Disclaimer: The characters of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions Inc. No Copyright Infringement is intended.
Rating: PG-13. Contains some sexual content.
Editor's Note: This story is set in the Buffy/Spike Shipper Society's alternate season six universe, also known as the SOGverse. It takes place sometime during the two months following the end of "Shades of Gray." The story is a standalone and can be read without having read SOG.
See Right Through You
An SOGverse fic
Written by Merrin
She would choose three things to remember about him. First, maybe the scent of his cologne, like cloves in citrus. That was nice. Second, the way he took her bottom lip between his teeth in the middle of kissing her; she liked that. And eww... the way he kept shoving his tongue into her ear, where it made a wet, sloshing noise. Why did guys think that was a turn-on? It must be a widespread misconception, because she kept meeting men who thought it was the way to send a woman into orgasmic convulsions.
As she was having these thoughts, she realized that she was kind of uncomfortable. Somehow, she had gotten herself shoved up too close to the headboard, and every thrust from the man on top of her made her head thud dully against the wood. She'd have to do something about that eventually.
In the meantime, she mused over the physical counterpoint they were creating: one player always ahead, the other lagging, as body parts impacted gracelessly against other body parts. If there's no rhythm, you just can't dance to it, she thought.
Of course, an observer with a clear, cruel eye might easily point out that this was to be expected when you were having sex with a guy you just met a couple of hours ago.
At a bar. Where else? He had dark hair, thick and crisp, and a moustache and beard. She'd considered the hazards of beard burn, then propositioned him anyway. She did it because he had a way of looking at her as if she were the only person in the room, and because his voice caught in his throat when she placed her hand on his thigh, and because he used the word 'detritus' in casual conversation.
So, now? She just wasn't into it. She felt... detached. Tab A goes into slot B. She didn't have any expectation that he would do anything interesting enough to distract her from the DVD-like commentary running through her brain.
Suddenly, his face loomed above her, mouth widening as he leaned down to kiss her. His eyes were large moist globes that glittered in the candlelight, and she could see the pores pockmarking his skin like moon craters.
She pushed him off of her with a shudder, and what started as a scream escaped her throat as a tiny squeak. The expression on his face told her he thought she was a lunatic, and Amy considered, for a fleeting moment, trying to explain the whole story to him.
About how she used to be a rat. God's truth. Because of... a magic spell. Honest.
When you peered down at me like that, it was like being back in a cage...
Magic spells? Ridiculous. Did she actually think there was a man on the planet (hell, anyone) who would understand? Who would come close to believing it?
Oh, for God's sake...
It was time to take matters into her own... hands, so to speak.
Amy held his gaze as she crawled across rumpled sheets and straddled him. She slid one finger into her mouth, tasting it with a languorous tongue, then she traced a line along the length of her neck, over her breast, around the point of her nipple, over her belly. As he watched with his tongue almost lolling out of his mouth, she slipped her fingers between her legs. After a few luxuriating moments, she reached out to stroke him teasingly: his bottom lip, the dark curly hair on his chest...
She leaned down and whispered in his ear:
Goddess grande e digno, eu sou seu empregado humble. O homem de maio seja frota da lingüeta, forte e firme em his esforça-se.
It was a spell, of course; he probably thought it was sweet nothings he couldn't quite hear, and, being a guy, he didn't bother to say What? What did you say? because he wanted to get back to humping her, the hell with talking.
Yeah, the hell with talking. She felt a soft buzzing; everywhere her fingers had traveled, there was a snap/crackle/pop that started at level one, then moved up the dial.
Much better...
When he put his mouth on her breast, she ran her hands through his hair. Her fingers tightened around the coarse, thick strands, then pulled sharply. He bit down, just hard enough, and she gritted her teeth inside a transcendent smile...
Later, Amy slipped out while he snored. By the time the elevator descended from his floor to the lobby, she realized she was having trouble remembering his name. Of course, she'd probably never see him again, but still... it felt wrong not to be able to match a face with a name. Bryce? Brian?
Half an hour after that, she was sitting in a diner a block away. It was early morning, so there were only a few people there... sleepy, very quiet people.
Amy stared at the menu.
When she first got her human form back, with its accompanying appetites, all she wanted to do was eat. Her roommate found her lying on the couch, groaning in agony. Amy told Willow it was bad Chinese food; the truth was, she ate so much that her stomach muscles were cramping in protest.
Hot fudge sundaes...Like heaven. Lobster scampi...Ecstasy. Blueberry pancakes, barbecued ribs and cheese quesadillas with hot peppers. Better than sex. There were still days when she felt like she could eat everything on the menu...
"Ready to order?" The waiter was in his mid-30's, maybe, with oily, side-parted hair that hung in his face. He wore a nametag with a smiley face; it read: 'Hi! My name is Steve. How may I serve you?'
God, nametags would have been so handy just now. "Hi! My name is Brandon. How about a one night stand?" No, it wasn't Brandon. Bruce... maybe?
The waiter was flicking his pen: on, off, on, off. His demeanor seemed to say Time is money, honey. He had an uneven shadow of a beard, and the top two buttons on his shirt were undone, revealing a gray, sweat-stained collar.
There were definitely days where it was all about the eating; there were other days, like today, when she just knew everything was going to taste like cheese.
Amy shuddered as nausea settled over her brain, heavy like the coastal fog that hung outside the diner's ceiling-high windows. "Just coffee, please."
"That all you want?" The waiter studied her. His nose wrinkled as if he were trying to catch her scent.
She thought about telling him to go screw himself, that he smelled worse then half a dozen indigents, but she decided to just give him a reason to go away. "Okay, gimme a bran muffin, too," she said sullenly.
Forty-five minutes later, she'd had six refills on her coffee. The dried-out muffin sat untouched on its plate. Amy was feverishly tapping a matchbook against the coffee cup, rattling the spoon and saucer, and deciding that caffeine was the invention of the devil.
She looked around casually. The patrons scattered around the restaurant were inside their own worlds; no one was paying any attention to her. She laid the teaspoon lengthwise in front of her and held her hand above it, fingers splayed. Her eyes closed to a slit as she shifted into a trance-like concentration. Nothing happened for a moment.
Suddenly, the spoon vibrated sharply, and levitated, just an inch above the surface of the table.
She felt the familiar surge of energy start at her fingertips and spread through the nerve endings in her hand, then travel half-way up her arm, before it dissipated like the fizz in a soda. The spoon sank back down onto the table.
Since she 'came back', she'd had plenty of sex; she'd overused alcohol, and tried various drugs, including something called 'e' someone gave her at a party.
Poor Willow. She observed, offered a compassionate ear (which Amy didn't make use of that often) and refrained from scolding... too much (which Amy was grateful for). Amy noticed that Willow always wore that sick face some people have when they're about to get on the roller coaster: Dear God, why did I stand in line for this?
Amy caught sight of her reflection in the diner window, like a photo negative of her daylight self. The weird thing was, after all these months, her own face was still a little foreign to her: a flat oval, with eyes that seemed too far apart, her lips an unnatural swelling of flesh.
It's not like she'd forgotten who she was before: the girl who didn't speak up too much, who just wanted to be left alone... the girl who tried to humor her whacked-out mother (and the less said about that bitch, the better)...
It's just that she was different now. She'd been there and back again. She gazed at her reflected features. What if it happened again? What if it happened right now? She could feel herself shrinking down and down, bones collapsing, organs twisting tightly together, limbs shortening and growing claws, body compacting into a hard little ball of sinew and hair and teeth...
… forgetting the names of the people and objects around her, forgetting her own name.
She noticed with chagrined amusement that she was doing it again. She had been licking her fingertips, then combing her fingers through her hair.
Lots of weird habits lingered: the grooming thing, curling into a ball to sleep, the way loud noises would send her skittering, and her sometimes acute sense of smell. At the moment, she was hyper-aware of every person in the diner, and not pleasantly so. The waiter, who kept striding by the booth she sat in, was trailed by an odorous cloud made up of grease and sweat and scrambled eggs. The man two booths away smelled like cigarette smoke and Ben Gay. She caught a whiff of urine when the door to the men's room swung open a while back, and now she couldn't escape it.
She was aware of more than their smells and their breathing and their sounds. She could feel the discontent rolling off them in invisible waves. The rules they followed, the fear they carried around with them; she could see it unmistakably when she looked in their eyes. That guy over there is a victim of how he thinks other people see him. That one is a prisoner of his past mistakes.
What about her? She was sitting alone in a seedy diner, not sure exactly where she was, geographically speaking, wearing the faint remnant of casual sex with a man who wore citrus cologne, and whose name she couldn't remember.
She had decided something in the last couple of months; it might even have been an epiphany. She was not going to be weighed down with regrets. Choices are made, and... that's that. At least she would have her fill.
"Life's a banquet, and most poor bastards are starving to death." She couldn't remember who said that. Willow would know.
Amy breathed on the windowpane, and watched a swirl of ice crystals form. Though the California winter was cold enough, there was no snow or ice, just early morning fog. If anyone sitting nearby had looked closely enough, they would have noticed that the ice crystals were forming on the inside of the glass.
Amy was painting a picture; she decided that it was going to be an ice princess, with arms outstretched, ready to fly away. Looking closer, Amy marveled at her ice maiden's face: so serene, such icy calm. What was the question again? the lady seemed to be saying.
Out of the corner of her eye, Amy caught a glimpse of a slender figure in a patchwork jacket coming in through the diner's glass doors. She quickly smeared her hand over her ice picture.
A young woman with a heart-shaped face and short red hair curving against her cheek slid into the seat across from Amy. She was biting her bottom lip nervously.
"Willow," Amy said, smiling affectionately.
"Yeah?"
"Your face could win you the overprotective mother of the year award."
"Amy..."
"You worry too much."
"I guess." Willow was still chewing on her lip.
"Thanks for coming to my rescue." Amy smiled brightly at her, resolving to ignore the uneasiness in Willow's eyes. "I'm hungry all of a sudden. Let's order breakfast, huh? I'll pay you back. Stack of pancakes this high. And six strips of bacon, eggs over easy..." Amy's voice was carefree, and a little loud for this early in the morning. "Hey, waiter! Hey, what's your name? Byron! We're starving over here."