Fic: The Right Words (Part 1 of 2)
Setting: Undetermined post-series; established (Buffy/Spike) relationship.
Rated: R for suggestive language and oblique sexual references.
Prompt: Revelations.
Author's Note: It took me 2 hours to write this piece by long-hand on Wednesday, and 3 days to FAIL to get it under the 1K word limit. So...in my despair I've broken it into two parts, each standalone-ish, I hope. Forgive me, I really want to recruit some gargoyles to this worthy cause, okay? :)
Word count: ~530.
Beta: The incomparable All4Spike. Thank you!
Feedback: Yes, please, if you'd be so kind? The last Spuffy writing I did was in May.
Since when? You ask.
It’s such an impossible question that I flounder. I can quip and banter my way through patrol on auto-pilot, but when it comes to matters of the heart… I laugh at my own clumsiness, and the feeble laughter chokes up in my throat and comes out sounding like a sputter.
When? Since it was too early to be wise or scrupulous or justifiable. Since it was too late to be courageous or honorable or even kind. Shall I play the romantic and say: Since always, since the beginning? Or shall I slip into the evasive and say: Since today; isn’t that enough? My life is not an inspirational poster; living each day as my last is just the reality of being a Slayer. An endless procession of todays, until at some point, there won’t be any - today’s all I have.
Lest you think I’m still bitter about it: no, not anymore. I once was chosen but now I choose, with my eyes wide open. The Slayer power might’ve fallen to me, but the scythe I willingly took up.
I don’t say any of this, of course. Words...may bounce around my head at a preternatural speed, but none of them can slip past my clenched teeth, my tucked chin, my folded arms, sealing everything in, keeping everything down. You know, my usual stance. Or, rather, my used-to-be stance. It’s harder to do in bed, naked and still coming down from the peak of passion, body slippery and throbbing and fueled by euphoria and apparently prone to meandering thoughts. How did I ever manage it, maintaining that full, mental suit of armour with not a stitch on, in the year that I came out of heaven and everything went to hell?
Anyway, that’s just not me anymore. Not since your miraculous re-materialization after you gave yourself so that I could go on living. Not since I’ve stayed alive after another resurrection, long enough to finally arrive at the foregone conclusion that after you had me, and I lost you, this is probably it: my last chance at something both greater and personal: a cozy, selfish love of my own. Nothing as grand or compulsory or effortless as Destiny; just an ordinary, linked journey shared by two.
But the isolating habit of withholding, built and reinforced for almost a decade of my life…takes time to break through, conscious effort to dismantle.
So I try: inhale deeply, exhale through my mouth, picturing my mind unfurling as a fist after sparring, unwinding the handwrap like ribbon, exposing my bare knuckles and loose fingers underneath. Taking away the hand’s combative urge to punch, giving back its capacity to touch, to feel.
Because with this incarnation of me and you, when I reach out toward you, cuffing my hand around your arm, it’s to caress, to connect; not to silence, to bruise. And I feel the clock ticking on my answer, feel the impatience brewing behind your eyes like a storm. Yet I am calm, because yours is no longer an overwhelming question that disturbs my universe, and even if my answer won’t stand the test of time as my moment of greatness, finally I know - I know what to say.
( Part two is here.)
Rated: R for suggestive language and oblique sexual references.
Prompt: Revelations.
Author's Note: It took me 2 hours to write this piece by long-hand on Wednesday, and 3 days to FAIL to get it under the 1K word limit. So...in my despair I've broken it into two parts, each standalone-ish, I hope. Forgive me, I really want to recruit some gargoyles to this worthy cause, okay? :)
Word count: ~530.
Beta: The incomparable All4Spike. Thank you!
Feedback: Yes, please, if you'd be so kind? The last Spuffy writing I did was in May.
Since when? You ask.
It’s such an impossible question that I flounder. I can quip and banter my way through patrol on auto-pilot, but when it comes to matters of the heart… I laugh at my own clumsiness, and the feeble laughter chokes up in my throat and comes out sounding like a sputter.
When? Since it was too early to be wise or scrupulous or justifiable. Since it was too late to be courageous or honorable or even kind. Shall I play the romantic and say: Since always, since the beginning? Or shall I slip into the evasive and say: Since today; isn’t that enough? My life is not an inspirational poster; living each day as my last is just the reality of being a Slayer. An endless procession of todays, until at some point, there won’t be any - today’s all I have.
Lest you think I’m still bitter about it: no, not anymore. I once was chosen but now I choose, with my eyes wide open. The Slayer power might’ve fallen to me, but the scythe I willingly took up.
I don’t say any of this, of course. Words...may bounce around my head at a preternatural speed, but none of them can slip past my clenched teeth, my tucked chin, my folded arms, sealing everything in, keeping everything down. You know, my usual stance. Or, rather, my used-to-be stance. It’s harder to do in bed, naked and still coming down from the peak of passion, body slippery and throbbing and fueled by euphoria and apparently prone to meandering thoughts. How did I ever manage it, maintaining that full, mental suit of armour with not a stitch on, in the year that I came out of heaven and everything went to hell?
Anyway, that’s just not me anymore. Not since your miraculous re-materialization after you gave yourself so that I could go on living. Not since I’ve stayed alive after another resurrection, long enough to finally arrive at the foregone conclusion that after you had me, and I lost you, this is probably it: my last chance at something both greater and personal: a cozy, selfish love of my own. Nothing as grand or compulsory or effortless as Destiny; just an ordinary, linked journey shared by two.
But the isolating habit of withholding, built and reinforced for almost a decade of my life…takes time to break through, conscious effort to dismantle.
So I try: inhale deeply, exhale through my mouth, picturing my mind unfurling as a fist after sparring, unwinding the handwrap like ribbon, exposing my bare knuckles and loose fingers underneath. Taking away the hand’s combative urge to punch, giving back its capacity to touch, to feel.
Because with this incarnation of me and you, when I reach out toward you, cuffing my hand around your arm, it’s to caress, to connect; not to silence, to bruise. And I feel the clock ticking on my answer, feel the impatience brewing behind your eyes like a storm. Yet I am calm, because yours is no longer an overwhelming question that disturbs my universe, and even if my answer won’t stand the test of time as my moment of greatness, finally I know - I know what to say.
( Part two is here.)