This is OLD! Originally posted somewhere that I don't remember back in 2004. I know it's at my archive House of Leaves, but I can't find it on my LJ. SO! Here it is again. Remember, this is OLD and unbeta'd.
Title: And If You Should Have A Future
Author:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seraphcelene
Email: seraphcelene[at]yahoo.com
Rating: NC-17
Archiving: House of Leaves. Everyone else please ask.
A/N: post-Becoming AU’s, spoiled for Anne and Faith Hope and Trick
Feedback: Is like air and highly addictive. In other words, yes, please.
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all related characters belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, the Warner Company, UPN et al. I’m just taking them out for a little exercise.
Summary: Bea Arthur and three incongruous career moves.
"There are three things I’ve yet to do:
opera, rodeo, and porno."
-- Bea Arthur
one. or tutto fini
Blood on snow is all that her blind eyes see. White becomes red, snow color-soaked into an immaculate crimson rug. When they come for her, wearing their heavy, clumsy shoes, they will ruin the picture that she makes lying there in her golden gown.
Gold, white and red -- it is almost Christmas and Anne vetoed the green velvet for its blatancy. The gold was celebratory without being too seasonal. The sprig of ivy in her hair and the delicate bells around her wrists were ‘tis the season enough.
They left her like a gift for someone to find. A gift wrapped in gold Christian Lacroix, throat slit and there is a hole in her abdomen where someone dug beneath the ribcage for her heart. Her face, wide green eyes and her ruby mouth rounded with surprise, is untouched.
She is beautiful, a dainty porcelain doll lying broken in the snow, illuminated by the stunning light of the full moon. Tomorrow the papers will be plastered with her picture beneath a bold headline:
AMERICAN OPERA SINGER MURDERED
They won’t include details about the missing heart or the runes, improbably burned, in a circle around the body. They will only write that her throat was slit. Sources will say that her purse and jewelry were missing. The sources will conveniently forget about the gold bells around her wrist. Her friends will not mention that she seldom wore jewelry at all.
Her mysterious past will be briefly touched upon, her troubled youth and sudden rise to international stardom. There really isn’t much to know and those who know more, or different, won’t speak to the press. They never have.
The ritualistic nature of her death will be left out, that part of the story discreetly squashed by British businessmen in stiff suits and drab ties. All the paperwork and red tape will be ignored and the body will be turned over to an obscure branch of the government that no one’s ever heard of or will ever recall the name.
She will be a murdered star, much loved, dead before her time at age 33. Anne Summers survived by her mother Joyce Summers of Sunnydale, California, USA.
Flowers will be left, candles will be lit and prayers whispered in churches the world over. They will build shrines to her. They will make sacrifices in her name, and dedicate their kills to her -- those who would be called and fear the burden of being Chosen. The lonely young who would much rather die at thirty years old, an opera singer in the Viennese snow.
two. the ship song
"Shit kickers," Buffy giggled.
"Man stompers," the man beside her drawled, and then he pulled her down across his beautifully tanned and gloriously naked chest. They tussled for a moment over the glass in Buffy’s hand. Whiskey spilled down his arm and Buffy bent to lick it off.
"Ball busters." She gazed at him through the veil of her eyelashes and smiled. Smiled with the joy of being in bed with a man that she almost loved, tangled in sheets and his arms, with the smell of him on her skin.
"Honey, you are the ball buster, not your disreputable old boots." His voice, honeyed and gravelly with near sleep, brushed against secret places and Buffy shivered.
"Disreputable?" she repeated, head tilted as if considering the flavor of the word. "Remind me again ... what that means?" She wiggled up to lay in the crook of his arm, her head on his shoulder.
"You know perfectly well what it means. ‘Sides, dictionary’s in the night stand," Jake lightly slapped her ass. "Look it up."
"Ow," Buffy wiggled closer. She inhaled deeply and caught the scent of him. He smelled of sleepy warmth and sunshine, salt and, faintly, sex. "No, it isn’t. I already packed it. Besides, that’s what I’ve got you for."
He set the glass on the table beside the bed and rolled over, settling automatically in the space she made for him between her legs. "Darlin’, improvin’ your vocabulary is not why you keep me around." He kissed the curve of her neck, bit and growled into the soft skin until she was breathless with laughter.
"So, you admit to being kept?" Buffy pouted up at him with laughter in her eyes. "A kept man. A gigolo. A male mistress." She pressed a finger into the soft fullness of his bottom lip. "Gee. You’re all Richard Gere."
"Only with you," he said and kissed her softly.
Three years later and it amazed Buffy, still, how much she did not miss Sunnydale. Didn’t miss slaying or school or Giles. And if she really thought about it, how much she didn’t miss Angel, although there were times when Jake’s dark head on the pillow made her heart ache. But then he would open his eyes, gleaming hazel shaded by a thick fringe of dark lashes, and smile a lazy, cat-in-the-cream smile that always seemed to say Hi, I love you, and she would forget that he was not the first man she had ever wanted.
They travel only with what they need. Essentials like the dictionary Jake bought for her the first time they met, now worn with use, Mr. Gordo, Mr. Pointy and a compass. The rest is gravy, changing as necessary.
There is no patrolling, no training, no library. No books. No rules. No council. No one to protect but herself because she never stays in one place long enough to make real friends. There is only Jake, and Lucy, the stray she picked up in New Mexico after running from a girl named Lily and a past that she couldn’t seem to escape.
And there is the rodeo. Traveling the smaller circuits for prize money, and of course, Buffy always wins.
She sends the ribbons and trophies to Joyce. She sends them in boxes wrapped in brown paper with no return address. Sometimes there is a note or a card, very occasionally pictures of where she’s been and what she’s seen. Prize money is spent on food, whiskey and lodging. Jake spends his winnings on her: flowers, trinkets, tickets to the movies and books. Buffy always refuses jewelry.
"Disreputable," he whispered against the corner of her smile. "Lacking respectability in character, behavior or appearance."
"Oh, I am so lacking in respect." Buffy arched against him, her legs sliding up around his hips.
Jake groaned, "This is not a good idea. You’ve got to ride tomorrow."
Buffy smiled wickedly. "Yea. But I wanna ride tonight."
His husky laugh filled her up and wrapped itself twice around her heart. Lucy whined lightly at the foot of the bed and Buffy lost herself in the man who had given her everything she ever thought she wanted. This, happily ever after.
three. ophelia
This is what he has left her: a willingly objectified body and the notoriety of sex on film. Her face achingly lost on DVD boxes, scrolling across computer screens ($49.99) -- Google’s number one downloaded image -- and her name in neon lights.
Her world is defined by soft flesh and her ability to fuck for hours, hot lights and the distracting whine of a generator. Somewhere in the distance there is the slap-splash of a swimmer in a pool.
She rides them, Ophelia in leather and diamonds, hands clawing at the sky, her soft, coral pout glistening and feral, lips peeled back into a snarl as she straddles them. There is something in her eyes, rage that burns through the green, and for a moment she is feared.
Buffy keeps her name as a reminder of how far she has fallen, or maybe risen, from the nameless, faceless and unknown. Slayers: a line of the sacrificial free-falling through centuries.
Now, she is infamous. Kissed as if she is loved, worshiped as if she is dear. Lips follow the fragile line of her shoulders, the deep curve of her back. Her legs are spread and she is touched so that it does not reach her heart. She is wet and she is tight, and somewhere beneath the boredom there is pleasure. Sprawled beneath a man, counting his strokes under her breath, she is sweet, innocent Mary Sue, the pretty, blonde girl-next-door, and they love her for it.
Still, Buffy is delicate and small and fucks defiantly.
And every time she takes them, making them shatter and wringing them dry, she sees him, Angel. He gasps, eyes wide, and her screams crawl out of her throat in breathless moans.
This is what he has left her: the vision of him reaching for her photographed on her brain. His voice whispers her name, a ghostly echo that fills quiet rooms.
She drowns the ringing loneliness with techno, vodka and tiny, colorful pills. Pretty girls pressed into the wall of the women’s bathroom and body shots at the bar. Her world is still a nighttime dark world, but now it is washed in a blur of color and light. Graveyard dirt replaced by the bitter smell of sweat and old cologne. For hours Buffy escapes the unrelenting exhaustion of never being saved. She forgets the glowing hollowness carved into the center of her heart. Forgets the scent of her mother’s clothes and Willow’s hair, the comforting weight of Xander’s arms and the scratch of houndstooth beneath her cheek.
Buffy makes love with her fingers and her tongue, listening to her lovers’ hearts flutter, their lungs constrict. Watches as they die little deaths, Le petite mort, Angel once told her, for the camera. For the men who watch, for Xander and Giles huddled in the dark, guilty hands jerking frantically between their legs. A girl on film searching constantly for what is missing. For the heart that she sent to hell and the love that she left behind a very long time ago. What she misses as she stares up at a nondescript ceiling with a dark-haired girl huddled between her thighs.
She arches up against the butterfly brush along her clit. Hips shifting, chasing the erratic, elusive skitter up her spine. Legs spread wide to give the girl more space, and the camera at the foot of the bed a clear shot. Buffy arches mechanically, pretending to come. Her voice is just broken enough, just breathy enough, to be believed. When it is done, more or less, Buffy reaches down to tangle her fingers into the long, chestnut locks draped across her knees.
Buffy forces the girl backward onto the bed and kisses her, tastes the salty, slick of herself on the other girl’s lips. She ignores the pleading, brown eyes and strokes her tongue along the long, elegant arch of neck and across the insistent ridge of collarbone. Buffy has wanted to do this for *so* long. Although innocence is unrecoverable, there are things that can still be regained. The taste of home, for example.
Cordelia whimpers as Buffy bites down on the sensitive curve of her shoulder.
Buffy can smell her, hot and needy layered beneath sweat, fear and faded Gaultier. She can feel the minute vibrations coursing through the thin, tan body. Trace the press of ribcage through baby soft skin. Licks and swirls her tongue around the breasts that are nearly too full for the slender body.
This girl has grown in the years since Buffy left Sunnydale, curved and filled out. Buffy loves Cordelia’s large, round nipples. She kisses across them, suckling and biting into the lush fullness. Dips her tongue into the girl’s navel then moves lower. Licking, her tongue dipping as she slides one, two and then three fingers deep into Cordelia’s body.
Buffy fucks the body beneath her desperately, searching for the heart by way of the cunt. Reaching vainly, and if she can force her to come maybe she can force her to ... love her? High and mighty society princess, Queen C, Bitch. Not so proud anymore. No money, no daddy. Nothing but her body to peddle for coin enough to live on. Buffy has seen Cordelia’s apartment and ignored the cockroaches skittering beneath the coach.
She bites the inside of Cordelia’s thighs and licks the tiny wounds, holding her down. Her fingers moving steadily along the cluster of nerves between her legs. Buffy forces her fingers in a steady rhythm, suckling until Cordelia shudders beneath her and Buffy’s mouth fills with the taste of another girl’s release.
Buffy moves off the trembling body and leans against the headboard, hand sliding down between her thighs to the wet, swollen folds. She rubs briskly, fingers sliding over warm flesh. She works herself until the tears in her eyes begin to fall and her orgasm crashes over her in wave after wave of aching emptiness.
When she can breathe again, Buffy stares down at Cordelia laying limp across her bed.
This is what he has left her.
The director calls into the hush, "Cut."
end
Title: And If You Should Have A Future
Author:
seraphceleneEmail: seraphcelene[at]yahoo.com
Rating: NC-17
Archiving: House of Leaves. Everyone else please ask.
A/N: post-Becoming AU’s, spoiled for Anne and Faith Hope and Trick
Feedback: Is like air and highly addictive. In other words, yes, please.
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all related characters belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, the Warner Company, UPN et al. I’m just taking them out for a little exercise.
Summary: Bea Arthur and three incongruous career moves.
"There are three things I’ve yet to do:
opera, rodeo, and porno."
-- Bea Arthur
one. or tutto fini
Blood on snow is all that her blind eyes see. White becomes red, snow color-soaked into an immaculate crimson rug. When they come for her, wearing their heavy, clumsy shoes, they will ruin the picture that she makes lying there in her golden gown.
Gold, white and red -- it is almost Christmas and Anne vetoed the green velvet for its blatancy. The gold was celebratory without being too seasonal. The sprig of ivy in her hair and the delicate bells around her wrists were ‘tis the season enough.
They left her like a gift for someone to find. A gift wrapped in gold Christian Lacroix, throat slit and there is a hole in her abdomen where someone dug beneath the ribcage for her heart. Her face, wide green eyes and her ruby mouth rounded with surprise, is untouched.
She is beautiful, a dainty porcelain doll lying broken in the snow, illuminated by the stunning light of the full moon. Tomorrow the papers will be plastered with her picture beneath a bold headline:
AMERICAN OPERA SINGER MURDERED
They won’t include details about the missing heart or the runes, improbably burned, in a circle around the body. They will only write that her throat was slit. Sources will say that her purse and jewelry were missing. The sources will conveniently forget about the gold bells around her wrist. Her friends will not mention that she seldom wore jewelry at all.
Her mysterious past will be briefly touched upon, her troubled youth and sudden rise to international stardom. There really isn’t much to know and those who know more, or different, won’t speak to the press. They never have.
The ritualistic nature of her death will be left out, that part of the story discreetly squashed by British businessmen in stiff suits and drab ties. All the paperwork and red tape will be ignored and the body will be turned over to an obscure branch of the government that no one’s ever heard of or will ever recall the name.
She will be a murdered star, much loved, dead before her time at age 33. Anne Summers survived by her mother Joyce Summers of Sunnydale, California, USA.
Flowers will be left, candles will be lit and prayers whispered in churches the world over. They will build shrines to her. They will make sacrifices in her name, and dedicate their kills to her -- those who would be called and fear the burden of being Chosen. The lonely young who would much rather die at thirty years old, an opera singer in the Viennese snow.
two. the ship song
"Shit kickers," Buffy giggled.
"Man stompers," the man beside her drawled, and then he pulled her down across his beautifully tanned and gloriously naked chest. They tussled for a moment over the glass in Buffy’s hand. Whiskey spilled down his arm and Buffy bent to lick it off.
"Ball busters." She gazed at him through the veil of her eyelashes and smiled. Smiled with the joy of being in bed with a man that she almost loved, tangled in sheets and his arms, with the smell of him on her skin.
"Honey, you are the ball buster, not your disreputable old boots." His voice, honeyed and gravelly with near sleep, brushed against secret places and Buffy shivered.
"Disreputable?" she repeated, head tilted as if considering the flavor of the word. "Remind me again ... what that means?" She wiggled up to lay in the crook of his arm, her head on his shoulder.
"You know perfectly well what it means. ‘Sides, dictionary’s in the night stand," Jake lightly slapped her ass. "Look it up."
"Ow," Buffy wiggled closer. She inhaled deeply and caught the scent of him. He smelled of sleepy warmth and sunshine, salt and, faintly, sex. "No, it isn’t. I already packed it. Besides, that’s what I’ve got you for."
He set the glass on the table beside the bed and rolled over, settling automatically in the space she made for him between her legs. "Darlin’, improvin’ your vocabulary is not why you keep me around." He kissed the curve of her neck, bit and growled into the soft skin until she was breathless with laughter.
"So, you admit to being kept?" Buffy pouted up at him with laughter in her eyes. "A kept man. A gigolo. A male mistress." She pressed a finger into the soft fullness of his bottom lip. "Gee. You’re all Richard Gere."
"Only with you," he said and kissed her softly.
Three years later and it amazed Buffy, still, how much she did not miss Sunnydale. Didn’t miss slaying or school or Giles. And if she really thought about it, how much she didn’t miss Angel, although there were times when Jake’s dark head on the pillow made her heart ache. But then he would open his eyes, gleaming hazel shaded by a thick fringe of dark lashes, and smile a lazy, cat-in-the-cream smile that always seemed to say Hi, I love you, and she would forget that he was not the first man she had ever wanted.
They travel only with what they need. Essentials like the dictionary Jake bought for her the first time they met, now worn with use, Mr. Gordo, Mr. Pointy and a compass. The rest is gravy, changing as necessary.
There is no patrolling, no training, no library. No books. No rules. No council. No one to protect but herself because she never stays in one place long enough to make real friends. There is only Jake, and Lucy, the stray she picked up in New Mexico after running from a girl named Lily and a past that she couldn’t seem to escape.
And there is the rodeo. Traveling the smaller circuits for prize money, and of course, Buffy always wins.
She sends the ribbons and trophies to Joyce. She sends them in boxes wrapped in brown paper with no return address. Sometimes there is a note or a card, very occasionally pictures of where she’s been and what she’s seen. Prize money is spent on food, whiskey and lodging. Jake spends his winnings on her: flowers, trinkets, tickets to the movies and books. Buffy always refuses jewelry.
"Disreputable," he whispered against the corner of her smile. "Lacking respectability in character, behavior or appearance."
"Oh, I am so lacking in respect." Buffy arched against him, her legs sliding up around his hips.
Jake groaned, "This is not a good idea. You’ve got to ride tomorrow."
Buffy smiled wickedly. "Yea. But I wanna ride tonight."
His husky laugh filled her up and wrapped itself twice around her heart. Lucy whined lightly at the foot of the bed and Buffy lost herself in the man who had given her everything she ever thought she wanted. This, happily ever after.
three. ophelia
This is what he has left her: a willingly objectified body and the notoriety of sex on film. Her face achingly lost on DVD boxes, scrolling across computer screens ($49.99) -- Google’s number one downloaded image -- and her name in neon lights.
Her world is defined by soft flesh and her ability to fuck for hours, hot lights and the distracting whine of a generator. Somewhere in the distance there is the slap-splash of a swimmer in a pool.
She rides them, Ophelia in leather and diamonds, hands clawing at the sky, her soft, coral pout glistening and feral, lips peeled back into a snarl as she straddles them. There is something in her eyes, rage that burns through the green, and for a moment she is feared.
Buffy keeps her name as a reminder of how far she has fallen, or maybe risen, from the nameless, faceless and unknown. Slayers: a line of the sacrificial free-falling through centuries.
Now, she is infamous. Kissed as if she is loved, worshiped as if she is dear. Lips follow the fragile line of her shoulders, the deep curve of her back. Her legs are spread and she is touched so that it does not reach her heart. She is wet and she is tight, and somewhere beneath the boredom there is pleasure. Sprawled beneath a man, counting his strokes under her breath, she is sweet, innocent Mary Sue, the pretty, blonde girl-next-door, and they love her for it.
Still, Buffy is delicate and small and fucks defiantly.
And every time she takes them, making them shatter and wringing them dry, she sees him, Angel. He gasps, eyes wide, and her screams crawl out of her throat in breathless moans.
This is what he has left her: the vision of him reaching for her photographed on her brain. His voice whispers her name, a ghostly echo that fills quiet rooms.
She drowns the ringing loneliness with techno, vodka and tiny, colorful pills. Pretty girls pressed into the wall of the women’s bathroom and body shots at the bar. Her world is still a nighttime dark world, but now it is washed in a blur of color and light. Graveyard dirt replaced by the bitter smell of sweat and old cologne. For hours Buffy escapes the unrelenting exhaustion of never being saved. She forgets the glowing hollowness carved into the center of her heart. Forgets the scent of her mother’s clothes and Willow’s hair, the comforting weight of Xander’s arms and the scratch of houndstooth beneath her cheek.
Buffy makes love with her fingers and her tongue, listening to her lovers’ hearts flutter, their lungs constrict. Watches as they die little deaths, Le petite mort, Angel once told her, for the camera. For the men who watch, for Xander and Giles huddled in the dark, guilty hands jerking frantically between their legs. A girl on film searching constantly for what is missing. For the heart that she sent to hell and the love that she left behind a very long time ago. What she misses as she stares up at a nondescript ceiling with a dark-haired girl huddled between her thighs.
She arches up against the butterfly brush along her clit. Hips shifting, chasing the erratic, elusive skitter up her spine. Legs spread wide to give the girl more space, and the camera at the foot of the bed a clear shot. Buffy arches mechanically, pretending to come. Her voice is just broken enough, just breathy enough, to be believed. When it is done, more or less, Buffy reaches down to tangle her fingers into the long, chestnut locks draped across her knees.
Buffy forces the girl backward onto the bed and kisses her, tastes the salty, slick of herself on the other girl’s lips. She ignores the pleading, brown eyes and strokes her tongue along the long, elegant arch of neck and across the insistent ridge of collarbone. Buffy has wanted to do this for *so* long. Although innocence is unrecoverable, there are things that can still be regained. The taste of home, for example.
Cordelia whimpers as Buffy bites down on the sensitive curve of her shoulder.
Buffy can smell her, hot and needy layered beneath sweat, fear and faded Gaultier. She can feel the minute vibrations coursing through the thin, tan body. Trace the press of ribcage through baby soft skin. Licks and swirls her tongue around the breasts that are nearly too full for the slender body.
This girl has grown in the years since Buffy left Sunnydale, curved and filled out. Buffy loves Cordelia’s large, round nipples. She kisses across them, suckling and biting into the lush fullness. Dips her tongue into the girl’s navel then moves lower. Licking, her tongue dipping as she slides one, two and then three fingers deep into Cordelia’s body.
Buffy fucks the body beneath her desperately, searching for the heart by way of the cunt. Reaching vainly, and if she can force her to come maybe she can force her to ... love her? High and mighty society princess, Queen C, Bitch. Not so proud anymore. No money, no daddy. Nothing but her body to peddle for coin enough to live on. Buffy has seen Cordelia’s apartment and ignored the cockroaches skittering beneath the coach.
She bites the inside of Cordelia’s thighs and licks the tiny wounds, holding her down. Her fingers moving steadily along the cluster of nerves between her legs. Buffy forces her fingers in a steady rhythm, suckling until Cordelia shudders beneath her and Buffy’s mouth fills with the taste of another girl’s release.
Buffy moves off the trembling body and leans against the headboard, hand sliding down between her thighs to the wet, swollen folds. She rubs briskly, fingers sliding over warm flesh. She works herself until the tears in her eyes begin to fall and her orgasm crashes over her in wave after wave of aching emptiness.
When she can breathe again, Buffy stares down at Cordelia laying limp across her bed.
This is what he has left her.
The director calls into the hush, "Cut."
end
