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Sunday100: Dead and/or Gone

He's been dreading this. First day of the drama curriculum, no choice for the text: J.B.

The questions have already started.
"That's your first name? Archibald?"
No.
"Related?"
No.
"We have to read the whole thing?"
Yes. Was he ever this stupid?

They never ask the one they should. "What are you doing here?"

The B.Ed. program took a lower GPA than the BFA. He's a kid at heart. They needed to pay for the baby.

Teaching's just as good as singing. The same thing, really: seduce them, then blow their minds. Keep telling himself that, he might start believing it.

Sunday100: Destruction, Deviance, Desire

"You on top, yeah? You're the straight one." Spike nodded as if the discussion was over before it started. As he leaned back on his elbows, his thighs parted, Xander had to bite his lip.

Lust made him woozy, but he managed to say, "That identity's long gone."

Spike's forehead creased. "Really? Always thought of you as Mr. Straight and Narrow."

Xander leaned over and took one good, long, slow lick up Spike's cock. Oooh, made him shudder. And moan. "Smashed to bits, my friend. Sorry."

Spike pouted. "Irrevocably?"

Xander lowered himself over Spike. "Think I remember how it goes."

Sunday100: Destruction, Deviance, Desire

Angel watches him and sees nothing amiss: So uptight and buttoned down, there must be more. A hint of darkness, perhaps, a glimpse of doubt. The children believe, cling to, the dichotomies in which he and Angel instruct them, but Angel knows there's more. He suspects Giles does, too.

In the alley's dark, he stops Giles short. Asks with a burning glance and crushing grip. Receives the agreement he knew would come in the single dip of a chin.

Yes.

Desire is greater than love, capable of spectacular cruelty, infinitesimal catastrophe.

They veer from binaries into a deviant, hopeless tangle.

Slash100: So Near, So Far

Sirius got under his skin immediately, licks of fire just below the surface.

At eleven: Such feelings unsettled him.

Fifteen: Confusion cleared and he ached for just a glimpse.

Twenty: Every morning, every evening, Sirius was there. Touching, coaxing, fanning the subdermal flames.

Then twelve years: Catastrophic betrayal, Sirius imprisoned at sea, beyond where maps reach, impossibly far. While Remus knew that it was over, his skin continued to flicker, yearning, and Sirius was closer than ever, within him.

Now: Sirius in his arms, tongue on his, legs around his waist, unbearably intimate. Fearful, Remus is miles away, and terribly cold.

Slash100: Heat of One-Thousand Suns

Three years together.
One thousand days.
One thousand sunrises. A single flame from one thousand different ones.

Thirty-six full moons, cold rocks shining stolen light.

Thirty-six losses: When Oz vanishes, Giles turns zookeeper.

Thirty-six doesn't sound like much, not against three years, not in a life structured for loss. Yet when Oz wakes naked as a baby, Giles is older. He has twenty-eight days in which to hold him again without fear. To love again the body that betrays, the mind that disappears.

Thirty-six nights alone begin to outweigh a thousand days together.

Thirty-six raindrops douse one thousand suns.

Sunday100: Terror. Fright. Fear.

Fists curled; nails pierced the skin of palms; and eyes glared.

Silence and dark betray no whisper of his presence. He cannot move.

It's rare that you come to a true fork in the road. A choice, a decision to be made. No going back.

He prolongs the moment before the final choice. He needs to draw it out and remember this forever. Whatever happens later when this fear has abated, he needs to remember that he did this. No one else.

His legs quiver well before he takes the step forward.

He really thought that she would be taller.

Sunday100: Worst Day

Whenever he wakes after the moon has vanished, when he is human again, a lush contentment steals over Oz. Even that first morning, shivering naked in the clearing, he blinked, realizing he had never felt better.

This morning is different. His body hums with pleasure, his cock is tucked between warm thighs, he is holding someone tight against his chest.

But Oz would rather be skinned alive by Cain than open his eyes.

He fears more than hurting Willow, more than betrayal, more than all the recrimination bound to rain down on him.

He's terrified by how good this feels.

Sunday100: Twisted Worlds/AUs

Irony? The night they got Xander was *quiet*. Dead, even.

Giles dismissed them with an attempted smile, a listless wave. Larry stayed behind, pretending to really *care* about planning escape routes.

In the back of the van, they were still laughing, drinking vodka, rolling around, knocking shit loose. Making noise, slobbering, humping like kids.

Oz never heard them. Too busy shimmying out of his pants, clearing space, singing loud, while Xander hopped out to take a leak.

It's one thing to drop in battle. Something else to see your boyfriend dragged away, bloodless, screaming silently.

Oz doesn't talk much anymore.

Spikenwes: Incorporate these lines from Craig Raine: "Dead dandelions, bald as drumsticks,/swaying by the roadside". Mid-S5/-S2.

[Sunnydale: January, 2001]

Swaying by the roadside welcome sign, Wesley can barely keep his eyes open as the damp night air creeps achingly into every scar and broken bone. He should be used to staying up all night after years of demon-hunting in various capacities (rogue, affiliate, employee, and now director). He's not.

He fails to resist the urge to check his watch.

"Waiting long?" Hoarse, amused voice behind him.

Wesley turns.

He's stopped wondering how it is vampires seem to bring along their own light, but this one is a vision in platinum.

"William the Bloody?"

"Spike, actually." He leans in and--pecks Wesley's cheek? "Come on."

Bewildered, he follows Spike down the short, steep path, through the trees, into a clearing. Spike straddles a small stone bench as Wesley steps forward and perches on the edge.

Spike produces something from his jacket with a flourish. "Here. A little Addams family, but then, I *am* a vampire."

It's a loathsome thing: Five long-dry roses, complete with thorns, surrounded by drooping dead dandelions.

"W-what is this?"

"Flowers. It's a date, innit?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"She said so. Your girl--"

"Cordelia? My associate."

"'Sthat what we're calling her? Your associate set this all up, and when I tried to ring off, she says 'so it's a date'. So, it's a date."

"Cordelia contacted you for information. She suggested you might know something regarding Darla--"

"Bint."

"Yes, rather."

"Nice night, though." Humming, Spike draws closer, and catches Wesley's wrist. "Oh, and you can't stake me. I'm harmless."

"Really?"

Chills: lips on his ear, then his cheek, fingers around his wrist.

"Perfectly harmless." Lips on his own, strong tongue, hand guided into open fly. "See?"

And when Wesley strokes the tightening balls, they're bald as drumsticks, only much, much softer.

Spikenwes: One of the boys has a secret. The other discovers it.

Wes is concerned. No, he's terrified. After several months of relative bliss--relative because there's no such thing as fully calm bliss while living with Spike and working with Angel--ominous signs are starting to accumulate.

Their joint chequing account recently ballooned, and is now deflating in big hiccups.

Sometimes Wes reaches for Spike in the middle of the night, but the bed is empty.

Spike's black clothes are gathering an ever-thicker layer of fine, short hairs.

None of it looks good. Wes is growing desperate. He can research demonic miscegenation and mistranslate prophecies with the best of them, but he is wholly unprepared for this.

5:43 AM, and Spike is slipping back into the bedroom.

"You're gambling again, aren't you?"

Spike stops short, mouth agape and arms crossed when Wes flips on the bedside lamp. "Don't know what you're talking--"

"Don't prevaricate, darling."

Spike sinks down on the bed's edge. "I'm not. Not gambling, not prevari-whatever-ing."

"The money?" Wes asks. "The cat hair all over you? Your absences?"

"What of 'em?"

"You tell me."

A soft, high mewl comes from Spike. Wes touches his shoulder. "It's all right. We'll get you help--"

Spike shakes, whether from laughter or anger, Wes can't tell. He uncrosses his arms, turning to Wes as his duster falls open. A large brown cat unhooks its claws from Spike's shirt and peers at Wes. "Meet Peachypoof's Alexander the Great. I call him Xander, 'cause he's a Viking with the girls in heat."

Wes's mouth forms a sequence of silent, astonished words. Xander-Cat butts his head against his knee.

"Three firsts, and a second," Spike says. "Best kitten in the Orange County All-Breed Show. First Burmese in ages to give those Persians the what-for."

"You--It--"

"Yeah, pet." Spike kisses Wes's forehead and strokes Xander. "Breeding show cats, that's my thing."

Spikenwes: No dialogue.

Their arguments move as fiercely, destructively, as summer storms. When they cease, noise gives way not to calm, but a brilliant, shimmering tension thrown off by everything they cannot say aloud.

If they only knew that the other had, in his own sweat-soaked, overly-Romantic boyhood, fervently believed that passions could be spoken, that gesture could be as eloquent as voice, then it would be different. There would not be this grave, hopeless silence.

Neither is a boy any longer, however, so neither knows quite how to begin speaking.

Contracting the throat and wriggling the tongue: the mechanics of speech are at once impossible and grotesque. They are mere animal motion, thought and sense reduced to flickers off nerve-endings and the flopping of thick muscle against teeth. Gorillas grunt and hoot at each other. These men would prefer, in this moment at least, to deny their animal nature. They both prolong the silence rather than become the first to capitulate to *that*.

Each is a literate man, and were they separated by oceans and mountain ranges, they would take to writing letters. Separated, however, by the length of a single room, each struggles to outlast the other.

Wesley takes refuge in the crystalline light of his mind, which is circular and fanned-out in tiers like the old Reading Room. To keep quiet, he tries translating his thoughts first into Sanskrit, then Aramaic, then back again. He cannot concentrate very well at all with Spike this close. Spike retreats somewhere much darker, into the slip of self that hovers between skin and muscle. He will not remain there long; his stubbornness may be notorious, but his heart and his impatience will win out.

The leather creaks as Wesley shifts forward and inhales.

Spike leans against the wall, his jaw working.

Any moment now.

Sunday100: Twisted Worlds/AUs

The first time he took Connor, Wes got his throat slashed and a pillow pressed over his mouth.

The second time, he has Connor fighting beside him and a box heavy enough to sink below the waves.

His feral, beautiful boy finds them a safe-house. They celebrate, toasting victory, survival, freedom, and fall into bed, entangled and jubilant. In the dark, they forget former friends, betrayals, and fathers, wallowing instead in the chance at last to touch and feel without fear.

As his back arches and face lights up in ecstasy, Connor gasps, calls him Daddy.

Wes kisses him harder.

Connor is cross. He lingers in the doorway to the living room-library-office, loath to abandon his one-sided argument.

"Why not?" he nearly whines. "It'll be good practice. Targeting. Shooting. Strategizing. Think about it."

Wes, on the other hand, is simply exasperated. He has been fighting to concentrate on the translation of some of Augustine's lesser-known erotica, but Connor will not let up.

"Really, Connor. Don't condescend to *me*."

Connor shakes the hair out of his eyes. "Not condescending. Pleading my case. You're condescending, because you won't even listen."

"I assure you, your arguments -- such as they are -- have been duly noted. Now go wash up."

Connor crosses his arms and huffs out a breath through his nose. It's a crass, deliberately rude sound, one he picked up from MTV. Wes makes another note to self: cancel the cable service.

Connor shuffles his feet irritably and fiddles ostentatiously with the chain to his wallet while Wes feigns absorption in the document up on his screen.

Finally, another huff.

Wes glances up. "Still here? I thought I told you to wash up."

"And a computer to play it on," Wes reminds him.

"They don't make games for-- for *that*." He waves a bony hand at Wes's computer.

"No? I would have thought FreeBSD a very popular gaming platform."

Connor's eyes narrow as his chin lifts. Wes is afraid that the boy is learning far too quickly the seductive power of his own pout. "Making fun of me."

Wes slumps back in his chair. Removing his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose, he pauses for a moment. Connor is so sensitive, at once so eager and so fearful to learn about this world, that the slightest remark can cut him to the bone.

"I'm sorry," Wes says. He turns his desk chair around to face Connor and opens his arms. "Come here."

Connor shuffles forward, stride shortened by the absurdly large pants he insists on wearing, until he stands between Wes's legs. His chin still raised defiantly, he squints into the middle distance, deliberately not meeting Wes's eyes.

"Never get anything," he mutters.

"No?" Wes asks, hands going around the thin waist, thumbs rubbing slow, small circles under Connor's shirt. "Is that so?"

"Yeah. Might as well send me back to LA."

Connor's skin is still baby-soft, inconceivably so after Quor-Toth, after several weeks in Los Angeles. He should be more riddled with scars and welts than Wes himself, but instead he is satiny and pale, apparently untouched. He flushes under Wes's fingers, scarlet staining virginal ivory.

"I don't think so," Wes says, pushing the shirt up. Connor slumps more, moving forward, shuddering as he always does at the touch. "I think I'll keep you."

Connor drops his hand on Wes's shoulder, bracing himself as his lips part just a fraction. Lank hair crowds his eyes as he drops his head, hot breath billowing over Wes's face. "Just--. Just not *fair*," he whines.

"When I was your age," Wes says, slipping one hand to the small of Connor's back, tracing figure-eights around one rocky vertebra, "I made do with books."

Wes does have to admire those trousers for the expanse of skin they expose, just above the swell of ass, precisely as wide as his palm.

"When you were my age," Connor says, running his hand up and down Wes's arm roughly. He has yet to learn the infinite subtleties of touch; he still equates force with intensity of feeling, and listlessness with lack thereof. "All you *had* was books."

Wes chuckles, pressing forward until his chin rests on Connor's sternum. Gazing up, shivering as Connor trembles in his hold and licks his lips. "My father always said--"

Connor shoves him back, the chair rolling until it knocks against the wall. Quick as light, he straddles Wes's lap, both hands on Wes's shoulders, holding him at arm's length. "Yeah, but you weren't *fucking* him, were you?"

Wes nods. Feeling the weight of Connor's erection against his stomach, he thrusts shortly up as he turns his head, licking then suckling the wedgwood-blue veins webbing the interior of Connor's elbow. "Not as such, no."

"Exactly," Connor says, yanking Wes's head up, nipping at his lower lip with his preternaturally feral teeth. He pulls back, stretching the lip until Wes moans. Smirking as he grinds back against Wes's groin, he tilts his head. Eyes go wide and innocent. "So, can I get it?"

"Of course," Wes sighs. "Of course you may."