Soft touches that burn.
Kisses that caress my skin and make me want to crawl right out of it.
Filthy. I'm filthy. Inside and out. Everywhere he touched was scarred forever. And I am forever disfigured because of it...
Now another's kisses touch me. Gentle and loving and pure. I am unworthy. His fire a brilliant, pure white, cleaving through the eternal darkness he must live his life in.
I have no flame to light my way. I have only memories of a coffin and no hope. Of clawing my way out of a death that I had welcomed.
And of the filthy one. He defiled me, and I let him. I'm just as bad. Worse. I let him. I did it to myself.
His thick fingers wind their way through my hair. Disgusting dreadlocks that attract only the darkest of creatures. And him.
I feel surrounded by ice. I want to call for him to save me, but I'm frozen in position. In this one moment of my life when I hate myself the most. I want to die, but I can't move. All I can do is wait for his kisses to thaw me.
Gentles hands, big hands, cold hands. They map my skin, shy away from my scorched and damaged areas. I can't...God, I can't breathe.
I am caught in the night. Drawn to it as a creature of it myself. What else could I ever have been?
"Angel," I say. "Please. Save me." Thick, foul air rushes in through my mouth, coating my throat and lungs. I can't breathe.
Bruises at the apex of my thighs. Multi-colored and signs that I cannot bear life. I'm burned there. I can still feel him moving in me. Still feel his cries of ecstasy as I screamed my defiance to the world and to him. But in the end I wasn't strong enough.
Deep bruises across my collar bone. He ripped my bath robe. And I never got to take my shower.
"I don't know how." He whispers in my hair. I don't know how, either. I don't know if I can be saved. I'm drowning, lost beneath endless fields of ice, and I can't breathe and I can't move...I'm so lost. Please, Angel. Please save me.
"You saved me before." Hollow tears would freeze to my face if I shed them, so I don't. Blackened souls that intertwine in the darkness. I don't deserve this. I know what I deserve.
Tender touches that feel so wrong on my skin. Tough skin, that wants to be bruised and used and abused. The way I deserve.
Hands that have found their way to my thighs. The source of my shame. I tuck my head to my chest. There's no way he can't still feel him there. No way he can't know exactly what it felt like, exactly what I feel.
I tremble in anticipation, like the whore I am. I was made for this. Not for slaying. For fucking. I was made to be broken. "Please," I whisper to anyone who will hear, him most of all. Please stop. Please save me. Please kill me. Please...unfreeze me. Make it all just...stop.
Flesh and blood and bone and sinews wrapped around this core of blackness. Of darkness that attracts like-minded demons. It can't shelter me anymore. I can't hide behind my own skin. It bruises and bleeds and tears. It can't protect me.
He's gentle in me. Always gentle. Always defying himself and me. I will curl up and he will hold my soul in his hands, keeping it safe and healing it as my husk of a body dries up and floats away on an evening breeze. He can heal me. I knew that when I came here for him.
Not all the rage in the world, nor all the fear. I have plenty of that to save nothing and leave myself drowning in the excess. But he has the love. He has the light. He can lead me to my place, my destination. My rest.
"Make me yours, Angel. Keep me." He grunts. I think of the ages his body has seen. The times, the people. The places. And me. He remembers when I was me. Loving and durable and strong. The Slayer.
Not what I am now. Not this...thing. My soul doesn't remember itself anymore. It wants to run, and I would follow it to the ends of the earth, leaving this body stranded here in the quagmire of a hell of my own making.
Soft sighs break my lips and my heart flutters softly. I hear the eternal beat of blood in my ears. Like a drum. Telling me to get up and dance. Writhe in the flames and remain untouched. I arch in response. My body tells his to respond. He doesn't have a heartbeat but he can still dance with me. Still cleanse me.
"I love you, Buffy," he says. I flutter around him, my body trembling in the shame of my pleasure. He comes in me. Maybe he can clean out my insides. Remake me anew. Eat out the horror and the pain and the shame and create me again as beautiful as I once was.
Scratching at my skin hasn't worked. Cutting at it hasn't worked. But maybe, this will. Angel loves me. Maybe he can corrode the awful plague eating at my heart.
"I love you, Angel," I say, and I mean it. But I am weak, so I allow him to touch me. I let myself pass on the disease of my self-loathing, hoping only that he will not catch it.
"It's not your fault."
"Yes, it is."
"I love you. I won't let this bring you down." He kisses my face frantically.
"It already has."
He wraps his body around mine, protecting me. Shielding me, making my prison my safe house. "You are beautiful, Buffy. You are wonderful and perfect, and no matter what happens to you, you will always be pure and good." Words that spill from his mouth in a torrent that threatens to drag me under.
I feel better despite myself. I feel more...free. He is setting me free with his love and his care and his beauty. Giving of himself to piece me back together. Words whispered against my ear pulling me back again. The parts that have wandered, have strayed. Called home. To him.
"I love you," he whispers. Magick is always spoken in threes. He's said it three times now. Something should happen. Something has happened.
"Thank you, Angel. For saving me."
"Always, my love. Always and forever."