And still think Plei is evil for enabling it.

Oh, like that's a SHOCK.

Plei, I'll hit stride shortly. Need to finish Weaver and Still Life edits before I let myself get too deep into anything else. But I wanted to keep it going.

Oh, who and where was it, that the subject of a BtVS/AtS crossover with Gumball Rally was first raised? Because Nic and I mapped the entire race out in our heads last night on the way home, including who got what cars. Example: Faith has the early eighties Ferrari Testarosa in arrest-me red. Angel, Mister Ragtop Man, is going to lose it when he spots a 1936 Lagonda convertible roadster with a running board for the taking. And we both agreed without a blink that Wesley must must must have Mrs. Peel's Lotus Elan.

Dawn and Buffy, off together, with Dawn driving illegally in something absurd, maybe a nice old Volvo P1800 and Buffy sweating bullets. Dawn would produce pink teeshirts that said "GO TEAM SUMMERS!"

Xander and Anya in a beefed-up Beemer, probably a 7-series.

Giles in the classic Jag XKE, not even street legal.

Spike on a killer bike, wrapped head to toe leather and full wraparound helmet, no sun can touch him anywhere. Demon-treated eye protection on the helmet so he can ride during the day.

Gunn, with Fred doing evil little things to the mechanics when it hiccups, in a seventies Lamborghini Miura, rollbar and all.

Alternately, Fred and Willow in a Mercedes 6-series, the kind my daughter's boyfriend has. Oh yeah.

Starting out in, say, London. Finish line - Transylvania?

Steph, yes indeed, Snow White and Rose Red. But I deliberately muddled it, because I saw Fred muddling it, and progressing naturally to Blood Red.

(and I adore that damned fairy tale....)

But I deliberately muddled it, because I saw Fred muddling it, and progressing naturally to Blood Red.

Okay, I get it. I was just being all editor-y. The editor is always on.

Excellent Steph. I loves me some good editors.

I plan to have Fred muddle stuff as a constant, in any Spred I write.

This was entirely accidental, okay? Someone came along and greased the slope with butter or something, and ooops! I slid down!

It isn't in character, either. Neither of them are quite right, though I think Spike's closer than Fred is.

- - -

“I don’t think they’re going to like this,” Fred said quietly.

“Who aren’t?” Spike asked, slowly combing his fingers through her hair. In his half-asleep state, he thought it was like Drusilla’s, thought perhaps a little softer.

“Angel. Gunn. Wesley. Anyone.” She was starting to sound nervous again, the way she’d been when they first met, so Spike kissed her. It helped a little, and she went on. “They aren’t going to like me sleeping with a vampire.”

“Look, love, they can’t really object. Angel’s a vampire, isn’t he?”

“A vampire with a soul,” Fred corrected, almost automatically.

“A vampire—with a soul—like the one I’ve got. Yes?”

“His was a gypsy curse and yours was given to you by a demon, but even the Watcher’s Council admits—I mean, admitted—that a soul is a soul, no matter what the source. They said so in 1584 when they had to have a Slayer re-ensouled by a shaman, because a demon had managed to remove hers.”

“You carry a lot in that pretty head of yours,” Spike commented, impressed.

Fred giggled a little at the compliment, and shrugged. “Actually, I went and looked it up while you were asleep.”

“After we…”

“Yeah.”

“Are you always this trusting of strange vampires?” Spike rolled a fraction closer to her.

“No, only the ones that make me laugh. When I’m armed.”

“Armed? How?” Spike enquired, moving away again, suddenly wary. This girl had depths he hadn’t seen.

“Left arm and right arm,” she said, demonstrating by hugging him tighter.

“And here was me, thinking you were an ‘armless girl.”

“Not me. Two arms, plus a stake.” Fred looked so pleased with herself that Spike couldn’t quite point out that merely having a stake wasn’t enough.

“Where do you keep that?” he said instead. “I’ve done,” and he demonstrated, running a hand down her side, “a pretty through strip search.”

Fred reached backwards, away from him, feeling for something tucked between the mattress and the bed frame. “Here.”

He looked at the stake suddenly in her hand, and his eyebrows shot up. “You’re good.”

“It’s better than being evil,” she giggled, “And it wasn’t my idea. I think Wesley put them there first, in case he ever had to deal with Angelus suddenly, and Gunn didn’t object because he likes to be armed all the time anyway. Every bed in the Hyperion has one.”

“Wesley was worried about having to deal with Angelus *in bed*?”

Fred blushed, more for the tone than the words. “And there’s one in the back of the fridge,” she said, her eyes widening. “They must have…”

“Sounds like this hotel’s seen plenty of action,” Spike smirked, and Fred recalled his explanation for being in LA. “I’m looking for the action—Sunnydale’s too quiet these days,” he’d said—but he wasn’t thinking about Sunnydale anymore. “On that basis alone, I don’t see them raising many objections.” His exploring hand was creeping lower.

Fred moved back a little, replacing the stake in it’s hiding place, and swept her gaze down Spike’s body, all on glorious display. “You’ve raised something, though,” she said, trying to match his smirk but ending up with a smile as sweet as the pixie sticks the Nibblet had shared with him once or twice.

“Very clever, pet,” he said, his voice low. He mirrored her movement, drawing back, and then pounced.

“I do my best,” she whispered before she let his lips silence her, and then she added in the quiet of her mind, “And that seems to be enough for you. Thank heaven.”

(Babe, gimme headers and a title, and I'll archive this puppy in the morrow.)

Um... give me a couple of days, Plei? I mean, you can, I'd love you to, but I want to polish and be slightly happier with it first.

Very quick Spred snippet, just because 'Buttery' amuses me So. Damn. Much. And it's evidently all the rage Chez Bitchfic right now:

* * *

A Little Happiness

It wasn't what she'd expected. He wasn't what she'd expected; but it turned out that he was just what she needed.

"Bloody hell. Where did you learn that, then? Nice little girl like you?"

"I never said that, sweetheart. C'mere."

She should have chosen Wesley, and if she'd been a better person maybe she would have done. His eyes still followed her from a distance when he thought she wasn't watching. He looked baffled, and frustrated, like her choices were as puzzling as the Riemann Hypothesis (and really, she should get around to telling someone the solution to that at some point when the world wasn't on the brink of disaster - but there was always another pandimensional demon text in need of translation or else the lobby floor in need of ichor scrubbing away, or else they'd run out of blood or cookies and somebody had to go to the store). The hurt on Wesley's face made her feel bad for him - but guilt wasn't a strong enough emotion to stop her sleeping with Spike. And, besides, she couldn't quite forget about Lilah.

It wasn't about love, for either of them. That was part of the appeal. Wesley's mind worked a lot like hers, and the way he looked at her made Fred feel like her knees would buckle at any moment - but it was all so complicated and messy with Wes, and it seemed to matter so much to him. And to Gunn. And yet sometimes they both made her feel like they forgot she was even there - that she was just something for them to squabble about, and what mattered was the squabbling.

And then Spike showed up, and he didn't put her on a pedestal and he wouldn't die for her - but he would kill for her, and he would let her kill for herself. He made her laugh, like Gunn did, and he wasn't subtle about finding her attractive, but he didn't make a big deal about it either. And he was dangerous, soul or no - he had this edge to him that Wesley had, and that she found so difficult to resist - but he made it all seem so simple. This time she was the one who did the kissing, and it was easier than kissing Wesley. And stranger. (Of course, technically Spike was dead, which was an odd thing to think when he had her pinned down and gasping into her pillow, because that wasn't what dead meant. Dead meant gone, stopped, no more. Vampires walked and talked and kissed and bit - gently, sometimes - and so their kind of dead wasn't the dead kind of dead, not really, but they still said they were dead.)

"Harder. Again. Harder. That's - oh!"

He made her stop thinking, and it was wonderful.

She caught Gunn looking at them once or twice, speculatively, and glancing over at Angel, and she knew what he was thinking 'cause she knew how he thought. But it wasn't because of that old crush. She'd gotten over the crush on Angel pretty quickly, and she wasn't embarrassed about it because pretty much anyone was going to get excited about a tall dark handsome stranger who swept them off their feet and saved them from murderous demons and brought them back to their home dimension when they'd just about convinced themselves that there was no such place as LA and that they really were a cow and always had been. That was a perfectly sensible reaction. It was funny to think she'd ever liked Angel like that, though.

Gunn, now - he had been the right guy to fall for, for a while. This wasn't like being with Gunn. Being with Gunn was all sunshine and warmth and an odd kind of innocence that she hadn't entirely understood. Being with Wesley would have been something like this, perhaps - but more serious. More earnest. Being with Spike was about smoking in bed and getting to be crazy and selfish and affectionate and dirty without feeling bad about it. With Spike she knew that he might be gone when she woke up, and that it wouldn't matter so much to either of them.

And the sex, of course, was simply amazing.

Fred was choosing sex rather than love for however long it lasted, because love made her heart ache and sex - well, sex gave her aches in better places.

Trying to get my hand in at this. It's a labour of love. My very first Firefly fic.

- - -

“Captain,” Simon said, exasperation clear in his voice, “Will you *please* sit down and let me clean that cut?”

Mal didn’t so much as glance his way. “How are we doing, Wash?” he asked.

“Not badly, Cap’n. At this rate, we’ll be landing in two days.”

“Good.” Mall smiled, and Wash decided to try and take advantage of the good news to get a few minutes off duty—and perhaps to help the young doctor as well, who was only trying to do the right thing.

“Would you mind taking the helm for a few minutes? I wanna go and see Zoe.” Not a whole truth, but enough that Mal would accept it.

“Okay,” Mal said, and took the seat as Wash vacated it. Wash noted that he only reached his right hand towards the controls, keeping his left arm out of the way, and prayed that nothing was going to require complex adjustments—the sort that needed both hands.

“Thanks. I’ll be back in ten.” Wash left, giving Simon a quick smile on the way out. The captain was sitting down—now it was the doctor’s turn.

For a moment, there was silence. Mal studied the controls and Simon studied Mal.

The cut on the captain’s forearm wasn’t very long or very deep, and it hadn’t bled very much—which was what worried Simon about it. A cut that size, sustained on a jagged edge somewhere in helping Kaylee, should bleed enough to clean the wound, and then some. The whole ship was filthy, especially the engineering sctions, and who knew what could be in that cut? Grease, soot, unburnt fuel, plain old dust and grime from a hundred planets—none of them condusive to quick and healthy healing.

Arguing hadn’t been helping his case before, so now he decided to simple get on with it. he knelt by the captain, who steadfastly ignored him, took the items he’d require out of his medical bag, and reached for Mal’s left arm.

Mall moved away, finding some excuse to lean over and fiddle with something on the control board.

Simon bit back a sigh. “Look, captain, do you want that cut to turn septic or not? Because if you don’t, I suggest you let me clean it out.” Mal still didn’t look at him. “Captain? Mal?”

The use of his first name did make him turn and make eye contact—the doctor didn’t use it very often. Simon took advantage of the moment of surprise. “Mal, let me help.”

Looking into the captain’s eyes, Simon suddenly realised that Mal was scared. The big, tough, godless, lawless captain who terrified Simon on an almost daily basis was scared—not of death, or of Reavers, or of the Alliance, but of a simple procedure that would sting for all of two seconds and prevent a lot of future pain.

Later, Simon would wonder why he hadn’t been forced to fight hysterical laughter. At the time, all he could think of was taking that pain out of Mal’s eyes—and without denting the captain’s dignity. The last thing he wanted to do was upset him.

“Where will we be if I let the captain die of gangrene?” Simon asked, knowing he was exaggerating the danger but aware that make the other option look worse could only further his cause. “Jayne would probably kill me.” He reached in his bag for local anaesthetic cream, and decided against telling the captain that he wouldn’t give it to most people.

“Zoe would stop him,” Mal said, trying to grin reassuringly. Simon reached for his arm again and this time he was allowed to take it.

“Yes, and then kill me herself.” Gently, Simon pulled Mal’s sleeve up and examined the cut. The light wasn’t as good as he’d like, but he could see the dirt in the wound well enough. He twisted it a little, trying to get a better angle, and Mal winced.

“Unlikely. You’d have…” Mal paused as Simon rubbed the cream onto his arm, and then went on, “to hurt Wash before she’d do that.”

Cream applied, Simon set to cleaning the cut. As he’d feared, there was engine grease as well as simple dirt, though lucky the wound was fairly simple, a straight cut rather than a tear or slice though the skin. “I think you may have underestimated Zoe’s protectiveness, captain.”

Watching Simon carefully pull a strand of fibre out of his arm—probably from his torn sleeve—proved to be more than Mal could watch. He turned away, grateful to be able to think about his crew rather than himself. “I know them better than you do, doc. Inara’s the one you’d want to watch out for—she’s got quite a line in self-defence when she’s minded that way.”

Simon didn’t reply for a minute. As he removed the drying dirt, the blood was beginning to flow, and his hands were full.