It's very much like the Greek gods to give a gift that is absolutely not what the recipient wants.

more of hte road trip.

The waitress in the diner, Brenda Ann, had an accent straight from the hills of Arkansas. Tara stared at her as she talked and pouted when she was gone. Everyone else was too tired to do more than eat and blink, though Xander blinked faster the more coffee he drank. They ate quickly, and Brenda Ann brought a lollipop for Tara when she brought the bill.

"We should get some stuff for the road," Buffy said after she paid the bill with her mother's credit card. "I don't know if there are going to be any stores where we're going."

"Road trip food, yeah," Xander said, bouncing slightly.

"And water and such." Buffy frowned. "I wish he'd told us we were headed into the wilderness."

Joyce maneuvered her way past a rotating rack of postcards. "Do we know where we're going yet?"

"Nope." Buffy spotted Giles in the general store portion of the business looking at maps. "Time we found out."

Giles glanced at his watch when he saw the others approaching. "That was quick."

"You said we were in a hurry," Buffy said. "So, maps."

"Yes, maps. Xander, how are you at map reading?"

Xander shrugged. "I was never a boy scout, but I've never gotten lost."

Buffy left the two of them going over the route and went to peruse groceries. Anya, apparently well conversant in Xander's tastes, was loading up on crunchy carb-laden things and power drinks. Joyce was tsking over prices but handing Dawn cartons of juice and milk.

"Not much in the way of solids," Buffy observed.

Joyce nodded to the other end of the cooler. "Did you see the price on the lunch meat? Tourist prices."

"Beggers and choosers, Mom. I don't think parking the bus at a grocery store is a good idea."

"Make Giles pay for it," Dawn said, balancing cartons. "He's dragging us out to the back of beyond." She lost control of a container of orange juice, but Spike appeared at her shoulder and caught the carton.

"Hand them over," he said, and Dawn gratefully passed over her awkward load.

"Do you know where we're going?" Joyce asked.

"Not a clue, love. I'm just hoping for buildings. I am not the wilderness sort."

"City boy," Dawn teased.

Buffy moved away, unsettled by how easy her mother and Dawn were with Spike. A pit bull on a leash was still a pit bull. Still, it was kind of nice to have a pit bull you could depend on to savage people you didn't like.

"How soon will we be ready?" Giles asked. Xander wandered over to Anya, still perusing the map.

Joyce pointed Dawn towards some packages of lunch meat. "I'm ready. Buffy, grab some of that water, please."

Buffy hefted one of the cases of bottled water. "I see all your shopping instincts are still in order."

The clerk at the counter was so delighted at the big order that she didn't even frown as Tara ran the fingers of her good hand through the windchimes hanging nearby. Willow untangled her fingers gently from a fragile ceramic chime. "When we get home, we'll get some to put in the window, ok?" Tara smiled and put her head on Willow's shoulder. Willow saw Buffy watching with a sad look, and she put on her resolve face. Buffy smiled and turned away to help carry groceries out to the bus.

and a chunk of conversation I wanted to get out of the way

Xander got behind the wheel and practiced maneuvering the bus around the parking lot, then over to the gas pumps to top off the tank. The rest strolled around the lot, taking a last opportunity to move around before continuing their journey. Spike strolled over to Dawn, pulled a package of batteries out of his coat pocket, and handed it to her. "Here. I ran down the ones in your CD player. Since when do you listen to The Clash?"

She palmed the batteries casually and tucked them into her own pocket. "Since I stole that CD from you. You think I'd pay money for that stuff?"

Spike snorted his amusement as he lit up a cigarette. Dawn glanced around to make sure no one was in easy eavesdropping range. "I was, um, watching you and Giles through the window while we were eating. The two of you seemed, well, close."

He studied her through the smoke. "What do you mean?"

Her blush would have lit up a room. "Well, what I mean is, you and him--he and you--are--have been . . . dammit, I'm a woman of the 21st century, I can deal."

He was half-curious as how deep a flustered hole she could dig herself into but decided to spare her. "Niblet, you want to get past this point and say something that makes sense? And the answer is yes. Why?"

"Would you have killed him that night in the front yard?"

"I'd have put him down like a mad dog, Niblet."

"Even though the two of you are . . ."

"Yep." He couldn't help smiling at her inability to say the words. Not that he intended on giving her details about his sex life.

"That's--weird."

"The shagging, that's just what vampires do to pass the time. That and fight. But the Glory thing, that's business. Ripper knows how he thinks it should go, and he knows I disagree. I'm going to stop any plan that involves you getting hurt. Make no mistake, Niblet, he'd have killed me if it came to it that night at your house. I'd have killed him if there was no other way. Just business."

"Just to keep me from getting hurt? Why?"

"Don't be dim."

She looked down to hide her grin as she fingered the stolen batteries he'd given her.

SpikeandDawnand... oh, Goddess.

Connie, did I mention that I love you?

I've been drabbling. Completely failing to write for the sunday100, but lots of drabbles, all the same. Mostly with no point and more to be writing *something* than with any real felling in them.

~~~

Buffyverse--

He sprinkles salt on all his food. It’s a habit—perhaps his mother did it, perhaps they told him not to and he’s making up for lost time. I sit, watching, sipping the pig’s blood I haven’t got any appetite for.

“Are you going out tonight, Spike?”

“I might. Why? Are you afraid you’ll miss Enterprise if I stay in?”

The quips are the easy part—they’re my only protection now, the gloss that keeping me from cracking completely simply because it’s habitual.

“I don’t… the remote’s mine, okay?”

He reaches for the salt again. Habits are hard to break.

~~~

M*A*S*H--

Practical jokes, puns, funny lines—they’re the stuff of life to Hawkeye.

I’m not quick and clever like that, but I get along okay. All the forms the army needs? They’re like wordplay. Colonel Blake—Hawkeye called him Henry, but that doesn’t feel right to me—just used to let me sort them, sign where I said sign, never sure what they meant.

Colonel Potter isn’t like that, and he’s better but worse all at once. He understands the forms, and likes Hawkeye, but he’ll never get how it is between us. It’s hidden in too many layers of puns.

~~~

Starsky and Hutch--

“Starsk?” Hutch whispered into the darkness, needing to know… something, and praying that his partner could help. “Starsky?”

“I’m here, Hutch,” Starsky said.

Dimly, Hutch thought, So. That’s what I needed to know.

“What’s’matter?” Starsky asked, and Hutch felt the bed dip and a touch on his arm as Starsky moved towards him.

Hutch didn’t know, and said so.

“You,” Starsky told him, “are a great big sap.” Hutch nearly disagreed, but the arms around him were so comforting that he conceded the point.

Instead, he said, “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Bit late for that now.” Starsky kissed him.

~~~

I started a Star Wars one, but when it hit three hundred words and still had lots of ideas, I decided I'd better let it be a story, not just a drabble.

Am, who's Spike talking to? I'm thinking Andrew or Xander.

In my head? Xander. In that lovely slashable space where they were living together, round about "Sleeper".

However, if you choose to put Andrew in, that would also work.

It has suddenly just reoccured to me their names were David Starsky and Kenneth Hutchinson. Kenny and Dave.

Odd, what surfaces.

Okay, disclaimer city: this is just a first scene, and I normally hate to post incomplete things in case I never finish them. Also? Never written Batman before. But I'm feeling a little stalled and hoping that if I release it into the wild, I might pick up the momentum I've lost.

****

It's a long time after midnight when he hops an empty train through downtown Gotham and beyond, taking the yellow line through the gentrifying neighborhoods where the young techies go to raise their charmingly multilingual children; then, as the train comes back above ground, past miles of working-class row houses, each looking like the next as the small hard-fought differences between them disappear into the dark. The train rattles and lurches, its brakes squealing at every curve and every stop, but nobody gets on or off, so it just moves on.

Finally, at 37th avenue, a drunk stumbles from the security of a pillar on the platform to the security of a bench inside the train. From the roof, the bat watches him, and the train keeps going.

Twombley Avenue is the end of the line. The drunk from 37th is fast asleep by now; he'll head back into town with the returning train, but the bat alights almost silently and heads down the rusted iron staircase to the street. Tucked under the elevated platform, a row of dark windows displays cheap Asian souvenirs behind their metal security grilles. Across the avenue, the fairgrounds are closed for the night.

He climbs the iron gate. His instinct after all these years is to scan for those intermediate places that will allow him to go over in a couple of quick leaps, almost like flying, or failing that to use one of his toys, but tonight he wants to do it the way he used to when he was just a pissed-off kid climbing into or out of trouble. He wants to feel his shoulder muscles strain and then catch as he pulls him up the vertical bars, feel the press of iron through the thin soles of his boots as he walks his feet up them. It would be even better if he could feel the rust and old lead paint and raw metal digging into his bare hands, but he's already halfway up when he thinks of it, and it's too late to stop to take the gauntlets off. And it works. He has to stop to rest at the top, and he looks out over the darkened lights and the roller coaster on the near horizon before he drops down into the darkened fairgrounds.

After hours, when the crowds have gone, only the freaks are left.

A twisted little carnie is hosing the cigarette butts and empty cotton candy cones out of the middle of the walkway next to a trailer painted with the legends TWO HEAD BABY -- WORLDS SMALLEST PIG -- GAINT RAT. The water leaves the sidewalks shining in the reflected light of the streetlights, the moon, and the bat signal.

BATMAN SMASH HEAD!

AMYCH DA BOMB.

Umm, more please?

Thank you, my dear! you shall have more as soon as I've got more to post. Off again to play in the dark, deserted places....