Eternally Present
There's like, this moment in that Romeo and Juliet movie with Leonardo DiCaprio where Mercutio puts the little heart drug on his tongue, and everything's real quiet for a moment?
And then it exPLODES!
You know that part of the movie? Where suddenly Romeo's in this sparkling world of beautiful people and loud music and glitter clothes and glitter makeup and everyone's dancing? And how it's scary and it's so beautiful and you'd kill yourself to go a party that good even though suddenly everyone's COMPLETELY INSANE?
...I think I get it now. I get it now a lot and that is Rome on a Saturday night when you're passing from discotheque to discotheque on pixie dust cut with champagne. I didn't know before tonight that I...LOVE....CHAMPAGNE. Cuz when I was younger, in Sunnydale, I was too good to drink and then it was just beer, malty liquor beer, but now I am in Rome and a grown-up and a goddess and girlfriend-free and this is the time for champagne.
Like Faith. I'm just like Faith now, except I don't think Faith was happy when she was dancing and drinking. I think she was proving she was mean and hard and I am happy and bubbly. Happy bubble champagne Willow, arms around one girl's neck while some guy is trying to grind and ew. Do I look like I want a greasy sausage?
It's just
too much to let go (I turn to him, vamp him, and knee him in the balls) and I was always such a good girl. Always living in my brain all the time and it was always
what if, willow? you could get hurt and it would be your fault for not thinking and does anyone want you if you're not living in your brain and what if you're just a thing holding in that special part and nobody cares there's a girl-mess attached to that special part and would they burn away all that annoying to keep the special?
because
nobody can be special all the time, not like this, glittering and dancing on the air and swelling with the beat and falling with the dirty guitar riff that takes you down, down, down til your heartbeat lives two inches above your cunt.
And that's when I see this girl (and I know she should be called a woman because it's infantilizing but I have my bad habits besides magic) and it can't be I don't know why but I know it's Fred and I don't care why I know somehow it can't be here but it is her and she's all tall and lean and beautiful.
Got her hair all twisted up and falling in crimp waves and braids and she's a goddess now in white leather against a tan and I can see her stomach and it's flat and I want to press my hands against it for hours. There are rings on her fingers and fuck-me pumps on her toes and a bell in her belly-button, and I'll follow her wherever she goes
I'm so hot that the whole world is melting and when her hand brushes my forehead, it's like a breeze and I've never been
so drunk so drugged I went out to get fucked the fuck up and I never did before oh why did I do this like this? Fred bites against my lower lip hard enough to bruise and I wrap my leg around her so that we're practically one person and suddenly I'm giddy with fear.
something
is
so
wrong ("I wanted you the minute I saw you," she growls on the elevator, pulling away the little hooker top I borrowed from Dawn to expose nipple. "Nobody said it was okay to want you. Nobody said I could want who I really wanted.")
but I can't think, no thinking when Fred is needy and cold-warm, kissing me and I thought it would be neat to kiss Fred cuz she understood what it was like to be brittle-nervous and not sure it's wanting after all and that it can be okay to be the stupid one when it feels
like this (licking down Fred's neck, sucking on her collarbone and wrestling against the stubborn hotel door that doesn't want to open and I finally just charm the darn thing open for us and tumble onto the floor topsy-turvy hurly-burly)
When my heart pounds, it's in my ears and I can't help wondering why my heart won't just stay put and leather bustiers are really hard to get off, you know? Fred has to do it, and I'm sort of writhing on the carpet and it was really easy to get naked except for my stockings cuz I was just wearing a little skirt and top that went poof easy like bubbles popping.
"Am I getting faded?" I ask, very concerned when I struggle up so I'm up against the bed cuz carpet burns. "I think I should be here if we're going to get naked."
Fred giggles. "Oh, I can see you just fine," she replies, pouncing. "We need lots of champagne and pixie dust and all night sex. That'll make it all better, won't it? All night sex, direct room service like this?"
"Shiny," I say, not sure if she's answered my question but she's very hot and I'm very naked and I would like to stop thinking. I want to stop thinking, want to start kissing again, hard kissing so we're pressed up against each other as dizzy as spinning but Fred is rubbing against me and I wanna fuck.
cuz thinking's overrated (oh god she's going crazy already and how did she know I like having my tummy nuzzled while stroking the outside lips and slipping just that tiny little baby pinky there)
and I'm on
fire like burning (gasping, pulling at those curls and braids and she's just teasing me now) cuz I could just throw myself open as far as I go and let her take me wherever she's driving.
I can't focus. Can't do anything except act like a sex-starved girl who is getting licked and moaning and moaning and grabbing at her own breasts to build up some kind of tension or EXPLODE like the fireworks in all the movies and I'm back to movies and Fred is darting her tongue in and out of me and I haven't shaved in a week and why am I thinking when I want to come and then grab her and finger her until she's calling my name and I want her to talk dirty -- I can't talk during sex, I sound dumb but I wanna hear her
say the things (oh Willow fuck me feels so good put it there, all those tiny aggregates of physical lusting buzzing like bees and making me wetter for the next go) but will she?
why is she even here? how did she get here?
Can't remember can't even think about it cuz she's sliding up me and she's wet as can be and rubbing on my thigh and I pin her and giggle and bite the tips of pink nipples and it's so high up here and I want her to wrap her legs around my head til I almost can't breathe.
Til it explodes
I wanna never wake up from this
gasping and sweating and crying and pinching (the sweetest thing, warm head buried in my shoulder as I bring her closer and closer but don't let her come yet, muttering, "Why couldn't it always be this way?" in a sob)
it's all going to bite me in the ass
tomorrow (now?) tomorrow (oh, Fred, don't ever stop doing that let's just stay here) tomorrow (oh, I think I'm tired now...just one more time, I can do this once more...)
tomorrow
now.
Now when my head is full of fuzz and everything is a copy of a copy like sleeplessness as thick as grief is muffling everything and I am in my ruined thigh-highs on the tile of the bathroom and I have carpet burn and the hotel manager is asking how, exactly, I got in there.
And I remember that Fred died, Fred died three days before I came back from the astral plane and Giles didn't understand why I was so angry. "Angel can handle his own people. He's made that clear."
That in LA, some Old One has her body and that she didn't even have a soul left, that it burned up pure, she goes to Nirvana and left us to wonder why it happened.
And I, I have a hangover and when I say I left the club with a girl in white leather, they give me security photos and at least I'm not crazy and the girl wasn't Faith or a big guy who dropped a roofie into my drink, she looks like Fred.
There are no good explanations. Not for me, not for anyone who wants to know why I freaked out for a girl I only met once or twice and when I even had a girlfriend.
I just feel kind of sticky and sad and dry-mouthed.
Like popped champagne.
Like someone who wakes up and realizes the dream could have been real if I'd just pushed one tiny possibility into the real world.
Oh, Fred. If I had only known, how different would things be?