For Him, while Dreaming

Author: Trixen

Disclaimer: Joss pretty.
Rating: R, for sex
Summary: Los Angeles is gone, so what’s a Slayer to do? Set after ‘Not Fade Away’ and written for the Angel prompt of fantas_magoria
Pairing: Buffy/Angel

*

One breath.

Two, three.

Her mouth opens, and she leans forward into the dark rain, and her mouth closes. Symmetry. She dreams that she is dreaming of the Pacific, and it is thin and flat, fathoms deep, memoryless. What would that be like? A place with nothing to fill it, no kingdoms to conquer, no floods to build on, no oh ohs of pain. No thing.

Buffy is tired; that is the main problem. Has been ever since Dawn called her at work and said, “turn on the news” and something in Dawn’s voice told her that this was bigger than big, so she did. Fire and mayhem, of course, but it was the city name in big block letters that really got her in the gut. She felt something unzip, and knew without knowing that this was the end of the world.

When Willow came to see her, and said, “please” like it was a favour not to freak out, Buffy imagined her head as that of a cow’s, or a vulture’s, a series of animals. Since talking to animals would make her crazy, she turned away, closed her eyes and tried not to smell the room she was in, or look at the plane ticket in her hand, or think of him – because she really could not do that.

His grave yawns in front of her, but there is, of course, nothing to put into it. It’s just a hole that she dug with a shovel she bought at Wal-Mart. There is no big body, with stopped circulation and a meaty heart and a stomach filled with blood. Not even a memento. She doesn’t have a hair, a tooth, a toe, a yawn. She doesn’t even have a weapon with his thumbprints, or a mirror trapped with his reflection, or a yellowed photograph in his image.

She curls up beside the hole, as fluid as a piece of spaghetti. She bought the grave stone yesterday from a bemused gentleman who was wearing a golden blazer and had bushy caterpillar eyebrows. She didn’t have an inscription ready, so she told him to forget about it. The eyebrows registered their dismay, but he said ‘sure’ and she carried the stone out, just like that.

Buffy has a general idea that really, she’s not the right person to choose the words to sum up his life. Cordelia, maybe. Darla. Wesley. Any of the people that constructed his family. But they are not here, and that’s a common enough theme. She’s tired and there is no thing and no one here.

So, she falls into sleep. It is broken only by the cry of a bird, shrieking to its mate. Her eyes open and she says, “what”, that is all, “what”.

There is not a what to be had. Wilderness surrounds her, and above, thrums the sky. She wants to vomit, thinks she should, but instead, she rolls over and expects to feel the reality of a body next to her. Perhaps with a perfect, dragon-shaped hole in its centre, or an axe in one thigh. But she did not stay for the fight—she wasn’t invited – and so she whispers, “yes” and that is when she feels the snap, the bonebreak of separation, forever separation, and the word forever cracks her together and then cleaves her in two until she is lying in pieces on the wet earth, miles from the stinking hole of Los Angeles.

What is there to do but remember? A memoryless place is just that, a place, and it is not reachable. She thinks of a million things, like the way mirrors go back and back into infinity mirrors, infinity faces and bodies and broken down bits – arms, legs, freckles, towns and cities. The way that Sunnydale is gone and Los Angeles is gone, and so the memories have no basis anymore, they are not real at all. There is no geography, no method of measuring the way they might affect the earth, like the way a herd of elephants leave a trail or a jet streams white from its tail.

The way that when Angel was walking away, she said, “Wait”.

He turned, nodded. “Do you want me to stay?”

She shook her head, laughed. He knew the cookies weren’t baked. “Not forever. Just for a minute.”

He laughed too, really laughed. “That’s new.”

“I want to give you something.”

He waggled his eyebrows, clearly in a good mood. “Like what?”

“Not that kind of something,” Buffy said but she felt hot and tight at the suggestion. He hadn’t teased her in a long time. It was startling how turned on it still made her. She reached into her pocket. “A good luck kind of thing. I want you to use it. I mean, for good luck—if that’s possible.”

He blinked as she handed it to him, the thin chain of silver with its perfectly cut cross. He closed his fist around the necklace and the smell rose between them, like burning leaves. He didn’t flinch, just wrapped his hand in the sleeve of his coat and put the cross between the layers. “I didn’t know you still had this.”

Buffy was embarrassed suddenly, but didn’t let on. She was sure her blush was evidence enough. “Right. Well. Yeah, I did. I mean, it’s nice—expensive, and crosses never really go out of style.”

“Buffy.”

“Yes?”

“Do you remember when you thought I had read your diary?”

She was thrown, and smiled. “Highlight of my life.”

“I never did,” he said thoughtfully, as if it mattered now, that she knew that. “It was tempting, but, you know. Your thoughts—they seemed too precious to invade. I didn’t want to ruin – it seemed so fragile, your privacy. So fragile.” His voice got soft, softer than the night or the trees or the wind. She listened. “Do you still keep one?”

“No,” she answered. “Dawn would read it.”

“Dawn always read it.”

“I guess.” Her brain hurt at the thought of the two worlds, Dawn and not-Dawn. “Do you—do you want to keep the cross?”

He didn’t seem to hear her. He shifted his weight back and looked down at the silver spilling over the dark material of his jacket. “That was our first kiss.”

“Was it?” she asked, as if she didn’t remember, which was funny. “I don’t—“

“We kissed beside the window.”

“I know.”

“You were wearing a hairband.” He smiled again, as if the memories were rushing back uncontrollably, like particularly truculent demons. “Little earrings.” He lifted his hand, touching her ghost. “White. A white top.”

“You remember what I was wearing?”

“It was memorable. I wanted so badly to—“

“What?” she whispered, stepping closer. “What did you want to do?”

His eyes were closed. Dark shadows of eyelashes and the paleness of his mouth. He shuddered with breaths, one two three, completely unnecessary, and she found that it tasted like tears, his faltering toward humanity. She touched his hand, not the hand that was fisting her necklace, but the other naked one and everything, her body, the world, went hot and white.

He said, “I wanted to fuck you.”

She kissed him and got a mouthful of copper pennies, a mouthful of doves about to fly off, a mouthful of dark earth, of the dead and the dying, of the thin dreams that lived on in the minds of dead girls and he lifted her with one hand, carrying her a little ways off, beneath some trees, with the stars pressing down.

It was, oh, it was. The small details of it

his lips covering her right nipple and his fingers on her left, with the cross still clutched between them, so that she could feel his skin burning until he dropped the necklace onto the grass

the grass beneath her knees as he undressed her, not slowly, as quickly as he could, and her whole body moving and opening

opening her pussy with his fingers, one two three, until she was wetter than she could remember being, not able to get enough, not able until he almost had his fist in her, fucking her so hard that she moved up and down, down and up, the stars blurring and tears stinging and her body liquid, sensitised, unable to bear anything but him, not the air, nor the bird calls, not the plane whining in the sky, not the drone of crickets nor the dirty ground, just him

him inside of her, his tongue first, at her clit, his cock in her mouth, hurting her with its fullness and briny taste, his tongue hot between her legs and she said, “yes” and he bit down a little and as she felt the first pump of blood, he said, “open your cunt for me” and she was beyond blushing

blushing around him and under him, as they fucked on the wet grass, the cross burning beside them and her legs up around his back, her breasts sticking to his chest, his scorched hand hot against her heart

her heart, that is breaking now, as she lays on the quiet earth, without him, on the quiet earth without him, and she thinks that she could get on a plane now, buy a ticket to anywhere, and she would not find him. Billions of souls in the world, but he is not one of them. Her fingers are inside of herself, and she rubs along her wet pussy, wet with tears and with orgasm, and remembers the sex, remembers how he did not lose his soul, remembers the words of love he gasped against her ear and her wet neck as he came inside of her, straight into the dark heart of her. She gathered him in her arms and soothed him after, straightened his jacket and kissed him goodbye. It is the memory of the kiss, the one perfect kiss that she never dreamed would be the last that finally sends her into the cavern of her second orgasm, hurtling like a rocket into hurting sky.

“Oh,” Buffy breathes out.

There is no one to clean her up. He cleaned her up after, wiping her down with his sweater, cleaning the sperm and the saliva from her skin. He put the cross carefully into his pocket and said, “I’ll wear it. When we fight.”

“Hopefully I’ll be able to stop it,” she answered, tired, smiling.

He nodded, but must have known then that he was lying. Or rather, that he knew more. Saw a future she couldn’t. “Someday I might need it.”

“Just put it in your pocket,” she said. “It’ll burn you otherwise, silly.”

He leaned down, pressed a chaste kiss against her forehead. “I’ll wear it. I’ll wear it over my heart.”

She wonders if he did. Is he down there, in Hell, with a hole in his chest, a perfect cross-shaped hole? The grave marker is still and empty, waiting for words. Buffy wants to laugh, wants to shake, wants to stop the rippling aftershocks of her orgasms. Would he appreciate it, her fucking herself over his grave, thinking about their first kiss? She remembers going home after their last, sleeping with Spike, and putting her hand, palm down, between her legs. She had still been wet and smelled sharp and marine. She thought then, how in her whole life – it seemed like her whole life—she had always known where he was.

It really is that simple. She curls onto her side and looks down, stares down, throwing up into the unforgivable emptiness. Whatever she had before she left – oatmeal, water, his semen, it strings out, the last memory.

+
Finis

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