Heh. Ok, for the buffyverse1000, I present:

*** Joyce/Jenny ***

It wasn’t quite bad enough to be Hell. Purgatory, maybe, but really, Joyce suspected this was just some kind of... celestial waiting room. Apparently, according to the chatter she’d heard so far, there were only a few people clear-cut enough to get right through the doors, without passing go and collecting two hundred dollars and all of that.

Being the mother of a Slayer, apparently, was not enough to earn one of those get-out-of-jail-free cards.

And the reason she was thinking in Monopoly metaphors was that this game had currently been going on, by her estimation, for the past week or so. She was almost out of cash, however, and when she finally landed on Jim’s Boardwalk square, it was an utter relief to declare herself bankrupt.

She made straight for the snack tables. Lukewarm soda and slightly stale Cheetos.

She sighed. So, this was the afterlife, she thought again, for the thousandth time. A mediocre party in some seemingly endless, nearly-but-not-quite upscale apartment. She sipped her soda and told herself it could be worse

And then, it was.

Oh great, one of the “ranters.”

Off to her left, a woman was working herself into quite the tirade.

”I mean, ok, I accept that there was ambivalence in my life. I know, I lied. It was stupid! It was bad! I shouldn’t have done it! But I think I paid for that good and well when the EVIL VAMPIRE SNAPPED MY NECK!”

Joyce made the fatal error of glancing in that direction. The dark-haired woman’s companion had a trapped desperate air to him, but he was doing an impressive job of forcing a look of understanding and nodding. Unfortunately, Joyce’s grimace of sympathy was picked up on not by the poor man, but by the ranting woman.

“I’m right, right?” the woman said.

Shit, Joyce thought.

“Vampire?” Joyce said.

“They’re real, I’m not crazy,” the woman said, with a huff of annoyance.

“Oh, I know,” Joyce said, not quite able to believe she wasn’t fleeing, like the dark-haired woman’s former victim was. “My daughter is the Slayer,” Joyce added.

“Buffy?”

The maelstrom of feelings that name invoked caught Joyce off-guard. Love, and pain, and missing her and worrying about her.

“Yes, Buffy,” she said, suddenly not feeling so trapped, “You knew her?”

“Jenny. Calendar,” the woman said, shifting her drink to her other hand and reaching out in greeting.

“Joyce Summers,” Joyce said, shaking the offered hand. “You-- You knew Rupert, didn’t you? You two were close, dating?”

“I did,” Jenny said, “In fact, I nearly knew Rupert in the biblical sense.”

She sounded smug, so Joyce couldn’t help but retort, “Nearly? Well, then, I’ve got you beat.”

“You?” Jenny looked skeptical, “He slept with his Slayer’s mother? That’s hardly... proper. What *happened* to him?”

Joyce was beginning to enjoy herself.

“Oh, he was quite the firecracker. Shame you never got to find out.”

“Rupert? A firecracker? Oh, come on. I was sure I was going to have to--”

“There were handcuffs and a police car involved.”

Jenny’s expression shifted instantly, a sly brow creeping up her forehead.

“Really?” she drawled.

“Oh, yes,” Joyce said, matching Jenny’s tone.

“And you liked that, huh?”

“Quite a bit, actually.”

And the afterlife may have taken away some of her inhibitions, but apparently none of her hormones, because this was rapidly becoming flirting, and she was quite enjoying herself. This was so much better than Monopoly.

“You know,” Jenny said, “I’m pretty sure we could find a semiprivate room around here somewhere. I’d love to hear more.”

Joyce grinned.

“Well, that depends. Do you think it will increase our moral ambiguity?”

---

*** Jenny/Ethan ***

“A beautiful woman should never have to get drunk alone.”

And she knows, when she sees him, that she should get up and walk away. But she doesn’t. She’s settled here, on this bar stool, and she doesn’t have the energy to argue with inertia right now.

Demonic possession really takes it out of you.

The lanky, dark-eyed man all but oozes onto the stool beside her, and his hand is already making itself familiar with her shoulder, and she can’t bring herself to care. She listens to him talk about Rupert until she can’t help but join in, her tongue and mind loosened by alcohol, exhaustion, confusion.

Then he purrs, “I know how it feels. Eyghon. The power. The violence. Once it’s inside you, it never really goes away.”

And so she follows him back to his run-down motel room, and then they’re naked together on ancient, scratchy sheets, and she hates his cock inside her, and he’s hurting her, and this isn’t right, this shouldn’t be--

Shouldn’t be perfect. Shouldn’t be touching something she never knew was inside her, that never *was* inside her, and driving her mad with lust.

She shouldn’t be digging her thumb into his bandaged arm, and she shouldn’t love the way he cries out in pain and just takes her harder.

But she does.

And so when she gets home that night, that *morning*, she sobs until her pillow is soaked. Still, when she looks in the mirror later, she knows she hasn’t been able to cry it out. Never will. She’s changed.

It’s weeks before she can stand to speak to Rupert again.