstretched arms. The wind whipped his jacket and her hair around them, and the cold, cursed stone at his back sheltered them from prying eyes. "It calls to me. Just as it ever did."
"Swear to sanity, Dru, I wasn't looking for you."
Silly boy. His face was no longer a poem, it was an opera, hardship and pain enough to sing of. He was still trying to get away, frozen in wariness though he was, his mind circling to thoughts of her victims (Kendra, Giles, nameless dead on a train) like a hymn of love. The tropical moon was low in the trees, and ancient memories of Aztec sacrifice danced across the landscape, bright enough that he could feel them on his skin too.
"I spy with my little eye, something that begins with... despair."
She bumped her nose against his, rubbed it in an eskimo's kiss, and he inhaled sharply, teeth gritted against her touch. Fury carved out with more layers than her Spike. Passion rejected for the scars it brought, not flowing free as in her Angel.
"Willow is going to be here any second, you know. So is Kennedy. You don't want to know what they'll do to you if you hurt me."
A lie, not-a-lie, a hope, a dream, a wish, a maybe. If they lingered long he would be right.
"You're the one that sees. And so am I."
And oh, there was the focus, there was the image of a nightmare, now she could almost see herself in his eye before he flinched away. "No."
Dru giggled, bubbles of good will rising despite the tarry grief that covered all. "They both died and left me. Died. And left me. Did you see?"
"See what?"
No, he wasn't to blame, he never thought of her other knights if he could help it. "I blame her. She snared them. Changed them. Left them. Like she did you." She lay one hand against his cheek, beneath the darkness of his missing eye. She would have taken both, a matched set; whoever did that hadn't loved him. Not as she could. "She owes me a knight."
"Are you talking about... Of course you are. It's always about them," he muttered, closing his eye. Then he sighed, and the lovely waves of fear receded a little, and she saw him staked by the dark-haired Slayer, saw the blood-stained witch burning his body, saw him left in the sun to burn before he rose, and she clenched her fists against his seeing.
"Dru, let me go. You don't want me. I'd be a horrible vampire. I look terrible in black. I don't brood, I just sulk. And I'd never stay with you." Leaving himself open, steel and bone, naked as a blade or death-wound to the heart.
"You left her. Crying in white, a mermaid with knives in her feet." His jaw clenched, and the fire was back, and she whispered, "Anya, Anyanka, Aud, your girl."
"Aud...?" Finally a glance, a hunger, a knife she could use, a truth to seduce him to her.
She smiled, took a step closer, spoke the words almost into his mouth. "A thousand years ago, there was a girl who had no friends...." Another step, pressing her body against his, her mind against his thoughts, his eye captured in her eyes, his heart capturing her heart, her gaze caging his hope, back and forth, waves of knowing. "More than a hundred years ago, there was a girl who lost everything...." He took a shuddering breath of sympathy and resistance, her knight, battered and bruised, and all the more precious for it. "Tonight there is a man, a man without a dream...."
"Xander!"
The flickering in his eyes warned her before the voice of the witch screamed out, sending her diving away from the flames. The dark-haired girl pounding forward, vaulting up the steps to the altar, angry and determined on saving him, too fast, too knowing to be snared.
"Dream of me, kitten. As I'll dream of you."
Turning away she ran to the edge of the nearest cliff, and plunged into the safety of night. She could still feel his eyes on her as the ocean swallowed her down.
Perri gave me the pairing. Celli gave me the set-up.
"Rum and coke, please," Tara requested, then returned to shredding her cocktail napkin. Blessing baby Connor had gone more smoothly than she expected, but it left her with time on her hands before she could go back to Sunnydale. She had too many things to think about to hang around with the celebrating new dad and his friends. Buffy's problems. Dawn's problems. Willow's problems. And way down at the bottom of the list, her own problems.
Like, how was she going to tell Willow she just wanted to be friends?
"Babe! I'm so sorry!"
Tara barely had time to blink before the tall dark-haired guy with the indigo-stress-shaded aura who'd just walked in the door was suddenly kissing her. With tongue. And a certain amount of finesse, which she couldn't help but respond to. Wait. Boy-lips. Ack?
Five seconds later, he had her in a bear-hug and was whispering in her ear, "Play along, all right? My life depends on it."
Okay, even she knew a really lame pick-up line when it dropped onto a bar stool next to hers, but-- the white sparks off his emotions said he was telling the truth. Which didn't help her with what exactly she was supposed to do.
"Um, that's okay... honey?" she tried hopefully. At his frown and very slight head-shake, she amended it to a stammered, "B-but, you kept me waiting here. You're late." As his eyes widened in approval, she improvised, "Very late. You, you, rat!"
"The traffic held me up at Mulholland--" He protested, moving closer, very carefully keeping his face tilted away from two men who'd just entered the bar, obviously looking for someone. Slouching, he leaned in to her, his dark eyes anxious and sincere. He had a nice face, and laughter around the eyes that almost reminded her of Xander-- if Xander were a linebacker. "I swear, it's not my fault--"
"Who were you with?" Tara demanded, yanking her hand out of his, and making a show of turning away, borrowing from every mannerism she'd ever seen Anya use when peeved with her fiance. "That, that, bimbo, right? Ha! My mother t-told me not to get involved with you!"
"Sweetheart, baby, blondie, sugar--"
"Don't you 'sugar' me, you, you, philandering low-life pig! You lied to m-me!" Maybe this was what they called Method acting, because blowing off steam at Willow by proxy was actually starting to feel good. "How can I ever trust you again!"
One of the guys was getting a little too close. Tara could see him scanning the room, any second he'd look at the guy next to her--
She picked up her drink and threw it in the stranger's comically surprised face, then followed it up with an open-handed slap. "I'm not s-stupid! You broke my heart!" And all of a sudden, she was in tears, sobbing hysterically. Catharsis is never pretty, she thought, closing her eyes in embarassment.
"Baby, baby, no, I'm sorry, no, I swear, never again..." Warm arms closed around her, pulling her close, and she just gave into it and wailed, with a total stranger stroking her hair and making shushing noises for the next ten minutes.
"They're gone, and that was perfect," the guy said in a normal voice when she'd calmed down a little. He handed her a cocktail napkin, mopped his face with another, and signaled the bartender for more drinks. "You should be in the movies, seriously. I mean, I know from make-believe, and that felt pretty damn real. Plus, you kiss well." He looked at her speculatively for a moment, his dark eyes seeing too much, then he grinned. "Marry me?"
Tara turned red and gave a gurgling laugh, wiping at her tears. "Um, thanks. But no. I mean, t-technically you're... not my type."
"And what type is that?" He handed her the fresh drink and clinked his glass against hers. "Eric Weiss."
She toasted him and took a sip, then answered him. "Female. And, um, I'm Tara. Maclay. So, unless you're okay with that...."
"Hmmm." His eyes narrowed in appraisal. Then he shrugged. "You said 'technically.' So what's the technicality?"
"Y-you kiss really well too."
The slow smile he gave her actually made her forget about Sunnydale and everyone else's problems for the rest of the night.
Buffyverse 1000 - "Because our fandom is the smuttiest of them all." They're aiming for 1000 ficlets and/or drabbles of different Jossverse pairings-- canon, AU, subtext to smut -- and right now they're at about 170 or so. Join the fun, read the fic, help a worthy cause. :>
Here's the three I wrote:
She propped her chin on his chest, only inches away from his eyes. "Hi. And? Welcome back."
Giles waited for his breathing to return to normal before he spoke, but couldn't hold back a tentative, delighted smile before that. "Mmmmm... I should say so." He curved an arm around her waist. "Welcome, indeed."
Kate grinned, then licked a quick stripe across his lips before he could catch her tongue, apple-tangy and warm. "I'm glad you stayed."
"So am I."
His gaze was soft on her face, and very slightly amazed. How had this happened? She was going to wait longer. She was going to tell him things. Her screw-ups, her new career, the darkness she hunted, her father, Angel, the drinking... instead, she'd blurted out, "Do you want to come in?" And, well. Here they were, two a.m. and wide awake, the sheets kicked to the foot of the bed.
Kate was the same age as Jenny. The only real similarity, aside from stunning looks. All the things he'd wanted to give Jenny, all the things he'd missed the chance to say, Kate had now heard. And she didn't know about... anything. Not Buffy, not Ethan, not the meaning of the tattoo she'd kissed as she'd stripped off his shirt. Olivia had known more, and look how that ended when she finally understood his stories. Maybe because she'd finally understood him.
Oh, she was going to break his heart.
He was going to say she was crazy, and once he did....
Giles pulled her closer just as Kate shut her eyes, and laid her head within the hollow of his chest.
He smelled delicious. Pain and fear, loneliness and regret, and that shiny, shiny steel underneath it all.
"I can hear your heart hammering, kitten. Knock, knock, knock." Drusilla clicked her tongue and leaned into the breathing-space of the man held captive between her outstretched arms. The wind whipped his jacket and her hair around them, and the cold, cursed stone at his back sheltered them from prying eyes. "It calls to me. Just as it ever did."
"Swear to sanity, Dru, I wasn't looking for you."
Silly boy. His face was no longer a poem, it was an opera, hardship and pain enough to sing of. He was still trying to get away, frozen in wariness though he was, his mind circling to thoughts of her victims (Kendra, Giles, nameless dead on a train) like a hymn of love. The tropical moon was low in the trees, and ancient memories of Aztec sacrifice danced across the landscape, bright enough that he could feel them on his skin too.
"I spy with my little eye, something that begins with... despair."
She bumped her nose against his, rubbed it in an eskimo's kiss, and he inhaled sharply, teeth gritted against her touch. Fury carved out with more layers than her Spike. Passion rejected for the scars it brought, not flowing free as in her Angel.
"Willow is going to be here any second, you know. So is Kennedy. You don't want to know what they'll do to you if you hurt me."
A lie, not-a-lie, a hope, a dream, a wish, a maybe. If they lingered long he would be right.
"You're the one that sees. And so am I."
And oh, there was the focus, there was the image of a nightmare, now she could almost see herself in his eye before he flinched away. "No."
Dru giggled, bubbles of good will rising despite the tarry grief that covered all. "They both died and left me. Died. And left me. Did you see?"
"See what?"
No, he wasn't to blame, he never thought of her other knights if he could help it. "I blame her. She snared them. Changed them. Left them. Like she did you." She lay one hand against his cheek, beneath the darkness of his missing eye. She would have taken both, a matched set; whoever did that hadn't loved him. Not as she could. "She owes me a knight."
"Are you talking about... Of course you are. It's always about them," he muttered, closing his eye. Then he sighed, and the lovely waves of fear receded a little, and she saw him staked by the dark-haired Slayer, saw the blood-stained witch burning his body, saw him left in the sun to burn before he rose, and she clenched her fists against his seeing.
"Dru, let me go. You don't want me. I'd be a horrible vampire. I look terrible in black. I don't brood, I just sulk. And I'd never stay with you." Leaving himself open, steel and bone, naked as a blade or death-wound to the heart.
"You left her. Crying in white, a mermaid with knives in her feet." His jaw clenched, and the fire was back, and she whispered, "Anya, Anyanka, Aud, your girl."
"Aud...?" Finally a glance, a hunger, a knife she could use, a truth to seduce him to her.
She smiled, took a step closer, spoke the words almost into his mouth. "A thousand years ago, there was a girl who had no friends...." Another step, pressing her body against his, her mind against his thoughts, his eye captured in her eyes, his heart capturing her heart, her gaze caging his hope, back and forth, waves of knowing. "More than a hundred years ago, there was a girl who lost everything...." He took a shuddering breath of sympathy and resistance, her knight, battered and bruised, and all the more precious for it. "Tonight there is a man, a man without a dream...."
"Xander!"
The flickering in his eyes warned her before the voice of the witch screamed out, sending her diving away from the flames. The dark-haired girl pounding forward, vaulting up the steps to the altar, angry and determined on saving him, too fast, too knowing to be snared.
"Dream of me, kitten. As I'll dream of you."
Turning away she ran to the edge of the nearest cliff, and plunged into the safety of night. She could still feel his eyes on her as the ocean swallowed her down.
Perri gave me the pairing. Celli gave me the set-up.
"Rum and coke, please," Tara requested, then returned to shredding her cocktail napkin. Blessing baby Connor had gone more smoothly than she expected, but it left her with time on her hands before she could go back to Sunnydale. She had too many things to think about to hang around with the celebrating new dad and his friends. Buffy's problems. Dawn's problems. Willow's problems. And way down at the bottom of the list, her own problems.
Like, how was she going to tell Willow she just wanted to be friends?
"Babe! I'm so sorry!"
Tara barely had time to blink before the tall dark-haired guy with the indigo-stress-shaded aura who'd just walked in the door was suddenly kissing her. With tongue. And a certain amount of finesse, which she couldn't help but respond to. Wait. Boy-lips. Ack?
Five seconds later, he had her in a bear-hug and was whispering in her ear, "Play along, all right? My life depends on it."
Okay, even she knew a really lame pick-up line when it dropped onto a bar stool next to hers, but-- the white sparks off his emotions said he was telling the truth. Which didn't help her with what exactly she was supposed to do.
"Um, that's okay... honey?" she tried hopefully. At his frown and very slight head-shake, she amended it to a stammered, "B-but, you kept me waiting here. You're late." As his eyes widened in approval, she improvised, "Very late. You, you, rat!"
"The traffic held me up at Mulholland--" He protested, moving closer, very carefully keeping his face tilted away from two men who'd just entered the bar, obviously looking for someone. Slouching, he leaned in to her, his dark eyes anxious and sincere. He had a nice face, and laughter around the eyes that almost reminded her of Xander-- if Xander were a linebacker. "I swear, it's not my fault--"
"Who were you with?" Tara demanded, yanking her hand out of his, and making a show of turning away, borrowing from every mannerism she'd ever seen Anya use when peeved with her fiance. "That, that, bimbo, right? Ha! My mother t-told me not to get involved with you!"
"Sweetheart, baby, blondie, sugar--"
"Don't you 'sugar' me, you, you, philandering low-life pig! You lied to m-me!" Maybe this was what they called Method acting, because blowing off steam at Willow by proxy was actually starting to feel good. "How can I ever trust you again!"
One of the guys was getting a little too close. Tara could see him scanning the room, any second he'd look at the guy next to her--
She picked up her drink and threw it in the stranger's comically surprised face, then followed it up with an open-handed slap. "I'm not s-stupid! You broke my heart!" And all of a sudden, she was in tears, sobbing hysterically. Catharsis is never pretty, she thought, closing her eyes in embarassment.
"Baby, baby, no, I'm sorry, no, I swear, never again..." Warm arms closed around her, pulling her close, and she just gave into it and wailed, with a total stranger stroking her hair and making shushing noises for the next ten minutes.
"They're gone, and that was perfect," the guy said in a normal voice when she'd calmed down a little. He handed her a cocktail napkin, mopped his face with another, and signaled the bartender for more drinks. "You should be in the movies, seriously. I mean, I know from make-believe, and that felt pretty damn real. Plus, you kiss well." He looked at her speculatively for a moment, his dark eyes seeing too much, then he grinned. "Marry me?"
Tara turned red and gave a gurgling laugh, wiping at her tears. "Um, thanks. But no. I mean, t-technically you're... not my type."
"And what type is that?" He handed her the fresh drink and clinked his glass against hers. "Eric Weiss."
She toasted him and took a sip, then answered him. "Female. And, um, I'm Tara. Maclay. So, unless you're okay with that...."
"Hmmm." His eyes narrowed in appraisal. Then he shrugged. "You said 'technically.' So what's the technicality?"
"Y-you kiss really well too."
The slow smile he gave her actually made her forget about Sunnydale and everyone else's problems for the rest of the night.