Woman of Steel
(The Black and Blue Remix)

Author: Benaresq

Original Story: Woman of Steel, Man of Kleenex by M. Scott Eiland

Summary: "I collect her bruises."

Rating: R

Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

It's sex, right? Strings-free sex with a beautiful girl. I think you have to be gay, or a Goth, or something, before you're allowed to complain about that. And it's not like I can talk to anyone about it anyway; I think this is secret. I don't know if it's secret. We do it in my basement, not on her bed in the room which Buffy shares with Willow, which is good because that would be wrong, and confusing, and wrong, and the room sometimes smells of Willow's sometimes perfume.

But when we do it in my basement it feels tacky, and cheap, and kind of ugly. It's like everything that happens in a graveyard is morbid, even down to the morbid as-dust-in-the-mouth eating of Twinkies; everything that happens in my basement is depressing. Not depressing. I didn't mean depressing. I just meant… sometimes I want to light some candles round the bed. Which is stupid because this isn't about candles, but even if it was, my basement couldn't carry it off.

It feels like the right place to be held down on the bed, in the dark, and used. Hard. It hurts, sometimes. Often, really. I honestly don't think she knows how strong she is. I think, when she's riding me, she's wild; I don't think she knows anything at all then. I think that's a Slayer thing, that kind of intensity. I don't know. I can hardly ask Giles. I don't think I can ask her to stop.

She's sweet and everything, before and afterwards. I mean, she kisses me, not just the greedy kind with tongues everywhere, but soft and princessy, and she asks about my life, and stuff, and she's not Faith or anything like her. Except I think she might be kissing and talking because she doesn't want to be Faith, or anything like her, and there's a kind of light that comes on inside her when we're fucking that isn't there when we're just talking. I don't think she comes for the conversation, is all I mean. I can't believe I'm saying that like it's bad.

It worries me; I don't think I ever realised how angry she gets. It's like she expects the world to just fuck her over, to try to hurt her. Being a Slayer would do that to you, I suppose. She said it was about Angel when I asked her, and then she said I had never been in love and what would I know. Which, yes, it hurt, because I once thought I was in love with her and I still think I might be, sometimes, because… well, what do I know? But I collect her bruises. After she said that she punched a pillow and broke a spring in the mattress, and then she kissed me.

I haven't told her about the bruises; I make sure I don't walk around naked in front of her. I don't think I would anyway. I get this vision of her seeing me with the light on, and remembering who I am and what she's been doing, and running out of the room screaming. She doesn't act much different to me in normal Scooby life; maybe she's a bit colder than usual. This thing that she's ashamed of is kept in the basement.

I think she broke a rib last night. I was afraid my collarbone might go. She was pretty wound up. I have to stop this, and I don't want to. Sometimes when she's gone I look at the bruises and touch them. That's probably not right. But all of this feels… off, and I might be using her while she goes through an unhappy phase, but I can't stop. And it's like a part of her there, even when she's not, the bruises, the pain. And I like having them there secretly, under the stupid uniform of the week, the way I used to like eating lunch at the designated geek hangouts and knowing I'd been fighting demons the night before. Buffy's part of something big and important and the violence is part of that, and even the stupid little bruises on my body are part of that too, and that is at least something to think about when you're delivering pizza to college freshmen who were in your class last year.

I have to haul my ass into hospital now, and I have no idea what to tell them. I think they'll know that there's wrongness, and they'll try and interfere and what can I tell them? That the bruises are the second-hand marks of superpowers? That I stroke them in the mornings when I jerk off? That I don't want her to stop making them- and well, if that's sick, it's sick. But I bet Lois Lane loved the bruises a little, too.

End

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to their owners/creators/copyright holders. This fan-written fiction intends no infringement on any copyrights.