Chapter Twelve: Blanket

Sire and Childe

She tasted like sun-warm blackberries. Her lips were softer than he would have thought, pliant, ready for every kiss, her tongue strong with the longing he sensed in her. He had seen it in her eyes the night he turned her. How she had wanted this, even when she had no way of recognizing it. It sweetened every sensation, made them drip with honey, as golden as her locks.

She was made for caresses, every curve of her smooth as silk; every line running into another; traceable, tantalizing. He explored her, feeling something close to obsession in wanting to find spots that had never been touched, every new tremble going through her acting as an extraordinary aphrodisiac.

x

He came back with drops of blood on his lower lip. It wasn't his. Its scent filtered down her nostrils, circled her taste buds and shot like bullets into her head, whirring through her thoughts until she felt she would rather have her mind be completely empty than experience this maddening rush, and having to resist it.

She had woken up in bed, alone. She had never felt as alone as in that moment. Ever.

She didn't look at him where he stood, but kept her gaze on the ocean outside the window before which she sat, still naked, with her legs pulled up against her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Her clothes lay scattered about her, like driftwood on a beach, abandoned and anonymous. She should collect them into a heap, she should dress; she should leave. She should.

Suddenly she heard a giggle, the click of high heels on the short, uncarpeted piece of flooring in the hall, someone stumbling, bracing themselves with long-nailed hands against the small table standing against one wall, another giggle, and the person came into view. She was beautiful. Her hair worked like a black frame for her lovely face, for her full lips and dark blue eyes. She wore a short dress in red silk, black tights and leather boots. Buffy could see the attraction, and her insides curled in on themselves until she felt actual pain.

"Oh," the young woman said at the sight of her. "Is that her?" she added with a look at Spike that was so knowing Buffy felt she would have blushed, if she'd had the ability to.

What had he said?

Spike smirked at the stranger, reached out a hand to her and moved his eyes into Buffy's as the girl stepped close to him, his arm around her shoulders as he led her upstairs.

Buffy felt sick with anger. She tore her clothes on, almost ripping one of the sleeves off her shirt, a button flying out of sight, clicking against some unknown object, skidding into forgetfulness. She took the stairs three steps at a time. The kiss being shared was broken instantly, the girl's eyes widening with indignation. It was nothing like what Buffy felt in that moment. Firstly, she wanted to find something heavy and beat Spike until he couldn't stand. Secondly, she wanted to tear the lips off the ignorant little fool of a girl who even dared touch him.

"Hey," the girl in question said. "I thought it wasn't a big deal," she added, looking back at Spike.

"It isn't," he replied, eyes in Buffy's.

She didn't know what the look in them said. It was expectant, but more in an ironic way than anything else, and it fed her fury until she felt like letting her previous urge have full reign, claw the girl's prettiness to bits, just to see the expression on his face when the deed was done. She managed to restrain it, however, and fastened her gaze in the eyes of the unnamed.

"Get out," she said.

The girl smiled.

"Listen, sister, he picked me up, alright. You go take a walk, work off some of that frustration and let us have some fun. I'm sorry, but if you can't satisfy your man, he's gonna come looking for something better."

The girl wasn't much older than her, Buffy concluded. Goddamn Jerry Springer generation.

She tilted her head slowly to the side, not amused and even less impressed by this scarcely dressed pop-princess wannabe. What she needed was a dose of reality, before she ended up pregnant and bitter and alone in some backwater community so obscure it was barely marked on a map.

And so, Buffy moved, faster than she had ever moved before. She practically lifted off the floor, the room around her becoming a mere blend of colors perceived in the shortest part of a second, and she knew that the mortal hadn't even registered it beginning and ending. To her, she had gone from standing in the doorway to standing right in front of her, in a literal blink. The girl drew a sharp breath.

Buffy felt how she consciously made the muscles of her face move. They pulled and tugged at her flesh, shifted gracefully, and at the sight of the horror in the other's eyes she knew the transformation was complete.

"He's no man," she said in a low voice in response to the other's short attempt at persuasion.

The girl screamed – once – as Spike vamped out as well, and then she was a-clatter out the room, her heels violating the stairs before the front door closed with a loud, short echo. It felt almost too anti-climactic; as though they should at least have left a few scratch marks on her.

Buffy shook her features back into human and slowly turned her eyes in Spike's. The fiend.

"You done?" she asked. He raised his eyebrows questioningly. "Making a point," she added.

He smirked.

"Wasn't making anything."

His smirk widened.

"So, this is the way it is?" she asked, ignoring the ache that was carefully spreading throughout her.

His smirk faded, his demon retracted, his eyes blue as they rested in hers.

"This is the way it is," he confirmed.

"Right," she mumbled. "So if I bring someone here..."

"You bring all the someones you want. I'm not staying."

"And where are you going?"

He nodded to the bedside table behind her. She walked up to it, lifting the airline tickets lying there and reading them before turning a frown on him.

"There are two tickets," she remarked.

He was silent. Of course. Drusilla.

"So, you're going to throw it away?" she wondered, feeling sadness scurry with precision to all those most dreadful places within her. She said the words before she had heard herself think them. "What was it all about? Before?"

"Oh, bloody Lord, here we go," he exclaimed. "Now we need to explain it, do we? You want a label on a few hours of plain, wholesome shagging?"

She stared at him. She had the sound of his moans fill her head, how he had moved inside her, how his hands had woken her skin until she felt like all of her was set aglow; his kisses deep, hungry. Everything gaining a completely new meaning with the sentence he had just spoken. It cut her. She was surprised to realize that she hadn't expected to hear those words. She had expected an acceptance. She felt her eyes grow moist, and it made her even angrier with him.

"God, I really do hate you right now!" she yelled before turning around and running out of the room.

He wasn't late to follow.

"No, no, we're having fun here!" he called after her. "I'll tell you what it was all about. It isn't complicated, I know you'll understand, and if not, I'll be more than willing to give you a full-on practical explanation." He was on her heels now. "It was about wanting and getting. It was about taking. Wasn't about giving, wasn't about anything deeper than your throat."

She swirled around and hit him across the jaw and he stumbled against the railing of the stairs, but he was on her before she could continue the last few steps, pinning her to the wall with one hand around her neck, his chest against hers.

"You wanted it, just as much as I did," she got out, moving her head from side to side to try and shake him, but it didn't work, and his grip tightened.

"Not saying I didn't," he replied. "But this... it's not even lust. It's you being tied to me, and me to you, and we've nothing to say in it. You made your choice the moment you drank of me."

"You made yours," she bit. "Why did you? Tell me why. I need to know."

He stared at her, his gaze intensifying until she felt her legs begin to grow unsteady with the spreading heat, and then his mouth caught hers, his hand letting go as she wrapped her arms around him, returning his kiss greedily.

x

He fell asleep on the floor, half covered by a blanket that had fallen off the couch as they brutalized it with their eagerness. She propped her head up in one hand and observed the outline of his face in the blueness of the moonlight. Her gaze wandered down his forehead, sliding to the tip of his nose, gracing his chin and working its way down a chest she had gotten intimately familiar with over the past few hours.

He was gorgeous.

She sat up and got to her feet, leaving his side with something stubborn shaping itself around her heart. She hated being this weak. She hated how he affected her, and how much worse the affect of him was now. She hated how she hated that he had left.

She leaned against the cool glass of the window, pressed her weight against it and closed her eyes.

She knew it was only a matter of time before the stillness was shattered and came crumbling down in chaos around her. This, whatever this was, hadn't even begun and yet she could perceive Drusilla planted firmly between them, like a wilting rose bush, and she knew that whenever he scented it, he would remember her.

She couldn't stand it.

She opened her eyes and looked out over the waves which in slow motion seemed intent on reaching further up the shore than they ever had before, every time a second away from succeeding before they had to relent and pull back to join with their vast origin.

She turned around, leaning her back against the glass as her eyes took in the vampire still lying on the floor.

She wanted him to be hers.

It was like a searing, overwhelming must, banging itself bloody against her temples. It was possessiveness unlike anything she had felt before. She wanted to chain him to her. And she knew then that he was right. It was the blood tying them together; it was the demon in her calling for its counterpart in him. It was fragile, in all its persuasiveness, and would fall apart with every new daybreak because it wasn't special, and daylight would expose it. She was a childe in need of her sire; nothing more.

She let her gaze drift over him and smiled a very small smile.

He was gorgeous.

She went down on all fours and crawled up to him, letting her face hover above his before she moved her head and sucked the fullness of his lower lip in between hers. One of his hands slid up her back, making her smile widely. They were incompatible in everything, but this.

x

"Hey," she said, sitting up and turning to him where he was just sliding the duster over his shoulders. "Where are you going?"

He observed her ruffled hair, her sleepy eyes, which were carrying the slightest hint of worry, and the blanket hanging loosely over one shoulder, covering most of her, except her left arm and the curve of her breast. He fought the urge to touch her again.

"I'm hungry," he said simply.

The worry was replaced with what he assumed was reproach and he shook his head at her.

"There's some blood in the fridge," he informed.

She pulled the blanket around her and stood. He hesitated, but thought it made sense to ask her. In what particular anti-reason-and-practicality realm this sense hailed from, he wasn't prone to ask himself – it just wasn't like him to waste a perfectly good plane ticket. And he thought he saw an opportunity to absolve himself of her. No more responsibility, no more of this ridiculous farce they were indulging in. It would be finished.

"So, you wanna come, you can come, I guess," he therefore said.

She frowned, halting in the doorway of the kitchen, her eyes in his.

"But there's some blood in the fridge," she replied.

"To Europe," he clarified, slightly impatient.

She stared at him.

"Guess I might, then," she said.

He shrugged.

"It's just a passage over."

"Right."

"Once we get there..."

"Sure."

He gave a nod and left, feeling confident that this was the best solution. Once they got to their destination they would go their separate ways. A lot of history in Europe; the Aurelian line had always had a strong foothold there. She could walk the paths he had walked as a newborne; learn the things he had learned. She was strong already, but there she could become a warrior again.

He just needed to find the proper tutor, and he already had someone in mind whom he thought would fit her perfectly.