"Last Night"

2. Those Sanguine Groundless Hopes

She could feel him breathing. Short, staccato bursts of air shook his chest and escaped in hot puffs against her throat. Before Spike, she had never thought of vampires breathing. Being the slayer meant focusing on the demon part of the vampire, and the demon certainly never needed to breathe. But it seemed the human part often did – not to survive, but to speak and to sing and even (as she knew firsthand) to snore. Often Spike breathed for no particular reason at all, as if it were simply another habit left over from his former self.

Was that all that was happening here? Were the rough gasps that made his cold flesh shudder against hers just an empty vestige of mortal life? Or were they for her sake, to show her what she wouldn't let him say? For whatever reason, Spike was breathing deeply now, drawing great quantities of air into dead, shriveled lungs… and now he had stopped.

Startled by his sudden stillness, she nearly asked if he was okay before realizing how monumentally stupid a question that was. Instead she said hesitantly, "Did you, um… did you already…?"

"Yeah, sorry," he panted. (Breathless, she thought, and fought a crazy urge to laugh.) "Been a while."

"No, it's okay," she said quickly, sorry to have embarrassed him. "I did too."

"Did you?"

"Kind of a lot." She reached up and threaded her fingers through the downy hair on the back of his neck; pulling him closer, she ran her teeth lightly along the line of his collarbone and felt the shiver run through him. "You couldn't tell?"

"Wasn't sure." He rolled onto his side and began tracing lazy circles on her damply glistening stomach. "Harder with you so quiet. Times past, the feral screaming was a helpful cue."

"Yeah, well, if the troops were to hear their fearless leader having screaming basement sex with the evil dead, I don't think it would exactly bolster their confidence for tomorrow."

"That's evil undead, I'll thank you to recall," he said haughtily. "And I'll wager it would be a damn sight better motivation to finish this fool campaign than another of your bloody speeches."

"Hey!" She pulled away in mock indignation. He grabbed her from behind and wrestled her into his embrace. She laughed, pinned and wriggling like a butterfly in his arms. Then gently, too gently, he blew on the back of her neck. Breathing again.

"Buffy?" He was trembling and hard as he pressed against her.

"Again?"

"Er, still. One more for the road?"

"Better than Dungeons and Dragons." She gave an involuntary whimper as he entered her – a completely embarrassing noise, like a baby animal. Hoping he hadn't noticed, she began to rock her hips against him.

"Don't," he whispered, halting the motion with a steady hand. "Don't move. Just let me be in you." His voice was raw with longing, as if this were the thing he craved most in the world.

She closed her eyes and made herself as still as possible. Her heart hammered ruthlessly against her ribs, and she wished she could subdue it. She knew he could feel the hot blood flowing just underneath her skin.

They lay there together, motionlessly entwined, for minutes that felt like forever. She wondered if he really believed this was the end for them. She wondered if she wanted him to believe it. Mostly she wondered what the fuck she was doing spending the night before the impending apocalypse naked in a dead man's arms.

He made one small sound, a sharp intake of breath, as if something had surprised him, and then his release tore through her. He pulled her closer as he came, knuckles white, fingernails digging like talons, desperate to tear the veil of flesh that separated them. His body trembled like earth split open by seismic waves; he seemed held together only loosely, on the verge of combusting into particles of ash.

This wasn't about slaking his lust anymore. Maybe it never had been. She understood now: he was trying to submerge his entire being into her little frame, to become nothing but this moment of fusion. He wanted to be inside her, not just physically but chemically, to be the oxygen and blood in her veins. She understood, and it frightened her.

Then it was over. Without warning, he broke apart from her and said lightly, "Thanks, pet. As consolation prizes go, that was a right growler."

A sickening sense of vertigo accompanied her realization that he was returning to business as usual, as if the last few minutes had never happened. Weakly attempting a conversational tone, she replied, "I assume that means something dirty."

"Well, bugger me backwards, she's cottoning on." He began rummaging under the edge of the cot's thin mattress; after a moment his search produced a squashed, half-empty pack of cigarettes. He pulled one out and put it between his lips, then gestured to the pile of clothes on the floor. "Lighter's in my pocket… would you mind?"

She dug the lighter out of his jeans and lit it for him. The tiny flame cast shadows against his pale skin as she held it close to his face and watched the cigarette tip begin to glow. He took a long drag, then flopped onto his back and blew smoke at the ceiling. "Goldilocks," he said thoughtfully. "Remember? I loved your hair short like that, even though you only did it because you hated me."

She looked at the lighter in her hand. A strange jumble of sensations – wistfulness, longing, disgust – churned uncomfortably in her abdomen. "It wasn't you I hated," she said softly.

Another smoky breath escaped him in a chuckle as her inner turbulence grew audible in the way of a loud tummy rumble. "Speaking of growlers…"

She felt herself blushing as she tried to remember how long she had gone without food. In the weeks since Caleb had arrived on the scene, she had gotten in the habit of skipping meals unless someone forced her to take the time to eat. Now, quite suddenly, she realized she was ravenous.

Spike directed her to a stash of half-eaten snacks behind the washing machine. They sat together on the cot for a while; he finished his cigarette, and she inhaled an astonishing number of snack cakes and candy bars after carefully divesting each one of a sticky note marked "Andrew" in large block letters. If anyone had come downstairs, they would have seen what looked like two friends enjoying a companionable silence… except that all their clothes still lay in a heap on the floor.

When she was down to her last Twinkie, she asked if he had eaten. He took one final drag on the butt of his cigarette, then crushed it into one of her discarded wrappers and replied, "Not really a snack cake kind of bloke, pet, but thanks for asking."

"No, I mean… have you fed?"

"Oh." He coughed and shifted on the cot so that his back was against the wall. "Not today. Couple days, maybe. There's some cow's blood in the fridge that Andrew scrounged me when the butcher blew out of Dodge – might not be totally coagulated. I'll toss it in the blender in the morning." There had been a time when he relished any mention of a meal, but now it made him visibly self-conscious. Maybe he felt the stark reminder of his vampire nature put too much distance between them, or maybe the act of feeding had lost its allure without the accompanying thrill of the hunt.

Or maybe cow's blood just tasted gross. She didn't know, and she wasn't especially interested in finding out. But she did know one thing, and after struggling and almost-but-not-quite succeeding to hush the voice in her head still demanding to know what the hell she thought she was doing, she said it loud. "There's another option, you know."

"No," he said quickly, and his voice was cold as death. "There's not." In a forcedly lighter tone, he added, "Unless you've decided to sacrifice a Slayerette or two for my dietary needs, in which case be my guest and welcome."

"No. Not the girls. But you're stronger when you drink human blood, right? I'm going to need you strong tomorrow. And Slayer blood… it's like the Red Bull of human, right?"

He stared at her for fully ten seconds, his eyes wide and lips slightly parted. Then he leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. "I'll just be over here when you return from leave of your senses, pet."

Her tenuous determination wavered. Giles and Willow and especially Xander would have her committed, or shot, or maybe both, if they knew what she was suggesting. The only person who might have understood was Tara, but Tara was gone. There was still time to take it back, to pass it off as a bad joke. He would let her; he would even believe her if she asked him to.

But she wasn't joking, and she wanted him to know it, even if it was (and it very probably was) the dumbest idea she'd ever had. Sure, it violated all the laws of nature and Slayerhood and her friends would most likely kill her… but so what, really? Dying was old news to her; it was living she needed to figure out, and right now that started with telling Spike the truth. He had earned that much at least.

"It's more than just practical," she said. "It's… I want to do this. Look at me, Spike. I'm not kidding."

Two narrow slivers of blue surveyed her dubiously for a moment. Then he closed his eyes again.

She took a deep breath and pressed on. "If everything goes exactly right, I'm going to be sharing my power with all those girls upstairs. They're untested and unproven, and I'm entrusting them with the essence of the Slayer. Not one of them deserves it more than you." She paused a moment, then added, "Besides, I've been bitten before, so it's not like –"

"Okay."

His sudden acquiescence surprised her into silence. She hadn't expected him to succumb so quickly. "Okay?" she said tentatively.

In response, he grabbed her by both shoulders and threw her down on her back, quite hard, to show he meant business. His face loomed over her, all shadow and line, like something out of a B-movie horror flick. "Anything to cut short another of your bloody boring speeches," he teased. She could almost taste the smoke lingering on his breath. After all this time, its acrid sweetness still smelled like sex to her.

"Bite me," she said playfully. Until his face began to change, she didn't really believe he would dare.

She was mesmerized as the well-known features shifted and distended into a malformed caricature that was at once grotesque and absurd. She had never seen the transformation in such close detail before. When it was done, the impudently smirking man was still faintly visible beneath the vacant guise of the monster.

"My pleasure," he said, his voice thick with teeth now perversely stretched and deadly sharp. With unnatural agility, he repositioned himself so that his body hovered over hers, achingly close but not quite making contact, trapping her without touching her. His fangs were inches from her throat. She was Little Red alone with the wolf after all, but no huntsman was coming with his axe to save her. That was supposed to be her job, too.

She closed her eyes. Just do it, she thought.

As if in reply, he buried his face in her neck… but instead of the swift stab of pain she expected, she felt only the soft touch of a gentle kiss. The knife edge of his extended canines raised gooseflesh on her skin as his tongue worked slowly down the curve of her neck, the valley between her breasts, the smooth slope of her stomach, and then…

Oh.

Well, this wasn't quite what she'd had in mind, but she wasn't about to complain. She opened her eyes and raised herself up on her elbows to look down at him, expecting to see the human face again, but the eyes that met hers were yellow and glowed like a cat's. His unconcealed fangs were cold as bone against the fragile skin between her legs, but his lips and tongue moved around them so deftly that they never even scratched her.

This was new. In all their kinky little trysts, all the wanton ways they had used each other, he had never once gone into game face when they had sex. Having seen how easily rage and arousal could trigger the change, she imagined it had cost him a lot of effort to maintain his normal appearance when they were together. She knew why he had done it, though. She knew he had thought that staying as human as possible was the only way he could convince her to love him.

Now, as she watched a gruesome smile spread across the distorted yet bizarrely familiar features, she knew he had given up trying to win her heart. He wanted her to see him like this, to feel herself writhing with desire as the hideous mouth pressed against her lower lips. He wanted her to know that the monster could make her scream with pleasure as readily as the man.

The ceiling was starting to spin. Prickles of heat radiated from her center; her legs felt like jelly, and her fingers were numb. She arched her back and chewed her lip to keep from crying out. Her hips bucked. She was suspended on the brink of ecstasy… she was slipping… she was starting to fall… and then with one rough grunt and the wet crunch of tearing flesh, he plunged his fangs into her thigh and let the hot blood flow.

She gasped and tried to reclaim herself, but it was too late; the shock had pushed her over the edge. The climax took her in waves, drowning her senses. For a long moment, even the pain felt like bliss. He drank easily as her pounding heart drove the blood from the wound. She could feel it even after it left her… bathing his tongue, sliding down his throat, flooding his body… becoming part of him.

When the mindless euphoria began to subside, she noticed how weak she felt. Was he taking too much? The blood seemed to be flowing slowly, which probably meant that he had pierced a vein, not an artery, which would be… good? She suddenly realized she knew next to nothing about vampire feeding habits. It had never seemed relevant. Giles had given her a pamphlet once, but she had just glanced at the pictures and tossed it back with a breezy remark about how any vamp who crossed her wouldn't be feeding again anytime soon.

Now she felt giddy and lightheaded, and she wasn't sure if it was in a fun way or a massive-blood-loss kind of way. She didn't know how much more he could drink without endangering her life, and she didn't know if he knew either. Was he still in control, still the man who would do anything to please her, or had the bloodlust awakened the demon that wanted nothing more than to drain her dead?

Just in case, she scanned her surroundings for a weapon within reach. The basement was full of them; Xander had seen to that when Spike moved in. He had drawn her a diagram, insisted that she memorize it – hoped, maybe, that she would need it. She mentally inventoried the concealed items: throwing knives hooked underneath the table, a crossbow tucked behind the hot water tank… and there, not three feet away, in a toolbox on the metal shelf beside the cot, a well-worn stake.

She was on the point of reaching for it when he released her. Fangs withdrew from flesh with a soft sucking sound, and the blood flowed unobstructed, slow and steady. He retrieved his black t-shirt from the floor and wrapped it gently around her leg. His face changed again, the demon's permanent scowl dissolving into the almost elegant features of his usual form. The mouth that just a moment before had been terrifying, stained and dripping with her blood, was now almost comical; he looked like a little boy caught eating strawberry jam with his fingers.

Fleetingly, she wondered which was the real face and which was the mask. She had always thought of Angel's human face as his true appearance, and in recent months she had begun to see Spike the same way: the cold blue eyes and mocking mouth belonged to the warrior she had come to trust more than anyone (sometimes even herself), while the vampire's fangs and menacing brow were nothing more than a façade. But maybe she had the answer backwards, or maybe she was asking the wrong question in the first place. Why couldn't she have just swallowed her Slayer hubris and read the goddamn pamphlet?

Spike sat watching her expectantly, waiting for her to speak first. She wanted to ask a lot of things, not least whether she was in immediate danger of death by desanguination, but what she actually heard herself say was, "What do I taste like?"

"O-negative," he quipped before stretching out beside her. He looked at the toolbox on the shelf and grinned. "You were well fit to stake me, weren't you, baby?" Cold fingers idly traced lines on her neck – jugular, carotid… which was the artery and which was the vein? "Might have been easier to let you."

Lips still slick with blood pressed against hers. The heady, metallic tang mingled with the smell and the taste of him – cool sweat and stale cigarettes, death and endless want. "Don't fret, pet, you'll be fine by morning. Didn't take much. I would never…" His voice dropped to a whisper. "Don't you know that by now? That I'll never hurt you again?"

And there it was, the future tense. Whatever he said about this being the end for them, she saw the truth in every contour of his human face. Every square inch of him was teeming with hope – hope for another night, another embrace, another chance to make her well and truly his. He had lied when he said he wanted to make love to her just once. The hope in his eyes – that stubborn, groundless hope – made it clear that some part of him believed, against all sense and logic, that once could still become forever.

Stupid lovesick optimist. He should have known better. And yet she found herself envying him, wanting powerfully to preserve the lie and half-wishing she could believe it was true. "I know you won't hurt me," she said. "Not now. Your soul…"

He snorted indignantly. "Is rubbish, and others have done worse with better. A penny soul never came to tuppence."

"I assume that also means something dirty," she said, smiling at his relapse into nonsensical Britishisms.

He shrugged. "Bugger me. Just something me mum used to say… erm, before I killed her… twice."

"Okay," she announced after dealing with that sentence for a moment, "I think this officially concludes share time."

"Got something better to do, have you?" He was grinning again.

"I'm sure I can think of something." She twisted her fingers through his blood-streaked hair and pulled him into a fervent kiss. He responded as he always did, as if she had switched on an electric current that ran through his entire body, crackling with energy. Within seconds he was lost to himself, defenseless, a willing slave whose world was empty of everything but her. He was right: she would never feel what he felt – not for him, maybe not for anyone. And he was right that he would never hurt her again. She would never let him.

Oh well, she thought as she sank beneath his familiar weight and tried to abandon herself, just for tonight, to the hollow, entrancing lie that sustained his captive soul. There remained a few hours to fill before dawn, and this was still better than Dungeons and Dragons.

-finis-