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buffyversetop51 Bread by Tulipp - AU - After Glory’s defeat, Willow and Tara’s relationship using bread as a metaphor.
Excerpt:
Together, they lifted the smooth oval of dough into a bowl, and Tara draped a tea towel over top. Willow was going to turn around then, but Tara's hand pressed hers onto the counter again, her warm, slick fingers tracing patterns on the backs of Willow's hands.
Willow became aware of Tara pressing lightly against her back, of the softness of Tara against the sharp angles of her shoulder blades. She watched as Tara's fingers played over her knuckles, drawing outlines in the flour on the backs of her hands, flicking under to tease at the undersides of her wrists.
Tara was kneading her.
2 ijemanja's Her Beauty and Her Terror - Harmony dating Wednesday Addams. What more do I need to say?
Wednesday may not have changed - though she is older and her chest finally filled out, a lot - but Amanda, she can see, is truly no more. The soul is gone, and in its place is something darker, older. It's quite disturbing to think of that girl, that pretty, blonde girl, as she knew her that summer, becoming a creature of the night.
Wednesday, naturally, approves.
"You're a vampire," she says.
"Last couple of years, yeah. Oh! It's so great to see you! How have you been? We should get together sometime - drinks or coffee or something. Ooh, girls night!"
3 Dr. Squidlove's treacherous tentacles present New York - Mmm, I love this story. I’m generally not into Giles and any of the Scoobies stories, given the age difference, but this works. I think the author sums the story up best: Xander is thirty-seven. Divorced. Two kids. 4000 miles from Sunnydale and his hellmouth childhood. Also, straight. Only someone forgot to tell Giles. In fact … where the hell is Giles?
Light fell across Giles' face, and Xander stopped breathing. Giles looked just the same. As in, the same. As in, he hadn't aged. And suddenly it was horribly, horrifically clear why Giles had disappeared for sixteen years.
And twice as clear that Xander hadn't been wrong when he'd thought his mystery follower was going to suck him dry.
That's why Giles wanted to be invited up to Xander's apartment.
Adrenaline surged; Xander knocked Giles' arm out and caught it as he twisted it back. Off balance for a second, long enough to realise he was going to have to shove a stake through Giles. Long enough to realise that he didn't have a stake to shove and that he was going to be killed, by Giles. Long enough to realise that Jen and Kate would never know what happened. And then pain cracked through his skull and Giles was sitting on top of him, crushing his chest, pinning his hands to the wet frozen sidewalk.
Shit.
Xander braced himself for Giles' face to slide into the hideous folds of a vampire. "Don't turn me," he whispered. "Kill me, eat me, just don't turn me."
"What the hell?" Giles' voice was clear, not sharpened by teeth, and his forehead stayed smooth.
"Don't turn me. Don't turn me. Anything else. Just don't turn me." He was chanting it, like it was some Willow-charm. God, Willow. I'm gonna be killed by Giles. "Don't turn me."
Giles' hand went for his neck and something snapped and Xander's eyes squeezed shut. Don't turn me.
"Open your eyes!"
They opened against his will to see something flashing in Giles' hand. Xander's chain. His cross. Oh god, Giles took the only protection he-
Giles wasn't smoking.
He waggled his fingers, making the cross bounce across his palm, then clenched his fist and opened it again. No burns. No vampire.
"I'm not a damned vampire," Giles sniped in a tone way too reminiscent of high school.
4 Sparrow 2000's Magpie - OK, you know this one, but it's so amazing how can I not rec it?
Excerpt:
5 The Silence In Between's Falling Like Icarus - Anya’s pregnant but there’s a problem.
Excerpt:
"It's a boy," the smiling technician tells them.
Misty-eyed, Anya sticks her tongue out at Xander. "Told you."
They're jarred from their joy when the technician stands abruptly and walks to the door. Suddenly, doctors are swooping into the room, as if descending from the sky like vultures, ignoring their frantic questions.
Panic rising, Anya tries to sit. "Lie still," a doctor commands, pushing her shoulder. Her fingernails draw blood from his forearm; in another century, his viscera would be her tiara.
"Please," her voice breaks. "What's wrong with my baby?"
Excerpt:
Together, they lifted the smooth oval of dough into a bowl, and Tara draped a tea towel over top. Willow was going to turn around then, but Tara's hand pressed hers onto the counter again, her warm, slick fingers tracing patterns on the backs of Willow's hands.
Willow became aware of Tara pressing lightly against her back, of the softness of Tara against the sharp angles of her shoulder blades. She watched as Tara's fingers played over her knuckles, drawing outlines in the flour on the backs of her hands, flicking under to tease at the undersides of her wrists.
Tara was kneading her.
2 ijemanja's Her Beauty and Her Terror - Harmony dating Wednesday Addams. What more do I need to say?
Wednesday may not have changed - though she is older and her chest finally filled out, a lot - but Amanda, she can see, is truly no more. The soul is gone, and in its place is something darker, older. It's quite disturbing to think of that girl, that pretty, blonde girl, as she knew her that summer, becoming a creature of the night.
Wednesday, naturally, approves.
"You're a vampire," she says.
"Last couple of years, yeah. Oh! It's so great to see you! How have you been? We should get together sometime - drinks or coffee or something. Ooh, girls night!"
3 Dr. Squidlove's treacherous tentacles present New York - Mmm, I love this story. I’m generally not into Giles and any of the Scoobies stories, given the age difference, but this works. I think the author sums the story up best: Xander is thirty-seven. Divorced. Two kids. 4000 miles from Sunnydale and his hellmouth childhood. Also, straight. Only someone forgot to tell Giles. In fact … where the hell is Giles?
Light fell across Giles' face, and Xander stopped breathing. Giles looked just the same. As in, the same. As in, he hadn't aged. And suddenly it was horribly, horrifically clear why Giles had disappeared for sixteen years.
And twice as clear that Xander hadn't been wrong when he'd thought his mystery follower was going to suck him dry.
That's why Giles wanted to be invited up to Xander's apartment.
Adrenaline surged; Xander knocked Giles' arm out and caught it as he twisted it back. Off balance for a second, long enough to realise he was going to have to shove a stake through Giles. Long enough to realise that he didn't have a stake to shove and that he was going to be killed, by Giles. Long enough to realise that Jen and Kate would never know what happened. And then pain cracked through his skull and Giles was sitting on top of him, crushing his chest, pinning his hands to the wet frozen sidewalk.
Shit.
Xander braced himself for Giles' face to slide into the hideous folds of a vampire. "Don't turn me," he whispered. "Kill me, eat me, just don't turn me."
"What the hell?" Giles' voice was clear, not sharpened by teeth, and his forehead stayed smooth.
"Don't turn me. Don't turn me. Anything else. Just don't turn me." He was chanting it, like it was some Willow-charm. God, Willow. I'm gonna be killed by Giles. "Don't turn me."
Giles' hand went for his neck and something snapped and Xander's eyes squeezed shut. Don't turn me.
"Open your eyes!"
They opened against his will to see something flashing in Giles' hand. Xander's chain. His cross. Oh god, Giles took the only protection he-
Giles wasn't smoking.
He waggled his fingers, making the cross bounce across his palm, then clenched his fist and opened it again. No burns. No vampire.
"I'm not a damned vampire," Giles sniped in a tone way too reminiscent of high school.
4 Sparrow 2000's Magpie - OK, you know this one, but it's so amazing how can I not rec it?
Excerpt:
He was in Lisbon when he found the first body. It wasn’t his first body – he’d found that at the age of sixteen, when he’d discovered that you didn’t need super powers to raise the dead. But this time no amount of CPR would heal the damage. You can’t give someone the kiss of life when half their throat is missing.
He knew the brutality was deliberate. Everything else had been done with delicacy and finesse; the placing of the body where he was sure to find it; the demure arrangement of hands and feet and the school skirt and blouse smoothed down, hugging every curve, hinting at the promise of bounty, but never revealing. But the wound, the wound told a different story. There was no care, no artistry, just the ragged, red ruin of jagged flesh and an impression of feeding and tearing and pain.
Xander didn’t know it then, but later he realised that was start of the dizzying climb to the tipping point.
That was the start of the deaths.
5 The Silence In Between's Falling Like Icarus - Anya’s pregnant but there’s a problem.
Excerpt:
"It's a boy," the smiling technician tells them.
Misty-eyed, Anya sticks her tongue out at Xander. "Told you."
They're jarred from their joy when the technician stands abruptly and walks to the door. Suddenly, doctors are swooping into the room, as if descending from the sky like vultures, ignoring their frantic questions.
Panic rising, Anya tries to sit. "Lie still," a doctor commands, pushing her shoulder. Her fingernails draw blood from his forearm; in another century, his viscera would be her tiara.
"Please," her voice breaks. "What's wrong with my baby?"
no subject
Date: 2017-10-31 04:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-31 07:10 am (UTC)Thanks for posting.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-31 03:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-01 02:56 am (UTC)Seconding the rec for New York, it's wonderful. And Falling Like Icarus - god, I remember reading it for the first time and having no words.
Haven't read the other two, so I'll look forward to them!
no subject
Date: 2017-11-03 12:53 am (UTC)Eeee! Her Beauty and Her Terror. I just love Wednesday and Harmony!