Buffy ground her teeth hard enough to feel the protest of muscle beneath her jaw as the blows she was raining down on the Magic Box's punching bag shuddered her frame.
It was becoming rapidly apparent that—this one time—violence was maybe not the answer. Or at least not enough of the answer.
She'd set the recently deserted (entirely disgusting) vampire warehouse on fire, and she was now expressing her feelings through the interpretive dance of double-jabs and backhands. Her knuckles were almost bruising as she brutalized the pleather hard enough to set the seams bulging under the pressure as she attempted to keep the deluge of thoughts back from the dam of distraction she was desperately trying to fortify.
It wasn't working. They were bursting through anyway. Thoughts of—she swallowed down the rising bile—Riley.
She could taste the hot angry salt of tears in the back of her throat and punched harder lest they got any completely stupid ideas of rising into her eyes. It had all happened in a matter of seconds, but the scene was imprinted on the back of her eyelids, as well lit and detailed as one of the paintings in her mother's gallery.
…Riley with a vampire. A writhing, lightly-groaning, unmistakably-female, vampire—
Don't you dare cry—
…The way her fangs had sunk into Riley's arm after giving a bored look towards the door. The half moan he'd uttered as she pressed closer in between his legs—
Don't you fucking dare cry!
…The glazed look he'd had as he watched the vampire lapping at his vein, a look of unmistakable lust twisting his usually genial features into a face she didn't recognize—-
"Argh!" Buffy let go a punch so forceful that the pleather ruptured, spilling sawdust onto the floor.
Okay, so the meant-to-be-cathartic workout really wasn't cutting it.
She started unwrapping her wrists in jerky, frantic tugs. It wasn't enough. She needed a fight. She needed a down-and-out brawl to feel better about this, but the daylight streaming in through the windows was unjustly restricting her options.
Not for the first time she wished the chip in Spike's head would short circuit, if only for an hour. A pang of self-reproach at that wish was just a momentary bubble in the roiling ocean of over-emotion. If ever there was a fight that would distract her from the brand-new, viscerally-gaping wound in her heart it would be the life or death battle she'd only ever experienced with him.
Plus it would have had the added bonus of at least aiming her anger at a semi-responsible party (rather than the punching bag that seemed to be sagging in relief from the respite) since he'd obviously done it on purpose. He'd paraded Riley's infidelity in front of her, reveling in the shock, refusing to give her any kind of warning as he marched her up the stairs toward her doom.
He'd wanted to see the hurt in her eyes.
He'd wanted to watch her heart break.
He'd wanted to inflict some pain after being thoroughly violence-deficient thanks to the leash Riley's battalion had inflicted on him, and so he'd opted for the nice, voltage-free, emotional variety.
And that thought stung more than she expected it would. It stung, and it stung that it stung. She wouldn't care (or be surprised) but it had felt—after her weepy conversation with him on the back porch, when he'd offered an awkward pat on the back and an attentive ear—that maybe there was something more to their dynamic than just pure hatred.
My mistake, she thought angrily, squashing the rising bile of betrayal.
"I just thought you should know."
Buffy scoffed, wiping her nose on the back of her hand as the tears in her eyes abandoned her tear ducts in favor of other means of escape.
"Just thought I should know." Yeah, right! How super considerate!
Her anger's compass swung suddenly off due-Riley on a different direction, the needle quivering with fury.
This was Spike's fault. This was definitely, definitely Spike's fault. And hey, guess what? That jerk still had a thoroughly breakable face, chip or no chip, so problem: solved.
"Hey, firestarter," Xander called over in nervous joviality as she stormed through the Magic Box, shrugging her jacket over her shoulders. "You wanna talk about—"
"Nope," she bit out, still furious that he'd dared suggest that she—Buffy, the Slayer, hello?!—wait for Riley's 'backup' to handle the vampire cesspit he had been frequenting.
She hauled the door open so hard the bell hit the wall.
The slam behind her was marginally satisfying, the crash echoing down the street as she assaulted the pavement in a furious march towards Restfield.
The walk did nothing to calm her down. The overgrown grass of the cemetery tangled around her ankles as though intentionally trying to raise her blood pressure further. She let out a furious huff once Spike's crypt finally rose into view. Surprisingly the door was open, and she briefly lamented the good kicking-in she'd planned to give it when she heard the shouting coming from inside.
"-Let's be reasonable about this!" Spike's voice cried out as Buffy sidled up to the crypt's windows, catching Riley mid-slam as he pinned Spike against the stone pillar.
"You may have noticed, Spike-" Buffy flinched as Riley broke a fist across Spike's face, his knuckles making a crunching sound of bone meeting bone. "I left 'reasonable' about three exits back."
Buffy's lips pursed into a thin line of indignant rage, fists curling tighter, the red mist doubling and then tripling. Stupid, cheating Riley stealing her vengeance moment. He should be at home wallowing over the stupid decisions he'd made. Scratch that, he should be out looking for her! He should be running all over town searching for her, not here harassing the admittedly well-deserving idiot who'd unveiled the whole disgusting affair.
"Look, I'm not the one who got you into this. Don't kill the messenger," Spike replied, managing to shake off the blow.
…True, Buffy thought begrudgingly after a moment of hesitation, though still wanting to at least beat the snot out of the messenger.
Riley's face was a picture of revulsion, fury etched into every pore. He pulled his arm back and the breath in Buffy's lungs halted, her blood froze in her veins, as she glimpsed the stake in his hand.
Oh God!
No—
WAIT!
"Why the hell not?" Riley growled as he drove it home into Spike's chest. She spun away from the window, burying her face in her hands, unable to watch the face that had sneered, and smirked, and leered at her for the better (or maybe worse?) part of three years burst into dust, crumbling into a visage of death and collapsing at Riley's feet.
Oh, God, he's gone.
Her pulse thundered in her ears, pounding so hard it seemed to blur her vision.
Oh God. Gone…
Gone…
The tears she'd been keeping on the sidelines burst forth, horror sweeping in as she slid down into the grass, her legs buckling beneath her. He'd known her, was the thing. In a strange, sick way that she didn't really want to think about—but was unable to stop herself from thinking about—he'd known her better than her friends, family, peers, watcher, boyfriend, the whole parade, the entire Sunnydale population. He knew her fists, and he knew her violence, and he knew her power, and was perhaps the only one to see that part of her and survive. He was hers to battle with, and hers to kill if the final showdown ever came to it, and hers to fight and scrap and snarl with, and as much as they loathed each other, as much as they were a thorn in each other's side, this end was…was…
Wrong! Her mind screamed as these thoughts rocketed through her mind on a single pulse. Wrong! Unfair! Un… worthy…
Shame swept in—she should've watched, if he was gone she should've watched!—quickly replaced with fresh flames of anger at Riley, his petty vengeance for having his secrets so maliciously unveiled wrenching her enemy permanently out of the world. No more fights, no more spats, no more spiteful back and forths that left her buzzing, lit up like a lightbulb. Gone.
Screams brought her back—recognizably Spike's—and a dizzying wave of relief sparked adrenaline in her veins.
Riley missed his heart! She hurriedly brushed the tears off her cheeks. He missed! GET UP, he won't miss next time!
She scrambled to her feet and nearly tripped as Riley's voice dropped a tone or two lower into fresh icy depths.
"Plastic wood-grain. Looks real, doesn't it?"
Buffy gasped, lightheaded from the poison in Riley's intentions as she stumbled through the open door just as Spike looked down at his chest, bewildered.
"Don't think I don't know what's going on with you, Spike," Riley growled. "Stay away from her. Or we'll do this for real next time—"
"RILEY!" she screamed.
Spike's head snapped up and his mouth framed her name. "Buffy…"
Riley turned, loosening his fingers from the stake protruding from Spike's heart, and she met his chin with her fist, unintentionally punching him back into Spike, causing a wet gurgled groan to escape his lungs as the stake went deeper.
"You! Sick! Creep!" Buffy screamed, dragging him off Spike and shoving him towards the door. "A plastic stake?! You sociopath!" Maybe the adrenaline and the betrayal was affecting her mental stability but she didn't even wobble on the suddenly vaulted position of high horsed-ness she'd found herself in. If Spike was going to be staked it would be her stake and it'd be an entirely real one and she'd have fucking fought him to a standstill for it!
"Buffy?" Riley's darkly manic eyes flashed to hers, staring out at her from a face she no longer recognized; cruel and sadistically twisted as he drew in breath and let out a bitter snort, shaking his head and rubbing his jaw. "Should've guessed."
"Should have guessed what?!" she shouted, and for his part Riley barely moved.
"Let's go," he commanded rather than answer her question, turning to leave. "We need to talk. Come on," he added motioning with a double-flick of his fingers towards the door.
"I'm sorry," she scoffed, shaking her head. "Do I look like one of your soldier commandos? Did I suddenly sprout army fatigues and a regulation buzzcut? Where the hell do you get off ordering me around?"
"Let's go!" he repeated louder.
"What did you mean 'Should. Have. Guessed'?!" she insisted, refusing to budge.
Riley's neck tightened, the tendons threatening to pop as he towered over her, moved closer to her, and a voice somewhere off to the side of Buffy's cognition noted that if she was just a girl, standing in front of this boy, she'd be in a very bad place.
"Should have guessed you'd swing by, Buffy," he answered with deadly calm. "Must not have been thinking clearly, expecting you to go anywhere else."
"What is that supposed to mean?" she demanded, drowning out Spike's snide mumble of "Blood-loss'll do that to you."
"Did you come to cry on your new best friend's shoulder?" he asked, his voice implying he'd already decided what her answer was. "Or let him sink his teeth into yours?"
Buffy paled, the palm of her hand itching to deliver a fierce slap across his face, but she fought it back down. She'd end up dislocating his jaw and she wanted answers.
"How do you have the nerve to ask me something as repulsive as that!?" she growled, visibly vibrating with mounting rage. "After I found you in that… that… place?!"
"Suckhouse," Spike supplied, helpfully.
"I so was not asking," Buffy bit back.
Riley let out a chuckle, shaking his head as a smile of exasperation stretched his lips into a grim smirk. "I think this might be a pot calling the kettle black situation."
"You're not seriously denying it?" she asked, spitting venom.
"I'm just pointing out the similarities here," he said, raising his hands in supplication as though they were previously having a reasonable conversation, and out of nowhere she was becoming hysterical. "You've got to admit charging in to save hostile-seventeen maybe undermines your ability to act the offended party."
"Oh believe me, 'offended' doesn't even begin to cover it," she hissed. "If you think you're gonna get away with the completely idiotic, stupid, reckless, revolting, thing you've been sneaking out behind my back to do—"
"You're right, it was reckless," he interrupted, voice steady like he'd already rehearsed his part in this fight, and wasn't remotely interested in her part of the dialogue. "It was, I admit it, but God Buffy, I just wanted to get it. To get you. Why I'm not enough for you! The biting… it was just a way to figure out why you keep letting it happen. Why Dracula—"
"I'm sorry, let it happen? Let it?!" she shouted just as Spike muttered an acidic curse of "youwanker". "Hello, thralled?! From what I remember Giles was six feet deep in a pit full of brides and Xander was chowing down on bugs like they were oreos!"
"And the other marks?" Riley persisted, glaring at her neck; bare but for the two well-faded scars just above her jugular. "Was that a thrall? Any mystical gun to your head that time?" he asked, rhetorically.
Buffy's expression dropped several degrees below freezing, along with her tone. "I did that to save a person I love, Riley. I let Angel bite me to save him. What I didn't do is dance off into the night, into an entire hornets nest of vampires, and open a vein!"
"So it's different. You're different. Fine. I get it," Riley snarled, his face reddened into a crimson hue as soon as she'd mentioned Angel by name. "But I think we can both agree it's not just life-or-death situations that get you to cross that black-and-white line."
"Do you maybe feel like throwing an example my way?" Buffy asked. "Because last time I counted I only had the two bite marks."
Riley's nostrils flared, belaying the suppressed grudge he was about to unearth. "Do you have any idea how I felt finding out the 'Spike' of your make-believe engagement not only existed but was an escaped hostile that you knew personally? Explain that."
"That was a spell gone wrong!" Buffy sputtered. "Willow messed it up, it wasn't my fault!"
"Yeah?" he prompted. "Well, it wasn't a coincidence either."
To which Buffy could only reply, "What!?"
"Oh, come on Buffy, don't play ignorant. You know exactly what I'm talking about," Riley replied, his tone beyond exasperated. "Your mom needs an MRI, who do you tell first over everyone else including your boyfriend? Spike. You take your own stake to the stomach and who do you run to for advice? Spike! God, I was out of my mind thinking I wasn't strong enough, fast enough, superman enough for you, and you fed that Buffy! You created that—"
"That when you went rogue in those caves, was it, big man?" Spike snickered, wincing suddenly as the motion constricted his chest around the stake, his fingers cupped protectively over it. "Right regret not coming along for the ride that time."
"Spike, shut up," Buffy hissed, just as Riley let out an incredulous laugh.
"You told him." His expression darkened further. "Figures."
Buffy's eyes snap back to his, finding not a single atom of kindness in them any longer. Was it all in my head? Didn't he used to be Mr. Goodguy?
"You know, maybe I have this really twisted around in my head," she said quietly when she got her breath back, "but don't you think the fact that Spike knows any of that stuff says a lot more about your problems than mine? You're the one that's been punishing me, and trying to make it all about you for months!"
"I've been punishing you?!" he almost shouted. "How?!"
"How about with every single fight we've had in this relationship?" she burst out, finally unleashing the resentment that had been dragging her heart down like a fishing weight hooked into the muscle. "It's always me calming you down about my chosen one-ness crap! You've pushed me out, or shut me down, or hey, decided to go and try to have a full-blown heart attack for no reason! And this!" She got hold of his wrist, yanked his sleeve up and tore off the bandage over his forearm, exposing the multiple circular punctures beneath, some halfway to healing, some still fresh enough to see the jagged edge of ripped skin. "What would you call that, Riley? That looks pretty punishing from where I'm standing."
He pulled his arm out of her grip, dragging his sleeve back into place with a firm tug. "You weren't supposed to find out."
"Right," she scoffed. "Your girlfriend, the Slayer, wasn't supposed to find a literal den of vampires with you being all mega comfy in the middle of it. That seems really likely."
"It wasn't to—"
"You wanted me to find you there. You did. You wanted me to find you there so you could have this big monologue of all the things Buffy doesn't give you. This wasn't some attempt to get to know me or understand me. This was you trying to hurt me for not being the weak, ditzy, college girl you thought I was. For being stronger than you."
"I was trying to understand you, Buffy," Riley argued, neatly side-stepping confronting anything else she'd said. "Obviously, I went about it all wrong. Maybe I should've broke into your house, and lurked about in your bedroom instead. That seems to work a lot better for you, right?"
Buffy's eyebrows furrowed, confused about how that could possibly be her fault, and secondly how he already knew Spike had been in her bedroom. "He was in my room waking me up to come and get you!"
Riley blinked, and breathed out an angry "What?!" just as Spike huffed "Shit."
"I meant I caught him rummaging around in your things the day your mom went in for the MRI," Riley growled. "But apparently, I'm losing my mind over something that is a regular goddamn occurrence."
"HEY, it's not regular—"
"Were you going to tell me about that or just silently hold it against me?" Buffy bit out over Spike's protestations. "And I obviously didn't invite him to do that!"
"Haven't kicked him out yet though, have you?" Riley countered, barreling over her objections. "Would it be so much to ask that you de-invite the undead creep that's completely obsessed with you?"
"Okay, you know what? Out of the three of us, he's not the one that's obsessed," Buffy answered, gesturing to Riley and then back at Spike with an exhibit-A open palm, slumped as he was against the concrete pillar with the plastic stake still lodged in his chest.
Riley shook his head, and let out a huff that would almost be a laugh in another place and time.
"Wake up, Buffy," he sneered, crossing his arms. "He's in love with you."
Buffy blinked.
She'd clearly misheard.
"What?"
A sharp, rattling sound of a panicked breath being drawn into tight lungs echoed at her back.
"W-wait," Spike sputtered.
Riley's gaze flicked maliciously to Spike for a millisecond before he leaned in closer to Buffy, enunciating his words clearly so she couldn't miss them. "He's. In. Love. With. You."
The halting white noise in her head was as deafening as the pause after a church bell, the silence after a gunshot, and she took it as such; ears ringing, stunned from the impact, breath caught in her lungs.
Until a ragged sigh from behind her brought her back.
"Oh, bollocks."
She turned, and saw on Spike's face the wretched truth. The miserable look as his eyes lifted slowly to hers. The twitch in his cheek that betrayed the shame beneath the bravado.
He…he's…
Spike stood still, watching her, seemingly counting the seconds.
Some sort of denial should've been making its way into his mouth but nothing came. For her part, she could only offer half-stunned guppy-out-of-water breathing.
…In love with me…
In love with me?
There was a shine to his eyes that could've been pain, except she'd seen that haunted, miserable expression more than once. Spike never hid heartache—didn't even try to—except this time there was no proud sneering anger to bolster him. No love's bitch attitude. He just looked broken.
When the silence stretched out passed when a response should have been given, Riley let out a weary sigh.
"I'm tired of fighting to keep you, Buffy," he said, shoulders sagging. "I'm tired of trying to live up to your needs—"
"Prick," said Spike, and didn't bother to keep the volume tamped down.
Riley glared back at him but didn't let it derail what he'd started to say. "There's a transport truck leaving tonight. Special ops again, one way ticket out of town. I'll be on it."
Buffy swallowed, head still spinning, but the velocity had eased off enough for her to regain control of her tongue. "Were you even gonna tell me?" she asked, still too dazed to make that sound accusatory rather than exhausted. "Or were you just going to disappear without a trace?"
"Would you have cared if I had?" he asked. She assumed it was another rhetorical question but when his lips pinched in a hurt line she realized her mistake. She opened her mouth, but there was no will in her heart to try and rectify it.
"Alright," he said when she'd closed her mouth again, averting her eyes. "It's for—-
"It's for the best, right?" she interrupted, tears doing the whole back-of-the-eye sting again even as she fought them down. "Yeah thanks, but I don't need this speech. Already had it once, and that was plenty." She broke off, shaking her head as if to herself. "Funny how people always say it's for the best when they're skipping out on you."
"Buffy—"
"Just go," she said, cutting him off, done with the fight. Done with it all. "Go."
She watched him turn and stride through the door, and the unexplained weight that had been sitting on her chest for months suddenly lifted.
It was him, she thought, closing her eyes to feel the relief. All that tension and anger and… badness. I thought it was me, but it was him.
When she'd sunk a little further into that warm bit of peace she turned, surveying Spike with calculating eyes.
"D'you need a hand?" she asked. He still hadn't managed to pull the stake from his chest, there being not enough fake-wood for his hand to get purchase around after Riley's fall against him had pressed it through to his spine.
Spike nodded, moving his hand away as she approached, letting her get a grip on it.
"Need your dainty fingers," he said with an unsteady smirk. "Just don't pull it out too-fast!" he choked off as she yanked the stake out with a brutal twist, pressing his hand over the hole as he let out a groan. "Thanks," he enunciated sarcastically once he caught his breath.
"Sorry," Buffy muttered as she dropped the plastic stake on the ground in disgust.
He slumped forward and on instinct she slipped in under his arm, walking him to the armchair and depositing him gently into it.
She retreated, standing at a safe, rational, sterile distance as he sank into the cushions, hand still pressed to his chest covering the hole.
She swallowed. Something inside her was telling her she should probably go, let him to lick his wounds in peace, but feeling as shell-shocked as she was she didn't know how to do so without appearing to be fleeing the scene.
Spike shifted uncomfortably, letting out a hitched breath, and the thought of leaving stuttered out of her mind.
"Does it hurt?" she asked, then rolled her eyes. Good. She patted herself mentally on the back. Starting out with the stupidest possible question.
He didn't reply right away, and when she dared to center her gaze back on his she caught his eyes lingering, full of emotion she hadn't seen directed at her before. Hunger, but not just hunger. Aching, but not just aching. She tried to veer away from her analysis lest her mental arithmetic added two and two and got forty-seven, but his eyes were pinning her in place with such brute force the air in her lungs was starting to labor.
"Yeah... It does," he answered, and she was almost 100% sure he wasn't talking about the hole in his chest.
He reached up to grab a bottle of wine from the table next to the chair and she took the break in eye contact to compose herself, recentering some very much needed worldviews that had taken a good scuffing after they'd been dropped in the dirt on her way in.
"Spike," she began tentatively as he uncorked the bottle, taking a swig. "What Riley said… what he said about… you…" He lifted his eyes to hers again and she wished he hadn't.
It's not real, right? she pleaded with him silently. It can't be real… right?
"Cat's out of the bag now, huh?" he said humorlessly as the ground beneath Buffy's feet became suddenly unsteady, her own personal earthquake buckling her legs.
Oh God… Oh God…
After a hard clench of his teeth that tightened his jaw into a look of misery, he added, "Wasn't quite how I planned it."
AN: Written as a very happy birthday present for my good friend Em_Kayelle! Happy birthday my dude! You deserve it and I was stoked to write this, I think we all wished Riley had gotten some comeuppance for this scene. What a prick. (And an award for the chastest prompt request goes to you but I'm not gonna leave them without a happy ending)!
Beta'd by Ravenlove12, Spikelover4ever and exceptional, beautiful, incredible, gutwrenching banner by CD85 [ef only]