RATING: NC-17 f/f slash, references to child abuse CLASSIFICATION: sick fic, more ways than one SUMMARY: PWP. Idea attacked me while I was surfing picture galleries. PAIRING: Maggie Walsh and Joyce Summers SPOILER WARNING: through US 4. DISTRIBUTION: how much do I owe you for hauling it off? FEEDBACK: please, at exfilia@y... DISCLAIMER: The BtVS characters belong to Mutant Enemy and are used with no intent to profit and without permission. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Mothers and Daughters by Exfilia Joyce Summers was pretty enough, in a warm and fuzzy sort of way, but she wasn't much like her daughter. Her legs were long, for one thing, taking long strides across the parking lot below Maggie's office window, whipping her gauzy skirt. They were very long, long enough to.... "Professor Walsh?" "Riley!" Maggie hadn't meant to squeal, and she surely didn't mean to stand with a hand to her throat, taking deep rasping breaths. "Are you all right?" "Fine. You startled me, is all. You move quite silently." "Yeah, well, they kind of teach us that in boot camp." "I thought it was all shouted cadences and pushups." "You're sure you're okay? Would you like me to drive you home?" "That's very thoughtful of you, Riley, but I have an appointment this evening." Maggie started for her desk, but the floor swayed beneath her until Riley caught her. "What's wrong? Come on, tell me. If it affects the Initiative's work...." "I stood up too fast, is all. That and the flu." She sank into her desk chair and pulled a bottle of water from the bottom drawer. "You're sure you're okay to drive?" "I will be, or I'll get a cab. Go home, Riley." "Who are you meeting?" he asked with a mischievous grin. "None of your business!" That had come out wrong. Riley was beaming with unwarrented assumptions. Maggie took another sip of her water, and had to force herself to swallow. Riley was watching her closely. "I could wait," he said. "When I need a babysitter, Mr. Finn, you'll be the first to know. Now get out of here and let me take care of... this." "Okay. I'm just going over to Buffy's, though. She isn't well, and her mom had to go out for a bit. If you need me, you call me, okay?" "You don't make a very good mother hen, Riley. Go. Go and be a young man in love. Go on." Riley smiled, and went. Maggie sat down and took another taste of the water. It was just the flu. It had nothing to do with the woman who appeared in her office door. "Professor Walsh?" "Mrs. Summers, right?" Oh, yes, it was Mrs. Summers, legs and all. Maggie capped the water bottle and put it away. "Yes, I've come for my daughter's assignments. She's going to miss the next couple of classes. She had a little accident." "I heard she got slimed by a chaos demon, and she'll be blind until the end of the week." "You know. You know she's the Slayer." "I know a good many things, Mrs. Summers. One of them is that extracurricular activities should not be allowed to interfere with academic work." "Saving the world is not an extracurricular activity, professor." Maggie smiled. If only Joyce knew. "Perhaps I should make an exception in this case," she admitted, and stood up and reached for the binder that held her lesson plans. She woke up a bit later, flat on the floor with Joyce Summers holding her elevated knees. It was not a bad way to wake up, not a bad face to wake up to, if it was sort of warm and fuzzy. Perhaps the fuzziness wasn't Joyce. Perhaps it was something inside Maggie, something that hadn't dared to rear its head since she was an undergraduate. Perhaps Maggie was feverish, if she was thinking any such thing. "Can you walk?" Joyce asked. "Can you get as far as the car, anyway?" "I have things to do...." She did. She needed to check Project 341.... "You should be in bed." She most assuredly should, particularly if Joyce Summers was there with her, warm and close, with Maggie's face buried in all that hair, and those lovely long legs.... "I don't think I'm doing too well," Maggie gasped. "You'll be okay," said Joyce. "Come on, I'll take you home." "You don't have to do that for me." "Then imagine that I'm not doing it for you. Say I'm doing it for the parents of the child who'll be killed when you pass out behind the wheel of your car." Joyce did not play fair. Well, she was the Slayer's mother, after all. Perhaps she had to know how to pull such strings. Maggie allowed herself to be bundled into a coat and half-carried into the elevator, where the motion almost made her faint again, and then out to Joyce's car. Maggie must have fallen asleep on the way home, because the next thing she knew she was sitting on the edge of her own bed with her face buried between Joyce's breasts, and the other woman's hands were unhooking her bra. "You back? Good. Can you sit alone for a minute? Where's your nightgown?" "I, uh, sleep in the raw. There's some sweats in the bottom drawer, though." Joyce returned with a pale blue tee. Maggie fumbled with the buttons of her blouse. "Here, let me do that." Joyce knelt between Maggie's knees and unfastened one button, then the next, working her way down Maggie's blouse. When she'd finished, she slid it off the other woman's shoulders, and only then met Maggie's eyes. For a moment they just looked at one another, each hypnotized by the other's gaze. "I'm going to get what you've got," Joyce whispered. "Oh, God, yes." They didn't actually make love, although Maggie was more than willing to try. Joyce peeled her out of her clothes, tucked her into bed and lay down beside her. "How did you find out?" Joyce asked. "I had a really close girlfriend in college. We experimented." "I meant about Buffy." "Riley told me. He was worried about her." "Riley?" "Don't think less of him for it. He really was very concerned. He needed someone to talk to, someone objective." "And you believed him?" "I'd seen something of the sort before." Maggie flashed on herself as a very young child, being carried screaming down an antiseptic corridor for things to be done with knives and needles, and whispers she wasn't meant to understand burned by the pain into her child's mind, "posthumous delivery," "cytoplasmic DNA," "maternal exsanguination," "retroviral extraction." "Maggie? Are you all right?" "It's passed from mother to daughter, you know, the Slayer thing." "No, I didn't know." "Did you ever think, what if it wasn't Buffy? What if it had been you instead?" "Not really. I suppose I'm lucky." "They tried to make another one, once. They cultured the stuff from someone who was born with it, and gave it to half a dozen little girls, and they all died. One by one, they all turned pale and died. They did it again and again and again. All those sweet little girls...." Warm arms wrapped around Maggie. "Sometimes," Joyce said, "I think we should just lock all the scientists in a big closet and throw away the key. Maybe we could put a couple of vampires in with them, you know?" "They had to do it. They had to try. It's the only thing standing between the human race and extermination. We have to find something...." "Shh. We'll talk about it in the morning." "Hold me, Joyce. Just hold me." Joyce burrowed against her, and Maggie laid her cheek against all that lovely hair. "Go to sleep. You'll feel better in the morning." "Yeah. Sure." The End ===== exfilia *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Can't a woman wreak a little havok without a man being involved? |