Actual slashy content: WIP meme!

[shadowscast]

Okay, it's about time to get back to the fun stuff, I think! But first, just one Boldthrough-related link: bubble_blunder has written an open letter to LJ/6A, asking some questions and making some requests that seem pretty clear and reasonable to me. She's looking to collect signatures of those who agree with her, to make the letter more of a collective thing.

And now, on to the meme-y fun! I've seen this one in a bunch of places, but for the sake of argument let's say I'm gakking it from soft_princess: When you see this, post a little weensy excerpt from as many random works-in-progress as you can find lying around. Who knows? Maybe inspiration will burst forth and do something, um, inspiration-y.

Technically speaking, only one of these is an actual WIP; the rest are utterly abandoned. Still, this ought to get me in the mood to get back to the writing!



1) Working title: Blood of the Sire

The idea for this story was that, in the summer between seasons 5 and 6, Spike contracted some sort of vampire illness and needed to be taken to Angel for healing. I think it was supposed to end up Spike/Angel. In fact I only ever wrote 240 words, so this snippet is more than half of it!

It was Xander and Anya who drew "Spike's crypt" from the short list of possible places to check. They walked nervously through the dark graveyard, stakes in hand. Spike's reputation was usually enough to keep the area immediately surrounding his crypt vampire-free, but since he hadn't shown up for patrol tonight, all bets were off.

"He probably left," Anya said, peering into the darkness behind the next stand of trees. "Honestly, Xander, why would he stay in Sunnydale now that Buffy's dead? He's probably gone off looking for what's-her-name, that vampire he used to date."

"Yeah, right." Xander shook his head. "If there's one thing I know, it's emotional wrecks—and Spike's a ten car pile-up on the 101. No way he ran off with Harmony again. Trust me, he's just crawled into a bottle and forgotten what time it is."

In fact, they were both wrong.

2) Working title: Christmas

This was meant to be a short Christmas fic set in the Fragments-verse, in between How the Light Gets In and Before the Time of Dawn. It was going to be just a slice-of-life kind of thing, all shmoopy and sappy. (With literal sap, I guess, going by the snippet!) Of course, I only wrote 360 words of it ... maybe shmoop isn't my thing.

Spike coughed, and then said in a tone that was patient to the point of being patronizing, "Xander, it's December 24th. Bit late to be bothering with a tree, innit?"

"Well, they were fifty percent off...." Xander shrugged. "I thought it'd be nice to do something Christmas-y."

"Thought you said you hated Christmas."

"I never said that. I said I hated Christmas with my parents." Xander crossed his arms and contemplated the tree. He'd never had a real one before. Now his hands were sticky with sap and he'd left a trail of needles from the front door, which maybe explained why his mom had preferred artificial. "You know, I think I can straighten it out. I just need my saw. It's downstairs in the storage locker. I'll be right back."

3) Working title: Expiry Date

This is an actual WIP (though it's been stalled for years)—it's a sequel to London Calling, the first Spike/Xander story I ever wrote. I've got 19,000 words written for this one, and I still do intend to finish it someday!

The waitress came right back with Xander's plate of sausages and scrambled eggs. Another giggle and smile in Spike's direction and she was gone.

"So where are you getting blood now?" Xander asked, raising the first bite of sausage to his mouth.

"Rupert." Spike tracked Xander's fork with a slightly wrinkled nose, kind of like the look Willow would give his bowl full of Sugar Crisps the morning after a sleepover. "Got a contact at a hospital, gives him stuff's gone past the use-by date."

"Still off the animal blood?"

"Won't drink anything that's been killed, yeah." Another faintly disapproving look at Xander's plate.

The bite of sausage somehow stuck in Xander's throat, and he put down his fork. "Oh, hell no. You're not going to pull that morally-superior vegetarian thing are you? You're a-" he lowered his voice to a fierce whisper "fucking vampire!"

4) Working title: Hell

This one fits in the Fragments-verse too; I intended to write a story set immediately post-NFA, in which Spike (now human) and Angel are squatting in the Hyperion, each more or less caught up in his own private hell. There would have been sex—dirty, fucked-up sex. But I abandoned it after 470 words.

For the first two days, he sits at his old desk in the shuttered, dusty office, and meditates on failure.

They'd laugh at him affectionately and call it brooding. But he failed to protect them and therefore they're dead, and the Hyperion is silent as a tomb.

No, not quite. The plumbing groans just after sunrise the first day, and again just after sunset; the human upstairs runs water, flushes the toilet.

Angel's mind skitters away from that presence, not ready to face the living symbol of his sins, his failure and his loss.

He is so still, not even breathing, that the dust begins to settle on him. A rat scampers across his foot in the dark of the second night and like a striking viper he scoops it up, has his fangs in the thing before it even thinks to shriek. Reminding himself of the taste.

5) Working title: Turn the Corner in Istanbul

And here's another one that fits into the Fragments-verse (this is why I called it "Fragments," btw—I mean, not this snippet in particular, but the fact that my conception of it consists of so many disconnected fragments). This one wouldn't even have had Spike and Xander in it; it's set in Sao Paulo, several months before Spike and Xander are reunited in Late Night Porn Store Blues, and it deals with what happens when Willow and Oz meet, by accident, in a marketplace. I wrote 850 words of it.

She led him to a café she knew, just on the edge of the market. They each ordered coffee—his Portuguese was halting, but up to the task—and then they sat back in their wicker chairs and just looked at each other for a moment or two.

His hair was cropped short, and undyed. He had the faint remnants of a sunburn under his eyes and on his nose. The colorful woven shirt he wore looked handmade. He'd had a battered guitar case strapped to his back when they'd met; now it leaned against his knee.

"I saw in the news about Sunnydale," he said. "They said it was an earthquake."

So that was a story she needed to tell him. He'd suspected, of course, that the truth had been something Hellmouth related, but there'd been no one for him to ask. So she gave him a very condensed version of the last few months of Sunnydale, explained the First Evil and its Ubervamp army and the desperate battle in the high school.

"Is that how Tara died?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No, that was earlier. Anya died in the high school, though—you remember her, right? And Spike, too. He kind of won it for us, actually. Burned himself up to save us all."

6) This one didn't even have a working title! But the filename is Time Travel.

It really never got very far. Aw, heck, I'll just give you the whole thing!

The first sign of trouble, the first indication that things had gone terribly, horribly wrong, was that Xander woke up feeling fine.

Fine should not have been a possibility. When he'd landed in Johannesburg yesterday, he'd dropped his bags off at the hotel and headed straight for the skankiest bar he could find that looked like it'd serve a white guy. It had been a month since Sunnydale—Christ, listen to him, since Sunnydale, it wasn't a place anymore it was an event—it'd been a month, and this was the first chance he'd had to get drunk. The first chance to let himself seek out that oblivion without Buffy's hand on his shoulder or Willow's worried looks or Dawn's awkward, well-meaning attempts to distract him.

He remembered the first five rum-and-cokes. He remembered making a clumsy, drunken pass at some chick with honey-blond hair and a chin that reminded him of Anya's somehow. He remembered her walking away from him, thank fucking Christ.

He didn't remember making it back to the hotel, though. In fact, he didn't remember leaving the bar. But now he was lying in a bed, and there was no pain. His mouth even tasted okay, like somehow he'd managed to brush his teeth. These were portents of doom, he was pretty sure. Sooner or later he was going to have to open his eyes and find out where he was and—fuck—whether he was alone.

Wait. Open his...eyes?

Eyes still closed, he reached up to touch them. It. His left eye. The empty, aching socket, only it wasn't, not empty, not aching, but round and slightly squishy and eye-shaped.

Holy fuck.

"Oi, you awake then?" asked someone close by.

Xander's eyes flew open and suddenly he wasn't even thinking about the fact that there were two of them, because he knew that voice and it was impossible and—

—he knew this place.

Spike glared at him from the Barcalounger and flexed his bound wrists. "I'm bloody famished, Harris. What've you got in the fridge?"

And that's all, folks! Well, that was fun. Now I should go, like, write something.

Comments

[cowboyguy.livejournal.com]

Oh, please write all of them. Y'know, one day, after you've finished That Good Night and everything. ^_^ But I always love a good Fragments-verse fic, especially schmoopy and sappy ones.

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

Oh, please write all of them.

Hee! It's sweet of you to be so interested. The chances are very slim, however.

Really, I'm just an awful tease.

[sciencegeek.livejournal.com]

Oooo...excited about the London Calling sequel

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I really, really want to finish that one!

[shapinglight]

I still entertain the hope that one day you'll finish each and every one of them.

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

I'd be happy, myself, just to finish That Good Night! *eyes word processor*

london calling...i never felt so much alive

[zowiebwalker.livejournal.com]

SEQUEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!