Mwah! Glad you liked it, love!

Ooo, Fay, nummy. I've not read much Xander-Oz all by themselves, but that was sweet.

(giggling like a loon)

Fay, you are so very much my kind of pervert.

Wrod.

And I'm excited about posting this drabble because it has some source material Buffistas know...despite being inspired by a L&O book challenge. Picture the Princess Bride with a minor casting change...Lennie Briscoe playing the Falk part.

The Grandfather sits on the bed, relieved he’s left his gun at the precinct. “Hey, kiddo, heard you’re sick.”

“Yeah. My throat hurts and everything.”

“Tough break. Brought you something.”

The boy rips the paper off. The grandfather wonders if he’d ever been that excited by anything, sober.Nah, people drink for a reason, probably. He smiles fondly.

“It’s a book.” His face and voice fall.

“Well, don’t get too excited all at once. Your mother will kill me if you have a relapse.”

“What’s it *for*?”

“Well, Smart Guy, I’m going to read it to you. Cheer you up. Maybe.”

(curses self for not knowing all these damn crimeshows. stupid self.)

Just rewatched Heart of Gold and realised how much better I like it with my slash goggles in place.

Unexpected.

Love was quite the last thing that Inara had been looking for, but she found it just the same.

It was difficult to pinpoint the moment when she realised that she had given away her heart; perhaps when Nandy caught her eye during the tea ceremony and Inara felt her stomach muscles clench with a shared sense of the ridiculous that brought her right to the very brink of laughter; perhaps the first morning when she woke up in Nandy's empty bed and pressed her face deep into the pillow, seeking out the familiar sharp-sweet scent. Easy to say when she had felt the first feather of desire – Nandy's beauty was the least of her attractions, but Inara had still noticed her on the very first day, even in the midst of all the other girls and the handful of boys, everyone peacock-proud in their finery, flaunting their firm young bodies and smug in the knowledge that they had succeeded where so many had failed. Bright young things with beauty and wit and flexible flesh, but Nandy stood out like a falcon surrounded by songbirds, drawing Inara's eye wherever she went. It was something about the ways she moved, confident without seeming to care how others saw her. Or her mouth, perhaps – a deprecating quirk which said that you and you alone could appreciate the joke. Or the set of her jaw when she had a weapon in her hands. Nandy was passionate about everything she did, and honest to a fault. She followed nobody else's lead, took risks that left Inara reeling, and there was absolutely nothing she would not do for a friend. They were chalk and cheese, ice and flame, silence and sound; Inara found Nandy utterly irresistible. She spoke without thinking, and didn't give a damn about the consequences, where Inara thought without speaking, and was forever assessing the possible repercussions of her every word and action.

Oh, and the way she kissed – her kisses were addictive. They broke Inara's resolve and cut cleanly through all the careful layers of professionalism she was crafting. Lying with Nandy should have been simple, a matter of mutual pleasure and increasing their skills, no more meaningful than a duet or a duel - but instead Inara always forgot to think about what she should be learning, about cause and effect, about manipulating and pleasing one's clients. Lying with Nandy was the best thing in Inara's life, and between Nandy's sheets she forgot about her carefully planned future and her glittering career. She forgot everything but the wickedly laughing girl who had fallen into her arms and into her heart.

Lying to Nandy was something else again; Inara's smiles remained nothing more than friendly, her words simply affectionate, even as Nandy slowly but surely became the centre of her world.

So it was easy enough to pinpoint the moment when desire first blossomed, but the point at which it had altered horribly, immutably into love – now that was another question altogether.

Nandy utterly undid her, without ever really realising it.

She had always been too good an actress. Too good at hiding her heart, that was the crux of the problem, and now this was never going to change. In hindsight her innocence appalled her. She hadn't imagined for a single moment that Nandy would leave the Academy; their futures were mapped out and glittering – power, wealth, independence, success. Respect. Somewhere along the line Nandy had become indispensable.

Until the morning when she decided that she could dispense with the Academy, and with Inara. They announced her departure quite casually in target practice, and suddenly there was a hole in the 'verse and Inara's heart gently shattered in her chest. For once she couldn't shoot straight to save her life. She had actually thought – and afterwards she never knew quite why – that Nandy understood. That Nandy knew her. That Nandy saw through all the professional shine and the practiced reserve, heard the words she still couldn't shape with her smooth tongue, and loved her back.

But she didn't, or at least not enough. And with this realisation, all the joy leached out of Inara's world, and her ambitions were so much dust.

She had always planned to live and work in the core, building a network of clients and colleagues in safety and security. With Nandy gone, it all seemed oddly pointless. She graduated with flying colours and found herself drifting; she attracted excellent clients and was squired to the finest events, but she could neither taste the food nor appreciate the dancing. She felt like she was sleepwalking through her life.

And so she left her life.

It was Serenity that caught Inara's eye; the ship had an indefinable air of rightness to her. Nothing glamorous, to be sure – her colleagues would be appalled at her choice. And yet – it was a sturdy little vessel, and honest. And there was something about Mal Reynolds – perhaps something about the way he moved, with an unstudied air of competence and authority; perhaps the hint of a smile. She saw the danger to it at once, but knew herself equal to it. Thought herself equal to it. Gradually Inara found herself fascinated in a way she had not anticipated; Malcolm Reynolds was not like any man she had ever known, and this was both his charm and his irritation

She built a life for herself; and if it was not the life she had expected, still it was a life that gave her unexpected pleasure and a kind of freedom she had not known to want. And temptations that she did not want to know. But she was forgetting Nandy, or at least thinking of her far less frequently, and that was all to the good.

Until the distress signal came, and Inara realised that the 'verse was a surprisingly small place…

It's ok, Fay...I do forget that UnAms don't have 47,000 hours of L&O to draw on...I know Lennie Briscoe better than my extended family. That's only a little bit as sad as it sounds.I do sort of feel like "Oh. Uncle Lennie," about him. Lennie is an alcoholic. Murder police. He thinks most people are stupid, but that's funny. He always has a smart remark. He plays the ponies, but not as much as he used to. He's tired of getting partners that are twelve.He's been divorced twice and doesn't trust women any more than he trusts men, which isn't much. When he was young, he used Langston Hughes poems to pick up girls.(This is starting to sound like one of those "My(Character's Name) essays. Ok, I'll go with that. My Lennie Briscoe is still torn up that he got Claire in that accident that killed her. But it's something he'd never talk about outside an AA meeting. There may be a vibe between him and his lieutenant but now that he's sober, he'd never shit where he ate. My Lennie Briscoe believes forensics are no substitute for pounding the pavement, partially because he can barely make his mobile work.My Lennie Briscoe is still halfway waiting for this computer thing to pass.

Fay! You are the bestest! Now that will be Inara's backstory for me.

I wrote a couple for this week's Open on Sunday challenge, which is faith (or Faith):

Belief

She believes it.

Power, strength, the scythe, Willow' spell. She believes it.

She believes as she dances in the blood of a dozen turok-hans, believes as a Potential becomes a Slayer before her eyes, believes as Spike calls out something incomprehensible that becomes Buffy's name, as he channels sunlight itself, flooding the darkness, dissolving into shattering rivers of light.

Yet the greatest belief is yet to come: as she leaps for the door, she turns back, and locks eyes with Buffy, for just a moment, Slayer to Slayer, darkness and light. She can be herself, Faith.

Buffy's got her back.

Vignette #1

In the total darkness, she's blind.

Her other senses are heightened to an unbearable edge. She tastes, smells, the blood-drenched darkness, its coppery bite settling into sinus and throat. She can feel the even, rhythmic sussuration of whatever is breathing at the far end of blackness, molecules of danger against her flesh. But vision is absent.

She closes her eyes and concentrates. It's a matter of faith. Being the Slayer is defined by that: faith in herself, her strengths, her intuition.

Buffy aims the crossbow into oblivion. All five senses register satisfaction, the demon screaming as the bolt connects.