You Just Took
"You.. You used me." I can feel the slight sting of bile rise in the back of my throat, as I choke on the words tumbling out of my lips. My eyes stare on, unblinking at the top of the coffee table, my elbows resting on my knees as I sit there, praying that you didn't.
Knowing that you did.
"I.. I'm sorry. It was a mistake. A.." I raise a hand, cutting off the rest of your jumbled and stuttering sentence. I feel like I've been slapped, or bitch punched across my jaw.
I woke up this morning in a tangle of your bedclothes, the smell of hard liquor fermenting in my mouth. The stale smell of forbidden sex surrounding me, as I lay naked beneath your sheets.
I remember the door opening as I came to pick you up for our night out. I remember getting to the Bronze. Dancing, laughing. Bursting with need as I watched you dance ever closer to me, ignoring every other soul on the floor as if they were nothing.
And the tequila. The vodka. And something that was colored brown. Thousands of tiny shot glasses, lining the edge of the bar, dancing and swimming in front of my hazy and distorted view. The burning sensation of utter blissful oblivion slamming down my throat and taking over my body.
'It was a mistake' the words almost causing me as much of a physical reaction of gut wrenching pain, as the fact that you thought you had to get me drunk, in order to have me.
Don't you get it?
"A mistake." I whisper, my eyes burring a hole through the wooden table I sit and stare at, as if it'll suddenly come to life and explain to me exactly when you became so blind.
"Just… just a mistake Faith. I swear I didn't.." I jump up, grabbing you by the collar and slamming you into the nearest wall. The knuckles of my fist the only contact my body makes with yours. Why should I give you, what you took already?
Haven't I had enough of me taken away? Stripped from my soul, and burned into nothingness? You had to take this from me too? The one thing I needed, the one thing I craved, the only thing I ever felt like I could have. And you stole it from me.
"I bet you didn't." I snarl softly to you. Rage flickering through my eyes, straight through into yours. I can feel your anger rising. I can almost taste its bittersweet tang on the air between us.
You reach up, grabbing my fist and giving it a hard squeeze. The skin on skin contact makes my entire body flare up in sudden need. It's oddly ironic that my body should remember your touch, but my mind refuses to.
"I have offered you everything," I whisper, leaning forward, resting my forehead on the wall next to you ear. My words carrying gently across the scorching air to you. "I have given you all that I have. And everything you could take from me, you took. But this?" I pull back, my eyes shrouded in tears. Small droplets of oceans pain that should have been cried years ago, wavering yet not falling. "B, you had to take this?"
A wave of confusion rocks your face. Splintering the hard mask of anger and rage you had worked up inside of you just then. Preparing yourself to shoot me down with your almighty backlash. Telling me how drunk we both were. Telling me it was just a mistake.
"It was just one night. I'm sorry. You don't remember. Lets just forget it." the pleading quality your voice takes on, when you know you simply won't win, is edging your soft voice like a knife. A double-edged blade, that cuts both ways.
"I already have." I whisper, letting go of you as I turn around, and angrily swipe away a stray tear, that had escape and ran for the freedom it had been longing for for years.
You shift behind me. I can feel the ripples your gentle movement causes the atmosphere surrounding me. Holding me up. Choking me. I feel like I can't get enough air into my body, like I can't breathe deep enough to make this black spot on my memory fade away, and leave me with only startling clarity.
I want to remember. I need to remember.
"I don't understand why you wanna know Faith." You voice is soft, talking to the back of my head. I can feel your breath whispering across the skin there. I hate that my skin stands to attention in shivering goose bumps. I hate the fact that I still want you. "It was just… it was just a.."
"Don't." I shake my head, stepping forwards slightly, needing to be further away from you than I already wasn't. I needed to run. But I knew you'd hold me here. Like a river to the sea, I'll always find my way back.
"But I don't understand why you.." you smaller fingers wrap around my arm, thumb trailing a slow stroking movement over my skin as I stand there, and simply be.
Is it truly called living, when you can't feel a thing at all?
"Because I can't remember!" yanking my arm away from you, I take another step forward, not understanding why you would move closer to me, when all I need is just a little room to breathe. I spin my body, my eyes locking with yours, and I fight the age-old impulse to flicker my vision at your lips, before focusing properly on your face.
"What?" you seem to sway slightly on your feet as confusion etches its way clearly across your features.
"I wanted to be there B!" I swing my arms out widely, gesturing to the entire room as I rip my eyes away from your face. I can't not look at your lips anymore. The need to do so, is killing me. The need to have you, has already killed me.
Because I already have had you. I just can't remember a single thing about it.
"You're making no sense!" and now I'm slammed against a wall, your body pressed flush into mine, your hands pushing at my shoulders, fingers digging into my flesh. Irritating the bruises that are now there, that weren't there when I left my motel last night.
"I wasn't there B! It was my body, but it wasn't me!" I tried to scream it back at you. I tried to yell at you. To make your head jerk backwards as if punched, my fingers curling into a fist as it connected with your face.
Slamming my head back against the wall, I look upwards, attempting to swallow the tears that made my voice crack. That gave you a slight look inside. That let you in.
Haven't you already taken enough from me?
"So congrats B. you got your one night's fuck with Faith. Have a party hat, blow out the candles on the cake." I look back at you, my eyes locking on your hairline and refusing to be taken in by your endlessly green eyes ever again. "But it was just the body. It was never me."
"This is it? This is what you're upset about? Someone's finally made Faith the notch on the head board, instead of the other way around?! That is so pathetic I don't even know where to start."
You just don't get it, do you?
I spin up around, slamming you back into the wall again, pressing your wrists into the plaster above your head and growling into your face. It may have been obvious to me, but I had to say it to you.
"You just don't get it do you, you stupid bitch." My words are like a well-placed slap. Stinging the skin they touch, causing you to wince at the few syllables I let out. Whispered into your lips. "The one thing, I was waiting to give you. The one thing I wanted to give you, you just took. I wasn't there B, but I fucking wanted to be there!"
And silence. The soft hum of the television as it sits in stand-by. The gentle howling of the wind as it rushes through the branches of the tree outside. The hammering and pure agony of my own heartbeat, hammering it's way into my chest. Pushing against my ribs so hard, for a moment I think you could even feel it against your own.
The realisation of everything hit you like a tonne of bricks. Smashing into you, forcing you to lay still, and quiet, and let the ramblings in your mind take over.
You took me out, you got me drunk, you took me home, you had sex with a body that responded, you enjoyed it, and then you tried to forget. But you didn't need to get the body drunk, to have the mind follow willingly into the pit of open desire, need and want that would have been offered.
"You could have had me any time you wanted me Buffy. You never needed to steal it from me." I whispered, the feeling of your lips being mere inches from mine causing them to tingle slightly. The muscles in my back straining with all my might, to stop myself from leaning forward and taking from you, what you took from me.
"We.. we can never.. be." your breathing hitched, as your eyes locked on my lips. The color of them drawing you in, locking you in a maze of multicolored emotions that bore nothing of the pain that now vibrated between us like an electrical current.
"You still just don't understand, do you B?" I whisper, watching your eyes as they pull themselves upwards and lock into mine. "Now? Now it's not about that we can never be. Screw destiny. We could have worked that out. But now, you can't have me."
I yanked myself away from you, my body screaming at me to go back. To find the comfort in your arms that I so desperately needed. To spill all those dirty little secrets to you, like I knew I was destined to do. To be with you, until the Powers That Be decided that enough was enough, and it was time for the end.
But my mind refused to give into the primal urges that screamed their way through my body. Blood alight with the whims and wishes of a child so young, and forever forgotten. The innocence I once had, crying itself into a stupor at what I was doing. What I was about to do.
"What you could have had, you took. You stole from me. You could have had it all B. We could have had it all." I shook my head as I yanked on my jacket, still staring at you, despite the tears I could feel slowly re-forming behind my eyes. "You could have had me anytime you wanted me Buffy."
"And now?" your voice called to me as I pulled open the front door. I turned my head slightly towards you, eyes trailing along the floor, but refusing to look at you one last time. Because I knew if I did, my resolve would crumble. My body would win; my mind would scream its defeat.
"And now you'll never know." My words whistled across the room, carried on the wind, as I softly pulled the door closed behind me. I swiped a tear away as I walked down the path and onto the sidewalk.
I didn't even have the emotions left to slam the door on the way out.