Author: The Amazon Queen Zara Ziti ( queenziti gmail . com )
I am also the Author Formerly Known As Kendra A. (My old profile, including fics, is still up.)
Title: Long Hot Beautiful Summer Outtakes: Underground
Rating: PG
Summary: You observe some strangers' quiet moments on the subway.
Expect: Second-person prose, perhaps a bit of WAFF, an out-of-context drabble that's perhaps a bit of fun anyway.
Pairings: Willow/Remus, Harry/Draco. A good many more in the grander scheme of things, i.e., the fics that aren't posted yet.
Disclaimer: None of the characters or premises of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or of Harry Potter belong to me, no matter how I may wish is otherwise. They belong, respectively, to Joss Whedon et. al. and J.K. Rowling et. al. I own only my ideas, and also the piercing in Remus' ear. Because… guh.
Feedback: is a naughty naughty stimulant. And frighteningly addictive. However, scientific studies have proven it has no significant negative long-term effect, so send it on in, baby!
Author's Notes: had better be short, or else all this stuff before the fic will be longer than the fic is. Right now I am writing a Harry Potter / Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel crossover called That Long Hot Beautiful Summer, which in the end ought to be about eleven chapters, give or take a prologue. (I will start posting this very soon.) I also plan to write a sequel to LHBS, which will, um, fuse with HBP (I'm sure you know of what I speak when I mention there are some events in that novel which I would prefer had occurred somewhat differently); this is an outtake from that sequel. Yes, I'm weird, I know, but it's short and sweet and I'd forgotten I'd written this. I plead possession.
The premise that matters most is that Willow Rosenberg has written a proposal to amend any negative legislature pertaining to half-breeds (particularly werewolves), and she's sharing it with her inner circle of friends before submitting it to the Wizengamot.
Enjoy.
UNDERGROUND
Your ride on the Underground is going to be a long one, so you consider yourself extra-lucky to have caught a seat this time of day, during rush hour. You settle back against the plastic and take out the latest novel you're reading, but after a few paragraphs your fingers relax. You lower your hands and your book into your lap and look around you.
A mother is holding a juice box for her child. A man in a slightly bedraggled business suit bends to put his briefcase down between his feet. Several different sets of teenagers are scattered throughout the train-car, listening to music or talking in undertones punctured with giggles or – in the case of just a pair of them – unobtrusively making out in a corner.
People read different newspapers, magazines, books, juggle their bags with cups of coffee and CD players, shuffle their feet to regain their balance as the train-car moves, pull hoods down over their faces to nap lightly.
The train doors open at a major station and half the passengers get off, leaving you with breathing room. Now you can see the people sitting opposite you, unhidden by straphangers. The mother and child have taken seats. A black girl with a nose piercing and five-inch platform shoes crosses one leg over the other, looks uncomfortable, and uncrosses them again. A short boy with bleached hair and a sparse goatee reads the advertisements pasted inside the train-car. The shapely girl sitting next to him has a knee thrown over one of his legs and files her nails calmly as the train lurches.
Further along the row of seats, a man who looks curiously, prematurely aged reads a thick sheaf of printed paper. Next to him a slender redhead whose large eyes give her an oddly waifish look wears a pair of headphones and has her arms folded across her chest. Two young men – one blond and strikingly, painfully, consciously beautiful, the other brunet and not-quite-handsome but unexpectedly magnetic next to someone as airbrushed as his companion – are sitting side-by-side, knees pressed intimately close. The blond's right hand rests on his knee beside the brunet's left; upon closer inspection, you can see that their pinkies are linked.
You smile and watch them.
Eventually the blond looks up from his magazine – one you've never heard of, and are those people with broomsticks on the cover? – and gently tugs at his partner's hand with his own. The brunet spares a questioning glance; in response, the blond nudges him and nods his head towards the redhead with the CD player.
Obediently, the brunet nudges the girl, who pulls her headphones down to rest them on either side of her neck. "Mm?"
"Is he done yet?" the brunet asks, gesturing with his chin at the not-young-not-old man. The girl sighs and shakes her head. "Didn't think so," the boy says, and rolls his eyes at his partner.
The girl shrugs. The boys look at each other, and shrug too. The girl puts her headphones back on. The brunet boy slouches slightly in his seat and slowly slides the hand whose pinky is linked with the blond's until all of their fingers are intertwined. The blond flexes his hand. He doesn't look at his partner while he calmly turns another page in his broom magazine, but he smiles.
The girl, slouched similarly to her brunet friend, tilts her head a little to look at the man next to her. A moment later his eyes flicker away from the text he's reading to her, then to the text and back again. "Something wrong?" he asks. His voice is like velvetine.
"Are you done yet?" the girl asks once she's taken her headphones off again. Her voice is lower than you expected, and her accent is American. Her slender lips curl into a hesitant smile.
"Not yet," the man says. "Almost." He smiles back gently, and the movement takes fifteen years from his face.
"Only, Draco and Harry wanted to know," says the girl.
The man's smile is reassuring even to you, who have nothing to be worried about. "Nearly done," he tells her.
She nods and tugs at a wavy lock of her own hair, which has spilled over her shoulders. "Okay," she says.
"Hey," he says, softly. She looks up again, twisting the brilliant red around her fingers. "It's good."
The girl's eyes widen. "Honest? No way. It can't – You're not even finished yet!" Her voice climbs in pitch with each protesting word.
"Willow," says the man. He lays one large hand on top of hers. "All I've got left is the conclusion. It's brilliant."
Willow blinks at him.
"It's bloody brilliant," the man continues. "Even Severus will think so."
"Do you—" begins Willow, and stops. "I mean…"
The two boys lean over towards man and girl. "Oh, you've finished, have you, Profes—Remus?" the blond boy does not ask so much as demand, even though he stumbles at the end of his sentence. He enunciates each vowel stiffly and perfectly, and his tones are imperious, but there is something in his icy eyes that speaks of affection for the people with him.
"So tell us, Remus," says the brunet, "is it brilliant or just, oh, I dunno, brilliant?"
Willow blushes crimson. "Harry, don't," she says. "I'm – this is serious."
"He's being serious, Rosie," says the blond. "Now. Lupin. Remus. Let's hear it."
The man calmly meets the gaze of each of his companions, but returns to lock stares with Willow at the end. "You'll have to read it for yourselves." He must be addressing this to Harry and the blond. "But I think it's amazing."
The corners of the redhead's lips turn upward. The two boys roll their eyes but sit back.
Willow and the man – Lupin? Remus? – shift slightly closer together in their seats, so that their arms are pressed together. After a few moments, Willow sighs and drops her head to lean it against Remus' shoulder. Remus' face does that thing where it becomes fifteen years younger: he smiles, and shrugs slightly to put an arm around Willow.
Your station is one of the next on the line, so you dog-ear your page in your novel and shove it into your shoulder bag. You are oddly reluctant to leave the train-car, though, and leave this odd close group of friends – the supermodel-blond and Harry and Willow and Remus. Harry has started tickling between the blond's fingers and the blond is pretending that he doesn't notice, and Willow's hand has wandered along Remus' thigh to rest almost possessively on his knee.
You slide your bag up your arm and onto your shoulder and stand as the train begins to rumble slowly into your station. You cast a quick glance back as the doors open with a screech, and you see Willow and Remus look at each other.
You're almost glad to get off the train, because that look is a private one, a soft meeting of the eyes, and is oddly more intimate than any kiss you've ever seen.
"It's brilliant," says Remus, not blinking.
Willow doesn't blink either. "I did it for you," she says, looking up at him through her eyelashes.
Remus' lips twitch upward in a tender smile so slight it's almost not there. He runs his fingers through Willow's hair, and as he leans down the train doors close.
FIN
So. If you don't mind my asking – besides 'Wow, this was random!', what are you thinking right now?