Title: Imagination
Author: Karabair
Description: "Buffy" Season 2, post-"Innocence." A wheelchair-bound Spike contemplates Dru and Angelus, and has his eyes opened to a few things about Slayers. For some reason that I didn't really plan, this is in first person.
Characters/Pairings: Spike/Dru, with overtones of Angelus/Dru and Angelus/Spike. Buffy/Angel mentioned but not in a pleasant way.
Rating: R, for dirty talk.
(2/?)
The point of Drusilla's black fingernail blazed a fiery trail through the scarred canyons of my face. "I see the cobwebs, my Angel," she purred to a spot behind my back. "The dolly's tangled in the cobwebs and it cries to me, cries, cries for refuge." She balanced her weight on the edge of the wheelchair and leaned across until her tongue flickered in my ear. "For sanctuary." There had always been good days and bad days with Drusilla, days she was lucid, almost rational, and days she wouldn't have noticed a herd of elephants stampeding out of the ceiling -- at least, she wouldn't have noticed them if they were actually there. But this, this was one of the worst days I'd seen in a hundred years, and I had a pretty good idea who to blame for that.
"Dru love," I said softly, keeping my eyes on her, letting the conversation be only between us. "It's me here, it's Spike."
Her face pulled away for a moment, to stare intently into my eyes. "Spike," she whispered, stretching it into at least three syllables, throwing an "O" sound in there, the way only she could do. By all the demons in hell, all the ripe slender necks on this earth, and by any merciful God who floated above it all and despised me, by all those things I swore that I would never be able to love a sound the way I loved the name I'd given myself, warped and mangled around Drusilla's tongue.
"Spike," she whispered. Her head pitched from side to side, as though she could not quite manage to focus her eyes. The finger drifted back to my cheek. "I see you wandering lost in the cobwebs. Buried beneath them, your face. Wait." Her eyes narrowed, the pupils almost flattening into feline slits. "Wait, I see the treasure. I know the key. Wait." The sharp ends of her nails closed around the edge of a scar, and in a split second motion she ripped, tearing a two-inch strip of skin neatly away from my face. My body jerked with the pain and the chair lurched to the side, almost spilling both of us, before I righted myself, and Dru jumped to her feet.
A howl of laughter erupted from behind me and I whirled the chair around in a few jerky movements. "You stay out of this, you bloody great poof." Which was just what Angelus looked like, trying to pull off the leather and chains look, like somebody's dad shown up for a punk show. Gone soft in his old age, Angelus had, out of touch with the times. The bloody soul was just an excuse; I'd known some pretty nasty characters with a helluva lot less demon in them than super-poofter Angel. Gone and made himself a bloody lapbitch for the Slayer -- the Slayer! It didn't get any lower than that. That last little indiscretion with the girl had brought old Angelus to his senses. And that was the problem. Angelus's senses did not always make the greatest company.
Now Angelus shrugged expansively. "Now don't be sore, Spoooiiiike, " he said. "She's just helping you get rid of the cobwebs."
"Don't," I warned. Stabbing my finger at him, trying to look as menacing as possible for someone who lacked the ability to stand without unendurable pain, realizing the futility of the exercise, refusing to back down. "Don't mock her. You of all people, don't you fucking dare." I turned to Dru again, took her arm, pulled her down to the side of the chair, and let her lean as much of her weight onto my chest as I could endure. "Dru? Sweetheart? Those are third degree burns, baby. No cobwebs, OK?" Her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed with trying to follow me. I sighed. "Nothing wrong with your dolly, all right? Nothing wrong a little time won't heal." On my cheek, I felt the cool trickle of blood beginning to fall from the wound she had opened.
"Heal." She weaved her head one way and the other, and her eyes suddenly focused as if she saw the word floating in the air before us. "Heal." Her lips erupted into a smile, her tongue darted out and she leaned her mouth in to pounce on the blood. Drusilla had a cat's barbed tongue to go with her cat's eyes, sharp and soft, warm and cold at once, nerves of shock and pleasure shooting through my body. "That," I gasped. "That you can do all day."
She pulled away to look in my eyes, her mouth widening into a child's astonished and unspoiled delight. "It talks. It likes us." Then an immediate petulant pout. "It won't love us. Won't do that. Won't make our toenails go all squishy like."
A sharp barking laugh from Angelus punctuated this. "Oh, bloody hell, Dru." I grabbed the back of her head and pulled her lips in to meet mine, pushing my tongue inside her, penetrating the caverns of her mouth, tasting the iron bite of my own blood. Sharp and stale, not the warmth of human blood, but a taste I had learned to love when it came off Drusilla's tongue. She pulled out of the kiss first, while I tried to linger, but when she squeezed her face in concentration, I knew what she was doing, saw her bite, firmly and hard, the inside of her own cheek. She bent again toward my leaking cut, sucked in more of my blood, and brought her mouth back toward me. "It tastes of us both, our water and fire. . ."
"Earth and air," I gasped, and pushed my tongue into her again, tunneling for the hollow of her cheek, where I tasted the blend of both of us. I knew the taste of her blood, older than mine, ripened into something sweet and rotten, the taste of ecstasy, and for all the pain I could feel my body rising to meet her, and for all the agony, I was ready to have her. I knew the answer to this one. Whatever didn't kill you made you stronger. . .
Except when it didn't. Dru started to move into my lap, and I convulsed again. When her weight rose off of me, I thought I had pushed her away, until I saw Angelus loom above me, lifting her body away.
"Really now, kids," said Angelus. "I'd tell you to get a room, except that. . ."
"Except that we have one," I said. "And you're in it."
"Well," said Angelus. "Ain't that just a shame."
END part 2