The Drizzle to The Rain

Sunlight - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

2007-11-21T00:31:13Z

Title: Sunlight
Author: mutinousmuse
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,113
Characters/Pairing: Buffy/Spike with a few cameoes
Spoilers: Series.
Summary:Post series finale. Spike’s gone and Buffy’s seeing things.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Obviously.
A/N: Despite the fact that Buffy was my first fandom so many years ago, this is actually my first BtVS fic. Go figure. Anyway, this is my sappy-maudlin coda for what I think will always be my favorite show. It’s dedicated to mastermia, who made me smile because she wanted to read it.

Sunlight

The first time she sees him after the end she’s in the supermarket with Dawn. It’s a new rule – one normal sisterly activity per week – and today’s event is grocery shopping. She turns a corner and he’s there, crouching down in the pasta aisle examining a box of spaghetti noodles , and she can’t breathe.

“Buffy!” Dawn pokes in her in the shoulder with a jar of peanut butter. “Smooth or crunchy?”

Buffy takes a step forward, arm reaching out. “Spike?”

The man looks up, brown eyes narrowing in confusion, hair suddenly less blonde. She stumbles back, mumbling something apologetic, and not-Spike wanders away.

“He’s dead, Buffy” – Dawn’s needless reminder. “Plus, you know, sunlight.”

Sunlight. The thing Spike turned into.

“Right,” Buffy says. “Chunky.”

“Huh?”

Buffy grabs the chunky peanut butter out of Dawn’s hand and tosses it into the cart. It smushes the celery.

The second time she sees him she’s on patrol. Spin, swivel, stake, Spike. Moonlight glints off of his hair as he darts behind a tree. She follows him into the empty space, and the darkness absorbs him.

She spends the rest of the night wandering through the graveyards of Los Angeles and doesn’t come home until the sun begins to creep up over the hills. Xander gives her a funny look when she walks through the door – then again, most of his looks are funny now, what with the whole pirate thing.

She’s surprised he’s awake. He’s been casanovaing through the potentials – no, the new slayers – and generally doesn’t find occasion to crawl out of bed until the hour hand hits double-digits. She wants to tell him that they’re not Anya, that they’ll never be Anya, and that he’ll spend the rest of his life thinking he’s found her in other women only to watch her slip away, replaced by a stranger.

She doesn’t though – she may not have done the whole graduating from college thing, but she did learn enough from Psych 101 to recognize projecting.

It’s Friday night, which means dinner with Angel. They’re dating now, and it’s a thing, complete with flowers and films and French food. She laughs in the appropriate places, and he pretends not to notice the way her head turns whenever someone passes by in a leather coat.

“Most people don’t live happily ever after with their high school sweethearts,” Willow tells her, and it feels like permission.

Still, being with Angel seems like what she’s supposed to do, so she does it. Besides, she misses cold, hard arms.

It’s thoughts like that which send her out into the night, hunting. She spends her days surrounded by women like her – warriors. Chosen. But she still spends her nights alone.

She’s on a date with Angel the third time sees him. She ignores him, stares down into her soup as though she’s reading her fortune in the creamy broccoli bits. She waits for him to disappear, to turn back into a waiter or a shadow.

It’s not until Angel drops his glass of wine that she looks up.

“You can see him too?” she asks.

Both vampires look at her as though she’s completely batshit, and at least that’s normal.

“Spike.” Angel’s voice is somewhere between annoyed and amazed. “How are you here?”

Spike’s eyes dart back and forth from Angel’s face to Buffy’s to the half empty bottle of something expensive sitting on the table between them.

“I should go.”

He’s through the door before Buffy’s legs start working again, and by the time she reaches the street it’s predictably empty.

She walks home, and Angel doesn’t come after her.

She finds him the next night in a cemetery, perched on a headstone. They don’t talk for a while, and he still chain-smokes.

“So, you and Angel?”

Her words tangle up and Spike makes a noise that sounds like laughter. He mumbles something about how she deserves to be happy and starts to walk away.

“Hey!” She moves after him, grabs his arm and swings him around hard.

“If you wanted to dance, Slayer, you could have just asked.” He jerks back, flinging her arm away, and it’s so familiar that it almost chokes her.

“You can’t just… just come back, all weirdly not dead, and expect me to be sitting here waiting for you,” she snaps. “You died, Spike.”

“I waited,” he said. “For you.” It’s different, she wants to tell him, but he starts to pull away again.

“That’s not fair.”

“Piss off.” He lights another cigarette and flicks the match in her general direction. “Shouldn’t you be running back to the love of your life right about now?”

“Angel is not the love of my life,” she says. “And you still haven’t explained what you’re even doing here.”

“Not the love of your life?” he scoffs. “Fine. Your soulmate. Your Romeo. The Ken to your Barbie.” His gaze drops, and his voice follows suit. “You can’t tell me you’re not in love with him.”

It’s amazing, she thinks, when things get simple. “I’m not in love with him.” It feels strange to say it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Spike looks up. “Right, so, technically you can. But you can also tell me that you’re a 57-year-old brachen demon with a penchant for eating mayonnaise out of the jar but that doesn’t make it so, now does it?”

She takes a step forward, and they’re practically touching. “I’m not in love with him.”

Spike’s hand moves of its own accord to wind through her hair.

“I told you,” she says. “You didn’t believe me, but I told you. I love – ”

He cuts her off, lips crushing against hers. The world is tilting and something finally breaks inside of her but it doesn’t hurt.

When they can speak again, he tells her about The Powers That Be and the amulet and waking up on fire somewhere beneath the earth. She tells him about the celery, and it’s kind of an even trade.

The fifth time she sees him he’s in the kitchen using his patient voice to explain to a wooden-spoon wielding Xander that he’s not The First. Buffy briefly considers reminding Xander that wooden spoons proved generally useless against The First anyway, but decides to pour herself a glass of water instead. She lets herself stare at him – they way his jaw muscles clench and unclench, the way his fingers are never still – and pieces of herself begin to float back together.

She falls asleep tangled up in him on the couch watching old black and whites. He’s still there when she wakes, and he’s warm. Warm like sunlight.

~fin

Unexpected - Heroes

2007-06-01T04:09:27Z

Title: Unexpected
Author: mutinousmuse
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,021
Spoilers and Warnings: Spoilers through the S1 finale. Warning for vaguely incesty Claire/Peter vibes.
Characters: Claire, Peter, Noah Bennet (still getting used to that!)
Summary: One month after the blast, Peter returns to find Claire.
Author’s Notes: Monumental thanks to truemyth and txtequilanights for being amazing betas, and for holding my hand as I walked directly into the special hell. Characters not mine. Obviously.

Unexpected

Claire Bennett couldn’t fly, and half the time it seemed like she was just about the only one. But when Peter Petrelli showed up in her living room alive and intact and so very clearly not blown to radioactive bits… well, she might have flown then.

When the late afternoon knock at the front door gave way to a pleased-sounding greeting on the part of her father, she was mildly curious. After all, between killing his closest business associate and moving the family to Nowheresville, U.S.A. her father hadn’t exactly been getting a lot of visitors lately. Nor, for that matter, had she. But most days she was fine with that, all things considered.

Maybe it was the Haitian at the door, she figured, eyes drifting back to the month-old copy of Seventeen magazine sitting next to her on the couch. She was halfway through the quiz – an insightfully crafted piece allowing her to explore whether or not she was “girlfriend material” – which constituted the closest thing she’d had to intellectual stimulation since the ANTM marathon wrapped up Sunday night. The second semester of her new school started in a week, and Claire was secretly (very, very secretly) looking forward to it. Just a little. Spending the final year and a half of her high school career at some hole in the wall that had little more to recommend it than the fact that none of the cheerleaders’ brains had been forcibly removed of late wasn’t exactly a thrilling prospect. Still… anything beat listening to her mother craft spontaneous odes to the sublime beauty of Mr. Muggles.

She was deciding between “My dream date involves twelve roses, a limo and a four-star restaurant!” and “Barefoot on the beach works for me!” when her hand froze mid-air. Froze, because there was a ghost in the room, and Claire only sort of didn’t believe in ghosts.

The ghost had his hands shoved in his pockets, and apparently hadn’t read the ghost manual very carefully because his hair was a little longer than it had been when she’d last seen him, which didn’t make any sense at all since ghost hair wasn’t supposed grow. At least, she was pretty sure it wasn’t.

That was the part where she flew.

Ghost-Peter staggered back a few steps as 105 pounds of cheerleader collided into his chest, but there was no hesitation in the way his arms immediately came up to crush her closer against him. He felt like Peter and he smelled like Peter (a cypressy sort of smell that Claire hadn’t been aware of committing to memory), and all evidence to the contrary, Claire pulled back a few inches away and gasped out two accusing words: “You’re dead!”

“Only a little,” Peter replied, a hint of a smile peeking out from one corner of his lips. Claire’s eyes drifted to fix on the curve of his mouth as he spoke.

“How? I saw you explode!”

“I regenerated,” he said, and Claire decided she now understood the expression about heads reeling. “You saved my life, Claire.”

She thought she felt his fingers twist into the material of her shirt a little more tightly as he spoke, and she opened her mouth to respond. Before she could find out what she was going to say, a movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention.

She turned her head to meet her father’s gaze, and immediately broke away from Peter to take two steps back. She felt a brief but intense rush of guilt which she immediately shoved aside. Who wouldn’t hug a newly-resurrected uncle, she reasoned, ignoring the way the skin on her back tingled a little bit where his fingers had dug into her skin through a very thin layer of cloth.

“We thought for sure you were dead,” her father said, moving to sit down on the loveseat. Peter followed suit, lowering himself onto the couch where Claire had sat moments before. An intense wave of surreality washed over her as she took in the scene before her: Peter, recently dead, sitting casual as you please on her sofa as though he’d just stopped by on his way home from the bookstore. Or whatever type of store he liked to go to. Feeling a bit light-headed, she allowed herself to drop down onto the opposite end of the couch, unable to tear her eyes away from Peter. She’d known that she missed him, but… she realized suddenly, maybe even epiphany-like, that she had really missed him.

“Me too,” he said, and she realized he was responding to her father. “I never really thought I could live through something like that.”

“What about – ” Claire blurted, the sentence stopping as soon as it had begun. She wasn’t sure what to call the man she’d known for only a few short days before he ostensibly blew himself to bits to save an entire city.

The pained look that shot across Peter’s face answered her unfinished question. For the past month she’d assumed that Nathan – her father – was dead. Nonetheless, at this clear confirmation, her chest quickly and unexpectedly crushed in on itself and her breath lodged in her throat. A painful feeling congealed behind her eyes and she looked away, vision settling on a picture of her father – her real father, she thought harshly – standing between her and her brother on some fishing trip she’d complained about the entire time. She took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out in increments.

But Peter’s alive, a small, insistent voice in her head reminded her. Peter’s alive, it continued, and he’s sitting right here, and he’s three feet away from you. Hints of the elation she’d felt moments before unfroze, putting cracks into the hardening pain that the verification of Nathan’s death brought. She fought back the sudden but intense urge to reach over and grab Peter’s arm and shake him, just to make sure he was there - really there. She looked up to see that he was staring at her with an odd expression on his face, almost as though he could hear her thoughts, and she looked away again.

“At first we thought, maybe…” Peter said softly, his left hand reaching out to crinkle a page of her magazine back and forth as he spoke. “After DL and Parkman stabilized, we started looking. Mohinder and I. We thought maybe Nathan had flown away fast enough…” His words trailed off into ambiguity , and no one spoke for a long moment.

It was her father who broke the silence. “Parkman made it?”

Claire wondered wildly who these people were, really were, and how they all seemed to know each other. In the past month she’d been filled in on the baseball card bios of these people whose lives were inextricably connected to hers, but they were more like characters in a movie she’d seen – not real to her, like Parkman apparently was to her father. In moments like these, she felt like she was assembling a jigsaw puzzle facing upside-down.

“Everyone else made it,” Peter’s voice broke into her thoughts, and she noticed that he’d placed an uncomfortable emphasis on the word ‘everyone.’ He met first Claire’s gaze, then her father’s. “That’s the other reason I’m here.”

Eyes widening, Claire felt an icy chill spread through her gut to battle with the other emotions already swirling inside of her. “Sylar?”

Peter nodded. “There’s more, actually. Molly – the tracking system – she said there’s someone else. Someone worse than Sylar. Someone who can see her when she thinks about him.”

“Who are these people?” Claire said, vaguely away that her voice sounded a little hysterical. “I thought we won.”

“Peter, I think you’d better stay for dinner,” her father said. He stood to walk into the kitchen, stopping to squeeze Claire’s shoulder on his way out of the living room. His face had regained the tight, nervous look which he’d begun to shed over the past month, and Claire told herself very sternly that she was not going to cry. She realized then that Peter was sitting much closer to her than he had been moments ago. He grabbed her hand and leaned in to look her in the eye.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She laughed, and the noise seemed to come from somewhere else in the room. “You come back from the dead to tell me that the world is still ending, and you want to know if I’m okay?”

“I’m sorry, Claire,” he said, the words seeming to tumble out of him as though they’d been held in his mouth for a long time.

“I know it’s not your fault,” she said.

“I’m sorry for before. For not telling you that we were going to see Nathan. I’m sorry that – ”

“Stop.” The word came out harsher than she intended, and she winced.

He released her hand as though he only just realized he’d been clutching it and sat up very straight. “Sorry.”

“Just stop apologizing!” she said, and the funny-sounding laugh was there again. “It’s okay. I’m not – you were dead, and I – ”

She stopped talking and her eyes narrowed in frustration.

“You what?” Peter’s eyes seemed seven shades darker than they had any business being, and Claire swallowed tightly.

She wished very intensely that Peter hadn’t let go of her hand.

Peter went very still, the odd expression from before returning to color his features. He turned away abruptly, picking up the nearest thing to him – her magazine – and glancing down at the open page.

“What is it?” she asked, a bizarre suspicion creeping into her thoughts. “Peter?”

When he turned to face her again, though, the strange look was gone, replaced by a comical, wide-eyed stare.

“Are you girlfriend material?” he asked incredulously.

The juxtaposition – Peter, her sofa, Sylar, Seventeen – suddenly struck her and Claire felt laughter – real laughter this time – pouring out of her. Peter raised an eyebrow and shook his head, and she felt some of the Sylar-induced panic begin to drain away.

“It just so happens that I am,” she replied, grabbing the magazine from his hands and tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I think. I hadn’t quite finished the quiz when you decided to go all Dawn of the Dead on me.”

“Well by all means,” he smirked, “don’t let me keep you. If I’d known you were doing something important, I would have come by another time.” He leaned back into the cushions, crossing his arms with an air of indifference as though he hadn’t just announced that the man who had tried to slice off the top of his head was alive and well and quite possibly planning on a sequel.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said.

For a moment his face slipped, sheer exhaustion contorting his features before a quirky sort of half-grin took its place. The look passed quickly, but Claire could still see hints of it around his eyes, and at the corners of his lips.

“So let me,” he said.

She exhaled softly and then nodded, turning sideways on the couch. She propped her bare feet against his leg and bent her knees to create a writing surface, determined to chase the illusion of normality for a few more minutes before the unavoidable dinner-table conversation about psychopathic telekinetics with a taste for tissue regeneration began. And if Peter stiffened a bit as her feet made contact wit h his thigh, well, she decidedly did not notice, pouring all of her energy into the quiz.

After a few moments, she snuck a look at him, noting the almost envious expression on his face as his eyes traveled across the family photos scattered around the room. There it was again - the strange itch to touch him which she had no business feeling – and she set her pencil aside.

“Hey, Peter,” she said.

He looked over at her. “Hey, Claire.”

“I’m really glad you’re not dead.”

He smiled at her, the first actual smile she’d seen on his face since he arrived. “Me too.”

~fin

The First Time - The Office

2007-05-27T23:57:17Z

Title: The First Time
Author: mutinousmuse
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,974 and counting
Spoilers and Warnings: Spoilers through S3 finale. Warnings for mildly roughish sex, but it’s pretty vanilla compared to some other stuff I’ve written.
Characters: Jim/Pam
Summary: Obligatory post-finale smut.
Author’s Notes: Characters not mine. Obviously. Thanks so much to shizam23 for the beta!

The First Time

The first time they have sex it’s on the kitchen counter of her new apartment. She still thinks of it as her new apartment even though it’s been almost a year since she broke the engagement with Roy and moved out, and she really doesn’t want to be thinking about Roy while Jim is shoving his pants and boxers down and clumsily kicking out of them.

“I love that you always wear skirts,” he says, shoving the black material of her work skirt up around her hips. They went straight to the restaurant from the office. No passing go, he’d said, no collecting anything, almost as if he were afraid that she’d change her mind about their declared first date. She’s glad she’s not the only who’s nervous.

She’s also acutely aware that Karen almost never wears skirts, and she doesn’t want to be thinking about Karen either, so she just smiles and says, “I know.”

He’s pulling her panties down her thighs, and he has that look on his face that she hasn’t seen in a long time. Half of her can’t believe they’re doing this so soon when three days ago she couldn’t even look at him without feeling a little bit like she’d gotten sucker punched in the kidney; the other half of her can’t believe they had to wait all the way through dinner. (And all the way through Stamford and all the way through Roy and all the way through so many intentionally misinterpreted looks and arm brushes and half-smiles and not-dates and she’s definitely done with the waiting part now.) Goosebumps flare up and down her legs as his fingernails scrape over her knees, and she blushes, sudden and unexpected and bright bright red.

“I didn’t know the new Pam Beesly blushed,” he murmurs, kneeling down to pull the lacy pink scrap over her ankles. She knows exactly what he’ll see when he looks up and blushes even brighter.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about the new Pam Beesly,” she says and tries to laugh, shooting for flirty, but probably landing closer to the sound a kid makes when he accidentally shoots milk out of his nose in front of the girl he likes.

His hands turn one of her feet upward, and she realizes he’s checking to see if she’s got scars or calluses or any other sort of alteration from her impromptu dash across the coals. She does, but they’re not on her feet. He’ll see them later, maybe, after, when they’re talking. Or maybe they won’t talk. Maybe he’s not a talker afterward. Roy wasn’t, and why is Roy here again when Jim is kneeling down below her, face slowly turning upward to see her, really see her. He’s looking up at her now, like she knew he would, and his smile changes, sharpens, as he pushes her knees further apart. Lips crush against the skin on the inside of her calf and then creep upwards. He doesn’t hesitate at all, and the throbbing that’s been building somewhere low in her gut expands outward as she realizes she’s shaking, and then his lips are right there and she can’t stop her hips from jerking forward into him.

He pulls back, eyes dark, and kisses her thigh. “Easy,” he says in the voice he saves for his moderately funny jokes (although he’s got a different tone entirely for the really funny ones). But this isn’t a joke, and there’s nothing easy about it, and she almost gets mad for a second, but then the look on his face shifts subtly and she knows he isn’t laughing at her. He mostly just looks hungry, and then his mouth is on her again. The shaking is gone now, replaced by a low-level humming that’s coursing through her veins, seemingly intent on moving inward to concentrate itself on the tight spot beneath his lips. When the explosion comes, she makes a sound that she’s fairly certain she’s never made before and then collapses back onto the counter. A wayward fork digs into her spine in a way that should hurt but doesn’t.

She can’t feel him anymore, and she looks up to see that he’s taken a step back, his eyes wide as he full out, blatantly stares. For a split second she can see exactly what he sees, almost like an out of body experience. Her hair is messy, the clip she’d been wearing at work discarded somewhere between the front door which she’s pretty sure they managed to slam shut and the entryway to her small kitchen. Her purple-striped blouse is unbuttoned, and she still has on the lacy pink bra which matches the lacy pink panties that Jim tossed somewhere near the refrigerator. Her skirt is bunched up around her waist, and her legs and arms are just sort of dangling, making her look like the broken rag doll she feels like.

He breathes out a single word – she’s pretty sure it’s “fuck” – and then pulls out his wallet.

“I told you I only take cash, right?” She surprises herself with the joke, arms moving to prop herself up, and a grin cracks his face wide open.

“Can I open a tab?” he shoots back, pulling a condom out of his wallet and ripping the foil open smoothly. He’s naked and she isn’t and that should probably feel odd, but it doesn’t. He rolls the condom down in a movement that’s clearly practiced, and she wonders fleetingly how many girls he’s been with. For her it’s only been Roy. A tiny shred of insecurity worms its way into her thoughts as she wonders how she matches up against Karen and Katy and the countless other unknown women he’s been with.

He notices her expression change, and he pulls her up so that she’s sitting upright on the counter, pressed against his chest as he stands between her legs.

“Do you have any idea how many times I’ve thought about this?” he asks, and his voice is now Serious with a Capital S, devoid of any traces of sarcasm.

She nods. “I think I probably do, actually.”

He kisses her, and even though he’s been doing it all night, in the parking lot of the office, at the restaurant, on her front porch while she fumbled through her purse for her keys, it still doesn’t quite seem real. She can taste herself on his tongue, and it’s strange but not offputtingly so. Roy would hardly ever go down on her, and when he did he’d usually move straight into the sloppy fucking he seemed to enjoy as soon as he was done, and she wonders if it should freak her out that Roy keeps popping into her thoughts when she’s finally, finally here with Jim.

She pulls away and looks down. “Is it weird that I feel sort of, almost, guilty?” She immediately feels like a jerk for asking, because she knows that he’ll know that she was just thinking of Roy, but apparently this whole being honest gig is getting to be kind of permanent.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Probably not… you were with him for a long time. Last time we did anything like this, you were still with him.”

“Do you?” she asks.

“Do I what?” He begins to trace his fingers down her arm at a maddeningly slow pace.

“Feel guilty.”

His features shape into a vague surprise. “Because of Karen?”

She nods, and his fingers reach the end of their destination to thread through hers. He squeezes her hand once.

“You know what?” He looks up, and their eyes meet. “I’m done feeling guilty.”

She kisses him this time, wrapping her legs around the backs of his thighs to pull him closer. He slides her blouse down her arms and she drops it on the floor. His lips move away from her mouth to land on the side of her throat. She tilts her head back to grant him better access and then gasps as his teeth graze gently over the spot where her neck melts into her shoulder. She can feel him pressing into her thigh, hard against her softness, and her nails dig into his waist.

“I want you,” she breathes, and it’s the truest thing out of a string of true things she’s been saying lately, and it feels really fucking good to say it.

She surprises herself again by reaching down between them to guide him into her. His eyes are wider than she’s ever seen them, and in fact his entire body suddenly seems frozen, almost like he’s afraid to move, afraid to shatter the moment, afraid to wake himself up. She loves that she does this to him, because it’s exactly what he does to her.

So she smiles, and pulls him into her more deeply, and then he’s the opposite of stillness. His hands are everywhere, his mouth is everywhere, and he’s moving inside of her with a singularity of purpose that has her tightening again already. She rakes her nails down his back hard, because she can; he cries out into her hair, and his hips begin to move even faster. The counter isn’t quite the right height, and the angle is awkward, and she can already feel bruises begin to form on the insides of her thighs, but she thinks she kind of likes it. She tightens her legs around him, urging him faster, closer, and his left hand clamps down around her hip in a vise grip. His right hand moves to dance across the fabric of her bra, fingers swirling over her gently, and she arches her back. He pinches slightly and she moans, arching into him even more. He pinches down again, harder, too hard, and she shudders suddenly and violently into a climax, a deep, throaty sound fighting its way out of her as she shakes against him.

His movements become jerky, the rhythm breaking, staccato, and then he stills.

“Holy fuck.” His words are panted into her hair, and she nods. She can’t talk yet. She leans forward into him, waiting for her heart to slow from a gallop to a brisk trot before responding.

“You can definitely open a tab, Halpert,” she says finally, and she can feel his smile as he presses a kiss against her forehead.

“So does this mean I get a second date?”

“Mmm hmm.” She kisses his shoulder, and he brings a hand up to play idly with her hair.

“We could double with Angela and Dwight,” he says offhandedly. “Save money on carpooling.”

“Or Jan and Michael,” she says, voice thoughtful. “She could cook for us, since she’s going to be doing the whole housewife thing.”

“You have a twisted mind, Beesly.”

“You know you love it,” she replies, etching meaningless designs into the skin of his back with her fingertips. The sound of his laughter makes her feel light and floaty, like something very small with wings. She pushes him away gently and then eases herself onto the floor. “You want to come upstairs?”

“I don’t know,” he muses. “I thought maybe we could give the bathroom sink a go.”

She grabs his hand and pulls him after her. “Only if I get to be on top.”

He makes a funny laughing-choking sound, and he follows after her. She turns and looks at him over her shoulder, her smile so big she’s not quite sure how her face is containing it. They’ve got matching shit-eating grins, and his hand is still clasped tightly in hers, and they’re tripping up the stairs like teenagers who got into the wine coolers when no one was looking.

The second time they have sex it’s in her bed, and the windows are open, and Pam doesn’t think of Roy at all.

~fin

Originally posted here at office_fanworks.

May Cause Lapses in Memory - The Office

2007-05-27T23:55:09Z

Title: May Cause Lapses in Memory
Author: mutinousmuse
Rating: G
Word Count: 326
Spoilers: A Benihana Christmas
Characters: Jim/Pam, Dwight, Karen
Summary: Just another day at the office.
Author’s Notes: Characters not mine. Obviously.

May Cause Lapses in Memory

Pam blinks a few times and shakes her head. She realizes Jim has stopped talking, and glances upward.

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”

She makes an apologetic face and doesn’t say anything in response. It seems like the better choice, considering that Option Two is, ‘When you lean over like that, your tie kind of dangles forward and I can’t seem to quit imagining wrapping my hand in it and yanking.’ So, yes, silence, golden and all that.

Jim quirks up one corner of his mouth and repeats what he must have just said, slowly, like he’s pretending to talk to a six-year-old. “Do… you… want… a… soda?”

“Oh,” she sort of laughs, and then shakes her head. “No, I’m good.” She thinks he might almost look disappointed, which is absurd because they’ve barely just started being friends again, but still she adds, “Besides, I just told Dwight that I read some article about how soda causes early-onset Alzheimer’s. Because of the aluminum. So, yeah.”

“Oh, that’s great,” Jim says, giving her that grin, and then he leaves to go buy four cans of Coke. He chugs them one after another, and then spends the rest of the morning calling Dwight ‘Jerry’ and asking what day of the week it is. In response, Dwight wraps caution tape – and of course, she thinks, Dwight’s got caution tape in his desk – around the soda machine; next, he tapes a memo on the refrigerator requiring that all employees wear nametags.

After lunch, everyone has a ‘Hi, my name is…’ sticker on their desk. Ryan’s says ‘Temp’, and Karen whites out her name and draws the Prince symbol in its place. Jim laughs maybe too long when he sees it, and Pam kind of wishes she’d never said anything about the soda thing in the first place. She spends the next twenty minutes shredding old receipts one at a time. It’s good to be thorough.

~fin

Originally posted here at jim_and_pam.

Not - Dr. Who

2007-05-27T23:50:32Z

Title: Not
Author: mutinousmuse
Rating: PG
Word Count: 509
Spoilers: S1, but nothing even remotely specific after that
Characters: Rose/Ten
Summary: Set sometime shortly after regeneration. Rose and the Doctor go out for chips.
Author’s Notes: Just a plot bunny I committed to paper in ficlet form. This is my first time dipping my writing toes into this particular fandom, so concrit (as ever) would be lovely.

Not

He squints and sends the thought at her like a laser beam: I am not in love with you.

She picks another chip out of the basket and sinks her teeth into it. She chews slowly, like Jackie is standing off to one side, watching her. When she finishes the first half, she pops the second half into her mouth. Teeth, clamping down, grinding, dissolving matter.

She’s a purist. No ketchup, no salt. Just shredded potato drenched in grease.

“What are you squinting at?” she asks, fingers digging through the basket for another chip.

“Nothing,” he lies. “Just… I forget that this body needs glasses sometimes.” He pulls out his glasses, doesn’t put them on, just stares at them.

I am not in love with you.

“So how many times have you done that?” Teeth, grinding away at soft greasiness.

Seven hundred and two.

He looks up at her, raises an eyebrow, twirls the glasses around in his fingers, stalls.

“The whole regeneration bit, I mean,” she clarifies, and he swallows his words.

“That.” The glasses snap together, slip into his pocket. “I’m number ten.”

“You sound like a cylon,” she says, and he recalls the show her mother plunked them down in front of last night. Recalls the fleeting surprise that Jackie would like such a show. Recalls recalling that Jackie had raised Rose, after all, and maybe he has no business being surprised at the Tyler women any more.

He blinks. Not, not, not.

“I’m not a different model, Rose.”

“I know that.” Her eyes are in the basket of chips again. Fingers fishing, a performance of being distracted. “I just meant…”

“We haven’t been to Barcelona yet,” he says.

Her eyes lift and she smiles, and he almost wishes she wouldn’t, but he can’t quite bring himself to do anything but smile back and ignore the tightly bound things that begin to uncurl.

“Doctor,” she says, and he concentrates on concentrating. “You haven’t had any chips yet.”

Her hand lifts, a single slice of fried potato wafting through the space between them, and all he can think of is some ridiculous human sitcom he once saw with some excessively styled woman attacking a baby with a spoon, all the while shrieking ‘here comes the airplane, into the hanger.’ Here comes the airplane.

She cocks her head, hand wiggling a dead vegetable in his face, and there’s only so much he can take, really, before it just becomes absurd. He leans forward, mouth opening, lips wrapping around the chip, brushing ever so lightly against the tips of her fingers before pulling away to chew, chew.

He ignores the color that wasn’t in her cheeks moments ago, instead focuses on how saltiness tastes a little bit different in this new skin.

Not, not, not in love.

“So Barcelona, then?”

He exhales, and only then realizes it’s been awhile since he’s done so. “Barcelona.”

He looks up, squinting again.

“Doctor.” She’s smiling, reaching forward, hand dipping into his shirt, and god god god not not not. “Your glasses.”

~fin

Originally posted here at time_and_chips.

Taketh Away - Dr. Who

2007-05-27T23:48:41Z

Title: Taketh Away
Author: mutinousmuse
Rating: R for vague sex
Word Count: 1,927
Spoilers: Through “Doomsday”
Characters: Rose/Ten
Summary: A temporary reprieve.
Author’s Notes: Bundles of thanks to rather superhero-ish txtequilanights for the beta!

Taketh Away

When it happens, he is tying his shoe. It feels like someone is flickering every light that has ever existed on and off while blasting Yma Sumac in the background. It is over as soon as it’s begun, and shoelace forgotten, the Doctor braces himself for the crash-landing he knows is coming. This is only the second time he’s felt one of these – an intentionally crafted shift in the space-time continuum – and the last time, he was the one who’d orchestrated it.

The TARDIS thunders into the ground of a planet somewhere, somewhen, and when he opens the door, his shoe is still untied.

That is of little concern, given the face that greets him. He closes the door, blinks twice, and then opens it again.

The same face stares at him, and his eyes widen.

“You’re impossible.”

“I’m impossible?” Mickey responds. “That’s rich coming from a man who just fell out of the sky.”

“You can’t exist! You’re not in this universe anymore.”

Mickey gapes back at him, and the Doctor fumbles through his pocket for the sonic screwdriver. It’s not so much that he needs it for any particular purpose, but he feels a sudden and acute urge to do something with his hands. Because if Mickey is here, here in this universe, that means the space-time continuum has been disrupted a great deal more than he expected. There are other things it means, too, but he’s afraid if he says the wish out loud then it won’t come true, so instead he pulls the screwdriver out of his pants pocket with a flourish and an “A ha!”

At which point Mickey crushes him back into the side of the TARDIS.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks, voice indignant.

“Drop that thing,” Mickey grunts back. “Now.”

Before either man can say another word, a familiar voice cuts through the air, and the sonic screwdriver clatters to the ground – not because the Doctor has suddenly begun to take Mickey seriously, but because the muscles in his hands have simply stopped working.

He steps forward, brushing Mickey’s arms away like pieces of lint attached to his coat, and stops several feet in front of her. Words swirl through him like butterflies, fleeting bits of intangible beauty, before one of them finds its way out.

“Rose?”

She stares at him, and his entire body tenses as he waits for her to respond. She opens her mouth, and he leans forward.

“Who the hell are you?”

“So explain this to me again,” she says, and Mickey groans.

“I think I’ve had about enough of story time with the Mystery Surgeon.” He stands and takes a look around the pub. “Space-time-whatever rift or no, I’m getting another drink.” With a shake of his head, he wanders away.

“Your boyfriend has a cheerful disposition,” the Doctor says, swirling the amber liquid in his glass around and around.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she replies, and he attempts not to feel mildly elated. “We’re just friends now. And you’re changing the subject.”

“Too bad,” he says mildly. “He seems like a nice bloke.”

“He is.” She smiles ruefully. “He’s actually been spending a lot of quality time with our friend Jack lately.”

He freezes, glass in midair between the table and his mouth. “Jack?”

“Yeah, it was a little surprising for me, too,” she laughs. “Actually, he’s… right over there.” She points to the table where Mickey has just sat down, and the Doctor’s grip on his glass tightens. Mickey leans over to say something into the ear of the man next to him, and the Doctor exhales softly, chasing away disappointment with a sigh.

“You mean Jake?”

She gives him and odd look. “No, Jack.”

“You don’t… have any other friends named Jack, do you?” he asks, voice strangely hopeful.

“What, like I’m supposed to collect them or something?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

Taking another drink, he very deliberately doesn’t think about the probability that he should be off somewhere repairing the fabric of the universe instead of sitting in a pub with a girl who has no business being there in the first place.

“Hey – how come you thought you knew me when you first got off your ship?” Her eyes are narrowed, face shaped into a look of concentration, and the expression is so familiar that for a moment he forgets that she isn’t quite real.

His gut twists, guilt winding its way through him, but he shoves it down. “You remind of me of someone.”

“A girl?” she asks, and he thinks she might almost look disappointed.

“Yes. A girl I knew a long time ago.”

Her face softens a bit. “And you loved her?”

He is silent for a very time, and she thinks he might have forgotten she’s there, but then he speaks. “Yes. I loved her.”

“Did she die?”

“Worse.” He drains his glass.

Rose doesn’t ask what’s worse than death, but she reaches across the table to take his hand. The air crackles where their skin connects, and his eyes widen. Her eyes snap up to meet his, surprised and maybe a bit of something, but she doesn't pull away.

“Want to go for a walk or something?”

“Sure.” The Doctor pulls her up by her hand and leads her out the door, never once letting go. They make it as far as the local park before their faces fuse together.

Her hands are tearing through his buttons and his finger are shoving at the material of her skirt, and she pulls away and asks him if she’s just supposed to scream “Oh, Doctor,” or if he’s actually going to tell her his name.

“Stranger things than that have happened, too,” he replies, eyes glinting.

It’s quick and urgent against a tree, one she remembers climbing as a child, and she bursts into an elated-sounding laughter halfway through that she can’t attribute entirely to the sublime oddness of the situation. He, conversely, is silent throughout, hips pressing her back into the tree in a singular rhythm, eyes locked unwaveringly on her face. The only time his eyes clench shut is when he comes, and her name chokes out of his mouth as though he’s reluctant to release it for fear it will dissipate into the cool, thin air. He collapses against her afterward, hands digging convulsively into the material of her jacket, body shaking slightly. The shaking worsens, and she can’t tell whether he’s crying or laughing.

Awkwardly, her arms come up to pet his hair and she attempts to make comforting sounds. He mumbles an apology, thick and wet against her neck, and she shrugs it off.

“It’s okay,” she says. “My mum told me this might happen sometimes.”

“Your mum?” he says, and seems to find it funnier than he should.

“Yeah, my mum,” she responds, vaguely miffed for some reason she can’t quite place.

“I’m sure she’s a lovely lady,” he says, contrite, and the shaking appears to have stopped. He twines his hand into her hair, lips pressing chastely against her right temple, and then pulls back to meet her gaze. The intensity of it frightens her a bit, but she matches him, refusing to look away.

“What would you say if I told you, Rose Tyler, that I am madly in love with you?”

Her breath catches in her throat and she has no idea why. All logical evidence points to the impossibility of a complete stranger who has just shoved her skirt up around her waist and shagged her against a tree being in love with her. Nonetheless, his words do something odd to her insides. So she slips sideways, out from under his embrace, and makes a great show of adjusting and straightening her clothing. Looking carefully at a button on her shirt, she replies, “My mum said men might say things like that, sometimes, too.”

He barks out a laugh, the sound scraping skin away as it makes it way out of his mouth. “Right. That’s that, then.” He runs a hand through his hair and turns to leave, but stops dead in his tracks when her hand catches his.

“But I wouldn’t mind getting some chips or something sometime,” she says, and this time it’s she who leads him by the hand.

They end up in the TARDIS, and he’s frenetic, adjusting knobs, tweaking dials, shouting about Barcelona, when she asks, “But what about the space-time rift thing? I thought that’s why you came here?”

His whole body stills, and for a moment she thinks irrationally that even his atoms must be frozen completely – he said in the pub that he was a Time Lord, after all – but then he’s moving again, readjusting knobs, rearranging coordinates. He grins at her, babbling something about dashing off to save the universe again, but his smile only reaches the lower half of his face, and she feels suddenly rather cold.

When they find the source of the disruption on a tiny planet in the middle of nowhere, his hands are shaking so badly he hides them in the recesses of his coat pockets.

“What is it?” she asks.

“It’s a time bomb. Last relic of the Time War.”

“That sounds bad.”

“It’s worse than that,” he says. “If I leave it here, the disruption will expand, undoing events at random. Undoing to end of the Time War. Bringing back the Daleks.”

He stares at the orb for a long time before sitting down unceremoniously on the ground and motioning for her to sit beside him.

She asks him something about the Time War, but he brushes away the question. Instead, he begins to tell her a story about a girl with the kind of curiosity that killed cats in droves, and a heart as bold and as beautiful as dusk on Septaforium, a planet with seven small suns. As he talks, she feels echoes like memories flitting through her mind, and marvels that even now, in the face of the truly surreal, her imagination continues to work overtime. But when he tells her of how he and the girl were separated, torn asunder and flung into two different universes before he could say goodbye, she begins to feel a little sick. When he talks about finding her again on a street corner in London after yet another one of the TARDIS’ infamous emergency touchdowns, she realizes she’s crying, and has been for several minutes. His arms wrap around her then, lips whispering promises into her hair that she suspects he can’t keep.

She pulls away, words coming out of her ragged and torn, asking, “So that’s it then? You smash the orb and I go back? And I don’t remember a thing?”

Her own devastation looks back at her from his face, an already shattered mirror, and she staggers to her feet. “Then leave it be!” She positions herself between him and the orb, eyes flashing defiance but something else beneath that, and he hangs his head.

“Rose – you know I can’t.”

When he kisses her this time, her chest constricts. Their lips break apart, and she inhales again and again and still feels like she’s choking.

“It’s not fair.” She chants it, a mantra, into the skin of his neck as his fingers create tiny bruises along the sides of her hips.

They hold hands while he obliterates the orb with the sonic screwdriver, and then he finds himself clutching at nothing.

It is a very long time before he remembers to breathe.

~fin

Originally posted here at time_and_chips.

Vignette - Dr. Who

2007-05-27T23:46:38Z

Title: Vignette
Author: mutinousmuse
Rating: PG
Word Count: 700
Spoilers: 2x4
Characters: Rose/Ten, Mickey
Summary: An angsty ficlet set immediately after Girl in the Fireplace.
Author’s Notes: Just rewatched GitF and needed a vent for the ensuing emo.

Vignette

Rose wound her way around another corner, Mickey close in tow as they toured through the deceptively extensive interior of the TARDIS. “That’s the kitchen,” she said, pointing towards a large room full of glowing bits and strange smells. “Though mostly we eat out.”

She gave a half-laugh, and Mickey smiled a little. It seemed polite. Rose glanced over her shoulder for the seventh time, and he let out a sigh.

“Supposing you show me where the shower is?”

“Of course,” Rose said. “Sorry. Feeling a bit jet lagged, then?”

“Something like that.”

“Down the hall, third door on the right.” Rose pointed in the general direction of the washroom, and Mickey nodded. “Holler if you need anything.”

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” Mickey said, and then vanished down the hallway.

Rose closed her eyes and sank back against the wall. She concentrated on the pulsating sensation emanating through the material of her shirt, the way the cool surface of the wall felt beneath the palm of her hands – anything other than the look on the Doctor’s face when he came back to the TARDIS alone.

She heard his footsteps echoing towards her long before he spoke, but she kept her eyes closed anyway.

“There you are,” he said, and for the first time since he’d regenerated, she could hear the effort beneath the manic lilt of his words. “Thought you were giving Mickey the grand tour.”

She opened her eyes then, and arranged her face into a smile. “He wanted to wash up,” she said. “I think he’s feeling a bit overwhelmed.”

“Well, that’s to be expected, first trip out.”

The Doctor jammed his hands into his pockets, swaying closer to her, and she pressed herself back into the wall a bit more firmly. The smile he’d been wearing faltered a bit, and he reached a hand out and pressed it against the wall next to her head. The space between them shrank to mere inches, and Rose floundered a little in the largeness of his eyes as they moved ever closer.

“So it’s just the two of us, then.” His mouth quirked wryly. “Way it should be, right? Rose and the Doctor, the Doctor and Rose.”

With a tiny gasp, Rose shot out from beneath him, skittering away as though burnt. “Right! You know, I’m just going to be in the control room. Controlling. In the room where that happens.”

She turned to go, and the Doctor grabbed her wrist, fingers gentle but insistent as he pulled her back.

“Wait.”

He closed his eyes as he kissed her, lips roving desperately over hers, hands clenching into her more tightly than she’d imagined they would. And she’d imagined this quite a lot lately, ever since his new hand had closed around hers beneath the falling ashes of the Sycorax.

And so she was more than a little taken aback to find herself shoving at his chest, backing away, throat closing up as though if she started to cry, she probably wouldn’t be able to stop.

“Stop.”

He stared at her, eyes half closed, mouth open, hands dangling uselessly at his sides.

“Just, stop it,” she continued, arms coming up to wrap around her waist. “I’m not her!”

His eyes widened at that, and he took a step forward. “I know that.”

“Do you? Or do we all just blend together?”

“It’s not like that!”

“Then what’s it like?” Her throat constricted even further, and she turned and ran before he could answer, following the twists and turns of the TARDIS at a whim. Silence chased her; no footsteps echoed behind.

The Doctor stared after her as she disappeared, unconsciously leaning against the same spot that had supported Rose minutes before.

“Oh, well done,” he muttered, face dropping into his hands.

Three doors away, Mickey poked his dripping head into the hallway. “What was all that shouting about?”

The Doctor looked up, air whistling out between his teeth. “Stubbed my toe.”

“Sorry,” Mickey said. “Say – don’t suppose you’ve got any towels?”

“Towels?” The Doctor straightened, deliberately burying the urge to chase after Rose and opening a cabinet that seemed to blend into the wall. “Towels I can do.”

~fin

Originally posted here at time_and_chips.

Happy New Year, Me - Veronica Mars

2007-05-27T23:18:18Z

Title: Happy New Year, Me.
Author: mutinousmuse
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word Count: 989
Spoilers: 2x10
Characters: Logan, Veronica, and a Keith cameo
Summary: Yet another “Who’s at the door?” fic. Sort of.
Author’s Notes: This is a vm_santa teaser gift for xbitexmyxlipx. Merry Christmas, Stocie! The goal here was to be anonymous, so I tried as hard to not sound like me as possible, which resulted in... well, an interesting writing style, if nothing else. Thanks to herowlness for the beta. :)

Happy New Year, Me

I exhaled slowly as Dad ambled down the hall, away from his 40-somethingth ball drop and off to sleep.

Happy New Year, me. Dead friend? Check. Boyfriend missing in action? Check. Massive hatred from the ‘09ers? Check, check, check. All I needed was some good old-fashioned sexual assault and it would be time to bust out the scissors.

When the knock on the door came, I almost didn’t answer. The odds of it being Duncan were slim to none, and besides – I may have played the part of the amazing girlfriend with aplomb, but that doesn’t mean I was really okay with the whole secret pregnancy thing. So who does that leave? Let’s see… perhaps the knock belonged to the cops – again – or maybe if I was really lucky, my drunken mother looking for a fresh start in 2006. In which case, I’d have to introduce Backup to his new brother, Winky the Flying Pig.

On the other hand, maybe it was Wallace.

I got up from the couch and went to the door. Please be Wallace, I thought. Please be Wallace.

I opened the door.

So. Not. Wallace.

“Happy New Year’s, Veronica.” His voice was soft, and he could barely meet my eyes. Instead, he shoved a fistful of Sack-n-Pack roses at me, each individually wrapped in plastic and still bearing a $2.99 price tag. “It was supposed to be a dozen,” he said. “But they only had eleven, so…”

I just stared at him. Words? No. And then I stared a little bit more.

“Can I come in?”

I swung the door open and stepped back. He wandered into the living room, standing awkwardly in the center looking very much the waterless fish. I realized that my fingers were clenched so tightly around the flowers that I was leaving nail-marks in my palm.

“I’m just gonna put these in water,” I said. “Um, do you want anything to drink? We have wine, and, ah, more wine.”

To my surprise, he shook his head. “No, I’m good.”

He settled gingerly on the couch, and I walked into the kitchen. I wasn’t sure if we even had a vase, but I found one shoved in the far back corner of an upper shelf. I vaguely remembered it from back in the days when celebrating a wedding anniversary didn’t mean Mom coming home with three bottles of champagne and a turtleneck. I pulled the vase out and began to peel the plastic wrapping off of the roses.

He had filled out the card on one of the flowers, and left the other 10 blank. The eleventh card contained one word: Sorry. I folded it up and shoved it in my pocket.

I really kind of wished it had been Wallace at the door.

While I attempted to arrange the roses into something semi-artful, I watched him. He was staring at the TV, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t seeing the New York revelers. It wasn’t until I sat next to him on the couch that he looked away from the screen. When his eyes met mine, they looked different than usual. There was always anger there, and something very, very sad. But this time, the anger was gone, and all that was left was a deep and ineffable despair.

See, I never talk like that. That’s how bad it was.

“Logan?” He looked back at the screen. “What’s wrong?”

“He sounds kind of like me, you know. When he says her name.”

“Who sounds like you?”

He looked at me again. “My father. My fucking father.” Logan wiped at his eyes, which had grown damp. “He said her name a lot, when he was fucking her. And when his face wasn’t on the screen, I could almost pretend it was me, you know? That he was just a sick fuck taping his kid in bed with his girlfriend, not...”

Logan stopped, and the blood drained from his face. “God, he probably had tapes of that, too. I’m sure they’re burned up now, but they must have been somewhere in the house. Fuck, Veronica, that’s probably why he wanted her in the first place.” Tears were pouring down his face by that point, and he made no attempt to hide it. He just looked at me, crying, and talking, and all I could do was stare at him. I end up doing a lot of that when he’s around.

So imagine my shock when my hand put itself on his cheek, and my thumb swiped at the water trickling down his face.

“Oh, god, Logan.”

And then he just… folded up. It wasn’t the first time he’d cried in my arms, but it felt different this time. Last time, it was awkward, strange. He wasn’t supposed to be there, and we had both known it. But this? This felt… normal.

Shit.

My dad is a superhero. He didn’t say a word the next morning – just scrambled a few more eggs than usual, and took Backup on a walk.

“She wasn’t, you know,” Logan said over breakfast.

“Wasn’t what?” The eggs tasted better than usual. Maybe Dad used more cheese.

“The love of my life,” he said, mouth juggling words and eggs. “I really thought she was. But I guess she was just a girl, you know? A really hot girl, but still.” He smirked, and while it came nowhere near his eyes, it was something.

I ate some more eggs.

“Do you have any coffee?” he asked.

I shook my head. “We just ran out.”

“You want to go grab some? I’m buying.”

I know that nothing but badness could ever come from a relationship with Logan. He’s irresponsible, and self-destructive, and generally a jackass. He breaks things, and people, and will very likely end up dead or in jail by them time he hits the big 2-0. All of these are very good reasons to stay as far away from him as humanly possible.

“Sure,” I said. “Let me grab a jacket.”

So, yeah. Happy New Year, me.

Originally posted to vm_santa - exact link not available.

Dear Logan - Veronica Mars

2007-05-27T23:12:51Z

Title: Dear Logan
Author: mutinousmuse
Rating: PG
Word Count: 544
Spoilers: General S3
Characters: Logan
Summary: Logan’s advice column! Heh.
Author’s Notes: This was written for and submitted to neptune_online. I don’t have the link to the issue in which it was posted, but go check out the comm! There’s a ton of great stuff!

Dear Logan,

My boyfriend bought me a kitten for my birthday. I think it was really sweet of him, but there’s just one problem – I’m allergic to cats! Should I tell him, or just stock up on the antihistamines?

Signed,
Sneezy

Dear Sneezy,

According to several doubtlessly reputable sources on the Internet, cats are often seen as symbols of sexuality, magic, femininity and intuition. Also, Satan worship. Take your pick, I suppose. At any rate, it seems to me that your boyfriend is trying to tell you to loosen up a little, lay off the army boots and try running a brush through your hair every once in a while. It can’t hurt, right?

Oh, I also read that overexposure to the source of an allergen can often diminish or even eliminate the allergic reaction. Try sleeping with the precious little puss directly on your face for the next two weeks. That should take care of your problem.

Sincerely,
Logan

Dear Logan,

My English teacher clearly has it out for me. Every paper I write gets a D or an F, and whenever I go in for tutoring, she says it’s my fault because I’m not working hard enough! I can’t get a failing grade in that class – I’ll never get into a decent college! Help!

Signed,
Maligned

Dear Maligned,

Clearly, what we’re dealing with here is a failure to communicate. Teachers are people, too. Pathetic, unfulfilled people who couldn’t hack it in their fields, but people nonetheless. And all people have one thing in common – greed. Have you tried purchasing your grade? Alternately, you could retain the services of a good hacker. Their rates are usually fairly competitive at this time of the year.

Incidentally, Mr. Clemmons, if you’re reading this, surely even you must be hip enough to know that “hacker” is a contemporary euphemism for writing tutor, right? If not, that would just be sad.

Sincerely,
Logan

Dear Logan,

Oh my god. My best friend says that pink is like the new orange, but I say it’s totally yellow. Back me up here.

Sincerely,
Like No Way

Dear Madison,

We’ve been through this. Yellow doesn’t work on you because it makes you look fat. Even Dick thinks so.

Signed,
Logan

Dear Logan,

You seem like you get laid a lot. What are some of your best pick-up lines?

Signed,
Pimp Dizzle Horn Dog

Dear Pimp Dizzle Ho– sorry, I just can’t,

While I’m reluctant to share my best material with the uninitiated, I can tell you this: Girls love it when you treat them like one of the guys. Seriously. Forget that flowers-and-candles crap. Get two tickets to a Slayer show, or even better, a monster truck rally. Now, a brief nod to tradition is fine – feel free to treat her to a hot dog and some domestic… soda. But don’t go overboard with the “being a gentleman” thing. You want to seem nice and heavy in the loafers, you know?

Also, pet names are a must. I recommend Sugarpuss. Sweet, but emphasizes what’s really important about your lady friend.

Oh, and don’t forget to throw in an ass-slap every now and again. Nothing says “I care about you” like a little possessive public fondling.

Best of luck, man!

Sincerely,
Logan

Originally posted at neptune_online - exact link not available.

A Day in the Life of Van Clemmons - Veronica Mars

2007-05-27T23:11:57Z

Title: A Day in the Life of Van Clemmons
Author: mutinousmuse
Rating: PG
Word Count: 750
Spoilers: General S1 and S2
Characters: Principal Van Clemmons
Summary: The title says it all.
Author’s Notes: This was written for and submitted to neptune_online. I don’t have the link to the issue in which it was posted, but go check out the comm! There’s a ton of great stuff!

A Day in the Life of Van Clemmons
By Van Clemmons

5:00 Awake. Again. Briefly contemplate tragedy of own existence before showering.

6:00 Coffee maker broken again. Coffee tastes vaguely like vinegar. At least it doesn’t taste like dead fish.

6:30 Someone has painted the words “ass” and “hat” in my parking spot. Does janitor have a sandblaster? If not, will put one in next year’s budget.

6:45 Check e-mail. Timothy Woodard’s mother has written again regarding her son’s physics teacher - third time this week. Claims that teacher is offering grades in exchange for sexual favors. Find this hard to believe, as Timothy is quite possibly the last child on the planet from whom anyone would want sexual favors. Also, fairly certain Mr. Wu isn’t gay – just Asian. Will call to schedule conference. That will be fun.

7:30 That bell is loud. I read about a school down in San Diego that uses wind chimes instead of bells. Better use of funds than sand blaster? Will have Mary look into it.

8:00 Meeting with Assistant Superintendent Robert Smith. Wants info regarding student abuse of anxiety disorder diagnoses. Problems at other school sites, too. His left eye twitches throughout the entire meeting, and he keeps adjusting his tie. Clearly, here is a man who has become too attached to the subject of his research. Huh. That was funny. Must remember to use that one at the staff luncheon in June.

9:30 Mary tells me the District Counselor wants to talk about this so-called Thumper’s attendance records. Kid’s been missing school for the past two weeks straight. Ostensibly this is a bad thing? Will practice “concerned face” in the mirror after lunch.

11:00 Find a pony-tail holder on the floor of my closet. Decide to leave it there and take an early lunch.

1:00 Lunch was good, if pricey. Italian. Saw the Sheriff there. Could have sworn he was with a student – Mercedes? Monroe? Couldn’t have been her – Madison! Right. Couldn’t have been Madison. Will continue to repeat that out loud.

1:30 Baseball team has an away game. Wants a dispensation to take their own cars instead of the bus. Have been getting more of those requests this year. Saves the district money anyway – don’t see how it could hurt anything. Too bad the team has the collective talent of a sack of dead monkeys. Not like that Fennel kid on the basketball team. Kid’s got the sort of jump shot that almost makes me forget he has a nasty habit of pawing through my files with the Mars girl after hours.

1:33 Mars girl. Dammit.

1:35 Check color of hair on pony tail holder in closet.

1:37 Slam head into desk.

2:00 Contemplate calling Veronica’s father. Decide against it. Instead, find a nice website with a lovely wind chime catalogue. Send link to Mary.

2:10 Try to catch Veronica Mars on her way out to the parking lot. She seems to have reattached herself to the Echolls boy. Hope one of them is sterile. Anthropomorphic, my left foot. I’ve got a word for you, kid – also starts with an ‘A.’

2:15 Head back to office. See Mrs. Woodard through the window.

2:20 Confiscate a student’s hat. Wear it low on head and slink past Mrs. Woodard. Ignore Mary’s look. Woman should be busy ordering my wind chimes anyway.

2:50 Get home. Sit down to write commencement speech.

2:55 Google “commencement speech.”

3:00 Hit print, cross out “Dundee” and add “Neptune.”

3:05 E-mail Mary. Tell her to tell Mrs. Woodard that I have developed a wretched case of the whooping cough.

3:10 Practice “sick face” in the mirror. Not bad.

3:30 Grab confiscated beer from fridge and turn on Animal Planet.

4:00 Attempt to bond with son, who has recently taken to wearing eyeliner. Should I be worried? Does this mean he is now eemow?

4:10 Google “eemow.” No hits. Make a note to ask Mary about it tomorrow.

6:00 Dinner. Try out a lovely recipe for ratatouille. Attempt to broach subject of “eemow” with son. Must have been too subtle. Perhaps the school nurse has a pamphlet?

7:00 Wash dishes. Attempt to get rid of vinegar taste from coffee maker.

8:00 Beat own Free Cell score.

8:01 Enjoy the moment. Success is fleeting and ephemeral. Hmmm. Include in commencement speech?

8:30 Floss and brush teeth. Moisturize. Lay out clothes for tomorrow. Decide on red “power tie” in preparation for the Wu-Woodard meeting.

9:00 Set alarm for tomorrow. Oh, the joy.

Originally posted at neptune_online - exact link not available.

Hate, Detest, Loathe - Veronica Mars

2007-05-27T23:07:29Z

Title: Hate, Detest, Loathe
Author: mutinousmuse
Rating: PG-13 for being a bit faaaaabulous
Word Count: 1,123
Spoilers: None really – college AU
Characters: Logan, Veronica, Wallace
Summary: Logan regrets volunteering to help Veronica out with a case.
Author’s Notes: Written for the vm_have_a_day challenge. X-posted to veronicamarsfic. Thanks so much to truemyth for the beta!

Hate, Detest, Loathe

“Have I mentioned recently that I hate you?” Logan’s eyes narrowed into a practiced glare, aimed directly at a mascara-wielding blonde whose face was stretched into a rather obscene grin.

“Quit wiggling,” she said, and then planted her left hand across his face, effectively stilling him. “And quit glaring or I’ll never be able to get this stuff on.”

Logan concentrated on glaring with his left eye while his right was assaulted with gooeyness. She finished the one, and he switched the glare to the other.

“Because if I haven’t mentioned it recently, this feels like an excellent time to do so,” he groused.

Veronica capped the mascara, grin still firmly in place, and then admired her artistry. “You were the one who wanted to help out on my cases, Logan.” She licked her thumb and reached out to wipe a stray bit of eyeliner from the corner of his eye.

“I guess I just thought there would be a bit more bursting through doors and rescuing dames involved,” he mused. “And a bit less satin. At least, on me.”

Veronica snorted. “Dames?”

Logan shot her a look of doom, and she chuckled. He stood and staggered awkwardly towards the mirror, weight shifting unsteadily from one 4-inch heel to the other. “Did it really have to be orange? I mean, really?” He plucked at the strap of his dress forlornly.

“Don’t you dare get weepy on me,” Veronica chuckled. “I am not doing your make-up again. Besides, it’s like, the new pink. Or something.”

Logan stared at his reflection from the floor up, shaking his head as his eyes traveled over his feminine twin. His feet were crammed into what he could only think of as fuck-me boots that extended, black and shiny, all the way up to his knees. Above them stretched a strappy garter belt that disappeared under the hem of his thigh-length dress. The dress itself a cacophony of orange ruffles and – proof positive that Veronica was a fucking sadist – sequins. A wig of matching color adorned the top of his head, shaped into a beehive.

And then there was his face. His face, which would have been cringing, had it not been held firmly in place with four pounds of foundation.

“You look lovely,” Veronica said.

“I look like a three-dollar hooker!”

“Oh, I’d say at least four,” she replied, face straight. “And from what I gather, our philandering husband seems to have a taste for rather masculine four-dollar hookers.”

“Did I say hate?” he asked, turning to face her. “Because I think I meant detest. Hate seems too pedestrian.”

Grinning wickedly, Veronica pulled her phone from her pocket and flipped it open. “Smile pretty!”

“Ack!” Logan threw his arms up in front of his face a split second after the phone had already grabbed his image and converted into a magnificent rainbow of ones and zeros. “Loathe, even!” he howled, and then lunged for the door as a knocking sound echoed through Veronica’s dorm room. “Oh no you don’t,” he cried, teetering forward like a drunken giraffe.

But Veronica moved a bit faster, and he arrived just in time for her to fling open the door, placing him face-to-face with a rather stunned Wallace. Logan let his head clunk sideways into the doorframe with a groan, bemoaning the lack of dramatic effect as the wig muffled the sound.

“Logan?” Wallace asked.

“Actually,” Veronica supplied helpfully, “it’s Lorraine.”

“Oookay,” Wallace said, recovering quickly. “Hey, Lorraine, I’ll give you a three bucks if you’ll sing ‘I Feel Pretty’.”

Logan turned to Veronica. “See? I told you. Three dollars. Not four. Three.”

Veronica shrugged. “Maybe it’s the boots.”

Wallace cleared his throat. “You know, if I’m interrupting some sort of college-experimentation thing, I can always come back later.”

“It’s for a case,” Logan ground out. “I’m...” He trailed off, a pained look on his face.

“He’s the bait!” Veronica chirped. “Look,” she said, pulling down the front of Logan’s dress to reveal a small camera nestled between what the package had truthfully promised would be “ample bosoms.” The lens peered out through a tiny hole in the exceedingly sparkly neckline, disguised as just another piece of sequins.

“Nice,” Wallace admired, as Logan batted Veronica’s hands away from his chest.

“Birthday present,” Veronica responded.

“Gives ‘money shot’ a whole new meaning,” Wallace continued, ducking as Logan attempted to attack him with a tasteful, cream-colored purse.

“You know, Veronica, don’t you think this would work even better as a two-man sting?” Logan asked, and Veronica turned and gave Wallace an appraising look.

“Actually,” Wallace said, arms crossing protectively over his non-ample chest, “I just came by because I was hoping I could borrow your Psych book. Jack spilled beer on mine. So I’ll just grab that and be on my way. Now.”

“Nothing says teammate love like destruction of property.” Veronica crossed the room and grabbed a large, brown textbook from her desk. “Just give it back to me tomorrow in class.”

“Will do,” Wallace said. “Oh, and Lorraine?”

“Out!” Logan pointed at the door. “Or so help me god, I will give you a lap dance in the cafeteria.”

Wallace held up his hands in mock surrender and backed away. “Later, ladies!”

Logan slammed the door shut behind him.

“Not a word,” he warned, readjusting his recently manhandled boobs.

Taking pity on him, Veronica swallowed her smirk and sat down on the bed, patting the spot next to her. Logan flopped down beside her, his angular movements belying his accoutrements.

“Logan, I really do appreciate this,” she said.

He sighed and lay back on the bed, pulling her down with him. “I know.” Veronica scooted closer to him, an arm creeping across his hips to dangle lazily over the edge of the bed.

Logan’s fingers trailed back and forth over the bare skin of her arm, and she smiled against his shoulder. “You know, we do have a few more minutes before we have to leave,” she said softly, her hand snapping devilishly at one of his garters.

Logan sat up, looking scandalized. “You can’t be serious.”

Veronica raised an eyebrow at him, and for a split second, Logan’s hand began to inch forward. Then she laughed, and rolled her eyes, and hopped up off the bed to grab her keys and her camera. Logan stared after her and blinked, suddenly glad for the, ah, obfuscating protection provided by the ruffle-fluffiness of his skirt. And that was a thought he’d never thought he’d think.

“Ready?” she asked, glancing at him over her shoulder.

“And willing.” He stood, grabbed his purse, and took a last look in mirror. “You know, these stockings make my legs look hot.”

Veronica laughed. “That they do.”

~fin

Note: The prompt was...

Yup. :)

Originally posted here at fic_from_mars.