Re/Envisioning
by Jennifer-Oksana

I keep having these dreams

these dreams

I keep having these

dreams, and Angel's there, and this is the intensely scary part, because so is Buffy, like she's really there. This is all from the Christmas after Buffy dumped Spike's undead ass and she came down for the holiday because she didn't know where else to go. That was the Christmas when she found out and

She was wearing the green dress, a gorgeous satin one with the bodice that really brought out her eyes. There was a ribbon around her neck, a big thick ribbon and of course that was hiding bite marks. She let him bite her for fun. I still can't get over that.

They won't stop coming, these dreams, and it's awful, just to remember the way he looked at both of us, smiling at Buffy, and she was wearing this really gauche red pantsuit that would have been in two Christmases ago but hey. This is Buffy we're talking about.

Angel looked at me like I was some sort of ghost even though he'd said it was okay that I came down and then I saw the way he looked at Cordelia and I looked at the ribbon again. And I understood. At least I thought I understood.

It was this tasteful black velvet ribbon, he'd bought it for me because we'd been getting into a little too much necking, you know. And it went so well with the green dress and the rest was so easily covered up by makeup. But there was this one part of my neck and he'd declared it the sweet spot and I told him, Angel, be careful.

I should have guessed before.

I should have guessed way before.

But in these dreams, these are the dreams where Angel comes downstairs and instead of doing what he did the first time, the real time, where he kissed Cordelia and let me know exactly where I stood in his world, he comes downstairs and takes my hands in his.

"I have a present for you," he said, and he kissed her on the cheek, like he did, but he hasn't kissed me, like he did, the big warning isn't in this dream. But he gives me the same present

It's this beautiful old-fashioned pearl ring and we should have known, but I was hurt, God, I was hurt that Angel had fallen for Cordelia. I mean, she'd grown but she was Cordelia! I felt like my stomach had fallen through the floor.

He gave her something I didn't understand at first. It was only way afterwards that I understood why he did what he did. I'm too afraid to think about it because the way Angel kisses me but doesn't kiss me in the dream is wrong. Something's wrong.

"I hope you like it," he says, sounding like the Angel I knew, the Angel who wouldn't get involved with Cordelia. He handed me a little red velvet box. I opened it up and there was this bracelet of garnets on a gold chain and a little note in that fancy handwriting.

we need to talk. upstairs.

She got this look on her face like everything made much more sense and I knew that Angel wanted to talk to her and explain and do all of his Angel-things. I understood. But something was still wrong. I could smell it in the air.

We go upstairs. She watched us like she knew something was going to happen, but she was the seer, after all. Maybe she should have foreseen this.

Can't stop things from happening in a dream, but I never stop imagining that I could change things, even though it was really just jealousy and bitterness that I was feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I don't know how to explain what happened

What happened next, there's not really much I can say about it. It didn't make any sense. Communal insanity caused by jealous and hormones and fuck if I know what. It doesn't make any sense at all. I pretend it didn't happen either, that it was just a dream

Would have been nice if it were just a dream. But this part happened.

I walked upstairs after waiting for ten minutes. It's not quite that long in the dream. I get bored really fast and I start walking upstairs, feeling my heart beat. It started to play a song, I think, or maybe that's just the dream part.

The talking doesn't happen in the dream. The talk wasn't much of anything anyway. He said something, I accused him of something. Before I could go away, he was kissing me and I was kissing back.

Kiss me. Bite me.

I think that's as far as the conversation went--or at least when I walk in, it's all about things going way too far and I stand there in my green dress, realizing that under that beautiful black ribbon, I'm marked. I'm marked and I'm a dumbass. Eternally.

She gasps--and ruined everything. In every dream, I wish that she wouldn't be standing there, in that dress that suddenly stops being green and turns blue, dark blue, and for a second becomes the vanilla sky

Buffy looks at me like she feels guilty. Or something. This is always awkward, real, dream, or whatever this is/was/will be.

"Cordelia--"

I say the thing that haunts me, the stupid angry bitter thing that should have never been said. Me and my hurt, stupid mouth.

"Aren't you going to invite me to play, too?"

She gets this look on her face, staring at me like I'm belly-button lint and I think that Queen Cordelia needs a taste of her own medicine, because who the hell does she think she is? I know what's under that ribbon and she has no right to look at me like I'm scum

I should have guessed.

Still can't believe I said that. And that he didn't say a word. But it stopped being about him the minute she opened her damned bitchy-ass mouth. Xander was right, Cordelia's mouth has always been a weapon.

"Depends. Are you okay with it?"

Buffy stands up. Every dream, she stands up and I think if she had just backed down, or laughed at me, or did something different

That damn black velvet ribbon. I know what she is under the ribbon. Marked. A whore. His whore because she obviously wasn't enough to rip the soul out of him.

She grabs me by the neck and I can hear her breathing. It's warm against the skin and her fingers are ice-cold. She pulls the ribbon away and I stand there, eyes closed, humiliated.

"Like them?" Cordelia says. "Want a set to match?"

Buffy smells like Love's Baby Soft and sex. I opened my eyes and hers were two inches from mine, full of need. I suddenly feel sorry for her and I kiss her on the forehead.

It's all too much and I pull her head toward mine, because I'm going to show Cordelia Chase what a set she's going to end up with but somehow we lose our way and then we were kissing, her face mashed up against mine and it wasn't even sexy. But it was happening.

"I'm okay with it, Buffy," I said.

I can't even decide what's now and what's then.

It seems all the same to me.

Everything becomes images and sensations without the storyline. Suddenly, we're on the bed and it's all three of us doing some serious naked exploration with much heavy breathing (well, the living ones were doing some breathing).

Cordelia's eyes suddenly close and I watch as her body arches up--she has pretty nice breasts--and she starts to wail like a banshee. Angel is stroking me and I suddenly want to thank the dark-haired evil thing for bringing us together like this with all the weird and the strange and clearly not perfect.

With my eyes closed, I could hear Buffy moan as he touched her. It made me crazy, wetter, angrier. Wanted her not to be there, but I needed her to be there. I wanted her to get me off and I wanted her to stop being so high and mighty and Buffy.

I wanted to break the evil high school May Queen, show her she wasn't so much better than me.

She was going to come hard, she was going to be one of the mere mortals and I was going to do it to her, me and Angel.

Angel, as for him, after he realized that there were some unfinished issues between Cordy and me, he stopped doing quite so much touching, though I kept feeling his lips on my back, my shoulder, the nape of my neck. It was getting to be sexual overload between the writhing mess under me and the controlling, green-eyed bitch on top of me (same Cordelia, different positions). Too much Angel, with his vague promises of love and sanity, would have been too much.

I can see Buffy, hating me, her fingers in my pussy, getting me off as roughly as she possibly can while Angel watched. The images are all there, me getting off, Angel pulling her away from me, getting her off, getting her back under him, all while I watch.

But it's not really all that great, because I'm already done and I'm trying to kiss him and suddenly, he's ignoring me. Not ignoring, but his attention can only be in one place at one time and his attention has suddenly turned to Cordelia.

Angel is suddenly five places at once and I know that he's going to make love to me--fuck me--in ways that are going to drive. Buffy. nuts. But like she wasn't already.

"I want you," he told her. "I want you so much."

Opening my eyes, I saw him but then I blinked and it's Buffy on top of me again, moaning and whimpering and touching me. Another blink and it wasn't Buffy, it was him and he was inside of me and I was enjoying it too much. Wasn't thinking.

Should have known it was already too much. But we were feverish. There wasn't much with the thinking going on.

If we had thought, we would have realized that this was impossible for Angel to set up, let alone for us to go along with. Share? Like that? Something was wrong.

It's not the sharing that got to me. It was the getting off on the way she was moaning and arching and writhing.

These aren't really the clearest moments in my dreams. It's all the sensations, the way it was too hot and too cold and just dizzy to remember. It's like remembering being delirious, or trying to put a vision into words. It doesn't work.

"I want you," he told her.

"I love you," I say.

Watching them was getting to be too much but there went my fingertips, moving and touching and rubbing away because there was something in watching them, in the whole moment that was so fucking good that I didn't really care that it wasn't me Angel was touching. I was coming hard, eyes closed, when I heard it.

"I love you." He loved me and then he drove his teeth into my neck.

She moaned like it was the end of the world. I think it was.

But I wasn't thinking. Arched into his touch, not realizing that he wasn't even fucking me anymore, it was all the thrill of getting bitten and getting off at the same moment. I was gone.

So was he.

Everything changed right about then, right after Angel's head came away from Cordelia's neck, covered in blood. He looked at me and there wasn't any soul left in those eyes.

See, in the way it turned out, we immediately knew he was Angelus and we stared at each other, naked and horrified that we'd been played--and Buffy had a stake somewhere--maybe it was one of the ones we kept in his drawer, the ones he kept for fun. Wherever. She had a stake--

And I looked at her and I said, "You know we have to."

And I said, "Yes."

But that's where everything changes

everything changed right then. the world stopped. He got the jump on us and we lose. Maybe it's the way things were supposed to be

or the way we wanted it to turn out.

In the dreams, it's not Angel that dies. It's her.

She's suddenly just so edible. He puts his arm around her and she's totally helpless because the stake is lying there on the bed and I pick it up and there's this look on her face and on his.

"Who do you love better?"

And that's the question that still gets me. Because suddenly, I can't bear to do what has to be done and I'm looking at her, naked and writhing and all I want to do is

This is all just a dream. I can't stand to dream it any longer. Because that's not what happened, not what happened at all.

But I can't stop thinking how good she would taste if she was screaming for her life. And suddenly something inside of me snaps and I can't stand these dreams anymore.

I break and I turn on her and he laughs as I bite down. Then he helps and it's this experience that's nothing like sex or eating but it's better than both and it's made up of both and by the end, she's dead and I can think only one thing:

God, she tasted good.

Angel--Angelus, I guess, that's who it really is, not Angel at all, though there never really was too much difference--he turns to me and says

"You're the only one I ever dream of."

That's when I wake up

wake up

When I wake

I wait for an explanation, something that lets it all make sense. Real? Dreams? Hallucinations? Somewhere in between. I wait for the answers, for the key to the madness.

It doesn't seem to be coming.