Title: The William 'Bloody' Shakespeare Effect
Author: ralst
Feedback address: ralst31@yahoo.co.uk
Date in Calendar: 25 June 2009
Fandom: Original (or Romeo & Juliet)
Pairing: Juliet/OFC (or F/F)
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 1508
Summary:
Advertisement: Part of the FSAC:DD09

Disclaimer: Juliet and Romeo are the property of William 'Bloody' Shakespeare, as he is himself, not that he's alive to take umbridge.

Note/Beta: Thank you to Ann for beta'ing this story and reminding me of the deadline.

'William 'Bloody' Shakespeare has a lot to answer for,' Juliet fumed, her irritation with the long-dead playwright growing in time with the lecherous groping of her 'one-true-love' Romeo. God, she couldn't decide who she hated more, Shakespeare for immortalising a great love that never existed or Romeo for buying into the myth and scuppering her every chance at happiness until she was so desperate for a shag that she let him back into her bed... time and time again.

"Get off!" She pushed him off the bed and quickly turned onto her side, as had become her custom for the past decade or two. "Just piss off back to Verona and leave me the hell alone!"

"Fair Juliet, why doest thou speak such foul words?" Romeo grabbed a pillow to hide his stymied excitement and began backing away from the bed, well aware of Juliet's penchant for throwing heavy objects in his direction. "Doest your love for me wither as the grape on the vine?"

Juliet eyed the duck shaped paperweight with darkening intentions. "My love jumped off the vine and committed hara-kiri into the nearest wine vat centuries ago." If she ever caught up with the romantic bitch who'd brought them back to life after reading William 'Bloody' Shakespeare's play, she'd tie her to an ant hill and pour honey over her naked body. "Now get the fuck out!"

With a sigh of manly forbearance, Romeo backed away from the bed and towards the ensuite bathroom where he'd taken the precaution of stashing his clothes. Juliet's inability to succumb to his advances perplexed him greatly; when they had been new to life and their love, she had welcomed him into her bed with an eagerness that had frightened him, but with time, her interest had waned, at least in him, and he'd been forced to cultivate patience. "I shall call on you anon," he muttered crossly. "Goodnight, fair Juliet."

"Sod off, Romeo!"

Juliet fell back onto the bed, her frustration erupting in a strangled scream she directed toward her pillow. Life, when she'd been a brainless teenager longing for excitement, had been unfair enough, but her after-death existence had brought her nothing but pure torture. Through the years, as the decades faded, her body had started the slow climb towards maturity, but it would still be another millennium before she could welcome the natural termination of her second life and thus end her torment.

"I just want to get laid," she wailed, her fists pummelling the nearest pillow and sending feathers flying into the air. "Is that too much to ask?"

She had come close, a time or two, when Romeo had been off sulking in a corner somewhere, but the second her intended bed partner found out who she was, the William 'Bloody' Shakespeare effect took hold, and they ran for the hills. Miriam, a very comely young maiden, with the most amazing décolletage, had been the only one to scoff at the great bard's lies, but she'd been interrupted by an air raid warning before she could finish her task and bring Juliet some relief.

"Bloody Nazis!"

Juliet had thought things would improve with the dawning of the Twenty-first Century and the rapid decline of literacy and interest in the classics, but then some twat had gone and given their story a modern day revitalisation, and she'd found herself back where she'd started, frustrated as hell and desperate for a shag. The advances in rubber technology had aided somewhat in her need for sexual fulfilment, but bunny-ears or not, they couldn't hold a candle to the real thing, or at least that's what she hoped.

Pornography didn't help either, it just made her hornier, and her one attempt to secure the services of a prostitute had ended in disaster, when she'd been arrested and bailed by three members of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who had proceeded to recite more of the long-dead-twat's works and bore her rigid. She'd thought one of them, a blonde with a cute little overbite, had been giving her the eye, but it turned out she'd just wanted to gush about how amazing Romeo must be to garner such devotion, and Juliet had ended the evening by head-butting her into unconsciousness.

She reached for the phone and put in a call to room service, "A bottle of Champagne and two AA batteries." At times, she wished she'd chosen to live in a less respectable establishment, where ladies of the night hired rooms by the hour, but she knew that somehow it would still end in disaster. She was cursed, three times over, and the sooner she accepted the fact, the happier she would be.

William 'Bloody' Shakespeare and his demented acolyte had won. She was destined to spend her afterlife-life being pawed at by Romeo and wearing out the batteries in her little rubber friends. She might as well accept it, Juliet decided, and forget about her dreams, because all they ever brought her was pain and suffering.

"The next time he tries it on," she told herself, "I'll let him go all the way." The thought made her feel slightly ill, but it was the nearest she'd ever get to human contact, and right at that moment, she was willing to sacrifice almost anything for the touch of another.

A knock sounded at the door. "Come in," Juliet called.

The bellhop eased open the door and deposited the ice-bucket on the nearest available surface. Her eyes, at once dull with boredom, lit with fresh interest as she spied the half-naked woman lying amidst the feathers on the bed. "Your batteries," she said, holding out the copper-coloured cylinders for Juliet's pleasure.

"You're not Ernie."

Ernie had been the bellhop at the Imperial for the last fifty years - during which time Juliet had watched him grow from an awkward teenager into a cantankerous septuagenarian - and seeing a younger and far prettier body inhabit the familiar attire, was disconcerting, and downright intriguing to Juliet.

The bellhop shrugged. "He retired." The old man had told her stories about the mystery inhabitant of the Shakespeare Suite, and how she'd defied death itself to be reunited with her one true love, but she'd thought him a fool and banished the notion to the back of her mind. However, standing there, looking at the radiance that was the woman on the bed, she could easily picture her inspiring the greatest of loves. "You're Juliet?" The question was tentative, but it was enough to pierce the hope that had been building in Juliet's heart. "Of Romeo and Juliet fame?"

"Why does he always get top billing?" she sighed. "Yes, I am." If the woman asked for an autograph, she just might scream.

The bellhop frowned. "I've always been more into Juliet and Juliet, myself."

Juliet's ears pricked up. "He wrote a sequel?" If William 'Bloody' Shakespeare had written her an escape route, she'd take back every vile thing she'd ever said about the man. "Do you know where I could buy a copy?" She'd have to find another witch and have her resurrect the second Juliet, but that shouldn't be a problem, and she could always lock Romeo in a cupboard if he proved an inconvenience.

"It's not a play, it's just..." The bellhop shrugged, not sure if the woman before her would understand the relevance of a Bad Girls quote. "I just meant I prefer women." She paused. "Together?"

A lesbian! A lesbian within ten feet of where she was standing! A lesbian within ten feet of where she was standing who wasn't running for the hills and quoting from her English Literature thesis! "Do you want to have sex?" It wasn't the smoothest of openings, but after the first hundred or so years, subtlety had started to lose its appeal.

The bellhop took a step back, in the direction of the door and her escape. "Excuse me?"

"I'd offer to take you out to dinner and show you the time of your life, but honestly, if I don't get laid in the next twenty minutes, I just might explode." She refused to cry. "I'm desperate."

It wasn't the most flattering of proposals, but it certain had novelty on its side, and the bellhop was due a break. "You're not fronting one of those stupid 'caught in the act' TV shows, are you?"

"No." Juliet crossed her heart and removed her negligée in one smooth move. "I promise."

The bellhop, when she'd been at school, had always hated William 'Bloody' Shakespeare, but if he was going to create visions with perky breasts, like the one laid out before her, she might just change her mind. "Once more into the breach..."

Juliet winced at the misused quote, but all thoughts of William 'bloody' Shakespeare and her plight vanished with the first touch of the bellhop's hands against her body and didn't resurface until hours later, when sated, she acknowledged that being given a second chance at life, and love, wasn't such a bad thing after all.