Fay, that was such a lovely story. Beautiful. And it should be published as the brilliant piece of original fiction it is. Maybe the pornanthology?

Connie - keep it coming.

Am - I love the salt. It's such a tiny character detail, but one I think Xander would have.

Connie-- it appears that all I have to say is "More! Please!" So, um, more? Please?

Elena, thank you.

past miles of working-class row houses, each looking like the next as the small hard-fought differences between them disappear into the dark.

I love this line and his climb into the fairgrounds. Really beautiful.

You've all written some brilliant stuff.

Fay, I think that would be awesome for the pornathology.

I love the story, connie. The dawnie/spike thing was brilliant, but I love all of it.

more, more, more from everyone, please?

Remember the boys in the basement? They're at it again.

- - -

“So you’ve got your soul back, then, Broody Boy?”

“Courtesy of Willow, yes. You managed to keep yours?”

“Yeah. I’m not relying on a stupid gypsy spell, either.”

“Why are you in such a bad mood today, Spike? I brought the best blood I could get.”

“The folks in Sunnydale were overcome with a sudden desire to have me work out my issues. Stupid American psychiatry crap.”

“To get rid of the trigger?”

“None of your business.”

“Why don’t you want to tell me?”

“You’d get upset.” Spike smirks, remembering.

“Look, Spike, I was Angelus only the other day. I did horrible things. I know what you’ve done in the past. Unless you killed Buffy, nothing you did could be worse than what I’ve done recently.”

“But,” and suddenly the grin and the candle-lit blue eyes are turned full-power onto Angel, “it wouldn’t have to be *worse*, would it?”

“What are you talking about, Spike?” Angel asks, but he can guess. Not Buffy, that idea he’s dealt with—one of the others. Willow? Surely not. One of the men, maybe. Not Xander, but… Giles? The principal Willow said they were working with? The other, what was his name—Andy? Arnold?

“Oh, I think you understand, Angelus…”

“I’m not Angelus! I have my soul!”

“I have a soul and I’m still Spike.”

Drawn by the confrontational tone of the familiar argument, Angel sits up, only to hit his head on a random pipe. “Damn! Interdimentional basement, and it’s still full of bloody piping.”

“That’s what basements are for, you ponce.” Spike moves across, kneeling in front of Angel, taking control. “Besides, technically speaking, you’re wrong. This,” a tap on the pipe over Angel’s head, “is an unbloodied pipe. Bloody plumbing is to be found,” and Spike’s hand is clever, unzipping and slipping inside, then grasping, fondling, “here.”

“Spike!” Almost a gasp.

“Is that as yes or a no, Angelus?”

Deep breath, and Angel’s in control again, of his voice if not the way his cock is hardening in Spike’s hand. “It’s a no, at the moment.”

He grabs hold of Spike’s shoulders and shoves the blond backwards. The hand still in his trousers persuades him to move as well, so that he ends up lying full length on top of Spike.

“Great! The poof says ‘no’, and then turns us into a big old heap o’vampire. Are you sure Willow didn’t take you brain out when she put your soul back in?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Make me.”

So Angel did, quickly, simply, efficiently, and in a manner than—while it didn’t lead to total silence—did keep Spike quiet for some time.

The start of something rather random (Sandman/BtVS):

* * *

The first time Drusilla dreamed the future, it was full of blood.

It started with a mirror tumbling towards the ground so slowly that one might suppose that the air had grown as thick as honey. Drusilla watched her pale face flicker into view and out again as the silvery disk fell, and she knew with a terrible certainty that when it hit the ground and shattered her reflection would be lost forever - but there was nothing she could do to save it. She was twelve years old and her dreams had always been as rich and strange and terrible and mundane as those of any other little girl, but this was different. This time she knew that it was real, and that the world would never be the same. When the mirror hit the ground it broke into the tiny fragments, a rainbow explosion of shards as small as sugar crystals or glittering grains of sand, and it was gone beyond all possibility of repair. For a moment the world shivered out of joint and she was standing in a dusty garden full of neat little paths. She heard a footstep like the whisper of dry grass and turned; behind her stood a hooded man his head bowed and a heavy book open before him.

"Excuse me, sir?" she ventured, embarrassed to be caught invading this stranger's garden and painfully conscious of her state of dishabille. "I beg your pardon, sir," she began, and then he looked right at her and her tongue grew still.

"You aren't truly mine, child," he said, and his voice sounded inside her head like no human voice she had ever heard, even in dreams. "And you are in my brother's kingdom. This is just a shadow of my realm - but you may walk in the garden when you will."

"I don't understand," she tried to say, and then the garden was gone and she was standing in sand all alone. At first she thought it was a desert, such as she had read about in books, but then she turned and saw the crimson ocean stretching to the sky. "This must be the Red Sea," she said out loud, frowning uncertainly, but that didn't seem right at all, because surely Red Sea and Dead Sea and Black Sea and Yellow Sea were only names for distant blue water. She stepped closer, and watched a wave rushing up to her feet. It wasn't water, and it wasn't a dream, or not like any dream that she had had before; she could really feel the warm blood lapping at her feet and smell its metallic taint in the air, and she knew that she was looking at the future.

"There." She spun around again but it was a different man this time. His skin was paler than the finest white lawn and his hair was black as a murder of crows. She did not know him at all. "Do you see?" His voice hurt her head. He sounded impatient.

"But I don't want this," Drusilla said. "Isn't there - can't I choose something else?"

"That is none of my affair. This is the borderland with my brother's country, and such questions are his concern." She glanced back at the sea, and when she looked again the man had gone.

She wasn't expecting the pain. Dru doubled up in sudden shock, clutching at her belly, and tears welled up in her eyes. She looked down and saw a poppy-bright stain blossoming on her nightgown. Blood was pouring from between her thighs.

Drusilla woke herself screaming. Her sisters, lying on either side of her, were peevish at being so rudely woken, but when she continued to sob incoherently for minutes and minutes and minutes their anger faded into puzzled fear. When they saw the blood staining her gown they screamed themselves and ran to find their mother. As Elizabeth ran to the door she slipped and her flailing hand hit the mirror that the three girls shared. Drusilla watched, hiccoughing with tears, as the little disk arched through the air. It hit the ground and shattered irreparably, and Drusilla felt sick to her soul.

"I saw it," she tried to explain through her sobs when Mama arrived. "I knew it would happen. I'm going to die."

Mama smiled and laughed and told her not to be silly. It was only blood, she explained, and it was part of a big mystery that grown up ladies shared. This happened to all little girls, and it was a punishment for Eve's sin, but it was magical too because it meant that she was a woman grown, and soon there would be handsome suitors flocking to pay their respects. She calmed Drusilla, brushing out the long dark hair and singing under her breath, and then she helped Dru to wash herself and gave her bandages, and she kissed Dru and hugged her and told her to be brave.

When Drusilla asked Mama about the dream and tried to explain about the mirror, Mama just smiled and shrugged and said it was all her body's way of telling her about the change. Drusilla nodded solemnly, but she didn't believe it. Not for a moment. She knew that this meant something more than her mother had said. Something worse.

I like, Fay. I like very much. In fact, I like so much I'm nearly incoherent.

His skin was paler than the finest white lawn and his hair was black as a murder as crows.

Metaphor. Image. Yay.

It's very powerful.

a murder as crows.

a murder of crows, perhaps?

See? Very powerful! And with added telepathy, that ignores typos!

Whoops! Cheers, petal.

I like.