Rage Coalescence: "Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open." -- Natalie Goldberg
1) In the Pilot, when Clark goes to punch Whitney, he's not holding back at *all*. This would be *after* he knows he can withstand being hit by a car and shoving his arm in the chipper-shredder. *point for the dark side*
2) Pitch Black? Damn. Fucking. Cool. Total mindfuck, complete with Vin Diesel being the badass of all badasses. He is now ranked among my top badasses of all time, though I don't buy him going back for the kid and the imam. Still though? Best sf/horror flick I've seen in a long time.
Mini-slash party with Becc today! Yay! Snugglies! Boys! Puppies! Snugglies! SNUGGLIES!
Catch y'all on the flip.
Confidential to Jenn: Um... I seem to relentlessly diurnal these days. *E-mail* me, would you? The likelihood of me catching you on AIM are pretty small at the moment.
Confidential to my Zoja: *nibble*
Music: Tyr whispering his personal philosophy in my ear. A hey hey.
Morning witchyness with Ben pays off. I added words to the Darla/Dru roadfic *and* finished the Gunn vignette thingy for Miss Sheila's MF AU. (which is/will be written in vignettes)
What you should know before reading:
1) The Master rose in the 30s 2) Some cities, or parts of cities, have been ceded to demonic control. 3) Wesley is Faith's Watcher.
Fine by Te June 2002
*
For a man covered in blood and demon slime, Gunn looked pretty damn good.
Granted, a life on the streets didn't lend itself to the kind of standards his near-mythical up-coast relations doubtlessly kept, but still --
He was young, he was entirely human, his scars had yet to go all keloidal and shit, and more than one admiring glance had been cast his way over the years.
In short, Gunn had to conclude he was fine.
There was a but in there bigger than Mama Lena's down at the shelter.
Gunn sighed and ran a hand over his scalp, wincing at the week's growth of stubble. He was almost out of razors and well and truly out of cash. What happened to all the demons with fat wallets?
He had to go back to hunting with his own crew, where there was usually time and safety to pat the monsters down before taking them out. And why *did* the vampires' clothes dust themselves along with the demon? Some of them had some fly shit...
And yeah, Gunn was officially tired, and the but in his head wasn't getting any smaller, either.
Think. Process. Something. Put some order to the end of the day. Night. Whatever.
Screeching howl outside that could be a car accident or some kind of mountain lion in heat or... something else. Long moments passed in the dark of his bed-down before Gunn realized he was tensed up waiting for the crash that never came.
Or something else.
Crazy-ass life.
Crazy-ass suicidal fuckhead Brit, complete with half-feral...
Gunn shook it off and felt around in the dark until he found the rag bucket. Stiffened terry-cloth for his hands and axe, a moment to clear his head as much as he was able, wipe the grains of denied sleep from his eyes. Back outside to the faucet that ran intermittently, warm and gritty at best.
Good enough for a quick scrub before sleep.
There was still a YMCA a few blocks over that took the C seriously enough to be useable. By daylight, at least.
If the Brit was here now he'd probably be calling Gunn on doing something as stupid as cleaning up outside in the middle of the night, considering all the flack Gunn gives *him*, but...
Some habits die hard. It'd been his job to set a good example for Alonna, long ago and far away as that was. And after that, after the barricades went up between every place Gunn had been forced to call home and every place Gunn had wondered about since he was old enough to know things didn't have to be quite *this* way...
You took your luxuries where you found them.
He still didn't know where Wesley and Faith were staying.
He wondered if they had sense enough to appreciate getting clean.
He wondered...
Well, see, there was that but again. All tied up with the usual worry about when and if and where Alonna had gotten home to tonight, and with whom, and yeah, she was only two years younger than Gunn, but she was still his baby sister, and it wasn't too long ago that he'd realized Rondell pretty much owned him for life for keeping Alonna away from the *other* things Gunn had to do to make money...
Gunn pinched the bridge of his nose, shuddered at the feel of warm water running down his spine.
Inside.
Bed was a mattress thrown on the floor, lumpy and a little singed-smelling. Better than most.
Did they have an apartment to themselves? A motel room? Blankets? A bed? Two? It was probably a sign of exhaustion that it was easier to picture Wesley and Faith having sex than it was to imagine Wesley being entirely heterosexual. There was a thought that made sense somewhere in there, but Gunn couldn't find it.
Shook himself like a dog and scanned the rafters automatically, heart jumping at a shift of shadows in the corner that proved to be a car passing outside the poorly-boarded windows.
He remembered when a warm summer night like this meant you could hear the cars coming from blocks away, bass rumbling from the sidewalk so that your bones knew what the song was before your brain did.
Some of the vamps still did that.
None of the humans did.
Sign of the times.
And Gunn's just old enough to remember being vaguely frightened by that song, and remember his cousin Tisha's impression of Prince freaking his shit out when he was... six? Seven?
Another little ritual. Something to help chase away the night. Tisha's wide, orange-lipsticked mouth, belting out 'some say a man ain't truly happy until a man truly dies' and Gunn remembers standing up by the hydrant, no, leaning casual as he could, trying to figure out if he could get a third degree burn from sun-hot metal.
Trying to figure out what a third degree burn *was*, because hell, anything was better than thinking about those lyrics.
Tisha and her smile, just waiting for him to blubber or run to Mama.
He wouldn't.
Gunn doesn't know where she is now, just knows she's out of *this* zone. It's not too much to hope that her people got out ofOakland before the military shut them off, too.
He shifts on the mattress, nightly, daily fight to avoid turning on his side. He knows he will sometime in the night anyway, but it's the principle of the thing. He wonders how Wesley sleeps.
If he's safe enough to have a patch of sunlight for his throat, and the smell of burning dust to send him into whatever dreams suicidal assholes get to have before another night of this life they're leading.
Wesley.
Gunn's smart enough to know there's a reason why his mind keeps going back there, and that the reason has a lot to do with the fact that the fucker is crazy, crazy enough to *choose* to break *into* L.A. with a motherfucking Slayer in tow and then infiltrate a gang and *then* just go ahead and live his crazy *and* motherfucking life in close proximity to Gunn's just as though there was nothing more sane in the world.
Just as though he liked it just fine, and an attitude like that...
It's new, is what it is.
New, and addictive, and there are times -- like now, if he's going to be good and honest, and he is -- when there's nothing Gunn would like better than to see what would happen if you took the incredibly fucked up boy out of the incredibly fucked up cityscape.
If, say, they could talk the way they do now. Hell, bring Faith along. See how she does if all she had to kill was mosquitoes or some shit.
Something.
Fuck.
'cause, see, Gunn has a secret. It's not a very big one, and it ain't all that secret, as secrets go, being as how he tends to shout it from the rooftops at any and every excuse, but... it's just this:
He's not going to die here.
He's not gonna die *here*.
Not like this. Not on some stank-ass mattress that probably used to belong to somebody who got killed by some *thing* that looked better on the wrong end of Gunn's axe than the right end of a mirror. He might die in L.A., he might die in the so-called DMZ, but it's not gonna be because he gave *up*.
And he doesn't see how someone as smart as that fucking crazy Brit can just waltz on through the world and not get that.
Heh.
Maybe he can get Faith to slap the boy upside the head a few times tonight.
Excessively odd dreams, with a Harry Potterish tinge. TPTB go about breeding the wizard line to end all wizard lines, and succeed. Sort of. They wind up with a seriously powerful, seriously beautiful witch... who is about as intelligent as the average lichen.
Back in high school, where every day after school there is a highly successful brothel. I am, of course, a whore. The stalls where assignations take place are helpfully marked with those little abstract-y girl-boy (or both) signs for potential customers, as are the towels the whores wear between tricks/showers. Long discussion with one of my classmates about what to do about a trick with a phenomenally bad-tasting penis. She's even pulled in *another* classmate to help with the chupa chup, but he agrees that it is one rank pene. This isn't resolved. Another long discussion about whether this sort of thing happens in other high schools, with still more classmates. (It's old home week!)
It's agreed that, while Columbia High School is pretty weird, at least we don't have a gang or drug problem. And hey, the teachers are involved.
Road movie, road trip. In one car? Agents for good. Can't remember who's playing them. In the other car are the agents for evil, played by Wesley Snipes and Dan Ayckroyd. Much snark ensues. Much theological discussion ensues. Much accidental... *stuff* ensues when one or the other of them says something too absolutist and, say, the road suddenly pockmarks itself and drops off straight into Hell. Whoops. I'm blaming Sarah for this one.
Others, fragments, demons, ice, fire, libraries, lying and cheating to win, whether or not sacrifice *is* actually key to saving the world, blah diddy blah.
Sorry about the delay. I had a little... maneuvering to do here in terms of Gabe's new assistant. I'm glad to hear he's doing better.
Interesting that your new friend is staying with the Wilsons. I don't suppose I'll ever grow accustomed to the telescopic nature of small towns. So she's going to be a sophomore this year? What school did she attend in Metropolis? I wasn't aware of any local high schools being invited to the gallery opening...
It's bothering me now. I can't remember the last time I've forgotten someone.
That was far more clever in my head.
Anyway. Has Saundra found anything to interest her in Smallville yet?
Oh, and tell Pete that he might have more luck with hot drinks. Terrible for the weather, but they'll work better at loosening the glue. As for Chloe, a few grains of Valium in an iced mocha should do nicely. She'll never notice a thing.
Interesting on the religion thing, Clark... why should it be ironic that God sent you to the Kents? Leaving aside the thorny matter of belief, it's obvious that you've brought them both great joy, not to mention the habit you have of trying to put Smallville's Emergency Services out of business. Note my restraint in not mentioning the crucifixion again. Irony is not a concept to be bandied lightly, my young friend.
As for Baptist ministers... well, they tend to dress rather poorly, don't you think?
I'd think you were avoiding Smallville, except you said that you learned that people have to face their fears and all that. Not that I think you're afraid of Smallville or anything.
And I'd take that like the dare it so clearly is and be there in *two* hours -- if I didn't have a message from Dominic informing me that I'm expected in Milan for a board meeting in approximately... ten hours. Christ.
A week, Clark. You know I'll have my laptop. Stay in touch. Be well.
1. What ONE thing do you most love about "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer"?
The way the characters grow and change and keep growing and keep changing and so on and so on and shoobie doobie doobie, oooh, sha sha.
2. What are your TWO favorite seasons?
2 and 6
3. What are your THREE favorite lines (from the show)?
Eeek. This is hard.
Giles: "You mean life?" Buffy: "Yeah. Does it get easy?" Giles: "What do you want me to say?" Buffy: "Lie to me." Giles: "Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true. The bad guys are easily distinguished by the pointy horns or black hats. And, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after." Buffy: "Liar."
Cordelia: I can't even believe you. You dragged me out of bed for a ride? What am I, mass transportation? Xander: That's what a lot of the guys say, but it's just locker room talk. I wouldn't pay it any mind. Cordelia: Oh, great, so now I'm your taxi *and* your punching bag. Xander: I like to think of you more as my witless foil, but have it your way.
Xander: I'm sorry, but let's not forget that I hated Angel long before you guys jumped on the bandwagon. So I think I deserve a little something for not saying 'I told you so' long before now. And if Giles wants to go after the, uh, fiend that murdered his girlfriend, I say, 'Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!'
Willow: Xander. Boy, you're lucky you weren't at school last night. It was crazed. Xander: Well, uh, gimme the quiet life. I'm gonna grab a snack. Anyone want? Giles: No, thank you. Xander: Oz? Oz: No. I'm oddly full today.
*g* That's enough for now...
4. What are your FOUR favorite fanfic stories?
Fade by Debchan Watcher by the Spike ::whistles innocently:: Divine Possession by the Spike Natural Blues by Sheila Girl 1 by Roz Kaveney Six Feet Deep by Kita and Jessica Walker Bathroom Rituals by Puca Pink Ladies by Hth...
You know, I could just keep going here.
5. What are your SIX favorite episodes?
Once More With Feeling, Fool For Love, Hush, The Zeppo, Graduation 1, School Hard.... AAAAGH... not... enough... choices...
Favourite villain(s):
Evil Willow and The Mayor
Favourite canon 'ship:
Ethan/Giles. Wait... *snerk* Faith/Buffy. No, I've got it. Spike/Dru. *g*
Favourite non-canon het pairing:
Faith/Xander.
Favourite Xander slash pairing:
Giles/Xander.
Favourite Angel slash pairing:
He gets nothing! Nothing! Er... Angel/Xander. But only as written by a very few authors.
Favourite Oz slash pairing:
Everyone. *g*
Favourite other m/m slash pairing:
Wes/Gunn. Now and forever. *snif*
Favourite femmeslash pairing:
Dru/Faith, Dru/Willow.
Episode that disturbs me too much to watch in its entirety:
None. "Hey, man, I think I like being scared, and I wish you all were there..."
Episode that I like despite the fact that many people don't:
Two great new stories for you to wibble over. First? The hilariously anachronistic Bride Price, in which Amanda and Methos show their age in the funnest possible way. You have to love a Highlander story that manages to take advantage of these characters' ages without all the sturm and drang.
Following Bas' lead, a partial (I'm pretty sure Jane still has more) list of my WiPs:
1) Lady Sings (with Jane): Darla and Dru on the road, in an '81 Jaguar. The car's sound system is remarkable. She thinks that the boy who owned it must have loved it like a woman, or perhaps a boy, to have lavished so much attention on it.
2) Gunn's Fine (a part of the MF AU): Gunn muses on crazy Watchers and crazier Slayers. It was probably a sign of exhaustion that it was easier to picture Wesley and Faith having sex than it was to imagine Wesley being entirely heterosexual. There was a thought that made sense somewhere in there, but Gunn couldn't find it.
3) Untitled Batman/Robin thingy (with Jane): I have no fucking clue. He walks away as soon as they stop, leaving Batman standing awkwardly for a split-second before he turns and pursues. Noting the loudness of Robin's footsteps and the slight limp that hisses back at him that the boy's *hurt*, that he's vulnerable, that Batman should never have let him into that fight.
4) School Days (with Jessica): Bruce/Lex first time. Lex has seen Bruce naked, but he never seems as naked when naked as the other guys... so big and unknowable. His cock somehow like just another one of the gadgets he's always building. Hair on his chest and square-jawed *manliness*. The kind of masculinity he knows his father wants out of him.
5) The Lartha ones you've seen. *sigh*
6) The Chlexark you've seen. Don't push me!
7) Lex's Birthday: CLex. There was something vaguely weird about the idea of Lex throwing a birthday party for himself.
Or rather, it was perfectly logical for all the intellectual reasons -- way too old for his parents to do it for him, wealthy enough to make it just the way he wants it to be -- but it still *felt* weird to Clark.
8) Corsetfic (with Jenn): Does it need an explanation? "Well... I mean... isn't this for. Um. Women?"
Lex tilts his head and carefully removes the item from Clark's hands, holding it up.
"Not necessarily. In the right setting--" Quick look at Clark's face. "Of course. I'm shocking you. Let's--"
"No! I mean, no, I'm--fine with it. Just--you know. Smallville. Not exactly--uh, leather central and all."
9) Satisfaction: An attempt at a nice, wholesome mindfuck for Miz E. Argh. Clark knows what he wants.
Almost *all* of what he wants, and he's been riding that high for a while now. It's the kind of thing that makes him smile behind his face, the way he thinks Lex does. The kind of thing that makes him volunteer to do extra chores -- less out of some sense of guilt than out of...
It's not happiness. Or not *just* happiness.
10) Screwed (with Jane): Ultimate Spider-Man, Harry/Peter. "What?" Hoping it doesn't have anything to do with weird wrestling t-shirts.
"I know who it is you look like."
"Tom Cruise?"
"Never in a million years, dude. k.d. lang."
"*WHAT*? No way!"
"Way."
"But she's a *girl*!"
"With floppy dark brown hair, and dark eyes and... heh." Harry grabs a backpack, pulls out a CD. Smirks. "See for yourself, Parker."
11) Border Men II: Something or Other (with Jane): Er... He's learned that California's a very bright, vivid version of hell. It's something he has reason to know, and it's really only the blinding, agonizing pain that's missing. The rest of it, the surreality, the random violence of the landscape, the psychic layers of strangeness and rage, he recognizes those. All mixed up with the skull-itch that means another magician's trying to be subtle about fucking with his head.
12) Untitled: Gambit and Gunn (with Jane): Te's on the monkey crack. "Yeah. Call me the welcoming committee, *Gambit*. What the fuck kinda name is that anyway?" Aware that he's both talking shit *and* stalling. It's been a long time since Gunn's gotten any pleasure from mixing it up with humans.
"Is *my* name, homme. Remember it." Fighting words, but the man is still. Waiting for *him* to attack.
Right, OK, this doesn't have to get uglier. "Right, fine. Wanna tell me what that shit was between you and Levon?"
"Gambit jus' bein' friendly. No harm. Not going to take the 'tite 'way from him. Elle est jolie, n'est-ce pas? An' he cling to her too hard to keep her long."
13) Himself: Multiple Man. Damn, I'd forgotten this one. The first time he woke up with himself he'd still been Jaime Madrox, single beloved son of Anne and Carl Madrox. Sleeping in the other room of a real hotel suite, on only the second business trip his father had been able to take them all on. He'd never even had a moment to believe it might be the dog.
For one thing, the dog was back home in Baltimore. For another, the dog had fur just about everywhere, and so wouldn't provide warm, smooth skin against his back and an arm around his waist. Secondly, the dog drooled less. So Jamie had screamed, even though it had seemed silly to do it after you'd actually thought about it, and woke himself up all over again, and his parents had come running in to find a Jaime on the floor and a Jaime on the bed.
14) Handbasket Detour II: The Ladies (with Jane): Self-explanatory, I think. Sometimes Ro can see what she must've looked like with long hair. Sometimes she dreams of burying her fingers in it and just hauling Jean to her. Kiss her until her mouth bleeds, until Jean sees something other than... this.
Cheerful fucking between fast friends, and Ro's always hated that phrase. Something so whitebread middle-American dream about. Girls giggling in the attic over boys they're too chickenshit to go after. Something.
Works for Jean *real* well, and that's a big part of the problem Ro's not supposed to be having.
15) Flesh and Bone II: Something or Other (with Jane). Dawwww... She doesn't remember when she asked Rogue to call her Sarah, only that flash of a smile and the answer to call her Marie. They're friends now, there are a lot of smiles like that, and sometimes Sarah's so *frightened*.
Somehow, though, when she is, Marie is always right there in the distance. They've measured her longest bone growths, and Marie moved her desk right there. Scott looked puzzled that first day, but smiled at them the next, shaking his head slightly in that way he has of trying to seem subtle and just failing.
16) Random Shatterstar POV. I was raised to be ready, to sleep with the covers carefully untucked above me, to sleep still, never to muss my hair. No pillows for fear they would leave unsightly creases on my face.
Valuable and beautiful, as all warriors were, in some way. Surrounded by perfect beauty, and the oiled sheen of powerful muscle. I grew up with my need, and my desire became the fire with which I fought. I never indulged myself in the bodies so close, so *ready* for the taking, and knew my fire grew from my abstinence.
And when I walked into the ring there was the hush, and then the cheer.
Julio gave me the hush I'd grown to need, but his cheers were rare, and unfocused. The glory of the team, perhaps.
