Today's Open on Sunday challenge is a weirdie - dictionary.com's words for your birthday, use as both title and in the drabble. So.
Anodyne
Angel curled on the bed, shivering.
He never saw the arrow Faith hit him with. He hadn't needed to; the fast leak of whatever nameless toxin she'd smeared it with through his system told him what was what. Curable, yes - with the blood of a Slayer.
Not a problem, she'd told him, and gone out into the night, to hunt for Faith. She'd come back empty-handed, but with a cure nonetheless. My blood, she'd insisted, take it. She beat him down, forcing the issue.
As she spasmed, orgasming beneath him, he understood what she was to him: his ultimate anodyne.
Second birthday word (from my birthday in 2000, I think):
Peremptory
So many things she remembers of Tara.
She remembers sensitivity, a skin so thin an eggshell seemed tough in comparison. A full, almost babyish lower lip, that would want to quiver at a perceived unkindness.
She remembers humour, sidelong glances over someone else's head, sharing a joke in silence that would leave them both laughing in the privacy of their bed long after the joke was gone.
Most vividly, though, she remembers passion, the only time Tara ever showed force rather than strength: the peremptory pressure of her lips to Willow's own, an end to conversation, a command to love.
(Nice, Deb, the both of them.)
I only wrote one.
Turpitude
For as long as he can recall, he has tried to mold himself to the expectations of others. A dutiful son, an attentive student, a loyal employee, first to the Council, then to Angel.
Cast in the role of betrayer, he struggles to find his lines. Judas, she whispers with a smile from just beyond the curtain. Not so pure, not so loyal, not so good as to resist everything she offers. In his bed, he lets her teach him. It's just another template: turpitude instead of rectitude, vice instead of virtue.
Just another set of expectations to be met.
I like that in your second one, Deb, I got such a tactile sense of Tara, like if I touched the words on my screen, I'd hit warm and fragile flesh.
I was looking over all the words, and grumping because one of my favourite words - portend - wasn't for my birthday. And the person who used it wrote a pretty fic, but used it as a NOUN.
MUNCH
Wolfram and Hart is a monument to entitlement and privilege. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a substitute phallus with tons of windows. Yeah, right, like if I’m compensating that much, my biggest problem is catching the light of day. Not that I know much about daylight anymore...it’s been, what, six weeks, and I’m beginning to forget how it felt.
Lilah walks around like she owns the place, I like to watch that. Who am I kidding? I love to watch her walk anywhere. I’d watch her take her trash out, filled as it would be with avocado skin, apple cores, and yogurt cups. Like Felicia’s. Yes, one sad desperate morning I watched Felicia take the trash out, so much did I want to plead my case for why she shouldn’t leave. Instead, I wanted to leave myself.(You don’t have to look shocked...I did let a gorgeous blonde literally suck the life out of me, you know.)
Our feet barely make any sound in the plush carpet, probably made from the skin of the oppressed. Outside, it’s the kind of beautiful night I could never appreciate as a human.
There are papers in a neat pile on the conference room table. A place for everything. I took a juvenile pleasure in disarranging all that order. And I was fast, too. I was done before Lilah got back with some kind of Hitler youth leader or something. Ken to Darla’s Barbie. “Detective Munch,” Lilah said.(Would I never get tired of my name shaped by those lips? And with a title, yet?) “may I present my associate, Lindsey McDonald.”
Aryan Ken shook my hand. “You’re Lindsey?” I put my glasses back on. I no longer needed them for vision, of course, but they comforted me. Reminded me of battles won and lost ideals, and of course, the tiny tactical advantage gained from looking over them at people. “Not what you expected?” he said, his gaze so keen that if he wanted to eyefuck me, I knew I’d need lube.
“Honestly?” I said, pretending I didn’t notice them both offering me chairs. In a place like this, I’d prefer to pace. Keep moving...maybe it’s a holdover from the pogroms.
Lindsey, who was probably not holding that particular bit of baggage ,sat in the biggest chair at the head of the table.Wow, executive foreplay, I thought. “No,” he said, smiling an All-American smile, “lie to me. I’m an attorney. I’m used to it.”
“Cute,” I said, sitting on the edge of the table. “Well, in that case, your name doesn’t make me think of a freckle-faced blonde with a D-cup.”
“We’d really prefer it if you didn’t sit there,” Lilah said. “That table has a very prominent place in the firm’s history.
“Not like it could have when we’re through with it, babe. “Better dead than adult is my motto I think.
“Well, we can make one of your dreams come true...not that one.” And suddenly I’m eye to eye with more cash than I’ve ever seen. A year of Stanley Bolander’s life, cash-wise, sits on that desk.(We’d talked salary once, only briefly. Then, he’d threatened to gut me. For being crass, although that wasn’t what he said.) “Blood?” Lilah said. I’m so obsessed, I think she said “Love?” and if I could, I’d blush.
Then, I’m surprised by a cut-glass decanter of the red stuff. “We have A and B negative.”
”Nothing but the best. Are there orchids in this too?”
“Taste it and see.” And she lets that provocative sentence hang in the air between us.
I’ve read that sometimes demonstrators get offered water laced with something to throw them off, and I suspect Wolfram & Hart has too.
“No thanks. I’d prefer to stick to business. You aren’t hiring me to be an undead gourmet. What are you hiring me for?”
“To be our eyes and ears. To move aside any obstacles as we take out AI.”
”I’m guessing by obstacles, you don’t mean federal regulators.”
“No, I mean Darla.”
”I live with Darla. She made me.”
“Who better? You were a detective. You know how often people get killed by their nearest and dearest...But don’t worry, if she stays out of the way, you won’t have to do it.”
And just like that, she’s gorgeous again, even with the heart of a Colombian drug lord...I’d love to tell you I found her hideous, but the one thing I can’t do undead is lie.
Thanks! I just had a feeling that that's what the Munchkin would see, even if Lindsey is really from Devil's Asshole, OK. And he has quite the gimlet stare, Lindsey.(And I really do think of my high-school friend Lindsay who fits the description of the Lindsay Munch was expecting, every time I type that)
