Disclaimer: Not my characters, Joss Whedon’s. Never owned ‘em, never will. No copyright infringement intended. This is, as ever, femfanfic, impure and simple. I should note this was written in the early summer of 1998 after the events of Becoming, Part II but well before the premier ep of season three, Anne aired.
Warning: Not only is this not for those under 18, this is not for the fainthearted. "We’re talking…adult content here," as Buffy said in WTTHM. The warnings are meant to keep the underaged and those who might be offended from this page. If you somehow managed to circumvent the warnings before your 18th birthday, or if you are uncomfortable with explicit material, Turn Back Now!
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..on the Highway of...
of
Buffy and Spike Redux
part 7
By moonrise, all preparations were made. They drew the appropriate diagrams, spoke the appropriate words, burned the appropriate offerings and watched as a wall of the loft shimmered and became insubstantial, letting a cloud of scarlet mist enter the room.
Xander kept chanting as the red mist billowed around them, seeping into every angle of the outer pentagram. He was locked into a second, smaller protective pentagram, where Hell did not intrude. But Spike and Buffy were outside of that. The mist enveloped them. As had been planned. Because the mist was from the demon dimension of Hell, and its presence in the pentagram allowed them to cross from the human world into that dimension, where the two would have to go in order to free Angel.
Xander didn't lose sight of them. Instead, an eerie, reddish light sprang up, illuminating their figures. As he watched, the ring Buffy held suspended on the chain swung outward. Buffy turned and followed in the direction it pointed, Spike at her side. Xander kept chanting. He didn't dare do anything else.
As Buffy walked into the mist, passing through the window into Hell, pain struck her like a physical force, ripping along her nerve endings, burning the surface of her skin. Her muscles cramped with it, her bones shivered with it. She took a step and screamed as her legs buckled beneath her, pain beating her to her knees. Spike was beside her instantly, trying to raise her up. But even his solicitous touch was unendurable. Buffy whimpered and pushed his hands away.
Lilith had warned him that this would be a different dimension of Hell than the one over which he had ruled and in which Buffy had been kept prisoner. This dimension was far more inhospitable to humans. So he had been prepared for the anguish he would witness. But he didn't like it a bit. Spike watched helplessly as Buffy reached within herself for the strength to rise.
For she had to rise. Because whatever agony she felt now, Angel had endured for months. And if she did not rise, he would endure it eternally. So Buffy called up every lesson Giles had ever taught her about focusing her mind, or that Spike had ever drilled into her about concentration. She built before her mind's eye, memory by memory, the face of her one true love. And when the picture came clear in her head, she used it to push aside any other intruding stimuli.
By an act of will, Buffy pushed up from her knees, breath labored as she fought to stand. Spike moved restlessly next to her, desperate to help, powerless to try. She did nothing more than stand perfectly still, breathing, for long moments. And then, slowly, deliberately, implacably, she moved one foot forward. Her muscles screamed in protest, and her bones seemed turned to knives in her flesh, but she took one step. And then she took another.
As Buffy forced herself to walk through a landscape that seemed to be nothing but blood-colored mist, she saw the dark shapes roiling toward her. Anything human was doomed to torment in Hell, and she was human. So the mist burned her skin, though it did not consume it, and she felt the brush of flitting demon spirits against her body as she continued to walk.
Each brush was a lacerating assault, not merely against her flesh, but against her spirit. She was an ungrateful child, they whispered in her mind. No wonder her parents had divorced. She was a bad Slayer, they chided her. A trial to her Watcher, and the real reason Jenny Calendar lay dead. She was thoughtless and selfish, which was why Angel had lost his soul. And all the while, they stung her, gouged her, burned her, sliced her, so that beads of her own blood pearled on her flesh, and were immediately drawn off by, and became one with, the thirsting mist. This was Hell, a place of torment, and the living human walking amongst the demons was fresh meat, a magnet for their attentions.
Spike did what he could to discourage them, saving her from some of the bigger demons, the ones he could see to stop. Denied the sport of taunting Buffy, they turned on him instead. A demon himself, he held his own. But hundreds of the smaller demons got past him, and they were even worse. His last glimpse of Buffy showed him that she was surrounded by a thousand darting wisps of darkness. Then another demon attacked and he found himself fighting for his life.
Buffy continued to ignore the physical agony inflicted upon her as she ignored the spiritual torment. She had already been down this road. It didn't matter. Her own life didn't matter. Angel was here, also in torment, and her own torment couldn't end until she found him.
She walked what felt like a thousand miles, over what seemed to be broken, burning glass. She felt as if her skin had been flayed from her body and her flesh flensed from her soul. Buffy Summers was no longer a creature of flesh and blood, but of spirit and will, with but one thought, to rescue her love.
She followed the pull of the ring, listening to Xander's voice, hearing Spike's battle to protect her from the infernal legions that sought her destruction.
And then she saw the figure standing immobile in the distance. The tall, dark figure transfixed by a sword. The one she had never thought to see again.
"Angel," she whispered, letting go of her mental image now that the reality was before her, and walking forward. How long did it take her to reach him? An instant? An hour? It didn't matter. She would have continued to walk for a thousand years, if that had been required of her. As it was, she walked until she was standing before him, her gaze feasting on the dearly missed sight of him. His eyes were closed, his features contorted by pain, and beneath his eyelids, feeding the encroaching mist, seeped tears of blood. Buffy's tears answered them.
He didn't know she was there. She wanted to walk into his arms, and kiss him, and tell him that she loved him. But the sword impaling him prevented her. That sword had been her one possible hope, the one thing she could use to save the world. And using it had cost her everything she hoped for, everything she was. Part of her hated that sword. But she moved toward it now, bending over the hilt. The demons swirled more fiercely around her, their assault surging and cresting, even more vicious than what she had been called upon to endure before. The pain she thought controlled surged with such sudden ferocity, reached such a new peak, that even her endurance faltered. Buffy cried out in anguish, stumbling back. A chorus of gloating demon laughter sounded in her ears. Buffy felt the demons' pleasure in their triumph and would not allow it. Weeping, she once more forced herself to ignore her physical torment. . Buffy struggled forward until she reached the hilt again.
In the "real" world, she couldn't have done what needed doing without a forge or a smith's tools. But in the demon dimension, she only needed herself and her love. And the symbol of that love: her claddagh. She found what she sought quickly, the pin holding hilt to blade, and used the thin metal crown of the ring to slice between the two.
The hilt of the sword loosened. She pulled it free. The raw metal end of the sword faced her. Buffy stared at it as the angry demons whirled around her in a screaming mass. Angel had needed his own blood to open the gate to Hell. She had needed his blood to close the gate, and this sword had been her weapon. Now, if she wanted to free his body of the intruding metal, blood had to be spilled again.
Sensing that their prey was about to elude them, the demons screamed their rage and renewed their assault. Buffy stood her ground amidst the swirling maelstrom, accepting and transcending the suffering inflicted upon her. She had come too far. She would not yield to them now. And then a hot wind seemed to rise, carrying with it the scent of myrrh, and beat the demons back, scattering them into the mist that had birthed them. Buffy was free to finish what she had started, what her prophetic dreams had told her she must do. She took a deep breath--
--and pressed her breast against the jagged metal of the sword end, letting it slide through her flesh and into her heart. A spurt of crimson jetted from her chest, dripping off the edge of the blade. Buffy drew in another deep breath as the raw physical agony assaulted her, teaching her a new lesson in the depth and texture, the subtleties and possibilities of pain. Angel's eyes flew open to meet hers. She saw them light with joy for one instant, until he realized what she was doing, what she had done.
"Buffy," he groaned. She had thought she would never hear her name on his lips again, and she savored the sweetness of the sound. "Don't do this. I'm not worth it." His face was awash with crimson tears.
"I love you," she explained, pressing forward.
A foot of sharp steel separated them. Buffy impaled herself more completely upon it, feeling it slide through her heart, cleave through her backbone and exit through her spine. Already weakened by the blood lost to the mist, she could feel herself weaken further as her heart's blood continued to trickle away. Buffy knew that she was dying, more slowly than she would have in the real world, but dying nonetheless.
That didn't matter. Only inches of steel now separated her from her Angel. Now, understanding that he could not dissuade her, and ever intent on protecting her, Angel moved those last inches himself, forcing the blade more deeply into his own flesh, through his own heart, until they stood with nothing between them.
Fighting the enervating weakness that swamped her as she continued to lose blood, Buffy lifted her arm to brush the crimson tears from his cheeks. Then their lips met in a kiss that denied all pain, all torment, all separation. It was balm and benediction, and if possible, a grace from Heaven snatched from the maw of Hell. The kiss said love, and forgiveness and healing, and everything else that needed to be said between them. And then Angel moved his arms, embracing her, and she was not in Hell, she was home.
Water in the desert was not more life giving than the kiss of the woman he loved. But Angel would be more damned than he already was if he would let her die for him. He moved his hands along her back, until he found the steel. In the ordinary world, she'd have been dead by now. But physical laws differed in the demon dimension, and he was demon enough to know what to do. So, still kissing her, Angel pushed the steel back along the path it had come, through spine and sinew and heart and blood, until it was free of her body.
She was the Slayer and her dreams were prophetic, and she, too, knew what to do. Buffy called on every reserve of strength she had to push the blade, stained with her own heart's blood, through the immortal body of her beloved. Angel gasped against her mouth as her living, human blood passed through his cold, unliving heart--
--which did what it had not done for 245 years; began to beat. Buffy felt his heart beating against her own, to the precise rhythm of her own. How not? The blood fueling it was hers. She fought to reach around to Angel's back, grasping the blade with her bare hand, pulling it forward, drawing it all the way through. Until the steel left his flesh, freeing him, freeing both of them, from its fatal kiss.
The sword dropped from her bloodstained fingers, to fall into legend. Perhaps some other hero would rescue it, for some other battle in some distant, future time. It had done its part now, and she could finish doing hers.
Buffy opened her mouth beneath the mouth of her one true love, tasting his tongue with her own. Her heart's blood continued to trickle from her body, she grew lightheaded and dizzy. Death came closer. She would die in his arms, she thought, and that was all of Heaven she could desire.
But Angel would not let her die, because that would be more of Hell than he had already endured. He broke the kiss.
"What did you do with the claddagh?" he demanded. His own was still on his finger, the heart still pointing toward him. Even becoming Angelus again had not changed that.
"It's...here." Buffy found it difficult to speak. She tried to raise her hand to him, to show him the ring, but couldn't move it very far. But it was enough. He saw. Supporting her with one arm, he took her hand with the other, opening it, reaching for the ring. He unfastened the clasp of the chain, and drew it through the ring with his teeth, dropping the chain to fall unheeded beside the sword. Perhaps it, too, had a destiny. Angel reached for Buffy's left hand, raising it to his face and kissing it.
"Do you love me?" he asked, his voice tender, his expression grave.
"Always," she whispered, smiling up at him gently, her eyes drinking in the vision of his face turned to hers. But he could hear that her voice was weaker. He could feel her heart slowing, slowing, no longer beating as strongly as his own. "Forever..." she went on, but the effort of speech had taken her last resources. Her eyelids fluttered shut over her green eyes, and she sank against his breast. Had he not been holding her, she would have collapsed.
Then Angel felt her heart stop. He had scant seconds to save her.
"As I love you," he told her fiercely, bending to take her mouth with a kiss as he slipped the claddagh over the third finger of her left hand, with the heart pointing toward her. Saying she was taken. Saying she was his. Renewing the marriage covenant that had been broken when he lost his soul.
The ring settled where it belonged, but nothing changed. Angel lifted his head to look down at her.
"Don't leave me," he begged her, begged whatever power had created earth and ordained Hell and chosen this one frail girl to stand against the forces of darkness. He had done what he could, and if there were any mercy or justice it would be enough.
She had been made, symbolically, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. And this had happened in a realm where magic was reality and science the stuff of legends. So, because he was a vampire, his flesh now healed from the wound caused by the sword. And because her flesh was his, he watched with mounting hope as her own wounds closed and healed. Angel waited long, breathless moments, moments that contained more torment than that he had already endured, before it happened. And then, when he thought surely it had been to long, and she was lost to him forever, he felt her heart do what it should be doing; beat in rhythm with his own.
Buffy stirred after a moment, her eyes opening. She smiled up at him, then tilted her head for his kiss. "Oh, God, Buffy," he said. Then he tightened his arms around her, kissing her reverently, with all the gratitude of his restored soul for her restored life.
The gentleness of his kiss was surcease from suffering, but it wasn't enough. Buffy had hungered for him for so long, had been denied him for so long. She needed him now, desperately. If possible, she wanted him more than she had the first time they made love. And this time, her prophetic dreams had promised, there would not be the terrible consequence she had endured before.
Buffy allowed her hunger to rise, allowed her passion to turn the kiss from gentleness to raw desire, triggering Angel's answering need. They kissed with open-mouthed avidity, greedy for each other, desperate to consume and be consumed by each other. Hands caressed bodies, stripped away the impediment of clothing, until they could hold each other, flesh to flesh.
Buffy heard the screams of a thousand demons cheated of their prey. They meant nothing to her. She broke the kiss, but only to take her husband's face between her hands and gaze upon him, savoring the sight of his beloved features, which she had never expected to see again. Angel closed his eyes, and turned his face in toward her hands, kissing them, kissing the claddagh that symbolized their union. Then he opened them, reached a hand to the back of her neck, and pulled her forward so that he could taste her lips once more with his.
Buffy stood on tiptoe to come up to him, raising her arms to circle his neck, yielding into his kiss as wax yielded to the kiss of flame. The demons roared around them in fury, but they could only come so close, then no farther. Something surrounded the lovers, some force sprung of their own love, denying the creatures of Hell the ability to touch them, to torment them.
Buffy and Angel sank toward the ground, heedless of the demonic screams, of the burning mists, which, in any case, now receded from them. Nothing existed for them beyond the boundaries of their own embrace. Still kissing him, Buffy sank further back, stretching out beneath him, opening her thighs to him, relishing the remembered weight of his body covering hers. And when he entered her, at long, long last, it was the final completion for her, the final healing she had needed. Angel was with her, the other half of her soul, and she was once more made whole.
They moved together in an act that transcended mere physcial pleasure, but no matter how deeply he embedded himself inside her, it wasn't deep enough for her. Buffy wrapped her legs around Angel's waist, drawing him deeper still. He dropped burning kisses against her throat, over her breast. "I love you," she said, her unending litany, the only thing she needed to say.
"I love you," he answered, the only words that mattered. He fit inside her as if his body had been created for her, as hers for him, as if their being together had been ordained from the beginning of time. He sent his hands once more over her, relearning the territory of her flesh. He tasted her with heated kisses. He moved inside her with surging power and strength, pressing into the sweet, wet, welcoming warmth of her. She tightened around him, her inner muscles embracing and releasing his shaft in an exquisite pattern of rapture. And the rapture built for them, slowly, sweetly, soaringly, lifting them out of the memories of betrayal and regret, out of the memory of pain and torment, out of Hell, and into the only paradise either ever expected to desire.
Buffy caressed his back and arms and shoulders, needing him closer, deeper, harder. She found his mouth with her own, giving him quick, heated kisses before opening her mouth to his, inviting the plundering invasion of his tongue. He responded and answered her need, matching her, as always. Her tongue met and mated with his, hungry for every taste and texture she had been too long denied. Buffy tightened her thighs around Angel's waist, lifting herself to offer herself more completely than she already had, her hands closing over his buttocks to pull him more deeply into her than he had already driven.
He wanted to drown in her, Angel thought. Her flesh gloved him, yielded around him, and he strove to plunge farther, to make her yield even more. He needed to give her matchless ecstasy, needed to make her pleasure the most exquisite she'd ever felt. He needed to make up to her for every moment of pain she had endured on his behalf. He loved her, but that wasn't enough, not nearly, not in the face of the sacrifices she had made for him. Angel needed, quite simply, to redeem himself in her arms, to make the act of joining with her sweet body the sacred consummation he had always known it to be.
But as if she knew his thoughts, Buffy broke their kiss, to whisper into his ear, "I missed you so much. I love you and need you so much. Don't hold back from me Angel. Not now, when I need you so."
"Buffy..." he began.
"Shhh. It's all right. If I have you, I have everything," and she kissed him with a sweetness that broke his heart. He drowned in her kisses and drowned in her flesh, and she died with him and with him, was renewed.
His flesh within hers, moving to her pleasure and at her command, summoned the storm, summoned the fires of passion and the ocean of desire. Bitter regret, unhappy memory was burned to ash, and the ashes washed away. The only thing left was the fire in which they remade themselves, renewing their commitment, reaffirming their love.
Angel drove into her body that exquisite bit more that shattered her soul, and sent rapture singing along each nerve ending. But it was his release she needed, his fulfillment she sought, so she tightened around him further, stroking his manhood with the silken walls of her own body. Until he groaned, closing his eyes against the intensity of his pleasure as he spilled inside her, and she could welcome his cold seed into her womb, allowing her own release to begin. She climaxed in great shuddering waves, held and anchored in his embrace, completed by his love for her. And it was, as he had needed it to be, the most exquisite pleasure she had ever endured, and her consciousness could not withstand it, so that she sank into a darkness, that was, for the first time in longer than she could remember, welcoming and sweet.
In the demon dimension of Hell, sympathetic magic was a potent force. As he cradled the unconscious Slayer in his arms, Angel felt the gradual change, but didn't recognize what was happening at first. The temperature shifted; cooling, then settling into a humid heat that somehow lacked the fiery sting he had come to expect. The air began to grow clearer, not as dense, not as oppressive. Even the surface upon which he and Buffy lay seemed to take on a different texture.
Angel opened his eyes to find, not the cold ground of Hell, but rather ordinary wooden floor boards beneath his gaze, where it fell over an unconscious Buffy's shoulder. Some rather extraordinary symbols had been painted upon the floor, however. He lifted his gaze, and found Xander standing not far away, in profile to him, and not looking at him, but rather straight ahead. He was chanting in a horse voice, and Angel could see tears streaming down his face.
Beyond him, Angel saw Spike, on his knees, gasping for breath he didn't really need, but which he took reflexively. A mist that Angel recognized too clearly was drawing away from them, receding into an unguessable distance. As Xander finished chanting, the last of it disappeared, and the window onto Hell gently, firmly, closed.
Angel understood where they were, and what had been done. He felt a shuddering jar as his heart stopped, once more. Scant seconds free of the demon dimension, he was once again subject to natural laws. He closed his eyes against the moment of loss, as his flesh lost rhythm with her own. After a few minutes, he realized it was safe to move, but he was reluctant to reveal Buffy's naked, defenseless form, even to the two others whom he realized loved her as much as he did himself.
It was Spike who understood, and forcing himself to his feet, moved first. He grabbed a blanket from the futon and tossed it to Angel, who did not withdraw from Buffy, or move to rise to his own feet, until he had covered her. Spike wordlessly handed him a bath-sheet, which Angel as wordlessly draped around his own lean hips. Saying "thank you" to someone who had sacrificed the greatest love of his life to get you out of Hell seemed an utterly trivial, even cruel, remark.
But of them all, Spike was the one who most understood irony. "Well, that's that, then," he said simply, and headed for the refrigerator, pulling out a six pack of beers, and tossing one to each of the others.
That got a laugh even from Xander, if not a particularly joyous one. He caught his, pulled open the top, and took a drink. But his gaze returned to Buffy. Angel's had never left her. Spike walked back, reluctantly. He didn't really need his heart cut out all over again, he reflected. But not watching this might be even worse.
So Buffy opened her eyes to see all three men who loved her gazing down at her, and she saw their love in their eyes. But she knew she had succeeded, and Angel, her Angel was out of Hell, and after a moment, she saw only him. Her smile, when it came, was radiant, dazzling, joyous. Spike thought maybe his heart could survive this, after all.
Buffy didn’t move, didn’t say anything. Her face said it all. Xander found that he had been wrong. Watching Buffy's joy in her reunion with Angel didn't hurt they way he thought it would. Instead, he experienced a profound moment of peace. Whatever jealousy and resentment he had harbored against Angel because Buffy preferred the vampire to Xander seemed, suddenly, meaningless and inconsequential, when measured against the healing he knew Angel's return brought her. How odd, he thought. Love wasn't about being with someone forever, the way he had always thought. It was so much richer, deeper, fuller than that alone, if so much more painful. He loved Buffy so completely, that all he could feel in the face of her happiness was a sweet, sad gratitude that she had been given the grace of this love.
Be happy, he wished her silently, and turned away.
"Sorry about the clothes, mate," Spike drawled to Angel, who smiled sardonically in return.
"No problem," he responded, still without taking his eyes from Buffy.
"I think maybe Xander and I will see about replacing them. I know some stores that are still open. And I want to check on...someone else."
"Good idea," Xander seconded. They left the lovers gazing deeply into each other's eyes.
They were alone together, and for once the world did not intrude. No appalling fate waited to overtake the earth. No deathless monster was about to gorge itself on countless innocent lives. None of her friends were in danger, no ancient prophecies warned of imminent doom. They had endured separation and pain and knew, logically, that the pain had yet to be dealt with. But for the moment, that didn't matter.
What mattered was that they had found each other once more, and that, for a few precious hours, that might miraculously stretch into a few precious days, they could be together, with no one and nothing to come between them.
There was so much to say, so much to talk over, to work out, to weep for. But even that could wait. Wordlessly, Buffy held out her arms to Angel and he could no more resist going into them than the ocean could resist the pull of the moon. Instead, he swept her into his own embrace, lifting her off the floor and holding her naked body tight against his own. His mouth devoured hers, and she returned his ardor, her thirst for him unslaked, her hunger unappeased. She clung to him as if he were the rock anchoring her world, and wasn't that exactly what he was, what he had always been for her?
Their fervid kisses weren't enough, being flesh to flesh wasn't enough. She needed him inside her again, needed to feel his seed flooding her womb, knew that her desperation echoed his own. He bent over her, setting her feet back down on the floor. She drew him down to her, sank with him to the floor of the loft as she had earlier sunk with him to the floor of Hell. She opened herself to him again and was again completed by him, again reveled in the power and force of him held within her own silken flesh.
She was so tight around him, so wet and responsive, yielding and sweet. He wanted to go slowly, easily, afraid that his own desperate need would express itself too violently, that he would hurt her. But Buffy's own urgency would not allow for gentleness. Her own needs were as savage as his. Her kisses moved from his mouth down his throat, to his torso, where she fastened onto his male nipples, biting at the tender bits of flesh, driving him crazy with arousal. Her hips lifted to take him into her body as completely, as deeply as she could. She began to take control of the pace he set, demanding he meet her own hot desire, that he hold back nothing.
It was like a torrent, a floodgate, the breaking of a dam or tinder set to kindle a bonfire. The first time they had made love, he had needed to initiate her gently. The second time, they had both needed to heal. Now, they needed nothing but to answer the storm of their own passion. To raise the tempest and let it consume them.
Angel met her fire and her passion and her need, echoing it, intensifying it, unleashing his own deepest desires for her. Raw animal need surged to the surface, making him vamp out, but even that didn't frighten her. Buffy pulled his changed face to hers, opening her mouth to him, letting her tongue caress his fangs, accepting him utterly, even the darkest side of his nature. As their tongues battled in a delicious war, Angel drove into her savagely, answering her heat, burning for her, consumed by a fire only she could quench, only her flesh satisfy. Her nails ripped down his back in answering hunger.
Buffy wrapped her legs around Angel's waist, her heels settled against his buttocks, encouraging the force of his rhythm inside her. Angel needed no further encouragement. He simply needed Buffy. He groaned and lifted her against his body, shifting positions until he was seated on the floor, Buffy straddling him, slipping even further down on his aching manhood, merging with him more fully than she had before. She opened eyes slumberous with passion and smiled at him, her hands moving from their fevered clawing of his back to gain purchase on his shoulders. Buffy locked her arms around Angel's neck, pulling his still vamped-out face back down for her kiss, using her forearms as leverage to lift her on his shaft, to help her set the rhythm she needed to appease her hunger.
If it could be appeased. If every waking moment of her life was enough to spend with Angel, to make up for the months she had spent fighting the monster who had worn his face.
But that was a question for later. Right now she needed to move on him with wanton rapture, to engulf his flesh with her own, to fill herself with him, to imprint on her memory the feel of him inside her so that she would never be without him again.
Buffy moved upon him with urgency and fire, but no more urgency and fire than that with which he met her. Angel drove into her until he touched the mouth of her womb, until she was sobbing with need and frantic with desire. She lifted herself on him until only the head of his cock was within her, plunged down until he was buried to the hilt inside her, then lifted herself once more. He abetted her rhythm, his strong, large hands on her hips giving her purchase and support, guiding her in her journey toward fulfillment.
The conflagration built within them, each nerve and receptor attuned to the message of unending pleasure and matchless ecstasy that their bodies created between them. They burned for each other, burned into each other, burned in fires only love could conjure, only love endure.
He felt her begin to peak, felt the exquisite contractions of her sheath around his shaft. His own pleasure answered hers. As she began to give voice to the cries that always signaled her completion, Angel spilled inside her, emptying his cold seed into her hot, liquesent depths, filling her, flooding her, giving her the final satisfaction she required.
She came to earth cradled in his arms, nestled against the solid wall of his chest, his sated manhood quiescent inside her. Buffy lifted her head from it's resting place against his shoulder, smiled into his now-human face, and drew him down for a kiss as soft and gentle as their lovemaking had been hard and furious. She tightened her inner body around it's captive prize, relished his groan as he became once more hard for her, and lifted herself to begin the fire and the rapture anew.
************
Getting clothing for Angel didn't take long at all. Spike had decades of experience and memories to draw on to match the other vampire's size and tastes. The hard part was checking on Drusilla. They each took their own cars, not certain what would happen once they got to her estate. Even with Spike beside him, Xander wasn't all that anxious to go up against that deadly lunatic. Just because they had left her gagged and bound to a bed didn't mean she would still be there.
Nor was she. Drusilla sat quietly on a couch in the living room, a silver tea service before her on a glass-topped coffee table, drinking from a porcelain cup almost as translucent as her own skin.
"You've done it, then," she said, her voice as pettish as that of a small child denied a treat.
"Yeah, sweet, we did," Spike agreed gently. Drusilla nodded and put her cup down. She rose from the couch, and glided toward them with a preternatural grace rare even among her kind. She was wearing a dress of pale yellow lace, against which her white skin looked like refined moonlight, and her black hair, worn loose in smooth waves tonight, shone as if polished. Xander thought her breathtakingly beautiful, if you could ignore the madness and the homicidal streak. And for the moment, that was pretty easy to do. Her gaze held his own, making promises he found himself wishing he could keep. She was only inches from him, before it occurred to him to move away. Xander wondered if even Spike could keep him from being a dead man.
Then she smiled, and he found his knees weakening, but she turned her gaze to Spike, and Xander took the breath he hadn't known he was holding. Dru's smile disappeared as she bent her attention upon the demon who had loved her and protected her for more than a century. The demon who had betrayed her two months before and again two nights past.
"His heart stank of her," she said of Angel, once more predatorily circling Spike. Spike was predator enough to turn with her, keeping her in his sight. And Xander was smart enough to get the hell out of their way. "And his," she indicated Xander with a nod of her head, but made no other move toward the human. "Now your heart stinks of her, as well."
"Baby," Spike began uneasily.
"It's mine, Spike," she cut him off. "She can't have what's mine."
"Now look, pet, you know I--"
"I'm going to take it back," she said menacingly, before springing toward Spike, clasping her arms around him and kissing him deeply. Spike froze, then his arms went around her and pulled her tight. She broke the kiss, vamped out, and sank her fangs into Spike's throat. The vampire groaned softly, appreciatively.
"Think I'll leave you guys to, uh, get reacquainted," Xander said, backing away.
"Good idea," Spike acknowledged, before gripping Dru by the hair, pulling her from his neck, vamping out, and feasting on her blood. Drusilla looked over at Xander, and gave him an unnerving, smug smile, that seemed to make more promises he would rather leave unredeemed. He retreated quickly, and headed for his car.
Angel's clothes were still in the back, but he knew better than to take them over right away. He'd drop by tomorrow. In the afternoon. They should be ready to face the world by then. Or at least, a few friends. Xander headed back to his uncle's. A message on the answering machine informed him that Uncle Pete's business had been concluded successfully, and he'd be returning in two days. The timing, Xander decided, was perfect. He cleaned up, went to the guestroom he had so seldom occupied, and turned in. Sleep came to him more easily than he'd expected.
For the two left in the abandoned loft, sleep was not an option. The ferocity of their lovemaking had taken its toll on Buffy, leaving her spent and exhausted in Angel's arms. He had carried her to the futon, settled with her under the covers, holding her close. She should have drifted off to sleep, but though she drowsed for a few moments, she wakened fully not long after he had lain down with her.
"Hello," she said softly.
"Hello," he smiled back.
"I missed you," Buffy said. "I don't ever want to miss you like that again."
"You won't," he promised and kissed her. There was no urgency in this kiss, just sweet tenderness. She gave herself up to it, allowing herself a few moments of unalloyed joy. But eventually she needed to breathe, needed to break the kiss. Needed to deal.
"Wait here," she told him, slipping out from beneath the covers, heading toward the refrigerator. She found what she wanted in the back; a quart jar, one of several that Spike had gotten filled at the butcher's that evening. After all, as he had pointed out, it had been months since Angel had fed. Buffy was aware that Angel had come close to taking her own blood during their unrestrained passion, that only his love for her had protected her from his desire for her. But she wasn't afraid of his desire any more than she was afraid of his love. They had been through too much for that. She took the jar back with her to the bed and handed it to him.
"There's more if you need it," she told him. He met her gaze steadily, not hiding his regret as hunger drove him to vamp out once more.
"I hate that you have to see me like this," he told her.
"I hate it too," Buffy agreed. "But I hate something else even more. If it weren't for this, we would never have been together."
"My only love, sprung from my only hate. Too early seen unknown, and known too late," Angel quoted.
"What?"
"That's what Juliet says when she finds out who Romeo is."
"Wow. Shakespeare really knew what he was talking about," she said. "That's exactly how I felt when I found out about you."
"I know," he whispered, "if I hadn't become the same kind of creature you were created to destroy, I'd have died about two hundred years before you were born." Angel took the top off the jar and lifted it to his mouth. She watched as he drained it. After a moment, his features shifted back to human once more. "I can't help what I am, Buffy," he said as she reached for the jar, to take it back to the sink. "And we both have to face that I'll never be any different."
"But you are different, Angel. That's the point," Buffy said. "You aren't the demon Darla created, the one who ravaged Europe, the one the Slayers before me couldn't hope to stop. You're the soul she banished to the aether." She lifted the jar, holding it in front of his eyes. "You may have to feed the demon's need for blood, but you never let it have the lives it wanted. Not when you were free of the aether."
"It isn't just what the demon wants. It's what I want," he told her forcefully, needing to make sure she had no illusions.
"Yes, it's what you want," she answered him unflinchingly. "But what you resist. What you don't let yourself have." She set the jar down beside the futon once more, moving back into his embrace. "Do you think I don't know how hard that is for you? Do you think that I, of all people, don't know what it means for a vampire to fight his need to kill?"
"I think that you shouldn't have to deal with it," he said, but his arms came up to welcome her, and he did not turn away from her solemn regard. His blue eyes met her green-brown ones.
"Angel, I can deal with anything I have to, if it means I have you. Because losing you is the only thing I can't deal with at all." She pressed her lips to his once more, tenderly, sweetly, lovingly. And if the kiss didn't stay gentle, if it turned once more into hunger and desire, their initial ferocity had been slaked, and they had all the time in the world to indulge in more languid passion.
Angel held her close, kissing her with all need that had been building inside him from the first moment he ever saw her. How was it that, even when he slaked his thirst for her and appeased his hunger in the fires of her flesh, it was always unsated, always just beneath the surface with him? He needed her more absolutely than he needed the blood that ensured his survival. One was mere physical necessity; the other imperative ran soul-deep.
He turned her in his arms, pressing her back against the softness of the mattress. She went willingly. Until he broke the kiss and pulled away from her.
"No," she whispered in protest, reaching to draw him back into her arms.
"Easy, love," he reassured her. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise?" she said with a sad smile.
"Promise," he told her, and moved down on the mattress dropping kisses over her pliant body along the way.
"Ummmm," Buffy sighed as she realized his intention. He first tasted her succulent breasts, licking their sensitive undersides, swirling his tongue up and over to lave her turgid nipples, opening his mouth over them, sucking her entire aureole into his mouth. Buffy threaded her hands in his hair, holding him closer, offering him more. He took the gift, adding light nips to his love play, making her groan softly.
He taunted her other breast in the same manner, until Buffy was moving against him rhythmically, as if he were already impaled inside her, forcing her to another completion. But he wasn't. Not yet. Angel kissed his way over the silken skin of her ribs and belly, swirling his tongue into the hollow of her navel until her body came up off the bed in reaction. He held her down, not done yet, needing to sate his own hunger, and with it, hers.
His lips traveled further down her body, and he pressed heated kisses against her thighs and hipbones. She tossed her head restlessly, needing him to kiss her more deeply, more intimately. He chuckled softly, not willing to rush things. Eventually, though, he pulled her beautiful, long legs apart and settled between them. She sighed her appreciation, lifting her hips in invitation.
Angel slid his large, strong hands beneath her hips, cupping the firm cheeks of her bottom and lifting her to his mouth. Still taking his time, he contented himself with feathery kisses at first, kisses that tantalized and aroused, rather than satisfied. Buffy began to plead with him, softly. He whispered soothing reassurances. But he refused to be rushed, and kept up the teasing kisses until she was breathless with desire and utterly pliant to his will. Only then did he let his tongue join in the caresses he had begun with his lips.
He licked out at the sweet crevice of her body, tasting every intimate secret, caressing every tender bit of flesh. He tasted himself on her, in her, and had a moment of purely male satisfaction. For one moment, he was not so forgiving of the lovers she had taken in his absence, and welcomed this reminder that she would no longer share herself with them. That she was utterly and completely his own. Then his mouth found and fastened on the deceptively small pearl of flesh that was the seat of her most ardent pleasure, and began to teach it another lesson in rapture.
Buffy felt that she would die with the incomparable sweetness of Angel's caress of her most intimate flesh. It wasn't merely skill he gave her, although his skill easily matched that of Spike or Xander. It wasn't merely physical ecstasy she needed from him, though he gave her that as well. It was his love that came through in every touch, in every taste, in every movement. Making love with Angel was just that: making love. Taking what was in their hearts and giving it physical expression.
Now, he was loving her gently, tenderly, using only his tongue and lips against her. Buffy was nearly swooning at the languorous seduction of his mouth on her body. How much could she possibly endure? But he showed her she could endure more, much more, than she had ever needed to before.
His tongue swirled more forcefully over her delicious, defenseless flesh, increasing her pleasure, but not sating it yet. Buffy began to whimper, her hands once more threading in his hair, this time their demand more urgent. He ignored it still, yet unwilling to move too quickly, still determined to take his time.
So he held himself in check, controlling the pressure he used against her, until she was sobbing in need, until she opened herself more fully for his pleasure, until she yielded everything she was to him, everything she could be. And then he relented, increasing tempo and pressure until she was screaming for him, her body arcing off the mattress, bowstring taut as her climax ripped through every nerve ending, and rapture flooded every sense. He increased his pressure yet again, devouring her, desperate for her yielding sweetness, for every nuance he could bring to her pleasure, keeping her locked in a state of ecstasy that she wasn't sure she could endure.
At length, though, her sated body overloaded, and the peak ebbed away. Buffy fell back against the mattress, boneless, limp, struggling to catch her breath.
But Angel wasn't stopping. For a moment, it didn't matter. The continued tenderness of his caress was almost soothing. Buffy let herself yield to it. But gradually, she realized that she was just a little sore, that this was just a little uncomfortable. She sat up, tugged at his hair.
"Please stop," she whispered. "I can't do this anymore."
A soft growl answered her. But he didn't stop.
"Angel, you're hurting--" her breath caught, and she couldn't finish the sentence. He had shifted just slightly, and the discomfort she had begun to feel metamorphosed into something utterly different. Buffy fell back against the mattress moaning. He increased his tempo yet again, and this time slid one long, firm finger inside her sheath. Buffy felt herself tighten around it, welcoming the intrusion. He stroked inside her, finding just the right spot to caress, as his tongue had found just the right spot to savor.
Her next climax built swiftly, overcame her almost before she was aware that it approached. She screamed for him again, hips grinding into his relentless mouth, hands pressing his head yet closer to the ravished core of her body. Once more, the storm shattered through her, once more he held her trapped in its embrace, once more her body simply couldn't sustain the exquisite sensations, and overloaded, allowing her respite.
And once more, Angel refused to let it end.
Her third orgasm came mere moments after the second, a fourth followed, and by then she was not just screaming, not just clawing his back and pounding his shoulders, she was fighting him, trying to pull away, desperate to escape the absolutely inhuman amount of pleasure he seemed determined she should endure.
He wouldn't let her go. Not until she gave up, until she was once more pliant to his will, until she lay back and let him do whatever he desired, would he relent. One final wave crested over her. She was forced to scale one more peak. And when she reached the pinnacle, he moved up and over her, driving himself inside her, so that she was in his embrace, holding on to him, when the world ended and was remade, clinging to the one rock that always anchored her existence; her Angel.
When she had calmed and recovered, she looked into his eyes. His face was wet with her; drenched with the completions he had forced her to. He offered her a half smile.
She sighed softly, and drew him down to kiss, not objecting to the taste of herself on him if it meant she could have his mouth on hers, if she could wrap her tongue around his own. She tasted herself but beneath that was the flavor that was peculiarly his, peculiarly Angel, and that was what she craved right now.
He hadn't found his own release when he entered her, and she wanted to give that to him now. He surprised her by pulling away, and withdrawing, but before she could protest, he shifted their positions slightly, rolling her to her side, fitting himself behind her, pulling her back against the muscled wall of his chest, into the cradle of his hips.
He dropped a kiss against her temple, another against her neck, and lifted her upper leg, draping it over his own hips. Then he slid inside her, and she gasped at the sweetness of having him move within her so deeply, with such power. Buffy thrust her hips back toward him, hungry for the feel of him, avid for more. He gave her everything he had and everything he was. Knowing her tender clit was too sensitive from his ravishment to withstand further attentions, he moved his hands to her full breasts, teasing each rose-bronze nipple into a delicious peak. Buffy moaned and pressed her own hands over his, abetting his love-play, yielding to it.
Her whole body was so attuned to his that her next climax came almost immediately. He laughed softly in her ear, pleased at how responsive she was to him, at how quickly he could force her to peak. She was so drained from his previous accomplishments, that her screams were reduced to wails, her cries little more than breathy gasps. He treasured each one, driving into her with increased force, wringing each nuance of pleasure from her satisfied body.
As before, her first climax wasn't enough for him. Buffy had learned from what he had just done, however, so this time she didn't fight him. She relaxed, letting the pleasure ebb away, and then letting it begin to build again. This time, when she began to crest, when her muscles began the rhythmic tightening around his thick cock that presaged her release, he began to piston into her more ruthlessly, his own breathing harsh, reduced to growls. She moved her hands to his hips to draw him in tighter, closer, to yield more, and to demand more.
This time, when she came, he was with her, dissolving in her heat even as she melted around him, spilling into her even as she became liquid fire, his groans matching her cries, his hips meeting her thrusts. They were mated, met, matched by each other, completing the cycle of renewal and release that they had been made to fulfil in each other, that Buffy felt, at that moment, had been ordained for them from the dawn of time.
They recovered slowly, content to find themselves still joined on the futon. Buffy snuggled her hips more firmly against his, drew his arms closer around her, and closed her eyes to sleep. Angel freed one arm long enough to draw the covers over her sweat-slick body, tightened his arms about her and dropped a soft kiss on her cheek, and then he, too, drifted off. Into his first untroubled sleep in over one hundred years.
****************
The door to the loft had never locked securely, but Xander knocked anyway. Given that it was still afternoon, he expected that Buffy would get the door, although sunlight didn't come as far as the doorway, so there was no real danger to the vampires who lived, or had lived, here. At all events, it was Angel, the towel draped around his hips, who answered.
"Hey," he said, opening the door and letting Xander in.
"Brought your clothes," Xander said, handing him a plastic bag.
"Thanks," Angel said.
"Buffy?"
"Sleeping."
"Good. I guess."
"Yeah. Let me get dressed." He looked at Xander squarely. "We should talk."
"Sure about that?" Xander asked wryly. Angel grimaced.
"I didn't say I wanted to. I said we should."
Xander nodded. "You're probably right," he admitted with reluctance. While Angel showered and dressed, Xander raided the refrigerator for milk and fruit. He had just finished off his second nectarine when Angel returned. The jeans and T-shirt Spike had found for him fit perfectly. Xander hated to acknowledge it, but the guy looked good. Although, there was something about his eyes...in a way Xander couldn't define, suffering had not left the vampire completely untouched.
"So, what is it we should talk about?" he asked, keeping his voice low. He didn't want to wake Buffy.
"About what happened while I was Angelus. And what happened while I was in Hell." Angel's voice was also low.
"Oh, man," Xander shook his head. "No. I don't want to hear about the first. And the second is none of your goddamned business."
"That isn't what I meant--"
"I don't care what you meant," Xander said forcefully. Angel's gaze darted to where Buffy slept on the futon. Xander dropped his voice again, but his fury was still evident in the softer tones. "I don't want to hear any excuses. And I damn well don't want to hear you say you're sorry. The things you did...forget that little end-of-the-world gig you had planned. God, what you did to Jenny... There isn't enough 'sorry' in the world that you could ever say or that will ever make me forgive."
"I know that," Angel's voice was as fierce as Xander's. "I know what I did. I remember details that you don't want to hear. But what I have to say about that is this: there are choices we make, and some of them are stupid. I was stupid. I told Darla I wanted to see her world. I'd never heard the word 'vampire' and she sure as hell didn't tell me what she was or what she wanted me to become. But I walked into a situation I knew was wrong, and I'm responsible for what happened to me in it.
"I could tell you that it wasn't me who killed Jenny," Angel went on, "or hurt Buffy, or went after all of you. My soul was floating in the aether, and there was a demon in charge."
"Well, isn't that convenient," Xander said bitterly.
"Very," Angel said bluntly. "For the demon. For me...I wasn't there. But I have to live with this: whatever the demon did, it did because it had access to my mind and my memories and my feelings. It knew how I felt about Buffy, and it got back at the things I forced it to do by hurting her as deeply and as completely as possible. So, even if I wasn't there...it's still my fault. I understand that. And I accept responsibility for it."
"Ah. So. You're going to turn yourself in to the Sunnydale police for a fair trial?" Xander flung at him sarcastically. He was surprised when the vampire smiled. Angel’s voice, when he resumed speaking, was tinged with irony.
"Jury's already in, kid. Guilty as charged." That stopped Xander, but only for a moment.
"And the punishment?" he asked softly.
"You don't get it," Angel said, shaking his head. "The jury's been in for a long time. Ever since I met her. And if I had any doubts, they ended the first time I kissed her."
"You're right," Xander agreed. "I don't get it."
"The first time I kissed her, I knew I wanted to die kissing her. She's human. And mortal. Even if she survives Slaying and the old legends are true, even if I get to take her home to Ireland, find an unowned mountain and forget the world with her for fifty years, there will come a day..." he didn't finish the sentence. "One day," he said instead, "I will wait with her for sunrise."
Xander closed his eye. Yes. The day they buried Buffy Summers, Angel would let himself turn to ashes on her grave.
"Okay," Xander said. "So much for what happened when you were, uh, not yourself. What's so important about Hell that I have to know about it?"
"Just that, part of my torment was knowing what was happening to Buffy."
"Oh?" Xander said, then, as the implications exploded in his mind. "Oh!"
"Don't sweat it, kid. I'm not angry that you slept with her."
"You're not? That makes no sense, because I'm plenty angry that you slept with her."
"Are you? Still?" Angel asked.
Xander opened his mouth to answer that of course he was sure, then closed it.
"Okay. I'm not angry. I don't know why I'm not angry, but I'm not."
"We aren't angry because we both love her enough to know it isn't about us. It's about her. The Slayer. The Chosen. She hasn't had it easy. She will never have it easy. And who are we to begrudge her whatever comfort she can find?"
"No one," Xander said softly, "no one at all."
He hung around until Buffy woke up, and let her know his plans. With his uncle returning, Xander had no real excuse to stay in L.A. And now that Angel was back and Buffy was safe, no real desire to do so.
"Just one thing," he told her. "I can't leave everyone in the dark. You've got to call them again, let your mom and Giles and Willow know you're still okay, that you're coming home. You are coming home, right?"
"Yeah," she acknowledged. "Soon. But not immediately, Xander. It’s been too much. I need a little more time. But I will call. I'll let Mom and Giles know that I'll be back before school starts. If Giles still wants to try to get me reinstated...I don't know. Maybe I can hang tough one more year."
"That's my girl," Xander said. She smiled and kissed him, gently, sweetly, on the mouth. He burned the taste and feel of her lips into his memory, smiled and said good bye.
The bus ride back to Sunnydale was uneventful. Xander sat in the last seat, watching the black asphalt of the highway ribbon out before him, taking him back to where everything had started.
He had been down some dark and bitter pathways on the highway of life, and some of unbearable sweetness. All of them had changed him. Such journeys usually did. He wondered what it would be like to go home again.
Cordy surprised him by meeting him at the depot.
"Your parents told me you were getting in today, and I talked them in to letting me pick you up," she said coolly. She was wearing another tight, short, slit skirt that showed her magnificent, tanned legs to best advantage. Her hair was loose down her back, and the tank top she wore fit snugly over her full breasts, exposing their tanned tops to his appreciative gaze. Seeing her for the first time in weeks, Xander found her beauty struck him like a physical blow. Not that he'd dare let her know that. Cordy had enough advantages over him without his handing her another weapon with which to bludgeon him into doing whatever she wanted him to do.
"The Cordellia Chase limo service for moi?" he teased instead. "Whatever did I do to deserve the glam treatment?" She surprised him by coming closer.
"I missed you," she said resentfully, and slipped her arms around his neck. He dropped his bags, his own arms going automatically around her waist, pulling her in tighter and closer so that he could kiss her the way he remembered.
But it wasn't the way he remembered at all. He had gone through too much, had seen and done too much. He knew exactly where the hunger she showed him could lead, and he realized he was no longer so reluctant to let it go there. And no longer so desperate for it to go there, either. He understood that, if Cordy ever decided she wanted to give herself to him, the fact that he loved and would always love Buffy wouldn't matter.
Because he could and did love Cordellia, he knew now, for all her selfish air-headedness and shallow concerns. Somewhere inside the seeming bubble-brain was a decent, caring human being. Cordy had done her share of world savage too, if it came to that. So Xander knew he could make love to her, if she wanted him to, in a way that would be as sacred as what had been between himself and his first, lost love; in a way that would never hurt her, never demean what she was or what she offered. In a way that would introduce her to rapture without leaving behind bitter regret. But only if she took the first step.
Having experienced what it was like to make love, Xander wasn't about to settle for mere sex.
"Wow," Cordy said when they broke for air. "Either absence really does make the heart grow fonder --which makes no sense, since my heart is so totally not involved here-- or you've been practicing." It shocked Xander to realize that she was lying, something he would never have recognized a few weeks ago. All along he had thought their mutual attraction a form of shared insanity. Now, it seemed their mutual love was so obvious, it was pointless to deny it. But his newfound insight told him that she wasn't ready to deal with that reality, that it would only humiliate her if he made an issue of it, so he let the matter drop, addressing her other question instead.
"Does it matter, honey?" He asked gently, warningly. For once, Cordellia was smart enough not to press.
"If you're back, and you're with me," she said thoughtfully, "and since that was three whole sentences without the words 'Buffy' or 'Willow', I guess not."
He smiled, hefted his bags in one hand, slipped an arm around her waist, and walked with her to the car.
"So, you found Buffy in L.A.?" Cordy asked matter-of-factly.
"Yeah, I did," he said as matter-of-factly. "And she's okay now. She'll be home soon."
"Good. She told her mother that much. And Angel must be with her, or she wouldn't be okay and neither would you."
He glanced down at her in surprise. "Absence seems to make the brain grow more perceptive, hon. 'Cause you're dead on the money."
"Well, money is one of the more important things to be dead on about..." she tossed at him. He let it go. There would be plenty of time for answers and explanations later. School wouldn't start for three more weeks. He threw his bags into the back of her car, climbed into the passenger seat beside her, and buckled up.
"Where to?" Cordy asked brightly. "Do you want to grab some lunch? Go right home? Stop at Willow's?"
"Whatever you want, hon," he told her. "Whatever you want."
Cordy dazzled him with a brilliant smile. "Okay," she said cheerfully. "Lookout Point it is." He laughed as she burned rubber out of the lot.
****************
It was well after sunset before Dru was appeased. She had demanded violent passion from Spike, had pushed him to the limits, had used every intimate trick learned over a century and a half of intimacies to bring him to his knees. Spike devoutly hoped that she would continue to doubt him for the foreseeable future. It would make the pain of losing Buffy infinitely easier to bear. Eventually, Dru drifted into the slumber of utter satiety, and he was able to slip away.
He could hear the soft murmur of voices as he stood outside the entrance to the loft. Like Xander, he knocked. The apartment wasn't his, anymore. He'd get what he needed moved in with Dru by dawn.
"How did things go?" Buffy asked. She was dressed as if she had been working out. Angel looked like maybe he had joined her. And like maybe working out hadn't been all they were doing.
"Pretty damn well, baby," he said fliply. "Would you like to see the scars?"
"You're a vampire. You don't scar anymore," she reminded him dryly.
"Tell Dru that," he said mockingly.
"No thanks," she said. "I'm not up to dealing with the sanity challenged."
"Well, I'll try to keep her out of your way, then, shall I?"
"That was the deal," she said softly.
"I don't know if I can get her out of the country," he warned.
"Doesn't matter. Can you keep her from killing?"
"I'll bloody well have to, won't I?"
"Yes," she nodded. "If you don't want me coming back for her, you will."
"Done," he said softly. He didn't say what else he knew: sooner or later Buffy would realize that she couldn't leave them for the next Slayer to deal with. Sooner or later she would understand that her own lifetime wasn't enough, that she would have to take them out before her death freed them to slaughter more innocents. Sooner or later, he would stand as he had twice before, and let her drive a stake through his heart. If Lilith relented, he might even stay dead. Third time, they said, was the charm...
Angel helped him get the stuff moved. There wasn't that much he really needed. The most important things were the books, and most of those could be replaced at pawnshops or the rare street vendor who kept his stand open past dark. As they packed the boxes and bags Spike was taking into the back seat and trunk of the car, Angel and Spike had the leisure to talk.
"There's something you should know," Angel began, as he had with Xander.
"I doubt it," Spike said, "But go ahead and tell me, anyway."
"Lilith paid me a visit while I was in Hell," he told Spike.
"Ah," Spike said. "See. I knew I didn't want to know this. She told you bloody everything, didn't she?"
"Including the time you undid," Angel informed him.
"As much as that?" Spike couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice.
"She thought it would torment me to know about it."
"Don't believe that for a moment," Spike said acidly. "She thought it would torment me for you to know about it."
"It was probably both," Angel conceded. "But she was wrong."
"Come again?" Spike said.
"It didn't torment me to know how much you loved Buffy, or why. You loved her enough to give her up, once. To give up every dream you ever had, once. And you loved her enough not to tell her about any of it when you remembered. You saved her life, you took care of her. And you walked with her into Hell to get me out."
"Yeah, well, they say love is a form of temporary insanity."
"Permanent, Spike. Permanent insanity." Angel told him. "And that doesn't torment me. The only comfort I had was knowing that Buffy was loved by someone who cared for her as much as I did. That there were others who would see that she carried on. So. Thank you."
Spike stopped maneuvering boxes into place, and looked directly at the other vampire, his gaze sardonic. "Ah. Angel? You will understand if, instead of saying 'You're welcome,' I say 'Go to Bloody Hell?'"
Angel laughed wryly. "Yeah, I'll understand. But I won't do it. It gets kind of old after the first time."
Spike's laughter joined his before they resumed their work. When there were only a few more boxes and bags left, Angel returned to the loft. Spike finished up. He wasn't really surprised when he felt her beside him.
"You'll be all right, then?" she asked him. He fixed a smile on his face before turning toward her.
"I've got what I want, haven't I?" he asked, knowing she would believe he really had.
"I hope you do," she said softly, tenderly. She smiled a little sadly, reached a hand to his cheek. He closed his eyes, frightened she would see too much, and held her palm against his cheek, turning his face to kiss her palm in a gesture he hoped she would find courtly.
"Thanks for the good wishes," he told her with a creditable imitation of his usual irreverence.
"'Thank you' doesn't really cover what I have to say to you," she told him. "I owe you too much. But Spike?" Her voice turned pleading, her eyes grew bright with tears "Please, please...don't make me come after you again. I don't want that between us. Not after everything else." Spike couldn't help himself. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her fiercely, possessively, as if he still had a right to do so. And Buffy returned his kiss, yielding against him as if she still belonged to him, which she didn't and never would again.
He forced himself to break the kiss, wondering how many more good-byes he could endure saying to her. But he was still playing a part, and he slipped easily into his role.
"No worries, pet," he drawled. "The only thing I want between us again is a thin layer of massage oil, nicely heated." She laughed, as he intended. He risked another quick kiss, and set her aside.
"Good-bye, love," he said then, and got behind the wheel of his car. He kept his eyes on her diminishing reflection in his rearview mirror as he drove away. Until he turned the corner and she was, once more, lost to him.
Buffy watched the car taking Spike back to Drusilla as it vanished from sight, ending the odd alliance they had formed. She realized she was going to miss him. She sighed and went back inside.
Angel was waiting for her, and she walked immediately into his arms. They kissed, gently, and she let herself rest against the comfort of his solid body.
Angel savored the feel of her humanly warm body held close in his arms. He was content merely to hold her, to listen to her breathing and feel the steady, strong beating of her heart.
They had talked it all out, what had happened, where they went from here. Summer was waning. They had only three weeks before school started, and she would have to be home before then. She needed to settle things with her mother, with the school board and with Snyder. Angel would have to settle things with Joyce Summers, as well.
And with Rupert Giles.
None of it would be easy. And none of it could be avoided. But they had a little, little time. Two precious weeks. For those few days they could stay within the loft and forget the world, as they had forgotten Hell, in each other's arms. Later the world would intrude, would demand that they separate, at least until Buffy was eighteen and they could legally move in together. But it would be best to wait even longer, until she was out of high-school, and no guidance counselors, or school board administrators would have any reason to worry about the unorthodox living arrangements of Buffy Summers.
If the world didn't through them a new curve ball. If Whistler didn't have another surprise up his sleeve. If they could both heal enough to lay all the ghosts to rest: Jenny, and Theresa, and Kendra, a dozen other unnamed innocents who had died to slake his thirst over the long months of his soullessness.
Meanwhile, Angel would do what he had always done: he would join her on patrol, and watch her back. He would keep his eyes open and his ear to the ground, bringing whatever information he could gather to her so that she had just that much more of an edge against the thousand, thousand enemies trying to take her down.
As Buffy lifted her face for another, deeper kiss, rising up on tiptoe to wrap her arms around him and take him into her own embrace, Angel knew he would, quite simply, love her. Unequivocally. Irrevocably. And forever.
The End
(At least, for the moment)
Story arc continued in Puppy-dog Eyes