To be honest, I was a little surprised at the number of requests for a commentary on this fic; I wrote it faster than almost any other story, and considered it primarily self-indulgent and fluffy, but the response was really positive. Which was wonderfully warmfuzzy, especially since this was my first time writing Buffy pov.
First title that sprang to mind -- which is unusual, usually I angst for ages -- and it seemed appropriately lighthearted and descriptive. Mostly I'm glad whenever I come up with a title that's not an overly pretentious quote from song lyrics or a poem. Also I like to think it sounds, um, tantalizing!
Kyra Cullinan
(kyrac [AT] sympatico.ca)
fandom: btvs
Very tangential sidenote: I love my fandom. I am so scared my fandom is going to die since the show's over. Don't die, pretty fandom!
summary: Buffy's possibilities.
This fic grew entirely out of the final moment of "Chosen", the dawning of Buffy's smile across her face which unravelled me completely, made me forget everything I'd ever been annoyed with her for because of the whole world suddenly lying open in front of her, the pathos of her entire storyline. Kept having all these different scenarios play out in my head, the things which could happen, but I didn't want to write any of them down because it seemed like it would destroy some of that sense of possibility by locking her into an imaginary future. This is a kind of compromise, an attempt at painting all -- or at least a handful -- of her choices.
notes: NC-17, post-"Chosen", a modified response to both the Five Things challenge and the Cocktail Challenge. Buffy/almost everyone.
The Five Things challenge was one of the best inspirations to ever hit the net, imho; this was my second (posted) response, the first being a Willow character study, and by this point I was interested in playing around with the rules of the challenge, tweaking its boundaries. Same goes for the Bordello's Cocktail Challenge, which I'd been wanting to answer forever ...
*
i. body shots
... hence the structural mechanism of using a different alcoholic beverage for each pairing, to evoke its tone. Also, when alcohol's involved I find even the most unconventional pairings way easier to swallow, don't you? A lesson learned from the masters *coughSpike/Anyacough*.
"Fuck it all," Faith said. "Let's go to Mexico." So they did.
I am not-so-secretly delighted by having written something with fuck as the first word.
Left a note to keep Giles from freaking: be back later, scrawled hastily on the back of a receipt. And they will. They just maybe don't know how much later.
They took inventory of their resources on the way: three stakes, a few hundred dollars and a ridiculous proportion of halter tops. The essentials, Faith said.
Mostly I was trying to capture the most basic and appealing elements of the B/F pairing here, which I think all goes back to their "Bad Girls" vibe, which is what the inventory's supposed to evoke.
The town is on the beach, full of loud, tiny clubs packed with locals and a handful of gringos. They dance hard, covered in a sheen of sweat, feeling the hot press of bodies around them. Take tequila shots like they’re water, the fluidity and motion of salt, drink, lime. Later, body shots, Faith’s mouth hot on Buffy’s collarbone, her own tongue tasting the skin of Faith’s cleavage, the burn of liquor sliding down her throat followed by the fleshy, tart give of fruit between her teeth. Over and over ‘til Buffy’s wrapped in a numb, alcohol-induced haze which is shattered in the dirty hotel room by Faith’s tongue snaking through her wet folds. Buffy tilts her head back, rests her thighs on Faith’s shoulders and blithely ignores the shouts which even through the language barrier are obvious orders to shut the hell up.
This sentence is horrible. I rewrote it about four times to improve its clarity (on paper, as I recall, so at least some of this first came into being in hard copy) and it's still horrible. Maybe my worst technical flaw (apart from the overenthusiastic comma thing), when my sentences just grow to massive, incomprehensible proportions. And then I come back and find them and they bother me forever. I'm never sure about the acceptability (or practicality) of editing my own stories once they've been posted.
Also, holy God do I adore tequila shots; does it show?
Buffy discovers she really, really likes the way Faith twists under her, the arch of her back and the flutter-squeeze of muscles around Buffy’s fingers. Likes how biting down on whatever flesh she can find, shoulder or wrist, only makes Faith wetter.
'cause in no universe would they not have rough sex. And I can pretend to myself that it keeps it from being too schmoopy.
These nights, through the rush of adrenaline and bass, it’s easy to pretend everything’s like it used to be. During the day, while they practice what she calls the art of zen tanning, it’s harder not to remember they’re older, different, wearier. Until Faith rolls over and grins at her, that flash of recognition, of I-know-what-you’re-thinking that she’s never achieved with either Dawn or Willow, and she remembers yeah, things are different: no hellmouth or responsibilities or watchers or inevitable destiny. Just them and the heat and the slick easiness of an unplanned future.
The most positive post-"Chosen" Buffy I can imagine, and I'm not entirely sold on the picture myself, is one who relishes what she's always wanted, from day one, an escape from the destiny thing. Kinda like the contrast of her sharing it with another Chosen One, so to speak.
ii. beer
Xander's such a beer kind of guy. I think I've gotten stuck on the image of post-wedding depressive Xander taking a swig.
"You know this doesn’t mean anything, right?" Buffy says and Xander grins that crooked, self-deprecating smile.
(it's what Xanders do best)
"Yeah, even I can pretty much figure that one out," he says, and his hands are big on the small of her back and his mouth is wet and close.
The monastic, anguished grieving routine makes no sense to her, and she guesses Xander agrees. It’s astonishingly easy to fall into each other’s arms, to slip into an intimacy that’s comforting despite its lack of meaning. It’s much harder to actually excise their less shallow ghosts, to get over what they’ve left behind, what they’ve lost.
Almost immediately after writing "less shallow ghosts" I had no idea what I meant, although at the time it was a very specific concept; I left it in because I liked how it sounded.
I find the B/X post-"Chosen" similarities intruging, the losses they share, and their potential (see below) for being at loose ends. I really like fic exploring the connection between Buffy and Xander, because I do think it's one of the most fundamentally important elements of the show, from his s1 crush all the way through to "If you die, I'll bring you back. It's what I do." Unfortunately I think this is the most positive romantic relationship I can see them in, i.e. one based on their mutual history and friendship rather than any kind of intense romantic love. Also unfortunately, I've seen too many fics where this means one of the two gets bashed, which I tried very hard not to do here, because --as is so common in Jossverse relationships-- it's a failure based on basic differences rather than there being a right and wrong party.
Everyone is gone. The smart people to England – Giles, Willow and Dawn – and the exuberant ones to Cleveland, where Faith and Wood are shepherding the new generation. It left the two of them with the wreckage of their former, vanished lives, baggage of dead lovers, and a sincere lack of drive. Florida has an endless, astonishing supply of construction opportunities for him and sun and languid days for her and is both like and unlike Southern California enough to be manageable for them both.
I spent the last ten years living in Florida so this is a totally wanky shoutout to, uh, me. Also I wanted each vignette set in a specific place to correspond with the different partners and drinks.
He doesn’t look at her with the adoration of highschool, and she doesn’t want him to. Their lives are far more tangled together now, too much history pulling them close, tightening around them, tying them together. They have sex during the day, sunlight across his back or her breasts. He is good in bed, practiced, solicitous. When she thinks to look in his eyes, she sees that he’s not thinking about her exactly as much as she isn’t about him.
She misses Sunnydale with a fervor she never expected; she knew who she was there. She had a role. Now she’s obsolete, unnecessary and she thinks she understands him more than she ever did before. He brings home Cuban food, black beans and fried plantains and she watches him break the last piece of bread and offer her half. He has a glass eye now, one that looks very close to normal, and to look at him you’d never know he lost anything. She takes the bread.
I only vaguely realized this while I was writing it, but breaking bread together is a fairly Biblical image. Not so sure what it means; maybe companionship, with an undercurrent of sadness, a la the Last Supper.
It’s not love, nor much like it, but she knows she’d miss him, that her bed would be cold without him there. And it’s all very easy, too easy, to curl up and watch sitcoms inside the whitewashed condo walls while the humid night presses against the screens; to shift as he comes in and hands her a beer, the bottle sweating in her hand. To watch the way he twists off the cap before he gives it to her, like she couldn’t do it herself, like she’s a normal girl. To curl into his arm and let the bitter weight of the beer slide down her throat and listen to his heart beat.
Did you notice that the beer jumps from one person to another, nonsensically? I did.
The heartbeat thing is supposed to emphasize the normal, everyday humanity of him, and them.
iii. strawberry daiquiris
... seem a very Willowy thing, maybe 'cause of what she drinks on her first date with Kennedy, as well as Rack's "you taste like strawberries". Also although I've read very little B/W it all comes down for me to the image of Buffy tackling Willow on the grass in s3's "Choices" (or the publicity photos from about the same time showing them wrestling), that really sweet and giddy best friend vibe. So, a similar drink.
This relief is a familiar feeling, cyclical, comforting. If she could chart their friendship, it would be a series of peaks and valleys, the low, bad spots followed by making up, making things right between them again. The simple reassurance of it, as far back as Buffy can remember, and she’s not going to try to analyze the relative healthiness of that when Sunnydale’s demise is still throbbing in her mind, so surreal and unbelievable.
One of my must-have elements of post-"Chosen" fic is the necessary post-traumatic thing the survivors must have going on after the sudden destruction of their entire town.
For now she’s just glad to see Willow smiling again, to be able to smile back and actually mean it.
'cause really, dude, what is up with their drama? Although I have a secret penchant for the episodes where everyone has a giant fight -- "Dead Man's Party", "The Yoko Factor", "Empty Places" -- and gets their grievances out in the open. And then later all is good again; the two of them are very good at gestures which show that, too -- see the joint meditation at the end of "Same Time, Same Place".
They’ve been paired off, split into their own duo like all the other Sunnydale survivors, on the hunt for newly called Slayers. ("Phase One of The Slayers of the Future!" Andrew had said before Xander rolled his eyes and dragged him off.)
I almost cut this because it sounded retarded (I can't do humor for the life of me) but then I got good feedback on this line in particular so it all turned out okay. The end! It stayed because in each of these scenarios I tried to explain not just what was happening to Buffy but where else everyone was, although without going into too much detail.
It’s a good match; Willow guides and Buffy explains and packs the bewildered girl off to L.A. for training, and in between there’s the road and maps full of funny town names and a sense of slow, easy unwinding. And the locator spells are sexy, filling her with a soft, tingling ache. Makes her think Tara was on to something.
Hee, it's all about Willow and Anya in "Same Time, Same Place": "It did get kinda sexy, didn't it?" Ha! What's that about?? I am intrigued.
They giggle their way through bars in Houston, Vancouver, Madison, ordering sweet, cold drinks that leave Buffy with brain freeze and flush Willow’s face. Make up fake names for the creepy guys that hit on them, and the first time Willow’s foot bumps Buffy’s under the table it’s an accident, but when Buffy reciprocates it’s not. Brushes her toes up Willow’s ankle half-hesitantly and they’re both laughing and it’s mostly to discourage the lecherous businessman who won’t buzz off, the way Willow’s fingers tangle in the short hairs at the nape of Buffy’s neck and make her shiver.
This I tend to consider completely believable and natural, given the situation, but I'm not sure if it's just me.
Later, in the hotel room, both of them drunk and silly, it’s more about how uncomplicatedly good it feels to have Willow’s mouth hot on her neck, the allure of running her tongue over Willow’s hipbones, the newness and familiarity of it all at once.
This is kind of silly but when I'm writing smut, especially so much so close together, I try to include detail about a body feature I find particularly indicative of that person (usually for no particular reason whatsoever) to keep it from being Tab A, Slot B sex. So we've got Willow's hipbones (because she's such a little person), and elsewhere Xander's hands, Faith's breasts and back, etc. This probably is way less interesting or unique than I think it is.
"Holy mother of GOD," she says, the first time Willow spreads her legs and licks her until she comes so hard she’s half-crying. Willow grins that witchy smile and crawls up to lie half on top of her, warm, naked girlflesh pressing Buffy into the sheets, soft in all the same places, and how weird is it to share a bed with someone her own size for once? Buffy runs her fingers over the soft skin in the small of Willow’s back and smiles into the dizzying kiss she gets in return. Tasting the headiness of herself on Willow’s tongue through bittersweet traces of alcohol and fruit.
Kind of like the harsh/sweet combination that characterizes their friendship.
iv. gin
See, if I were a good fic writer I would've researched what it is that Giles drinks in his depresso drinking phases, but I was internetless at the time of writing so instead I just picked one of those yucky, harsh grownup drinks I don't like and applied it.
It rains all the time. Gray skies and damp air that she’s entirely unused to, and she never realized how much her mood depended on the climate of southern California. Soft days, Giles calls them affectionately, and she pulls his blinds closed so she doesn’t have to see outside. Looks at him, instead, and he takes off his glasses and gazes back.
My Irish grandmother, who I never met, apparently said the "soft days" thing, and my dad would tell it to me when I was growing up and cranky about it being overcast. I did not find it comforting, but I've never heard it anywhere else. Also I like the intimacy of the image of Giles-without-glasses.
Things are different from the start: usually they only leave after she sleeps with them, but he went away long before this. She has nothing else to lose from him so she pays careful, clinical attention to the way he gasps, the way his palm settles on her head as she takes him in her mouth. Learning him as a man, to forget him as her Watcher. A stupid mission, and impossible, but she pretends that if he’s just a man she sleeps with, he won’t be Giles who went away, who stopped trusting her. Who made her be the Slayer for so many years that now she’s forgotten how not to be.
They are drafting the plans for the new Council, building it from the ground up with their joint expertise and she keeps her clothes in the room Willow used last summer and spends her nights in his bed.
A *lot* of this section is cannibalized from a future B/G I wrote a year ago and never finished, based on the song on Anthony Stewart Head's album written by Joss, "Last Time". Recycling half-finished stories is often the only way I can make myself come to terms with the fact they'll never be completed, which in this case is a very good thing. It was very angsty.
He’s neither her best lover or her worst. He fucks her hard, exactly the way she wants, and she wouldn’t have expected that, if she thought to expect at all.
"I’ll bet old Quentin is rolling in his grave right about now," she said the first morning after, and he chuckled at her.
"This is the way women and men have behaved since the beginning," he said, brushing his thumb over her nipple.
IT'S A RESTLESS LINE! See, see?! He says it in his dream in Restless! In that oddly subtexty scene between the two of them. This is precisely why I wanted to do this commentary. I love dropping in little things like this but because I'm a dork nobody ever actually notices but me.
"Watchers and Slayers are no different. It’s hardly unusual." He tilted his head. "Didn’t Faith ever tell you about her first Watcher?"
In my own personal fanon Faith was totally sleeping with her first Watcher, who I think canonically was a woman. Which doesn't actually mesh with the "women and men" thing, but I couldn't resist.
She blinked and shook her head and had something else to think about. She thinks a lot about Slayery concepts now, determined that things will be different for all the new girls she’s drafted into the life she’s tried so long to escape. She feels the weight of responsibility, of being on the other side of things, the side she hated and disregarded and left, taking only Giles with her. They argue about protocol, about the future, and she realizes she’s never going to leave any of this behind. She can’t leave it behind, and she half-hates him for trying to, for leaving, for suddenly making the choice for himself that he’d spent so many years telling her she didn’t have. Feels it all dissipate, though, when he looks at her with all that stupid, timeless Giles love, affection that neither of them bothers to categorize. She is used to being looked at with adoration, found substitutes for it when he wasn’t around to do so, and would never, ever admit that to anyone.
There’s a cabinet full of glass bottles in his house here, and when she kisses him he tastes like their contents, harsh and adult. He pours two tumblers every night, without asking, and she hates the way it tastes and drinks it anyway. Hides her shudder and feels it burn on the way down, blurring reality, taking her away from everything.
This is pretty much the diametrical opposite to the Faith section, a future in which Buffy is totally unable to escape from slaying and doesn't deal with it well at all. Also see Mexico sun vs. English rain, Slayer vs. Watcher, woman vs. man, etc.
v. wine
I wrote this before Angel s5 had even begun, based only on casting rumors, and thought it had totally been Jossed until the event at the beginning of Destiny, which mean this isn't totally out of the question. The tightrope walk of writing for a fandom still on the air!
She will not kiss either of them. This is her very solemn plan and she repeats it over and over to herself on the way to L.A. That day, the last in Sunnydale, when she somehow managed to have Angel on her lips and Spike between her legs all in the same twenty-four hours was entirely too confusing for her to begin to process even now, let alone recreate. And jealous, sulky vampire – either one – is something she’s intent on avoiding.
I think some people assumed Buffy slept with Spike right before the "drowning in footwear" scene, yes? Way out of the Spuffy loop but it seemed viable for the purposes of this.
Spike truly is alive, which she hadn’t really believed until she saw him, same familiar eyes on her. And behind him, Angel, himself as ever, watching the both of them.
"How did you know?" "I lurk." Also insert something about the (double!) male gaze.
Dinner is sumptuous and it’s obvious Angel’s showing off his Wolfram & Hart connections. Glasses of wine older than anyone at the table, which is seriously saying something, and she drinks too many, unused to something so potent. Spike is obvious too, in his tense quietness which matches Angel’s, the two of them attempting best behavior. The muted jibes are odd on them, and her head spins with the strangeness and the particular haze of red wine until she leaves to splash water on her face in the softly lit bathroom.
I'm fascinated by that moment of self-evaluation and sudden solitude, looking in a mirror while you've been drinking. Can't really capture it in words, which is infinitely frustrating, but Six Feet Under did fairly well with it onscreen once.
Comes back and things are suddenly a whole lot more complicated, because chairs have been thrown over and Angel has Spike pinned against the wall, forearm across his collarbones, and she always forgets how little Spike is next to anyone who isn’t her. For a split second she thinks they’re fighting, shades of Riley showing up, and she bangs the door open to stop them, and then realizes where, exactly, Angel’s other hand is. They both freeze when they see her, Angel’s hand still on Spike’s crotch, Spike’s mouth hanging open in an aborted gasp, like they expect her to either run out or light into them.
I love how Buffy always feels like (and okay sometimes rightly so) she has to charge in and separate her fighting lovers. It's so very very her.
Instead, she sits down. Right on the floor and blinks because, wow. They break apart hastily, and she can see that they’re both hard and both still glaring sideways at each other and ... everything is far less weird than it should be. And of all things for her to realize in that instant, it’s that even in the freakiness of this moment, they’re both hers, with the kind of intensity which might freak her out if she thought about it, if it weren’t so natural by now. The man she loved and the one she never managed to get around to loving, and suddenly she gets it; wants them *both* with a rush that makes her dizzy. It doesn’t stop her from standing up, though, and looking hard at them.
"Buffy, I –" Angel starts but she shakes her head and he stops, chagrined.
I think I meant chastened. Not sure chagrined really works.
She’s trying to work something out, through the fuzziness in her head.
Angel is from a time when broken hearts were still new to her, and Spike from long after they’d become too routine. Both of them part of the life swallowed along with the rest of the town, the physical embodiment of the girls she’s been. There’s some kind of riddle here, like if she can have them both she’ll figure out who she is, who she’s becoming. Chart the path of her growing up to figure out where it’s pointing.
Also Buffy logic is kind of adorable. In that crazy way. Cookie dough, much?
Guilt is still playing across their faces when she walks over to Spike and kisses him very softly and purposefully on the lips. Breaks away before he can touch her or open his mouth and stands on her tiptoes to do the same to Angel. Just the smells of them each --
Buffy bites her lip and waits. Closes her eyes and breathes as they move to encircle her.
Everyone wanted more of this scene; hell, *I* wanted more of this scene, but (for once) am totally not able to envision the dynamics of the three of them having sex. Unfortunately. Dammit.
And yes, that's my official answer to the great which vampire should end up with Buffy question: both of them! All together! The more the merrier!
On a broader note, something I noticed while doing this is how the use of light in each section evolves into a diminishing pattern throughout the whole: suntanning in Mexico, sunlit sex in Florida, overcast England and finally vampires-at-night. I'm not sure what this means, apart from the fact that as a lit student I can fanwank absolutely anything into some bizarre kind of sense, but if I were actually trying to prove this I'd chalk it up to something about Buffy's inherent darkness creeping in. Heh. I'm so full of it.
Anyway, this was surprisingly fun! And massive kudos to you if you actually made it this far, through all the self-indulgent babbling.
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