shadowscast

This morning I indulged in reading of fic. I ended up looking in

kimberly_fan's recs page, and through that I found

witling's BogleScatVerse. And wow, was that ever lovely. And by "lovely," I mean "well-written and hits my kinks hard."

The premise is pretty simple: Spike gets sick. Mysteriously. And Xander ends up taking care of him. I think it's set sometime season five-ish, but we learn through subtle hints as we go along that it's somewhat AU. Meanwhile there's some hilariously icky demons to fight, and Spike and Xander move wonderfully, torturously slowly towards, oh, something. Sadly, just when they're starting to get there, the story leaves off; the last update was round about a year ago, so I think the author has moved on to other projects. But still, there's lots of good reading, and wow. Did I mention the kink-hitting?

Besides the fact that it was just absolutely wonderful to read, I also enjoyed skimming through the comments. Lots of other people mentioned the hitting of kinks, too, and that was kind of empowering. I'm frankly a little sheepish about my kinks, but knowing that they're not so very unusual makes me feel better about them. So much so that I've decided to finally put up on my website a link to my own kink-heavy Spike-gets-mysteriously-sick fic. (Back a few months ago I put it on the website and mentioned it in my LJ, but never actually put a link up on my links page. Heh. Weird, illogical and sheepish am I.)

Meanwhile, I'm getting more okay with reading WIPs. They used to drive me nuts, especially the abandoned ones. (And yes, I am guilty...I'll finish "Family" someday. I swear.) Now I'm at a point where I can walk into a story knowing it might not ever have an end, and as long as the ride is good as far as it goes, I'll enjoy what I can get. I think

theohara was the one who finally broke me (er, won me over). I find her writing drop-dead gorgeous, but my lord, I don't think she's ever finished anything. Still, I will keep reading and loving her every beginning.