I *met* my girlfriend through fandom and I know that therefore this isn't helpful to your discussion at all but god how fucking great is it to be able to say that!

Ahem.

She reads what I've written and vice versa, but we don't actually line-edit for one another, because we have some different ideas about writing. It's neat, but it ended up keeping us from doing more than skeletonizing the Connor/Angel epic we were planning.

Spred is my "neat idea! funny portmanteau!" P, but my OTP remains the same as ever.

RL, is that Connor/Angel as in ... Connor/Angel? Because that pairing would set off my squick meter.

Patrick knows what I'm writing, and I've shown him some of my drabbles, but he's not super-motivated to read fanfic. I'll probably show him the Slayer!Willow thingie when it's done -- we talked about it on Wednesday.

RL, is that Connor/Angel as in ... Connor/Angel? Because that pairing would set off my squick meter.

Consider yourself squicked, Lyra.

(A not-AU AU in which Connor was not exactly Angel's son, but.)

I hear voices all the time. Sometimes my whole world resembles a "Blade-Runner"-esque adventure with appropriate voice overs.

I totally believe Xander being lost and scared of all this. He's lost all of his friends to the vampire/Slaying thing, even if Willow is still alive. I'm trying desperately not to fic the fic by thinking, "Let's see, Xander's all by himself, he could fall into inadvisable company and then wackiness could ensue."

Hubby does not get to read my fic. He's stopped asking, because I firmly told him no. Why don't I let him read it? Because he "knows" that there is nothing I can that he can't make better somehow, if he just looks hard enough. Honestly, I can't stir a pot of soup without him coming over and saying, "You know, if you stir in a figure 8 it'll work better, here, let me show you." He's very much in the "You got an A? Why not an A+?" school of critique. Also, I don't want him that far into my brain. Yeah, I love him, but he thinks it's a sign of relationship breakdown if we don't have the same dish for dinner. It's not as romantic as you think, having a man who wants to know every bit of you, inside and out. Plus, the guy/guy stuff freaks him out.

sorry, didn't mean to make this a hubby analysis.

The Resurrection Gambit

Part Fourteen: The Night Can Make a Man More Brave

China, 2023: Spike could get drunk, but knew in his heart that it was largely psychosomatic. For him, drunkenness was an automatic reflex, like gasping when dunked in water. Some things the body just remembered. He sat on the roof of the hotel in Shanghai, sipped whiskey from a flask and listened to the city. In the distance, he heard Dawn and Xander’s muffled groans, their possibly one last mad grasping at life before…. In the distance, he could here sirens and sobbing. Somewhere, not far, someone was dying. For him, there is always someone dying in the distance.

London, 2023 Buffy dreamed of Africa.

In the desert, the sand still hot beneath her feet, even by moonlight, while the wind cut sharp and cold into her skin.

Before her, the first Slayer battled a vampire. They had been sparring for what seemed like hours, each savage thrust countered, each potentially crippling blow blocked.

The vampire was tall and handsome, skin so dark it nearly melted into the night.

“It was so different then,” she thought, “so unlike the... thing... that murdered Angel. It was human once.”

She saw the slayer falter, saw something unreadable flicker in her eyes. With preternatural speed, the vampire’s fist connected with her head, and she fell, and in a frenzy of blood and fangs, she was gone.

China, 2023: Gone. Angel was gone and he had never… so much unanswered between them. The mystery of their twin resurrections, the eerie parallels of death denied.

It had all gone wrong. Angel had seized the Aurelius Gem from Drusilla. Buffy, Giles, Willow and Xander attempted to weave a spell that would cast the vampires from the Earth before the Slayers were gone to defend it. Before the battle was forever lost. The Juris appeared and shifted the tide of the fight. Angel’s soul screamed as it was drawn from his body. No, not just withdrawn. Shredded. Angel’s soul was being shredded into pieces. There are no words for that sound.

London, 2023: Buffy shifted in her sleep.

In her dream, she was in an African village, many miles from where the first Slayer died. A jolt of awareness shot through a girl’s body—she was no more than 13, thought Buffy—and the Shadowmen took her by the hand, leading her to her destiny.

In the desert, the Juris—that was not his name, thought Buffy, not yet—began to walk south.

Buffy thought of Spike, of how he traveled here to find his soul.

China, 2023: Spike thought of Buffy, of how everything had changed when he returned. He, nursing a growing, aimless rage. She, more free than he had ever known her.

It was over before it ever started again. He made his home among those he thought most likely to kill him. He tried to make amends, and knew he never would.

“Soon,” he thought. “Soon we finish the damn thing.”

He took one last sip of whiskey, and left to sleep before the sun rose.

skipping this, because hello, Victor-y goodness!

(Or, you know, not, because that appears to be all our Victor-y goodness for the night.)

Umm. So, here be (in the next post) my slashficathon entry. Which I just now wrote, as I spent the time I should have been writing it hanging with, amusingly, the person I was writing it FOR. So, for our very own, if absent, Herself, I wrote

Last Rites

Riley/Spike, to her specifications. Which were that they compete over Buffy, have some of that rimming, and then fuck.

Things used to be simple. Black and white. Good and Evil. G-d and Country. Boys and Girls.

Black and white got him bruised and battered and damn near killed when they collided in a haze of grey and made the line between Good and Evil get fuzzy. He's stopped going to church, he's not sure how he feels about his country, and even if he knows how he feels about the girl, his feelings aren't the ones that make or break things.

Riley looks over at Spike, and realizes he envies the enemy almost as much as the enemy envies him. Spike is Psych 101 simple, driven by his id. He wonders again why they've let this particular Hostile live. Buffy'd probably tell him it was "complicated" or something like that, some excuse that rings false to Riley's ears. And everything Spike's said tonight is true.

Buffy doesn't love him. He's not monster enough for her. "I'm the guy," he says again, trying to put more strength in the words. "I'm the guy, and it eats you up, doesn't it?"

A shrug and the bottle's tossed back Riley's way. "Course it does. She deserves better than you, you know."

The whisky stings, cheap and bitter in his throat, but he drinks it anyway. He stares at Spike, who stares back, cocky even through the obvious pain, teeth bared in a pleasant sneer. Riley feels old, tired, lost, and he takes another swallow, tosses the bottle back to Spike. "Kiss my ass," he says, wrenching his head around so all he sees are the dark stone walls.

He hears the clink of glass on rock, and knows Spike's set the bottle down. There's a rustle, a muffled groan, and then soft words without breath are hitting his ear. "Well, if that's the way you want to play it."

He's not prepared for Spike suddenly twisting him around until he's flat on his stomach, or for Spike's hands tugging at his pants until they're off and discarded, and he's sure as hell not prepared for the feel of a cool, damp mouth on his ass. He feels a rush of adrenaline and a surge of something that might be need as the mouth goes lower, hands parting his cheeks and that tongue going where tongues, in Riley's world, were never meant to go.

It's not the first time a vampire's made him hard, just the first time one of them took this route to get him there. Spike probably doesn't think Riley has it in him to go this low and enjoy it, but Spike doesn't know him very well. Flickers of motion over tender skin fly through him like electric shocks, and he starts to shake and sweat. He lashes out blindly with his feet, connecting and sending Spike off balance, and, more importantly, off of him.

Sprawled on the floor, sneer intact, Spike laughs at him. "You still smell like her, which I guess makes you the next best thing."

With a growl, Riley pulls Spike up and looks him dead in the eye. "And you're small and blond." It takes a moment for the implication to sink in, and while Spike's busy puzzling it out, Riley returns the favor with the pants. "On your knees, Hostile," he orders.

Spike drops, but not without another bark of laughter coming out of him. "Didn't know you had it in you."

"I don't," a pause as Riley bends down between Spike's splayed thighs, his still-hard cock brushing against Spike's raised ass. "But you will."

Reasonable's now more than just a couple exits back: it's crossed the state line and gone into hiding. This is stupider than going to those vampires, stupider than falling in love, stupider than anything he's done since leaving Iowa, and he doesn't care. Riley pushes his cock inside Spike's ass, knowing full well that it's as big a mistake as he could possibly make, as low as he could humanly go, and that it still won't be low enough.

This is something else he's never done, never thought of doing; Spike shifts to take him in deeper like it's something he's done any number of times. Riley finds himself thinking clinically about the differences between what he's doing now and what he's used to doing. It's primarily a difference in sensation; this is tighter, forcing him to go slower, to hold back when holding back is the last thing he wants to be doing.

Riley closes his eyes and tightens his grip on Spike's shoulders. He can feel the sharpness of bone through his palms, digging into the skin. Can feel the slide of his own sweat against skin that only gets wet by artificial means. Spike smells like smoke and whisky and nothingness. Oblivion. Riley stops holding back.

When it's over, he collapses, like his body can't hold up under the weight of his actions. Spike slides out from under him without a word, and from the corner of his eye, Riley can see him walk over to where he left the bottle. He picks it up, takes a swallow, and offers it to Riley, who has pulled on his pants and managed to sit back down on the ratty couch. Riley takes it, trying to wash the memories out of his brain.

"Well, now I know what she's so willing to give up, and I can't say as I blame her." Spike's in full control again, and Riley's stopped wondering how that happened.

"Fuck you," he says, finishing off the whisky and throwing the bottle to shatter against the wall.

"You already did that. Wonder what Buffy would say if she found out?"

As a threat, it's not particularly effective. "You wouldn't tell her, and even if you did, it wouldn't change things." Riley faces the knowledge he's tried to avoid, and tastes the truth in his next words like poison even before he forces them out. "It's over," he finally says. "You've seen to that."

Well shit. Because when I signed up for the slashficathon the e-mail I got said to write Angel/Wes, and when I look at the list here it says I was to write Andrew/Wes. ARRRRRRRRGH...

But I have 16 hours and, oh, 11 of those I'M AT WORK!!!! Goddamn. I suppose that's what I get for not checking up livejournal entries for folks I've not friended.

FUCK!