Title: Subhuman
Author: iridescentZEN
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine.
Pairing: Willow/Spike Rated: GA. General Adult. Mostly for violence.
Summary: They were both less than human.
Author's notes: Written for the live journal community winterspillow. Also tied in with my Garbage title fics. The song Subhuman is a Garbage b-side and was released as a bonus track on their self-titled album in Japan. It was also released as a CD single in the UK as well as being included on the cd single for Vow.
This wasn't love. It was punishment. Willow's punishment for hurting Dawn, for nearly getting Dawn killed. No one cared that Willow had been hurt, that she had nearly gotten herself killed. All that mattered was precious, not even real Dawnie in Buffy's world. Which made sense when Willow thought about it, because if she had been in Heaven and had to sleep in the next room over from the person who took her out of bliss, she might have mixed feelings too.
Only this. This was totally unexpected. This was Buffy asking Spike to take Willow home while she brought Dawn to the emergency room. This was Spike slapping Willow across the face when she started sobbing again. As if her night hadn't been pathetic enough, she had to deal with the fact that he had caused her pain and received none in return. That his slap was more violent, with more emotion and less reason than Dawn's.
That a tiny microchip implanted by the government to stop him from causing harm had failed her.
Or simply hadn't worked on her. Not this time. Less than human. Subhuman. That must be why. All that dark magic must have changed her at a molecular level.
This was - this was the result. Willow sprawled out on a neighbor's porch, chipped gray paint turning red from her blood. Spike staring down at her as if she were alien before he jumped off of her to sit up on the top step of the porch. The sound of his sniffling made her wince. The memory of the last time she heard his cries, felt his tear drops fat and wet on the skin of her hand, her neck, haunted her. A warehouse of doom with a threatening, broken liquor bottle and the whole lamenting a crazy lost love thing would be fun compared to this.
At least then she wasn't bleeding.
At least then she had a chance.
Spike's hand covered the deep wounds at her throat, his fingers cool and sticky with her blood. "I didn't ... I didn't mean to do this. You know that, Will, right?"
Kinda doesn't matter. Neck gushing blood here, she thought.
Willow continued scratching at the front door of the house. She hadn't stopped since he pounced on her like a cheetah on a gazelle and she landed on this porch. That moment she turned her back to him to run, recognition flaring the moment his chip had failed to work on her. The moment his cold hand had laid the double whammy on a cheek that still burned from the shame of the first slap. When her own magic had left her tapped out, his hand twisting around a chunk of her hair, knotting painfully at the nape of her neck while he used his other hand to swing her around and throw her roughly to the porch. The moment all the wind left her lungs like wisps of smoke from a burned out candle, and she furiously tried to breathe while scrambling back to knock on a door that she knew would never open. Not opened because it was better that they remain uninvited. Smart of the home owner, but damning for her.
Willow's fingernails were bleeding. Some were cracked and broken. Accessories to her soul.
"I just. I just wanted someone else to understand. Bloody ... Oh, God. I never," he pulled her into his embrace by her wrist like she was a rag doll, "I never meant to do this."
That was fine. She never meant to take Dawn to Rack's. Never intended to step foot in that sleaze-bag's den after the first bad trip. Why was that so hard to understand?
The world was strange, and she was all light headed. This porch was familiar, and trying to concentrate was so hard, but she knew deep down in her gut that he wasn't talking about killing her. If he nicked an artery they would both know. The wounds were deep and savage, but the bite wasn't death mete out through mystically sharpened bone enamel.
It was something else.
Something dark and scary like a lurking boogie man just waiting for the lights to go out.
Something warm and comforting. A blanket of ownership wrapped all around her, helping to keep out the cold.
The sound of Willow's breathing was loud in her own ears. Blood covered her neck, saturated the black, low-cut peasant blouse that was much more Buffy than it was Willow. The jacket she wore was useless. Blood dripped down her neck to her chest in a slow burn over Rack's luminescent hand-print of magic that was festering and raw. It pooled uncomfortably between her breasts. She wanted something to say. Something profound and smart. Anything that wasn't a sob or tears because she was so tired of that and that's what led her here.
With a shaky raspy breath she managed to let him in on something, "I died on this porch once."
On Halloween. Dressed as a ghost when all her breath had been taken from her as she became the costume she wore. As she was strangled by magic that wasn't hers and left to die on a porch alone, kept hidden beneath a sheet.
The owner hadn't opened the door then either.
Spike's fingers were in her hair, weaving gently in a comforting manner that she was all too willing to lean into. The body a traitor to the mind. Lips that were soft like micro-fiber slowed at her pulse point before leaving her neck completely. "What's that now?" he asked blankly, dismissing her words. "Must be the blood loss," he said. "I'm not going to kill you, Wil. Haven't wanted to do that for years. Well, not since the dorm room anyway."
Willow's head was practically buried beneath his armpit. The chain links of the ghetto fabulous necklace he was wearing were starting to dig into her neck and shoulder. There was the thought that he didn't want to see her face. Didn't want to confront what he just did anymore than she wanted to confront the idiocy of taking Dawn to Rack's. Because hey - big ball of mystical energy might be kind of tempting to a magic usurper that was into vulnerable little girls.
This was real. This was too screwed up not to be. This was also Them. This strange Willow and Spike thing they had shared over the years. It was all kidnapping, threats, violence and attempted murder with a little bit of strange love in between. Assurances of ego and bite-ability. You're trying too hard. Let's wait a half an hour and try again.
Only in Sunnydale.
Willow moved her hand up to touch the wounds at her throat. The deep punctures were raw and burning, more than the hand-print on her chest. They throbbed with something unholy, keeping perfect rhythm with her heart beat.
"I know what Rack does, Will. I can smell it, smell him all over you. It disgusts me," Spike told her, his eyes cold even as she flinches and turns her head. "He's more dangerous than a spitting cobra, he is. Spits that venom, blinds the third eye and sets about eating you alive."
Willow held her breath when he placed his hand under her shirt, between her breasts. She whimpered when he made contact with her flesh. "Rack made you his, Will. I had to take that away. You're mine now."
Spike's hand was caressing her flesh, moving from the center of her chest up and over her cleavage, gliding over her breasts and she whimpered again, but because she wanted him. Right here, on this porch, in a puddle of her own blood.
It was dirty and wrong, but it wouldn't be the worst thing she did tonight.
There was an unspoken question in Buffy's eyes while time stood still earlier tonight. When Buffy stood towering over her, and Willow kneeled in a sad heap after her legs gave out beneath her. How low can you go? Those hazel orbs silently asked of her. The same way they had for weeks after resurrecting her. After Buffy woke in her coffin, her biggest fear brought to life, perpetrated by her best friend.
How low? Willow thought. This low.
Willow had a feeling that as low as she had already sunk, there was a lot more hole left to sink into. To bury herself in the place of her living-dead friend, magic as her shovel, need as her dirt.
Willow wanted Spike more than anything. With Buffy in the picture, there was no way he would want her back. At least, not on an emotional level. Willow wanted it all. Every nuance of his personality. She wanted every look he sent to be sent her way. Every action to be in reaction to her. Every touch to be only on her skin, and every thought that rambled through his volatile head to be of her.
It happened when he bit her. Slow, like water set to boil. Hardly bubbling at all. Right now it was at a timid boil, and she was afraid of what might happen when it boiled over. It was wrong to want him. Even when her brain started to supply her with all the lusty unconscious thoughts she had way back in the day when Oz left her and she needed something, someone to fill the void because her friends weren't helping, whining wasn't helping, and she ached. They hadn't known that, couldn't see that, but he had. He could always see it, and it bothered her.
All those thoughts, those urges that went away the instant her fingers entwined with Tara's. Like a match caught between fingertips, snuffed out beneath what should burn. The dark, so very wrong attraction she had for Spike turned into wisps of gray smoke before burning out completely. Sparks then afterglow, until all that was left was ash. Tara's light, her flame, her goodness, had burned so passionately that it spread through Willow like an uncontrollable forest fire in her soul. Now that Tara had left, all boxes, tears and dial-tones, the fire was done burning, leaving Willow with a ravaged and unrecognizable landscape that would never truly recover. That would never be the same again.
All Willow knew now was that the fire had been re-ignited by Spike. The careless driver on the freeway, chucking a lit cigarette into the underbrush. No concern for the landscape it will scorch. Somehow there was the knowledge it wouldn't be easily extinguished. It was burning oil on her insides and she felt it everywhere. Her skin should be waxy and pale, but she felt a blush rising that made her pink, sweaty and aroused.
"W-what," her voice sounded child-like and she hated it, "what did you do to me?" she asked, her hand wrapping around his, desperate for contact. Desperate with the need to understand the feelings that were flooding through her. Desperate because the walls were closing in on her, and he had made it impossible for her to magically open a door.
There was no escaping this. There never would be.
There were no more tears in Spike's eyes. There were no trails left behind on his face to show that they even existed. Maybe she imagined them as tears but really it was just left over blood splatter. Right now he seemed detached, resigned in some way to whatever it was he had done. He wasn't scraping his knees on pavement begging for absolution, asking for help. In a way, she was jealous.
Spike tucked an errant strand of Willow's hair behind her ear, his eyes fixed on hers before he answered, "I punished you."
the end