Birthday Fic
Oct. 19th, 2005 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedeadlyhookWhat a morning - about to dash to the door with no time to do much of anything but bolt my coffee and damn if Toys's office chair doesn't hurt my lower back. Sad to say, but that's still an improvement on his previous chair.
But before I go, at least I can post my entry for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tesla321's Birthday Ficathon.
Happy Birthday, darling! Hope you have the bestest time!
Okay, this one's Angel/Fred... sort of. And yes, I did try, sweeties, but I seem to be inexorably shackled to character angst. It's a little interior-thoughts Angel piece, set in AtS Season 3, during "Heartthrob."
Handsome man saves me.
He watches her move around the room, stick-figure slim and nervous movement, babbling in jagged fragments. Writing on the walls.
He's nervous himself, jangled and disoriented from being back in the States and among friends instead of alone with his thoughts, but she doesn't need to know that. She's got her own thoughts, and his been alone with them for as long as he's been gone.
He keeps his eyes moving, doesn't let himself really watch her, track her like a predator. That's not what he's here for.
He's here to help. That's what he does.
Piles of papers everywhere. He has to clean off a chair to make space enough to sit down, and she's still talking nonstop, as if she were a teenager and he's a boy she likes.
Inky fingers fluttering at her hair, her glasses...
She does like him.
Just another reason to keep his eyes averted. Words fall out of him, kindly and soft. The sorts of things a concerned friend might say. All about how she needs to have courage, take the next step, venture from the safety of her cave...
Damaged. Fragile. The sort of person that, ever since the return of his soul, he's found himself wanting to help.
If her hair were a different color...
He's already met, and loved, another girl a little too much like her.
One that's gone forever now. That's what the whole retreat thing had been about. Meditation and silence. An isolated space in which to contemplate.
Of course he never got that, the isolated space. Not like this. He looks at her wall scrawls and wonders if she's figured out the kinds of things he was searching for. If there really is a formula to explain love.
She's strong, this girl. This... woman who'll probably still look like a girl no matter how old she eventually gets. Deceptively delicate. Like a flower on the outside, trembling, but a tiger within. Lost for years in a hostile dimension, and yet she survived. Found a way to help him when he was lost there too, and by doing so helped herself.
He could love her.
It feels like a betrayal to even think it, but he knows the feeling to be real.
Fred--and what kind of a name is that for such a lovely young woman, although that too is something she has in common with the one he loved. Brilliant smile, and the soft lines of her neck and her falling hair, hiding behind glasses she probably doesn't need--her eyes don't focus like someone with weak vision. Glasses as a shield, just like the curtain of her hair. A smaller cave she can wear around her face.
In the old days, he'd have smiled at her and... played with her.
Lifted that curtain of hair off her neck, traced a fingertip along the sensitive vein there and whispered to her of forbidden pleasures while she shuddered and gasped oh no please no I couldn't.
All that much more delicious for hearing her say no.
She's still talking and so is he. All of it calm and reasonable, even her ramblings, because even though she's vulnerable...
He's got to wonder if it's the soul that draws him so helplessly to women who are strong enough to fight back. Maybe that's his penance, or part of his curse, or maybe it's the way he's always been, choosing the strongest ones so it'd be worth more when they surrendered. Willingly or not. He doesn't like to think that he finds women to love the way he once found victims. Like diamonds lying on the ground, only needing a final artistic polish.
Her laugh, nervous. Fingers, fluttering like birds. Symbols everywhere, formulae. Incantations to let him know that this is a mind behind anything he's capable of comprehending.
In another life, he'd have made her a monster. In this one... he could break her heart.
Handsome man saves me.
Let her have the fairy tale. It's better than her seeing him as a man.
But before I go, at least I can post my entry for
tesla321's Birthday Ficathon. Happy Birthday, darling! Hope you have the bestest time!
Okay, this one's Angel/Fred... sort of. And yes, I did try, sweeties, but I seem to be inexorably shackled to character angst. It's a little interior-thoughts Angel piece, set in AtS Season 3, during "Heartthrob."
Handsome man saves me.
He watches her move around the room, stick-figure slim and nervous movement, babbling in jagged fragments. Writing on the walls.
He's nervous himself, jangled and disoriented from being back in the States and among friends instead of alone with his thoughts, but she doesn't need to know that. She's got her own thoughts, and his been alone with them for as long as he's been gone.
He keeps his eyes moving, doesn't let himself really watch her, track her like a predator. That's not what he's here for.
He's here to help. That's what he does.
Piles of papers everywhere. He has to clean off a chair to make space enough to sit down, and she's still talking nonstop, as if she were a teenager and he's a boy she likes.
Inky fingers fluttering at her hair, her glasses...
She does like him.
Just another reason to keep his eyes averted. Words fall out of him, kindly and soft. The sorts of things a concerned friend might say. All about how she needs to have courage, take the next step, venture from the safety of her cave...
Damaged. Fragile. The sort of person that, ever since the return of his soul, he's found himself wanting to help.
If her hair were a different color...
He's already met, and loved, another girl a little too much like her.
One that's gone forever now. That's what the whole retreat thing had been about. Meditation and silence. An isolated space in which to contemplate.
Of course he never got that, the isolated space. Not like this. He looks at her wall scrawls and wonders if she's figured out the kinds of things he was searching for. If there really is a formula to explain love.
She's strong, this girl. This... woman who'll probably still look like a girl no matter how old she eventually gets. Deceptively delicate. Like a flower on the outside, trembling, but a tiger within. Lost for years in a hostile dimension, and yet she survived. Found a way to help him when he was lost there too, and by doing so helped herself.
He could love her.
It feels like a betrayal to even think it, but he knows the feeling to be real.
Fred--and what kind of a name is that for such a lovely young woman, although that too is something she has in common with the one he loved. Brilliant smile, and the soft lines of her neck and her falling hair, hiding behind glasses she probably doesn't need--her eyes don't focus like someone with weak vision. Glasses as a shield, just like the curtain of her hair. A smaller cave she can wear around her face.
In the old days, he'd have smiled at her and... played with her.
Lifted that curtain of hair off her neck, traced a fingertip along the sensitive vein there and whispered to her of forbidden pleasures while she shuddered and gasped oh no please no I couldn't.
All that much more delicious for hearing her say no.
She's still talking and so is he. All of it calm and reasonable, even her ramblings, because even though she's vulnerable...
He's got to wonder if it's the soul that draws him so helplessly to women who are strong enough to fight back. Maybe that's his penance, or part of his curse, or maybe it's the way he's always been, choosing the strongest ones so it'd be worth more when they surrendered. Willingly or not. He doesn't like to think that he finds women to love the way he once found victims. Like diamonds lying on the ground, only needing a final artistic polish.
Her laugh, nervous. Fingers, fluttering like birds. Symbols everywhere, formulae. Incantations to let him know that this is a mind behind anything he's capable of comprehending.
In another life, he'd have made her a monster. In this one... he could break her heart.
Handsome man saves me.
Let her have the fairy tale. It's better than her seeing him as a man.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-19 09:48 am (UTC)Ooh, interesting insight. Nice look inside Angel's head.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-19 10:46 am (UTC)These are some wonderful insights, I'd say, into both Angel and Fred. So much of the later seasons seemed to portray him as the big, shy lunk who was mainly the muscle, it's easy to forget there's a cunning and insightful mind in there. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:14 pm (UTC)Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-19 11:46 am (UTC)In another life, he'd have made her a monster. In this one... he could break her heart.
I love fic that shows us the things that *don't* happen because we don't act on every desire; we choose which ones to let free.
Thank you for this glimpse.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:16 pm (UTC)in so many ways during this time, Fred is like Dru
I just couldn't stop thinking about that, going back to the way Fred was at the beginning. She's a shattered mind that Angel tries to save, to repair, but what's so interesting to me in those early Season 3 eps the way he also keeps his distance. He doesn't let her get too close.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-19 04:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-19 05:32 pm (UTC)So many wonderful lines I could point to and say "this one" - loved this so much! Fantastic!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:19 pm (UTC)I tried and tried to think of a way I could actually put the two of them together, but the more I thought about it, the more it kept coming to me this way, as something Angel might avoid, on purpose. So sad.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-19 05:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-19 07:53 pm (UTC):but in a good way!:
Thanks so much!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:20 pm (UTC)Glad you enjoyed! : )
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-19 09:46 pm (UTC)This is of the good. thanks.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-20 03:25 pm (UTC)I'm a funny one on Fred myself, in regards to pairings - you can almost convince me of a pairing for her with anyone, but in each of those it's like she's a different character. (I remember reading a Fred/Gunn story that I really liked, but only one, and that was sort of all about her willingness to accept unusual things in her life that other people get uptight about, e.g., interracial dating.) Maybe the idea of Fred is just large enough, and her characterization loose enough, that it's easy to just pick aspects of her to emphasize in a fic pairing? Hmm....
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 10:02 am (UTC)In the old days, he'd have smiled at her and played with her.
I just love that! It’s so simple and yet so chilling!
He's got to wonder if it's the soul that draws him so helplessly to women who are strong enough to fight back.
Well, there was Darla. But it’s definitely a pattern, isn’t it?
Really enjoyed that!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 10:44 am (UTC)Birthday Fic
Date: 2005-10-21 11:52 am (UTC)I like the idea of Angel not being with Fred cause he likes her too much as opposed to just not wanting to be with her.
Would you be willing to post this fic at Fairytale Beginnings?
http://fairytalebeginnings.dream-like-mist.net/fiction/index.php
I'm on staff there so I can do it for you if you're too busy or what have you.
Thanks!
Mare
Re: Birthday Fic
Date: 2005-10-21 03:21 pm (UTC)Thanks again!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-25 08:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-25 07:31 pm (UTC)