| The Trouble We're In AUTHOR: Nyxie
Part 4 **
Buffy turns her eyes away, turns her heart away as Angel walks out the door. She feels like she's suffocating, dying inside, but she holds it all together by sheer force of will.
How can he just walk away from her? How, when all she can do is watch him leave? How, when he is everything she's ever wanted and can never have? How much of her life spent aching and wanting on the ragged edge? And how much more of her can be shattered, before there's nothing left to give?
Spike inhales sharply, taking a single step toward her, and she blinks back the pain, blinks back the memories and the years and the yearning.
She can be more than this, can't she? More than these broken, jagged pieces of girl that cut when he reaches for her?
There has to be more to her than this. There has to be.
*
He isn't prepared. He's never considered what might happen if they never got to the place where they walked hand in hand, side by side, heart in heart. All the stars, dark, all the skies, gray, and she loves him. She loves him. All the time spent waiting and wanting and straining and dying and she loves him. It's the cruelest irony, the killing joke, and he loves her more truly now than he ever did before he had a soul, but his soul is the very reason he has to let her go.
She loves him. And yet he is still alone and aching and wishing for impossible things.
"It's not bloody fair, you know. Waited all this time to hear you say that. Thought I deserved the reward. All that bluster and show, and here I am." He gives a surprised, ironic laugh. "I didn't even know there was a choice to make till I knew I had one."
She stares at him, her eyes open and naked, secrets laid bare to him, for the first time, for the last time. Green-gray tempests that consume his soul. It's like staring into the heart of heaven itself. He stands, astounded and awed beyond anything he's ever known.
"This isn't what you want." He tries to make himself sound sure, to tell, not ask, and love grows small within his chest, a tiny, frightened, dying thing that beats back in desperation against the arm that he wraps about her body, drawing her close to where his heart fills deep with ice. Cracked and broken, unbeating, but enough to fire his blood. Enough to remind him that part of him is still human, even if he does not live.
"It's what I can have." She stares at him with those fathomless eyes, those depths that swallow him whole and leave him gasping for breath he doesn't need.
"Oh, Buffy," he whispers, fingers brushing her cheek with reverence and knowing sadness. "It'll never be enough."
"You're rejecting me?" Buffy voice is disbelief, a raw, high-pitched whine that makes him wince when it strikes his ears.
"Oh, luv, no," Spike says, cupping her face gently in his hands, staring straight down into her soul. "Never."
“Then why?”
“Just told you why. Never be enough for you.”
“Yes! It can! It is!” she protests, her voice rising angrily.
“You already know it isn’t.”
And he’s right, and she knows he’s right, but she doesn’t want to know. She crumbles, sagging in his arms, a single tear rolling down her cheek. “It should be enough! It ought to be enough!”
“Can’t choose who you love, Buffy,” he says, softly. “You know that.”
“Why can’t it be enough?” she asks miserably.
“Wish I knew, pet.”
Broken and bruised, aching around the edges of his piecemeal hope and his wounded heart, he hugs her close. The room is calm, quiet, and yet the air tingles around him, moving over his skin as if with the electricity of anticipation. His mind curdles with the fullness of understanding, and the deepest core of everything he is feels shrunken, emaciated, dying by inches… and yet… and yet... there is something deeper; a sense of calm that drives deep into his bones and steadies his soul. There is a fated feeling to this, a finality in this moment, as if everything he has been, everything he is slowly becoming has converged in this very instant, and he stands on a precipice; an abyss stretching away endlessly beneath his feet, offering nothing but open air and bone shattering halts. The world yawns in blackness before him, and nothing is certain, except that nothing will ever be the same again.
She has been the axis upon which his world turned.
But there's someone who understands her more than he does. A sadness in her that he can't erase. She could love him the rest of his days and he would never be the one. Once, he could have lived with that—could have lived with anything if it meant having her in his arms. But he'd gotten a soul for her, had wanted to be better for her. Caught on the cusp of life, he had struggled for her—struggled toward her—-had become almost human for her. He had become a man.
And that man couldn't live with this. No matter how she felt, he could never live with her unhappiness. Could never live with being second best.
And you'll always be second best, won't you, Spikey? Angelus's voice slithers down the corridors of his mind, cold and scaly serpent that clings and coils.
He ignores it. Because Angelus and Angel and every other bloody fucking split personality his "sire" is hiding behind that glowering caveman brow can sod off and die. This moment, this victory, belongs to Spike.
He cups the back of her golden head, turns his cheek into her hair and breathes her deep, feeling her warm and yielding in his arms. For this moment, for one single, shining moment, she is his. Only for this moment.
It isn't much as victories go.
But for this one moment, he'll take it.
*
He helps her back to her room, sits and smokes cigarettes all day, watching the sunlight slowly creep and fill the room to bursting, and then roll back out again like the tide, last crimson fingers of sunset releasing the room reluctantly.
His fingers start and stop, stuttering over ink and paper, time and time again, and he feels his hands ill-suited to this work. Never have his fingers felt so thick and primitive and useless.
The room grows ever darker, and finally he finishes his work, biting down against the inside of his jaw as he makes the final pen stroke.
And still, she sleeps.
He watches over her in silence, listening to her breathe.
*
The quiet of the room seems sudden, and Buffy blinks awake, knowing instantly that she is alone.
There’s a note on her bed, written in Spike’s scrawling script.
Thought I’d spare you the awkward goodbye’s...
She sits on the bed and reads it three times before the words blur.
*
Spike answers the door to his room, suitcase in one hand, cigarette in the other.
“Spike. I... uh.” Angel stands there, mouth opening and closing like a dying fish as he casts about for words. Spike lets him stand there like that, brows arched and eyes wide, the picture of saintly patience, watching him in amusement. Finally Angel clenches his jaw and glances downward. “I came by to say goodbye.”
“To me?” The sarcasm in Spike’s voice is so affected that it fairly drips acid. “Why Angel, I didn’t know you cared.”
“To Buffy, you moron,” Angel says, the sharp, deadly gaze of his brown eyes drilling holes through Spike. “Is she here?’
“She’s in her room,” Spike says shortly. “But you’re not leaving. I am.”
“What?” He blinks, slow and dull-witted as a cow.
"Listen, I don’t have much time, so I’m gonna make this quick: You're gonna live forever, barring pointy stakes, mate. You really want to live like this?"
"What?"
"God's sake, Angel. Angelus. Rico." He shrugs and makes a dismissive gesture. "Whoever you are this week. Girl loves you more than anything."
"She loves you, too."
Spike smiles hard; the curve of a striking serpent. "And you love Nina."
Angel blinks and shakes his head, lost and flailing. "I don't understand."
"Course you don't. Never were so much on brains as brawn." He takes a last drag of his cigarette and cuts his eyes at Angel with thin amusement. “Look. I’ve already done more than my part in this, mate. Way bloody more than I ought to have. And I don’t even think you deserve this. So if you think I’m going to be the one to tell you how to not screw this up...” He stubs out his smoke, then turns to look at Angel full on. “Think again.”
He steps out into the hall, pulls a room key from his duster, and slowly slides it down into Angel’s shirt pocket.
“There. Key to her room. Up to you, what you do with it.” He leans up a bit, face inching closer to Angel’s with a smirk. “Actually? I’m kind of hoping you do screw this up.” He pats Angel on the shoulder just a little too hard, then turns away.
“Be seeing you,” Spike calls over his shoulder with a grin as he saunters down the hall.
*
Spike. Stepping aside for him? There’s a concept. Right up there next to Satan serving snow cones.
He eyes the key in his hands, turning it over and over, a tiny bit of metal possibility that cuts into the lines of his hands and heart.
He knows what he wants to do. But he’s a man who’s life has been built on what he should do, and he’s grown so used to denying himself that he can’t even imagine opening that door. He wonders briefly when such a way of thinking became a way of life, when the idea peace became even more frightening than the possibility of indulgence.
And here, now, he literally holds the key to all these things, right here in his hand. And there’s nothing to stop him. Nothing except himself.
The memory of her blue, tear filled eyes, the way her hands fluttered like dying birds trying to protect herself from the truth.
Do you love me?
As much as you love her?
He knows what he wants to do.
He does what he should do.
*
He’s almost back to their room when the door opens.
Nina meets him in the hallway, suitcases in hand. She’s beautiful in sunflower yellow, eyes the color of the sky, and he wants to tell her, suddenly, how very much she means to him. How much she always will.
“Nina, I can’t let you—“
She takes a deep breath and meets his eyes.
“No, Angel. You have to let me do this.”
He bows his head against the pain in his heart and waits.
"I meant to do it better than I did," she says, lower lip trembling, chin held high and proud, tears pricking just beyond the fringe of her light-colored lashes. A wry, empty laugh escapes her. “I meant to be noble and magnanimous. Say goodbye and waltz out all grace and composure.” She shakes her head. “I’m sorry I fell apart.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
She looks at him, her eyes sad and distant, an odd smile that really isn’t a smile at all playing about her lips.
“Not even Spike?”
Words die and lodge in his throat, and he swallows hard against their mass.
"We made such a mess of everything," she whispers.
"We really did," he says, assuming all the blame, himself.
"We all did the best we could." She reaches out with a hand that shakes almost as badly as her smile. Her fingertips skim the smooth skin of his cheek, and warm ripples spread from them like ripples on the surface of a pond.
Forgiveness. Acceptance.
Blue eyes meet his with deeper meaning than her words, and he hears it, spoken just as if she'd said it out loud.
"You should hate me," he whispers.
"Would that make it easier for you?" She lowers his chin with the barest touch of her hand. "No hating. I'll always--"
"Shh..." He presses his fingers to her lips, stilling them. He shakes his head once. "You don't have to say it."
"I wanted to."
"I know," he says, with small, fragile smile. "I already know."
She takes his hands in hers, presses them together and clasps them against her heart.
"We had some good times, didn't we?" she asks, her smile tremulous.
"Some of the best."
They stand that way for the space of a few heartbeats—for forever, it seems—and then she gives his hands back to him with gentle care.
"Go, Angel. Go to her. Love her, and never waste a moment of the time you have together."
"Nina--"
"Please. Don't make me say it again." Her mouth curls in a bitter smile, trembling on the verge of tears. "I don't know if I can."
"Will you... Will you be all right?" he asks.
She nods, eyes wet as she steps backward from him.
"I will."
She gives him a last, faint smile—-a smile so filled with "what might have been" that it nearly chokes him to see it.
Then she turns on her heel and sweeps down the hallway in a yellow wave of sun-dress.
Like that... she’s gone.
"Thank you," he whispers to the empty hallway.
*
“Angel?” Buffy sits up on the bed, her head still sleep-filled, rumpled with dreams still clinging to it, and for a moment, she’s not sure if he’s really here.
For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything, just stares at her with those sad, soulful eyes. And then he moves to sit beside her on the bed. He looks just the same as he always does in her memories; tall, strong, handsome—but then he does begin to speak and she knows she’s not dreaming, because the words that come from his mouth are nothing like the ones he speaks in her dreams.
“It won’t ever be true happiness. After what happened with you... and then later, with Connor.” He pauses, searching for words, and shakes his head. “I don’t know if I’ll ever know true happiness again.”
She thinks about that for a long moment, mulling it over.
“Me either,” she answers somberly, staring up into his deep brown eyes. “I’m not sixteen anymore, Angel.” She almost whispers, leaning up toward his face. “I’m not a little girl, and we aren’t the same people we were then. We can’t ever get that back, can’t ever be those people again.”
His face flinches as if she’d struck him, but he doesn’t turn away. Takes it all and drinks it down as if to say, yes, he deserves this penance, this punishment. Her fingertips skim the line of his jaw and he’s never felt fragile to her before this, strong and sure and like salvation and home, but never fragile.
“That kind of innocence...” she shakes her head sadly. “Once it’s lost, I think it’s gone forever.” His eyes, God, his eyes, echoing with sadness, pain so deep and dark and bound to him just as surely as his soul, etched eternally into the lines of his face. “But maybe it doesn’t have to be perfect. Maybe it doesn’t have to be true happiness. Maybe, for once, it can just... be what it is.”
He tilts his head slightly, lips parting unconsciously as he leans toward her. “And what is it? This thing we have? Because it owns me, Buffy.” His voice is thick, urgent and heated, and she feels a thrill run through her at the sound of it, so deep and full of need.
“That’s the whole point; we have to find out.” And she thinks maybe she does know but she’s too scared to say it out loud—-too soon, too much, and he’s close, so close she can barely think anymore. Her eyes are wide, they feel too wide and her skin is hot, and if he would just touch her—
“I think about Nina, and I know I should feel terrible. And part of me does. But all the things I’ve done, the hurt I’ve caused... for her, for Spike...” his eyes go wide and liquid, “none of it matters, because all I can see, all I can feel, all I can care about, is you.” He blinks, staring at her plaintively. “What kind of person does that make me?” he asks, beseeching, as if for acceptance, forgiveness.
She stares at him, speechless, breathless as the truth washes over her like a wave.
“A person like me,” she answers.
“It doesn’t seem right.”
“Maybe it’s beyond right and wrong, Angel. Maybe it’s beyond who’s to blame.”
“And maybe we just don’t care.”
She swallows hard against that, and manages to nod. “Maybe.”
“She forgave me. Sent me here with her blessing. Told me not to waste a moment that we have together. And even now it’s taking everything I have in me to hold back.”
“Then why are you?” she asks, breath escaping her in a rush.
His eyes focus on her sharply, something dark and dangerous flickering in their depths. “Because holding back is all I’ve ever done.”
She leans up toward him, one hand cupping his face. “Then don’t.”
*
The first time is hungry, quick and rough, her body clinging to him like second skin as she wraps herself around him, whispering to him urgently with heated breath. Presses her into the bed and kisses her until she’s breathless, his hands everywhere, all over her skin, cupping the firm swell of her breasts, twisting and teasing the hard buds of her nipples.
He can feel her pulse racing beneath her skin like a thousand tiny horses, each one straining and arcing against the touch of his hand. Lifts her lacy little skirt, finds her aching wetness and slides home, crushing her against him, fingers between them tracing a rhythm against her clit until she mewls like a kitten and explodes, her hot little pussy milking him dry.
“Don’t stop,” she breathes, and he doesn’t except to pull her clothes from her and then they’re tumbling naked together across the bed for an instant before he pushes back inside her. God, she’s so beautiful, the flush of her cheeks, her kiss-reddened mouth, those tiny fingers that twine through his, tracing spirals on the backs of his hands, and he raises her palms to kiss each of them, reverently, and slower now, pull and twist and thrust and...
And nothing matters but the momentary touch of her hand; nothing but the softness of her skin. And he is a man who's spent a lifetime like a needle in a bruise, a lifetime spent avoiding the news, and he cares so much and he doesn't care about anything else, ever, so long as she is here, beautiful and vibrant and naked and alive and touching him, holding him, breathing him and loving him and God, it's more than he'd ever imagined it could be, this joining of flesh and this feeling that is too large to hold inside either of them as they embrace and kiss and love and discover each other all over again inside and out,
*
and God she is going to break, shatter into a thousand tiny meaningless fragments that only call his name and want his touch, and there is nothing in the world so much as this and she doesn't know how she could have ever forgotten,
*
and he is so thirsty, and God, he wants to drink her down, slake his firing need, his aching want, and there isn't enough of her touching him, never enough, and this is the sweetest, the best, the brightest,
*
and he is everything, the sun the moon the stars her world, exploding and contracting like the birth of the universe all around her and she is more alive than she’s ever been, a sunburst of joy at the center and all the planets spin around her while gravity cries his name,
*
and all the broken pieces of him that ever were all glued back together in just the right way so that he curves like a bright star against her, perfect and whole and the best man he could ever be, all right here in her arms, cradled right here in her arms, loved like a man, held like a child, held up so high, taken to the sky, taken in her arms...
This is everything. How could he have ever forgotten, even for a moment, what she is; what they are together?
“Oh, God.” His voice is thick and strangled as she convulses around him, and then, for a while, all thoughts cease.
*
They crest and then recede like an ocean wave, each falling, spent, into the others arms.
Buffy lays wrapped up in his embrace, face pressed into his chest, safe and warm and more content than she’s possibly ever been in her entire life, unable to deny the intrinsic feeling of “right” that there is about this moment. There’s a tremendous amount of “right”, here, even with all the wrong they went through to get to it.
She isn’t sure if it balances out, but here in his arms, golden and glowing and feeling like warm melted taffy, she thinks that maybe, somehow, they can find it within them to overcome it. They’ve been forgiven; now all they have to is forgive themselves. And if that doesn’t work out... well... There’ll be the usual penance paid with good deeds, and hey, the occasional near death experience, with, you know, possible actual death thrown in as a bonus. And don't forget the intermittent drama, and fighting, and angst, because, well, this is Angel. Better not to sugar coat it.
Funny. She almost can't wait.
But there’s plenty of time for all that.
She kisses his chest and shifts her weight, wriggling backwards a bit to see him. His eyes flutter slightly in response to her movement, and his arms tighten around her automatically, as if to keep her from slipping away.
SO not going anywhere, she thinks with a smile.
“I was thinking, I might tell Giles I’m taking some time off. You know, since I’m more “she who will fight the vampires with an army of chosen ones” than “one girl in all the world”, these days.”
His eyes flicker open, warm brown and gently questioning.
“So how long can you stay in Cancun?” she asks.
He slides back from her a bit, tilting his face down to look at her, and he’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. “How about forever? Does forever work for you?”
Her smile rises up like the sun from the tips of her toes, warming her from the inside out before exploding into brilliance.
She's not one girl in all the world anymore. But she's still his girl.
Always.
*
EPILOGUE
“Last call for boarding American Airlines Flight 508 to Buenos Aires.” The tinny female voice resonates over the speaker, hanging in the air of the cabin for a moment, and Nina looks around, as if expecting last minute passengers to appear out of mid-air.
The seat next to her is still empty and she’s hoping it will stay that way as she raises her eyes to the line of people straggling down the aisle with suitcases in their hands, laughing and talking as they tuck their belongings away tidily beneath seats and stuffed them into overhead compartments. People going on with life as if it were any other day.
She looks away, eyes finding the sky outside, its color a slightly paler shade of black than the asphalt that stretches out endlessly below it.
Someone jostles her seat as a presence fills the empty space beside her, and she turns to greet her aisle mate despite herself, summoning a smile.
“Hi, I’m—,” The words die in her throat.
“Nina, isn’t it?” Spike asks, with a lazy arch of one brow, managing to arrange himself in the tiny chair in such comfortably cool repose that it borders on unnatural. “Well,” he says with a curl of his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “Fancy meeting you here.”
The safety belt light dings on, and the pilot’s voice crackles to life over the speakers. It’s eighty-five degrees outside, and they are flying non-stop to Argentina, he informs everyone, as if they didn’t already know.
“Ever been to Buenos Aires?” he asks after a bit, pulling a magazine from the chair in front of them.
“No.”
“Well, then. First thing we’ll do when we get there is—-what?” he asks, breaking off, suddenly suspicious at her stare.
She stares at him for a long moment, and then her mouth curves into a bemused smile. “I was just thinking... This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“You start calling me Louis and I’ll cheerfully throw you off the plane, luv.” His voice is calm, seemingly indifferent as he flips through his magazine.
But he smiles when he says it.
FINIS
| Fiction Index | Home Page | Back |
|
