No...I've just been busy and haven't figured out what happens yet. Thanks for asking.

I've got a slightly-ugly (in the sense of rough, not that the plot includes...oh, nevermind) 9-page GilesFic that I've been working on for at least a year that desperately needs someone else to look at it. It's complete, in the sense of ending. I'd like to get it to the point where I can think of it as done, and I can't figure out if it's too short or unfocused or unclear or if I've just been looking at it too often for too long.

the writing seems to finally be coming back. I got the idea last night and typed it out this morning. Now if I can just write at my new home, without Hubby saying "Whatcha doin'?" every few minutes and derailing me.

Not-So-Deaf Ears

Spike slowly opened his eyes onto the darkened living room. Had he dreamed the low, rumbling growl, or was there something in the apartment? Behind him on the couch, Xander slept on.

He didn't smell anything other than him, the whelp, sex, and the ghost of the dozen take-out burritos from El Taco Loco that had served as dinner. Slowly he sat up, scanning the room. Nothing out of the ordinary. He shifted to gameface to trigger his full senses.

A faint, chuckling gurgle, somewhere close. He turned his head for triangulation, then slumped. Xander burped lightly in his sleep, triggering another of those mysterious gurgles.

Spike studied his lover. It was easy to forget how noisy human bodies were. Bubblings and gurgles and pops and creaks and clicks. Being surrounded by cacaphonous humans could drive a vampire crazy. That one particular human, though . . .

He leaned down over Xander, listening to the boy's body.

The tacos were sitting as well as could be expected, what with the extra hot sauce. Spike twitched at the sounds of digestion, trying not to remember that his body had done those sorts of things too, once upon a time. Being a proper Victorian, bodily functions were not something he had generally acknowledged. It had almost been a relief to fastidious William not to have to deal with that sort of thing any more.

Xander's lungs whooshed reassuringly, and his heart thump-thumped steadily. Spike had spent a few nights early on with his ear against Xander's chest, listening to the rhythm and the echos and the tides of blood through the arteries. He'd heard a brief syncopation one night and demanded Xander see his doctor, only to be told that an occasional stutter in the rhythm was to be expected in a system that never got a chance to rest.

Xander shifted, then grunted at the clunk of his left hipbones shifting. Spike glared at the joint. The life of a Scooby was hard on the body, and Xander was slowly losing the resilience of adolescence. On bad days, Spike could hear clicks from Xander's knees and elbows, and there was a hitch in the right shoulder that worried him. When Xander had loudly popped his neck back into alignment once, Spike had been ready to call an ambulance.

The less said about the wet sounds of infected sinuses the better.

Spike stroked Xander's forehead as gently as he could, careful not to wake him. So damned fragile. So damned mortal and human. Vampire bodies were silent unless something was wrong. He and Dru would lay in perfect stillness, listening to the shift of the world with themselves at the quiet center. He thought occasionally about rescuing Xander from noisy mortality, but the idea of a Xander who was silent in any way seemed go against the laws of the universe.

He settled back down, but he knew better than to think he'd get any sleep. He closed his eyes and drifted, cataloging all the sounds from the body next to him, trying not to listen for the tick of a clock slowing down.

I am pleased to announce the completion, after a year and a half, of my Italian Renaissance Spike/Xander AU story, Nessuno.

Whew.

[link]

I've gotten back into "Dead Women Can't Say Anything" and posted it here
[link] I'll probably finish this evening.

A little SpikenDru ficlet:
An Imaginary Night
Liverpool-1959

Yeah, sure, he looked the part, with his black jacket, skin you could fuckin’ see through and the sideburns. He looked like a negative of Elvis, Stuart said, and he was dead impressed. Everything always came down to looks with Stuart eventually because Stuart was a real painter, not just a messer like John himself.

“So you write songs?”

”I guess you could say that...they started off poems first.” The Jacaranda was one of the few places in Liverpool where even a tough-looking lad like this William fella could admit to dabbling in poetics.

“Well, let’s have ‘em, then. Not here for my health then, am I?”

“ Yeah. This time we get all the beer we can drink.” George. Fuckin’ kids. He just wouldn’t get it. If they wanted to be the best band ever, they had to act like the best band ever. All the time.John pulled on the old Holly specs and gave the stranger a look daring him to say one word, but the stranger didn’t, distracted as he was by his girl who seemed to be dancing to the music in her own pretty head.

She turned to Paul and said “You’re pretty,” and touched his face.

Paul, not guessing she’d be one of millions, blushed. “Thank you. You too."

“Ooh, Spike. Could I keep him? I’d feed him every day...”

“Drusilla, please...”
“Miss Edith could remind me, if I forgot, but I probably could hear his pretty tummy rumble.”

John wanted to break up laughing, but he didn’t dare. He was the leader of a band, and he didn’t think Buddy Holly got to be Buddy Holly laughing at the Crickets’ barmy girlfriends.
” You do paint a picture, mate.” he said, looking over the lyrics. “Bleeding ghastly as it is. But it’s cool, though, because you’ve got a vision. Except...”

“Except?”

“Well, it’s not on, is it? Too many bloody syllables. And it’s not rock and roll.”

“Effulgent’s a real word. Means “gleaming”.

“Just say “gleaming” because at least it rhymes with “dreaming” and “scheming”...I mean, you don’t see Carl Perkins putting out “The Effulgent Blues” do you?”

Oh, bravo, Erika! I like that.

Excellent!!!

Thanks. I guess it is pretty gear, at that.

I like it very much indeed.