Chapter 28: Testament
Her arms were draped over her head, her eyes were closed, her mouth open and red and obstructed by the tongue she darted out to lick her lips. Two white, thin straps dangled from her chin down the center of her sweat-slicked chest, and he reached up to palm her breasts as they bounced to the easy cadence of their hips while she rode him.
“Say the rest,” William said hoarsely, his throat dry and in desperate need for water though he ignored it, ignored the stinging in his lungs from his shallow breathing. He’d let himself run out of air before he ever stopped this.
A tuft of her hair had fallen out of the simple, white pilgrim’s bonnet she wore and Buffy wanted to take it off, feeling even hotter with her hair mashed on top of her head but William started rolling his hips beneath her so she didn’t really mind.
She ran her hands down her chest as she continued reciting her lines from The Crucible, William her captive audience with his cock deep inside her. “I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men! And now you bid me tear the light out of my eyes?” She opened her eyes then. “I will not, I cannot!”
William smiled and bit his lip, digging his fingers into her hips as he watched her. She was glorious.
“You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet! Oh fuck.” She moaned, falling forward a bit and bracing herself up on his chest. She was lost in the sensations, tired from fucking for so long yet unable to stop as if she ever would, sweaty and groggy and he was touching her so wonderfully that it was hard to remember the next part.
“Do the freak out bit,” he said, grinning up at her as he pinched each rosy nipple. “Come on. Damn me to hell, woman.”
She giggled and sat upright once more to finish reciting. Melodramatically, she said, “I want to open myself!” Her eyes closed and she started bouncing over him. He grunted, meeting her thrust for thrust. “I want the light of God! I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the devil.” She locked her fiery eyes with his. “I saw him, I wrote in his book! Oh, William…” She broke character again when he pivoted his hips and stroked her clit with his thumb, unable to stifle the moans that bubbled in her throat.
“Keep going, Abigail…come on…”
“I can’t…I can’t…oh! God…oomph!” William flipped her onto her back and buried his mouth in her throat. She smiled drunkenly as he moved over her.
“Wicked witch,” he grumbled, propping up on his elbows as he thrust inside her.
She toyed with the tie beneath her chin and said, “We danced, that is all. And mark this, if anyone breathe a word or the edge of a word about the other things, I will come to you in the black of some terrible night,” she wrapped her legs around his waist and nipped at his chin, “and I will bring with me a pointy reckoning that will shudder you! And you know I can do it.”
“I have a pointy reckoning at the moment,” he said, chuckling as he proved his point to thrust hard inside her.
“Do you want me to say the lines or not?” She pouted shyly, dragging her calves up the backs of his thighs.
“I’m done with you, Abigail Williams,” he said softly, leaning forward to kiss her neck. “Give me my Buffy back.”
She tore the bonnet away, grateful when the cool air hit her heated scalp and she laughed as he began amorously moving over her, letting out sweet moans and groans and grunts and then he kissed her.
Her fingers were knotted in his hair, his brow pressed to hers, and they were moving in tandem. He dipped his tongue in her mouth, she squeezed his flexing muscles and soon he was bringing her over the edge. He smiled against her ear as she came, murmuring how lovely she was right before he came undone.
He rolled over onto his back, panting and staring at the model plane hanging from the ceiling. He smiled and closed his eyes when she snuggled up beside him.
“Always wanted to have sex in this bed.”
She started giggling and kissed his chest before she propped her chin there to look up at him. “Now you have, are you sad it’s over?”
He swallowed, his throat scratchy and dry. “No.” He trailed his fingers up her spine. “Still have the bathroom left to conquer. Then we can move on to the other rooms in the house.” He loved the sound of her laughter. He didn’t even have to open his eyes to know how she looked right then. But he did anyway. “Ever had sex in a library?”
“No.” She stared at her hand as it moved over his belly, her mind starting to drift off in thought. After a long moment of silence she suddenly said, “If we couldn’t have sex for some reason, would you still love me?”
“What?”
“I said, ‘if we couldn’t have sex—’”
“I heard you, Buffy. I just want to know where that came from.” He pulled her up to look her in the eye and she felt ashamed for even asking.
She sat up and grabbed the bonnet, idly playing with the straps. “I just wonder if you would love me this much if we couldn’t.” She casually tossed the bonnet onto the floor, her hands landing loudly on her bare thighs. She shrugged and smiled at him, trying to keep it casual and failing when he cocked his head to the side with an incredulous expression.
“Well, it’s obvious that all I care about is your pussy.”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
“No, I’m very serious.” He sat up and leaned over to crack a window open by the bed before he settled against the headboard. “I don’t like you, don’t like any part of you. Just your crotch.” He lit up a cigarette.
She sighed. “I was being hypothetical. You don’t have to be crude.” She straddled his waist and he laced his hands behind his head to watch her, his cigarette dangling from his smiling lips. “What if you never saw this body again?” She ran her hands up the back of her head, flipping her hair sexily and sticking her chest out.
“That’d be a shame. Am I blind or are you just a head in this scenario?” He sucked on his cigarette, eyes still twinkling.
“What if I was very cruel,” she said, leaning forward to hover over him, “and never let you touch me again?”
He put his cigarette out. Sniffed. Then he looked up at her.
“What if I did the same?”
She was silent, her chin cocking to the side as she swallowed her smirk. “Point taken.”
“Damn straight.” He craned his neck up to kiss her, then fell back on his pillow with a happy sigh. She played with his hair, content laying on him though they were both sticky and thirsty and tired.
“So would you say Miranda is your friend?”
He would have sighed, but she didn’t sound angry when she asked him and even after he studied her face, he could only find the sweet girl he loved staring back at him. “Yeah, I guess she was. Took a while to open up to her what with the way she reacted when I told her about you.”
“How did she react?”
“Well,” he said, laughing, “I think she thought I was some sort of pedophile. Which is hilarious, considering you did the pursuing.”
Buffy gasped playfully and sat up, making him groan when she grazed his cock. “I did not.” She chewed on her thumb shyly. “Ok, so I did.” He laughed. “Well, it’s not my fault you were so damn sexy with the punishing.”
He swatted her behind. “Miranda made me feel bad for it so I was a bastard to her for a while. But…then we talked and I think we sort of came to an understanding with one another.”
“What did you talk about?”
William was silent for a moment, thinking over his conversation with Miranda. He hated to admit it, but it had been creeping into his mind ever since they shared a bottle and their woes. Some of the things she’d said struck a chord with him that had yet to stop resonating.
“She thinks I’m immature. That because I became a priest so early, that I missed out on certain transitional periods or something, and that because of that, my connection with you makes sense. That I’m a young man trapped in the body of a thirty-one year old.”
Buffy frowned, watching the light in his eyes start to dim. Who the hell was this Miranda? And where did she get off thinking she could analyze him when she had no idea who he was?
“You don’t believe that, do you?” She rubbed his chest comfortingly, staring down at him.
He shrugged. “Makes sense, doesn’t it? I wasn’t really exposed to a lot growing up. Private schools and maids raising me for the most part, while Dad was off who knows where.” He looked to the side at some nonexistent point in the room. She wanted to gather him in her arms, knowing exactly how it felt to be left alone for long periods of time. “I was a shut-in at that school. If it weren’t for the nuns dragging me out of my office to chat and share stories, I’d have been way worse off than I was when we met.”
“I don’t know a lot,” Buffy began cautiously, “but I know you. And I don’t think you’re immature.”
He smiled slightly, his head still turned to the side, but she could tell he wasn’t taking her words seriously. She was only eighteen after all. But that didn’t make her an idiot.
“You ran an entire school by yourself. You organized meetings, handled tuition and paychecks for the staff, wrote sermons every Sunday, had one hell of a complicated syllabus for English classes, and managed to keep it together without killing yourself from being stifled under the lie of being a priest. I couldn’t do that.”
Whatever she’d said must have been the right thing to say, because he was smiling in awe at her, his jaw ticking slightly as he tried to control his emotions.
“And I refuse to believe that you love me only because you’re ‘immature’,” she said, making air quotes with her fingers. “Miranda said that because she doesn’t understand. Don’t let it ruin what we have.”
He touched her cheek, cupping it gently, as he smiled gratefully at her. Hearing it from Buffy, the realization that she knew him better than he thought was the sweetest thing in the world. His fears, the words Miranda said to him, started to disappear.
Very softly, he said, “You know, I think I fell in love with you a little bit more.”
She smiled sweetly and leaned forward to kiss him, moaning against his lips when his hands came around her middle. She turned her head to the side to rest beneath his chin, her eyes closing a fraction as he started to scratch her back.
“We needed each other,” she whispered, “whether we realized it then or not. That’s why it all started.”
“I still need you.”
She closed her eyes and smiled. “That makes two of us.”
* * *
“Fuck that,” Buffy said, angrily.
“Buffy.”
“She can kiss my ass and die in hell.”
“Buffy.”
“No, William! I am not calling her.”
“You have to call your mother.”
She yanked the refrigerator door open, snatched up the carton of orange juice, poured a glass and chugged it, her eyes wide and pissed, her throat undulating with every angry gulp. She exhaled and wiped her mouth before slamming the carton and her glass down hard on the kitchen counter.
“Slow down if you’re driving, pet,” he said teasingly.
She glared at him. “Why do I have to call her?”
“Because, Buffy. You’ve been expelled and now you’re living with me. She might want to know, at least so she doesn’t keep sending the school tuition checks.”
“She doesn’t give a shit. Neither of my parents do.” She turned around and walked out of the kitchen.
William sighed, running his hands through his hair before he put the orange juice back in the fridge. He followed her out into the living room.
“You just have to call her, give her the information, and then you can hang up. It’s not that hard.”
“Hearing her voice is like nails on a chalkboard,” she said, pacing the floor. “Can’t you do it? You’re so good at being bitchy.”
He scoffed. “Masculine damage!”
“Well, being an asshole then.”
“Buffy, you have to do this. I can’t keep cleaning up your messes. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to man up and deal with her.”
That stung, and because she was already defensive, she said, “Why don’t you man up and deal with your father?”
He inhaled slowly and she saw his lips twisting a bit. Very evenly and calmly, he said, “We’re not talking about me.”
She folded her arms and chewed on the inside of her cheek, narrowing her eyes. “Fine. Give me the fucking phone before I lose my fucking nerve.”
“I fucking will,” he said with a smile, trying to lighten the mood but she was too pissed to pay it any attention. He sighed and retrieved the cordless from the other room and walked back to her. “Deep breaths.”
She snatched it from his hand and walked over to her purse to pull out her address book. She flipped to the page of numbers she had for her mother, most of them written in pencil and scratched out, straight and neat of course, from all the various places her parents traveled. She pounded the last written number onto the phone, inhaling deeply and calming herself down. Since the last phone call she had with her mother, Buffy had decided she wouldn’t give her parents any more of herself since they didn’t seem to want to be a part of her life. Maybe this would be the last phone call to them she had to make for a long time.
“Hello?” It was her father that answered.
“Dad?” She hadn’t spoken to him in over a year, and the sound of his voice hit her like a ton of bricks, her anger and vitriol escaping like a harsh breath. She sat heavily on a chair, unable to look up at William who was staring at her.
“Buffy? Well, what a surprise. You know, your mother and I went to this party last night in Lyon and met a charming young couple. The girl looked just like you and I turned to Joyce and said, ‘Doesn’t she look just like Buffy?’ Of course, this girl was much older and had the biggest set of fake tits I’d ever seen, but she had your adorable face.”
She closed her eyes and turned away from William completely. “So, um…I kind of have something important to talk about,” she said, glossing over his uncomfortable words to get to the heart of the matter.
“Oh. You want me to get Joyce?”
“No! No…Dad…I can talk to you, can’t I?” He wasn’t much better in the parental department than her mother, but he would be easier to deal with.
She heard him sigh and then he said, “I guess so.”
“I just wanted to tell you not to send any more checks to St. Mary’s.”
“Don’t tell me you got a job,” he said, the condescending tease in his voice as plain as day.
“No. I got expelled.” She felt William’s hand on her shoulder.
“What?” he shouted. “How did you do that? We can’t…fuck! We can’t deal with this right now. I have two clients lined up next week and I can’t fly to the States. Jesus, Buffy…”
She closed her eyes and William stroked her hair. “Yeah, well, don’t worry about it,” she said defiantly, a slight quaver in her voice. “It’s handled so you don’t have to be a parent.”
“Buffy—”
“Just don’t worry about it!” She was really angry with herself when she felt hot tears on her cheeks, but William’s warm hand rubbed her back and she held it together.
“What are you going to do? It was like pulling teeth to get you in that school with your background.”
“My background? Whose fault was that, Dad? You’re the one who insisted I was home schooled for so long so you could screw your secretaries all over the world.”
“And look what happens when we enroll you in school! I told your mother you couldn’t handle it.”
“I can handle it.” She stood up, needing space and the ability to think on her own feet. William watched her pace the floor, her eyes darting wildly as she lifted her chin. “I’m going to enroll in public school. And I’m going to graduate and I’m going to walk the stage and get my diploma and you can fuck off!” She hung up the phone and let out a loud roar of frustration.
William sat down as she started to pace the floor, watching her ire escalate to a level he’d never seen before.
“Fuck him! And fuck my mother! They think I’m so stupid, that I won’t amount to anything, that I’m worthless and inconvenient for them. Well fuck. Them.” She put her hands on her hips, the phone still in one hand, and she let out a snort of humorless laughter. “I’m going to college, too. Fuckers. I know how to take care of myself!”
William smiled proudly. “Good for you.”
She finally looked at him and she huffed, smiling a bit. “God, I just freaked the hell out.”
He laughed. “Think it was called for, love. Had a mouth full of blood the whole time.”
She ran her hands through her hair and let out a long, puff of air, closing her eyes. “I’m done. I don’t want to talk to them ever again. I’m serious.”
William had her in his arms within seconds, rubbing her back and kissing her angry brow. “You don’t have to. I’m sorry I made you.”
“No, you were right. I needed to tell them.” She pulled back, still wrapped in his arms and said, “You’re my family now.”
He sighed happily, pressing his lips to her forehead once more. “Guess that means I get to annoy you on holidays.”
They both laughed softly, holding on to one another. Perhaps it was a coincidence that silence fell over them in the same moment, and that nothing was said between them for a long while. Perhaps it was the first time they realized that neither of them had ever really had a family.
William’s mother was something of a mystery, something he didn’t like talking about. Maybe he could now. Maybe he could work up the nerve to tell Buffy the parts of his life he’d kept hidden for so long. But he’d always been alone, or at least he always felt that way. Though her circumstances were substantially different, Buffy had also been without the sort of guidance and familial love she needed. At least, William thought ruefully, he had holidays with his father and conversations about things that challenged him intellectually. But he never felt like a son. Not in the way he thought he should.
But she was his family now, as much as he was hers. The very idea of that was both wonderful and heartbreaking.
It was time for both of them to heal.