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Unbidden the Day
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Part III
He checked his breath, checked for armpit sweat, checked to make sure nothing gross was hanging from his nose hairs. Then, taking a deep, steadying breath, he knocked on the door.
She opened it, nodding approval. “Xander. Exactly on time. Good.” She turned and walked away from the door, leaving it open but without invitation. Which, considering that 1) this was his apartment, and 2) this was Sunnydale, made perfect sense.
He followed her to his living room, took the seat she indicated. “Uh, ma’am ... Captain —”
“Morgaine,” she corrected briskly. “You’re not under my command. Not even military.” She gave him a flashing smile that vanished even as it registered. “Not technically, at any rate.”
“Uh, yeah, sure, right.” He closed his mouth firmly over the hysterical babble that was trying to fight its way out. Truth was, Captain Ainesreath (Morgaine, he reminded himself) was shaking his foundations in more ways than one. She was still in uniform, but had removed the crisp BDU top, revealing not the brown t-shirt that the Army currently favored as an undershirt, but one that was solid black. Some Special Ops perk? She looked no less martial without the immediate display of rank and insignia, but then she had looked no less female while in full battle dress. And precisely as impressive — intimidating — both ways.
She set a pair of small glasses on the coffee table between them, poured a finger of bourbon in each, then nudged one glass toward him. “You’re wondering why I asked you to meet me here, two hours before the mission kicks off,” she told him. She picked up her glass, waited until he followed suit, and then tossed back the bourbon. “In fact, you’ve been wondering why I chose your apartment as my field headquarters.”
Long experience in various forms of humiliation kept him from trying to down his drink in one gulp as she had done. He took it in three measured swallows instead, and then, wheezing only slightly, said, “If I had to guess, well, I guess I’d guess you were going to be considerate and tell me in private that I’m a no-go for tonight. That I’m being benched for my own good. And, and I appreciate you not just spitting it out in front of everybody —”
“No,” Morgaine interrupted. “You won’t be scrubbed. I can see the part you play, even if the others let it slip by them. I asked you here for the same reason I chose your home as my quarters: because I have more in common with you than with any of your friends.” Her mouth twisted wryly. “More, in some ways, than with my own people.”
Xander was nodding, not because he understood but just to indicate that he was following the words. Now, however, he asked, “Uh, say again?”
“They all started with advantages,” she explained. “Mystical power for Buffy and Willow. An expensive, exclusive education for Giles, plus the backing of an international organization. Even Anya — yes, I know her origins — may be physically unthreatening now, but she can call on the memories of, what? a thousand years of demonic experience?” She leaned toward him across the small table. “Of them all, you’re the only one who’s had to cope purely on his own merits. And you’ve done it. And, speaking as someone who’s clawed her way up every step of a deeply gender-prejudiced rank structure, I can relate to what you’ve accomplished.”
Xander could feel a light sweat beading on his forehead. Her words were heady praise, but she was … was somehow more here here, more physically present, than she had been in the series of lightning briefings. He forced back the hormonal tide he could feel beating at him, and croaked, “I can see that, yeah. I have my own experience with macho power games, and I can just bet that they look at you in uniform and see Barbie dressed up like GI Joe —” Oh, God, kill me now! “— and, and, uh, tell me again why I’m here exactly?”
Morgaine set down the empty glass she had continued to hold. “As I said, the mission roll-out is in two hours. I can spare an hour of that for personal time, and I want it to be with you.” Without looking at her watch, she added, “Five minutes of that is gone already, but I believe I can trust you to stay on point for the rest.”
And once again with the hysterical deafness. Except, no, he’d heard her perfectly, and the light in those frost-pale eyes left no doubt as to her meaning. Through a tight throat he heard himself saying, “I’m … I’m with Anya.”
“You’re with her,” Morgaine agreed. “But the two of you aren’t together, not really. If you were, you wouldn’t feel the way you do about me. The way I can see you feel about me, felt the moment we first caught sight of one another. Not just desire — we’ve both been there, and we both know this is something deeper. So the only real question is, do we want to waste any more of the little time we have?”
And there was so much he could say to that, so many things he wanted to say, but that would just run out more of the clock and the part that mattered most right now was, “No. No, we don’t. Not another minute.”
“Good.” She stood and started toward his bedroom: objective identified, course of action chosen, proceed to implementation. “Only, remember: just because I like to be on top, doesn’t mean I want to do all the work.”
“No, ma’am,” Xander said, following. “As you say, ma’am. Lead the way, ma’am.”
* * *
“He is dear to you, is he not?”
Willow jerked in startlement, as much at that lyrical voice — so familiar, yet so totally different — as at the words. “Uh, huh, whuh, y–… you mean Xander?”
“Fratello mio, my brother, yes.” Alissandra was standing very close (for privacy, yes, yes, she wanted to keep this a private conversation, that would also explain why she was speaking so softly), and her eyes held Willow’s. “It is in your face, whenever you look at him, whenever he speaks. You love him. I see this.”
Willow desperately gathered her composure — oh, goddess, I could go swimming in those eyes! — and said, “I, we, yeah, I’ve known Xander basically my whole life. We bonded practically in kindergarten. Maybe in the womb. But love, no, not love, not like that, nuh-uh.”
Alissandra regarded her through thick-fringed lashes. “I am not jealous, if this is what alarms you. I am happy, yes, to think that he has not been alone all this time.” Her nose wrinkled. “I saw his home, and his … our birth parents … before I found him at his site of construction. I think it would have been better if they had given us both for adoption.”
Memories of what she had seen of Xander’s home life over the years made Willow compress her lips in disapproval. She was pretty sure his parents had never been abusive (except maybe verbally), but that had by no means been a nurturing environment. “Won’t hear me arguing with you on that one,” she answered, her tone clipped.
Alissandra considered, still holding Willow’s gaze with her own … then, with a glance around, she murmured, “Come walk with me.” Then, raising her voice: “Mr Giles, Alexander — I will return soon, your Willow is going to show me where is to be found the best gelato in this town.” A laugh, again disconcertingly like Xander’s but rich and melodious. “Or perhaps one of your marvelous chili-dogs!”
Before she really understood what had happened, Willow was outside with Alissandra, and the two of them were strolling (gulp) arm in arm down the sidewalk. “Truly,” the taller girl was saying, “you cannot make me believe that he and you were never lovers. My own eyes tell me this is not so.”
“Lovers, no, no,” Willow insisted. “I mean, sure, I had a sort of a crush on him when were both little. Which, yeah, kinda hung on for maybe a dozen years. And, and we kissed a few times, just a little, and didn’t that just turn into the biggest stink bomb ever you could imagine! But not lovers, not the way you mean.” She could feel herself beginning to blush, and of course that only seemed to make her blush even worse. “That’s, you know, if you mean it that way. Which I don’t really know.”
Alissandra eyed her doubtfully. “Indeed? The two of you never —?”
“We got caught in flagrante,” Willow admitted. “There was flagrante all over the place. But it was all lips and, and maybe hands that shouldn’t have been where they were being. And that was years ago and it’s all over now. Xander’s in a new relationship, and so am I.” She had forgotten that until just this second; how could she have forgotten? “It turns out … it turns out Xander and I both like girls.”
In one of those Sunnydale transitions that could carry you from a cheery residential cul-de-sac to a warehouse district within only a few blocks, Willow and Alissandra had come to the entrance to Weatherly Park while they talked, and now the Italian girl firmly steered them inside. They walked for several more minutes in silence, Willow at first fearful of the pause and then cautiously hopeful as Alissandra showed no sign of unlinking their arms. “You are a lover of women,” Alissandra observed as they came to the duck-pond that this park boasted. In one spot, the blossom-laden branches of one of the trees bent almost to the ground at the pond’s edge, making a fragrant screen; Alissandra stooped to make her way inside, pulling Willow with her, and sat down within the natural shelter. “That is … most fortunate.”
Beside her, Willow felt her heart thumping. Xander, in a female body: it was like a dream too wonderful for her to have imagined. “So — you’re gay, too?”
“I do not make favorites,” Alissandra told her. “I like some women. I like some men.” She leaned in, took Willow’s face in her hands and kissed her resoundingly, and the world caught fire. “And I like you.”
Then they lay back together on the grass, under the shower of blossoms, and it was lips and tongues and hands in places they absolutely should be, and it was skin and moans and rapture and oh goddess oh goddess —
Heaven. Heaven.
* * *
There are matters you and I must address in private, Rosamonde had told Giles in a quick moment between group planning sessions. Find errands for the others — valid tasks, but timed to our benefit — so that we may deal with these issues without interruption. Her assurance, her reputation, the force of her personality made her one not to be gainsaid, so Giles had done as instructed. Rosamonde had withdrawn to the small upstairs room set aside for her use, while he handed out assignments. He tapped politely at the door now, and her voice came in immediate response. “They’ve gone, then?”
“Yes,” Giles confirmed. “The arrangements I’ve asked them to make, the ingredients they’ve set off to gather, these should occupy them for the next few hours. You didn’t specify, I hope that time is sufficient to your purpose —”
“I am confident,” she said, and opened the door, “that it shall prove to be ample time.” Her hair was unbound, and fell around her shoulders, past her waist and hips and almost to the level of her knees. She had also, clearly, taken advantage of her time alone to dispense with the encumbrance of clothing.
“Ah,” Giles said.
Rosamonde nodded. “We are neither of us blushing virgins, and coyness would be insincere and tedious. Best, I thought, to address the matter directly and without ambiguation.”
“You most certainly have done that.” She had chosen to expose herself to him, so Giles studied her body with clinical thoroughness, if not detachment. It was magnificent, a prince’s plunder. Despite the racing of his pulse, he felt his thoughts fall into a cool, settled order. “Very well. Are we certain that this is an … advisable course of action?”
“I know what I want,” she replied crisply. She glanced downward, arched an eyebrow at him. “Obviously, you want it as well.”
“I won’t deny as much,” he said. “There is still the fact that I am roughly twice your age.”
“Which will mean precisely sod-all if neither of us live to see the morning, as could quite possibly occur.” Her voice was hard, but then her eyes and mouth softened. “No life is without regrets. I prefer to regret the mistakes I have made … not those I failed to make when the opportunity presented itself.”
He favored her with the barest hint of a smile. “I am a mistake, then?”
“One I quite look forward to regretting.” She assessed him with a rather unsettling directness. “Given the nature of the occasion, Mr Giles, you are severely overdressed.”
“Ah,” he said. “Yes, quite. Well, Ms Blackpoole-Travers —”
“Miss,” she interrupted. “I’ve no objection to modernity, but I loathe faddishness.”
“Indeed. Then, Miss Blackpoole-Travers, if you will make yourself at ease —” He gestured toward his bedroom. “— I shall join you once I have suitably adjusted my attire.”
“Don’t dally,” Rosamonde said. She stepped past him, her hair flowing about her like a russet curtain, and the sudden lewdness of her smile was a jarring contrast to the schooled formality of her tone. “The kettle has been simmering long enough already.”
Giles watched her — that brave vibration each way free — until she had disappeared into his bedroom, then attacked his recalcitrant clothing with hasty fingers. It wouldn’t do, no, it wouldn’t do at all, for the kettle to boil over before he could arrive … He did, however, take an extra moment to fold his garments, for he could see that she had folded hers; then, having matched her for propriety, he moved toward the bedroom, prepared to cast himself once more into the breach.
* * *
“I am pleased to be able at last to speak with you in some privacy,” Amarantha Ariadne Xenakis, also known as the Sunwalker, said to Anya Christina Emanuella Jenkins, once known as Anyanka. “Your companions are warriors brave and true, but I cannot feel entirely comfortable with them.”
“They’re not too bad,” Anya said. “I stopped wanting to kill them long ago.”
“Yes, but after my … treatment, by Kakistos’ minions, I cannot bear the thought of a man touching me, and my long seclusion, in study, has left me ill-suited to any closeness with human women as well —”
“Wait,” Anya interrupted. “Is this about sex? because my human body seems to be pretty solidly heterosexual.” She thought for a moment, shrugged. “But on the other hand, there are lots of things I like that don’t require a penis … okay, we can give it a try.” She unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it, peeled her blouse off over her head. “You probably don’t know much about girl-girl stuff, locked away all this time in your ivory tower — ebony? obsidian? whatever — but I’ve done some studying of my own. Porn, and Cosmo, and you’d be surprised how much overlap there is …”
“I …” Amarantha blinked. “… these things are not familiar to me …”
“— and if it works out okay, maybe we’ll have time to set up something with Xander. Don’t worry, you won’t have to do anything with him, and I wouldn’t want to share him anyway, but I’m sure he’d be glad to just watch us together —” Anya stopped in the act of unhooking her bra. “Well? Why aren’t you taking off your clothes?”
* * *
I must know your capabilities, Sayomi had said, and so she and Buffy had repaired, alone, to the workout room Giles had set up in the back of the Magic Box. There, they began testing themselves against one another: bare-handed, sparring rather than combat, but with increasing speed and power and commitment as each became sure of the other’s capacity to keep up.
To Buffy, it was a new and unsettling experience. She had fought many things stronger than herself, and some (rarely) that were faster, but this … Sayomi was perfect, every move was flawless, delivered to the precise instant and millimeter intended, there was no transition between techniques because the execution of one always somehow formed the beginning of the next, a seamless uninterrupted fluency. She — Buffy — had the greater speed, she had established that early on, and the other woman wasn’t using the Orbs, but it didn’t matter: everything she tried to do, Sayomi was already there, reading each attempt before it was launched and intercepting or forestalling it with something that broke her rhythm, forced her to re-orient, kept her scrambling to catch up. They dueled back and forth across the dojo floor, twisting and weaving, ducking and spinning and leaping in attack and counter and follow-through, stretching it out in a ceaseless, unbroken sequence.
At last Sayomi stood back. “Enough,” she said. Perspiration glistened on that saffron skin, but her breathing was slow and deep and even. “I wished to know, and now I do.” She regarded Buffy, her eyes pure Asian in their shape but not in their color: like deepest amber, darkest honey, a shade impossible to fully define but striking and altogether unique. “I could kill you, I believe, with a weapon, but not without; you are too swift, too powerful — you withheld your full strength, as was suitable in this circumstance, but I marked it — and your focus is that of the higher bushidan. Yes, I can rely upon you in the struggle to come.”
“Nice to know I measure up,” Buffy said. Her tone was flippant, but that was more pretense than would normally be the case. Something about this woman had made her want to impress her, and simultaneously wonder if she could. Get a grip, she warned herself. However extraordinary, Miyake Sayomi was still only human —
“There is a very slight hitch in your left side,” Sayomi observed. “Almost imperceptible, but it might cost you a tenth of a second when you could least afford it.” She tilted her head. “You sustained a belly wound, did you not? Not too long ago, but you heal quickly, except you came to favor that side in anticipation of a pain that is gone, and now your muscles have aligned to preserve and prolong this misperception.”
“Uh, yeah, I guess,” Buffy admitted. “I mean, yes, I took a stake to the gut a couple of months ago — not a highlight of my Treasured Memories collection. And it’s, what, slowing me down now?”
“It is a very, very small thing,” Sayomi told her. “Perhaps insignificant, but also easily remedied.” She gestured toward the mat. “Sit in anza — cross-legged — with your forearms resting on your thighs, palms up.” Buffy did as instructed, and the other woman added, “And remove your top. The friction of cloth on skin would work against what I wish to do here.”
Topless (she’d had to take off the sports bra, as well), Buffy relaxed as much as possible while Sayomi’s cool fingers touched and probed the muscles of her bare back. This wasn’t massage or acupressure or anything like that; Sayomi seemed to be following the muscles to their insertion points, tracing lightly, and then stroking, coaxing, teasing them into new and easier conformations. It was an odd sensation, and actually a little disturbing to feel as if her body were under someone else’s control, but it wasn’t actually uncomfortable.
“Do you really think we can win this one?” she asked. It was the first time she had spoken since taking her position as directed.
“On the path I have chosen,” Sayomi murmured in her ear, “I have not the luxury of facing easy foes. Had I lost a single battle since I struck out on my own, I would have died. I have not died.”
That puts me one up on you, Buffy thought, but she didn’t voice the words. Perhaps having concluded that she had achieved her goal, Sayomi was doing something else with her fingers now, kneading lightly along Buffy’s shoulders and up her neck, sensations sensuous and languorous and delicious. Above the tang of perspiration she smelled of sandalwood, and perhaps faintly of jasmine: rich, intriguing, exotic.
Something was happening, something slow and unexpected and inexorable, she felt Sayomi feel it as well and respond to it, and the awareness put a tremor into her voice. “I’ve been through apocalypses before, and every one is different. How would you get ready for something like this?”
“For warriors on the eve of battle,” Sayomi said, “there are various ways to prepare.” Her hands were moving up and down Buffy’s arms, over and along her shoulders, tracing along her collarbones. “It would depend on the warriors, and the battle, and the moment.”
Buffy felt, paradoxically, as if her body were both slack as a strand of boiled spaghetti and taut as a violin string. As if she were ready to burst, or melt. Faintly, unsteadily, she asked, “So — for here? for now? … for us?”
Sayomi moved around to kneel in front of Buffy, their faces inches apart. “For here,” she said, “for now, for us … I might suggest … this.”
And then their lips met, and there didn’t seem to be any further need for speech.
* * *
And so on, and so on. At one time or another, I’ve had all of them.
Okay, not all. Dawn is a kid (and not getting any older), and I don’t go there. And Spike … forget it. Chiseled cheekbones and washboard abs are one thing, but let’s face it: gorgeous or not, he’s basically a reanimated corpse, and I’m no more into necrophilia than pedophilia. Plus, he’s kind of an asshole.
And Tara …
That one makes me feel not so good. I never get Tara. What I do isn’t mind control, it just fiddles a little with their judgment, so that they uncritically accept my presentation of myself in various identities (false memories, strategically placed, help with that), and in the process of seduction it relaxes their inhibitions so that I can get them more quickly to a place they would go, without artificial easements, if I ever had more than a single day to work with.
But not Tara. I can tempt her, I can make her waver, but I can never get her to betray Willow, not just in one day, not even when I up the pressure to the point where, for anybody else, it might qualify as mind control. Which, eventually, weirded me out enough that I stopped trying. A few times, I rebounded by arrowing in on Jonathan and giving him a hell of a surprise (not that he objected) in one or another of the back booths at the Bronze. For a nerd, he’s not that hard to get along with … and sometimes, after too much top sirloin, you’re just in the mood for a hot dog.
Don’t think, though, that I haven’t noticed how hard it isn’t to get Willow to betray Tara.
I’ve tried other combinations, and most of them are successful once I iron out the kinks. Alissandra is a hit with all of them (except, I’ve never aimed her at Xander; I’m not his real sister, but he would think it was incest, which is just skeezy). Giles is too cautious to get entangled with Amarantha — the whole semi-demon thing, I guess — and on the other side of that, Anya is just as resistant to the too-much-like-a-Watcher Rosamonde. Willow definitely prefers Alissandra (and is distinctly cool toward Morgaine), and Buffy does okay with most of them but clearly responds most strongly to Sayomi …
The funny part is, I was still a virgin when all this started. And may be again, if it ever ends.
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