Last one of the night: Rulesverse Wesley/Illyria festive ficlet
(In case you're wondering, I got stuck with all my fic on the wrong device over the weekend. Now it is freee, and I'm not really around for the next couple of nights. Hence, spamming. Which ends here.)
When I asked for prompts, young snogged frivolously prompted me back my own Femslash minis prompt: Illyria, santa hat. You know, the one I was trying to get one of you to write. Well, aaronlisa took my prompt and wrote a proper story for it: Winter's Snow.
I, on the other hand, realised what date we have reached and wrote what I think may be my first Rulesverse ficlet this year. It's cute. Or heartbreaking. Kind of depends on your perspective. It fits between Being Heroes and Bringing It Home, so Buffy and family are in CA. (Lost in the Rulesverse? Intro post and timeline are here. But seriously, this may not be the place to start.)
Each Other Now Embrace
200 words, Wesley/Illyria, with OCs (Spuffy babies, as it happens), PG
December, 2012
"The frivolities of human happiness do not concern me." Your voice is as solemn as ever. Your face as coolly inhuman. The children don't like to touch you. They know you are different. They feel the chill of your skin, and it bothers them the way Spike's never does.
But you're lying. Yes you are. You are here. You are spending Christmas with their family, because you want to spend Christmas with a family. Our family, in a backhanded, unacknowledged sort of way that neither of us has the stomach to articulate fully. And you are enjoying yourself. No one made you be here. No one forced you to help me make the Christmas cake to give Spike and the girls a familiar taste of an English Christmas, he still so uncertain that the move back to the West Coast will stick. No one compelled you to decorate the house with green branches. Though perhaps that came more naturally than the rest.
More naturally than this last point, for certain. You're wearing a polyester Santa hat because it makes Annie smile. It does not suit you. It lacks logic. It serves no purpose in nature. Yet I have observed, secretly, that it makes you smile too, when you think no one will notice.
O, Illyria. You never will be human. But the moments when you are…
*
When I asked for prompts, young snogged frivolously prompted me back my own Femslash minis prompt: Illyria, santa hat. You know, the one I was trying to get one of you to write. Well, aaronlisa took my prompt and wrote a proper story for it: Winter's Snow.
I, on the other hand, realised what date we have reached and wrote what I think may be my first Rulesverse ficlet this year. It's cute. Or heartbreaking. Kind of depends on your perspective. It fits between Being Heroes and Bringing It Home, so Buffy and family are in CA. (Lost in the Rulesverse? Intro post and timeline are here. But seriously, this may not be the place to start.)
Each Other Now Embrace
200 words, Wesley/Illyria, with OCs (Spuffy babies, as it happens), PG
December, 2012
"The frivolities of human happiness do not concern me." Your voice is as solemn as ever. Your face as coolly inhuman. The children don't like to touch you. They know you are different. They feel the chill of your skin, and it bothers them the way Spike's never does.
But you're lying. Yes you are. You are here. You are spending Christmas with their family, because you want to spend Christmas with a family. Our family, in a backhanded, unacknowledged sort of way that neither of us has the stomach to articulate fully. And you are enjoying yourself. No one made you be here. No one forced you to help me make the Christmas cake to give Spike and the girls a familiar taste of an English Christmas, he still so uncertain that the move back to the West Coast will stick. No one compelled you to decorate the house with green branches. Though perhaps that came more naturally than the rest.
More naturally than this last point, for certain. You're wearing a polyester Santa hat because it makes Annie smile. It does not suit you. It lacks logic. It serves no purpose in nature. Yet I have observed, secretly, that it makes you smile too, when you think no one will notice.
O, Illyria. You never will be human. But the moments when you are…
*