Fandom: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER / ANGEL: THE SERIES
Pairing: Buffy/Angel
Length: 1300 words
Author on LJ: margotlefaye
Author Website: Margot's Femfic

Why this must be read: A Buffy/Angel reunion, as seen by near-strangers. The tarot card theme is a great touch (even if you know nothing about tarot), especially in light of the role of prophecies and so forth throughout the Buffyverse, not to mention Drusilla. This short fic shows how they might settle in together, in something resembling a simple, happy ending.

( The girl next door...is an odd one. )

The Girl Next Door

Fandom: NUMB3RS
Pairing: Colby/Ian
Length: 6,000+
Author on LJ: swingandswirl
Author Website: http://swingandswirl.livejournal.com/113056.html
Why this must be read:

I think it’s tempting for a writer when doing a Male to Female transgender story to pick a character that’s already halfway there. The short guy, or the skinny one, or the already a little effeminate one.

This author picked big butch Colby Granger to go through the change and this needs to be read because she made it believable.

Then she went and made Colby(Frejya) and Ian’s relationship a believable and romantic one.

Read this and become a believer.

Containing Multitudes Series

Fandom: NUMB3RS
Pairing: Alan Eppes, Carl McGowan
Length: 1,134
Author on LJ: ladygray99
Author Website: http://ladygray99.livejournal.com
Why this must be read:

Numb3rs never did a lot in the way of recurring bad guys or multiple episode arcs, so when they brought in Carl McGowan to investigate Don and Charlie it didn’t work right for me and it apparently didn’t work right for the author of this fic either.

She sets out to explain what the show never did. Why McGowan was so hell bent on taking down the Eppes brothers.

Can’t tell much more about it without spoiling it but let’s just say that Don and Charlie aren’t the first Eppes that McGowan has run across.

This is a short read that neatly plugs a big plot hole.

27 Hours

Fandom: NUMB3RS
Pairing: Charlie/Billy
Length: 610
Author on LJ: emmademarais
Author Website: http://emmademarais.livejournal.com
Why this must be read:

Technically this is smut, short smut at that, but that’s like saying a Matsuo Bashō haiku is seventeen syllables about the weather.

If Steinbeck wrote gay porn it might have come out something like this.

The descriptions are short and precise and at the same time poetic.

They let you feel the heat of the rattrap motel room in Indian summer, and hear the sounds of the cars outside and the neighbours arguing in Spanish.

This is one of emmademarais’s finest works out of a large collection of very fine writing.

Hotel Royale

Fandom: NUMB3RS
Pairing: Colby Granger/OMC briefly
Length: 1,696
Author on LJ: sunlesslands
Author Website: http://sunlesslands.livejournal.com/tag/!numb3rs
Why this must be read:

Colby had never been strong on sentiment or memory. He had too many of one and tasted too much of the other for any romantic notions to survive. A quick look around, the boxes that were his life, said everything by saying very little; thirty years of life, packed away in two days.

This is the story of how Colby became what he is, as apposed to what he could have been.

Set to Chopin's Prelude #15, it jumps in time between a young Colby with an artistic soul and a grown Colby who put that soul aside to make a dead father proud of him.

This is one of those beautifully written stories that makes you hurt in the best way possible.

Holding the Shadow

Fandom: HARRY POTTER
Pairing: None, unless you count unrequited Severus/Lily
Length: ~5,000
Author on LJ: musamihi
Author Website: musamihi's masterlist of fic
Why this must be read:

This is a devastating and beautifully described portrait of addiction and—not recovery, but resignation to the truth. Snape has been living for almost a year in a state of self-deluding dependence on a potion that allows him to dream of Lily. He's clearly on the point of losing his sanity, and probably his life, as his need for a fix to get him through the day leads to an increasingly reckless dosage. He's hallucinating and miscalculating, and things can't go on this way. The story begins with Dumbledore finding out how close his Potions master is to falling apart and deciding it's high time he put a stop to it.

musamihi focuses on the process of Snape's withdrawal, his demons and reasons, his derangement, his entrapment in the promise he made to Dumbledore. For most of the fic he would clearly prefer the ghost story he conjures each night, and dying from an overdose of imaginary love, to facing the loss of Lily and his responsibility in her death. What he endures as his body throws off the drug is painful and mesmerizing, captured with a sensuous attention to detail that transforms his nightmares into art. But only for us, not for him. Dumbledore's actions here add to the bleakness, making Snape's survival (as I read it) a matter more of reporting for duty than a recognition of his individual worth.

The fic is carefully paced, precisely imagined, gorgeous, and graced with a moment's innocence that suggests the difference it might have made if Snape's dreams about Lily had ever been real. But they weren't. Which is the ultimate heartbreaking revelation, because he wakes at last to emptiness and obligation, not peace; and to a path he has always been destined to travel alone.

***
( Severus at breakfast )

To Dwell on Dreams

Fandom: BANDOM
Pairing: Jet Star/Kobra Kid (Ray Toro/Mikey Way)
Length: 2,735 words
Author on LJ: delphinapterus
Author Website: Fic Master Post
Why this must be read:
Another Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys story, this has fantastic world building, so detailed and vivid, along with quickly and clearly sketching the relationship between Jet Star and Kobra Kid. Delphinapterus will open your eyes to a new world of ficcish pleasure. The battle scene is well done, and the adrenalin-fueled, post-combat handjob is hot. Read this; you'll be another Killjoys convert!

Come on, come on, kiss my battery on LJ
Come on, come on, kiss my battery on AO3