VII
Chapter Notes: Okay, I’m very nervous about this chapter. There are certain things that need to happen AND I’m trying to stick as close to canon as possible. So everything is plot-centric.
The pendant Giles unearthed for her worked like a charm—which, Buffy supposed, was the point. At night she’d slip the chain around her neck and awaken the next day refreshed, rejuvenated, and thoroughly dreamless. There was no Spike to break her down. No Spike to caress her skin with his hands and mouth. No Spike to fill her heart with unspoken promises. No Spike to destroy her with what he knew—the mocking realization that she’d allowed herself to fall in love with him when he couldn’t allow himself to love her back.
There was no Spike. Only rest.
And she missed him. She missed him so much, and hated herself for missing him so much.
The couple weeks following the incident at the church were void of everything. Patrols were uneventful, school became a tedious pattern of repetition, and her friends avoided her without bothering to explain why, though it wasn’t like she needed a diagram. Her mood following Spike’s incapacitation—following the night he’d told her how much he hated what she was doing to him—wasn’t exactly inviting, and they were still stunned silly over her reaction to the pipe organ collapsing.
Though she knew she should be hurt over their avoidance behavior, the whole of her couldn’t be moved to give a damn. While her nights remained uneventful and her sleep undisturbed, her mind refused to keep from returning to the vampire who owned her heart.
The things he’d said…the terrible things he’d said.
In the deafening quiet, Buffy couldn’t help but wonder what would have changed. How things might have been had Spike not invaded her dreams the night he attacked her school. Had they proceeded as enemies. Had she been able to view him as her foe and not her lover. Had she never tasted the sin of his lips or known the simple bliss of his hands on her body. Had she been able to look at him dispassionately—as an obstacle to be overcome.
Spike was a formidable opponent with or without an emotional advantage. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one who had been going soft on him because of this thing they shared. Perhaps she was only alive because Spike couldn’t bring himself to kill her. Not with his hands. He certainly didn’t mind destroying her with his words, but he’d had chance upon chance to end her life and he’d turned away before he could go through with it. If they weren’t sharing dreams, would one of them be dead now?
Was she only breathing because Spike liked the way she moaned for him? And if so, what was going to happen when he healed? When the broken bones keeping him confined were mended, and her patrols were no longer quiet and uneventful? He’d been so harsh when they last spoke. So passionately dispassionate. He’d split her apart with words, pieced her together with kisses, and watched as she dug herself into an early grave with the weight of her heart-rendering admission.
Buffy shivered and wiped at her eyes, side-stepping a headstone as she turned to go home after yet another boring patrol. Only a few vamps tonight—all fledglings and no challenge. Angel didn’t even bother lurking around anymore. Not that she blamed him, of course, given the immensely cold nature of her shoulder in recent weeks. Ever since the dreams began she’d practically ignored her would-be boyfriend, even in the beginning when Spike’s touch came with brutal force rather than the tenderness she’d fallen in love with. The tenderness had died when the organ crashed; tenderness she would never see again.
Tenderness Spike hated himself for giving her.
It would have been kinder if he’d attempted to rip her throat out, or done something that drew definitive lines. That gave her a reason to hate him so her heart wouldn’t scream at the curse of loving him.
Was there something unlovable about her? Something she didn’t have—something her humanity prevented her from seeing? Nature demanded their relationship consist of blood and hatred. He was a soulless monster, responsible for who-knows-how-many deaths and the owner of a guilt-free conscience. He was the embodiment of everything she hated—everything she’d been tapped to fight and destroy. He was unrepentantly evil, and he flaunted it every chance he received.
But somewhere inside the killer was a man. A man the demon hadn’t been able to silence. A man who was very human—a man who touched her and smiled at her and kissed her lips while stroking her clit and murmuring how beautiful she was. There was nothing inhuman about the Spike she’d fallen in love with. It was the dichotomy between the two facades—polar opposites composing the same being. Both sides of him played an essential role in who he was.
The man wanted her. While her body ached with the sting of his rejection, while her eyes were raw from crying, there was no doubt in her heart that Spike wanted her. Beyond simple knowledge based on the words he spoke—the angry confessions he screamed at her while trying to talk himself into ending her life—she knew he wanted her in some form beyond the physical. He just wanted her to be his complacent mistress; he wanted her to be the woman he turned to whenever Drusilla didn’t feel like putting out. He wanted her to be someone with whom he could enjoy sex and the fact that she was a slayer played a dynamic role in his attraction. If she was plain ole Buffy he wouldn’t give a damn. He wouldn’t have credited her with a second glance.
So beyond the physical, this was about screwing a slayer. He loved the idea of forbidden fruit; he just didn’t love the idea of loving the fruit itself.
Cool night air blasted her damp cheeks. Buffy shivered hard, crossing her arms, her eyes glued to the ground as she walked the memorized pathway home. Perhaps she was looking too hard. Perhaps there wasn’t anything special about her after all. Sure, she could slay vamps with the best of them, but what did she really know about being female? About being a woman? Her past was scattered with so few instances dealing with mature relations with the opposite sex. Her boyfriend back in Los Angeles—what a joke. All she and Tyler had ever done with any measure of success was fight about how she wasn’t willing to put out, even if all the other kids were doing it. He’d accused her of being a cold fish, among other things—all show and no action. She was marketed as a bargain in the advertising, he said, but the product itself was broken.
At the time, Buffy had written him off completely as a jackass who wanted sex and didn’t know how to take no for an answer. Her ego hadn’t suffered a bit; she had been, after all, one of the most popular girls in school up until she got branded a pyromaniac. Even then, though, Tyler’s words hadn’t cut at all. It wasn’t like she wanted to be a pyromaniac—she had no choice. She was of the Chosen. The One. The Slayer. Vampires were bad and needed to be killed and she maintained that fire was the best way to slay when drastically outnumbered.
That night, she’d glimpsed into the eyes of her own mortality and realized how easily her life could end. But she was still alive. Three years running as the Slayer—not that she held the record or anything, but it wasn’t anything to sneeze at. She was still alive. She was alive enough to eat, drink, breathe, and cry. She was alive enough to climb into her room by virtue of the tree outside her window—the one seemingly planted with the specific mindset of sneaking out of the house. She was alive enough to strip out of her clothes, take a quick shower, don her favorite jammies and climb into bed. She was alive enough to slip a chain around her neck and finger the pendant cradled between her breasts. She was alive enough to wish for morning so her mind wouldn’t be occupied with these disturbing thoughts. So she wouldn’t stay awake all night wondering if her lack of femininity and her over-abundance of slayer was truly the problem Tyler had indicated it was. If Spike couldn’t love her—or love being with her—she was hardly a woman at all.
Her experience as Woman Buffy effectively ended the night she dusted her first vampire. Merrick had taken the part of her designated for learning how to love and be loved, handed her a stake in turn, and told her that her future essentially belonged to him. Thus when she arrived in Sunnydale, she knew the rules of dating—how to play the game—but there was always the niggling voice in her head promising a lack of any sort of future. The Inner Woman failed her with all the boys who initially showed interest. There was Xander, though she couldn’t see herself dating him unless it was essential to populate the planet after a nuclear holocaust. There was Owen, who loved the Slayer and thought the Woman was a ditz—even if he was too nice to say as much. And there was Angel. Angel who, at first, only seemed interested in the Slayer; it wasn’t until much later—even after initial kissage—that she started to believe he might want the Woman too.
Buffy didn’t know how to play the game. The Woman was at a loss, ruled entirely under the command of the Slayer. Her life was defined by what she was while being ignored for who she was. What did she know about loving, except understanding she loved Spike? What did she know about pleasing anyone, except understanding she wanted to please Spike? What did she know about broken hearts, except understanding hers was broken?
How could she hope to compare to a vampire who wasn’t defined by who she was because vampires didn’t have these ethical dilemmas? How could she measure up to a woman who knew exactly how to be a woman?
She didn’t know. Perhaps she wasn’t meant to know.
All she knew for certain—right now—was her pillow would again be soaked in tears. Again her night would be dreamless. Again she would awaken refreshed but miserable.
She wondered if Spike still dreamt himself into the room. If he thought about her at all while he was there, or if he was grateful she’d finally made her exit.
She wondered how long she had until he walked again.
She wondered.
And slept.
But didn’t dream.
*~*~*
She stood in front of the mirror for a long time, staring into her eyes until the objects in the background faded into a swirling mass of shapeless color. Until her pupils no longer looked like pupils and her face became so unfamiliar she barely recognized herself.
Buffy had experienced her share of bad birthdays. This was definitely the worst.
She didn’t know why seventeen felt like such a right of passage. Like something pushing her over that final threshold, screaming if she hadn’t learned how to be human yet—a woman yet—her later years held little hope. It wasn’t like anything special happened when one turned seventeen, other than admission into rated R movies. Well, legal admission—the sort which came without having to flash a flirty smile and bat her girlish eyes.
Rated R movies. The pinnacle of the seventeenth birthday.
She’d never heard of anyone having an age-crisis at seventeen. Perhaps she was a freak. All she knew now—standing before the mirror and staring down at a stranger—was she’d hurt someone she cared about. Someone she might have loved had things gone differently.
And she’d done it because she wanted to feel something. Feel anything. Feel worthwhile as a woman. Because, after all, if she hadn’t learned how to be a woman by the time she was seventeen, there was no hope for her in the empty years to follow.
Angel deserved more than that. He’d been so patient with her. So kind and understanding. He hadn’t pushed her for an explanation over the Spike debacle, even though his eyes betrayed knowledge deeper than words. He hadn’t asked her on dates or tried to kiss her or anything to suggest he was still interested in her as a woman, if indeed he ever had been. No, after the initial period of avoidance was over, Angel had tentatively emerged from the shadows as her patrol buddy. Her friend. Someone who made her feel protected in a world where she was increasingly aware that Spike’s immobility would soon be a thing of the past, and then she’d have to face the man she loved in real time. In this world and not the place of abandoned dreams.
She didn’t know how she knew Spike was still in town—she just did. She felt him everywhere she went. Tonight was no exception. Tonight, in fact, had shoved her over the edge.
It was no excuse for what she’d done. How badly she’d treated Angel.
Buffy shivered, her reflection blurring under the weight of her tears. She had no idea how she’d be able to face him again. God, she didn’t even know what she thought she was going to accomplish. It couldn’t have been under the delusion she’d feel better, because there had never been such a low. She was dirt—she was lower than dirt. She’d scrubbed her skin four times now since arriving home and she was still smothered in filth.
At least before her suffering had been her own. Now she’d dragged Angel into it as well. She’d hurt a friend because she wanted to feel. She wanted verification. She wanted validation.
Mostly, though, she wanted retribution. Spike had practically forbidden her from looking at Angel back when he gave a damn. And part of her—the largest part—the part she could no longer keep silent—wanted to hurt him. Wanted to know if touching Angel would make Spike bleed the way he’d made her bleed. If he’d be consumed in agony every waking second of his hopefully now-miserable existence because she’d done something intimate with a man who wasn’t him.
Buffy hadn’t given Angel her virginity. That part of her, even now, felt reserved for Spike. Her heart couldn’t fathom giving herself to anyone else. But she had touched Angel the way she touched Spike. She had pretended he was someone else. She had pretended she could love him, and it came through bright and clear in her performance.
She had taken him into her mouth because Spike loved it when she did that. Her scalp burned from where his fingers had woven through her hair, and wondered if she would go deaf for her mind’s cruel repetition of his euphoric whimpers. There wasn’t a part of her that wasn’t covered in dirt.
Her mind had pictured someone else. Her heart wanted someone else. It was that knowledge combined with her self-disgust which had prevented her from giving him her pussy. Hell, she’d even denied him a kiss. Everything had been so unfeeling, so cold and distant. She’d wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as she rose on her wobbly legs. Angel had reached for her, either to hug her or claim her mouth, she didn’t know which, and she’d turned on her heel and made a mad dash for the sanctuary of her bedroom.
She was a monster. She’d given Angel a second of happiness before jerking it away. And now here she stood—gazing down the stranger living in her mirror and wondering if her skin would ever be clean.
Wondering if Angel could ever forgive her for using him as heartlessly as she had. For trying to validate herself as a woman by hurting someone who probably didn’t give a damn whose cock she sucked. And if he did—if Spike did care—it was only because his mistress was his property and he didn’t like sharing with the other kiddies.
Buffy was so wretchedly disgusted with herself she could barely move. Yet somehow, she managed to drag herself to the shower one last time. Managed to change into her pajamas and climb into bed.
Her eyes were so heavy she fell asleep the second her head hit the pillow.
The pendant, buried under a stack of birthday cards, was forgotten.
TBC
A/N (Cont’d): Okay…those of you familiar with my work know how I feel about Spuffy, and hopefully can appreciate how hard it was for me to refer to Buffy/other in this. But as I said in the first note, it’s very essential for the following chapters in more ways than one.
And though the guidelines for this fic specifically said “no Angel kissage” … well, there wasn’t any. I made sure to include that. … don’t you love how literal I am?