Title: Safe Sex
Author: Flywoman
Email: berenbaum@hotmail.com
Rating: NC-17
Summary: "I'd still. I'd very still." "Okay. No biting though." Oz/Willow pre-"Wild at Heart."
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy are the source; this piece is but a pale reflection
of their glory.
Thanks: To all the folks at Glass Onion who tried to help me nail this one.
I noticed this girl the other night at the Bronze. I was up on stage, lead guitar for Dingoes Ate
My Baby at our first really official gig, the Sunnydale High World Culture Dance. I looked out
over the crowd, and she was standing there staring at me. It wasn't that she was stunningly
beautiful or anything; in fact, she was almost hidden from view in this shaggy Eskimo
costume, like a shy girl who wasn't used to being looked at. But there was something else,
something I couldn't quite put my finger on. Something special about her.
It wasn't really the other night. It was two years ago, in fact. Willow doesn't know this, but I
think of that date as our true anniversary. The day I discovered her. Not love; that came later.
But that was the beginning for me.
Not for her, though. I don't think she even realized we were playing that night; the faraway,
desolate look on her wan face suggested that our brand new amps and long minutes of
practice were totally wasted on her. No, she didn't notice me then. It took a while, actually.
But I'm a pretty patient guy.
Of course, romance on the Hellmouth is never simple.
The bullet I took for her during Career Week should have been a dead giveaway, but I didn't
really start to get the whole picture until our first official date. Willow dragged me along to a
surprise birthday party for her friend Buffy, whom I knew only as a rather tense faux blonde
with a reputation for violent and destructive behavior. Our fellow celebrants turned out to be
the school librarian, class clown Xander Harris, Devon's ex, Cordelia; and a moody-looking
older guy named Angel. We met up at an abandoned warehouse, set up the refreshments,
donned party hats, and waited in the gloom for almost half an hour.
When the birthday girl finally showed, she had company with her. The only thing that
surprised me more than her abrupt crash through the wall was the way her companion
exploded into dust when she rammed a piece of wood into his chest. But then, it did explain a
lot about life in Sunnydale.
Anyway, I really didn't have a problem with it - the vamps, the Slayer, the Slayerettes. Love
Willow, love her friends. Except when she actually took it upon herself to, well... *love* her
friends.
I knew from the beginning that she had a thing for Xander. Willow is a lousy liar, partly, I
think, from lack of practice, but partly because her face is just so transparent, her feelings
swimming so clearly just below the surface. I saw the way she watched him and Cordelia in
the rear view mirror the night we drove my van to the base for a raid on the army's arsenal.
But I was willing to wait. If it were meant to be, she'd come around.
Turned out to be by a longer and more complicated route than I'd expected, not least because
my little cousin Jordy unwittingly initiated me into the pack. From what I've heard, that first
full moon I almost managed to kill Willow, and then a bounty hunter almost managed to kill
me. I felt terrible afterwards, guilty and disgusted, knowing that I had this repulsive,
destructive thing inside me, that she had been in such danger from me. I thought that she
would be the one to walk away then, but she didn't.
I was so freaked out by the experience, though, that I resolved to take things slowly with her.
And for a while, it was great. Which is pretty much ironic given that there were all kinds of
horrible things happening at the time, what with Angel getting back in touch with his inner
demon and Ms. Calendar's death and the world almost ending and then Buffy just up and
disappearing without a word of explanation. But we dealt with it together, all of it.
We had a fabulous summer. During the day, I ditched make-up classes at the high school for
make-out classes under the trees with my favorite tutor. In the evenings, we packed wood
and walkie-talkies and patrolled the cemeteries and teen hangouts for things that went suck in
the night. That was the only time it sometimes got a bit more difficult, when Willow was
reminded of why we were out there in the first place - because the Chosen One had
abandoned her post and her friends and we had to cope with the evils the Hellmouth
continued to brew in her absence. The worst nights, of course, were those when we couldn't
console each other because we had to be separated by sturdy bars and the sights of a
tranquilizer gun.
I guess was so glad that she'd stayed by me despite all the weirdness that I didn't even notice
when she started to drift away.
It had been going on for a while, I see that now. There were signs, little things capable of
being discounted in themselves, but telling from the post- betrayal perspective. The way
Willow jumped when I gave her little presents, the way she and Xander always appeared
within a few moments of each other, but never together, and avoided eye contact around the
rest of us. The distinctive smells of arousal and guilt that lingered in a room they'd just
occupied. And I'm supposed to be Mr. Test Scores and all, but I honestly didn't figure it out
until... well, until the night I did.
I don't remember whose idea it was to go bowling on a double date that day, but I was all for
it. For some reason, Willow seemed to be having second thoughts about the idea, though, and
she gushed over the Pez witch I gave her in a way that should have screamed nervous guilt to
me. But I still didn't get it, even when Willow snuck off to the Magic Shoppe on a mysterious
errand and then met Xander in the chemistry lab that evening for some unscheduled tutoring.
Even after they disappeared together, I remained blissfully unaware right up until Cordy and I
drove by the factory where Spike was holding them.
Of course I knew long before I actually saw them.
Cordy was surprised that I was able to catch Willow's scent from the van. What I didn't tell her
was that I also recognized lots of other things bound up in it: crushed herbs, mescal, blood
that wasn't Willow's, cigarettes and leather and peroxide, fear and loathing and desperation.
And following the scent trail to the basement, I encountered new smells composed of
tenderness and longing, sweet saliva and male musk and the crush of clothing on damp skin.
Cordy stiffened in shock beside me when we finally emerged on the scene, Willow and Xander
entwined on the couch amidst a wreckage of alcohol and shattered glass, but I had already
known what we'd find.
Good thing, too, because it took every step down those stairs for me to struggle with the other
Oz, to shut myself down.
It's funny, when you make it a point to be blunt with people, they come to believe that what
you show them is all there is. They think it's cool that you're so open, and they accept your
imperturbability at face value, never suspecting the existence of all those nasty, complicated
thoughts and emotions you've closed off from them, confined to an airtight compartment in
the back of your brain.
It's not something that I'm especially proud of. It's just the way it is.
And it isn't just the werewolf thing; I've been this way for as long as I can remember. It's
difficult to explain exactly, but it's like, there's this definite disconnect between the Oz who
thinks and the Oz who feels. The thinking Oz lives in the world, goes to classes (or not), talks
to people (or not), notices things and picks them apart and responds in a mostly appropriate if
sometimes slightly offbeat, dare I say appealingly eccentric, way.
While the other Oz turns round his cage in tight, desperate circles, gnaws his own limbs to the
bone, and then throws back his head and howls.
Anyway, Willow obviously felt terrible about the whole thing, but it was a long time before I
trusted her again after that, and an even longer time before I decided that we were ready to
take the next step. Although, to be honest, it wasn't a decision in any premeditated sense, or
really, in any rational or even conscious sense. It was more a decision in the seat-of-my-
pants, panic-stricken, it's-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it sense.
See, I've always been careful. Except for the first time.
No one can fault me for it. As far as we were concerned, there could be no consequences.
After all, the fucking world was about to end.
And we had been together in her bedroom poring over ancient tomes for hours, trying to find
a way to prevent apocalypse and getting nowhere. Willow was frustrated and terrified and
didn't understand how I could act so calm. I understood that what she really wanted was proof
that I loved her. Because how can you believe that someone cares passionately about you if
they show no fear at the prospect of being separated from you forever?
She probably wasn't even aware of it, but it was a turning point for us, a test. I knew in that
moment that I hovered on the cusp of losing her, the one person I had ever really felt for - if
not the day of the Ascension, it would be the next, or the next, a slow decline. So what can I
say - in my own way, I did panic. I pushed my rational self aside for the moment, I locked him
away.
Just that once, I let that other Oz come out to play.
That's why the first time with her was so incredible. For once in my life, I wasn't an objective
observer watching myself from the outside. I was fully alive, active, part of the process. The
running commentary in my head finally stopped.
Willow was sitting on the bed, useless books lying in dusty little piles around her as she
babbled about all the things she might never get to do if we all died in two days' time. Without
any warning, I lunged forward and stopped her mouth with my own, and it was as though a
switch had been flipped on: like an electric current was flowing from my groin through the
circuit of our joined lips and down into her sweet, secret places. I could tell that she felt it too
from the way her agate eyes widened and her fair skin flushed. But more than that, I could
smell her excitement, overlying my own.
"What are you doing?" she murmured, surprised but not frightened.
"Panicking," I deadpanned, more honestly than she knew.
I pushed her down on the bed, not violently, but with a slow, irresistible pressure. I wasn't
about to spoil anything by being in too big a hurry. Being a little guy has its advantages
sometimes; I spread myself full length on top of her, pressing her into the comforter without
worrying that my weight would hurt her.
Long moments were solely devoted to one of my favorite activities, Willow kissage, and she
was right there, too, kissing me. In one sense, it was nothing new; I'd already spent many an
hour exploring her mouth, and I could have mapped every nook and cranny like my childhood
bedroom. But for the first time, Xander's spectre didn't lie between us; it was just she and I,
alone together at last. I didn't realize that at the time, though; all I knew was that her
attention was wholly focused on me, and that it was good.
As we became more aroused, more attuned to one another, I gradually became aware of
every point of her pressing exquisitely into my skin. Our bodies called to each other across
layers of denim and cotton. My penis was pushing painfully against my pants, straining to
reach her answering warmth, but I relished the almost delicious discomfort of denying myself
a little while longer.
At last I pulled back, helped her out of her blouse, lifted her t-shirt over her head and slipped
my hands behind her back to free her breasts from her bra. I followed their contours with my
mouth, stroking and sucking gently on each of them in turn. She has such amazing skin, pale
and luminescent and cool. Being able to caress it freely after so long was like cupping my
hands around the remote and untouchable moon.
I tongued her nipples, moving in slow circles, entranced by the way they hardened into
rosebuds as her skin prickled. She tasted like lemonade and new grass on a warm spring
morning, citrus and sharply alive. Unable to resist, I nipped her, gently, not breaking the skin.
She made a small, startled sound that might have been my name and wrapped her fingers in
my hair.
Eventually I moved further down the white plain of her flat stomach to swirl my tongue in her
bellybutton, making her giggle. I smiled against the quivering in her hips for a moment,
enveloped in the rich, moist smell of her. Then I sat back on my heels and unfastened my
pants.
Willow immediately swung her legs over the side of the bed. For one second of dumb surprise
I thought she had suddenly figured out what was happening and wanted to leave, but no,
apparently she just wanted to help me out by taking her clothes off, too. I could feel myself
grinning, relieved, and she smiled back and toed off her shoes.
Before she could go any further, I knelt at her feet and slipped my hands up under her skirt to
catch the waistband of her tights, then peeled them carefully off. She anticipated me perfectly,
standing, then sitting again, lifting one slim leg and then the other. Underneath, she was just
as smooth and almost as white. I caressed one of her calves and then pressed my lips to her
knee, her instep.
When I reached for her again, though, she avoided my grasp, pulling back the covers and
burrowing into the bed. From the awkward movements, she was shucking her skirt and
panties under the sheets. I had never really been one for modesty at a time like this, but she
still hadn't seen the Oz full monty at that point, so after struggling out of most of my clothes, I
slipped in next to her before pulling off my boxers.
She was lying very still now, watching me, her heart thumping nervously like a wren beating
against the windowpane. I wrapped my arm around her waist, kissed her earlobe, whispered,
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
She bit her lip, staring at me for a second, and then she smiled. "Yes." I smiled back and ran
my hand down her side, traced the bones in her hip, and trailed my fingers across her thighs.
She was warm and wet, unfolded like a flower. I hooked my leg over her body and lay down
on top of her then, sliding luxuriously along the soft, scented skin clothing her bones, and
gave her a last kiss on the mouth, slipping my tongue in to touch and tease her in a little
prelude of what was to come.
I knew, of course, that it was her first time. I went slowly at the beginning, probing a little,
shifting my hips to find the right angle. She could have gotten scared, tightened up, closed off.
But she didn't. She trusted me.
Sliding into her was like surfacing after holding my breath underwater for far too long, like
plunging into a hot spring after rolling in a snowbank. I was watching her face the entire time,
and her eyes were huge but unafraid. When I pushed into her, she gave a little cry of pain and
surprise, but then when I hesitated, she reached up to cradle my head, to kiss me. "I'm okay,"
she reassured me. "Don't stop," she said.
I played a slow, sweet song in her at first, breathless with the accumulated yearnings of years
clamoring to be released. She was pretty passive for a while, with the expression of intent
discovery that I love so much, a tiny frown of concentration over a faintly disbelieving smile.
But once the raw novelty wore off, she relaxed and began to experiment, wriggling around me
so that I groaned with pleasure, thrusting her hips up to meet mine.
At some point, I let myself go. Willow was under me, radiant, joyous, her body melting into
mine. I was fully inside her, and as fully inside myself as I'd ever been.
As I sped up, pumping faster and faster, I suddenly began to feel the change sweep through
me. I felt my fingers curl, the coarse hair sprout from my skin. My face twisted painfully
around my cheekbones as they reshaped themselves; my penis swelled, a hot, heavy weight
between my thighs. Faster and faster, long liquid thrusts that pulled me irresistibly toward the
brink of consciousness.
Teetering at the crest, I heard a howl that I realized only later had come from my throat. Then
I plummeted into pure pleasure, sank into divine darkness and collapsed on top of her,
gasping with a sound like sobs.
I'm not really sure how much of what I remember actually happened. When I came to, Willow
was relaxed and smiling. She said it was nice and made no mention of my wolfing out. We lay
side by side for a while, basking in the afterglow. New smells of blissful satisfaction
surrounded us, earthy smells of semen and female musk and the first drops of rain falling on
the dust of a prairie flayed by flame. For once the savage beast within me was loose but
soothed, sleepy, stilled. We entwined limp fingers under the covers and thought that nothing
would ever separate us.
What with preparations for graduation and the Mayor's Ascension, we really didn't have that
much leisure to repent for a while. It was the following night, as we stood out on the school
lawn watching the firefighters extinguish the final embers smouldering in the rubble of our
former high school, that I fully realized the potential consequences of what I had done to her.
The month after graduation, I was a wreck. The usual easy-going, unflappable Oz was on
summer vacation, and his replacement paced and snarled and rattled the bony bars of his
human cage. I can't even begin to describe how horrible it was, the waiting, not knowing.
Maybe we had been inconceivably lucky. Or maybe I had managed to destroy Willow's chance
at a normal life, and a new monster was destined to enter the world.
I mean, a lot of girls wait for the next moon to see whether they shed blood... but not like
that.
Since then, I've always been careful.
The thing is, no one is really sure how it's transmitted. For all I know, my tears could be
deadly if they slipped through a crack in her skin. Certainly both my saliva and semen are
suspect. If Willow has a coldsore, I won't even kiss her.
So now sex is no longer a whole-hearted celebration of the body, it's a surgical procedure.
Snap on the latex, get in, get out. Don't contaminate the sterile field, don't expose the patient
to your own invisible filth. And whatever you do, don't leave any part of yourself behind.
Anyone who says that it feels just as good with a rubber on is lying. I don't just mean the loss
of physical sensation, a dimming of the delicious slippery friction that sex reduces to for so
many people. I'm talking about the cruel denial of the ultimate intimacy possible between two
human beings, which intercourse with a condom can never fully capture. How could it, when
every electron in your body yearns to circle the other person's atoms and you impose an
impermeable barrier right where the desire is strongest?
But the worst part of it for me is the smell. Instead of all of those wonderful Willow smells
from before and during and that sweet dim golden period afterwards, I reek of spermicide and
rubber. Sometimes it nauseates me so much that I have to run to the bathroom to throw up;
then I scrub my skin raw trying to get it off my thighs and penis. When I return, I joke to
Willow that my bladder just can't handle the intensity of being pressed up against her for so
long. I don't think she has any idea what's really going on. Like I said, it's easy to hide when
people think you've got it all out there in the open.
How can sex bring one person so much closer while pushing the other so much further away?
I still love Willow more than ever, but it's hard. Sometimes I'm spooned up behind her, and
her fragrant, sleepy warmth is filling my nostrils, and all I want to do is thrust into her from
behind without warning and lose myself in that sweetness. Sometimes I'm on top of her, and
her pulse is working in the tender hollow of her throat, and all I can think about is sinking my
teeth in and ripping it open.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be able to let that other Oz out again, if only for
an instant.
I noticed this girl the other night at the Bronze. She was up on stage, lead vocalist for Shy at
their first local gig. I looked up over the crowd, and she was standing there staring at me. It
wasn't that she was stunningly beautiful or anything; in fact, she was on the chunky side, with
too much eye makeup and the swollen, pouty lips of a girl who's used to being looked at. But
there was something else, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. Something special
about her.
.end
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