Brutti’s pick your own adventure day (1/7: The One With The Dragon)

I asked my flist what they wanted to read (pretty much as I did for last Seasonal Spuffy), but between us we didn’t come up with one thing I wanted to write. So I didn’t. I wrote seven. They span from season 5 time travel to simple pr0n, Pylea wing-fic to post-Apocalyptic schmoop. One of them not your thing? There’ll be another one along soon. And they’re short.

These are fragments of stories. They could grow, if you’d like to write more with this as a starting point (I’m thinking something like sb_fag_ends‘ Prompt Tag. Totally happy for anyone to take up the challenge, so long as you link back to here and let me know what you’ve written!). Or you can feed me comments or ideas, and we’ll see if some more of one of these gets written by me in time for Free For All. It’s an adventure!

If you’d prefer to read them all and treat them as a whole, they could all be vignettes from the life of Rulesverse Spuffy (since the Pylea fic is definitely Rulesverse, and the PWP probably is too), but I didn’t write them as such. It’s more like a pot pourri of Spuffy possibilities. Pick and mix at will, and enjoy!

Author Brutti ma buoni
Title Pick Your Own Adventure 1/7: The One With The Dragon
Rating and warnings PG
Word count 610
Medium Fic
Setting Post-series

“Spike, don’t-“

But too late, it has seen them. The leathery creak overhead screams dragon even before the warning burst of flame splits the path and temporarily separates Buffy from Spike.

(Temporarily, she hopes, anyway. He’s so flammable, and it’s only around flame that she ever truly fears for him in a fight. If he’d only have let her do this alone, she would be so much more relaxed. But no. Mr Fearless Vampire had to come to fight the dragons.)

Since a sneaky approach to the hoard is no longer an option, Buffy holds up the oriflamme she was kind of hoping not to use. But it works. The dragon lands, lumpen and scaly on the ground, losing the grace it kept in flight. Buffy casts the scarlet slip of silk around its neck, and starts to climb its foreclaw. Up the limb, onto the shoulder and then the neck. Where Spike is waiting, looking smug.

“Told you those heels wouldn’t be good for climbing.”

She ignores him, takes the two ends of the oriflamme in her hands, and tries to remember the Latin. Draco… something, something… levit…. “Uhm…”

Spike sighs, and sounds out the Latin. Showoff.

Then he starts to look a little off, as the dragon’s shoulder muscles work and they lift into the air; those vast leathery wings beating up overhead, then down, almost under the belly of the beast. It feels startling, surrounded by power and anchored only by silk. Buffy loves it.

Spike is going a pale shade of green. “How’d you steer it?”

Buffy thinks, as she looks over at him, how incredibly rare it is for Spike to look awkward. He usually blends in with the sheer power of his shamelessness. Apparently, though, dragons are not his style. “Um, Spike? You just told it where to go. No steering. Sit back and relax.”

Buffy may be showing off a little here. She may also be enjoying watching Spike be a passenger. It really doesn’t suit him.

The dragon breathes as they ride, sides heaving with exertion. Their legs shift and lift with each in-and-out; the scales under them grate and slip with the movements.

Buffy leans forward, on impulse, heedless of Spike’s alarmed shout and grab. She’s not slipping, she’s experiencing. This is possibly the only time she’ll ever ride on a drago- Oh.

She looks over at Spike, the alarm not yet faded from his face. “I’m really, really stupid sometimes.”

Just that, really, that’s enough to start him out of his fear. Because he appreciates how very stupid she’s not, he loves to hear it from her. (This goes both ways. Spike is far from a fool, impatience notwithstanding.) He grins, lopsided but game. “Yeh. Just remembering now, are we?”

“I wasn’t there,” she protests. “I didn’t see it.”

Which is true, and a sore spot to press a pointed finger on, she knows. He shifts irritably, forgetting his on-dragon location, and visibly twitches when he recalls just where he is. “No. You didn’t. Didn’t have a pretty piece of silk then. Nothing to hold it by. Nothing to tame it. Just had to-” He makes a hacking gesture, several of them, blows going different ways and different styles. He’s reliving the fight.

Buffy recognises Illyria’s fighting style, choppy and intense. Then, with a pang, the flowing, almost martial-arts-style Angel used.

(So there had been three of them, on the dragon. The last of them, from the alley. He’s never talked about it. Good to know.)

She leans forward, feeling the dragon once again. “Nearly at the hoard, I think – down there?”

This time there will be better memories from the dragon. She’ll make sure of it.

Not your cuppa? Part 2: The One With the Time Travel is now available

Originally posted at https://seasonal-spuffy.dreamwidth.org/790597.html