Catharsis

Finished: 7/27/02

Spoilers: After "Smashed" and "Wrecked," Buffy considers just what she and Spike did. Rating: *shrug* It was on the show.

I'm being lifted, turned, slammed back against a wall. My arms and legs are busy holding me to his thrusting body, and I can dimly feel little distracted love bites he's giving me while my head is tilted back, and the sensations I'm feeling are making explosions of colors dance behind my closed eyes.

I groan and gasp, because gods, this is good. I don't care what else it is, but it's a sticky, hard, deep-inside satisfaction, a scratch to an itch I've ignored...and then, oh god, I have to reach up and grab the wall above my head, and I think he's crying just a little, but I can't open my eyes to check, it's all I can do to keep breathing and then, oh boy, here it comes...and I fall into relief and release, and then he falls too, and now we're both falling...

I jerk awake just before our bodies hit the floor, and run a shaking hand over my face, pushing long, sweat-soaked hair away. My heart is pounding, and my blood is rushing, and I'm aching...

I pull the covers back and turn to sit on the edge of the bed. I'm taking deep breaths, trying to calm these feelings that I won't allow. My heart finally figures out where it is and grudgingly slows, and then I'm too cold and shiver, and roll to rest my head on the pillows and snug the covers under my chin.

My thoughts are dancing, and I make a token attempt to shut them down before giving up and letting them go exactly where I want them to be anyway.

A sparkle of blue eyes and a cocky grin float up, and I close my eyes and sigh. Spike. My body jumps to (hopeful) alertness at his image, and I have to take a minute to scold it into submission, and hunger eventually subsides, though not without a parting pleasurable twinge.

My body and my brain have set up opposite camps in my head and are waging war. You're a healthy young woman with sexual needs! my body screams, rattling spears and giving Amazonian war cries.

My brain responds with a flurry of kicks and punches, beating down the thought and voicing its own: Spike is a vampire! All sorts of badness there!

Didn't seem to be complaining about his badness the other night...let alone his bad ass...

V-a-m-p-i-r-e. What does it spell? Evil!

My desires decide to take another approach: And who was the one who bandaged your broken hands after the nightmare of your rebirth? Who was it that sat and just was, listening when you had something to say, remaining silent and just being present when you didn't?

My brain has little to come back with, though it continues to stomp on the thoughts as they emerge, like little badly tended campfires threatening to become a wildfire.

Another tact, almost wheedling now: You felt those kisses. Were those evil?

There are deserters from the brain camp, and the defenses are weakening.

He said he was your willing slave. He wants you, he'll do anything for you, he loves you.

A last ditch attempt by the cognitive process: He doesn't.

But the words are weak and whispered and fade fast.

The victors, desire sweeps over me, pushing me to my feet, making my hands reach for clothes, shoes, the doorknob and then directing the path my feet take, hurrying them along. Desire grows as I reach my destination; a bizarre game of warm and cold - I'm getting hotter the closer I get to my goal.

Just before I close the crypt's door behind me, a word whispers through my head, a blessing, an excuse, a benediction: Catharsis.

Catharsis: 1.Greek, a cleansing. 2. Discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or permanent relief of the condition.

Synonyms: release, deliverance, respite, intermission, surcease, reprieve.