lackadaisicalnereid

Sometimes | HIMYM | Barney(/Lily) | for the December meme of doom prompt: you give love a bad name | for

spuffy_noelle | 487 words | PG. To

spuffy_noelle I hope you like this, and thanks again for writing the magnificent Barney/Lily for me ♥

It's something like this: sometimes, when he forgets to close the windows in his bedroom and it's cold, and he's too lazy to get up and close them, but he can't sleep, because he's cold, sometimes when that happens, he thinks.

Thinks about whatever, really. How Ted told a funny joke a few days ago, how Robin got so drunk yesterday she couldn't make it back to her own place and instead slept on Marshall and Lily's couch, how Marshall's scarily tall occasionally, but not always.

He thinks of Lily the most. Nothing important, like Lily's the best person I know, or Lily's the hottest woman I know. He thinks, Lily smiled at me yesterday, or I touched Lily's fingers when she passed me a beer yesterday at McClaren's. Nothing about his thoughts is important.

And still.

He doesn't like thinking about her, doesn't even think he chooses to think about her. It's more like this - she chooses him, over and over again. There's the real Lily and there's the Lily in his head, and the Lily in his head chooses when he thinks about her, and is also sometimes to blame for how he behaves around the real Lily.

(Who'd ever think they'd see Barney Stinson blush? He does, people just don't notice.)

It's not love, of course it's not. Marshall and Lily, that's love, and Ted and Robin, that used to be love, and this thing, this monstrous thing that makes him unable to sleep, it's not love, because it can't be.

(That's a lie. It's impossible not to love Lily Aldrin.)

It's just, sometimes he looks at her. It's ok, because she's a friend, and you get to talk to your friends and look at them because it's necessary to look at your friends to be able to talk to them, but sometimes he looks at her more than that. More than he should.

And not in the Barney-Stinson, overly-casual-not-at-all-important kind of way, like when she bends over to pick something up or when she leans over and shows more than would be smart. Those are things he can deal with. Looking at her when she smiles, just because she has a pretty smile, and listening to her talk and losing track of the conversation because he's focusing on her lips, that's not familiar territory. That should never be familiar territory.

(There's one book in the entire world that Barney believes in. The Bro Code is his Bible and his Quran and this, this violates the Bro Code in about 47 different ways. He knows, because he counted.)

It's something like this: sometimes, when he forgets to close the windows in his bedroom and it's cold, and he's too lazy to get up and close them, but he can't sleep, because he's cold, sometimes when that happens, he thinks about Lily Aldrin, and he thinks about love, and the two are the same.

find your way home | blair/nate | PG-13 | 510 words, at

jada_jasmine's awesome Goodbye Gossip Girl ficathon here. For

margottenenbaum's prompt these years will be glamorous—all the / magazines say so.

I love Chuck, one of them says. It doesn't matter which one it is.

Nate comes over to talk to Chuck, but Chuck's not there, he's on some meeting or other. It's probably a misunderstanding, Blair offers and Nate agrees. Do you want to stay for dinner? she asks. He smiles and nods, like he always has.

Blair doesn't wear headbands anymore, but she still selects her dresses as if choosing what kind of person she'll be, each morning, all over again. He can imagine her (he does imagine her) standing in front of her mirror, staring into her reflection, naming flaws (my skin's too elastic, there's laugh lines around my eyes, my hair doesn't have enough volume anymore). Blair Waldorf, always looking back (remember when we used to - she starts, but these days she doesn't finish her sentences).

Blair Waldorf, always trying to find something that's not there anymore.
Blair Waldorf, always a little too late.

Later in the evening, when they've finished their dinner, and Blair's suggested they go to the living room and have some wine, and Nate's loosened his tie and Blair's already on her second glass of wine and her heels are forgotten, tossed below the coffee table, this is what she says: I always thought it'd be you and me, you know?

Yeah? he says, but he's not sure what he's trying to say.

(Do you ever wonder -

I miss the times we used to -

I still want to kiss you when -

I always want to kiss you.)

Nate? she whispers. He must have gotten lost in thought, really lost in thought, because she's moved from her sofa to his and he hasn't noticed, but her bare knees are touching his, and she's looking at him, and that he notices.

Listen, I should go now, it's late. I'll see you on Sunday, okay? he says, but he gets up too suddenly, and she knows, because Blair Waldorf's always known.

Nate? she calls out again, and before he can turn, she grabs his shirt and pulls him down on the couch and (God, she's swift) moves one leg to the other side of his legs and sits on his lap (Oh, god). He moves a loose strand from her face and she leans in to kiss his lips. She starts slow, but gets faster, her hands are all over him, and she goes straight for his pants, but lets him keep his shirt on.

I lov - he starts, but she kisses him instead, forces him to swallow the rest of the sentence.

She kisses him on the cheek in front of the elevator when he's leaving.

Wait, I forgot my jacket.

I'll bring it.

She brings him his jacket, and kisses his lips.

(I always thought we'd end up together.

Me too.)

Later, when he's riding in the cab, he finds a paper in his pocket, her handwriting on it.

On the front, it says Chuck's gone on Mondays

The back of the paper says I love you, too.

Little beast | BtVS | Dawn/Spike | post-s5 pre-s6 | 557 words. R. Written for

upupa_epops's kick-ass I want YOU comment!ficathon, for

youcallitwinter's prompt, (maybe post S5 pre-S6?): (don't try too hard to think, don't think at all)

That's a nice touch, stains in the night, whiskey and kisses for everyone.
Richard Siken

What're you doing, Nibblet?

Thinking.

Never got me anyplace I wanted to be.

Some nights are worse than others. It sounds easy, manageable enough, put in a simple sentence like that. But those nights, it's not.

Those nights are when she gives up, and those nights are when she fights the hardest to stay alive. It depends on where you're standing, though.

I miss her, she writes in her diary, sitting on her bed. She tears the page into shreds immediately.

This is the only sound in this house that was once a home.

She knows he watches her sometimes. Sometimes when she watches her it's the stare that a man saves for his epic love's little sister, the sister that he promised to look after.

Other times, she thinks it's not.

She can hear sounds downstairs again tonight, and she knows it's Spike. There's the drag of his boots on their hardwood floors, the opening of the kitchen door, because Willow won't let him smoke inside, and she imagines hearing a sigh, because that would almost be an invitation to go downstairs and join him.

Mostly, she just focuses on not running and falling down the stairs.

I bet this is not the kind of forever you had in mind, she says and smiles and bites her lip, because she's a 15 year old girl and her sister just died, okay, and she's allowed to bite her lip if she wants to.

He turns around to face her, cigarette smoke surrounding his face, you are beautiful, she thinks, but she doesn't say anything. It's his turn now. Or at least it should be.

But then he says nothing so she sits down next to him anyway, because she knows she wouldn't want to sit alone on the porch, when she could sit with someone, with someone she liked.

You miss her, she says.

How would I not?

She nods. I know. I miss her too. Maybe we could help each other. To miss her less. She says none of those things.

(You think too much, he would tell her.)

Instead, she kisses his cheek and leaves him to sit alone.

Some nights, she thinks of him. (All nights, if she's being honest.) Mostly not even about him in her bed, or eternal love, or things like that. She thinks of kisses on the cheek, you're fun to be around, Little Bit, and secretly sharing cigarettes when Willow and Tara fall asleep.

She's sitting in her bed again, when she hears him come into the house. She counts in her head, onetwothreefourfive, and then comes out of her room, down the stairs.

You're drunk, she says. He's sitting on the couch, a bottle of something she guesses is cheap whiskey in his lap.

Amnot, he slurs. She laughs, but just a bit.

She walks to him and sits on the coffee table. Neither of them speaks, she just sits and stares at him and he stares at something, and she thinks I still think you're beautiful.

(But then she remembers, thinking never got her anywhere.)

She leans closer, pulls the bottle out of his lap and before he thinks to stop her, gulps down the rest of the bottle. (Which, admittedly, was not much.)

What are you doing?

Not thinking.

She kisses him. He kisses her back.