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The heavy bass flows into her and beats so strongly it almost feels like what a heartbeat is supposed to mean, life and energy and mortality and all that shit. She stands in the middle of the dance floor and the smell of sweat and arousal almost sinks into her skin, her dead and dry and lifeless skin. She almost loses her own scent in the heavy air, dust and stillness and death. Someone brushes up against her back and maybe there’s sustenance in here for her, maybe some hapless boy with bright eyes and a lifetime of promise flowing in his veins will move his body in sync with hers and call it love and she’ll drink it all down.
Pretend that his future has been gobbled up by her, pretend that everything he could have been is now flowing through her like a token, pretend that it will mean a damn.
Humans haven’t changed in a millennia, no one will remember a dead boy in a club tomorrow. She knows. She watches the headlines. Humans don’t have the memories they should, they fuck and eat and fight and love and pretend that it all hasn’t been done before, but she knows, she’s seen it all. It’s all the same.
A flash of blue glints in her periphery and she sighs, leaning into the chest that conveniently has crept up behind her; men haven’t changed since the beginning of time. She could travel back to the very first moment, stand in a crowd and sway from side to side, and a male chest will appear behind her back, acting life a life vest that can catch her if she falls. She follows the flash of blue sequins, hunter following hunter, and longs for the simplicity of stillness, thinks of a bed far away with clean sheets and the scent of lavender, as if she ever had that, as if there was ever a moment in her past that felt pure.
Maybe that’s what death will do to you, she thinks as she twines her fingers between pale fingers, lightly touches an exposed hip, moves her body in the same slow rhythm as the blonde in front of her. Yeah so she’s not ready to see a body crumble, maybe she just wants a moment with skin pressed against hers, a hollow chest pressed against a hollow chest. Maybe this is what revenge feels like, heady and light and freeing. Maybe this is what freedom tastes like, death embracing death, hunter wrapped around hunter, dead skin warm and cold against dead skin.
Maybe all she’s been looking for is a little revenge all along.
Okay universe, you wanna fuck with me – I’ll fuck you right back.
They make it to the alley, somehow, an instinct built into them from time immemorial. This is what she does, she follows Death into an alley and she breaks it down into submission. There’s a moment after they turn towards each other on the dance floor, a moment when pretending there isn’t recognition beating into them with every pound of the bass (it almost feels like what a heartbeat is supposed to mean) flies out the window.
“I always wanted to know if Slayers could really live up to the hype,” one of them says.
“Teach me a few new tricks,” the other bites out like it’s an insult. Like they both don’t know she’s a whore. Like they both haven’t had their hearts ripped out in mirror effect.
Teach me how not to care, she doesn’t say, but somehow pleads for it on her knees in a dirty alley, fingers gripping into the fleshy underside of a dead girl’s knees, tongue reaching, reaching, reaching to find an answer, a reason, a meaning. Death tastes like flesh and that is less of a surprise than she would have thought, and so she loses herself in it, fingers pulling at her hair, a voice above her keening and sighing. It’s a dance. she thinks as she rises to her feet and meets lips with her lips.
“As old as time,” she whispers, golden eyes staring back at her. There’s a rush of blood flowing in a new direction, pouring out of her like her body was never meant to hold it all in anyway, there’s a finger pressed deep inside of her and she rides it like there’s a solution to life at the end of it all.
And then everything is ash around her feet.
Buffy twirls the stake in her palm and adjusts her jeans back on her hips, her black boots make tracks in the pile of dust and it would be sad if she could feel anything at all. She disappears back into the club and it all begins again, the hunt, the beat of the bass pumping her blood through her body, making it pretend to be alive for another moment, the delusion that something could have broken through her cold heart.
The heady scent of sweat and arousal threatens to sink into her skin, erase the dust and decay that lingers there like a promise, but it never does.