More
by bhv
[reviews]
Always I am stunned to remember it,
as if I have been to Saturn or the bottom of a trench in the sea floor,
I sit on my bed the next day with my mouth open and think of it.
Sharon Olds, "It"
A few hours ago, I found myself sitting on the back steps of the villa, carving stakes with a kitchen knife, using wood from our firewood supply. I hadn't been in a trance or sleepwalking or possessed by anything but somehow I'd finished three before I stopped and realized what I was doing, and how long it had been since I'd even held a stake, much less carved one myself.
Stake production and supply had gotten relegated early on to Andrew and the potentials last year. The heavy wooden boxes by the front and back doors were always full to the brim with freshly whittled stakes. We would just grab them on our way out, almost as an afterthought. They were useless against the ubervamps and it was easier and safer to take down the bringers with bigger weapons. Who would have thought we'd get so overrun and out-powered that we actually didn't give much thought to the plain old stake-em-in-the-heart-with-wood vamps?
But back to tonight. I was retired, on an open-ended vacation here in Italy, and I hadn't as much as smelled a vamp — uber or plain-old — in months, but here I was sitting outside in my panties and t-shirt, shivering in the wee hours of a chilly damp October morning. Carving stakes, wood chips flying.
"Don't leave ... just don't ever leave me ..."
"I won't leave you ... not ever ... I swear"
I looked over my shoulder at the upstairs corner window. There was a faint glow flickering as the curtain billowed out in the breeze. Damn, I should have blown that candle out — I was trying so hard not to wake up her up as I scooted out of bed and backed out of the room that I didn't even notice it was still burning.
I looked from the soft light back down at my hands — the stake in my left and a knife in my right, a pile of shavings on the steps between my feet. I set the knife down and switched the stake to my right hand, hefting it, then wrapping my fingers around it by instinct. If I live to be 100 and they prop me up in the middle of the grandkids to take a picture and someone hands me a stake for old times sake, I'm sure my knobby, arthritic fingers will do the exact same thing. My wrinkled nose will catch a whiff of freshly carved wood and the tendons in my hand will involuntarily waken, stretch, tighten around it.
Stake in hand equals Slayer. Then why did my hand look so foreign tonight? Still gripping the stake, I curled my fist back around, examining the knuckles. Even in the moonlight I could tell the scars were fainter than ever. Not a single fresh scratch or cut. These last couple months I was learning to be more careful with them. My hands, I mean.
Back in August, our very first time, I stopped suddenly at the last second, surprising both of us. What if I lost control? Actually, I was pretty sure it wasn't so much a "what if" as much as a "when." I rested my forehead on her shoulder, tasted her cool salty sweat on my lips.
"Don't be afraid, Buffy." Even panting, Willow sounded surprisingly best friend-like. I raised back up and she groaned underneath me, but in her eyes I saw the same steady light I've been following for years. "I can take it." She grinned up at me and pulled my head down, bringing my mouth to hers for possibly the hundredth time that night. Clamping down on the back of my neck, she plunged her tongue deep past my lips. I slid my fingers into her and she reached down and held my hand still. Mouth to mouth, hand to sex, we stayed locked there for a little while, awed by the power of our connection.
During those first few tentative days, we loved each other with a fierce shared tenderness — it made us both reach to the other with more than anything, kindness. Somehow we forgave each other for all past wrongs and injuries, as we also made reparation for all the sins of omission during the dark years we'd just left behind.
Earth to Buffy. Even having gone up a whole jeans size after six weeks of good Italian country cuisine, my ass was still freezing out here. Why was I here with a stake in my hand while she was up there, wrapped around a pillow instead of me?
Because we'd moved past our beginnings. Summer ended, September flew by, and October was upon us. Will told me it was a holy time, that the veils between worlds, between all realities, between the different parts of ourselves even, were thinner with each passing day as the old
year died. Our lovemaking was more intense than ever, it wasn't unusual for one or both of us to cry before during or after. Sometimes we cried because we'd been so damaged by time, sometimes we'd cry because we'd made it through as intact as we have. Sometimes, like tonight, the tears seemed to be the only language we were left with afterward. The release was beyond any one emotion, it was every emotion possible, passionate, exhausting, and terrifying.
Even I was exhausted after the physical and emotional intensity of tonight. I'd tried to sleep. I needed sleep. But all I wanted was to get out, out of this bed, out of this house. Willow had fallen into a heavy sleep with her head on my chest. Gently rolling so that she slid off onto her side, I waited till she settled around the pillow I placed in her arms. I listened for the familiar dreamy muttering, but she was still deeply slumbering, so I eased off the bed, grabbing a shirt from off of the bedpost and snagging the first pair of underwear I found on the floor.
I had to stop halfway down the stairs and sit for a minute waiting for the faint swell of vertigo to roll over me. I felt like I had just woken from a dream, had just fallen back to earth.
"This just isn't me."
"That's the point. Halloween is the night when not you is you, but not
you, you know?"
I'd told her I'd never leave her. I'd sworn it to her. Who was I at that moment? To make such a heartfelt pledge? After I'd already died twice? And who was she, that she'd believed it? After she'd seen what happened to both of us after she brought me back? When did we change into the people who said those things tonight?
*******************************
I let the stake fall out of my fingers and hear it clatter into the pile of wood chips at my feet. I flex my hand and turn it palm side up in the dim light. I fold my fingers back into a fist, then open them again, just staring at my hand.
"More," she moans, slamming back against me.
"There isn't any more, baby. I'm already using all four fingers." From behind her, I lean across her back and sweep her hair aside with my free hand, both of us pausing to catch our breath. We'd started out tonight soft and tender and slow but now we are urgent and reckless, like we're running out of time, desperate.
When she tells me what to do, I just trust her. Even though she's so wet and slippery, way more than usual, and even though I want her more than I want breath right now, I'm careful not to push too hard, letting her take me in slowly as she kneels on the bed in front of me, begging me not to stop even though her own inner walls hold me back. She tells me not to be afraid. And then my hand is gone. I am inside her up to my wrist.
I just stare at where my hand disappears. I am as aroused as I am shocked, which is to say, completely. I might as well be on the moon. Up to now, intuition, enthusiasm, and Willow's loving confidence had made up for my lack of experience during our lovemaking, but at this moment I have nothing to draw on. Maybe now I know how Riley felt. Why am I thinking that now? I flash on him going down on me for the first time. It was obvious he didn't know what to do or how what he was doing was making me feel. He was so tentative. Why couldn't he just trust my body, trust me urging him on?
I'm not Riley. I'm Buffy and this is my Willow and she wants me inside her. I can feel her wanting me, holding me, keeping me there. I keep staring at where we are joined, I move forward just slightly, leaning into her. She's so beautiful at this moment. She cries out my name and we keep going, farther and higher than ever before. Shuddering with my own arousal, I am slowly thrusting up into the wetness I'd helped create. I did this, am doing this. My hand, my strong killing hand, is doing this, this very good, sweet, thing.
She is sobbing when she finally comes. I have to, need to, hold her, so I ease out of her and she cries even louder, still on her knees, her head down on her elbows, hands clenching the sheets. I pull her over and down so I'm spooning her tightly. I'm neither surprised nor jealous that she calls Tara's name as I hold her. Tara's here a lot lately. They are all here with us, the departed lovers, our families, our younger selves even.
"Don't leave ... Buffy, don't leave." She turns and wraps herself around me. I am locked inside her arms and legs, she sobs into my neck. "Just don't ever leave me."
I hold her and whisper over and over, "I won't leave you ... not ever ... I swear."
*******************************
The sky has just turned pink and over the fields in the valley below the fog is floating in wispy strands. I pick up my stakes, and turn to go back inside the house. I toss the stakes in the big bucket of wood by the fireplace, then go and wash my hands and start coffee.
I open the bedroom door quietly. She is still asleep, the sheets pulled up tight around her. I cross over to the open window and shut it slowly, fastening it and pulling the curtain against the cold air. I unearth the bedspread from the pile of clothing on the floor, shaking it out and pulling it up over her.
As I'm pulling on some clean dry clothes, I hear her stir behind me. I turn and watch her stretch, struggling up out of sleep. Her eyes flutter open and meet mine.
"Mornin' dear," I drawl.
"Mornin' honey," she drawls back, yawning. "I woke up earlier and it was dark but you were gone. Was I dreaming?"
"I was just outside. I couldn't sleep." I don't offer any details.
"What were you doing outside?" she presses.
"Not sleeping." I don't want to get all heavy, she just woke up.
"What else?" she keeps it up.
I cave. I say it plainly, "Carving stakes."
"Ahhh," she nods thoughtfully, interrupted by another yawn. "I see."
"You do?"
"Sure, plain as day," she smiles.
"What do you see?"
"Destiny," she intones solemnly. Then she starts to roll back and forth in the bed. "Destiny, destiny, no escaping that's for me..."
She's giggling now, as much at herself as at my growing grin. She knows I can't resist it. I jump on top of her and join the chant till we have both laughed ourselves silly.
After we catch our breath, I reach over and brush the hair off her face and I kiss her eyelids like I always do in the morning. Then she kisses my nose like she always does in the morning. And then we lay in bed holding hands like we always do in the morning, staring at the ceiling and just saying what comes into our heads.
"Will?"
Yeah?"
"I can't promise I won't ever leave you," I say softly, just above a whisper. "I shouldn't have."
She says nothing in response.
"No one can promise that. Not even normal people," I continue.
She turns her head to look at me with a little smile. "You know normal people?" She wrinkles her brow. "And just where did you meet these normal people?"
"I'm serious, Will."
She turns on her side and pulls me over.
"I know, Buffy. I know ... even if you never go near a Hellmouth again, which isn't likely, you're still you and I'm still me and the bad stuff will find our address."
"And," I begin and am interrupted.
"And... even if it never does, someday, somehow, we'll die." She pauses, bringing her forehead to mine.. "Probably not at the same time," she says, sadly. "One of us will leave the other one when it's time. Buff, I know that. I really do — by now, I know it better than a lot of people do. And ... I get it, I do. Now."
"I was pretty sure you did," I murmur, almost afraid to breathe. We are in dangerous waters here.
She sighs. "I just forgot it for a little while earlier ... where I was ... in that place with you tonight."
"I know. Me too," I kiss her softly. "Not just tonight either, I sort of forgot who I was for the last couple of weeks, I think. I mean not like I had amnesia but I just haven't taken the time to do much remembering the last few weeks. I feel like I've just been here. With you. Like, it's always ... now."
"Yeah." She kisses me back.
"Wish we could find someplace where we could both forget all of it forever," I look back at the ceiling.
She puts her hand over my mouth and makes me look at her. "Be careful what you wish for," she says with a sad grin. I kiss the fingers on my lips in reply.
"Besides," she continues. "I don't want either of us to forget any of it. "
I just look at her. She shrugs, "It's what made us, us."
"Yeah, but this balancing it out with the here and now thing," I trail off.
"Tricky, huh?"
"Yeah," I nod
"But not impossible," she says brightly.
"If you say so," I agree somewhat dubiously.
"And you know," she kisses me lightly, then deeper and slower. "There's this whole other part called the future that I keep hearing things about...very interesting stuff."
I lay my head on her chest, squeezing her to me. "And here's where Buffy goes all Chicken Little and starts carving stakes."
"I don't know what scares me most, Will. The fact that one of us could die and we miss out on our future together or the fact that we even have a future. Or how much more of now we have and how we just keep making now better, bigger, sweeter, more. Every night in this bed, we get closer and closer, then every day I keep waking up more and more in love with you. Sometimes I don't understand how we can still be wanting more after all this time. But what happens if we stop? Or, if we start to stop ... like if one starts to stop before the other one? And this morning ..."
She kisses me again to make me shut up. Then she stops and whispers, "OK, breathe."
"OK," I whisper back.
"OK. How about we take the very near future in very small chunks?"
"Hmmm," I nod gravely. "An intriguing concept... what size chunks are we talking about?
"How does forty five minutes sound?" She's serious.
"How about thirty?" I counter.
"Well, I'm not sure what you had in mind but I can assure you that I'm not so happy about giving up 15 entire minutes of what I was imagining doing to you in the very near, immediate-like, future." She knits her brows and tries to look glum.
"Oh, but you don't have all the data, Research Girl." I flash a subdued but evil grin.
"Enlighten me, Action Girl," she taunts.
"At the end of the thirty minutes, we find ourselves sitting in front of a crackling fire in the fireplace downstairs, drinking the coffee that's brewing as we speak." I play my hand with a flourish.
Giggling again, she nuzzles my ear. "You've got a deal."
"Great!" I say, shuddering and closing my eyes.
"Great," she agrees, before kissing her way down my neck.
"OK!" I gasp. "I'll be there."
"Me too," she says before she gently bites my collarbone. "Half an hour?"
I pull back slightly and take a deep breath. "Yep."
"Promise?" She tilts her head and waits.
"I swear." I murmur against her waiting lips.