The Fic of a Snick

And another drabble. Incidentally, I'm still accepting prompts, no strings attached.

Fifth Sense
For angearia: Oz/Willow

He could smell it on her: the magic. The wolf probably read the whole scent like a fragrant guitar riff, but he couldn’t remember that. Human, all he smelled was the Willow-smell, apples and incense and organic fibers. But in the seconds-long dusk between, he caught the tang of other things, rich and deep, and it was no wonder to him how she could love them. He could distrust that tang, but he couldn’t hate it.

What he hated was how it seeped into the Willow-smell until, in the last wolfish moment before dark, he couldn’t find her at all.

A general note on recs: since I’ve been in the fandom less than a year, I regularly discover old fic that I want to squee about. So, there’s no guarantee of anything here being new, just good.

Culture Vultures, by Yahtzee
post-Chosen
Oz, Willow, Faith, and an OFC go to a museum, and craziness ensues. I've read stuff by Yahtzee before and even recced some of it, and I've always found it thoughtful and smoothly told, but this is the story of hers I've fallen in love with. Much as I warmed up to Tara there at the end, if I had an OTP, it'd be Oz/Willow. Here they are, sort of, maybe picking up the threads of old romance while Willow tries to figure out who she dares to be. Plus: Faith!

The Scourge Does Titipu, by rebcake
pre-series
Pretty much what it says on the tin: post-play, the Fanged Four quote Gilbert&Sullivan (some of which is, as Rebcake points out, remarkably Jossian in tone and subject matter). Rebcake has been writing elegant little historical ficlets for a while now, but this is my favorite for the clever use of the referenced material, the perfect voices and the fun character interaction on an evening when all four vamps are in equitable moods.

Dawning, by goldenusagi
Spoilers through 4.8 "Pangs"
You guys know I'm a sucker for Spike and Dawn together, right? This series of ficlets chronicles their encounters up through mid-S4, and is on my very short list of "fics that might as well be canon." Brief, sparingly told, with exactly the right amounts of skepticism and covert curiosity on both sides.

The Last Hurrah of the Golden... Handshake? by speakr2customrs
Spoilers through Angel NFA
This drabble is for irate copyeditors everywhere, and is possibly also my favorite AU ending to "Not Fade Away." And did I mention it’s funny?

Many Happy Returns, by erimthar
post-Chosen
A ficlet that illustrates the Xander and Buffy friendship more clearly than almost anything else I've seen in fic. Brief, quiet, poignant, darkly humorous, and with brilliant Xander-voice.

In League With Serpents and Of Feathers and Forked Tongues, by WeyrWolfen
Vague spoilers through 6.17 "Hell's Bells"
Spike wins a smalled winged serpent in a poker game, and she proceeds to turn his life upside down. WeyrWolfen is fast becoming one of my favorite authors of plotty, sweet, romantic Spike/Buffy adventure stories. She confidently builds stories around the new supernatural elements she introduces to the Buffyverse milieu and manages the trick of making those new elements intriguing in their own right, while also peppering her fics with sparkling bits of character insight and nice turns of phrase. Plus, I love her Spike, who's struggling and befuddled and well-intentioned despite his best efforts. This story and sequel are my favorites so far, but Cycle of Rebirths, about Buffy and Spike's link to a long-dead Japanese Slayer and her husband, is also fun, plus it has the fabulous, completely Spike- and Buffy-free sort-of sequel Wash Cycle, which has one of the best, funniest original demon characters I've ever read. Also recommended is To Ride a Pale Horse, the mid-Ats S5 zombie apocalypse WIP, which she’s writing with AtheneWolfe.