This week's drabble challenge was "pairings or characters you would normally never write."

Here's two.

To Mask Pain (Buffy/Tara)

I'm not sure how it happened, even though I do know why it happened.

I found her crying in her mother's kitchen. Iconoclasm's horrible, watching someone you think is unbreakable, cracking like cheap crockery. Joyce was upstairs, mumbling to herself, and Buffy was sobbing, her face awash in pain. I saw fear there. She understood: Joyce was going to die.

I touched her, tentative at first, wanting to help - because, well, the Slayer. We ended up there on the floor, locked lip and hip, passion born of fear, to push her terrors away.

I wonder if Willow would understand.

Ripe (Dawn/Andrew)

I'm hosed.

I've always a good idea about losing my viriginity, especially since I found out how Buffy lost hers. No big deal, no complications, no losing the soul, no world ending, no having to kill him later. Just a hot guy, a few nerves, fun. More like Faith than my sister, except without Faith's "use 'em-lose 'em" thing.

So how I managed to drink my first tequila shots ever and wind up on the bathroom floor with Andrew, biting back squeaks and praying none of the Potentials needed to pee, I don't know.

I don't think Buffy would understand.

I think those are good.

They're generating more comment than usual, for me. Huh.

I wanted to do one with Anya, regarding solace, but I'm damned if I can think of a situation weirder than her having sex with Spike.

There's a challenge Am found in lj with porny 9-word telegrams.(and somehow Munch is so the man for that job) The challenge is at [link] My entry is:

Munch to Kay(After The Movie)
Last night was great. STOP. Don't ever cut your hair. Kay to Munchkin: Well, now you know. STOP.I'm a natural redhead.

Nine-word porny telegrams?

Oh my. Must think about that one.

Probably wasted on the hostess being she's a Potter slasher and that would be a difficult cross-pollination.

Lilah: YOU TOOK MY HEAD STOP GIVE IT BACK STOP

Wesley: YOU GIVE WHOLE NEW MEANING TO WORD "HEAD" STOP

Damn. I'm rather horrifically enjoying the "never normally write this pairing" challenge.

Realisation

He wanted to do this before. Now? He's going to.

Sod the chip. If those bodgers in the Initiative hadn't mucked up his skull, he'd have done this already.

Tonight, knowing her roommate is out, he walks straight into the dorm. He's been invited before; there's nothing to keep him out.

He pushes her against the pillows, dragging her knickers down around her knees, dropping his own trousers. He takes her hard, and waits for the pain in his head to kick in.

It never does.

And he looks into Willow's pleasure-glazed eyes, and understands: she's wanted this, all along.

I think something got lost in the middle, maybe?

Oh my god, yes. There's this whole little Fred/Gunn post-relationship thing that goes there. It must have gotten lost in the editing or cut-and-pasting.

Me = stoopid. And should read my stories through all the way after I post them.

So it turns out the missing paragraph is the result of a rotten LJ-cut tag. (I left out the >, which made everything until the end of the next set of italics disappear.) It should read as follows:

She reached in, hefted a shiny hubcap axe. Balancing it between two fingers, Faith spun it; first clockwise, then counter-clockwise. "Aw, this is wicked. It would take out a dozen vampires at once. Line 'em up and knock 'em down."

"That's what I thought when Wes tracked it down. It's got some magic mojo on it, too, makes it extra-precise."

Faith nodded. "State of the art killing machine." She put the axe back in its cabinet. "You want to take it with you to Wolfram and Hart, or is this one we can have at the Slayers' Academy?"

It was August, sticky in Los Angeles. The Hyperion's ancient air conditioning hardly made a dent in the smog filling the building. After two months at Wolfram & Hart, Gunn had finally admitted to himself that the attorney upgrade was permanent. When Faith called to ask him if he'd be interested in helping her train some of the new Slayers, it was the push he needed to finally clean out the weapons cabinet at the old hotel; Angel, Fred and Wes had long since removed the weapons they wanted, but had left him the bulk of them. For "closure," Fred had said, propped against the couch in his new office, scooping nachos with extra guacamole into her mouth.

He halfway listened as she explained that it was important that he get his stuff out of the Hyperion, just as she had removed her techie toys and Wesley had dismantled the library. Gunn watched the way her ponytail bounced on the back of her neck as she spoke and thought: She might make goo-goo eyes at scientist boy, but when she's lonely, I'm still her eating buddy. He remembered, vaguely, that their relationship had ended badly, but brushed the thought aside. No point obsessing. Time to move on. Fred was ready to be friends – why wasn't he?