I surprise myself with my next question "Cause it's blood, or cause it's me?" Like I'm asking chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry.
"Oh, babe, it's all you. I would want to do this with you even if I hadn't been bitten. Can't you tell?"
I tell myself I'm horrified, but I'm not. I feel all lit up inside, in a way I haven't since I was sixteen and found out Chick liked me "more than a friend". I tried with Ed, but he and I only had a low-grade version of the same thing. I told myself that was good, cause we could hold off till the weekend when we had time for it. I lied about that, too. Just like I'm gonna lie to Timmy. To protect us.
"Oh, Munchkin!" I say, moaning a little. And also thinking it sounds ridiculous, but what pet name isn't?
We kiss and his lips are cold. Mine are hot enough to warm up the room, or at least his face. This would be a good way to die, I think, and it takes a minute before this translates into another upsetting awakening.I touch my chest, it's dry and scratch-free. I'm both relieved and disappointed. I put some pants on and decide to climb up on the roof. If I'm gonna get all sweaty in the middle of the night by myself, I might as well get some exercise. I feel like a teenager sneaking out her bedroom window. -more-
Oh, my. My my my.
Plei, you don't need me to tell you how good the Wes/Gunn is - since when has anything you've ever written with Wes in it been short of perfection? But I'm perfectly willing to throw more roses and yet another perfect Wes.
wrod. I didn't mean to ignore it, but I was afraid I'd lose my nerve.
And I forgot to thank Deb again for her beta.
Maybe a cop will come. That's about my speed these days, stranded up here with some piggish uniform leering at me while I'm wearing little more than my skivvies. Ok, Howard, I think, you're here, now what? I could jump off, I think, I'm losing my fucking mind.
But, you know, I know what that looks like. I know I'm not gonna float down on some fainting couch like some Debra Winger character, and I don't want the street covered in essence of Howard. Although the thought of messing up Detective Lockley's cuticles makes me smile for a minute. She's not bad, she just has no idea. None.
I look down at the buildings and wonder what the people inside are doing. Probably, somebody is killing somebody right now. Not that this makes me feel better, but in my confusion, whether Homicide has twisted me or not, it's good to have a pattern. Baseball season, football season, dunker season. Not like summer. Summer is like hell.
erika, you need a line break between thanking me for the beta and the start of the story - it reads very blinky-making without it.
Damn it, Plei.
Ah! I see Fay's been hitting the backlog and found my Back in the Day assignment.
Uno mas, the back up one I wrote
Outside In
Sometimes, she thinks it was all a nightmare, that any minute now, she'll wake up in Silverlake and Dennis will have breakfast ready for her. Then, before she's even had her coffee, she'll feel her head start to throb because it's yet another message from the Powers that Be in full-on Gross-o-Vision, and boy howdy, does that seem better than the reality, which is that she's probably never waking up at all.
She thinks she's opened her eyes to check the alarm, but the alarm's not there. She's there, bloated and moaning with pain and the need to give birth to... that.
A soft hand slides across her shoulder. "You're seeing it again, what you did to my boy."
Darla. If Cordelia turns, she'll see a summer dress in the dark, blonde hair blending with the off-white gauze, blue eyes cold with rage. Darla's always in the light. No, Darla always is the light.
"That wasn't me."
"Wasn't it?" The hand slides down her back, the fabric of whatever outfit Cordelia imagines she's wearing disappearing with a touch. Fingernails dig into her skin, bleeding pink into Darla's dress, which Cordelia can see somehow, even though Darla's still behind her.
"No." But the woman on the floor wears her face, and it was her body beneath Connor's, and her regret the morning after. Cordelia never sees Connor, never sees the thing that they brought forth. All she sees is herself, the handprint blossoming on her belly.
Darla's hand traces the curve of her hip, sending tiny shivers of something wrong, curling inside her like her other self. Cups the barren flatness of her stomach, folded over the spot where Connor painted her with virgin's blood. "He killed for you, lied for you." Practiced fingers slide down, slide inside her. "Died for you."
The tiny shivers turn to shockwaves, and Cordelia's legs turn to jello and stone. She's trapped halfway between molten and frozen, between asleep and awake. "For her," she manages to say, hoping this time Darla will understand.
"Did you really think it would be that easy, that there wouldn't be a price to pay?" Darla's hand works faster between her legs, teasing and clawing, leaving her thighs wet with blood and sweat. "That your demon wouldn't want out?" The heat from Cordelia's body warms her skin, sending a cloud of Shalimar to wrap around them, powder and copper and salt.
But she didn't have a choice, she screams behind her closed lips, her open ones panting and moaning as she leans into Darla's touch. So many of her trapped in here, and none of them able to get out. She pictures bubble baths, smells death. Screams a name that's not her own, but was, somewhere, except it's too late. Dead fingers writhe like worms inside her where life kicks and swells.
"Give. It. To. Me." Each word forced from between gritted teeth.
Darla pauses, her lips a breath she doesn't have away from Cordelia's ear. "Give you what?" she asks, knowing and making her say the words, always making her say the words.
"Something real."
Darla's thumb flicks up, presses down, the light from her blinding, overwhelming, overtaking Cordelia, before everything fades once again to black.
Wow, Plei. Dark and beautiful, like always.
A little bit from the Munchkin
Let me tell you something that will tell you all you need to know about men.(Not that a young woman like yourself needs instruction from the likes of me. You're probably better off sticking to that cybersex anyway. What's that about? I'm in my box, you're in your box...you should pardon the expression, maybe we exchange photos..maybe not. Maybe I'm an old woman from France...maybe I'm a dwarf. Oh, I see that look, you're one of *those*. Ok, maybe I'm a little person. So anonymous and tawdry. But on the upside, everyone keeps their hands out of each other's pockets. Trust me, babe, there's a lot to be said for that kind of arrangement) Where was I?
The thing you have to know is, inside every man, no matter how big a putz he is, there's a part of him that wants to be Batman.-more-
