Shiny. Want.(but only for a night or so)

The question being, would you survive the night or so? Or, again, do you want to?

Tough question, there.

Before I post this latest installment, I want to thank Deb G for stopping me from pushing for kissage. I can't decide if there will be smoochies or not, but they are taking their time, and I respect that...so Kay POV

Wesley made me stay in and study. I hate how that makes me sound like a punk kid, but it’s true.And I was a punk kid. Not bad, just restless, and not wanting to be sitting in a row of desks all the time. For a while, the demonology was interesting, but after about an hour I wanted to be in high school again, and climb up on the roof and drink beer.But since my encounter with the undead Munchkin, climbing anything didn’t feel the same. Bet he heard that from a lot of people, huh? God, now, he’s got me doing it.

Wesley leaned over to explain something in one of those diagrams, and I could smell that, rather than just thinking about drinking, Wesley had been. He smelled like beer, the weird dark foreign kind.
“You know,” I said, “You should probably watch out for that. At least on the Job, huh? It’s a bad habit. One of the few I can stay away from.”

“I’ll take it under advisement. What bad habit could you have? Apart from your abuse of the King’s English.” He was still poring over some dusty old etching. How can he concentrate so hard for so long? I can only do that on a case, and even then we are running all over the city...whichever city.
“However...”(and my stomach sank. Even though I sometimes thought he worried too much, I wanted him to like me. Respect me. And he wasn’t hard to look at...touching a live body that didn’t know about my last physical would feel very nice) "that was incredibly stupid and irresponsible,fighting that thing without preparing first. You could have been killed, as well as jeopardizing many other lives. I’m not in the habit of handing out ‘attaboys’ as you call them, for that. Even if it was also quite fearless and intrepid.”.

“I’m stubborn...I like to work without a net, and I’ve fucked people I worked with.”

I couldn’t help noticing that, although he looked shocked, I’d gotten his attention out of the monster book. It made me proud, in a really teenage way.
“What?” he asked.

“Don’t look so shocked. You asked for my faults...I gave you some. No skin off my back. What about you? Is there a soccer riot with your name on it, hon? I know you guys can be into that.”

there a soccer riot with your name on it, hon? I know you guys can be into that.

snerk! chortle. hah!

Glad you liked it, Deena.

Sitting in the corner, choking with Deena over the soccer riot....

Thanks...I'd feel bad if you choked, though.

Opening, unbeta'd chunk of my Charmed/Angel crossover. The fic pretty much explains what you need to know about Chris, though this may help explain why I felt the need to write about him.

Title: A Little Warmth
Author: Elisabeth
Fandom: Angel/Charmed
Rating: A soft R for swearing and implied slashiness.
Summary: Chris and Connor needed to talk. (As one Anya Jenkins once put it, "*cough* Daddy Issues.") So I let them. I'd say this is mid-S4 for Angel, early S6 for Charmed, but the continuity is of limited importance.

"Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck…." Chris Perry muttered. One second, he had been working with his aunts to vanquish a Skeltar demon; the next, there had been a whoosh and he ended up in this … place. A tiny cabin with a pile of furs on the floor and a blizzard whirling outside the smudged window. It was, quite possibly, the least promising situation he had ever seen.

He tried to orb out. Nothing. Tried again; even more nothing.

It was then that he noticed he was not alone. A young man watched him, another pretty boy with shaggy brown hair and blue eyes.

"Why are you squinting like that?" he asked, mildly.

Chris straightened himself. Be cool, he thought. "I was just trying to find a way out."

The boy gestured. "Door's there."

"Yeah, and so is six feet of snow. No way am I going out in that until I have to."

"So how were you going to get out?"

"I was going to … never mind. What are you doing here?"

"I was chasing a demon, and it jumped through a portal, and I ran after it – but all that's here is you." He looked puzzled. "You aren't a demon, but –" he sniffed the air --"You aren't human, are you?"

"Of course I'm human. Do I look like a demon to you?" The other boy kept staring. "Okay, I'm not exactly a normal human. But you couldn't have figured that out if you were human yourself."

He shrugged. "I'm not a demon, either. My name is Connor."

"Chris."

They shook hands, tentatively; Connor moved as though he was expecting an attack at any second.

He nodded towards the door. "I'm going to go and see if I can find another portal."

"You're crazy. It's awful out there. At least we're-" Chris watched his breath condense in the air "-not actually freezing in here."

"I've seen worse," Connor said. He grabbed a shaggy brown fur off the pile on the ground and was gone, vanishing into the snow before he'd gone six steps.

"Bye," Chris said, wondering what had just happened.

His individual spells had never worked, not the way Wyatt's had, and he had no supplies, but he had to try anyhow. He sat cross-legged on the furs, summoned the powers of the Halliwell family.

"Bound by snow, far from home, take me back, no more to roam."

He might as well have recited a nursery rhyme.

He tried again: "This cabin does not my mission hold, give me my family, more precious than gold." If crickets could live in snowstorms, they would have chirped.

He shrugged and began an inch-by-inch exploration of the cabin.

Forty-five minutes later, he was done, having found even less than he had expected. A bag of ancient jerky above a rafter, a sticky half-bottle of whiskey underneath the bottommost fur. No source of light at all, no heat beyond that radiating from the ancient gas stove in one corner. No clue as to who had built this, or why, or who had left the food.

*** The snow was blinding, and shifted so much that he fell down four times before he figured out how to keep his balance.

It didn't matter. Cold was better than heat, anyhow. Connor pulled the fur closer around him and walked more quickly, scanning the canvas of the snow for any sign of – of anything.

There was nothing.

As his energy flagged, he turned around.