Chapter 13: Weakness
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Turbulence had never been so symbolic.
It was blatant, really, in the way the plane kept fighting and yielding to the changing winds. It would lurch forward, then glide up. Lurch forward, glide up. Resist, relent. Resist, relent.
Buffy sympathized with the plane. The wind was far too persistent and much too good in bed.
And if the plane gave in completely, let the wind whisk it away and blast it to smithereens? She wouldn't be mad at it. At least she could skip the whole suffer-the-consequences portion of the program. Unless, of course, Hell was real and there was a warm, toasty torture device reserved just for her... right next to Spike Pratt. And his mom.
Maybe she should become a Catholic, just in case. One confession, a few Hail Marys, guaranteed afterlife insurance.
Bless me, father, for I have sinned. I let a man who is not my husband do unspeakable things to me for twelve hours straight. Well not straight, we slept at least four, and there was a shower and breakfast and some chit-chat, but I guess it's all the same to you, isn't it? Sex was had, of the majorly bad variety. Bad as in wrong, that is, not bad as in bad -- obviously, or it wouldn't have lasted twelve hours, right? I mean, God, that last orgasm was almost a religious experience...!
Ahem.
Bless me, father, for I have sinned. I recently had a blasphemous thought, for one. Which reminds me, is it true that thinking about adultery is just as much a sin as committing it? Isn't that kind of imprudent? I mean, doesn't that give everyone a free pass to do it, so long as they're already thinking about it? I'm sorry, this isn't working for me.
It didn't help that she could hear Spike grunting in the next room, venting his frustrations on defenseless exercise equipment -- frustrations that were likely courtesy of her not speaking to him for the last three hours.
She'd had no choice but to take his jet -- all available seats to L.A. cost upwards of three grand. A car's waiting for you downstairs, he'd said as if he'd expected her to meet him at the airport all along. Nothing else has changed, she made sure he knew, and that was the last thing she'd said to him besides Excuse me when she left the lounge for the bedroom.
Good, lock me out again, he'd said. At this rate your virtue's sure to grow back before nightfall.
"If only," she said, touching the screen of her phone, open to her last message to Lindsey:
Hey baby! Just got your txts & vms now! So sorry I worried you. Thought charger fell out in Cali airport - turns out I left it on the plane. Wish I could call you now but my brand nu cold came w/ a side of laryngitis. Mmm, misery. We should be landing 4pm LA time. See you @ home. I miss you. xoxoxoxo, B
He didn't reply. At least, not for the first hour while she still had reception. She couldn't blame him: Lindsey had a job that required him to recognize the steaming aroma of bullshit; it was only a matter of time before he figured it out.
The worst part, she knew, would be seeing it through his eyes. His disappointed, disgusted, heartbroken eyes.
How had this happened? How had she landed smack in the middle of a love triangle with a man and his father? Just three short months ago, she was more than content. She'd felt so lucky, so sure she'd found her perfect match, so positive they'd last forever. Then her dad died, and as she stood at his funeral surrounded by strangers, the thought struck her: Lindsey had to get to know his father before it was too late. Wishing someone had done the same for her, she made it her mission to fix their broken relationship.
Now she'd broken everything else too.
Did her father ever feel this gutted when he was cheating on her mother? Probably not. He was a deny-until-you-fry kind of guy. I haven't done anything, Joyce. You're being paranoid. She's just my secretary.
Buffy tried it on for size, feeling skeevier by the second: "I haven't done anything, Lindsey. You're being paranoid. I would nev--"
"GRAAAAAHH!"
She rolled her eyes and slammed a pillow over her head, wishing for earplugs and a Unisom or twelve. Maybe he kept some in his bedside drawer...
Locked. So much for sleep aidage.
Though she did have a bobby pin in her bag...
"Go go gadget me," she congratulated herself when she finally jimmied it open. However, inside was nothing but a couple of pens, a lighter and a well-worn hardcover of A Moveable Feast. Terrif -- she'd committed a misdemeanor only to find that they had the same taste in movies and books. "I need to start liking new things."
She opened the cover. On the dedication page was a markered cursive scrawl:
Have a
nice
fuckin
life,
Mother Fucker!!!
The opposite page was marred with an X. So was the next, and the next... When Buffy took it out of the drawer to inspect it further, a black envelope slid out of the book jacket and into her lap.
The envelope was addressed to Spike and postmarked April 2000 from 'NT Productions' in London. It had clearly been handled a lot since its initial opening... and it was sent roughly eight years ago -- the last time he'd been truly intimate with anyone. Could this be the cause? And if so, why would he leave it on his plane? Unless it was so important to him he brought it wherever he went...
It was a moral quandary. On the one hand, this was private property, and she had absolutely no right. On the other, she was dying of curiosity, and Spike was a dick.
She pulled out the note.
This was all I could find -- Wrecked Records Xmas bash.
Destroyed as per your request, this is the only copy.
Respectfully,
Navin Troy
Inside, a gold DVD that read: Darla 1983
Oh, boy.
Buffy might as well have been handed a map to the Holy Grail. Lindsey's enigmatic dead mother, captured on film the year he was conceived, very likely interacting with Spike? This was huge. This could be the key to everything.
Her eyes slid to the laptop on Spike's desk, to the locked bedroom door, and back to the DVD.
Her sleeping principles woke up screaming when she was midway to the desk. She couldn't do this. Spike aside, it wouldn't be fair to Lindsey. He was the one who deserved to know more about his mother, not her. And what exactly was she looking for at this point? Now that she was involved with Spike, her motives couldn't be justified as simple curiosity anymore. This was her lover's ex. This was dangerous, any way you sliced it.
Taking the high road, or the highest road available to her at this stage, she put everything back exactly as she'd found it and closed the top drawer. It made her feel better.
Until, as she struggled to lock it, she began to wonder about the bottom drawer. Twice the depth of the top, it had enough room for a lifetime of Pratt family puzzle pieces. What else did Spike have to hide?
She saw the pheasant feather first. It was long and soft, with a gilded base. Then she saw what was under it:
A pocket knife. Leather gloves. Black rope. A blindfold. A leather paddle. And three boxes of L'Eggs pantyhose.
She shut the drawer, heart pounding, and came to a conclusion:
"I'm watching it."
* * *
It's a punk rock Christmas.
A skinny, sweaty band performs on a warehouse stage in various oversized pieces of a Santa Claus outfit. The guitarist, who's wearing the pants, chugs from a whiskey bottle and says drunkenly into the microphone, "This is for Darla. And the two-face fascist fuck who's fucking her now."
The song is fast and angry and unintelligible. When it's over, the guitarist shouts, "Suck my cock, Pratt! Happy fucking Christmas." Then he kicks an amp over and storms off.
Someone near the camera asides smugly, "I assume they're off the roster now then?"
~
A naked female ass, lined with white powder. A pound note, rolled into a straw, is lowered over it. The owner of the ass giggles. "Ooh! That tickles."
The camera pans out. It's Darla, in a Santa hat and sparkly red halter top, lounging belly-down on a black lacquer coffee table bedecked with drugs and candy canes. The space around the table is occupied by slouchy disaffected youths with asymmetrical hair. Behind her, a shirtless guy with an angel tattoo is painting a mural on the wall.
"Who else wants a bump off my ass?" Darla, beaming like she's pleasantly high, lifts her long, false ruby-dotted lashes toward the party crowd. Ignoring the chimes of 'I do!' around her, she sucks on a candy cane and says, "Spike?"
The camera moves until it settles on the back of Spike's head. He's beseeching a scowling brunette who's dressed too conservatively for this crowd.
"Spike! Hello! Fuckin' look at me!" Darla's tone starts out breezy but takes a turn for the tantrum. "Asshole? Motherfucker, I'm talking to you!"
"Do I look like your sodding dog?" he snaps at Darla, revealing a youthful profile, then: "Cecily, don't go--"
Darla rants in the background, "Fuck you, you arrogant shit! Angel, come here!"
Buffy has to rewind to hear what Cecily says: "I won't share you with that yankee slag."
"I told you, it's over, all right? She's with Liam now. I married you, didn't I? It's you I want."
"I wish I could believe you, but every time she's--"
"OH, fuck! Angel! Yeah! Give it to me, give it to mama." The camera finds Darla, on her back on the table, the shirtless artist's face buried between her legs. It's Liam Angelus. "You're such a good boy!" Blonde hair fanning behind her, she flashes Spike a provocative grin as she says, "You're the best mama's ever had."
The camera turns to Spike, and he's staring her down like an enraged yet horny bull. Cecily slips out behind him unnoticed. He spots the camera. "Get that bloody thing out my face--"
* * *
As the laptop screen went blue, Buffy sorted the facts: Spike stole Darla away from some angry musician, Spike married someone stable but kept seeing Darla, then Liam stole Darla away? The only true surprise was that young Spike actually seemed to care about his marriage.
She got why he was so attracted to Darla though; why they all were. In photographs, she was just another cute blonde, but on film, she was magnetic. Somehow, even though she cursed like a sailor and indulged in casual public sex, she didn't seem at all cheap or trashy. Darla had charisma to spare, an inner glow that was only heightened by a powder keg mixture of bravado and fragility.
She could describe young Spike the same way.
The screen flickered. There was more.
* * *
The sound of panting and gasping. The camera peeks through a curtain into a red-lit space. Two figures come into focus: It's Spike, pants at his ankles, frantically fucking Darla amid some stage equipment. She's bent backward, head against an amp, his hand on her throat. She wraps her hand around his throat, and they look like they want to kill each other.
"Fucking do it," she dares him. "Choke me, you coward. Strangle me. Do it!"
Snarling, he squeezes hard, to the point of making her gag... then lets go. Face touching hers, he pounds into her harder and grates, "You're ruining my bloody life. And you bloody well know it."
"Yeah well I'm leaving. I'm never coming back!"
"Good," he says, and pulls out of her. She drops to her knees and he throws his head back as he comes in her mouth.
When he's done, he looks down at her and touches her hair. It borders on tender. But then he grabs her face, kisses her roughly, and lets her fall.
"I don't want to see you ever again," he says, walking away from her.
When he's out of sight, Darla sobs.
~
The camera is following Darla down a dark corridor. She's slightly more dressed now, in a miniskirt to match the halter. She's holding a bottle of vodka and a set of keys.
Stopping at a door marked HEADMASTER, she runs her finger across it and reads, "'Cock-suck-er'. Yep, this is the place." She finds the key. "Lemme give you the grand tour."
Darla walks to the center of the office and addresses the camera. "This is where Spike Pratt profits off the genius and talent of others. He's what we call 'The Man'."
With a grin, she teeters to a black futon and sits on it, then peels off her false lashes. "This is where The Man fucked me for the first time."
"Oh?" the cameraman asks. "And how did he do that?"
"He wanted Sever out of the band." She sticks her lashes onto the futon, arranging them like eyes. "I came to tell him what a mistake that would be, Sever is the band. He called me a second rate Yoko so I slapped him. Next thing I know we're wrestling on this couch and his dick is in my pussy." She drinks out of the vodka bottle. "Isn't it romantic?" She flings it at the wall and it shatters.
~
Darla picks up a framed photograph from Spike's desk. "This is his wife Cecily. She's a cunt, but her daddy's filthy rich, and Spike has a hard-on for money." She smashes the glass against the desk, then takes it to his desk chair.
"This is where we fucked the third time. Or was it the fourth?" She places Cecily's picture on the chair, pulls up her skirt, leans forward on the desk and sings in a lovely country twang, "Paste a tail upon my nose and point me toward the grass / I'm going back to Texas to be one more horse's ass."
It takes Buffy a moment to realize that Darla is peeing on the chair.
~
Darla sits Indian style on the desk, talking to the camera, A Moveable Feast hardcover in one hand.
"This? This is Spike's baby. He just loooves this book. See? First edition. Makes sense, one chauvanistic prick to another, right?" She picks up a Sharpie. "This is a permanent marker. I'm just gonna write him a li'l goodbye note."
As she scribbles, she says, "Dear Motherfucker, I'm pregnant with your fucking baby. Don't worry, I'll get rid of it if the drugs don't. Fuck off and die, you Nazi swine. Love, Darla."
The camera focuses on what she's doing: drawing Xs over all the pages and ripping a few out. She flings the book at the futon. "There. He'll find that in the morning. Let's get out of here."
* * *
Buffy stared at the blue screen, stunned. None of what Darla had claimed to be writing ended up in the book... And if she'd left that night, when did Spike find out about the pregnancy?
She forwarded to check if there was more, then rewound to watch the last scene again.
so I slapped him. Next thing I know we're wrestling on this couch and his dick
She forwarded to the desk part, raised the volume to hear everything clearly, and watched intently up to
Dear Motherfucker, I'm pregnant with your fucking--
"What the hell are you doing?"
With a startled shout, Buffy shut the laptop, jumped out of her chair and spun around. Spike was in the room. How did he get in the room? How did she not hear him unlock the door?
He had that enraged bull look, too, only there was no trace of horniness in it; he was just plain enraged. "Answer me!"
"I..." Her mouth went dry. Her hands shook. She had no explanation. "I wasn't-- I just--"
"You just what," he said menacingly, closing the space between them.
"I just..." Avoiding his iced-over eyes, she focused on his exposed chest. There were little beads of water all over it. He'd just gotten out of the shower, obviously, walked by the room and overheard it somehow. "I didn't mean to, to..."
Nostrils flaring, he shoved her face-first into the desk, twisting her wrist behind her and bracing his arm over the back of her neck. "You have been a very. bad. girl."
Buffy couldn't control it. This was not her usual M.O. and she was so not a bottom, but those words, and the way he said them, made her wet.
He spoke through his teeth. "What do you want?"
"I don't... Nothing!"
"What. Do you. Want?"
He yanked her up by the hair and clutched her throat, and as the pain flared over her skin, a floodgate opened in her mind, her body, her life: "This."
He was surprised. She could tell. Not unpleasantly.
There were a million ways to say it, but she chose the simplest. "Punish me."
A sharp exhale, and his towel fell to the floor.
In seconds, he undressed her and wrangled her to the bed, held her down with his knees and ransacked the bottom drawer.
Trailing the soft frayed end of the rope down her spine, he said, "You've got a lot to learn, little girl."
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A NOTE ABOUT PLAGIARISM: Don't do it. Call me crazy, but I don't like finding my hard work pasted into other people's stories. If I find out you've plagiarized me or any other author, I will make sure everyone knows it. If you're not clear on what 'plagiarism' means, the definition is here.