You Didn't Really Think...?
Picture by Bent
Italicized parts are past.
“…Slayer?”
Willow, Dawn, and Giles looked up from their dinner at Spike as the blonde vampire entered the room. The tension was already thick in the air, not abated by the fact that they knew, all three of them knew, that, without a doubt, Buffy would return. There was never any question on it. She’d go and then she’d come back, and they could all get on with their lives.
It was as simple as that.
“What?” Giles asked, still, after all these years, uncomfortable with Spike. What was it with this group and vampires?
“Where is the Slayer?” Spike asked again, his patience obviously at a low point.
“Uh…” Willow tried to answer, but couldn’t; she didn’t want to tell Spike where Buffy was because she didn’t want to really think on it. Instead she looked to Giles who shrugged.
“Why?” he asked, standing to clear the dishes off the table.
“Because something’s up out there, and she’s needed,” the vampire snapped, patience obviously now gone. “Now where is she?”
~~~~~~~~~~
“It’s Buffy!” Cordelia said, rushing to the doors to find Angel. “She’s alive!”
He looked at her for a moment, complete astonishment on his face as he tried, desperately, to understand what she’d just said. Alive? She was… racing into the lobby, he didn’t notice how he’d left Fred sitting there, alone in the night and having absolutely no idea what had just happened.
He pushed Lorne aside, barely muttering an apology as he made it to the office and closed the door, locking it behind him. He drew the blinds, too, took a deep breath as much to steady himself as it was an automatic scenting of the air, and went to the desk.
He was shaking. His blood pumped through him to the sound of her heartbeat, that steady, comforting thump-thump that told him as much as anything that he hadn’t been imagining that feeling the last few days, thinking he was losing his mind to grief and missing her. She really was alive.
Still shaking, Angel picked up the phone and dialed her number.
“Buffy?”
“Angel, you called.” She sounded relieved, and Angel could all but see the tension leave her body.
“Of course I did, baby. How could I not? What…where…” he swallowed, closed his eyes. “I need to see you.”
“Yes,” she said quietly, her voice soft but strained. He could hear it as clearly as if he were right there, next to her in her house, her warm body against his, soft and yielding. “God, yes, Angel. I need you.”
“Our place?” Buffy made a choked sound of ascent and Angel smiled slightly. “I’ll meet you there in an hour, a stór. Tá mé chomh mór sin i ngrá leat…” My precious. I love you so much…
“Agus mé tusa, mo chroí.” And I you, my love.
~~~~~~~~~~
“She’s meeting Angel,” Dawn said, not caring if Spike knew.
She cared for Spike, in the high school crush way, and didn’t at all like his own crush on Buffy. But honestly, she’d always liked Angel, even if she’d never actually met him until Buffy’s funeral, and knew her sister needed the vampire with a soul, especially now that she was back from that hell dimension and all. Angel survived hell; maybe he could help her…
Dawn wanted her sister back, and didn’t care how she got the Buffy she remembered.
Spike paused in whatever he was about to say, his mouth looking silly, half opened like it was. Closing it very slowly, he blinked at the trio. He couldn’t have heard right, he thought, and blinked again. “You couldn’t be that stupid....” he muttered. “Where is she?’
“Angel,” Dawn said again, a frown in her voice. “She went to meet Angel.”
“You are that stupid!” He blinked at them, shook his head. “Bloody hell. She went…he knows…they…?” At their nods, Spike just started to laugh; it was a hysterical sound, and freaked out the three before him. “When did she leave?”
Oh, what he wouldn’t give for a cigarette right now, but he’d promised Joyce, ages ago, that he’d never smoke in her house. Just because she was dead didn’t mean Spike was about to go back on that particular word. A drink, however, would help, and he stalked to the sideboard to pour himself three fingers worth of whatever alcohol was within easy reach.
Knocking it back, he waited their answer.
“Yesterday,” Willow answered, the worry in her voice that she hadn’t yet brought up clear in that one word. “She went someplace to meet him yesterday.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Angel hung up the phone and smiled. She was back. She was alive. God, she was alive!
Closing his eyes as it moved through him, he felt it as clearly as he had so long ago, and was helpless to stop it. There was nothing…he couldn’t… He gasped, tried to move, to breathe, to…do…something.
Looking around, he frowned. What…? Buffy. He was meeting Buffy. He was…she was back. Alive. And he was meeting her at their cabin.
“Buffy?” he asked aloud, though it was clear that she wasn’t there. In fact, everything was a little odd, and wasn’t it strange that he had no idea where he was or how he got here? The room/place/landscape was blank, an empty canvas waiting to be created. Waiting for bold colors, for grassy knolls and blue skies; for hot love, pure desire, dark need, and deep passions.
Walking, he explored. For what, he couldn’t have said, but he wandered the limitless expanse of nothingness that stretched before him. Searching for her. Time had no meaning, but then time was often their enemy; and yet he still searched, still walked, still looked for her.
“Angel,” Buffy smiled, walking out of the mist to stand before him. She was dressed in a long gown of deep blue, gauzy and flowing, barefooted. The only jewelry she wore was the ring on her left hand, third finger. Her claddagh. “Angel,” she repeated, clasping his hand with hers, her ring rubbing against his.
“What…?” Angel looked down at their joined hands, solid and real, silver rings glinting in the omnipresent light.
“I don’t know. But here you are. So it doesn’t matter.” She smiled, real and pure, and full of love and joy.
He leaned down to kiss her, soft, gentle, expecting, already knowing. “Yes. I’m here. Always.”
~~~~~~~~~~
“Yesterday,” Spike repeated, flatly. “She met with the poof yesterday. And she’s not back.” It wasn’t a question.
“Well, no,” Willow admitted, flustered. “She’s not.”
“And you don’t find this a little…odd?” At the looks he got in return for that question, Spike laughed again.
The laugh was a tinged with desperation and a hefty dose of mocking ruefulness. If he had his way, he’d leave now. But he made a promise to Joyce to watch over her girls, and he made a promise to Buffy to watch over Dawn. He wasn’t going to disappoint them. At least he’d be able to keep one promise.
~~~~~~~~~~
They’d met at their place. That in between place only the two of them knew of. A small cabin by a lake that Angel had bought when he thought they had a future. When it was just the two of them and everything looked hopeful and new, shaded with love as it was. Before Angelus, before the full extent of the curse made itself known. Before, before, before.
They’d met there only twice, once after Buffy’s defeat of Adam to reassure Angel she was okay, and once after her mother died. She’d needed someone there who would comfort and accept and not ask any questions. Not someone who needed and needed and didn’t understand that she’d just lost her mother and needed, too.
Buffy stood by the window, a shadow against the single candle lighting the cabin. She watched him park, a haphazard screech of tires that left the car crooked next to her no less straight parking job, and smiled at that. He was as anxious as she, then. She didn’t turn when he entered, closing the door softly behind him.
“I was desperate,” Buffy began when he came up behind her, large, cool hands encircling her and pulling her tight against him. “I was going to ask you to kill me. To take me out of this world and send me back.”
“To heaven?” he asked, somewhat rhetorically, mouth against her ear. The coolness of his breath tickled her slightly, and she shivered. “They pulled you out – pulled you out of heaven and trapped you here.”
It wasn’t a question, nor yet an observation. He already knew. And in knowing, hated.
“Yes. Send me back to heaven.” Buffy shivered, sighed, and relaxed back against his hard body, allowing the cool touch of him to keep away the pain of this harsh, terrible world. Molding to him, where she’d always belonged. “I was prepared to beg,” and now there was a hint of amusement in her voice.
“Beg?” His grip tightened at the thought. Placing a quick kiss on her shoulder, he asked, “What changed your mind?”
Buffy tilted her head to the side, looking back at him with large, dark eyes that spoke of pain and death, of burdens unbearable, and of love. It was the love that got him, sending a shiver through him that rocked them both.
“I don’t have to ask you, Angelus,” she said plainly, that damnable trust and love still in her voice. “I know you’ll do it.”
“Do you, lover?” Angelus wondered, voice low and silky against the satin of her skin. His erection was hard against her buttocks, and she shivered, unconsciously pushing backwards. Turning her in his arms, he lowered his lips to hers, tasting, exploring, remembering.
“What makes you so certain?”
“That you will?” she asked, breathless when he finally released her. “That you’re Angelus? Or something else?”
He said nothing, merely raised an eyebrow and waited. Buffy smiled at him, slow and sure, confident in herself and him. One hand glided up to trace his features, the angles of cheekbones, the straightness of nose, the sensuous lips, parted to capture her finger. Her hips thrust forward, once, and she gasped in need at the contact, eyes drifting half closed.
“I know,” she finally said, opening her eyes. “I’ll always know.”
Know that he was Angelus? That the soul was no longer there? That he would kill her, drain her life’s blood into him, hot and spicy and powerful and his. That he would roar with the taste of it, the orgasmic force of it. That he would then turn her, his eternal mate, lovely and dark, passionate and strong. That he would claim her in the last way they could claim each other. That he would never leave her.
Yes. She knew.
“Mine,” he whispered, kissing her once more, hard and claiming, feeling her respond, her body rocking against his, her hands holding him close, her heart beating for him, solely for him. And then it beat no more.
His fangs slipped into her neck like a caress, gently so as to cause her no undue harm. Still holding her against him, secure in his embrace. He did roar then, shuddering as if he’d just come in her sweet, tight body though his cock was so painfully stiff he knew that only Buffy could ease the ache.
The last words she spoke, however, would never belong to him.
“Have Spike take care of Dawn.”
Angelus watched her for a moment, wondered if she really didn’t think he’d turn her. But no, he saw it in the fading light of her eyes. She wanted to make sure her sister was taken care of before she rose – when it was entirely possible she wouldn’t care any more.
“Aye, love,” he promised to the last beat of her heart. Slitting his neck with a suddenly long, pointed, vampiric nail, he held her close to him, waited through the first almost drowsy intake of his blood. Hardening even further when Buffy began to suckle in earnest.
When she could take no more, Angelus picked her up and carried her to their bedroom. Lying her on the soft coverlet, he went to make a phone call. After all, a promise to Buffy was a promise he wasn’t going to break.
“Spike…”
~~~~~~~~~~
“Dawn, pack a bag,” Spike instructed in a hard and commanding voice. “We’re leaving.”
“What?” Giles protested, and Dawn looked bewildered. “What are you talking about? She’s not going anywhere with you.”
“This is great, just, just…great.” Turning to Dawn he ordered, “Dawn, don’t listen to the deluded watcher, we’re leaving. If they want to tag along, that’s fine, but we’re not sticking around anyplace he can find us.”
“Who?” Willow asked, confused. “Who can find us?”
Spike said nothing for several long and precious seconds as he stared at them. “You people actually live on the Hellmouth and survive! How in the bloody hell have you managed that? Oh, right,” he snickered. “You had the slayer to help you along with your pathetic little lives. Without Buffy, you’d all be dead by now, and I’m forced to wonder if anyone would miss you.”
He jerked, once in agitation. “You’re too stupid to see what’s right in front of you, and yet you continue to live your lives as if you were free from the things you know, know, go bump in the night.”
Sighing in resignation, Spike pressed his fingers to his eyes, wondering how they managed to give him a headache worse than that damnable chip ever had.
“Right then. Buffy’s back from the dead, yes?” Spike asked slowly, and they all nodded as if it were he who was the delusional one.
“So let’s go over the facts then, children.” He felt like he was talking to toddlers, and then decided that they sometimes acted like three year olds so it was an apt analogy. “Angel freaked when he learned Buffy was dead, destroying his hotel, leaving the country, secluding himself for months on end, first on a boat, then a monastery, and only recently returned to LA, right?”
They nodded again, but more reluctantly this time.
“Angelus is still within Angel, they live together like some freaky opera. Right? Angelus wanted the slayer just as much as Angel, no matter what you thought when he made his command performance a couple of years ago. So. If you were the Vampire With The Trick Soul and The Obsessed Demon, and you discovered that The One Love Of Whatever Life You Bothered to Use in This Little Scenario was suddenly Back From The Dead, do you really think that said soul would still be in the body?”
There was dead silence in the room, and Spike smirked. “Dawn, pack a bag.” This time, no one protested. Dawn raced upstairs to unearth her duffel bag and toss a few things inside it.
“You can’t really mean that Angel’s moment of happiness happened because he,” Giles took off his glasses, understandably unnerved. Waving a hand mid air as if the motion would help him explain the sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, he continued, “He, well, because of Buffy’s return?”
“Rupert, Rupert, Rupert,” Spike snickered as he heard Dawn frantically rummage through her room. He poured himself another drink. “Think about it. Perfect happiness, and all that, didn’t that stupid clause go something like, ‘One moment of true happiness, of contentment’…?”
Giles nodded, already moving into the living room to gather his own things. The dishes be damned, there were more important things to take care of. Life, limb…all that jazz. “What have you heard, Spike?” he asked, as Willow raced upstairs, shaking.
“Nothing, yet, but it makes those rumors on the street a little more understandable.”
“And those are?”
“That something big and bad is back, and even the slayer’s disappeared. Now, of course I thought they meant the Buffy-bot, but with Angel most likely all Angelus again, I’m thinking not.”
Willow threw a few things into her own duffle bag, not really paying attention to what she packed. Clothes, underwear, socks, shoes, brush, the bare essentials…and a few spell books and her (third) copy of the restoration spell. The Magick Box had an Orb of Thessula, six, in fact – just in case – but they needed to go there to get them.
She picked up her phone and dialed Xander with shaking fingers. Briefly explaining what most likely happened, she told him to pick Tara up at school, and meet them at The Magick Box. Willow wasn’t sure if she could do the soul restoration spell without knowing where Angelus was; she needed for him to be within a reasonable distance, but she wasn’t sure what that distance was.
~~~~~~~~~~
She’d woken unbelievably fast, all things considered. Angelus had expected her to sleep for days, from sheer exhaustion if nothing else. Still, when she jerked awake, drawing in gasping breaths and sitting upright on their bed, he wasn’t really surprised.
“Good Evening, lover,” he whispered against her bare skin, cool to the touch, and still as satiny as ever.
“Not in a grave,” she managed, choking on a sob and sagging against him.
“Grave?” he demanded sharply, pulling her around to face him. “They left you in your grave? Damn them and their idiotic pea-brains, they didn’t bother…” the rest was an inaudible growl that had her shivering against him. Not from fright, from the comfort of his anger. And in need.
With effort, he calmed himself. They were dead. He was going to kill them all and leave tiny pieces of their mangled bodies for some hapless stranger in the wrong place to find. But then Buffy whimpered, and his attention was immediately back on her.
“Hungry, love?” he asked, shifting her so she straddled him, naked and luscious. He’d been hard for her for hours, days, years maybe, wasn’t sure how he managed to survive not taking her. Christ, he needed her.
“Yes,” she nodded, but didn’t move. It wasn’t, he knew, because she awaited permission. Not his mate. No, she waited because she was already dripping wet for him, and tense with need. Her mouth flitted across his neck, fangs elongating as they scraped his skin.
“Buffy,” he hissed, hands clenching on her waist.
“I’m hungry,” she told him, words slightly obscured by the newness of her fangs and the fact that her mouth was suckling on his neck. “And I need you, Angelus…I need you in me.”
Lifting her without another word, Angelus thrust two fingers into her wetness, opening her for him, thrilling at the coolness that coated his fingers before slamming her onto him. “God, baby, I need you, too.”
She didn’t say a word, simply met him thrust for thrust, nails scraping down his back, body wrapping around his as they finally, finally christened their bed. It didn’t take long for her to climax, body going stiff under his, as she panted his name before going soft and pliable.
With a growl, Angelus climaxed, too, the feel of release washing over him in waves of ecstasy and bliss. Collapsing atop her, he had to wait a moment to regain his strength before rolling them to the side, mouth dropping a lazy kiss on her shoulder.
He’d fed beforehand, knowing the voracious appetite of the newly awakened, and wanted Buffy’s first meal to be from him. Since he doubted very much he was going to let her out of his sight for the next year, or hundred, Angelus had also brought the woman’s companion, and he now lay in the corner, bound and gagged, and waiting his last breath.
~~~~~~~~~~
Within twenty minutes, the gang from Sunnydale was out of town, heading for parts unknown. Well, Spike and Dawn were…the rest of the gang were heading for LA, as prearranged, to meet up with Cordelia and that gang in an attempt, useless as it was, to think of a plan to find, control, stop, and kill Angelus.
Turning to the vampire beside her, Dawn asked, “What do you mean Angelus wanted Buffy as much as Angel? I thought he wanted to kill her?”
Snorting and lighting a cigarette, Spike shook his head, cracking the window of the DeSoto just enough to let the smoke escape. “That’s what the watcher wanted you to think. That’s what Buffy wanted you to think, because that’s what everyone else thought, and she didn’t want them knowing the truth.”
“Oh.” Then, “How do you know the truth?”
“I witnessed the whole thing, niblet,” he confided. “And at first, I thought he wanted to kill her, too. What with that whole Acathla thing. Ah, those were the days,” he sighed, reminiscing. “I thought he wanted to suck the world into hell because she wasn’t dying.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“He didn’t kill her when he had the chance,” Spike said as he remembered that fight. At the time, he honestly thought that Angelus was going to kill Buffy. With Dru in his arms Spike hadn’t cared; but then he returned, and Buffy wasn’t dead. It’d taken a bit, but the younger vampire realized that if Angelus wanted the slayer dead, he could’ve done it at any moment between losing that pesky soul, and being sucked into Acathla’s hell dimension.
He hadn’t, however, and that, finally, sparked the realization that Angelus didn’t want Buffy dead. He wanted her for himself. Spike couldn’t believe that it’d taken him so damn long to figure that out. Getting slow in his old age.
Dawn said nothing for a while, and they continued to drive. “Is she okay? I don’t want my sister to die again.”
“She’s fine, niblet. Angelus’ll take good care of her, don’t worry.”
“But she left me!” Dawn sobbed, truly frightened, lost, and alone. “She went to see Angel, and didn’t come back. And what if he really hurt her, what if she really doesn’t want to be with him, what am I going to do without her?”
“You have me,” Spike reassured her “And I promise that Buffy’s fine. She needs some time to herself now. She…” he couldn’t tell Dawn that Buffy was in heaven, he’d promised. Honestly, what kind of demon was he, keeping his promises and all.
And what was it about these Summers women that made him do so?
“She didn’t want you to see her like this,” he amended. “She didn’t want you to see her how she was…returned from…hell.”
“Oh. But,” she added after a moment, “I can? I mean…she’s not leaving me?”
“You can,” Spike nodded, hoping that was true. “I promise.”
Dawn dozed then, and tried to make sense of her life now. It was so strange; she always thought Buffy would be there for her, and then she wasn’t, but then she was, and Dawn didn’t want her to leave again. Waking only when Spike pulled into a station to refill the tank, the sun already set, she didn’t see the others.
“Where’s everyone else?”
“Still in California, I suppose.”
“But…” she blinked at him, big eyes confused. “Then where are we going?”
“Not with them. I was thinking Mexico. Nice and sunny there, niblet, maybe you could work on your tan.”
“Why aren’t we going with the rest?” Her voice was rising now, and Spike hastened to reassure her.
“Because I promised only to look after you, Dawn. The others mean nothing to me, and I care less than rat’s blood what they do. Angelus doesn’t care about them, though it was really damned funny to see them run so fast. The greatest insult, though only Rupert would get it, is that he’s going to leave them alive. They don’t mean enough to him to bother with. He only wants Buffy. And Buffy wants you safe.”
Dawn lapsed into silence, again. It was a lot to take in, but she eventually nodded. “Don’t I need a passport then?”
Laughing, Spike finished pumping the gas and started the car again. “Niblet, where we’re going, no one will even know you’re in the country.”
~~~~~~~~~~
“They’re gone,” he said as he hung up his cell.
“Spike has Dawn?”
“Yeah, baby,” he said and shifted her against him more comfortably, flinging a leg over hers to trap her against him. One hand absently moved over the taunt round of her bottom, slipping into her, teasing for a moment then moving slowly, slowly, before removing his fingers to her stifled moan of disappointed loss.
“They’re on their way out of town and heading south. I believe Willow and Tara were thinking of transferring to UCLA, and Xander swore he could find a job with any construction company. Giles and, no doubt, Wesley are going to work themselves mad trying to figure out what happened and where we are.”
She shrugged, moving so her clit rubbed against the wiry hairs of his leg. A sound between a sigh of pleasure and a groan of need caught in her throat, and he chuckled.
“They left awfully fast,” she commented, hand moving to her breast, tugging on her hardened nipple. It wasn’t the same, and she found Angelus’ hand without opening her eyes, placing the large coolness of it on her aching breast. He obligingly manipulated her nipple, rolling her so she lay on her back, open for him alone.
Leaning down to taste her delicious skin, to taste their combined essence, their joining, both physical and vampiric, he agreed. “Spike’s good at what he does,” he confirmed and bit one areola, smiling when she arched up, legs wrapping around him, hips moving against him as she tried to find release.
“He’s not big on the planning,” Angelus added, sinking his fangs into her breast, drawing the tiniest droplets of blood. “But he’s good at execution and sowing dissection.”
“They didn’t even try and look for me!” It was shouted, but that was because Angelus had moved to her clit and was teasing unmercifully, trailing a thin line of blood down chest and belly, over hip and pelvis, unable to taste enough of her, to have enough of her.
“Buffy,” Angelus said seriously, raising his head to look at her fully. “They don’t deserve you. You know that, or you wouldn’t have come to see me in the first place.”
Buffy said nothing, staring into his eyes for long minutes before nodding. Smiling wickedly down at him, over her own body curving and soft, she nodded. “Well, yes.” She grabbed him by his ears, tugging him up her body. “You’re mine,” she whispered, kissing him hard and quick. “Just as surely as I am yours.”
He kissed her, his passion for her unending and volatile. She responded quickly, letting her own passion for him overcome her, take her to her own heaven. And later, when they slept, she burrowed deep within his embrace, comforted and loved.
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