I killed the thread. Ah well - here's a drabble for the regular Open on Sunday 100. Theme is crossovers. This one is Buffy/CSI.

Bugs

"So, how was it?"

"Nasty." Dawn dropped her bag on the floor. The view from the 26th floor of the Bellagio was almost enough to bleach out the memory of what she'd just watched, but not quite. The smell was still with her. "I don't think I can do this."

Buffy grinned. "You mean that Grissom guy managed to gross you out? The bugs and stuff? You were the one who wanted to check into forensic pathology as a career."

Dawn remembered the eviscerated corpse, Grissom and Sidle enthusiastically looking at maggots, and shuddered. "Yeah, well, I changed my mind."

One more, for the Open On Sunday crossover challenge.

I aint saying nothin'.

Incantation

"What is it?"

"I'm not sure." Willow held the thing in her hands, turning it over, trying to make sense of it. It was a smooth stone oval, with an irregular section missing from one side. "It's magic, I know that much. Why does it look so familiar?"

"Huh." Beside her, Xander peered with his one eye. "It looks - oh! Got it! Total Homer Simpson." He reached out and touched it, grinning. "It's a donut."

He produced his best Homer voice. "D'oh!"

"Oh, my goddess." Her eyes widened as he began to shimmer. "Xander! No! 'D'oh' activates the spell!"

I don't have to do that one...my whole life in fandom is a crossover challenge.

The Aspiring Actress

Hide in plain sight.

Up here on the stage, no one can see me shaking. Well, OK, maybe they can. But they think it’s just stage fright. As if. Duh, there are much scarier things than people watching me suck out loud. The lines chatter like woodpeckers from my mouth. The measures between words can be measured in life cycles. I am still breathing.

Here’s something I’ll tell you for free. My life looks like a mediocre television show, but as long as I’m on stage, as long as I’m on camera, I can pretend that’s what it actually is. Don’t look off stage. There is something waiting in the wings. There is always something waiting in the wings. My God. I’m always so…fucking…scared.

Smile pretty. Pray for applause.

I have a brilliant future ahead.

Good one, Victor.
A little bit more of my long story(I thought I was gonna get 'em off the roof today at least. But they weren't having it.)
There’s not much room for grey in Frank’s life. And I know that Frank really believes all victims are created equal.(We all try, huh? We were all babies once.)But he’s the only cop I ever met who would never admit to wanting to make an exception. Or twelve. (Over the course of a long career, that’s not so many. Not with all the dealers and wifebeaters out there...we’re supposed to call ‘em domestic abusers, but there’s nothing domestic about what they do...I’m sorry. Off-topic again, aren’t I?)

Anyway, Munch could have very easily given up his life for us. For me, the woman who told him he was disgusting all the time. And for Stanley, still missing the other man in his life, bugging Munchkin for quarters every morning as tribute to his status(I never had to do the quarter thing. I think that’s the only way Stan had to tell me I was pretty.I kept waiting for him to ask...he never did. A couple times, I put some in the jar anyway...I didn’t want to be treated special.Having breasts doesn’t put bear traps on my legs, huh? Why quarters? Cause Stan has twenty-five years in.) I don’t have the feeling Munch was thinking of himself at all, when he did that. Or maybe at all, dumb bastard. Heroic, stupid bastard. I start to well up again...probably no demon will want me now...my blood’s all sap, now, I’m pretty sure.

"You were trying to protect us,Munchkin. I can respect that.” I wanted to say more, but I didn’t. Real life isn’t like those coffee commercials.

“You respect me?” he said, looking like he finally won something off of one of those dumb lottery tickets. “I thought I was gonna have to beg your forgiveness.”

And then, I got an image of the other side of Munchkin. Wiry, relentless, a bundle of urges...did his victims scream? Or did he back them into a corner so fast there wasn’t time? He would take his time with me.

I ducked away from his hand.”Have you done anything you need forgiveness for?” For a second, we’re in the Box. Suspect is a white male, approximately six feet, somewhere in his fifties...but I can’t be like that with somebody who risked everything like that. Not to mention he held my hair when I puked on New Year’s. But if he tells me anything, I’m gonna have to report it. “I’m not in the forgiveness business, Munchkin. Isn’t there a rabbi you could talk with or something?”

“I’m not in the rabbi business, Kay. What time is it?”
I look at my watch. “Quarter after three.” Which was good. Cause if I don't get my three hours, I'm out of it all day. “Damn, it’ll be dawn soon. “ But he makes no move to leave, instead he nods toward my wrist with the watch on it. “Hasn’t the British Boy Wonder talked you out of that yet?!”

“Why’d you have to ask so stupid, huh? You can see he hasn’t. And, anyways, I’ve worn it during sex before...not that you needed to know. It’s just...habit. That’s all.”

“Well, if you start playing Hide the Salami with Poindexter, be sure you get one with a second hand, ok, babe? Maybe one like in the Olympics that counts fragments of seconds.”

”Did I ask you? Did I say ‘Rate my new acquaintance as a lover, while you’re out here being undead and mysterious?’ And his name’s not Poindexter, it’s Wesley. My dad’s name is Wesley.”

“You just deserve somebody good enough to take your watch off for. Maybe even to forget what day it is. Mysterious, I like that. “

I ducked away from his hand.”Have you done anything you need forgiveness for?” For a second, we’re in the Box. Suspect is a white male, approximately six feet, somewhere in his fifties...

(thunk)

Really? Cause I kind of thought that was weak. But Wambaugh says that's why cop marriages don't last...they look at everybody with their cop face on, and everybody starts to look like a perp...including the wife/SO and kids. Of course he used a lot more words than that.

erika, I thunked because I got hit for a moment with the same regret she had to be feeling when she thought it. Munch can never be Munch to her again - she has to distance him someway, somehow.

Poignant.

Yeah, I felt that too.It's a bummer, even as it serves the story and pushes the angst up to 11...their little repartee is one of my favorite things about H:LOTS. Yeah, it's one thing to say that he is not *just* a bloodthirsty vampire. It is another to ignore that things have changed.

That's it. He's always been particularly human, and now the soul is elsewhere, so the humanity becomes a mask and the wit becomes a weapon. Yet the way you're drawing him, he seems to still have some vestiges underneath. And I'm all about believing in the vestiges, going back to older vampire canon: when Stoker describes the last seconds before Dracula's dissolution into dust, he describes the look of peace on the vampire's face. And if he can feel that he's going to be at peace? It does argue, for me, of some underlying humanity and need.

And this encounter plays that way - he can be hungry, hungry, hungry, and still somehow grieve over the strength of his own hunger, by regretting that this is Kay.