Author: rae (starlitefaeriegrrrl on the board)
Email: saltedtears@hotmail.com
Website:gurlpages.com/rae_n_kay
Feedback: it would make me happier than...um, a really really happy person. thanks.
Distribution: ask, I'll probably say yes.
Spoilers: 'new moon rising', i guess. but you guys should all know that one by now... also, spoilers for the film Velvet Goldmine. Be warned!
Rating: PG.
Pairing: W/T
Summary: I happen to love the movie Velvet Goldmine. So does Willow, and she wants to share it with Tara. Willow's POV
Disclaimer:the characters of buffy the vampire slayer belong to joss whedon, who is evil and satan incarnate. dialogue and described scenes from velvet goldmine belong to todd haynes, who is lovely and a god. joss, learn from him.
****
I knew I had to show her this movie, it had such a huge impact on me that it just had to be done.
I was a big fan of Ewan Mcgregor, had seen all his films, and when I rented this the first time I instantly loved it. The music, which made me want to jump up and dance with wild abandon. The script, beautiful quotes of Oscar Wilde’s and wonderful original dialogue by Todd Haynes that made me melt. Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who’d been nineteen as he made this, camping it up like no actor of his generation that I’d seen before. Slightly older actors than him still doing teen movies even now. A film full of glitter and magick and love and sexiness and prettiness and mmm, just so many good things that I watched it all the way through, unable to look away. My soda sat next to me untouched, my homework forgotten, a pillow clutched to my chest tightly so that I could squeeze it in the really romantic parts instead of crying.
I forgot about it later, though, a movie like Velvet Goldmine just didn’t seem to fit in to my world of college and small town California, Buffy and Xander and Cordelia and Oz, monsters and fear and death. A world like mine didn’t seem to have love that could transcend eras and genders and places and types. I was with Oz at the time and although I loved him and although he was my world, I viewed Curt and Brian as very different creatures- a more kind of poetic romance, a love that was all-consuming and almost desperate. My first kiss with Oz had been wonderful, but people’s voices had not faded into the background as the room began to spin and spin. He had not quoted Oscar Wilde to me and I had not felt helpless in the embrace of his gaze. So Velvet Goldmine had to be forgotten, or else my life would have seemed too empty by comparison.
Fast forward to a year later. There was still college and a small Californian town, one I had been born and raised in, there was still Buffy and Xander, although Cordelia and Oz were gone with Dawn and Anya around to take their place, there was still fear death misery monsters demons nightmares.
There was Tara, my lover soulmate of a year. Gorgeous and sweet and kind, a practicing Witch like myself, but so interested in nature, the elements, the moon, the sun, stars, respecting the deities. A much better witch than me in that way, much more in tune with Paganism than I was.
I remembered Velvet Goldmine the very first time we kissed. Well, no. We’d kissed before that moment, small shy pecks where we’d pulled away as quickly as possible and smiled at each other, little pleased shy smiles, and had gone back to holding hands.
Then Oz came back for me and I had to decide between them, who was the real true soulmate? And I loved Oz but not like I loved her, I knew that after only a few months of us being Willow and Tara we were meant to be Willow and Tara forever. So I chose Tara and said goodbye to Oz and hugged him loved him knew I’d forever miss him somewhat forever. Then I went to see my true love, sitting in the dark of her room, watching and wishing on the moon’s dark power that I would be happy with my choice. She told me about that night many times when we’d lie in each other’s arms trying to sleep. The moon, the dark and my Tara, all of them grieving away for lost love. I offered her a candle, told her I loved her, and then she took it from me and blew it out.
Our lips met in the dark room for the first time, really met I mean. Her window was open and music from the room below floated up and danced through the air around us. I recognized the soft notes as Unknown by Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions- I had the album and knew it by heart almost. Funny it should follow me here, to Tara’s room on this night. This was magick, what she and I had, this was real and true and for the first time I was filled with understanding of what power magicks could wield.
Her lips were soft and tender, they tasted of strawberries. Her hands, intwined with mine, seemed to have a thin layer of dirt covering them. Had she been digging in the ground earlier, maybe some kind of ritual? Maybe gardening, even. I loved feeling the curves of her body; she wasn’t hard in the chest and straight down like boys were, her body was shapely and comfortable.
And I wanted to whisper to her, like Curt had to Brian, “The world is changed cause you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history,” because now I understood that line, inside and out, I had lived it and embraced it and it made me sigh with it’s beauty.
Then one day, a year and three months after that kiss had originally taken place, we were trying to decide what to rent. We had already been there for nearly an hour, the two of us unable to find something we hadn’t seen before that didn’t suck. Tara wasn’t in the mood to rewatch anything, she said, she was in a discovery sort of place. I noticed Velvet Goldmine and grabbed it.
Holding it behind my back, I moved in front of Tara and said teasingly, “I have just the thing for you, Tara.”
She gave me her patented oh-what-is-Willow-up-to-now? look. “What is it?” she asked suspiciously. Her lips quirked up into a smile and her eyes seemed to dance with Willow-Love. I knew Tara was the right person to share this with. As soon as I met Tara, I knew that she was the right person to share everything with. “Did you pick out something naughty?”
On a whim, I was consumed with the need to kiss her. So I did, I grabbed her wrist and pulled her into my arms, pressing her against me tightly. Our melted together tenderly, tasting one another like it was the first time.
When we moved apart an audience had gathered so I gripped her hand and pulled her, the both of us giggling, to pay for the movie. When I put the video in and we sat down to watch it, she clutched at my arm as though she expected some horrid joke to have been played on her. But as soon as the movie began, she had the same reactions I’d been hoping for; smiling, laughing, looking sad and full of understanding for the characters. When they first kissed, I heard her sigh as she squeezed my hand slightly before whispering in my ear, “You remember when that was us?”
I smile at her. “It still is, doofus.”
She rests her head on my shoulder and focuses back on the movie.
And then the boys are breaking up, ending, with Curt screaming at Brian through the glass of a recording booth and Brian looking miserable and unsure of what to say. When Curt storms away to Brian’s taunt of “Back to your wolves! Your junkie twerps! Your bloody shock treatment! And fuck you too!” and then next scene the boys gaze at each other through a window stories apart she was already gone, crying softly but with such passion and sadness. I tightened the arm that was around her shoulders, gripping her tighter, and then pressed a kiss to her cheek.
When the movie was over, the screen dancing with the bright colors and shapes that accompanied the credits, she looked at me with a big smile on her face and tears in her soft blue eyes. I was also crying, but I had seen the movie before so I had a slight advantage over her.
We went to bed and I undressed her, put on her pajamas, then changed my own clothes and we both got into bed and underneath the covers. She was still sniveling, her eyes sad.
“Tell me a story?”
I began to stroke her long blond hair as I told her, “Once upon a time, there were two boys named Curt and Brian who were very much in love. Many people wanted to keep them apart- society who told them that their love was immoral and wrong, the fans who wanted all of their parts for themselves, Brian’s manager who thought Curt was a deadbeat. But they were so in love, and so soulmates, that even when they had broken up for ten years they found each other one day in a New York City park. It was everything one would expect of soulmates- pounding heartbeats, shortness of breath, sweaty palms. They moved together and kissed and kissed and kissed, their lips apologizing to one another for all that had happened before.” I paused a second to see Tara watching me in wonder. Oh Gods, was she ever beautiful. How could this girl be mine? “Then Curt took Brian home, made him toast and eggs, and then kissed him some more until they’d both fallen asleep.”
“Wills?”
“Yeah, Baby?”
Eyes half closed, Tara sounded on the verge of slumber herself. “Will you kiss me to sleep?”
“Of course.”
“And would you find me, even if it took ten years?”
“Yeah.”
She yawned so I took the opportunity to ask her, “An- and do I still make your heart pound and your hands sweaty and your breath short?”
“All that,” she agreed. “And my insides warm and melty, my legs wobbly, my elbows twitchy-”
“Your elbows twitchy?” I asked with a frown.
She laughed the laugh of someone who has been up way too past their bedtime. “I was just testing you!” She smiled her Wicked-Tara smile at me. “See if you were listening.”
“I’m always listening,” I told her. “Now go to sleep.” I leaned in and kissed her forehead, then she rolled over. She was facing away from me, but my arms still held her tightly.
And then they lived happily ever after.
.end.
at: 10/27/02 1:18:56 pm
