Some Devil 2/11
Title: Some Devil Author: twisted_reach Pairing: Spike/Angel, Will/Liam Rating: T Warnings: Starts with very strong language. Time frame: goes AU post NFA Summary: A take on how Shanshu might work - after the battle Spike wakes up to Will’s life. Part 1 He went back to work. He found his office without thinking, held a sophomore tutorial on European history, marked some midterm papers and groaned inwardly at the state of the grammar, assured that the spelling would be just as bad if not for the magic that is spellchecker.
Something felt odd.
His lecture on popular music in the 20th century: a girl with dark red hair met her boyfriend as he filed out of the lecture theatre.
"Willow!?"
"Oh oh oh, sorry, I waited outside until your lecture was finished, I didn’t distract Oz - Daniel, really I don’t think I did, I didn’t mean to anyway…"
"It’s okay, um, say hi to your mother, yeah?"
"Yes Professor Haddon."
"It’s S- William."
She smiled worriedly and scuttled off.
He felt the world tilt. Sandra saw him and bolted towards him, catching him just before he crumpled.
"Dammit Will, I told you not to come back until you were better."
"’m fine, boss."
"To borrow a phrase from you, bollocks you are. Go home. Do you want a lift? I can take you before my next tutorial."
"No. I’ll be okay."
He sat on the edge of his bed with his elbows on his knees and his hands threading through his hair, making it stand on end.
What’s wrong with me, how do I know how to teach university, how do I know people I’ve never met before, how do I know the door to my flat needs to be kicked just there to open. What’s wrong with everything else, why didn’t Willow know me, why wasn’t she emanating that bloody huge aura of power she has - had - fuck I‘m losing my mind. Oh god-
Buffy. He called directory enquires and asked for listings for Buffy Summers. No? Try Joyce Summers. No? Damn, what was her father’s name? Hank, try Hank Summers. Yeah, put me through.
"Hello."
"Hi, Mr Summers, I trying to get in touch with Buffy. Do you have a number I could reach her on please?"
"Who is this?"
"Um, Will, I’m an, um, old, er, school friend." Shit, how pathetic did that sound.
"Oh."
"Hello?"
"Hold on."
He heard muffled voices, that was Joyce wasn’t it? She was alive?
"Hello?"
"Yes"
"I’m afraid Buffy won’t be able to talk to you. Please, don’t call again."
"Wait, is that Joyce I can hear? Could I speak to her?"
"No."
"Please, wait don’t hang up, please…what’s wrong, has something happened to Buffy?" his voice was on the edge of cracking. There was more muffled talking on the end of the line.
"Hello? Please tell me what’s wrong."
"Buffy is in an institution. She’s in a catatonic state, has been since she was 16. The doctor’s think it’s some kind of extreme paranoid delusion."
"I - I’m sorry. I won’t bother you again. G’bye." He barely made it to the bathroom before throwing up.
That night he got drunk.
He crawled to work the next day, set some reading for both his lectures and cut the kids loose early. He closed the blinds in his office and sat with his forehead on the nice cool desk. The ‘ding’ indicating he had a new e-mail was very loud today. It got shifted straight to the spam folder. He opened it anyway. Some new age crap about healing crystals. He hit delete and went back to the quiet contemplation of the inside of his eyelids.
Something felt wrong.
Jim found him drooling on the desk.
"Man, you’re lucky Sandra didn’t find you."
-grunt-
Jim laughed, Will gave him a two-fingered salute without raising his head.
"Don’t move I’ll be back in a second."
-grunt-
A fizzing glass of something was put by his head.
"Here, Isa swears by it for hangovers."
"Wizzit?"
"High strength vitamin C dissolved in water. She says it’s like magic."
Will drank the orange drink, and made it through his 2pm tutorial a little easier. He’d have to pick some of that stuff up next time he went shopping.
Something felt wrong.
Then the nightmares started. Restarted would be a better description; since the soul, sleep had been a real adventure. He hadn’t noticed them missing since he’d been mugged. But he hadn’t been mugged, had he. Had he? No, definitely not, he’d been part of yet another apocalypse.
Nightmares. They were vague at first, a sense of night-time, the sound of laughter and singing in a tortured accent, the taste… oh god the taste… like nectar, then pain - blinding white pain. He awoke drenched in sweat and shivering cold. He struggled to go back to sleep.
More specific, Angelus letting him know the rules about sharing and possession, hunting together - tall dark and glowering or a golden boy - something to attract anyone, mayhem created over a century with his princess, a sado-masochistic relationship with a half-crazed slayer, one last kiss…
He woke up again with his heart pounding: not afraid, aroused. These weren’t nightmares, these were dreams.
He didn’t understand, he was human, he had a soul and no demon to fight with it; memories of dismembering families should disgust him, not turn him on. Right?
Was he some kind of sick psycho?
‘… I just opened the door.’
He sat in bed hugging his knees. He was disturbed enough by the memories now he was awake, and he certainly wasn’t turned on anymore, maybe he couldn’t help how he felt when asleep. Maybe the demon got free reign in his dreams. No, there was no demon any more, no more vampire.
Vampire.
This was LA. Where were all the vampires?
He shot out of bed.
The seedy bar he found himself in was just that, a seedy bar. Not like he remembered, a seedy but very demon bar. He tried another, the same. Another, a bit classier, the same.
He went to the most vamp infested area of LA he could remember.
"Look nummy fresh free blood." He stood in the street with his arms out, bouncing on his feet, yelling like a maniac. Even the dealer on the corner gave him a wide berth, sparing just an idle thought about what shit he might be on.
He went into work though it wasn’t even light yet. The internet revealed none of the databases Angel Investigations used to use, references to demons strictly of the mythological or bonkers variety. His unease was rachetting up by the second. He grabbed a road atlas out of his desk draw.
There was no Sunnydale on the map, nor any sign that there used to be a Sunnydale and there was now a big crater. He followed the road with his finger from LA to where it left the state. His hand was shaking.