Fic: Two More Joy Day Snippets: BuffyVerse
Here's two Joss-verse snippets I wrote for More Joy Day. Both mostly gen, although there's some het in the Faith one.
Faith Lehane and Five Wrong Numbers
Rating: Teen
Spoilers: for everything but the comics
Written for haphazardmethod
1. One time Faith had a slime demon, antlers and all, trapped in an alleyway behind the five-and-dime. It was a new phone, and she hadn't programmed in all her numbers, and instead of getting B, she got the pizza place over on Burnside. They delivered a pizza for her, anyway, though, which was wicked cool of them. Slaying made her hungry.
*
2. Three hours after busting her out of jail, Wesley handed Faith a cellphone along with the bag of clothes and toiletries. She locked the bedroom door from the inside and sat on the bed facing it. Tossed the phone on the musty-smelling coverlet, and just stared at it for a long time.
Finally she picked it up and dialed. "Hi, I'm trying to find Mary Lehane?" . . . "Okay, thanks anyway, sorry to bother you."
When Wesley came to get her an hour later she left the phone behind on the bed. Wasn't as though she was going to need it, anyway.
*
3. Billy put her in the hospital when she was fourteen. Mary told the cops, and the social services woman, that Faith rode her bike into a telephone pole. Never mind that Faith had never had a bike in her life. The social services woman looked at her funny, and quizzed Faith when she got her alone, but. Wasn't worth it. Faith knew enough to know foster care wasn't any better.
Three days after the cast came off, Faith waited until Billy was passed out and picked up the phone.
"I want to take a self-defense class."
"Yeah, yeah, I can do that, but -- I don't have any money. Can I like, don't you need someone to clean up or something? I can, um -- oh. Yeah, whatever."
"Assholes."
A week later, she met her Watcher.
*
4. She found the phone on a beach, and she'd just lost her last one, so she stuck it in her pocket and took it home.
It was an awesome phone: the battery never died, and she always, always had service.
On the down side, occasionally she got some really strange phone calls. Usually it was a guy with an English accent--not Giles, though, the accent was different, and over time he even sounded younger, which made no sense at all--and whenever Faith answered, he would start talking and it had to be like five minutes before he would figure out she wasn't who he was trying to reach, and hang up.
Funny, though: by the fourth time she'd have expected him to figure out he had the wrong number. But every time, he seemed so surprised.
*
5. She meets the guy in a bar, naturally. He's hustling the college boys so well they don't even see it, and for once Faith decides she's just gonna watch.
Of course, that only lasts until he sees her watching, and he grins this grin--and it's about all she can do not to jump him right there and fuck him on the table. But she doesn't want to block his play, there's about three hundred bucks at stake, so she just spreads her legs a little, and takes a long slow slug of her beer.
He nearly scratches, and she grins right back.
She doesn't have a place to crash, just the damn Toyota, so they end up in a skanky motel room on the strip. It's even worse than the place she stayed when she first got to Sunnydale, but there's a bed, and once they turn the tv up loud enough, the neighbors stop complaining.
She sleeps fast and hard, but comes up quick when the phone rings. She grabs it and answers before she realizes it's not hers. "Wha?"
"Dean?" It's a man's voice, low and gruff.
"Sorry," Faith says around a yarn. She nudges a muscled shoulder, but gets nothing more than a groan. They'd killed most of a bottle of Jack, and only a couple of other people on the planet have her constitution. "He's kind of passed out."
There's a frustrated sigh. "Damn. Okay, girl, tell him I called and he has to call me back as soon as he wakes up."
"Hey, I'm not--"
He hangs up before she can explain she's not an answering machine, or get his name.
She falls back asleep before she finishes the thought, wakes to a hand between her legs, and only remembers the message around mid-afternoon, two hundred miles south.
She shrugs. Couldn't have been that important, anyway.
END
~
Five Computers Angel Didn't Like
Rating: all ages
Spoilers: into season 5
Written for yhlee
1. The desk-top computer Cordelia bought, for the billing. Except every time he walked past, she was reading some Hollywood gossip website, and chewing her nails. The more time she spent on it, the more unhappy she got. After the office blew up, he refused to replace it.
*
2. The computer in his cell phone. He's not stupid; he knows a cell is basically a computer. But it's too small--he keeps losing it--and it doesn't work and it goes off when he's hunting through the sewers, when he has to be quiet. Or it doesn't go off at all, and he doesn't find out for hours that Wesley was trapped behind the 7-Eleven by a Chusia demon. It's false reliance, and he finally leaves it on the reception desk until it stops beeping for good.
*
3. The police keep computer records, he knows. He's certain he's in there, in one incarnation after another. It wasn't as though he cared, for a long time. And if he didn't kill anyone, not for decades, he wasn't entirely invisible.
You can live off the grid, but the grid finds you. Even if he hadn't been too close to human trouble too many times, Wolfram and Hart would have made sure of it.
He wonders, sometimes, what those files actually say about him.
*
4. When he takes over the LA office, they give him a computer. It's a laptop, they say, although he sees no reason he would ever put such a thing on his lap. It's sleek and silver, and they assure him it has all the latest in messaging technology.
It whirrs and hums at him; he suspects it's possessed. He is absolutely certain the Senior Partners have it bugged somehow. This is Wolfram & Hart, after all.
After four months, they take it away, and his messages arrive on little slips of pink paper, in Harmony's heiroglyphic handwriting.
*
5. He spent nearly a century and a half terrorizing humanity, killing for food, for fun, for boredom. No one could stop him, and those who tried, he broke into pieces.
Now he knows: for all that time, and after, the Watchers' Council tracked him. They compiled lists of his crimes, named his victims, documented his atrocities.
Everything he did, in Ireland and England, in Vienna and Paris and Beijing. And in Sunnydale and Los Angeles. All written down in those moth-eaten volumes, and more recently scanned or transcribed into neat databases. Green letters on black backgrounds, naming the deaths he caused across the years. Documented for posterity, so that three centuries from now the name Angelus will still be known.
When word finally reaches LA about the destruction of the Watchers' Council, Angel allows himself a moment of pleased relief: all that history is now gone. Just for a moment, because there is work to be done. But for the next months, it feels sometimes as though a shadow has lifted, as if maybe there is a future now, unburdened by the stains of his past.
END
Faith Lehane and Five Wrong Numbers
Rating: Teen
Spoilers: for everything but the comics
Written for haphazardmethod
1. One time Faith had a slime demon, antlers and all, trapped in an alleyway behind the five-and-dime. It was a new phone, and she hadn't programmed in all her numbers, and instead of getting B, she got the pizza place over on Burnside. They delivered a pizza for her, anyway, though, which was wicked cool of them. Slaying made her hungry.
*
2. Three hours after busting her out of jail, Wesley handed Faith a cellphone along with the bag of clothes and toiletries. She locked the bedroom door from the inside and sat on the bed facing it. Tossed the phone on the musty-smelling coverlet, and just stared at it for a long time.
Finally she picked it up and dialed. "Hi, I'm trying to find Mary Lehane?" . . . "Okay, thanks anyway, sorry to bother you."
When Wesley came to get her an hour later she left the phone behind on the bed. Wasn't as though she was going to need it, anyway.
*
3. Billy put her in the hospital when she was fourteen. Mary told the cops, and the social services woman, that Faith rode her bike into a telephone pole. Never mind that Faith had never had a bike in her life. The social services woman looked at her funny, and quizzed Faith when she got her alone, but. Wasn't worth it. Faith knew enough to know foster care wasn't any better.
Three days after the cast came off, Faith waited until Billy was passed out and picked up the phone.
"I want to take a self-defense class."
"Yeah, yeah, I can do that, but -- I don't have any money. Can I like, don't you need someone to clean up or something? I can, um -- oh. Yeah, whatever."
"Assholes."
A week later, she met her Watcher.
*
4. She found the phone on a beach, and she'd just lost her last one, so she stuck it in her pocket and took it home.
It was an awesome phone: the battery never died, and she always, always had service.
On the down side, occasionally she got some really strange phone calls. Usually it was a guy with an English accent--not Giles, though, the accent was different, and over time he even sounded younger, which made no sense at all--and whenever Faith answered, he would start talking and it had to be like five minutes before he would figure out she wasn't who he was trying to reach, and hang up.
Funny, though: by the fourth time she'd have expected him to figure out he had the wrong number. But every time, he seemed so surprised.
*
5. She meets the guy in a bar, naturally. He's hustling the college boys so well they don't even see it, and for once Faith decides she's just gonna watch.
Of course, that only lasts until he sees her watching, and he grins this grin--and it's about all she can do not to jump him right there and fuck him on the table. But she doesn't want to block his play, there's about three hundred bucks at stake, so she just spreads her legs a little, and takes a long slow slug of her beer.
He nearly scratches, and she grins right back.
She doesn't have a place to crash, just the damn Toyota, so they end up in a skanky motel room on the strip. It's even worse than the place she stayed when she first got to Sunnydale, but there's a bed, and once they turn the tv up loud enough, the neighbors stop complaining.
She sleeps fast and hard, but comes up quick when the phone rings. She grabs it and answers before she realizes it's not hers. "Wha?"
"Dean?" It's a man's voice, low and gruff.
"Sorry," Faith says around a yarn. She nudges a muscled shoulder, but gets nothing more than a groan. They'd killed most of a bottle of Jack, and only a couple of other people on the planet have her constitution. "He's kind of passed out."
There's a frustrated sigh. "Damn. Okay, girl, tell him I called and he has to call me back as soon as he wakes up."
"Hey, I'm not--"
He hangs up before she can explain she's not an answering machine, or get his name.
She falls back asleep before she finishes the thought, wakes to a hand between her legs, and only remembers the message around mid-afternoon, two hundred miles south.
She shrugs. Couldn't have been that important, anyway.
END
~
Five Computers Angel Didn't Like
Rating: all ages
Spoilers: into season 5
Written for yhlee
1. The desk-top computer Cordelia bought, for the billing. Except every time he walked past, she was reading some Hollywood gossip website, and chewing her nails. The more time she spent on it, the more unhappy she got. After the office blew up, he refused to replace it.
*
2. The computer in his cell phone. He's not stupid; he knows a cell is basically a computer. But it's too small--he keeps losing it--and it doesn't work and it goes off when he's hunting through the sewers, when he has to be quiet. Or it doesn't go off at all, and he doesn't find out for hours that Wesley was trapped behind the 7-Eleven by a Chusia demon. It's false reliance, and he finally leaves it on the reception desk until it stops beeping for good.
*
3. The police keep computer records, he knows. He's certain he's in there, in one incarnation after another. It wasn't as though he cared, for a long time. And if he didn't kill anyone, not for decades, he wasn't entirely invisible.
You can live off the grid, but the grid finds you. Even if he hadn't been too close to human trouble too many times, Wolfram and Hart would have made sure of it.
He wonders, sometimes, what those files actually say about him.
*
4. When he takes over the LA office, they give him a computer. It's a laptop, they say, although he sees no reason he would ever put such a thing on his lap. It's sleek and silver, and they assure him it has all the latest in messaging technology.
It whirrs and hums at him; he suspects it's possessed. He is absolutely certain the Senior Partners have it bugged somehow. This is Wolfram & Hart, after all.
After four months, they take it away, and his messages arrive on little slips of pink paper, in Harmony's heiroglyphic handwriting.
*
5. He spent nearly a century and a half terrorizing humanity, killing for food, for fun, for boredom. No one could stop him, and those who tried, he broke into pieces.
Now he knows: for all that time, and after, the Watchers' Council tracked him. They compiled lists of his crimes, named his victims, documented his atrocities.
Everything he did, in Ireland and England, in Vienna and Paris and Beijing. And in Sunnydale and Los Angeles. All written down in those moth-eaten volumes, and more recently scanned or transcribed into neat databases. Green letters on black backgrounds, naming the deaths he caused across the years. Documented for posterity, so that three centuries from now the name Angelus will still be known.
When word finally reaches LA about the destruction of the Watchers' Council, Angel allows himself a moment of pleased relief: all that history is now gone. Just for a moment, because there is work to be done. But for the next months, it feels sometimes as though a shadow has lifted, as if maybe there is a future now, unburdened by the stains of his past.
END