Alice Roosevelt - A Life Uncommon - B/S - There isn't much of it, and I think it's an eternal WIP, but the prose is better than pancakes. Post-slightly-AU-S7, Spike and Buffy navigate a deepening friendship.
Spike claimed that the mess on the desk had structure. Buffy thought it would make a great habitat for wild pygmies. How he managed to hunch over such a cluttered space was a great mystery, but hunch he did, with bare feet hooked on the rungs of the chair and a cigarette hanging from his lips. Poking disconsolately at the chaos, Buffy sighed. If Spike was kidnapped and the abductors left a ransom note in the junk, he was lost forever.
alira - Nevertime - Spike, B/S, S/F, Ensemble, Firefly - Warmth and grace suffuse alira's writing. "Nevertime" is possibly my favourite story in the whole Spike-centric post-NFA corpus. Her other tales all feature the same mild-mannered, idealized Spike, but a whole fascinating range of could-have-been Buffies, some open-hearted, some broken, some cruel. She'll often throw one or two facets of a character into high relief, making her villains and heroes either woefully unsubtle or intriguingly stylized, depending on one's taste.
"You ran too fast." Angel pulled another sheet out of his drawing pad and laid it on the table in front of him. "You'd laugh as you ran. Jump over walls and trashbarrels and slices of sunlight. Call back insults." He picked up his pencil and said, "I should have dusted you. Worst minion ever."
Amybnnyc - Whispers in a Dead Man's Ear (7) - B/S, B/F - Achingly lovely, cathartic coda to Lies My Parents Told Me, the kind mean old Joss would never write himself. This is part seven of a very good series.
Buffy could see from the set of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders that he was being purposely obtuse. On any number of other nights, she would have called him on it, would have relished the verbal sparring that slowly pried his secrets from their closely-guarded hiding place, but tonight was different. Tonight, resigned after a long evening of fighting enemies both strange and familiar, she simply sighed as she raised one booted foot and eased it out the window. Her ankle wobbled a bit as she shifted to draw her other leg to join her, and a steel-strong arm shot out to hold her steady, not relinquishing its hold until she had stabilized and moved to sit by him.
Anna S. - Season Noir - S/X, B/S, Ensemble - Few people in this fandom would not sacrifice a body part to have Anna's command of language. Her plots are prettily kinky, but not spectacularly original; her style, however, will make you drool. The characters in "Season Noir" display a refreshing savagery that's missing from a lot of fiction in which the leads are all sops and evil tastes like digestive cookies. "Subtleties," a long, loose-limbed string of scenes, sweeter than "Noir," dragged me, kicking and yowling, into a temporary but strong enthusiasm for X/S. X/S is her most-visited pairing, though "Season Noir" is B/S and her LJ memories are stuffed with all sorts of oddities, including one mind-warpingly good Spike/Riley. Spike/Riley? Not just believeable Spike/Riley, but frickin' comfort food? Uh-huh.
"Oh god," he said when the bar door opened to decant them. A wave of fresh, cool air slapped him almost as hard as the beam, and he grabbed the nearest thing to keep from falling over, then leaned against the wall. The wall was Spike; the thing was his belt.
Annakovsky - Umad Learns Sumerian - Lots o' Pairings, Ensemble - One of the cleverest fic writers. Polished prose and sneaky humour.
sap-lis am-ma-tu4 su-ma la zak-rat
And below, the earth's name had not been spoken
zakrat = from zakaru, G stative third person feminine singular
ammatu = strong, stable, a poetic word for the earth
zakaru sumu = to mention someone's name
Automated Alice - Half Gifts - B/S, X/S - The amount of schmoop this author gets away with is truly staggering. Schmoop aside, her descriptions of people and places are rich and fine, her humour subtle and her quotations blissfully a propos. "Half Gifts" imagines a slightly different outcome of Spike's African adventure. Her AU foray into Spander, I should also mention, is the hottest thing I've read. Ever. *No longer available online. Cough.*
Officially, it’s still early. Too early for Buffy, but the morning is glorious. That’s what Giles would say. A good morning to see grand megalithic monuments. You got the stones? All the stones a boy could need—right over there, mister. Understatement, much? She looks at him again. He’s standing in the high dry grass a few feet from his bike, all cocky feline grace, face tipped up to the sky, features obscured by the brightness. All sleek bones and tender mouth. ‘I want to see you in the sun’ had always been a dumb thing to say to a vamp. Hello, postergirl for lameness. But it was true. And here he was.
Avidrosette - Down Where the Woodbines Creep - William/B - My favourite William fic. Immaculate period voice. Read it just for the dinner table conversation about the Greeks. WIP.
"Ah, I see from your expression that you fear for the immortal
souls of our two beloved heroes. Very correct of you. Yet, before you despair,
consider that their...exchange of ideas led to a highly edifying discourse on
the philosophical nature of love in all of its many forms. Why, it ultimately
produced a ranking of sorts—"
"Gracious! Let me guess: with their own
unique expression of love at the top?"
"Just so, Mother. One would think you had
been studying the classics all your life."
Barb Cummings - A Raising in the Sun - B/S, Ensemble - Go here for the deftly-written, plot-packed, sexy and often hilarious Barbverse trilogy (plus a few extras) that starts with a re-imagining of Buffy's resurrection and goes on to explore, seriously, what trials and tribulations might have occurred had Buffy allowed Souless!Spike the title of "boyfriend."
Sex had finally saved the world. That had to be a first for Sunnydale.
Bogwitch - Working My Way Back to You - B/S, S/I, Ensemble - Tentacles are love! and Boggie makes sure our fandom has plenty. "Working," however, is dense and atmospheric horror set in the English countryside. Chilling is an overused word, but there's none better for this ruthless tale.
Little Darrow in daylight looked vastly different, but no less eerie, than it had the night before and the stark silhouettes that had dominated the dark had become pretty little buildings devoid of life; yet they felt ever watchful, like sinister sentinels, ensuring that she didn’t escape.
The Brat Queen - Protocol - A/W, A/S/W - Nobody, but nobody, writes banter like TBQ. Her dialogue is canon-worthy. That said, her plots are weird. In her own words: "In the old days when the mapmakers would get up to the parts of the Earth's geography that they knew nothing about, they would put warnings down like "Here there be dragons" or "Here there be hyppogryffs", which was essentially their way of saying that if you went any further you could consider yourself warned. [...] They're not meant to be good, they're not meant to be in character, they're not meant to be anything except a way for me to get insane plot bunnies out of my head. And also, admittedly, they tend to be meant to stroke my fic kinks pretty fast and hard. Open fictional masturbation, I suppose one could say, but hyppogryff fic sounds cooler." Her OTP is a very D/s Angel/Wes, with lots of snarky commentary from Spike. Recent fiction is in her LJ Memories.
"I wasn't killing when I was his age," Angel said. Then
paused. "I look 18 to you?"
"You know if
you and I actually got along," Xander said, "I might find that adorably
deluded."
Christina Kamnikar - Disneyland - Ensemble, B/S - Crisp, clever and kind, but not too kind. More interested in character than 'ship, but agreeable to my leanings. ;-) "Disneyland," a coda for Chosen, is where I send new fans who've just finished watching the series and are suffering withdrawal. Her post-Gift Spike & Tara sketch, meanwhile, does a more perceptive job than most of illustrating Spike's unstable morality as he struggles to shape himself and his allegiances after Buffy's death.
Someone's arm went around her, and Buffy jolted back, almost falling
over into the soft sand.
"Relax. I just brought you some
Kleenex. Dorkhead." Dawn's tone was sarcastic but her hands were gentle
as she dabbed at Buffy's tears, then put the tissue in her hand. "Blow."
Cyn Martin - Ronin - Ensemble, B/S - Style like whoa. Do not read while drinking tea. There's post-NFA roadtrip with Andrew (that would be "Ronin"), there's Sister Angelus with an exclusive interview with Spike's soul, there's flaming cornfields and Dana and Dru.
I pushed past him and into the kitchen. Water surged from a burst oven in a powerful torrent, cascading onto the floor. It reeked of myrrh and violets and I had barely a moment to register this odd perception when the oven shuddered, cried out like a living thing, and shot a human figure out onto the tiles.
Dana Woods - After the Opera - Pairings Galore, Ensemble - Her "After the Opera" series is one of the loveliest, best-drawn post-Gift Buffy-stays-dead AUs I have found. She's interesting and admirable for painting intense friendships that don't always transmute into romance, as happens in the vast majority of fanfictions. Dana understands people.
Angel pulled one of the chairs away from the table and sat so that
he was facing Giles. "Spike did ask me to come," he agreed softly.
"But not for that reason."
"I'm using him, you know.
Using what he felt to let him shoulder it all."
The admission was so stark
and bare that Angel sighed. "I know. So does he."
"And you've come up with
a way to fix it all, I take it?" Giles guessed.
"No," Angel countered.
"But Spike has."
The Deadly Hook - Does It Have to Mean Something - B/S - Hook has set herself the monster task of hashing out post-NFA Spike/Buffy honestly. By George, she's succeeding. Her insights are bang-on. DIHTMS is actually my favourite middle installment of Hook's 'verse.
There were rules to any universe. There had to be. And so what if
she didn't understand magic or dimensions, or any of it.
All she needed to do was find
him.
And that was something
Slayers were made for.
When she opened her eyes again,
one hundred and forty-seven carefully counted deep breaths later, he was there.
Dessert First - On Location in Egypt - Many Pairings, Ensemble - Sunnydale, porn capital of the world. You think I'm kidding.
"Pathetic, huh?" Lindsey smirks, elbowing Xander from his spot reclining against the hay bales. His cowboy hat, the only article of clothing he is currently wearing besides his elaborately tooled boots, is pulled low over his eyes, his hair sticking out in mussed tufts on the back of his head. The ramshackle barn looks perfect, as all Ethan's sets are, down to the horse blanket he'd thoughtfully spread out after snarking about prickly straw and tender body parts not mixing. That Ethan really knows his business, Xander reflects, idly toying with one of the sets of tackle. Uh, tack. Whatever.
Doyle - A Girl Made From Sky - Pairings Unlimited - Dawn/Cheeseman.
He first saw her in the dream of a monk in Budapest.
Dutchbuffy - Take Heart - B/S, S/F, W/S - On a scale of inventive to bonkers, Dutchbuffy's an eleven. Grande dame of queasy adjectives, brilliantly lunatic similes, and plots stuffed to the gills with comedic horror and horrible laughs. "Take Heart" veers off from the tail end of S4.
Her eyes are downcast and he has to strain to hear her. "The four of us did an enjoining spell to kill Adam. The spell connected us all. It gave me my friends’ powers. I can’t undo it…. the connection. And now instead of me getting their essence, they’re draining mine. My heart, my spirit, my mind, theyr’e all being consumed because of our link.” She pauses. “I need you to kill them."
Estepheia - Cues and Balls - Many Slashy Pairings - For all your slashy needs.
Xander frowns. He's about to lose a hundred bucks. But this isn't
about money. It's a matter of principle. A battle of balls, if you will. And
guess what? Two can play this game. Xander's jaw sets.
Two brisk strides
and he's standing behind Spike, close enough to press his hard-on against Spike's
butt, just where the folds of the duster part. Sending a silent apology to Larry—may
he rest in peace and not come back as the First to haunt him—Xander quickly
bends forward until his lips brush Spike's ear. When he speaks his voice is
low and smooth, the way Anya used to love it, and a direct imitation of Spike's
seductive growl – even though he'll never admit to that: "Larry's
the first guy to ever suck me off."
The cue-stick tears
the felt and furrows a groove into the wood underneath, while the cue ball lies
untouched. The only sound from Spike is a gasp that sends a surge of arousal
through Xander, and the clatter of wood landing on the table.
For a moment they
remain frozen, aware that the only thing to separate them are two layers of
clothing. That and about two hundred other people.
Xander's insincere
"Oops" comes out embarrassingly breathless.
Europanya - Shards - B/S - Buffy goes dimension-hopping, and lo, she has hot sex with Spike. And angst. And ... kittens? Euro's such a sharp stylist that she can get away with anything.
He caught up to her at the tideline where the kelp gathered in small tangled clumps. He wrapped a long cool arm around her middle and pressed his hand next to hers in the sand.
Fallowdoe - Spiegel im Spiegel - Buffy, Spike, B/S, Ensemble - It is eminently clear that Fallowdoe is a musician. There are currents in her writing, like a symphony, like water: light and depth and colour and momentum. She creates piercing, breathcatching images that stay in the mind for days. Her trilogy spirals outward from an AU Gift, building one of the most memorable post-apocalyptic landscapes I've discovered anywhere.
She smiled at him, and let the wasp loft up into the space around them,
where it floated before her expectantly.
“See? I can do things…
they talk to me, you know. Not that they know it. Not much for brains if you’re
pretty much wings and a stinger...”
He didn’t smile back.
Instead, he made a jump for the insect where it danced above their heads.
He leapt forward, still perched
with careful balance on the railing. In a swift, elegant burst of speed, he
seized it between his left thumb and index finger. It was so fast she didn’t
see his arm move.
Femmenerd - The Non-Mutual Exclusivity of Perversion and Love - B/S, B/F, B/S/A - Here's a helping of gleeful, racy joy. The fashion—the copout way to get lauded as a writer—is for doldrums: insufferable, unrelenting, highly poetical pessimism. Bah! to that, says Femme.
The two people he gets the most fun out of irritating in one room together. Now that’s a party. And it feels good to be at a party that he’s welcome to—not as a crasher or hanger-on, but a bleedin’ invited guest; lord of the manor, even, so to speak.
Fer1213 - Fill in the Blank - B/S - Fer's justly famous for her gap-filling episode codas, which are neat, unpretentious, humourous, sad, and always impeccably voiced. Her longer pieces are good old romping Spuffy fun.
He patrols with her nearly every night. With
or without the little girls. For someone who’s all preachy and teachy
in a group, Buffy’s rather quiet when it’s just the two of them.
And he actually prefers it that way.
Tonight, though, she wants to talk.
“This is where I bumped into Holden Webster,”
she says.
Flurblewig - The L.A. Patient - Pairings Like Whoa - Rapier wit. Characterizations so fine-tuned that you don't need to be a fan of House to get a howl or fifty out of "The L.A. Patient."
Vogler frowns, looking from Gunn to Angel. "What are you talking
about?"
Gunn smiles. "I have people - well, employees,
anyway - in just about any field you care to name. Accounting. Tax. Contracts.
Medical research. Share dealing. Ethical review boards, the police, the IRS.
If you've ever cut a corner you shouldn't have, or even so much as dropped a
gum wrapper and not picked it up, Mr Vogler, I can know about it within ten
minutes of making a phone call. And I can make life very, very interesting for
you and your company."
"Are you threatening me, Mr Gunn?"
"Absolutely not, Mr Vogler. When I threaten
people, I tend to do it with an axe. I'm a traditionalist that way."
Frimfram - The Other Side of the Tracks - Dru/Spike, Darla/Angel, A/S - Set in 1880, mouth-watering period detail, sharp, sly characterizations, crafty prose. Also some tightly-knit one-shots.
She broke the dust cross with her scrabbling, blistering fingers, upturned the soil and dug it all under her nails. She was born breaking through the earth, and it seemed no trouble to her now. William staggered to his feet and stood over her again, transfixed in horror, as she cast aside handfuls of dirt and sang the horrible song. And there, emerging through the loam beneath her clawing fingers, he saw it: a tiny, white hand.
Germaine Pet - Sense Memory - S/A, Sundry Threesomes - People inflict weird challenges on each other around here. GP found herself saddled with Buffy/Riley/Angel. By Ghod, she sold it. She's also responsible for some of the sweetest, heh, Shakespearean stylings in the fandom.
They’d given him a promotion. For outstanding bravery on the field of battle and courage under fire. He kept the medal in a drawer and wore the hardness around his eyes.
Glossolalia - Mystery Play - Many, Many Pairings, Oz - From shockingly dirty S3 Buffy/Angel ("Mystery Play") to lazy, mellow Oz gen, Glossing's output is wide-ranging and inventive. Her signature character is Oz, and she probably writes him better than anybody else.
She touched him one night in January, took him deep inside, and the
pleasurepain of it all didn't cease until May, until she returned the motion.
Thrust the sword once as he watched her, eyes welling with memory, fucked him
right through to hell.
Now that he's back, they circle each other with
wary, weary eyes. Solid air, mansions of molecules and suburbs of oxygen, between
them, maps and miles weighing down their hands. His chains rattle, her breathing
whistles.
Gwyneth Rhys - The Sun, the Moon, the Stars - B/S - Substantial, well-written Spuffy, plus a few other things, for a rainy day.
Buffy made shooing motions. "Let's go."
All these strangers probably thought they had some horribly sad May-December
romance going and Giles was trying to back out of his responsibilities. They
went outside and stood facing Somerset House, leaning against a railing in the
late afternoon shadows.
"Who keeps asking if your clock is ticking?"
Giles quizzed her with glee. Once everything had settled down and he'd no longer
had to carry so much of the weight of the world on his shoulders, he'd turned
out to have a childish sense of humor, one that he showed often. Buffy had always
felt like that man had been hiding there all those years, lurking under all
the tweed.
Helga von Nutwimple (a.k.a. Theohara) - As the Romans Do - B/S, T/S, D/S, Ensemble - HEEheeheeee go read Helga NOW. Her multiple WIPs feature crisp, zippy, zigzagging plots full of unusually canny characterizations and eye-popping, whoop-inducing revelations, but it's her sense of humour that makes her a star. There's some excessive Spike-love and Buffy-hate going on, even in the Spuffy stories, but to each her own. And unfortunately, she's easily distracted, so the WIPs seem likely to remain that way.
"You guys are ruining
this road trip for me," Xander pouted, tipping the bag back to pour chip
dust on his tongue.
"Road Trip?" Robin sputtered. "Xander,
we're careening at suicidal speeds down the L.A. freeways to go battle a demon
horde in aide of a bunch of other undead we think are still good!"
"Yeah, well," Xander sighed, "I
don't get out much."
Herself - Leather - B/S, Firefly - I didn't intend to get hooked on a WIP by Herself ("Where They Have to Take You In," now complete), as I find the heights of melodrama she's willing to scale rather a turn-off, but her style is really something else—bird-skeleton graceful and a little eerie. I kept going back for that reason, and lo, I was rewarded with one of the most remarkable, loving, poignant characterizations of Angel I've ever seen. (Also, undeniably first-rate smut.) She's not to everyone's taste, but she's damn good, and usually yields a happy ending ... until the next installment.
She felt oddly shy, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the mattress,
the bedstands on each side crowded with open white cartons. There was something
weirdly intimate about eating in front of him, at least like this, wearing nothing
but her panties. She'd put those on because no way was she going to dine naked,
no matter what he told her.
Even though, okay, there was something
to be said for getting sparerib sauce licked off your nipples. An experience
she'd be glad to recall later on.
If there was a later
on.
Huzzlewhat - Seeing Africa - Gen - The definitive Xander in Africa story. Gorgeously researched, rich in detail and insight, emotionally perfect. Even if you're a rabid shipper with a one-track mind, please read this. You're missing out, if you don't.
Carving after carving depicted man and beast, caught in mid-transformation,
the human and the inhuman merging. He picked out one, with man and hyena, then
went back the next day and bought two more. Silly, since a cheetah wasn’t
a wolf, and he didn’t know if he’d ever see Oz again. And the man-lion
... the carvings were supposed to depict punishment, the carver explained, the
transformation a curse for having eaten a sacred animal. He didn’t know
how Oz felt about his wolf these days, and he didn’t really want to pick
a fight with Angel, but they just seemed right. He got a wicked laugh, though,
imagining Angel’s bewilderment when he received a gift from Xander.
The carver, pleased at both the sales and at
meeting a fellow woodworker, took him to one of the local beer halls, where
they drank chibuku, which the man said was beer. It looked like hot
chocolate and tasted like nothing Xander had ever drunk — or ever wanted
to drink again — but it was worth it for the stories.
Jane Davitt - Possession - Lots o' Pairings - Heat and innocence in season one is what I've linked to; Jane writes all kinds of good things.
She waits until she's home, with her bedroom door locked, to go through
the pockets, feeling dirty, feeling sneaky, feeling... good.
Research, she tells herself, spreading it out
on the bed and kneeling beside it. Mysterious men need investigating.
Kalima - Daemons Luminati - B/S, Ensemble - Sharp, professional, unforgettable plots, scathingly good characterizations, hilarity in plenty. Kalima isn't sentimental, but what I've linked to is undoubtably a love story. I have a sheepish desire to see her someday utterly over-indulge her warm and lovestruck side.
“Shit. Oh shit, man,” the kid blubbered. “I didn’t
do anything to her I swear. It’s not even my car! Don’t kill me,
please don’t kill me man, please—”
“Nobody’s killing anybody
here, Jack,” Xander said.
“We're just going to saw off your
fingers a little,” Spike assured him.
Kassto - Cold - B/S - Kassto's one of a too-small number of authors willing to get inventive, and write sex as sloppy. One line, thought by Spike as he — well, I won't tell you what he's doing to Buffy — grabbed me and hasn't let go since:
These little American girls with their barely-there clothes, they still knew nothing about raunch.
Kawcrow - Rise (He Buys Cigarettes) - Spike - A striking and strikingly prescient character study of Spike begun before The Gift and finished before All the Way aired. "I," remarks the author, "am John Creasy's worst nightmare."
His face is gaunt and haunted and pleads for help without knowing how, but they keep their eyes to the wall. They know what's happening. They don’t know why. They could kill him, singly or as a pack; they could ask him all the questions they haven’t dared to as they tear at his cold flesh again and again—Is this what you wanted? Does it happen this way? Is it worth it? They could but they don’t. They’re afraid to see him look at them with his empty human eyes and say, Yes.
Kidcyclone - How
to Be a Topp Fledgling (With apologies to Molesworth) - Spike
- Self-explanatory, really.
So you are freshly rizzen a creature of the night a child of darkness etc etc etc. The grave dirt is still beneath yor fingernails. You cast aside yor burial suit (2 6/8 Grunnig's Best Funeral Outfitters) and stride forth to embrace (hem hem) yor Sire, the one who has given you unlife. The one who will teach you perls of wisdom like 'A Sire owes his childe rebirth, education and discipline; a childe owes his Sire obedience, devotion and fealty' (Wisdom), and 'Hunger makes old tramps taste like young virgins', (Philosophy) and 'Always check and make sure your battle axe is sharp before attending a party with a pack of Sycorax Daemons.' Which is v sound advise actually.
Kita - Second Hand - Angel, A/S - Must-read. Spike and other people's children. Dense, ouroboric, diamond-cut frames. "Six Foot Deep," co-written with Jess, is essential Jverse reading.
A kid in a backwards baseball cap and a t-shirt that proclaims "Hooters!"
in big orange letters answers the door.
"Connor?" Spike squints.
The kid doesn't answer him, just turns
around and hollers, "Hey, Connor, some old guy's here for you!"
Ain't that the fucking truth.
Ladycat - Woman - S/X, Ensemble - Muted, blanket-soft, rainy day reading. The Shadowverse (post-Gift AU sans Buffy) is pure comfort—provided Soulless!Woobie!Spike doesn't throw you out of a tale automatically.
Nodding dumbly, Willow crab-walked toward the kitchen. Tara stopped
her halfway, holding a crumpled wrapper and something long and vaguely tube
shaped. Together, their eyes traveled from the object to the ice cream dishes—new
ones, since Spike that thoughtfully washed the old ones yesterday—to Xander
and then back to Dawn.
Xander held out his arm, allowing Willow to curl
up next to him, holding her while she cried.
Lesley - Samson and the Broken Dolls - Spike, S/I, B/S - Brainy and bitchy, razorwire writing, mucho plot. This one's post-NFA with Spike and Illyria.
"The First - a trickster, forever starving
to ape its betters, to feel the pleasure of life draining from the bodies of
its enemies. An annoyance - little better - but it gives me pleasure that my
pet should have defeated it." And the scary thing is that she does look
proud of him - a lioness at her cub's first kill, only exponentially more dangerous.
"Not a pet."
He can't help snapping, "If I find anything to tattoo myself with, I'm
considering going with that."
Lori - Swallow's Nest - G/A - The series, "Investigations and Acquisitions," is fresh, delightful Giles/Anya, sold by the author as "a comedy of manners, romance, and domesticity, and of demons and spies; in addition, it pays homage to classic Golden Age detective novels by Christie, Marsh, Allingham, and Sayers. It is also, eventually, a comedy about family." This installment features a particularly good villain.
David Martin Giles knows the voice of a Catcher when he hears one.
He can't move, even
as the footsteps come closer, as the Catcher comes almost across the threshold.
But he can think Dad's Merlin-spell over and over – Hie thee hence, hie
thee hence, hie thee hence –
One more footstep,
and Mr Camp is almost inside.
Then there's a flash
of shiny long hair, and a good smile, a warrior's smile. "Edward? Whatever
are you doing?" Aunt Dawn says, coming up behind the monster and putting
her arms around him. David wants to shout at her to get away from him, but Aunt
Dawn's really tough and smart, smarter than the Catcher, probably.
Lost Akasha - Washer at the Ford - C/A - Akasha has a wonderful ability to seesaw between mythic dream and comic mundanity. I've heard shippers of all stripes call her "the writer who makes me get Cordy/Angel."
"Sar alainn," he whispers to the washer woman, still bent over the darkening river. She raises a scrap of carnelian satin, then plunges it into the current. Doyle’s eyes flash demon red as he looks at Angel, in the next instant they are quicksilver, cold. "The sexual imagery’s kinda trite, with the sword and all," he confesses, reaching to touch her hair as she worries the fabric in and out of the water, against unseen rocks. "But she is magnificent. A real stiffener, like I said."
macha - descant descending - Buffy, Spike, Angel, Ensemble, B/S - Inanna's Quest. Lit, crit, prose, poetry. Fandom masterwork. This is why we play.
born to be a bank clerk, like any poet, but this ain’t William, and that world’s gone forever. still the best street fighter of any century he happens to be in, but wasted all wasted protecting a Slayer’s family and friends, fixated on keeping his promises, treated like dirt. gone, all gone. maybe.
Mad Poetess - The Waking - S/X, Ensemble - When she's on, she's brilliant. This story offers an OC like none I've ever seen. "'I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.' ~Theodore Roethke. Giles is loved."
When he was eight years old, he carved his name into her skin with a penknife. She was green and wet with spring, and the cut burned deep, bled clear. When she'd finished screaming, she thought, 'So this is love, then.'
Marcus L. Rowland - Legend - Ensemble - Ripping yarns and gleeful crossovers—CSI, DS9, Constantine, Veronica Mars, you name it—all well-constructed and highly amusing.
There have already been several attempts to fictionalize the last days of Sunnydale, the otherwise ordinary Californian town that was destroyed by the collapse of an underground cave system four years ago. This ambitious semi-autobiographical first novel, aimed at the young adult market, is a fusion of fantasy and magical realism in which high school students rub shoulders with demons, the narrator's sister Billie is secretly in love with a vampire, and the town literally falls into Hell.
Mona - Physical Presence - B/F, B/S - ...Except for this one, which is Anya/Rodney. Stargate Rodney. HaHA! But don't miss the femslash either.
"Getting back to the Wraith -- so you know them well?"
She seemed to suddenly find his bare feet rather
fascinating. "Oh, please. Like one drunken night of tentacle-fondling --
theirs, not mine, I'll have you know -- means I know them well ."
Rodney decided to let his mind skip over this
image, thankyouverymuch.
Nan Dibble - Old Blood - Spike, Dawn, B/S, Ensemble - Shriek-provoking cliffhangers. Fascinating explorations of vamp social dynamics, even when they skew the canon. Language that's terse, memorable and drives the plot without wasting a word. Noteworthy also for the front-and-centre friendship between Spike and Dawn.
She was just about dragging him. He looked awful, which served him
absolutely right. Hanging, leaned crookedly against her, inert and ungainly
as a rolled-up carpet, bare feet mostly dragging. Dawn wondered why Buffy didn’t
just carry him, Slayer strength and all (how Spike would hate that), and Buffy
should just pick him up and pitch him as hard and as far as she could instead
of supporting in half-steps, awkward pivots and shrugging adjustments, the pretence
he was doing anything like walking on his own.
Except for the silence,
the stillness, they looked like a pair of drunks seeing each other home.
Nautibitz - In Heat - B/S - The queen of smutty comedy. Hot, hilarious, zippy, conspiratorial. Very much 'genre' writing—Spike's idealized—but if you're worried about that, you're a dope.
He shrugged. "One man's tampon," he said, dropping it into his mug of blood, "another man's teabag."
NWHepcat - Dormant Magics - Xander, X/F, X/Various, Ensemble - The Xander writer, as far as I'm concerned. Everything she writes is notable for economy of language and witty, sympathetic characterization, but her post-Chosen in Cleveland saga, in particular, fills me with joy. She'll sell you on Xander/Faith like nobody else.
Moisture gathers beneath the eyepatch. "Would you teach me?"
"To play?"
"To make them."
Pip - Home Front - Ensemble - Plots, schemes, politics...and a puck. Nerdy and original McGuffin this-a-way: a really clever, fully-conceived—and very droll—post-NFA apocalypse scenario. Lots of players, loads of style. Settle in.
'Oh dear,' said a small voice from somewhere
in a shrub.
'Oh, bugger,' said Spike.
'I feel the need to curse,' said Illyria.
The Frophla hit the railings with an almighty
swap! Then it went straight through, cut into more than twenty pieces. The smaller
Frophlas fell, straight onto the Mile End road. There was the sound of screeching
brakes as raining slug demon bombarded onto the traffic.
Poshcat - Small Victories - S/B, S/D - Naughty. Tsk.
She fumbled with the key in the lock, but finally managed to get
the door open and limped inside. She looked back at him. "This is my favourite
part," she said, and shut the door. The porch light blinked off.
Spike stood there in the darkness beside
the lilac bushes. "Oh my God, I hate her," he said to no one in particular.
Quinara - Samsara - B/S - Strange and sly as a prophesy.
Looking at her, he had frown lines. Like tiny
vampire ridges. They were kind of cute when they were that small.
“Love, it’s high
noon.”
She flicked her head around again. The
dying sun had disappeared, and been replaced by it’s younger self, which
was soaring high through its zenith.
“Sorry.” She frowned. (Was
she a mini-vampire too?) “I must’ve been in the wrong time zone.”
“Happens to everyone.”
Redbrickrose - All That's Best of Dark and Bright - S/A, B/S, B/A - One of those rare writers who does justice to all three protagonists at the same time. The Spike & Buffy friendship is unusual, and gratifying.
"I love you."
"I love you."
"We don't work."
"I know."
Romany - His Body a Boat - S/A - Terse poetry disguised as prose.
“You got a point here, Spike?” Rolled out from under,
kicked him across the room through a Bauhaus chair. “Hey, my chair!”
“Ugly as fuck anyway.” Spike lunged back, re-straddled.
“Point bein’, you don’t walk away while I’m talkin’.
S’not polite.” Three punches for emphasis.
Angel game-faced, grabbed an arm. Bit. Hard.
Ow! Mother-fucker!
Oh. Yeah.
Roseveare - William the Bloody Useless and the Beaker of Doom - Fred, Lilah, Wes, Ensemble - If I have to sell the story after that title, there's something wrong with you.
He jerked to his feet, swaying and gasping. "What did I tell
you? Intensive... combat... training... I, ah, certainly gave him what-for!"
"Yeah," I said. "You're a deadly
weapon, all right."
Salieri - The Use of Memory - B/S - My favourite Spike Shanshu, thoughtful, romantic, eloquent.
From his initial vantage point he hadn't seen them, but now that
he had stepped down into the lobby, Angel was able to see Buffy and Spike sitting
cross-legged on top of the counter that separated the main hall from the back
offices. Angel's throat tightened. They were facing each other, and they were
eating ice cream.
They weren't flirting, they weren't hanging on
each other, they weren't feeding each other or indulging in some other sappy
romantic display. They were simply sitting and eating, sporting matching bad
postures with their elbows on their knees.
Sobsister - Rhymes with Luck - A flash of insight into 6x10 "Wrecked" in poetic form. Flawlessly controlled rhyme and rhythm, like a porny Eve Merriam.
elision of the word / the one you wish you heard
Sophia Jirafe - Thousand Yard Stare - Gen - Now this is just cool.
Everyone is always in such a hurry in this house. The Slayer's sister gets up first, then rides with the construction worker to school (school — are her high school days over too?), clearing the kitchen for the late morning stampede. She always seems to enter a room just after they leave it, wavering in the door frame and feeling the emptiness pull at her. A little behind the others.
Sylvia Volk - The Wanton Folly of Me Mum - Buffy, B/S, Ensemble - Must-read. Big, ambitious brain, adores a stylistic challenge. Mere days after the airing of the Angel series finale, Sylvia authored the definitive "Wanton Folly." "Keystone Vampires" is a romp; "Psychomachia" is a verbal tapestry full of nuns and angels and poets and sheep.
When Buffy at last burst into the lobby of Wolfram & Hart, she came with an axe in her right hand, Mr. Pointy in her left, catapulting through the glass doors with a resounding crash, and with fear and anticipation in her breast; it was a dark and stormy night; and the creature she pursued was muscular and glistening and red, bounding ahead of her in ceiling-high bounces, a trail of gore splattering behind, till Buffy tackled it and swung Axcalibur—and then it lay with heaving flanks, all oozy, spurting arterial blood from odd tentacular protuberances . . . and she exclaimed aloud, "Boy, I thought I lost this thing in San Francisco, but here it's tracked me all the way to L. A.," just as Angel and Spike sprinted up from opposite directions.
Tabaqui - Bao Bei - X/S, S/A, Firefly - Remarkable for her bold, vivid, gritty settings and virile emoting.
Most of the graffiti was indecipherable - some of it so old that Simon had no reference for puzzling it out. Like the crooked 'A' inside a circle, done in red paint that had bled down the wall. That wasn't an Alliance symbol, that was for sure. Simon stared at the symbol - it was near the top of the layers, and fairly clear. It was where he'd been told to wait and now he was feeling nervous about that.
Tesla - Anya Saves the World - Pairings Galore, Ensemble - It was a trial to choose one story to link. I picked the Anya/Angel domestic saga with side orders of Fred/Wes/Gunn, Cordelia/Xander and, well, etc., but don't miss "The S Curve" (Xander/Angel high school AU), "Cold Hand in Mine" (Vamp!Mulder joins Angel Investigations) or "Sunnydale Wholesale Beauty Supply." It all sounds crazy, but her writing's brilliant—tastier than potato chips. Especially "The S Curve"! Really! I mean it!
Angel turned a page of his magazine. "The
folks are arguing upstairs," he said, unconcerned. "Been going at
it for a while. I don't think there's going to be any dinner."
"What's it about?"
Xander asked.
"I don't know, but Faith is upstairs in
the hall closet with a juice glass pressed to the wall. She was snaking the
garbage disposal when they got into it." Angel swallowed a spoonful of
cereal. "I don't think Sunnydale is giving her enough scope for her talents."
Tea at the Ford - Three Deep - Ensemble - The most soaring virtual season, fueled by poetry and athletic brains. Character arcs ahoy. B/S? B/A? A/S? Heheheh. Yesss.
Contentment, joy, happiness—all precursors
to tragedy. That was simply a fact of his existence. So the joyous, floating
sense of freedom he felt lasted only as long as the fraction of a second it
took to identify it. Dust covered him, thick and downy soft, a blanket for his
corpse—and others. He opened his eyes and dust fell away, fell into his
eyes. Stung, burned, but he didn't blink. No one was breathing, not even the
one who actually had to breathe. Not dead though. If he moved, if he sighed,
the spell would be broken. And what would they be then? What would he be?
In stories, only a princess awakened to the sight
of her true love. A prince awakened to the monster in his own reflection.
Angel closed his eyes.
TKP - Best Souvenir - B/A - Whistler never existed. Buffy and Angel meet for the first time, post-Chosen. Juicy and adult. Much of TKP's other writing is fearlessly experimental, dense and provoking. "Blood Types" (Angel reflects on the taste of people) is a must-read.
Okay, so he was right. They were going to have to “work a couple things out.” He was talking about stuff like manacles and toothbrushes and shirts with collars, she suspected. Talk about a rock and a hard place. She was stuck between staking the guy and buying him hair gel. Buffy sighed. Her life was weird. “Okay,” she said, “assuming I’m not going to leave you chained to a radiator while I work all this out, what would you need?”
Toys Dream - Angel of Memory - Ensemble - A blessedly unromantic, sharp-eyed post-NFA novella.
He sat slumped on the stone floor of
the chamber, lit only by the flickering light of the fiery curtain that sealed
its entrance. Bodies were scattered everywhere about him, the bloody remains
of the secret masters mingled with the broken bodies of the friends he'd sacrificed
in this last desperate battle.
At last
there came the hollow clack of footsteps, and Angel raised his eyes to see Illyria
standing before him. The fallen god tilted her head with a clockwork click,
and regarded him quizically. "What is it," she asked, "that you
have in your hand?"
Trixie Firecracker - Amen - B/A - The First is wreaking havoc in Sunnydale; Buffy pays a visit to the Hyperion with Spike in tow. This piece is moody and sad, yet strangely kind-eyed.
"Don't ask me that," I shake my head. "Please."
"Why not?"
"Because you
love Cordy." I laugh. It sounds funny when I say it out loud. Like an impossibility
that Willow and I would have giggled over in High School. "Because everything's
changed."
His eyes are bright.
"Not everything."
Valerie X - Super Food World - B/S - Funny, perceptive S6 that manages to be emotionally satisfying without tossing canon out the window: quite the achievement. Valerie's also responsible for tormenting the fanfic world with "Redeeming Spike's Ass," which is superb, but never to be finished.
He was like the radio.
He was like when you hear the first
few notes of a song and you turn up the volume, but then you remember that you
hate this song, and you feel stupid having just made it louder. Maybe you even
nodded your head to the first few beats, or sung along with the opening line,
and now you feel ashamed for enjoying it. If someone walked in, you’d
have to explain what you were doing listening to that song, when that song so
obviously sucks. Like him. If she was attracted to him, it was only because
he was there, and because he’d been there in the past. Like the song you
react to just because it’s familiar.
That was Spike, Buffy thought. Her own
personal Sugar Ray.
Vatrixsta Cruden - Hard to Forget - B/A - Smart B/A. Oh, don't look so surprised. ;) In this piece, romance takes second fiddle to a moving character study of Buffy.
With Faith, Buffy just felt like she was out
of her league, in every conceivable way. Then sometimes, Faith would look at
Buffy in this way she had, and it was like she was begging for something and
Buffy didn't know what it was and Faith couldn't bring herself to say it out
loud. Then the moment would pass, and Faith would say something sexually explicit
or bitingly caustic, and Buffy would pretend she hadn't glimpsed a moment of
raw need for... something.
Buffy was getting good at ignoring things people
needed from her, assuming they weren't immediately life threatening.
Witling - Signatures of the Visible: Postmodernity and Pastiche in the Autofictional Encounter - S/X - Best title ever, for a start. Witling's best known for grim, searing, impeccably penned Spike/Xander.
Xander's mouth tasted like beer, and his hands were warm. He held himself still at first, a little bit aloof. Then he opened his mouth and let a small groan slip through his teeth. His hands tightened on Spike's shoulder and hip. It was going to be one of those nights, Spike knew. The kind where the sex was a conversation, hour after hour of raw questions and firm answers.
Yahtzee - Phoenix Burning - B/A, Ensemble - Post-Gift epic. Fandom classic. "Being Lois Lane" is a brief and memorable Joyce study.
As she slumped down onto Buffy's bed, she found herself remembering those damn comic books again. Superman comics; to be specific, Lois Lane. Dumb old Lois. Month after month, she had Clark Kent turning into Superman in phone booths and broom closets right next to her, and she never caught on. Never figured it out.
Updated July 18, 2008
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