Title: Olden Days

Author: iridescentZEN

Disclaimer: Characters are not mine.

Rated: Mature

Pairing: Spike/Willow

Summary: Killing each other softly.

Author's Notes: This was one of my winter_spillow fics. Yes, I had more than one. It wasn't ready in time, and I went with Subhuman. Many, many thank yous to Kat for the beta. All mistakes are my own.

This isn't the best way to curb her addiction. Willow knows that. Only she needs something to take the edge of her magic withdrawal off. So a nest of vampires who suck blood for money? Not of the good. Right now it's her only alternative. The only way she can think of to get her what she wants without losing all her friends. She gets that it's dangerous but what isn't on the Hellmouth?

Going to the ice cream bar with a potential boyfriend with vintage flair seemed like a good idea at the time, all those years ago. When Buffy was just a bright smile and shimmering hair that Willow tried so hard not to be jealous of, because there weren't too many girls that wanted to be her friend. There weren't too many girls that would even talk to her, let alone be seen with her, and have lunch with her. In public.

Tonight with Amy not there, Willow had Rack between her legs for the magic. She let him inside, let him see all that she was and he laughed when she cried, and all it did was make her feel good, and-and that had to be wrong. She couldn't live with that memory, with the dull ache between her legs as she twisted and turned in her bed, consumed by her need for a spell, any spell.

Willow's sure that maybe, just maybe, if Tara hadn't left her, she could have risen above. With Tara's gentle fingertips gliding through her hair, across her neck to massage the aches away as Willow fought the urge to vomit. Tara's lips kissing away the tears that wouldn't stop coming. It would be easy to rise above it all because she would still have Tara in her life, and Tara is the one who's strong as an Amazon. Willow tells Tara that in her head and wonders if Tara's actually hearing it as she sleeps. I can't rise above, baby. I can only fall down. Okay, that was a slip. She's allowed a slip. She has to be.

Tara probably wouldn't even look at her, let alone touch her, if she knew about Rack or what Willow had done with him.

This whole vampire sucking her blood for the wad of cash Willow has burning in her pocket is nothing compared to the lows she's already sunk to. I have money, she said to Rack. Only he didn't want money. Now she's all Callisto begging for help as she sinks even lower into quicksand, and her friends are Xena, able to save her, but instead content to let the problem solve itself by watching her head go under.

Willow stops in her tracks in front of an abandoned building she knows for a fact is a nest. One that must have gotten under Buffy's radar. She hears her own voice repeat words from the past in time with the memory when Buffy was so belligerent because Riley proved there was a little bit of bad in the biggest batch of good. "Who would do that?" Willow had asked the group as a whole. Now she knows. Me. I would. I'm that desperate.

"Right, can't let you do it, Will," she hears Spike's voice from behind her and tries not to jump, tries not to show how scared she is. If he tells Buffy; if he tells anyone and it gets back to Buffy, Willow's sure she won't be welcomed in the Summers' house ever again.

Spike strolls up in front of her, and stands between her and the nest. "I can't let you get bitten by some nameless, faceless vamp," he says with a slight grin. "I know you. It would be ookey." He's throwing old words back in her face, and looking pretty thrilled about it. She remembers saying much the same thing to him when he tried to dust himself.

"You don't understand, you just can't ..." Willow breaks off, unsure really of what to say.

"Oh, that's right," he drawls out, "I couldn't possibly understand."

There's conviction in his voice. There are tons of images of him micro-waving blood packets over the years to back it up. How humiliating must it have been for him to sip blood through a straw stuck in a coffee mug full of pig's blood? She wants to ask him, but doesn't want to risk getting him angry.

"Right," she swings around with her back to him, feeling beads of sweat forming on her scalp. Fright or need. She's not really sure. "I'll just be going home. Where there's my bed and the vomiting." She slaps on some patented Willow cheer for good measure, "If I'm lucky, I might even get a few nightmares!"

It's a total lie. Not the first one she's ever told, admittedly. It's kind of sad how good she's gotten at it, but the red hot heat of Rack's den is drumming through her body. There's no way she's going back to the land of teenage-angry-laser-eyes, and Buffy, who doesn't even want to look at her. The Warlock is close, available, and Willow just has to. Rack is Willow's mug of pig's blood at this point. She's starving just enough to take a sip, to not care about quality, only sustenance.

"No need for that. I'll do you." Spike's against her back, a cold fingertip on her neck gliding over her pulse point. She remembers how it felt to have his lips against her neck. Of how it felt to fear death by fangs that were outlined by lips of velvet. Strangely, his finger on her neck is more intimate than when it had been his lips, his fangs. "Just us, Wil. No slayer. No best friends. No judgment."

"I can't," Willow whines, a sharp pain in her abdomen. The words aren't meant as refusal. I can't take this anymore, she thinks. I can't.

There is cold Spike tongue on her neck, softly exploring her skin in feather-light licks. Spike tongue! That's new. The feeling is more invasive than an X-Ray, and makes her tingle inside just the same. That feeling of being exposed, of matter moving to view something that never should be viewed. Her magic responds to him, to his demon. She wonders if that's why she's always felt jittery around him.

The world goes gray scale when her eyes blacken, a direct result of the tip of his tongue lingering on her pulse point.

Spike pulls away, staring intently into black orbs. He struggles to keep his eyes from flashing gold. "Are you sure?" he asks her, his voice husky with faux concern, because she's sure he really doesn't care.

Sexy, Willow thinks.

He's sexy.

Willow won't label herself in her head. The constant reassurance has always been about covering her bases, making sure that Tara knew that she loved her. Only Tara's not here. There is no one here that she has to assure her lesbianism to. No street cred that needs validating. She can think he's sexy. She can think it doesn't matter, because what she really needs is his fangs. She needs him to perform.

And she's already kinda ruined her street cred tonight anyway. She might have even gone bankrupt.

There are no tears, because they are on reserve, waiting to be freed with cascading water in the shower, where she can pretend they aren't falling. There is shame though. Shame at how much she wants this, how much she needs this. Not money. Not magic. Not here.

"N-not here," she tells him.

They are in Spike's crypt. In a bottom level Willow never knew existed. There is a neatly made bed of black satin. It's all much cleaner than she would have expected. There are touches of his personality here and there. The room is illuminated by candle light. The right lighting for biting, she thinks deliriously. She takes off her coat and wonders if he can hear how fast her heart is beating, if he can smell the shame in her sweat, seeping from beneath her skin to perfume the air around them.

Spike takes off his duster and turns to her. He runs a hand through his hair, and gives her a cocky grin. "Right then. So, where do you want it?"

Spike sounds like he's doing her the hugest favor. Like he won't enjoy the taste of her blood on his tongue. Rack's words haunt her. You've got to give a little to get a little, right? That was Rack. What did Spike want? What if he didn't just want blood?

"W-what about your chip?" she questions, sitting down on his bed and feeling entirely too much like tuna caught in a fish net. No one ever cares about the tuna. It's all about the dolphin. Woe for the dolphin, should it end up processed and in a can, but mmmmnnnnn tuna!

Spike invades her personal space. Eyes that have watched centuries go by stare at her with such intensity she can feel it tingle through her like radiation. Willow tries not to shrink away, but does it anyway. He grabs her upper arms and shakes her roughly, making her straighten up. "You're hardly giving off human vibes here, Red." He licks his lips, a starving dog staring at a pork chop.

That hurts. She pouts in a completely unWillow-like manner, averting her eyes from his. Willow feels every second that ticks by in the gnawing pain in her belly, like the need for magic is eating her inside out. She's positive that it is. That magic is a wasp, and she's a helpless tarantula, stung and paralyzed as the wasp lays eggs inside her. Now she has to wait. Wait endlessly for magic eggs to burst through her stomach, and eat her alive.

Spike takes her hand in his cooler one and she marvels at how it engulfs her own. She stares at it a little longer than she should, mesmerized. A man hand. How long has it been since a man has held her hand like this? Tonight, she had a man's hand against her chest, searing painfully, making her ache inside. That part hadn't felt good. Though Rack's magic had more than made up for it, he hadn't touched her like this. Willow knows that the last time she felt a touch like this was that night in her dorm room when Oz spoke to her about Tibet, about controlling a beast that he didn't really have control over, and Willow had been much too focused on how good his fingers felt stroking against her skin, than she had about the fact that her own fingers had given Tara pleasure the night before. That Tara's love was just as real, and she hadn't cheated on her with some were-skank then left her hanging.

Willow had given up Oz's hand, those fingers, his touch, that love. In exchange for Tara's. Oz probably would have reacted the same way to the magic anyway. At the time, it seemed to be going much the same way. Badly. Where there was wariness and lack of trust. Willow feels spiteful just the same. Here she is, willing to get fanged because of this little magic problem that no one seems to really understand.

Willow's back in the moment when Spike squeezes her hand gently, and she wonders at how much of his congeniality is due to being hungry. Would he hold her hand if she was just depressed? She'd like to think he would. What are you talking about? I'd bite you in a heartbeat.

It's an ego-booster to know he wasn't lying.

An image flashes in her brain. It's Spike with unkempt sandy brown hair, glasses on the edge of his nose. The clothes he's wearing are from a time she can't recognize, but she knows can probably be classed as being from the olden days. He appears timid, meek. A small pad of paper in his hand as he covertly studies a young woman from afar, his gaze full of worship.

Willow shakes the vision off, unsure of where it came from or why she saw it. Was it the soft glide of his fingertip across the skin on the back of her hand that acted as the trigger?

"So, you want to start with the crook of the arm or go straight for the good stuff?" Spike's so close she can feel his breath on her lips. Death breath, she thinks, trying to distract herself from the urge to kiss him, smells like coffee.

Willow gives up and gives in, leaning forward to taste his lips. They both tense when their lips meet, sparks of magic flaring all around them. Angry, passionate reds, dark blacks, vivid streaks of jade green. Spike looks as alarmed as she feels. All attempts to pull away are futile.

It's an entirely too real lip-lock.

Magic fueled by hunger, by the need emanating from the both of them, rises up all around them. They are caught in a magical sandstorm, and can only be buried alive.

It wasn't me! It wasn't me! she projects to him in his mind. I didn't do it.

Spike has no way to answer back, and it doesn't matter, because they are both caught up in a twisted re-telling of a past history they both had shared and forgotten. They have walked through a mirror to the past without even moving; on a journey of souls and shells, tied together in not wholly pleasant ways.

They are themselves a hundred years ago, different, and the same. They are re-living moments as though they are there. It's like their bodies are frozen in time, their lips together, Spike's hand in her hair, Willow's hand resting on his hip-bone as their brains take a trip down memory lane.

"My heart expands/'tis grown a bulge in it/inspired by your beauty, effulgent." Willow hears those words, remembers those words because she heard them once, though not in William's voice. The words inspired long nights spent awake, wishing they had been written for her, but she is always overlooked.

At the moment, she wishes she'd never set eyes on that gentle face. That face with gentle features too pleasing to the eye, too boyish to be anything but dangerous. She wishes that she had been overlooked, like always, but obviously he'd seen her. Recognized her. Remembered her face like it had been etched and painstakingly painted, sealed inside a locket to rest upon his neck, a heavy burden of humiliation.

William watches her, a servant girl who was at that party that night. Who watched his public humiliation with the rest. It never mattered that he had seen hers. Richard Hamilton, son of a merchant, was never known to be less than brutal with his staff. He'd seen her groped over the most beautiful place settings, saw hands disappear in her dress as she poured wine with a shaking hand. William remembers that she always seemed more bothered when Hamiliton kissed her than any of the other indignities she suffered. As though his kiss was harder to bear than his touch.

William had already been inside her tonight, and she cried far less than he likes. She screamed only when he was particularly brutal. It all seemed hardly worth it, but he needed his revenge and he was kind of hungry. When she did cry it was music. A symphony that played just for him. He could listen to it forever and never grow tired of it.

"You were there. You watched them laugh," he says, his eyes locked with hers. He tries not to feel like he's drowning in green, like he's doing a bad thing, because he's a vampire now and by extension, he's evil. Evil demons do not feel bad for killing, for raping, for anything.

She draws a deep breath from bloodied lips. "I didn't laugh with them," she says hoarsely. "I'd never laugh with them, Sir."

"Liar!" he slams her head down against cobblestone, watching as her eyes roll slightly up before focusing back on his face intently. "What. are. you. looking. at?"

"N-nothing," she says, averting her gaze, which only seems to anger him more.

"What were you thinking at that party?" he asks, his expression softening, but she knows better. Knows that any gentleness he has within is not on reserve for her. "When they all laughed? What did you think?"

He's drunk, and there's a broken bottle of liquor entirely too close to her face for her liking.

Willow tries to move her right hand but it's pinned to the ground in the dirt between cobblestones with a railroad spike. "I-I thought, 'I wish that someone would look upon me like that ...'" He growls deep in his throat, but it doesn't stop her from voicing what she thought, "'That a man would take the time to extol my virtues in a poem. That he would think of me and feel the urge to capture that kind of emotion in words. T-that someone would l-love me that way." Her eyes move back to his, her voice a whisper, "But all I get is this."

It's time to end this. William brings his mouth to her neck, unmindful of the fact that his clothing is saturated in blood, and that people will ask questions. That Darla will ask questions. Haughty bitch.

Gently, William licks her pulse point. Her left hand, left unrestricted, comes up to his chest, pushing away with more strength than he thought her capable of at this point. "What are you doing?" her voice is weaker than it was moments ago.

She was at that party. She saw him laughed at, mocked. This is only fair. "Killing you," he answers, before tearing into her throat for a second time.

The magic evaporates, leaving the crypt like a snake slithering back to its den. Willow and Spike break away from one another, both falling to the floor. Back to the future, Willow thinks. Though that hardly seems important now that she knows, now that she felt Spike killing her! Another her. The her before she was her. Willow circa 1880. That was - well it wasn't nice! That little trip to the past had her knowing what it felt like to be murdered. Let Spike in on what it felt like to kill her.

Willow fixes her gaze on Spike, who is in game face. Obviously having as much of a hard time dealing as she is.

"I-I was a servant!" Willow whines, extremely upset with her former occupation, and the fact that the pulsating need for magic hasn't gone away, even after feeling it all around her. Even after having what was possibly the worst side-effect to magic use ever. "A servant!"

"Get out, Will." Spike growls, deep from his belly, and the magic in hers growls back. She doesn't move. Then he is on her, his fangs in her throat, his fingers down her pants. She has no time to tell him to stop. No time to react in any other way but sexually, because he's giving her a violent release. Spike's helping her get rid of her sickness. They have re-instituted the practice of using leeches to suck the blood of patients in order to heal, to promote circulation. That's what this is. Spike's sucking her blood to heal her, to help her.

Willow's blood is hot and wet, beads of it dripping onto her chest but none wasted by splattering onto the floor. That man hand with man fingers is down her pants, two fingers deep inside, and she is as hot and wet there as her blood is in his throat.

The bite's more pleasure than pain. She keeps black eyes fixed on his, knowing that his have turned amber by demon even if she's only seeing in black and white. His fangs sink in even deeper, his fingers copying the action. Willow lets out a keening sound of pleasure, her body stiffening beneath him. He tenses above her, lets out a cry of his own, before taking his hand out of her pants. He uses it grab her left arm and pin her down. She wails as his fangs go even deeper, not enough to kill her, but it's excruciatingly painful.

Another man hand, hurting her.

"W-what are you ... what are you doing?" she blinks up at him, confused.

"Killing you," he echoes his own words from the past.

Not this time. No. This time she wouldn't be staring up at him with blank eyes, stagnant pools of black, a victim. The black eyes he sees now are far from dead. Bringing her hand up to his chest, she lets her magic flare, hears him scream from pain far more insufferable than what she's just endured. It's red and black, angry, but calm pinks and blues mix in beneath her fingertips and sink into his chest.

"Red," he chokes out, his lithe body jerking like a fish out of water beneath her hand. Which is payback, in a way, for the way he made her hips roll, her body crave him.

Willow sits up, turning them over and straddling him. The spell is done. She's finished what he's started. "Yes?" she asks him, feeling strong, exalted. Not the way someone who just lost so much blood should be feeling.

Willow's done a spell. Even though she's sure she'll be punished somehow, ostracized from the pack, she feels good. She feels better. She feels whole.

Spike has put a claim on her. Made her his, and she wouldn't bear it. Wouldn't suffer the fate of wanting him while he wanted Buffy. Wouldn't exist as the tuna while he cried over the loss of the dolphin. She's not thinking of Tara anymore because Tara has been extracted with mystical sharpened bone enamel. Erased with a bite that went beyond flesh and blood.

Willow removes her hand from Spike's chest. He stares up at her, not nearly as confused as she was. "What are you doing to me?"

She smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "Killing you."

Not a literal death. The death of his control. Of a form of him.

The magic ebbs inside him, and Spike lays listless on the ground beneath her. The worship he's felt for Buffy is fading, blonde being replaced with red. That need for the slayer is replaced with need for this witch. The relationship he and Buffy had was abusive and faulty. It's also over, but Spike feels no regret.

There's a soul now. A ship that's anchored deep inside him. There is no getting it out. No shaking it free.

Spike smiles at her and she smiles back, and this time it's as though neither has hurt the other. As if the last twenty minutes hasn't happened. She's worked her mojo on him good. His arms are around her, enveloping her, and she hugs him back, unmindful of the fact that they are both covered in blood. Blocking out the fact that the crypt smells like dark magic and burnt flesh. Willow feels her blood flow slow to a trickle, magic healing over the twin punctures at her neck. She can see smoke still rising from where her hand rested against his chest.

Spike's fingers twine with her own, rubbing softly where the vision showed her hand impaled with a railroad spike. He remembers killing her now. Remembers how good it felt when he jammed that piece of metal through her flesh. He remembers how good it felt to have her writhing beneath him on her dorm bed in 1999. She whimpers because his touch feels good, and he wonders if she realizes what she's done to them both. "I'm going to write poems about you," he says.

Willow smiles sweetly, the same smile she gave him that night in her dorm room. And over a hundred years ago across a room of crowded people. "I know."

End.