Secondary Disclaimer: This story is set in some vague time between the 4th and 7th seasons, but Tara never died. Anything that may have happened on "Angel" is not included here, because I haven't been able to see that show beyond the first season.
Enjoy, and please let me know what you think!
Angel, you know it's not the end/ we'll always be good friends/ the letters have been sent....
Buffy stared up at the ceiling. The soft light of a street lamp filtered through tree branches and cast shadows on the walls of her bedroom. It was one of those summer evenings when blue seemed to linger in the sky forever, and extra daylight kept nocturnal creatures at bay and gave the slayer a holiday of sorts. A few summers ago, Buffy would have welcomed this phenomenon, but now the lack of work just gave her more time to ponder things she'd rather not have thought about at all. The music drowned out her thoughts for a moment, and she could still feel its rhythm as she drifted off to sleep.
It was the same dream as always, the same images that had slowly begun etching themselves indelibly into her unconscious mind over the past few months. Buffy was lying in a room that, in the typical manner of dreams, represented her own but was not quite the same. She draped a thin blanket over her naked body and propped herself up on her elbows. There were footsteps, coming up the stairs and then down the hallway-- confident, masculine footsteps. She knew it was Angel; it had to be. He had realised that they were meant to be together after all, and had come here to spend thenight in her arms, where he belonged. Buffy ran her fingers through her hair, and smiled as the door opened to reveal....Spike.
"Come on, love," he said, lips pursed in his signature smirk, "you didn't really think that your darling Angelus had lost his senses completely, did you? He knows you're nothing but trouble, just like I do."
Before Buffy could respond, another figure appeared in the background, a shadow in the darkened corridor. A pair of muscular arms wrapped themselves around Spike's waist, and a familiar voice mumbled something quietly in his ear. Buffy knew who it was before she even saw his face. So he must have turned evil again, she thought. How else could he be doing something like this? But as his face emerged into the dim light of her bedroom, she could see in his eyes that he was still in possession of his soul.
They stood in the doorway, kissing each other gently but with a passion that was undeniable. Angel lowered his head and his lips met Spike's; even from her vantage point on the bed, Buffy could see as Angel slipped his tongue inside the other vampire's willing mouth. She shouted at them to stop, but they seemed to be deaf to anything outside of themselves; she tried to rise from her bed, but found that she was glued to the spot.
Buffy woke in the middle of the night, heart pounding, as she so often did after having a prophetic dream. This dream, however, was no prophecy; Buffy knew that what she had seen was not a warning of a possible future. This was the present. Buffy tried to block out the memory of this dream, tried to rid her mind of the image of Angel and Spike locked in an embrace. She thought about how things had been just a few short years ago, back when Spike had first come to town and Angel had helped her fight against his evil plans. It was love that had kept him in Sunnydale then, too....but back then, it had been Buffy that he had loved.
