Mornings left Angel dead, literally. Whenever Buffy woke, it was always to see him resting still and cold next to her. Sleep robbed him of all the little tricks of humanity he had perfected over the centuries, tricks like breathing and occasionally moving. It was eerie, seeing him as he rested; no true human could stay as still as Angel. Everything about it was unnatural, but she had grown to love that as well. Sleepy still, she took a moment to study the man, no, the vampire, that she had chosen to share her life with. His hair was still thick and tousled, his unaging face still held hints of the boy he must of once been all those decades ago, back when his heart still beat. Careful not to wake him, she traced the outlines of his familiar features with a finger, not actually letting herself touch him, just letting herself remember all their years of history. His cool skin absorbed the heat from her finger as it hovered over his face. She wondered how long it would be until she looked older than him, if she would live that long.
She had never been quite sure what had brought Angel back into her life. One day he had just shown up, Conner in tow, and said, very simply and very sincerely, that leaving her had been the stupidest choice he had ever made. She could only stand in the doorway and stare, because nothing in her life had ever made her think that he would come back this way, come back to her at all. Angel was a drop in, drop out kind of a guy; he never came back to stay. Eventually, clearly taking her silence as refusal, he added hesitantly that he had always loved her. It had been over a year now, and he had never given her a reason for his return, had never offered her any explanations on what about his life in L.A. that brought him back here. After awhile, she stopped asking.
Buffy remembered numbly stepping aside to let him and the kid into the house, hastily re-inviting Angel when it became clear that the significant amount of remodeling that Xander had done to the house had managed to cancel out Angel's earlier welcome. The first few days had been awkward, trying to get used to Angel's presence in her life, all the ways that it changed things. It had taken her so long to figure out how to live without him that she no longer knew how to be with him. Some days she would just sit and watch him, drinking in the sight of him, it was that hard to believe he was real, that he had come back. At first he had slept in the basement, far away from the light, far away from her and the temptation he made her feel. What was she supposed to do? What did he want from her, what did she want from him? What could possibly be left for them? It was easier to have him out of eyesight.
It had been a week before anything really happened between them. They had been sort of carefully dancing around each other, as they tried to figure out if there was any way that they could be anything to each other again. Buffy had never told Angel, because why would she, but she had been terrified about trying the whole romance thing again. Spike had been her last... her last who knew what and god knows that had been nothing to brag about, any part of it. Especially the part where he booked out of town as soon as she admitted she actually loved him. After that fiasco, why would she even want to try another relationship? And she was scared, really very scared, that no man would ever stay in her life. For all that she tried to reach out, tried to be honest with her feelings, all her lovers left, one by one, until she had started to wonder if it was some curse of being the slayer, that she would always be, at the heart of things, completely alone. So though she had seen Angel watch her with that old, familiar heat in his eyes, she had been too nervous to act on it, wondering if he too would be gone the next morning, or, even worse, be Angelus. She wondered how she had ever found the courage to kiss him, all those years ago, when she was so scared now.
Angel must have grown tired of waiting though, because one day while she was making tea in the kitchen, he had reached out and laid a single cool hand on top of hers and somehow that touch, the sheer fact that he had reached out for her, combined with the fact that he had come back for her, hit some strange cord in her memory. It was nothing she could really recall, just a strange sense of deja vue as he touched her hand, and then she was lost and they were kissing, really kissing after all those years, and it was really him, arms wrapped around her. They managed to get control of themselves before they did anything that might cause Angel to lose his soul happened, but from that day on, there had been no turning back. They had been a couple again. He had come back. To her. For her. No one had ever done that before. She was determined to keep this one thing, when she had lost so much else. She absolutely refused to lose him again.
He was not, Buffy reflected now, as she watched him rest, quite the Angel that she had loved so desperately back in high school. There were flashes of something different, something deeper, moving under the surface, but whatever it was, Angel seemed content to let it lie and she wasn't going to fight him on that. Let him have his secrets. She was, after all, not quite the girl he had known. Everyone grows up, even the undead.
Damn. She loved him, she really did. Mysterious, unspoken of past, sullen teenage son that wasn't hers, brooding silences and all, she loved him. And that was why she was so scared now. Spike showing up again confused things, threw her carefully ordered world so far out of sync that she had no idea how to make things right again. The careful puzzle-pieces of the life she had put together with Angel, Conner and Dawn were all being pulled apart. Last night with Angel had shown how fragile that life had been, seeing how far he would go just to convince her that he was the one for her. She didn't want Angel to prove his love for her, only to wake up next to Angelus.
But what to do about Spike? Seeing him was like seeing a ghost, like sliding back through time. She could still picture that old Buffy, brazen because really, what did she have to lose? A life she wasn't sure she really wanted, now that she had it? A world of responsibilities on shoulders that had only recently been nothing but bone and the memory of muscle? There should be nothing about her memories of Spike that brought her any happiness, nothing she should be wistful for, but there it was. She missed him, his tough bravado and his glass sharp sense of humor. She missed how she felt when he looked at her, like a goddess, like a devil, like the only woman in the world. She had never meant to fall in love with him, wasn't quite sure how it happened. She only knew that, bit by bit, she had realized that she could not imagine a life without him in it, sarcastic and sniping, cynical and hopelessly romantic, all at once. So then, like a fool, she had told him, and he was gone before the sun rose again. Jerk. And even with everything else in her life now, she still felt that pain of his disappearance, the nagging sense of something left unfinished, only put on pause. The past crowded around her, heavy and insistent, every time she thought of him, every inch of her reminding her why it was she had loved him in the first place, even against her own commonsense. Losing him had been like losing some part of herself that she had never even known that she had been hers until he tore it.
She had to do something about this. She had to finish the past so that she could get on with her present. She had to end things with Spike. Deep in her mind, her conscience skittered and whispered to her, reminding her that if it was this hard for her to see Spike again, that she should imagine how hard it was for Angel to deal with him again, with the past he had never wanted Buffy to know, a past with Spike. Though her mind traveled to a thousand wicked places when she tried to picture that, she couldn't imagine what they had actually been like together. She was trying hard to not imagine it.
Feeling all tangled up in confusion, Buffy got up of bed, and made her way to the shower, where she washed all of the memories of last night off of her skin. It had been good, very good, but then had come the fear, that they had come to close to losing Angel's soul again, and now she just wanted to forget that he could do things like that before she got to needing it again and again. God, she ached. Angel was good, very good; she wanted things he could never give her again.
Despite the fact that it was a non-class Saturday for Buffy, Angel was almost sure to sleep in. Though he tried to keep as human a schedule as possible, there was no escaping the fact the he was meant to sleep the day away. Which, today at least, was just fine for her. She wanted to, needed to, had to, find where Spike was and the less company she had for that, the better. There were things she needed to say to him, things that had been unsaid for much too long. This had to be put to rest. Everything else in her life was in danger until she managed to lay all of her old ghosts. This insane love triangle, threesome thing had to end. She couldn't take the stress of it.
She tried the old crypt first because she remembered him saying that, since he died, he didn't like the feel of human homes. They reminded him, he said, of all the things he had loved and lost that night he gave himself up to Drusilla. He couldn't stand the taste of that much humanity around him around anymore, that it made him feel every inch of the monster he was. She strode in like she owned the place, because that was the only way to be with Spike, strong from the start so even if, at some point, you became weak, you still had the memory of strength to hold you up when everything went wobbly. She needed any advantage that she could get.
It was dark in the crypt, and dusty, and as soon as its walls closed around her, she could remember everything that she and Spike used to do in there. Two years later and muscle memory still sent a thrill down her spine. There was almost no part of this place she could look at that didn't carry a reflection of their shared past. She shivered, wishing again that she could put it all behind her and knowing that she couldn't. Just the fact that she had come back here was proof of that. Why couldn't she ever get over any man? Why was she always haunted by these things?
"Spike?" she called and was proud of herself for the confidence in her voice. "Spike, you here?"
A pale and glimmering body pulled itself up gracefully from the tunnel to the basement, made the shadows its own. "You don't have to shout, pet, the shadow said, I've never been deaf."
"Spike."
"In the flesh, as it were," he said and took a step towards her, predatory, beautiful.
The look of Spike/Not-Spike was still new enough to hit her like a blow. There was so much about him that was familiar: the cocky tone of his voice; the arrogance that suffused every inch of him; the way he walked like he was hunting. But now there was the black hair, and the black tattoos standing out like stains on his too-white skin. He had his shirt off and she could see that there was actually more than one. The tattoo she had spotted the other night, the mere tip of it peeking out from the loose shirt, was reveled to be some kind of an elaborate stylistic dragon curling over his shoulder. The other, completely new to her, was a small omega sign wrapped around his right nipple, which, she couldn't help but notice, was now pierced by a delicate silver ring. Buffy was staring, she knew she was, but she couldn't quite look away, seeing as she had become hypnotized by the sight of his bare chest. She whispered to herself angrily, reminding herself that she was only here to put the past where it belonged. It was not that she could not resist the sight of him.
"See something you like, love?" he asked sardonically after noticing her stare. As he spoke, he took a slow step towards her. Buffy could feel the blood rise to her face saw how it caught and held his interest; it was the blood that drew him in, an aphrodisiac that no vampire could resist. In front of him, she felt powerful, beautiful. Feeling a little evil, feeling exactly the way he always made her feel, she let her head drop to the side, giving him a clear view of her neck and the artery that ran through it, a clear view of the scars left by Angel and Dracula. Vampire foreplay was not human, but it could be learned. Spike's eyes tracked her movement, locked on her neck like he couldn't look away. When he spoke again, his voice sounded more strained than it had only a few moments before. It wasn't just the lure of blood and sex stretching his voice out, either. Buffy knew it was also the reminder that she had never allowed Spike to mark her, never given to him what she had to the others. Anger and lust mixed together in his rough face and the sound made her shiver. "What do you want, Buffy?"
Buffy tried to beat down the guilt that tried to creep in on her. This was not about Angel; he had no place here. This was just to say good-bye, just to put an end to things. She took a step towards him, as slow as his had been, closing the gap between them by inches. This would be simple. It wasn't about need; it was just about closure. "I want to get you out of my mind. I want to get past you, over you."
"You want me," he said, agreeing with only the first half of the statement. "So you left your precious Angel and came to me." He moved another foot towards her, slow and sinuous, sex walking.
"He's sleeping." It was not a strong defense. She should have said something about Angel knowing, she should have lied. She had never been good at lying to Spike. Her turn for a step; somehow, she doubted that she did it as well. She was shaking and she didn't even care. The accusations were chasing all her rationalizations all through her mind, one following the other so quickly that she could barely follow them. She was dizzy with the speed of them.
"So I shouldn't think this is a permanent thing, then?" Spike looked furious with himself as he took another step forward, but whatever his feelings were, they weren't strong enough to keep him from moving closer. A quick glance down showed why; Spike had never been that could at controlling his baser nature.
"He'll wake up soon enough and I should be there." There, that sounded good: A time line, a set ending. She took another step forward, almost against her own will. Now there was only twelve inches between them. If Spike were alive, she would have been able to feel the heat from his body.
"Smelling of me?" Spike asked in a whisper, the words seeming to be dragged out of his body by some force stronger than himself. He seemed to basking in the warmth of her, the scent.
"Depends how hard you're trying," she answered, all good sense out the window when she was standing this close to him and it had been so long. This was good-bye, nothing more, nothing less. But even as she told herself that, she knew at least part of her was lying. She was here because she couldn't stay away. She tried to feel guilty about that, about this betrayal of everything she had with Angel, god knows that she had felt bad enough coming here, but it was like Angel's Buffy and Spike's Buffy were two very different people and what the one felt had no bearing on what the other did. And Angel's' Buffy was long gone now, replaced by Spike's rough and ready lover.
Spike was fighting himself, it was clear, and it frankly surprised her. Who knew that Spike cared enough for human morals to feel anguish over the fact that she wasn't coming to him a free woman? Who knew he would have any guilt at all about borrowing her temporarily from Angel? Who cared? She had made up her mind, had thrown caution to the wind, and she just wanted him to do the same damn thing. She burned for him despite all the times she told herself she wasn't interested in him.
"You've got that white picket fence and everything." As last-ditch arguments went, it lacked something. She was pretty sure, however, that he was making a point in there somewhere. She was pretty sure that she didn't care. She had already lost and he was losing. There was only one way this could end, and then she would finally be free of him. Then she could back to Angel as only one Buffy, with no missing pieces.
"This isn't forever, you know," she stammered, Angel's Buffy talking out of Spike's Buffy's mouth, a startling change. "It's really important that you know that. I just... I keep remembering everything that I thought I forgot and I just keeping hoping that if I..."
"Screw me?" he suggested crudely as she trailed off, struggling for words. Buffy could feel all the breath knock out of her at his response, but the images in her head couldn't be denied anymore. Whatever she had planned for the end of her sentence, whatever very important truth she had been planning to tell him there, it had been knocked out of her mind by the glint in Spike's eyes. Angel's Buffy fled from that frankly carnal look and the rest of her rejoiced. This was what she needed, a vacation from reality. Screw Spike? She could do that.
"Pretty much," she agreed and then his arms were grabbing her, just as hard as they used to be, and there was no room at all between them, not even room to breath, to think. Which she didn't care about at all because it was Spike kissing her again, Spike touching her again, and it was everything she had tried to forget in Angel's arms and Angel's bed and couldn't. And when he lowered her to the floor and reminded her of a few more things, she almost forgot about Angel entirely. The last thing she remembered asking was, "So, what else did you get pierced?" and his wicked, knowing chuckle as he answered with, "Just you wait and see." And then it was all feeling, no brain involved at all. And that was just fine with her.
When they were finally done, when she had finally lost the hunger that had burned through her at the mere sight of him, she lay in his arms and just rested, strangely comforted by his closeness. She loved Angel, it was like a deep river running through her life, that love for him, but she loved Spike too, and there were some times when that was easier to remember than others. If Angel was the river, Spike was the ocean with all its tides, pulling her in and pushing her away, a force of nature she had no control over. As she watched, he was trailing one black-nailed finger down one of the blue veins in her breasts, his eyes running over every inch of her skin like he was trying to memorize her.
"Christ, I missed this," he said lazily, his voice sounding sated, heavy and tired.
"What, sex?" she retorted. She had never known what to say to Spike after they had been together, had always felt confused. When she wanted him, that was the only thing in her mind, but the confusion came afterwards, when she remembered that he was supposed to be her mortal enemy. The guilt was starting to drift back again too, washing back in as the tide receded, but she felt almost too good to care.
"Sex with you," he corrected. "There's been no one else, Buff. Not since there was you. No one else smelled right, felt right."
"That skank at Xander and Anya's almost wedding?" she asked, disbelieving.
"Not you," he repeated quietly. "No one was you. All this time, if it wasn't you, it was my hand and me wishing it was you."
"Gross, Spike, I didn't want to know that," she protested, trying to pretend that it wasn't a rush to hear that. No one else? Not once, not even a drunken one-night stand. Without her prompting, her mind started drawing pictures of Spike, all alone with his hand, calling her name. She fought the urge to curl into his cool body, resisted it because they had never had that kind of a relationship, because that was not why she was here, was not why she had come.
"So, how long had it been for you then?" he asked, laughter lurking in his voice.
Buffy stayed quiet for a minute, not wanting to feed the pride she could almost see growing under his skin. But she finally gave up and answered, "Since you left," and almost didn't mind when he immediately began gloating. A last little piece of attitude however, forced her to add smugly, "Didn't need it with Angel."
"Almost didn't need it," he corrected, his voice underlining that first word. "You're forgetting who just spent a fair amount of hours with."
"Hours?" she repeated in shock, and all the thoughts of Angel that she had forced back came rushing forward and she was almost drowning in guilt now. "Oh my god, what have I done? Spike, what am I going to tell him?"
Spike rolled over onto his back, rested his head on his folded arms. "Sort of hoped you had that planned out before you came here." His voice was cool, distant, pissed, the way he had always sounded when some action of hers reminded him that nothing between them had ever been meant to last.
"It was a good plan in my mind," she muttered, searching around for her clothes, trying to absolve herself of any wrong doing. This was good-bye. Things were finished between her and Spike now, really they were.
He had nothing to say to that, simply watched her as she pulled on her clothes, fought with her hair. She was struggling to go home looking like she hadn't just spent hours in another man's bed. Or floor. She had come here trying to lose her desire for him, hoping that she could just get him out of her system and then go home to Angel. So far, the plan seemed to have failed, but maybe it was because he was still naked and staring at her with heat in his eyes. She so had to get out of here, had to escape before she ran away from Angel and all her responsibilities and threw herself right back into Spike's arms.
As she was ducking out the entrance, Spike's voice calling her name stopped her. "Buffy? Love? Just answer me one question before you go scampering off. Why are you with him?"
She looked into the sunlight, into all the places that neither Spike nor Angel could go. "Because I love him. And because you weren't there." The streak of cruelty he had always brought out in her was back in force and she welcomed it, because it made it easier to walk out on him, back into the sun, back where he couldn't follow. She had a family to get back to.
"You're late," said Angel, startling Buffy as she tried to slip quietly into the kitchen. "I'm sure you meant to leave Spike's a lot sooner."
She sat gingerly at the kitchen table, wincing at the stretch of muscles that, after a year, she had almost forgotten she had. The guilt came washing back again, almost crushing in its weight. "I'm sorry. I didn't want you to know."
"Because that was a real challenge." His voice was flat, emotionless, and she couldn't get any feel for how he was taking this.
"We needed to talk."
"That would probably be more believable if you had taken a shower before coming home. Were you thinking that I wouldn't smell him on you? You reek of my childe." His voice rumbled like thunder as he spit out the last sentence.
"Dru's childe," she corrected warily, trying to figure out where he was going with this. Strange, but this wasn't the route she had expected that his anger would take. Sure, he sounded jealous, but it didn't really seemed to be directed at Spike.
"Mine," he said with a snarl, and she pulled back a bit, startled.
"Okay, yours," she agreed hastily. She had never understood the relationship between Spike, Dru and Angel and the recent revelations weren't making that relationship any easier to figure out.
Silence fell as Buffy watched Angel struggle with his rage. She hoped the kids were out, doing normal human things. If this went bad, she didn't want them here. Angel was visibly holding himself together, forcing a layer of calmness over an almost feral anger. There was a glint in his eyes that she hadn't seen since she had last fought with Angelus and it scared her. She wondered again if last night had brought them closer than they should've gotten to losing his soul. Could they lose pieces of it? A slice here, a slice there, until the man she loved was just a shell over a totally different creature. Maybe he was only have the man he was before.
"Why?" he finally asked carefully. "Why did you go back to him?"
"So I could forget him. We never had a proper good-bye." Even as she spoke, she knew she was lying. She had gone back because she couldn't stay away, because something in her needed something in him. Angel's eyes on her were dark and intent; he didn't believe her either. She tried to pretend she wasn't afraid of what she saw in his eyes, what she saw in his face, but she couldn't convince herself of that. He had noticed her fear, he was drinking it in like blood.
Suddenly he smiled, not his usual one, but a hard, mocking one. Uneasily, Buffy stirred under the heat that had suddenly appeared in his eyes. The smile grew until it bloomed into a full-grown laugh and Buffy's nervousness grew.
Angel laughed and laughed; he laughed until he was drawing in unneeded breaths just so he could laugh more. Shocked, Buffy could only stare. Who was this and what had he done with her real boyfriend?
Eventually, Angel calmed down to stand. He dropped an almost absent-minded kiss on the top of her head. You know what, love? Now that you remind me of it, I remember that neither did I. Whistling, he strode out of the kitchen and down the basement steps, towards the tunnel he had connected to the city sewers so he could get around during the daytime. Buffy stayed where she had sat down, feeling frozen in place, listening to the sound of his passing grow fainter and fainter. Where was he going? What had she brought to the surface?