A Recent Batch of Ficlets
Title: Cold Comfort
Details: Chuck, Chuck/Bryce (slash), PG-13, located here at comment_fic.
AO3
It started as a combination of necessity, laziness, and penny pinching. They were both at Stanford on scholarships. Neither of them had any culinary skills to speak of, the time for cooking even if they could, or enough money to consistently order out from somewhere nice. So they lived off of crap from the campus food court. Vending machine fare like cheese puffs and Mountain Dew. Microwave pizzas and cheap beer. They ate so much candy that Chuck made Bryce swear not to tell Ellie, and promised in return to share with Bryce whenever Ellie sent him a care package. Homemade cookies and cupcakes... Even the occasional casserole, when it was Ellie's turn to drive up for the weekend and visit Chuck. They rationed it all out like they were castaways and knew no rescue boat was coming. Bryce said once how nice it would be if they could eat Ellie's cooking all of the time. And Chuck let himself imagine a future in which they could.
After a while, though, the crap they ate in the dorms became just another part of the college experience. When one of them ordered from the burger place down the block or the sub shop near the bookstore they knew exactly what to order for the other. Nothing they ate was of much nutritional value, but they learned which nutritionally deficient foods each preferred the most. Chuck introduced Bryce to cheddar cheese popcorn and Bryce convinced Chuck to try dipping his oreos into peanut butter. It was probably weird, Chuck didn't realize until later, that they never ate alone. They could have just as easily eaten their cheeseburgers or their slices of pizza separately, where they bought them. But they always brought their meals (such as they were) back to the dorm room so they could eat together.
Chuck doesn't know why, now, years later - several heartbreaks later - a package of oreos and a jar of Peter Pan can cheer him up as well as a plate of Ellie's pot roast.
"Seriously, dude," Morgan will say, when Chuck retreats to his bedroom on a particularly bad day, with a barrel of cheese puffs and the most caffeinated beverage he can find. "I do not get your definition of comfort food."
Chuck doesn't either. He still loves his sister's cooking. And he's learned to use an oven and a stove top. But he can cook for himself any day, and he'll never sit with Bryce on a dormroom bed and miss Ellie's shortbread cookies again.
Title: Welsh Hospitality
Details: Angel/Torchwood, Angel + Ianto, G, located here at comment_fic
Ianto doesn't mean any offense - he simply does what he is tasked to do. All of the things that nobody else thinks about. Which includes making those guests who come to the Hub - the few and far between - as comfortable as a guest could possibly be while visiting an underground bunker housing a pterodactyl, several thousand feet of storage for alien artifacts, and the severed hand Jack insists on keeping in its glass box on the shelf behind his desk.
Seeing as their current guest is a vampire, comfort means a warm mug of human blood instead of the customary spiced tea.
And Torchwood's seen its share of spilt blood. So Ianto doesn't really see the problem.
"I know you meant well," Angel is saying, taking a seat across the table from Ianto in the conference room. "And I appreciate it. I do. But I don't think some of the others are as... open-minded as you are. About having a vampire come to work with them. Serving me blood on a silver platter isn't exactly helping with that."
"Our serving trays are ceramic. And I don't see how the fact that you have to eat has anything to do with your working here."
Perhaps he is being a bit... Stubborn on this issue. But Angel is kind. He saved Ianto's life. Ianto will not go about catering to the rest of his team, crudely ignoring Angel, simply for the sake of a few weak stomachs.
Well. Two weak stomachs. Tosh looked positively green when Ianto served Angel that morning. Gwen's face squinched up unattractively and she kept looking anywhere but at Angel and his breakfast. Even Owen looked irritated. Although, to be fair, Owen usually looks irritated, about some thing or another. Ianto doesn't think the blood bothers him - he is a medical examiner, after all - but Owen's never liked Ianto's serving dishes. The philistine. He'd live off of bottled beer with his fish and chips if he could.
Jack, as always, was unperturbed.
"That's not what I..." Angel sighs. "Look. I'm just trying to keep the peace."
"Could you at least try the blood before you completely strike it off the menu?" Ianto went to some lengths to procure a real quality supply. And storing fresh human blood is less difficult in the Hub than it would be in most workplaces, but still not easy. He had to work out the exact right temperature at which to keep the blood packs refrigerated by himself.
"I don't-"
"Angel. Please. Try it."
Jack is rarely immune to Ianto's pleading, when Ianto gives him the right kind of eyes with his pleas. Apparently this tactic works with more than one kind of immortal.
Angel takes a reluctant sip from the (fresh) mug in front of him.
The look on his face is worth all of the trouble that's come before.
"This-"
"AB Negative. Fresh. Kept only lightly chilled and then warmed to exactly thirty-eight degrees Celsius," Ianto informs him. "With a dash of rosemary and some lemon. I thought you might like that."
Ianto knows he's won before Angel says, "I- I do. This is..." He takes another sip. "You know, I could probably just take breakfast in here while I read the paper. Like you said... Guy's gotta eat, right?"
Ianto smiles. "Right."
He silently pats himself on the back for the rosemary.
Title: A Hold On Me
Details: Chuck, Chuck/Bryce, PG, located here at comment_fic
AO3
He's got to wonder if it's a genetic thing. Obsession is an inherently Bartowski trait. His mom obsessed over Hartley for twenty years. His dad obsessed over his mom. Ellie can be a little bit obsessive about him. (Not that Chuck minds, of course. He'd probably be the same way if their roles were reversed and she was the chronic screw-up.)
But maybe it's just Chuck. Frost probably didn't think, the first time she saw the-man-who-would-be-Alexei-Volkoff that she'd spend the next two decades of her life trying to save him. If Chuck's dad knew how the Intersect project would affect his friends and family, he would have scrapped it. And Ellie was practically born taking care of her little brother.
Chuck had never had feelings for another guy... not those kind of feelings... before Bryce. He'd never looked at someone and thought, 'Wow. I could look at those eyes forever.' And he knew - he knew - that he was screwed the moment he looked into Bryce's eyes and did. But that didn't stop him from becoming Bryce's friend. From becoming Bryce's roommate. From fantasizing about becoming so much more...
From becoming so close, with Bryce, that the only difference between what they had and what they could have had was - arguably - what they chose to call it.
"Chuck... You've got to let this go." He's heard it from everyone. Sarah. Casey. Morgan. But Chuck couldn't just "let it go" when Bryce broke his heart at Stanford. He couldn't let it go when Bryce sent him the Intersect without explanation. Chuck couldn't let it go when Bryce lay on the floor of the Intersect room, dying. Bryce's instructions to destroy the cube threatening to give his killers an opportunity to get away with it.
Chuck can't just "let go" of the possibility that Bryce didn't die after all. Not with hard evidence of the alternative staring him in the face.
"I at least have to check it out," Chuck insists, packed and ready to leave. For good if he has to. Burbank, the CIA; everything.
"We can't help you." Shaw knows less, about Bryce and what Bryce means to Chuck, than anybody in the room. Chuck doesn't know if that makes it less surprising or more ironic that Shaw is giving the least opposition to his plan. Shaw doesn't understand why Chuck is doing this - that's clear in his eyes. But he also trusts Chuck to go and do it and to come back once it's done if he can. Chuck doesn't see trust in Sarah's or Casey's expressions. Not except buried under layers and layers of fear and concern. "I can cover for you with Beckman for a while. But-"
"That's all I need. I just- I have to try."
"Bartowski-" Casey begins.
"Chuck." Sarah - even Sarah, who can admit out loud that she loved Bryce... Can't fathom why Chuck would be willing to storm an enemy compound alone on the slim chance of finding him alive after all this time. "You could be killed," Sarah reminds him.
That didn't stop him from hatching his hair-brained scheme. Only actually getting killed, Chuck thinks, could. Whether genetics or individuality or whatever is to blame.
Chuck doesn't know why Bryce Larkin is his obsession. Why he forgave Bryce everything. Would give Bryce anything.
But that's the way it has always been. Every Bartowski has an obsession, and since the day they met, Bryce has been Chuck's. And Chuck has been his.
Chuck's pretty sure he always will be - however long the word 'always' comes to mean.
"Or I could bring Bryce home," Chuck argues. As far as he's concerned, that makes a little obsession worth all the risk.
Title: A Good Thing
Details: Angel/Chuck/White Collar, Angel/Bryce/Neal/Darla implied, PG, located here at comment_fic
AO3
He knows he's being greedy. Darla's cross with him; she doesn't like it when he keeps pets. He doesn't give her enough attention when he's got one, she says, and now he has two.
"You're only doing this to annoy me," she accuses. "There's no sense in keeping them both. They are identical. They even taste the same!"
"Aye, they do." Angelus was pleased to discover it. He's always discovering something new about his boys. Greedy or not, he's not giving them up. Let Darla be cross. She'll come around. "Ya can never have too much of a good thing," he says.
There'll be no arguing with that. Who is Darla to speak against a bit of hedonism - she practically wrote the book on the subject. And she taught him everything she knows.
"You'd better not spend all night playing with them again or-"
Angelus kisses her. Twirls her about the room. He loves it when she lets him win.
"We'll play together. You'll enjoy them. You'll see," he promises.
And they do. Darla enjoys herself so much she doesn't even break his toys in the process.
Angelus is proud. His boys are sturdy. That's good.
They'll need to be.
Title: Negative Space
Details: Angel, Wes/Lindsey, PG-13, located here at comment_fic
Lindsey never noticed him before. He doesn’t think - and he believes Wes would agree with him on this - anyone could have their eye on Angel and notice someone else. Not the way Lindsey notices Wes now. Angel is a flame. And when you’re all wrapped up in him, everybody else is just another moth. Lindsey had blinders on when he was obsessed with the vampire. He’s pretty sure Wes did too.
But having his blinders off isn’t the only reason Lindsey notices Wes now. The length of Wes’s fingers. The shape of Wes’s jaw. The different tones of voice that mark Wes’s moods and the specific glances that go with them - Wesley has a dozen of them. Narrowed eyes and a dry tone when he’s suspicious; a blinking stare and a quiet stutter when he’s surprised. A hot gaze when he catches on that Lindsey’s coming on to him and a voice like whiskey when he decides that he’s okay with it.
It isn’t that Wes helped Lindsey when Lindsey needed help. Wes is the guy who helps people. Like Angel. Like Gunn; a white hat. Lindsey was bleeding out, so of course Wes helped him. They would have been one hand down in their war against Hell on earth if Wes hadn’t. No, it’s the way Wes helped him that caught Lindsey’s eye. That made him stop and notice.
Wes was gentle. Maybe Lindsey wasn’t giving the others much credit by being surprised by that, but he was. And there were no backhanded compliments while Wes bandaged Lindsey up, no quiet barbs because he’d been a second too slow with that demon and nearly got his guts spilled out. Wes’s words were short and brusque but sincere and his eyes weren’t anything but blue and patient when he asked if Lindsey’s binds were too tight, if he needed any other assistance.
It’d been a while since someone had been gentle with Lindsey. Longer since Lindsey could trust the gentleness he’d been given. Lindsey watched Wes, wary, for days after that, wondering what the guy was up to. Now he just watches Wes. Wondering.
It takes Angel noticing for Lindsey to realize that he’s doing it.
“Stop stalking Wesley,” Angel tells him. “Or if he doesn’t kick your ass for it, I will.”
The vampire’s just one big, broody dark cloud of intent. And it’s startling to Lindsey. That - for maybe the first time he can remember - he isn’t thrilled that Angel is intent on him. Even Angel’s anger, his hatred, has never failed to fascinate Lindsey.
For once, Lindsey isn’t fascinated. He keeps a blank face and ignores the churning of his stomach as he asks, “Wes tell you he has a problem with it?”
He doesn’t bother denying Angel’s accusation. If one grown man watching another’s every move can’t be termed stalking by some definition, then Lindsey got lucky in over a dozen civil suits he won before going to work for Wolfram & Hart.
Angel frowns. Like Lindsey’s startled him too. Like Lindsey isn’t playing right and this is a game.
Usually… Lindsey would say that everything is. But the thought of Wes having a problem with him doesn’t make Lindsey feel much like playing.
So when Angel stutters, “No… Not ex-“ that’s good enough for him.
Lindsey grins. “Well, alright then.”
“Lindsey-“
“I’ll stop stalking him.”
Wesley’s just walked into the room. Lindsey makes a decision. He strides up to Wesley, ignoring everything else. Angel’s angry question. Wesley’s expression of surprise.
“Lindsey, what are you-“
He grabs Wesley, framing Wes’s face with his hands, and kisses him.
In the background, he thinks maybe Angel’s going apoplectic, but he isn’t really paying attention.
“Is that better?” he asks, when they come up for air. Lindsey doesn’t take his eyes off of Wes.
Wes doesn’t take his eyes off of him. Wes blinks. Finally, he says, “I would say… ‘than what’? But if you’ll do it again, I’ll just say yes. Most definitely.”
Lindsey smiles. “Deal.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Angel groans from behind them.
Lindsey doesn’t notice.
Title: Aspect
Details: Angel, Angel/Wes, NC-17, located here elsewhere
The first time it happens, it is purely by accident. Angel forgets his own strength. Wesley is too distracted to know himself if it is in pain or in pleasure that he screams. Angel is horrified as soon as they begin to return to themselves, he releases Wesley's wrists, and Wesley cries out, pain radiating from the slender bones Angel had gripped too tight.
"Honestly, Angel. This is unnecessary. I'm certain I can manage-"
"And I'm certain I won't let you." Angel smiles, setting Wesley's tea cup down on the table at Wesley's right. If there were pillows on Wesley's couch, Wesley is rather afraid that Angel would plump them. "You're complaining because I'm pampering you?" His tone is light, his expression casual, but Wesley can see the guilt - the fear - still lingering in his eyes.
Wesley just studies him. "I actually found it quite flattering," he says quietly. "I must have done something right, for you to have lost control that way."
Wesley is teasing. Masking his own mixed emotions about the incident, sure - from Angel's reaction - that Angel would not appreciate them.
"If I lose control, Wes, I could hurt you," Angel says immediately, heatedly. Something twists in Wesley's chest as the false neutrality fades away and Angel's remorse bleeds into his facial expression. "I hurt you," he says again.
No more than Wesley is hurt on a more or less regular basis, and under much less pleasurable circumstances, Wesley wants to say - but his mind sticks on the word 'pleasurable'.
Angel might not appreciate this... And it's not as if Wesley doesn't realize the danger in dangling an admission like this in front of a centuries-old vampire; one who - as Angelus - had taken great pleasure in suffering. In the suffering of others', anyhow. But.
"I liked it." The words escape Wesley before he can think better of letting them free.
Shock blanks Angel's face, but Wesley is only being honest. The short, sharp burst of pain that shot through him as Angel's grip tightened too tight around his wrists, at the same time that Angel released himself inside of Wesley, only heightened the pleasure that tore through him as he also came.
"Wes-"
"I'm not saying we have to do it again. No more than occasionally, in any case."
"Damn it, Wes, I-"
Wesley smiles. Gentle. If anything tells him that he can trust Angel not to really hurt him, not to make him regret starting this... It's the lingering fear and ever-present concern warring with heat in Angel's eyes. "Angel, I know you would never seriously hurt me," he reassures his lover.
"I could-"
"You could inflict every imaginable horror upon me," Wesley says blandly. Firmly. "... and some I dare say are beyond the normal human imagination. But you won't." Wesley can't stress that last part enough. They've had a version of this conversation many times. And if he will not allow Angel's capabilities to scare him away from a relationship with the vampire, then why should they allow it to scare them away from pursuing a potentially satisfying development in their sexlife? Wesley doesn't mind the occasional bandages and bruises. He earns plenty every day in his line of work.
Angel stares at him for a long moment.
He's been off-handedly stroking Wesley's arm, the skin around the edges of the bandages limiting the movement of Wesley's wrist until it recovers from its sprain.
Angel lifts Wesley's wrist and places a kiss on the inside of it, over the bandages. Wesley's breath catches. A pulsepoint lies beneath the bindings Angel has just brushed with his lips. They haven't explored that potentiality either, but if Angel will agree to taking one leap of faith, then eventually Wesley would like to-
"I'm gonna go warm up some blood while you drink your tea."
Wesley is more disappointed by Angel's quick dismissal of their conversation than he'd anticipated.
"Angel-" Then Angel squeezes Wesley's injured wrist - just a little, just for a moment. Just enough that Wes can tell what he is saying. 'We'll talk about this later.'
"I'm not talking about this while you're hurt and I accidentally hurt you." Angel presses a kiss to Wesley's lips. Wesley supposes he can be patient, so long as Angel isn't shooting down the implications of his confession completely.
"Go get your blood," Wesley says. "We'll watch the game together." He can't say which game - but there is always some televised sporting event available and Gunn has gotten Amgel hooked on them.
Angel grins. "Yeah?" Wesley's book can be patient too. He thinks perhaps this pampering business is going to have to work both ways if he wants to persuade Angel into making the best of last night's accident.
Title: Pancakes
Details: Chuck, Chuck + Ellie, G, located here elsewhere.
AO3
Every year, without fail, on her birthday, Chuck makes her pancakes. From the time he could reach the stovetop he's made it a priority. Buttermilk pancakes, strawberry pancakes... Blueberry; banana. Ellie can always count on her Birthday Breakfast. It's a constant. Maybe the only constant in life that she didn't arrange herself.
While he's still in high school, Chuck gets up and has breakfast waiting on the table before she has to start her commute to the USC campus. He only lets Morgan help once, and then promises never to do it again as they put out the flames and eat the scorched remains.
At Stanford, Chuck tries his hardest to be home whenever Ellie's birthday rolls around. On the only occasion that he doesn't succeed, he cooks the pancakes anyway - seals them in a large ziploc bag and then overnights them to Ellie just in time.
Even after Chuck moves out on his own for good - after Sarah and his spy life begin taking more and more of his time - he honors their ritual. If he isn't at her door first thing in the morning, she knows she can walk over to his and he'll be waiting, with breakfast and a smile to serve with a hug. In fact, after she learns the truth about his double life, she knows she doesn't have to wait on a knock or a walk. Chuck will simply let himself into her house as she sleeps, an enigmatic grin startling her as she laughs that she'll have to change her alarm codes again - the look so grown-up on the face that will always be the face of her baby brother.
Chuck says she's worth the effort. That she earns it with all of the lengths she's gone to for him over the years. He says he needs their constants as much as she does and Ellie knows that this is true.
But she hears something different in his constant presence on her birthday. She hears, 'I am here' in the circle of his arms; she hears, 'I am not our mother. I am not our father' in the cooking smells and the scent of syrup that greet her on birthday mornings.
She hears, 'I love you, sis,' when Chuck does - and even when he doesn't - say it.
And for all they lost, having only each other to rely on throughout their childhood, Ellie can only feel that they gained much more. Right or wrong, she wouldn't take a dozen picture perfect family moments with her parents over one of Chuck's pancakes.
Title: Bittersweet
Details: Supernatural, Dean/Cas, PG-13, located here elsewhere
It's a definite problem. But the only thing more awkward than dealing with it would be trying to tell Cas what the problem is.
"It just... It just does, okay," he pleads. "Just drop it."
Cas doesn't drop it. He wants to know why Jimmy's love of all things sweet, and how Famine's nearness is affecting Cas, bothers Dean.
Or he thinks he does. Dean is pretty sure no angel, even a cool quasi-human (sorta, sometimes) angel like Cas would want to know how the sight of Cas licking syrup or powdered sugar off of his fingers bothers Dean.
"I am sorry that this gluttony disgusts you," Cas says, not meeting his eyes. He sounds equally wounded and pissed. But embarassed more than anything, and Dean is such a sucker for a pouty angel.
"Cas-"
"But I cannot help it. I am trying, Dean. I am trying to resist."
He looks Dean square in the face, blue eyes - as always - fiery with intent, so sharp and seeing.
Dean can't believe Cas still doesn't see this. (Or how both frustrated by and grateful he is himself for that.)
'You and me both, buddy,' Dean thinks. Cas will ask him, later, why he is not affected, and Dean will say it's because he doesn't hunger for anything Famine could make him crave. That he's "well fed". But he'll lie. The one thing Dean's craved, from almost the beginning, is licking pancake syrup from the corner of its lips and looking at him like his word makes it awful or alright.
"I know, Cas. And you don't disgust me."
Oh what he'd give about now for even a smidge of disgust.
It would certainly cut back on the number of cold showers Dean is going to have to take for as long as the memory of Cas, syrup-scented and sucking on his own fingertips, remains.
Details: Chuck, Chuck/Bryce (slash), PG-13, located here at comment_fic.
AO3
It started as a combination of necessity, laziness, and penny pinching. They were both at Stanford on scholarships. Neither of them had any culinary skills to speak of, the time for cooking even if they could, or enough money to consistently order out from somewhere nice. So they lived off of crap from the campus food court. Vending machine fare like cheese puffs and Mountain Dew. Microwave pizzas and cheap beer. They ate so much candy that Chuck made Bryce swear not to tell Ellie, and promised in return to share with Bryce whenever Ellie sent him a care package. Homemade cookies and cupcakes... Even the occasional casserole, when it was Ellie's turn to drive up for the weekend and visit Chuck. They rationed it all out like they were castaways and knew no rescue boat was coming. Bryce said once how nice it would be if they could eat Ellie's cooking all of the time. And Chuck let himself imagine a future in which they could.
After a while, though, the crap they ate in the dorms became just another part of the college experience. When one of them ordered from the burger place down the block or the sub shop near the bookstore they knew exactly what to order for the other. Nothing they ate was of much nutritional value, but they learned which nutritionally deficient foods each preferred the most. Chuck introduced Bryce to cheddar cheese popcorn and Bryce convinced Chuck to try dipping his oreos into peanut butter. It was probably weird, Chuck didn't realize until later, that they never ate alone. They could have just as easily eaten their cheeseburgers or their slices of pizza separately, where they bought them. But they always brought their meals (such as they were) back to the dorm room so they could eat together.
Chuck doesn't know why, now, years later - several heartbreaks later - a package of oreos and a jar of Peter Pan can cheer him up as well as a plate of Ellie's pot roast.
"Seriously, dude," Morgan will say, when Chuck retreats to his bedroom on a particularly bad day, with a barrel of cheese puffs and the most caffeinated beverage he can find. "I do not get your definition of comfort food."
Chuck doesn't either. He still loves his sister's cooking. And he's learned to use an oven and a stove top. But he can cook for himself any day, and he'll never sit with Bryce on a dormroom bed and miss Ellie's shortbread cookies again.
Title: Welsh Hospitality
Details: Angel/Torchwood, Angel + Ianto, G, located here at comment_fic
Ianto doesn't mean any offense - he simply does what he is tasked to do. All of the things that nobody else thinks about. Which includes making those guests who come to the Hub - the few and far between - as comfortable as a guest could possibly be while visiting an underground bunker housing a pterodactyl, several thousand feet of storage for alien artifacts, and the severed hand Jack insists on keeping in its glass box on the shelf behind his desk.
Seeing as their current guest is a vampire, comfort means a warm mug of human blood instead of the customary spiced tea.
And Torchwood's seen its share of spilt blood. So Ianto doesn't really see the problem.
"I know you meant well," Angel is saying, taking a seat across the table from Ianto in the conference room. "And I appreciate it. I do. But I don't think some of the others are as... open-minded as you are. About having a vampire come to work with them. Serving me blood on a silver platter isn't exactly helping with that."
"Our serving trays are ceramic. And I don't see how the fact that you have to eat has anything to do with your working here."
Perhaps he is being a bit... Stubborn on this issue. But Angel is kind. He saved Ianto's life. Ianto will not go about catering to the rest of his team, crudely ignoring Angel, simply for the sake of a few weak stomachs.
Well. Two weak stomachs. Tosh looked positively green when Ianto served Angel that morning. Gwen's face squinched up unattractively and she kept looking anywhere but at Angel and his breakfast. Even Owen looked irritated. Although, to be fair, Owen usually looks irritated, about some thing or another. Ianto doesn't think the blood bothers him - he is a medical examiner, after all - but Owen's never liked Ianto's serving dishes. The philistine. He'd live off of bottled beer with his fish and chips if he could.
Jack, as always, was unperturbed.
"That's not what I..." Angel sighs. "Look. I'm just trying to keep the peace."
"Could you at least try the blood before you completely strike it off the menu?" Ianto went to some lengths to procure a real quality supply. And storing fresh human blood is less difficult in the Hub than it would be in most workplaces, but still not easy. He had to work out the exact right temperature at which to keep the blood packs refrigerated by himself.
"I don't-"
"Angel. Please. Try it."
Jack is rarely immune to Ianto's pleading, when Ianto gives him the right kind of eyes with his pleas. Apparently this tactic works with more than one kind of immortal.
Angel takes a reluctant sip from the (fresh) mug in front of him.
The look on his face is worth all of the trouble that's come before.
"This-"
"AB Negative. Fresh. Kept only lightly chilled and then warmed to exactly thirty-eight degrees Celsius," Ianto informs him. "With a dash of rosemary and some lemon. I thought you might like that."
Ianto knows he's won before Angel says, "I- I do. This is..." He takes another sip. "You know, I could probably just take breakfast in here while I read the paper. Like you said... Guy's gotta eat, right?"
Ianto smiles. "Right."
He silently pats himself on the back for the rosemary.
Title: A Hold On Me
Details: Chuck, Chuck/Bryce, PG, located here at comment_fic
AO3
He's got to wonder if it's a genetic thing. Obsession is an inherently Bartowski trait. His mom obsessed over Hartley for twenty years. His dad obsessed over his mom. Ellie can be a little bit obsessive about him. (Not that Chuck minds, of course. He'd probably be the same way if their roles were reversed and she was the chronic screw-up.)
But maybe it's just Chuck. Frost probably didn't think, the first time she saw the-man-who-would-be-Alexei-Volkoff that she'd spend the next two decades of her life trying to save him. If Chuck's dad knew how the Intersect project would affect his friends and family, he would have scrapped it. And Ellie was practically born taking care of her little brother.
Chuck had never had feelings for another guy... not those kind of feelings... before Bryce. He'd never looked at someone and thought, 'Wow. I could look at those eyes forever.' And he knew - he knew - that he was screwed the moment he looked into Bryce's eyes and did. But that didn't stop him from becoming Bryce's friend. From becoming Bryce's roommate. From fantasizing about becoming so much more...
From becoming so close, with Bryce, that the only difference between what they had and what they could have had was - arguably - what they chose to call it.
"Chuck... You've got to let this go." He's heard it from everyone. Sarah. Casey. Morgan. But Chuck couldn't just "let it go" when Bryce broke his heart at Stanford. He couldn't let it go when Bryce sent him the Intersect without explanation. Chuck couldn't let it go when Bryce lay on the floor of the Intersect room, dying. Bryce's instructions to destroy the cube threatening to give his killers an opportunity to get away with it.
Chuck can't just "let go" of the possibility that Bryce didn't die after all. Not with hard evidence of the alternative staring him in the face.
"I at least have to check it out," Chuck insists, packed and ready to leave. For good if he has to. Burbank, the CIA; everything.
"We can't help you." Shaw knows less, about Bryce and what Bryce means to Chuck, than anybody in the room. Chuck doesn't know if that makes it less surprising or more ironic that Shaw is giving the least opposition to his plan. Shaw doesn't understand why Chuck is doing this - that's clear in his eyes. But he also trusts Chuck to go and do it and to come back once it's done if he can. Chuck doesn't see trust in Sarah's or Casey's expressions. Not except buried under layers and layers of fear and concern. "I can cover for you with Beckman for a while. But-"
"That's all I need. I just- I have to try."
"Bartowski-" Casey begins.
"Chuck." Sarah - even Sarah, who can admit out loud that she loved Bryce... Can't fathom why Chuck would be willing to storm an enemy compound alone on the slim chance of finding him alive after all this time. "You could be killed," Sarah reminds him.
That didn't stop him from hatching his hair-brained scheme. Only actually getting killed, Chuck thinks, could. Whether genetics or individuality or whatever is to blame.
Chuck doesn't know why Bryce Larkin is his obsession. Why he forgave Bryce everything. Would give Bryce anything.
But that's the way it has always been. Every Bartowski has an obsession, and since the day they met, Bryce has been Chuck's. And Chuck has been his.
Chuck's pretty sure he always will be - however long the word 'always' comes to mean.
"Or I could bring Bryce home," Chuck argues. As far as he's concerned, that makes a little obsession worth all the risk.
Title: A Good Thing
Details: Angel/Chuck/White Collar, Angel/Bryce/Neal/Darla implied, PG, located here at comment_fic
AO3
He knows he's being greedy. Darla's cross with him; she doesn't like it when he keeps pets. He doesn't give her enough attention when he's got one, she says, and now he has two.
"You're only doing this to annoy me," she accuses. "There's no sense in keeping them both. They are identical. They even taste the same!"
"Aye, they do." Angelus was pleased to discover it. He's always discovering something new about his boys. Greedy or not, he's not giving them up. Let Darla be cross. She'll come around. "Ya can never have too much of a good thing," he says.
There'll be no arguing with that. Who is Darla to speak against a bit of hedonism - she practically wrote the book on the subject. And she taught him everything she knows.
"You'd better not spend all night playing with them again or-"
Angelus kisses her. Twirls her about the room. He loves it when she lets him win.
"We'll play together. You'll enjoy them. You'll see," he promises.
And they do. Darla enjoys herself so much she doesn't even break his toys in the process.
Angelus is proud. His boys are sturdy. That's good.
They'll need to be.
Title: Negative Space
Details: Angel, Wes/Lindsey, PG-13, located here at comment_fic
Lindsey never noticed him before. He doesn’t think - and he believes Wes would agree with him on this - anyone could have their eye on Angel and notice someone else. Not the way Lindsey notices Wes now. Angel is a flame. And when you’re all wrapped up in him, everybody else is just another moth. Lindsey had blinders on when he was obsessed with the vampire. He’s pretty sure Wes did too.
But having his blinders off isn’t the only reason Lindsey notices Wes now. The length of Wes’s fingers. The shape of Wes’s jaw. The different tones of voice that mark Wes’s moods and the specific glances that go with them - Wesley has a dozen of them. Narrowed eyes and a dry tone when he’s suspicious; a blinking stare and a quiet stutter when he’s surprised. A hot gaze when he catches on that Lindsey’s coming on to him and a voice like whiskey when he decides that he’s okay with it.
It isn’t that Wes helped Lindsey when Lindsey needed help. Wes is the guy who helps people. Like Angel. Like Gunn; a white hat. Lindsey was bleeding out, so of course Wes helped him. They would have been one hand down in their war against Hell on earth if Wes hadn’t. No, it’s the way Wes helped him that caught Lindsey’s eye. That made him stop and notice.
Wes was gentle. Maybe Lindsey wasn’t giving the others much credit by being surprised by that, but he was. And there were no backhanded compliments while Wes bandaged Lindsey up, no quiet barbs because he’d been a second too slow with that demon and nearly got his guts spilled out. Wes’s words were short and brusque but sincere and his eyes weren’t anything but blue and patient when he asked if Lindsey’s binds were too tight, if he needed any other assistance.
It’d been a while since someone had been gentle with Lindsey. Longer since Lindsey could trust the gentleness he’d been given. Lindsey watched Wes, wary, for days after that, wondering what the guy was up to. Now he just watches Wes. Wondering.
It takes Angel noticing for Lindsey to realize that he’s doing it.
“Stop stalking Wesley,” Angel tells him. “Or if he doesn’t kick your ass for it, I will.”
The vampire’s just one big, broody dark cloud of intent. And it’s startling to Lindsey. That - for maybe the first time he can remember - he isn’t thrilled that Angel is intent on him. Even Angel’s anger, his hatred, has never failed to fascinate Lindsey.
For once, Lindsey isn’t fascinated. He keeps a blank face and ignores the churning of his stomach as he asks, “Wes tell you he has a problem with it?”
He doesn’t bother denying Angel’s accusation. If one grown man watching another’s every move can’t be termed stalking by some definition, then Lindsey got lucky in over a dozen civil suits he won before going to work for Wolfram & Hart.
Angel frowns. Like Lindsey’s startled him too. Like Lindsey isn’t playing right and this is a game.
Usually… Lindsey would say that everything is. But the thought of Wes having a problem with him doesn’t make Lindsey feel much like playing.
So when Angel stutters, “No… Not ex-“ that’s good enough for him.
Lindsey grins. “Well, alright then.”
“Lindsey-“
“I’ll stop stalking him.”
Wesley’s just walked into the room. Lindsey makes a decision. He strides up to Wesley, ignoring everything else. Angel’s angry question. Wesley’s expression of surprise.
“Lindsey, what are you-“
He grabs Wesley, framing Wes’s face with his hands, and kisses him.
In the background, he thinks maybe Angel’s going apoplectic, but he isn’t really paying attention.
“Is that better?” he asks, when they come up for air. Lindsey doesn’t take his eyes off of Wes.
Wes doesn’t take his eyes off of him. Wes blinks. Finally, he says, “I would say… ‘than what’? But if you’ll do it again, I’ll just say yes. Most definitely.”
Lindsey smiles. “Deal.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Angel groans from behind them.
Lindsey doesn’t notice.
Title: Aspect
Details: Angel, Angel/Wes, NC-17, located here elsewhere
The first time it happens, it is purely by accident. Angel forgets his own strength. Wesley is too distracted to know himself if it is in pain or in pleasure that he screams. Angel is horrified as soon as they begin to return to themselves, he releases Wesley's wrists, and Wesley cries out, pain radiating from the slender bones Angel had gripped too tight.
"Honestly, Angel. This is unnecessary. I'm certain I can manage-"
"And I'm certain I won't let you." Angel smiles, setting Wesley's tea cup down on the table at Wesley's right. If there were pillows on Wesley's couch, Wesley is rather afraid that Angel would plump them. "You're complaining because I'm pampering you?" His tone is light, his expression casual, but Wesley can see the guilt - the fear - still lingering in his eyes.
Wesley just studies him. "I actually found it quite flattering," he says quietly. "I must have done something right, for you to have lost control that way."
Wesley is teasing. Masking his own mixed emotions about the incident, sure - from Angel's reaction - that Angel would not appreciate them.
"If I lose control, Wes, I could hurt you," Angel says immediately, heatedly. Something twists in Wesley's chest as the false neutrality fades away and Angel's remorse bleeds into his facial expression. "I hurt you," he says again.
No more than Wesley is hurt on a more or less regular basis, and under much less pleasurable circumstances, Wesley wants to say - but his mind sticks on the word 'pleasurable'.
Angel might not appreciate this... And it's not as if Wesley doesn't realize the danger in dangling an admission like this in front of a centuries-old vampire; one who - as Angelus - had taken great pleasure in suffering. In the suffering of others', anyhow. But.
"I liked it." The words escape Wesley before he can think better of letting them free.
Shock blanks Angel's face, but Wesley is only being honest. The short, sharp burst of pain that shot through him as Angel's grip tightened too tight around his wrists, at the same time that Angel released himself inside of Wesley, only heightened the pleasure that tore through him as he also came.
"Wes-"
"I'm not saying we have to do it again. No more than occasionally, in any case."
"Damn it, Wes, I-"
Wesley smiles. Gentle. If anything tells him that he can trust Angel not to really hurt him, not to make him regret starting this... It's the lingering fear and ever-present concern warring with heat in Angel's eyes. "Angel, I know you would never seriously hurt me," he reassures his lover.
"I could-"
"You could inflict every imaginable horror upon me," Wesley says blandly. Firmly. "... and some I dare say are beyond the normal human imagination. But you won't." Wesley can't stress that last part enough. They've had a version of this conversation many times. And if he will not allow Angel's capabilities to scare him away from a relationship with the vampire, then why should they allow it to scare them away from pursuing a potentially satisfying development in their sexlife? Wesley doesn't mind the occasional bandages and bruises. He earns plenty every day in his line of work.
Angel stares at him for a long moment.
He's been off-handedly stroking Wesley's arm, the skin around the edges of the bandages limiting the movement of Wesley's wrist until it recovers from its sprain.
Angel lifts Wesley's wrist and places a kiss on the inside of it, over the bandages. Wesley's breath catches. A pulsepoint lies beneath the bindings Angel has just brushed with his lips. They haven't explored that potentiality either, but if Angel will agree to taking one leap of faith, then eventually Wesley would like to-
"I'm gonna go warm up some blood while you drink your tea."
Wesley is more disappointed by Angel's quick dismissal of their conversation than he'd anticipated.
"Angel-" Then Angel squeezes Wesley's injured wrist - just a little, just for a moment. Just enough that Wes can tell what he is saying. 'We'll talk about this later.'
"I'm not talking about this while you're hurt and I accidentally hurt you." Angel presses a kiss to Wesley's lips. Wesley supposes he can be patient, so long as Angel isn't shooting down the implications of his confession completely.
"Go get your blood," Wesley says. "We'll watch the game together." He can't say which game - but there is always some televised sporting event available and Gunn has gotten Amgel hooked on them.
Angel grins. "Yeah?" Wesley's book can be patient too. He thinks perhaps this pampering business is going to have to work both ways if he wants to persuade Angel into making the best of last night's accident.
Title: Pancakes
Details: Chuck, Chuck + Ellie, G, located here elsewhere.
AO3
Every year, without fail, on her birthday, Chuck makes her pancakes. From the time he could reach the stovetop he's made it a priority. Buttermilk pancakes, strawberry pancakes... Blueberry; banana. Ellie can always count on her Birthday Breakfast. It's a constant. Maybe the only constant in life that she didn't arrange herself.
While he's still in high school, Chuck gets up and has breakfast waiting on the table before she has to start her commute to the USC campus. He only lets Morgan help once, and then promises never to do it again as they put out the flames and eat the scorched remains.
At Stanford, Chuck tries his hardest to be home whenever Ellie's birthday rolls around. On the only occasion that he doesn't succeed, he cooks the pancakes anyway - seals them in a large ziploc bag and then overnights them to Ellie just in time.
Even after Chuck moves out on his own for good - after Sarah and his spy life begin taking more and more of his time - he honors their ritual. If he isn't at her door first thing in the morning, she knows she can walk over to his and he'll be waiting, with breakfast and a smile to serve with a hug. In fact, after she learns the truth about his double life, she knows she doesn't have to wait on a knock or a walk. Chuck will simply let himself into her house as she sleeps, an enigmatic grin startling her as she laughs that she'll have to change her alarm codes again - the look so grown-up on the face that will always be the face of her baby brother.
Chuck says she's worth the effort. That she earns it with all of the lengths she's gone to for him over the years. He says he needs their constants as much as she does and Ellie knows that this is true.
But she hears something different in his constant presence on her birthday. She hears, 'I am here' in the circle of his arms; she hears, 'I am not our mother. I am not our father' in the cooking smells and the scent of syrup that greet her on birthday mornings.
She hears, 'I love you, sis,' when Chuck does - and even when he doesn't - say it.
And for all they lost, having only each other to rely on throughout their childhood, Ellie can only feel that they gained much more. Right or wrong, she wouldn't take a dozen picture perfect family moments with her parents over one of Chuck's pancakes.
Title: Bittersweet
Details: Supernatural, Dean/Cas, PG-13, located here elsewhere
It's a definite problem. But the only thing more awkward than dealing with it would be trying to tell Cas what the problem is.
"It just... It just does, okay," he pleads. "Just drop it."
Cas doesn't drop it. He wants to know why Jimmy's love of all things sweet, and how Famine's nearness is affecting Cas, bothers Dean.
Or he thinks he does. Dean is pretty sure no angel, even a cool quasi-human (sorta, sometimes) angel like Cas would want to know how the sight of Cas licking syrup or powdered sugar off of his fingers bothers Dean.
"I am sorry that this gluttony disgusts you," Cas says, not meeting his eyes. He sounds equally wounded and pissed. But embarassed more than anything, and Dean is such a sucker for a pouty angel.
"Cas-"
"But I cannot help it. I am trying, Dean. I am trying to resist."
He looks Dean square in the face, blue eyes - as always - fiery with intent, so sharp and seeing.
Dean can't believe Cas still doesn't see this. (Or how both frustrated by and grateful he is himself for that.)
'You and me both, buddy,' Dean thinks. Cas will ask him, later, why he is not affected, and Dean will say it's because he doesn't hunger for anything Famine could make him crave. That he's "well fed". But he'll lie. The one thing Dean's craved, from almost the beginning, is licking pancake syrup from the corner of its lips and looking at him like his word makes it awful or alright.
"I know, Cas. And you don't disgust me."
Oh what he'd give about now for even a smidge of disgust.
It would certainly cut back on the number of cold showers Dean is going to have to take for as long as the memory of Cas, syrup-scented and sucking on his own fingertips, remains.