![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quinaraAnd so we reach the end of the story! Except for the epilogue. I really hope you like it. *bites fingernails*
Turn and Face the Strain.
[Sequel to The More Things Stay the Same and As Good as a Rest.]
When Buffy thought about falling in love again, she didn't expect it to be nearly so complicated as it actually turns out to be.
Also, she didn't expect it to be Spike. (She's not sure he did either.)
[Notes + Chapter One: I'm Not a Political Animal, But.]
/
[Chapter Thirteen: Handing the Keys over to Nixon.]
.
Chapter Fourteen: Welcome to the Doublemeat Palace.
The first time Angel moved, Buffy was too slow to stop him. Her heart almost burst out of her chest with shock when Spike tackled him backwards, not sure at all what he was doing, but then it was just hammering. From where she was, not far from Angel where he stumbled, she could see the crossbow against Spike’s heart, right over the new jacket she still needed to decide whether she liked or not. She could see Spike’s face – the fear setting in.
“Come any closer and I’ll kill him. You’ll have the blood of us both on your hands.”
She heard the words, but it took a moment to understand. Her gaze turned to Angel, vamp-faced Angel with the threat still heavy in the stance of his body. Then she realised what the words meant. Her first thought was that it would be OK, that they could make this work, but it was less than a second before she realised that Angel was still waiting to pounce and that he was going to.
The moment when he decided he didn’t care about Spike was yet another moment when she realised that she really, really did, enough that it felt like the air she had in her lungs was choking her, like her heart was being sucked inside its own black hole. Oh, hello Love. I didn’t miss you much. For an instant, it felt like Spike was already dead and she was dying with it, wounded with the pain.
Thankfully, her fight or flight instincts were honed way beyond natural ability. She was moving before Angel’s feet had inched from the ground, before his growl had even finished. No nonsense, she punched him in the face with one violent southpaw slug, knocking him to the ground as the impact jarred up into the core of her wounded shoulder. Like she gave a crap. “You don’t even think about it!” she yelled at him, painful shrieky tones colouring her voice as the air rushed up her throat. “Stay down!”
Something like remorse had to be rushing through Angel right then, if not despair, because his face was slipping back to human, the bruise right now only a light red mark spreading out across his cheek. “What’s the matter with you, Holtz?” he was spitting out anyway, not looking at Buffy at all where she stood guard, ready to hurt him again. “First you try to kill us all, now you’ve got cold feet? He’s a vampire. You shouldn’t care!”
“No,” Buffy breathed, feeling all the pain again. She had no way of knowing if Holtz knew, no way of knowing if his knowing would make a difference. It didn’t make a difference to her, not now.
Her eyes shot straight to Spike’s where he was staring at her, looking like someone had told him a joke he didn’t understand. Christ, I’m gonna die, was written all over his face. I’m gonna die for saving this bastard. The worst part was that she had no way of telling him what that meant to her, how much she loved him, how she had enough pride in him to make her sick. How did he know what she was thinking, what she wanted? Because this was it, wasn’t it, protecting Holtz? In the end it always would be – and Spike, he knew that.
Try and judge me now, world, she found the thought haring wildly through her mind. Tell me this guy’s a bad one. Try it and watch me slit your throat.
Through the silence, then, and the stalemate, Daniel spoke. “I didn’t know,” he said softly, almost apologetically. His arm never dropped and his posture didn’t relax, but he was stable, not murderous, for the moment. “Until I saw them run, I didn’t know the girl and the child were inside.”
“What?” Wesley spoke for both of them, looked as confused as Buffy felt when she spared a glance his way. And Kate and Cordelia, there were there too now, silent at the mouth of the alleyway, both nothing more than shocked and confused by what was going on. “What girl?” Wes kept on talking, his voice strangled.
“Fred was with Connor,” Angel hissed, climbing to his feet. Her eyes trained on him, Buffy nonetheless let him stand up, so long as every movement remained slow and steady. “They were in the hotel when Holtz and his cronies burned it down. Barely got away.”
He was turning Wes against Holtz, Buffy could read that much from what was going on. She didn’t understand how she was supposed to feel about the rest of it. Fred and Connor had been inside the hotel when Daniel had set it on fire? Weren’t they all assuming he’d done it with the intent to kill anyway, if only Angel? Had she missed that part of everybody’s thinking?
But apparently this eventuality hadn’t quite crossed Wesley’s mind, because he looked dangerous. “Fred?” he asked, still monosyllabic, his eyes narrowing. Buffy couldn’t work out why he’d not thought about this when he was having Daniel come to dinner in his apartment. There had to have been something else going on there; identification, maybe? Whatever it was, it seemed like he regretted it now. Clearly he didn’t have a system in place for these situations. “Was she hurt?”
Really, whatever happened to easy, generalist approaches to harbouring criminals? Buffy wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do if Wes got on board the killing train with Angel. She couldn’t protect Spike, by proxy of Daniel, from both of them at once.
“Wes…” Cordelia, at least, seemed to be on the side of life; they shared a look of understanding. “Don’t,” she appealed to one twitchy-looking watcher-guy.
“I was lied to by a demon, Wesley,” Daniel claimed more strongly, bitterness in his voice and the gestures of his left hand. “by Sahjhan. I see now…”
“Oh, please,” Angel interrupted, scoffing at him. “Don’t tell me you’re feeling guilty.” The words were like acid, like very little Buffy had heard from Angel before. She wasn’t sure what to think as she listened to him speak. Everyone… Why was everyone so messed up? “You committed two hundred years to this revenge; you’ll not convince anyone you’re giving it up now.”
There was no way she could look at him. Looking at Spike still hurt, so her gaze drifted to the others standing at the mouth of the alleyway: Wesley’s anguish, Cordy’s worry and Kate, who looked completely unsurprised by Angel’s anger, by his rage. Set against the backdrop of the night and the lights from the traffic jam, she looked serene, empty. Moved on from all of this, uncaring. Like it was too familiar to let it get it to her. Like this, being detached, this was how she needed to be.
How had that happened? Buffy wanted to know. When had it all changed? Kate had reminded her of two years ago, when she’d been here after Faith and her own revenge – but then Angel had kept Faith safe, stopped Buffy, reached out when everybody else had given up. It was hard at the time, and even harder with current evidence, to believe that Angel’s motives had been pure of anything but moral righteousness. (Rectitude? That word that sounded like a ruler…)
But she did believe it. When she was being fair on Faith – and sometimes, in hindsight, she was – Buffy believed in everything Angel had yelled at her about way back when.
You have no idea what it’s like on the other side!
And she could still remember Faith yelling that at her, word for word. She didn’t know how true it was anymore, but Angel had always known it, Buffy knew that. Right now he was practically standing there, shadows on his face and damp brickwork behind his back.
Was it going to be down to her? Buffy really hoped it wasn’t. She didn’t know if she had the strength for this anymore. “Is that it then, Angel?” she asked, letting some of her fear leak into anger, balling her fists against the cold and in preparation. “You gonna throw him to the wolves, turn yourself into one? Don’t you save souls anymore?”
Clearly she didn’t have the strength, because what she said seemed to have no effect. “No,” Angel replied almost immediately, not removing his steely gaze from Holtz’s back. “Not his. Not now.”
Like at the end too many conversations she had with Angel, she could feel the upset and disappointment filling her gut, dragging her down. When had this all turned around? She wasn’t supposed to have to stand for this stuff on her own. “Angel…” she begged, shaking her head but all too aware that it wouldn’t change his mind.
“You’re wasting your time, Miss Summers,” Daniel told her then, loudly enough to make sure his voice carried. “The monster inside will never be content until vengeance is done.”
“And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” she shouted back, flinching as she saw Spike flinch. But of course Daniel was entirely unmoved. “You and your revenge.” Honestly, she was just afraid now, panicking beyond reason about how all this was going to end. This was always what love did to her. “What did you think was gonna happen when you started on all this, huh?” she accused, fighting through it, the tarmac hard beneath the thin soles of her shoes. She should never have worn heels, no matter how happy she was to be free of the Doublemeat ugly flats collection. “Right, so Angelus killed your whoever, but now you’re trying to kill his son! You’re coming out of the haze, starting to feel guilty, fine. Good. You do that. Angel’s gonna feel just the same way when he gets over this, so right now you could try not making him want to kill you!”
“My wife and children,” Daniel replied dully, his voice resounding nonetheless in the night-time. Buffy watched him for any sign of movement, but there was none. “My Caroline, my Daniel Henry, my Sarah. That was my ‘whoever’. They may be two hundred years dust, but it has been less than half a year of my experience since I held them in my arms. And now you tell me…” For a moment he paused and Buffy allowed herself to breathe, still watching him. The straight back of his dad-coat was still straight, his hair even stiff in the breeze. “You believe Angelus is able to love his son, with the same faith and duty as I loved mine?”
Cordelia was first off the mark with a response to that. “Yes!” she insisted, as panicked as the rest of them, thankfully holding it in enough that Spike had a chance to survive. “For god’s sake, yes.”
Her response, however, seemed to have no effect on Holtz. “Miss Summers,” he asked, demanding a response specifically from her. “Even you, with your training, your experience?”
“Yes,” she answered, because, really, it wasn’t a question. She looked at Angel, all his hate, all the fear that was causing it, and she knew there wasn’t any other answer. “Angel loves his son every day, every second. As for Angelus…” For a moment, she paused, not certain what she wanted to commit to. But there still was little doubt in her mind, not least with Spike standing there, meeting her eyes as she looked at him again, needing to know he was still all right. It had to be possible, didn’t it? She’d gone too far not to accept that it was possible. “If Angel lost his soul,” she stated, directing her words plainly and cleanly at Holtz’s back and the crossbow still in his hand, “I think he’d still love Connor.” She could imagine it, imagine the twisted, contorted expressions of emotion; she had a terrible feeling Angelus had still loved her. “I think it would tear him up inside,” she continued, keeping her voice steady, “and I think the best thing anyone could ever do for that boy right then would be to take him far, far away, but, yes, he’d still love him.” He would always be standing here, doing this – even when he no longer had principles to break. “He still would want revenge.”
Angel harrumphed at that moment and Buffy spared him a glance, trying to work out if he agreed with what she was saying. It didn’t really matter in the end, because Holtz wasn’t going to believe him whatever he said, but she still wanted to at least try and be right.
As their eyes met, however, Buffy felt certain that she knew. “The problem wouldn’t be that he wouldn’t love him,” she explained, seeing in this rage the same guy who'd cooed over a crib. “The problem would be that it would still leave him evil.” She shook her head, looking back to Holtz, over his shoulder to Spike, wondering if this would finally make him understand. “That’s the thing about Angel, with me as well, what makes us alike.” They’d never be able to rely on love to make them do good. “Love doesn’t make us different; it doesn’t change who we are.”
On that comment, Spike’s eyes widened, though he still looked too nervous to say anything. She wanted nothing more than to force him out of Daniel’s grip and tell him again, get them alone and make him understand – because it finally made sense to her. His love made him notice stuff, work things out. Hers… It wasn’t nearly so helpful. That was the reason why he didn’t trust that she loved him, it had to be, but it was just because they were different; it didn’t mean she was wrong.
“I suppose you claim to love this vampire, then,” Holtz remarked, apparently quite able to assess situations when his life was falling apart and he was at risk of having his throat torn out by an angry Angel. He emphasised his point with a jab of the crossbow into Spike’s chest, making him gasp, and her in turn. “And think your integrity remains intact.”
“Yes,” she said, feeling quite snippy about having to let everyone know about it, under this sort of duress. She could feel their eyes on her. “Even.”
Saying it felt awkward, off-message and off-mission – but it got Spike looking at her. That made it worth it: at least if this all really did go wrong he might go out believing her.
And he seemed to – that was the thing she loved best. She wasn’t expecting it, but a long, warm flush of feeling spread through her as her eyes met his. There was acceptance on his face, relief when he realised he could trust her to get him out of this. It felt like nothing else.
Because she could, couldn’t she? If he trusted her, then she could. All she needed was a distraction to knock Daniel out, not risk him firing that crossbow in Spike’s heart…
“Now?” Spike asked – and he was playing it breathless, like a man asking the woman he loved if she really did love him back. It was – well, it was pretty realistic.
It gave them the chance to communicate. “Do you trust me?” she asked, like a woman who hadn’t just watched him work it out. What she really meant, and she knew he knew it, was, Are you ready?
With a look that was deadly serious, not gushing anymore but definitely perfect, he nodded. “Yes.”
She nodded back – then moved.
It was another one of those moments. Yet again, Spike found himself living some sort of bullet-time daydream, only this time it was his own life at stake.
Of course, it was also different this time because Buffy loved him. She’d said it in front of people, in front of Angel, and, unlike before when he’d found himself mostly confused by the words, this time it actually felt like he’d stepped into a parallel universe, right where they made sense. This had to be some sort of perfect world, he was certain of it, even if he was being threatened with death. Everything was coming together.
He knew what was coming when Buffy nodded, just as he knew this was the best chance of getting out of this mess, even if he didn’t overly fancy the hurt about to come his way. Thankfully he understood pain, had felt more than enough of it before – had felt a hellgod rummage through his insides with her fingers not so long ago. If he could survive, then he’d get over it.
Shutting his eyes then, so he wouldn’t have to see, Spike put his unlife on the line. He listened to Daniel’s steady heartbeat in a black, blank world, set against the sound of the traffic. In one single, unpredictable movement, he clapped his hands up to Holtz’s wrist, squeezing as he pushed the man’s arm upwards and ducked his own body down onto its knees.
Immediately pain flared in his head, a loud hot-cold burn, forcing his eyes even more shut than they already were. The bolt carved into him as he forced it up his chest, fired into his shoulder so the pressure threw him back against the wall. More pain seared into the muscle there, across his shoulder blades which had already felt too many bricks for one evening.
He panted, trying to breathe through it, opened his eyes to slits just in time to see Buffy’s fist smash a perfectly-timed knock-out blow into the side of Holtz’s head, not quite hard enough to kill him. As the man fell, his arm wrenched from Spike’s hands, giving him one final jolt of damning pain.
But then it was over, the last of it. He knew it, as well as he could hear the others starting to move, as Buffy immediately dropped to his eye level and stroked his face, one warm, small hand against his cheek. She checked that he was conscious, lucid, darting looks between his pupils, before she was turning her head over her shoulder, barking orders about the body lying by her side. “Somebody get him somewhere! – Restrain him! – Angel, you aren’t gonna harm him or so help me I will kill you myself! – Call… Call Riley and his supernatural jail squad! – Do something!”
Always a quick thinker; that’s my girl… As for himself, Spike thought, letting his head loll back against the wall, unconsciousness was starting to sound like a good idea. It was far less embarrassing than nausea and he had the awful feeling like he needed to be sick. Or die. Death didn’t sound too bad an option.
“Hey, you; wake up!” his harpy of a lover was then suddenly shouting at him, panic in the tingling of her fingers as she tapped the flat of his cheek with her left hand. “This bolt needs to come out,” she explained, feeling up the area with some fingers. It had been a hell of a lot sexier when he’d done it to her wound; maybe that had been the magic after all. “D’you want me to pull or push?”
There was no need for him to look down to know what was going on, or even to open his eyes. He had a shaft of wood sticking out of him, thankfully carved from one dowel of wood rather than with a metal tip, so it wouldn’t rip him up too much whichever way it went. But there would be suction if it went backwards – and more damage if it went forwards. Which would he prefer? He wasn’t sure whether…
Ow, ow – “Fucking bitch!”
His eyes flared open, a fresh rush of adrenaline sending him straight to alert, fangs jerking past his teeth as his face went. Buffy was still there in front of him, but she was holding one bloody crossbow bolt in her fingers, wrenched out without any warning at all. Of course the cow had one perfect little smirk on her perfect little face. He felt like biting it off. “Christ,” he kept on swearing, panting heavily between words. “What the –”
With a quick snap of the wood into two bits of rubbish, however, his darling Buffy was dropping it to the ground and cradling the back of his head in her left hand so she could close in for the sweetest kiss of his unlife. More than happy to change tack, he submitted, relaxing his face and opening his mouth to the slow, silencing caress of her tongue. As she pulled away, his body was far less interested in being sick than curling up into soggy ball of misery, all set to throw himself on Buffy’s charity.
Frankly, he was embarrassed that he could be so easily bought, but there wasn’t much he could do apart from accept that that was how it was. “Still think you’re a bitch,” he said, if only to assuage his own pride. At her snort of amusement, all the same, he immediately contradicted himself – dumped his arms around her and dragged her in closer to where he was slumped against the wall. Then, as her fingers worked through his hair, he couldn’t even keep up a little bit of verbal pretence, telling her, “Love you,” as he lowered his aching head onto her warm shoulder.
“You too,” she murmured, and it was like a big warm feather eiderdown wrapping around him, tickling his fingers and toes.
Against that feeling, however, blood was seeping onto his shirt and jacket, probably clotting happily on its own, even as it ruined his new gear. It felt unpleasantly cold and sticky. “Bastard ruined my jacket,” he muttered, certain he was starting to feel better now that he was noticing that sort of thing, but definitely not about to move of his own accord. “It was new this morning and now it’s got this whacking great hole in it!” He just knew he was never going to get the blood out. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It’s not so bad,” Buffy replied, nudging him into what was probably a more comfortable position. She cast a glance to the bustling sounds of people around them, but he couldn’t be bothered to look up and see what was going on. Although, from what he could see, Holtz was being dragged off somewhere not the ground; it was a weirdly comic sight for the end of all this, but he ignored it as Buffy kept on talking with her Buffy voice. “It’s a good colour on you; tones down your hair. And it’s sacrilege, I know, but it actually makes the bleach job look less cheap… Although,” she punctuated her pause with a pleasant scrunch of her fingers in his curls, “getting rid of the Brylcreem helmet does that too.”
“Calling me cheap, are you?” he asked back, amused as he nuzzled into her hand a bit and looked up at her face.
She took the opportunity to meet his lips for another brief kiss. “You’d better be, for my budget,” she told him with an impish little grin. “Can’t afford to wine and dine you like the other women out there.
“Eh,” he dismissed, definitely feeling better now. He could do with a bandage on his chest rather than an open wound, but other parts of him were, oh yeah, raring to go apparently. “I’m sure you’ll make it up to me in other ways.” They were curled up together on the ground, his left arm around her back, her right around his, his thighs getting a nice feel of her shins; he wondered, but doubted, whether she’d be up for a bit of a shadowy touch-up before they got moving again. This was the problem of a short jacket, of course, because he couldn’t let the tail of it swing round and convince her it would be discreet. He’d have to settle for resting his hand on her thigh and hoping she wouldn’t shove it away.
What she actually did was cover his hand with hers, pull it a touch higher and spread the digits till his thumb was very nearly beyond the bounds of standard decency, getting lost in the fuzzy creases of her trousers. It was surprising, not to mention quite unfairly arousing for an injured man. “Seriously,” she breathed in his ear, making it a hell of a lot worse. “I have so many plans for when we get home.”
Considering that was about as dirty as Buffy Summers had ever spoken to him when there were other people in earshot, he felt a charge go through him almost as heady as if she’d straddled him then and there. “Love,” he told her, giving himself away by the needy rumble he didn’t know how to get out of his voice. “Keep talking like that and I’m gonna give Angel and his pals something of a show.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that,” she whispered smuttily back, shifting on her bum so her shins rubbed a bit against his thighs. Her mouth was definitely expecting the kiss he laid on it, lips greedy and full against his, enjoying the attention. Even as it felt like love, however, as he let his hand get in a little leg-squeezing, he knew it wasn’t going to last. There were still some more things to do, a mission to complete. Buffy would never forget about that, not for him, not for anyone. No one apart from Dawn, maybe, though they hadn’t actually needed to test that claim of hers, in the end.
Even if he was blocking out everything that was going on around them, far more content to pretend it was just him and Buffy, together on the floor of the crypt, perhaps, after they’d ended up on the wrong side of the room – he knew that she was listening to every voice around her, keeping track of what was going on.
But he could be all right with that, still trust – actually believe that she loved him and would work to keep them going. The strange feeling of happiness in him properly thought that he could, and it wasn’t even that distracted by the pain in his shoulder, which was refusing to numb.
“So,” she asked when they pulled back, popping her lips together presumably to make them look less wet and ravished. She pulled her knees up to her chest as well; it made him bring his hands back to himself, but he had a feeling the action’s main purpose was to conceal various embarrassing reactions she’d had to the kissing. That brought its own fun, just from the way she squirmed when he shot her a wink. “Anyway,” she continued, not sounding all that certain about what she was trying to say. “We’d better…” Her eyes lowered demurely as she paused, frowning. “Why did you save Daniel, actually?” she asked in the end, distracting herself from the mission to look at him again.
Startled, he didn’t know what to tell her. He would have thought any question from her about that would have been why hadn’t he saved him – and it would have come with a lot more anger and accusation after they were dealing with a dead body, gallons of blood and Angel dancing in the stuff. It would’ve been very much like a party, only he wouldn’t have been enjoying himself, the same way he hadn’t been able to fully enjoy the idea of that sort of thing since he’d come over all queer for one squidgy goody-two-shoes slayer. “It’s what you expected of me, right?” he asked, momentarily uncertain. “What you wanted me to do?”
Her response was one of those strange half-smiles of hers, accompanied by bright eyes not quite welling up.
Oh. Right.
“Yeah,” she said warmly, letting her right hand escape her knees to take hold of his left, squeezing his fingers. God, but she could make him feel good. “It’s hard to tell sometimes,” she continued, “when it’s all messed up like this…” It sounded like she’d been thinking about it for a while. “But yeah, definitely.” Nodding her chin so she could stare through her eyelashes, she made sure he was listening as she finished, “Always, actually. Even if it’s me who’s high on the vengeance fumes.”
“Noted,” he agreed, quite happy to keep on living the dream. It wasn’t like it bothered him whether people like Holtz lived or died, after all, so, as far as he was concerned, it sounded just as easy to save them as it was to slaughter a roomful. It was the magic of apathy, that.
Knowing his luck, also, it was likely to get him into just as many interesting life-or-death situations. Having Buffy in his life mostly made up for the other bits of excitement he’d miss out on. She didn’t seem to care too much about the gambling and the smoking and the stealing, which he was going to cut down on anyway, the moment he got himself some cash again. It wasn’t a sustainable habit, really.
Bloody hell. “You’ve turned me into a right old Mr. Clean, haven’t you?” he accused her the moment he realised just how far his thoughts had gone, looking down at their clasped hands and wondering why he wasn’t putting up more of a fight.
The answer was pretty obvious, nonetheless, in the way she squeezed his fingers. Even as she scoffed with mock-outrage, “Don’t you go blaming me! All I wanted from you was a way to self-destruct.” He looked up to see her trying not to smile, could feel the matching grin spread across his own lips. “I take no responsibility for you at all.”
“Is that right?” It was ever so possible that in his new, mission-conscious state, Spike was a little more aware of his surroundings now. For example, he knew that, while Wesley, Kate and Cordelia were having a conversation, Angel was listening in. “The self-destruction’s fucking hot, though, innit?” he couldn’t not ask when he had Buffy on the ropes with her laughing eyes and claims she hadn’t made him good.
“Hoo, yeah,” she replied, giggling.
He really did have to keep himself from crowing to everyone in a five-mile radius how happy she looked. Not least as Angel billowed his billowy coat with a turn to leave the alleyway. Yeah, he still had it. Take that, evil of the world.
Of course, when his eyes slipped back to Buffy’s she winked at him, proving once and for all that she would always be one step ahead. And certainly not above little bits of petty revenge against people who had him nearly killed. Maybe this was why he wasn’t meant to rely on her for moral guidance…
“All right,” Spike asked finally, putting a hand against his wound to assess the damage and deciding he would indeed survive for time being. “What actually is it we’re doing now?”
Buffy threw up a hand, halfway to a shrug. “We are…” She looked behind her, at his motorbike, the cluster of people and a still unconscious Holtz who had his hands secured behind his back with something or other. Just beyond, the traffic jam looked like it was finally clearing up for the night. “We’re giving Holtz to Riley for a jail term or a restraining order or new life in Santa Fe or whatever, because apparently I outsource all responses to all human threats now, and then…” Frowning, she paused – but then she reached into her jacket pocket. Out came what looked like a business card, brandished with an aura of ‘aha’. “We call Brian and see if he can hook us up whatever this urn thing is we need trap the evil demon genie guy.”
Groaning, Spike wondered if he would be able to plead chest wound and sleep it all out in the car. The last thing he needed tonight was a chat with Riley Finn. As for this Brian bloke, all bets were on for him to be a boring wanker too. Still, it had to be done didn’t it? Best get on with it, he thought.
But then – “Don’t worry, though,” Buffy told him as they struggled him to standing. It suddenly seemed like an awfully long way down to his feet again – and his shoulder, well, apparently it didn’t enjoy supporting the whole weight of his arm. Ow. “I’m pretty sure we personally only have a date with Mecurochrome and Tylenol.”
Now, if that wasn’t love, he didn’t know what was. “Errrgh,” he thanked her, trying to make sure he didn’t show his own feelings by vomiting over her hair.
.
[Chapter Fifteen: Epilogue.]
Turn and Face the Strain.
[Sequel to The More Things Stay the Same and As Good as a Rest.]
When Buffy thought about falling in love again, she didn't expect it to be nearly so complicated as it actually turns out to be.
Also, she didn't expect it to be Spike. (She's not sure he did either.)
[Notes + Chapter One: I'm Not a Political Animal, But.]
/
[Chapter Thirteen: Handing the Keys over to Nixon.]
.
Chapter Fourteen: Welcome to the Doublemeat Palace.
The first time Angel moved, Buffy was too slow to stop him. Her heart almost burst out of her chest with shock when Spike tackled him backwards, not sure at all what he was doing, but then it was just hammering. From where she was, not far from Angel where he stumbled, she could see the crossbow against Spike’s heart, right over the new jacket she still needed to decide whether she liked or not. She could see Spike’s face – the fear setting in.
“Come any closer and I’ll kill him. You’ll have the blood of us both on your hands.”
She heard the words, but it took a moment to understand. Her gaze turned to Angel, vamp-faced Angel with the threat still heavy in the stance of his body. Then she realised what the words meant. Her first thought was that it would be OK, that they could make this work, but it was less than a second before she realised that Angel was still waiting to pounce and that he was going to.
The moment when he decided he didn’t care about Spike was yet another moment when she realised that she really, really did, enough that it felt like the air she had in her lungs was choking her, like her heart was being sucked inside its own black hole. Oh, hello Love. I didn’t miss you much. For an instant, it felt like Spike was already dead and she was dying with it, wounded with the pain.
Thankfully, her fight or flight instincts were honed way beyond natural ability. She was moving before Angel’s feet had inched from the ground, before his growl had even finished. No nonsense, she punched him in the face with one violent southpaw slug, knocking him to the ground as the impact jarred up into the core of her wounded shoulder. Like she gave a crap. “You don’t even think about it!” she yelled at him, painful shrieky tones colouring her voice as the air rushed up her throat. “Stay down!”
Something like remorse had to be rushing through Angel right then, if not despair, because his face was slipping back to human, the bruise right now only a light red mark spreading out across his cheek. “What’s the matter with you, Holtz?” he was spitting out anyway, not looking at Buffy at all where she stood guard, ready to hurt him again. “First you try to kill us all, now you’ve got cold feet? He’s a vampire. You shouldn’t care!”
“No,” Buffy breathed, feeling all the pain again. She had no way of knowing if Holtz knew, no way of knowing if his knowing would make a difference. It didn’t make a difference to her, not now.
Her eyes shot straight to Spike’s where he was staring at her, looking like someone had told him a joke he didn’t understand. Christ, I’m gonna die, was written all over his face. I’m gonna die for saving this bastard. The worst part was that she had no way of telling him what that meant to her, how much she loved him, how she had enough pride in him to make her sick. How did he know what she was thinking, what she wanted? Because this was it, wasn’t it, protecting Holtz? In the end it always would be – and Spike, he knew that.
Try and judge me now, world, she found the thought haring wildly through her mind. Tell me this guy’s a bad one. Try it and watch me slit your throat.
Through the silence, then, and the stalemate, Daniel spoke. “I didn’t know,” he said softly, almost apologetically. His arm never dropped and his posture didn’t relax, but he was stable, not murderous, for the moment. “Until I saw them run, I didn’t know the girl and the child were inside.”
“What?” Wesley spoke for both of them, looked as confused as Buffy felt when she spared a glance his way. And Kate and Cordelia, there were there too now, silent at the mouth of the alleyway, both nothing more than shocked and confused by what was going on. “What girl?” Wes kept on talking, his voice strangled.
“Fred was with Connor,” Angel hissed, climbing to his feet. Her eyes trained on him, Buffy nonetheless let him stand up, so long as every movement remained slow and steady. “They were in the hotel when Holtz and his cronies burned it down. Barely got away.”
He was turning Wes against Holtz, Buffy could read that much from what was going on. She didn’t understand how she was supposed to feel about the rest of it. Fred and Connor had been inside the hotel when Daniel had set it on fire? Weren’t they all assuming he’d done it with the intent to kill anyway, if only Angel? Had she missed that part of everybody’s thinking?
But apparently this eventuality hadn’t quite crossed Wesley’s mind, because he looked dangerous. “Fred?” he asked, still monosyllabic, his eyes narrowing. Buffy couldn’t work out why he’d not thought about this when he was having Daniel come to dinner in his apartment. There had to have been something else going on there; identification, maybe? Whatever it was, it seemed like he regretted it now. Clearly he didn’t have a system in place for these situations. “Was she hurt?”
Really, whatever happened to easy, generalist approaches to harbouring criminals? Buffy wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do if Wes got on board the killing train with Angel. She couldn’t protect Spike, by proxy of Daniel, from both of them at once.
“Wes…” Cordelia, at least, seemed to be on the side of life; they shared a look of understanding. “Don’t,” she appealed to one twitchy-looking watcher-guy.
“I was lied to by a demon, Wesley,” Daniel claimed more strongly, bitterness in his voice and the gestures of his left hand. “by Sahjhan. I see now…”
“Oh, please,” Angel interrupted, scoffing at him. “Don’t tell me you’re feeling guilty.” The words were like acid, like very little Buffy had heard from Angel before. She wasn’t sure what to think as she listened to him speak. Everyone… Why was everyone so messed up? “You committed two hundred years to this revenge; you’ll not convince anyone you’re giving it up now.”
There was no way she could look at him. Looking at Spike still hurt, so her gaze drifted to the others standing at the mouth of the alleyway: Wesley’s anguish, Cordy’s worry and Kate, who looked completely unsurprised by Angel’s anger, by his rage. Set against the backdrop of the night and the lights from the traffic jam, she looked serene, empty. Moved on from all of this, uncaring. Like it was too familiar to let it get it to her. Like this, being detached, this was how she needed to be.
How had that happened? Buffy wanted to know. When had it all changed? Kate had reminded her of two years ago, when she’d been here after Faith and her own revenge – but then Angel had kept Faith safe, stopped Buffy, reached out when everybody else had given up. It was hard at the time, and even harder with current evidence, to believe that Angel’s motives had been pure of anything but moral righteousness. (Rectitude? That word that sounded like a ruler…)
But she did believe it. When she was being fair on Faith – and sometimes, in hindsight, she was – Buffy believed in everything Angel had yelled at her about way back when.
You have no idea what it’s like on the other side!
And she could still remember Faith yelling that at her, word for word. She didn’t know how true it was anymore, but Angel had always known it, Buffy knew that. Right now he was practically standing there, shadows on his face and damp brickwork behind his back.
Was it going to be down to her? Buffy really hoped it wasn’t. She didn’t know if she had the strength for this anymore. “Is that it then, Angel?” she asked, letting some of her fear leak into anger, balling her fists against the cold and in preparation. “You gonna throw him to the wolves, turn yourself into one? Don’t you save souls anymore?”
Clearly she didn’t have the strength, because what she said seemed to have no effect. “No,” Angel replied almost immediately, not removing his steely gaze from Holtz’s back. “Not his. Not now.”
Like at the end too many conversations she had with Angel, she could feel the upset and disappointment filling her gut, dragging her down. When had this all turned around? She wasn’t supposed to have to stand for this stuff on her own. “Angel…” she begged, shaking her head but all too aware that it wouldn’t change his mind.
“You’re wasting your time, Miss Summers,” Daniel told her then, loudly enough to make sure his voice carried. “The monster inside will never be content until vengeance is done.”
“And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” she shouted back, flinching as she saw Spike flinch. But of course Daniel was entirely unmoved. “You and your revenge.” Honestly, she was just afraid now, panicking beyond reason about how all this was going to end. This was always what love did to her. “What did you think was gonna happen when you started on all this, huh?” she accused, fighting through it, the tarmac hard beneath the thin soles of her shoes. She should never have worn heels, no matter how happy she was to be free of the Doublemeat ugly flats collection. “Right, so Angelus killed your whoever, but now you’re trying to kill his son! You’re coming out of the haze, starting to feel guilty, fine. Good. You do that. Angel’s gonna feel just the same way when he gets over this, so right now you could try not making him want to kill you!”
“My wife and children,” Daniel replied dully, his voice resounding nonetheless in the night-time. Buffy watched him for any sign of movement, but there was none. “My Caroline, my Daniel Henry, my Sarah. That was my ‘whoever’. They may be two hundred years dust, but it has been less than half a year of my experience since I held them in my arms. And now you tell me…” For a moment he paused and Buffy allowed herself to breathe, still watching him. The straight back of his dad-coat was still straight, his hair even stiff in the breeze. “You believe Angelus is able to love his son, with the same faith and duty as I loved mine?”
Cordelia was first off the mark with a response to that. “Yes!” she insisted, as panicked as the rest of them, thankfully holding it in enough that Spike had a chance to survive. “For god’s sake, yes.”
Her response, however, seemed to have no effect on Holtz. “Miss Summers,” he asked, demanding a response specifically from her. “Even you, with your training, your experience?”
“Yes,” she answered, because, really, it wasn’t a question. She looked at Angel, all his hate, all the fear that was causing it, and she knew there wasn’t any other answer. “Angel loves his son every day, every second. As for Angelus…” For a moment, she paused, not certain what she wanted to commit to. But there still was little doubt in her mind, not least with Spike standing there, meeting her eyes as she looked at him again, needing to know he was still all right. It had to be possible, didn’t it? She’d gone too far not to accept that it was possible. “If Angel lost his soul,” she stated, directing her words plainly and cleanly at Holtz’s back and the crossbow still in his hand, “I think he’d still love Connor.” She could imagine it, imagine the twisted, contorted expressions of emotion; she had a terrible feeling Angelus had still loved her. “I think it would tear him up inside,” she continued, keeping her voice steady, “and I think the best thing anyone could ever do for that boy right then would be to take him far, far away, but, yes, he’d still love him.” He would always be standing here, doing this – even when he no longer had principles to break. “He still would want revenge.”
Angel harrumphed at that moment and Buffy spared him a glance, trying to work out if he agreed with what she was saying. It didn’t really matter in the end, because Holtz wasn’t going to believe him whatever he said, but she still wanted to at least try and be right.
As their eyes met, however, Buffy felt certain that she knew. “The problem wouldn’t be that he wouldn’t love him,” she explained, seeing in this rage the same guy who'd cooed over a crib. “The problem would be that it would still leave him evil.” She shook her head, looking back to Holtz, over his shoulder to Spike, wondering if this would finally make him understand. “That’s the thing about Angel, with me as well, what makes us alike.” They’d never be able to rely on love to make them do good. “Love doesn’t make us different; it doesn’t change who we are.”
On that comment, Spike’s eyes widened, though he still looked too nervous to say anything. She wanted nothing more than to force him out of Daniel’s grip and tell him again, get them alone and make him understand – because it finally made sense to her. His love made him notice stuff, work things out. Hers… It wasn’t nearly so helpful. That was the reason why he didn’t trust that she loved him, it had to be, but it was just because they were different; it didn’t mean she was wrong.
“I suppose you claim to love this vampire, then,” Holtz remarked, apparently quite able to assess situations when his life was falling apart and he was at risk of having his throat torn out by an angry Angel. He emphasised his point with a jab of the crossbow into Spike’s chest, making him gasp, and her in turn. “And think your integrity remains intact.”
“Yes,” she said, feeling quite snippy about having to let everyone know about it, under this sort of duress. She could feel their eyes on her. “Even.”
Saying it felt awkward, off-message and off-mission – but it got Spike looking at her. That made it worth it: at least if this all really did go wrong he might go out believing her.
And he seemed to – that was the thing she loved best. She wasn’t expecting it, but a long, warm flush of feeling spread through her as her eyes met his. There was acceptance on his face, relief when he realised he could trust her to get him out of this. It felt like nothing else.
Because she could, couldn’t she? If he trusted her, then she could. All she needed was a distraction to knock Daniel out, not risk him firing that crossbow in Spike’s heart…
“Now?” Spike asked – and he was playing it breathless, like a man asking the woman he loved if she really did love him back. It was – well, it was pretty realistic.
It gave them the chance to communicate. “Do you trust me?” she asked, like a woman who hadn’t just watched him work it out. What she really meant, and she knew he knew it, was, Are you ready?
With a look that was deadly serious, not gushing anymore but definitely perfect, he nodded. “Yes.”
She nodded back – then moved.
It was another one of those moments. Yet again, Spike found himself living some sort of bullet-time daydream, only this time it was his own life at stake.
Of course, it was also different this time because Buffy loved him. She’d said it in front of people, in front of Angel, and, unlike before when he’d found himself mostly confused by the words, this time it actually felt like he’d stepped into a parallel universe, right where they made sense. This had to be some sort of perfect world, he was certain of it, even if he was being threatened with death. Everything was coming together.
He knew what was coming when Buffy nodded, just as he knew this was the best chance of getting out of this mess, even if he didn’t overly fancy the hurt about to come his way. Thankfully he understood pain, had felt more than enough of it before – had felt a hellgod rummage through his insides with her fingers not so long ago. If he could survive, then he’d get over it.
Shutting his eyes then, so he wouldn’t have to see, Spike put his unlife on the line. He listened to Daniel’s steady heartbeat in a black, blank world, set against the sound of the traffic. In one single, unpredictable movement, he clapped his hands up to Holtz’s wrist, squeezing as he pushed the man’s arm upwards and ducked his own body down onto its knees.
Immediately pain flared in his head, a loud hot-cold burn, forcing his eyes even more shut than they already were. The bolt carved into him as he forced it up his chest, fired into his shoulder so the pressure threw him back against the wall. More pain seared into the muscle there, across his shoulder blades which had already felt too many bricks for one evening.
He panted, trying to breathe through it, opened his eyes to slits just in time to see Buffy’s fist smash a perfectly-timed knock-out blow into the side of Holtz’s head, not quite hard enough to kill him. As the man fell, his arm wrenched from Spike’s hands, giving him one final jolt of damning pain.
But then it was over, the last of it. He knew it, as well as he could hear the others starting to move, as Buffy immediately dropped to his eye level and stroked his face, one warm, small hand against his cheek. She checked that he was conscious, lucid, darting looks between his pupils, before she was turning her head over her shoulder, barking orders about the body lying by her side. “Somebody get him somewhere! – Restrain him! – Angel, you aren’t gonna harm him or so help me I will kill you myself! – Call… Call Riley and his supernatural jail squad! – Do something!”
Always a quick thinker; that’s my girl… As for himself, Spike thought, letting his head loll back against the wall, unconsciousness was starting to sound like a good idea. It was far less embarrassing than nausea and he had the awful feeling like he needed to be sick. Or die. Death didn’t sound too bad an option.
“Hey, you; wake up!” his harpy of a lover was then suddenly shouting at him, panic in the tingling of her fingers as she tapped the flat of his cheek with her left hand. “This bolt needs to come out,” she explained, feeling up the area with some fingers. It had been a hell of a lot sexier when he’d done it to her wound; maybe that had been the magic after all. “D’you want me to pull or push?”
There was no need for him to look down to know what was going on, or even to open his eyes. He had a shaft of wood sticking out of him, thankfully carved from one dowel of wood rather than with a metal tip, so it wouldn’t rip him up too much whichever way it went. But there would be suction if it went backwards – and more damage if it went forwards. Which would he prefer? He wasn’t sure whether…
Ow, ow – “Fucking bitch!”
His eyes flared open, a fresh rush of adrenaline sending him straight to alert, fangs jerking past his teeth as his face went. Buffy was still there in front of him, but she was holding one bloody crossbow bolt in her fingers, wrenched out without any warning at all. Of course the cow had one perfect little smirk on her perfect little face. He felt like biting it off. “Christ,” he kept on swearing, panting heavily between words. “What the –”
With a quick snap of the wood into two bits of rubbish, however, his darling Buffy was dropping it to the ground and cradling the back of his head in her left hand so she could close in for the sweetest kiss of his unlife. More than happy to change tack, he submitted, relaxing his face and opening his mouth to the slow, silencing caress of her tongue. As she pulled away, his body was far less interested in being sick than curling up into soggy ball of misery, all set to throw himself on Buffy’s charity.
Frankly, he was embarrassed that he could be so easily bought, but there wasn’t much he could do apart from accept that that was how it was. “Still think you’re a bitch,” he said, if only to assuage his own pride. At her snort of amusement, all the same, he immediately contradicted himself – dumped his arms around her and dragged her in closer to where he was slumped against the wall. Then, as her fingers worked through his hair, he couldn’t even keep up a little bit of verbal pretence, telling her, “Love you,” as he lowered his aching head onto her warm shoulder.
“You too,” she murmured, and it was like a big warm feather eiderdown wrapping around him, tickling his fingers and toes.
Against that feeling, however, blood was seeping onto his shirt and jacket, probably clotting happily on its own, even as it ruined his new gear. It felt unpleasantly cold and sticky. “Bastard ruined my jacket,” he muttered, certain he was starting to feel better now that he was noticing that sort of thing, but definitely not about to move of his own accord. “It was new this morning and now it’s got this whacking great hole in it!” He just knew he was never going to get the blood out. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It’s not so bad,” Buffy replied, nudging him into what was probably a more comfortable position. She cast a glance to the bustling sounds of people around them, but he couldn’t be bothered to look up and see what was going on. Although, from what he could see, Holtz was being dragged off somewhere not the ground; it was a weirdly comic sight for the end of all this, but he ignored it as Buffy kept on talking with her Buffy voice. “It’s a good colour on you; tones down your hair. And it’s sacrilege, I know, but it actually makes the bleach job look less cheap… Although,” she punctuated her pause with a pleasant scrunch of her fingers in his curls, “getting rid of the Brylcreem helmet does that too.”
“Calling me cheap, are you?” he asked back, amused as he nuzzled into her hand a bit and looked up at her face.
She took the opportunity to meet his lips for another brief kiss. “You’d better be, for my budget,” she told him with an impish little grin. “Can’t afford to wine and dine you like the other women out there.
“Eh,” he dismissed, definitely feeling better now. He could do with a bandage on his chest rather than an open wound, but other parts of him were, oh yeah, raring to go apparently. “I’m sure you’ll make it up to me in other ways.” They were curled up together on the ground, his left arm around her back, her right around his, his thighs getting a nice feel of her shins; he wondered, but doubted, whether she’d be up for a bit of a shadowy touch-up before they got moving again. This was the problem of a short jacket, of course, because he couldn’t let the tail of it swing round and convince her it would be discreet. He’d have to settle for resting his hand on her thigh and hoping she wouldn’t shove it away.
What she actually did was cover his hand with hers, pull it a touch higher and spread the digits till his thumb was very nearly beyond the bounds of standard decency, getting lost in the fuzzy creases of her trousers. It was surprising, not to mention quite unfairly arousing for an injured man. “Seriously,” she breathed in his ear, making it a hell of a lot worse. “I have so many plans for when we get home.”
Considering that was about as dirty as Buffy Summers had ever spoken to him when there were other people in earshot, he felt a charge go through him almost as heady as if she’d straddled him then and there. “Love,” he told her, giving himself away by the needy rumble he didn’t know how to get out of his voice. “Keep talking like that and I’m gonna give Angel and his pals something of a show.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that,” she whispered smuttily back, shifting on her bum so her shins rubbed a bit against his thighs. Her mouth was definitely expecting the kiss he laid on it, lips greedy and full against his, enjoying the attention. Even as it felt like love, however, as he let his hand get in a little leg-squeezing, he knew it wasn’t going to last. There were still some more things to do, a mission to complete. Buffy would never forget about that, not for him, not for anyone. No one apart from Dawn, maybe, though they hadn’t actually needed to test that claim of hers, in the end.
Even if he was blocking out everything that was going on around them, far more content to pretend it was just him and Buffy, together on the floor of the crypt, perhaps, after they’d ended up on the wrong side of the room – he knew that she was listening to every voice around her, keeping track of what was going on.
But he could be all right with that, still trust – actually believe that she loved him and would work to keep them going. The strange feeling of happiness in him properly thought that he could, and it wasn’t even that distracted by the pain in his shoulder, which was refusing to numb.
“So,” she asked when they pulled back, popping her lips together presumably to make them look less wet and ravished. She pulled her knees up to her chest as well; it made him bring his hands back to himself, but he had a feeling the action’s main purpose was to conceal various embarrassing reactions she’d had to the kissing. That brought its own fun, just from the way she squirmed when he shot her a wink. “Anyway,” she continued, not sounding all that certain about what she was trying to say. “We’d better…” Her eyes lowered demurely as she paused, frowning. “Why did you save Daniel, actually?” she asked in the end, distracting herself from the mission to look at him again.
Startled, he didn’t know what to tell her. He would have thought any question from her about that would have been why hadn’t he saved him – and it would have come with a lot more anger and accusation after they were dealing with a dead body, gallons of blood and Angel dancing in the stuff. It would’ve been very much like a party, only he wouldn’t have been enjoying himself, the same way he hadn’t been able to fully enjoy the idea of that sort of thing since he’d come over all queer for one squidgy goody-two-shoes slayer. “It’s what you expected of me, right?” he asked, momentarily uncertain. “What you wanted me to do?”
Her response was one of those strange half-smiles of hers, accompanied by bright eyes not quite welling up.
Oh. Right.
“Yeah,” she said warmly, letting her right hand escape her knees to take hold of his left, squeezing his fingers. God, but she could make him feel good. “It’s hard to tell sometimes,” she continued, “when it’s all messed up like this…” It sounded like she’d been thinking about it for a while. “But yeah, definitely.” Nodding her chin so she could stare through her eyelashes, she made sure he was listening as she finished, “Always, actually. Even if it’s me who’s high on the vengeance fumes.”
“Noted,” he agreed, quite happy to keep on living the dream. It wasn’t like it bothered him whether people like Holtz lived or died, after all, so, as far as he was concerned, it sounded just as easy to save them as it was to slaughter a roomful. It was the magic of apathy, that.
Knowing his luck, also, it was likely to get him into just as many interesting life-or-death situations. Having Buffy in his life mostly made up for the other bits of excitement he’d miss out on. She didn’t seem to care too much about the gambling and the smoking and the stealing, which he was going to cut down on anyway, the moment he got himself some cash again. It wasn’t a sustainable habit, really.
Bloody hell. “You’ve turned me into a right old Mr. Clean, haven’t you?” he accused her the moment he realised just how far his thoughts had gone, looking down at their clasped hands and wondering why he wasn’t putting up more of a fight.
The answer was pretty obvious, nonetheless, in the way she squeezed his fingers. Even as she scoffed with mock-outrage, “Don’t you go blaming me! All I wanted from you was a way to self-destruct.” He looked up to see her trying not to smile, could feel the matching grin spread across his own lips. “I take no responsibility for you at all.”
“Is that right?” It was ever so possible that in his new, mission-conscious state, Spike was a little more aware of his surroundings now. For example, he knew that, while Wesley, Kate and Cordelia were having a conversation, Angel was listening in. “The self-destruction’s fucking hot, though, innit?” he couldn’t not ask when he had Buffy on the ropes with her laughing eyes and claims she hadn’t made him good.
“Hoo, yeah,” she replied, giggling.
He really did have to keep himself from crowing to everyone in a five-mile radius how happy she looked. Not least as Angel billowed his billowy coat with a turn to leave the alleyway. Yeah, he still had it. Take that, evil of the world.
Of course, when his eyes slipped back to Buffy’s she winked at him, proving once and for all that she would always be one step ahead. And certainly not above little bits of petty revenge against people who had him nearly killed. Maybe this was why he wasn’t meant to rely on her for moral guidance…
“All right,” Spike asked finally, putting a hand against his wound to assess the damage and deciding he would indeed survive for time being. “What actually is it we’re doing now?”
Buffy threw up a hand, halfway to a shrug. “We are…” She looked behind her, at his motorbike, the cluster of people and a still unconscious Holtz who had his hands secured behind his back with something or other. Just beyond, the traffic jam looked like it was finally clearing up for the night. “We’re giving Holtz to Riley for a jail term or a restraining order or new life in Santa Fe or whatever, because apparently I outsource all responses to all human threats now, and then…” Frowning, she paused – but then she reached into her jacket pocket. Out came what looked like a business card, brandished with an aura of ‘aha’. “We call Brian and see if he can hook us up whatever this urn thing is we need trap the evil demon genie guy.”
Groaning, Spike wondered if he would be able to plead chest wound and sleep it all out in the car. The last thing he needed tonight was a chat with Riley Finn. As for this Brian bloke, all bets were on for him to be a boring wanker too. Still, it had to be done didn’t it? Best get on with it, he thought.
But then – “Don’t worry, though,” Buffy told him as they struggled him to standing. It suddenly seemed like an awfully long way down to his feet again – and his shoulder, well, apparently it didn’t enjoy supporting the whole weight of his arm. Ow. “I’m pretty sure we personally only have a date with Mecurochrome and Tylenol.”
Now, if that wasn’t love, he didn’t know what was. “Errrgh,” he thanked her, trying to make sure he didn’t show his own feelings by vomiting over her hair.
.
[Chapter Fifteen: Epilogue.]
(no subject)
Date: 04/06/2012 20:45 (UTC)And no one gets kidnapped to a hell dimension. Yay.
(no subject)
Date: 06/06/2012 20:09 (UTC)Yay! :D No kidnapping on my watch. ;)