"Paper Moon"
by Katharine
Rating: R
Summary: Giles and Anya's relationship starts - with a word.
Disclaimer:
Property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy et al.
Improv: #47 --Ryan Adams song
Notes: Post Season 6. No spoilers per se.
Inspiration:
"Paper Moon"
by Ryan Adams
"What Can You Tell Me" by Anthony Head
"Teardrop" by
Massive Attack
Special thanks (again!) to my beta, Wesleysgirl. Chica, you
rock.
Distribution: My site, Rapture (http://paranoid-kitten.net/rapture)
Want, take, have. Let me know where it went.
Feedback: Would be
wonderful.
It started with a word.
There is nothing remarkable about that. Many things begin with words. Many things live through words, and wither away as conversation dies.
A word is an entity. Words can be bought, and sold, and exchanged. They can explore, they can emote, they can hide, they can hurt. Words are as constant as the rotation of the world they brighten.
Ideas are expressed through words. Without words, there would be no heaven. No hell. No universal idea of existence. Words bring a spectrum of human possibility. Good. Evil. Ambivalence. Seraphim, cherubim, goblin, ghoul.
Doctor Faustus sold his soul to the devil for twenty-four years' possession of a demon. Through words.
In this town, one could easily exchange soul for demon, entering into a contract with no foreseen expiration. A wordless contract.
Words are not everything. They have their uses, but there is a great deal to be achieved without them.
He knows this as he stares into the infinite hazel of her eyes.
He knows that he would willingly surrender his soul, body and mind to this demon.
He knows that perhaps he already has.
It started with a word.
"Goodbye."
It began with farewell. He often ponders the irony of this. Wonders what might have happened if she hadn't reached out to him at that moment. Hadn't kissed him.
A chain of events must have a beginning. The beginning of this chain is wordless.
She kissed him desperately, and he kissed back. Clothing melted away as they succumbed to the temptation of the flesh. His humble apartment was suddenly the scene of something greater, the merging of two spirits into one.
Giles chuckles as his memory glorifies their violent coupling, making it cosmic, grandiose, profound. Not recalling it for what it was.
Her last ditch strategy for making him stay. The one strategy she was convinced might work. A hard, wordless fuck.
Wordless sex is inherently emotionless sex. Or so he had thought. So, no doubt, had Anya. For two people who live their lives through words, he through books, she through wishes, silent emotion is difficult to fathom. Silent emotion that is shared by two people is next to impossible. Perhaps this is why, when both discovered its existence, they found it so difficult to let go.
For the first time in her life, the focus was not on the raw act itself. For the first time in his, he felt inexplicably connected to another being. As climax approached, their bodies were not their own, but each others'. The feelings created inside them were not simply pleasure gained through copulation, but pure, uninhibited emotion.
At first, it happened once a week. He came to expect her, at some time that single evening. He would hear the gentle tap on his door, and she would be standing there, lamplight glowing and reflecting from her hair.
She enters, he shuts the door behind her, and she falls into his arms. During the week, words are exchanged. This one night of sanctuary is punctuated only by moans. By the sound of clothing hitting the floor. The sound of skin moving against skin. Afterwards, she stays. For the first time in years, he lights up a cigarette, the smoke hanging around their sated bodies like a halo. She does not complain. Simply looks up at him with those ethereal eyes, reaches and takes the cigarette from his mouth, and draws from it herself. There is something intensely intimate, intensely erotic about this movement. He wants to berate her for putting her own health at risk, then remembers that it is she who is eternal.
She stays until the morning comes. And then she picks up her clothes, quickly puts them on, turns uncharacteristically nervously towards him, smiles a little, and then leaves.
This is how it began. The first few times, the first few weeks. And then, one night, midweek, she unexpectedly arrives on his doorstep, tears in her eyes. He blinks, caught off guard.
Past her head, he can see the glassy stars, the paper moon, bouncing its beams from the white stone of the building, the pale fire reflected in her glistening eyes.
She speaks.
"What can you tell me?" she whispers. And for once in his life, he does not understand the words, but understands the emotion.
That night is different. Everything seems more intense. As before, no words are spoken during, but afterwards, they talk. She wants to know why. He cannot tell her. They both already know.
Love. Love is a verb. Love is a doing word.
It becomes twice a week. Every other night. Every night. They cannot let go of what they have. They have become greedy. Avarice takes hold of their souls, makes them ache for one another.
Now he realises how much damage this potentially may have caused. This addiction to one another. Stolen kisses in the daytime, passion by night. Without fail, at nine o'clock every night, she stands on the cool stone of his doorstep, and as he opens the door, a weight seems to lift from his shoulders.
Words begin to flow more freely between them, more naturally. They speak of their lives, their dreams, of anything that enters their heads. They tell each other anything and everything, a kind of freedom that makes each feel drunk. She knows of his claustrophobia, he knows of her hatred of narrow-mindedness.
Over the weeks, a relationship constructed on the foundation of chemical attraction and physical compatibility progresses and develops. She takes him to her favourite opera, he buys dinner at his favourite restaurant. They are soon constructing contrived excuses why both must disappear for a long weekend; this is easier than either could have imagined. She is cursing perfidious husbands, he is on Council business. They are in a hotel in Paris for four days.
Perhaps, he reflects, they became too complacent.
Under the influence of ardour, they are incautious, indiscreet. They forget that they are not the only two people in the world.
Which is why, one night, everything crashes to a halt. The glassy stars are smashed, the paper moon crunched beneath careless feet.
That night, they don't make it to his bed. They stumble through the door, already clawing at clothing, kissing hungrily, her legs wrapping around his waist, her hips thrusting against his.
He pulls her dress over her head, and she unbuttons his shirt, quickly, yet gently. They collapse onto the couch as she works open his trousers, and then straddles him, lowering herself onto him. She does not believe in foreplay.
As their bodies merge for what seems like the thousandth time, the world slows down and stops around them. Plants no longer grow, other humans no longer exist, the planets no longer spin. All that exists is them.
He is drawn to so something entirely strange to these moments. Something foreign and taboo.
He speaks.
"I love you, Anya," he moans.
She stops moving. He worries that he has said something terribly wrong. Her face is filled with an emotion that he does not recognise. This terrifies him, but only for a moment.
"I love you," she replies, before making him groan in pleasure.
This is a death blow.
Climaxes reached, they collapse against each other, neither having the energy to move. Neither wanting to leave the cocoon they have created.
Neither hearing the quiet click of the door closing.
A gasp echoes through the room. Giles and Anya open their eyes. Buffy and Xander stand in front of them.
Buffy's face is expressionless. Xander's is not.
Giles jumps to his feet, forgetting for a moment his nakedness.
"Look, we can explain..."
"You bastard." The last thing Giles remembers of the drama is Xander's fist coming towards his face.
This is all he has been thinking of for eleven hours. He assumes that it will continue to haunt him for the rest of his existence.
As the customs officials glance in his direction, he raises a hand to the swollen purple mound on his cheek. The terminal is eerily empty, and the public announcements system rings with an accent that seems strangely familiar, and yet out of place. He grips his passport firmly in his hand, fumbles with the mixed currencies in his wallet, and walks out of the terminal to find a taxi.
He stops abruptly at the vision before him. There, on the pavement, hair plastered to her head, makeup running down her face, battered by the rain, she stands. A shaft of sunlight, taken out of context, placed in this dead, grey airport.
He drops his bags, and walks towards her, at first slowly, and then more briskly. Before he quite reaches her, she speaks.
"I think you've made me lose my mind."
It started with a word. And with a word, it began.
"Hello."
Theirs was a disordered romance.
FIN