aaronlisa (aaronlisa) wrote in fadeddreaming, @ 2009-02-09 11:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2009, character: angel, character: buffy, character: faith, character: spike, character: willow, fandom: buffyverse |
[buffyverse] five times angel rejected someone else
Title: Five Times Angel Rejected Someone Else
Author: aaronlisa
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel
Pairing/Characters: Angel, Spike, Willow Rosenberg, Buffy Summers and Faith Lehane
Rating: FR15
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel belong to Joss Whedon and company.
Prompts: n/a
Notes: Written for the 2008-9 round of winter_of_angel.
Summary: Five times when Angel rejects someone else.
Word Count: 1208
I.
When he walks into his cold apartment, Angel knows immediately that he is not alone. It takes him a moment to realize that his uninvited guest is Spike. It doesn’t surprise him when Spike walks up to him and falls to his knees with his pale hands moving to Angel’s belt. Angel even lets him undo the belt and the top button of his pants before violently pushing him away full of desire, guilt and anger.
“No,” Angel curtly tells him.
“Why not?” Spike angrily asks as he stands.
Angel glares at him and he knows that Spike isn’t here for nostalgic reasons. He’s not here to relive a bit of their past together, and even if he was, Angel knows that he’d still refuse.
“I won’t help you heal Drusilla.”
“You owe it to her.”
“I owe her nothing. And even if I did, do you really think I’d help heal her so that she could go about her merry little way killing indiscriminately?”
Angel turns away from Spike, not able to look at the need that is written on the younger vampire’s face. If things were different, he might have been willing to given in to Spike. But there is no way that he can agree to help heal Drusilla, not when he knows what she’s like. In the past, he had seen her kill just because she had liked the frock a young woman had been wearing or because a young man had looked at her with lustful eyes. A healed and healthy Drusilla is not something he can tolerate even though it breaks his heart to reject Spike.
“Fine then, I’ll do it without your help,” Spike snarls and leaves.
II.
The memory of Hell is still fresh in his mind as he walks into his bedroom in the mansion that he loathes yet seems unable to escape. The ghosts of the recent past still seem to linger in the rooms and he can’t quite find it in himself to leave them behind. Soon but not quite yet.
He pauses in the doorway as he takes in the site of Willow sitting on his bed, prim and proper with her hands folded on her lap. It takes him a moment to realize that she is not in her bright and colourful clothing. Instead, he notices that she wears a pair of black flats, black tights, and a long dark grey skirt topped by a white blouse. For a moment, he wonders if this is the outfit that she dons when she goes to the Synagogue with her parents.
“Willow?” Angel quietly asks.
She turns to look at him, her green eyes are dark with an emotion that Angel’s not quite certain of. And in the moment when her lips tremble as the words fail her, Angel realizes that somehow they are connected because of her spell. More than just how the old gypsy woman knew that he was tormented by his soul, Willow somehow feels the torment and she is here to relieve it.
His hands clasp her shoulders as he pulls her up. He wants nothing more than to take her up on her offer but he can’t. She’s too innocent for him and he refuses to taint her more than he already he has.
He places a kiss on her forehead before he walks her home, no words passing between them as he quietly rejects her and the love that she has offered him.
III.
He stares at her in the distance and his heart breaks. Yet he has always known that there was never a future for them. She’s a Slayer and he’s a vampire despite the fact that they both possessed the desire to be someone else. The fact remains the same and what’s worse is the sheer torture of never being able to consummate their passion and love for one another. How much longer could he stay in Sunnydale before it became too much and he either took her or he turned to someone else making a mockery of their love?
And in the end Angel knows that he has to leave. She deserves to find someone who she can be with, someone that doesn’t have to hold himself back from her because of the monster that he truly is. Buffy deserves that much, and Angel knows that he’ll never be the one to give that to her.
IV.
As he watches Faith sleeping in his bed, Angel wishes that he could give her what she so desperately craves and needs. But he knows that he can’t nor can he pretend to. She is far too damaged and unstable for him to pretend that he can give her what she needs. Even now the temptation to crawl into the bed and lay beside her is overwhelming. He knows what it feels like the first few shaky steps on the path of redemption and he knows how much he craved the feeling of having someone who cared, who loved him. Yet he won’t give her that because it’d be false and in the end it would only hurt her more. Instead he keeps vigil over her from the chair in the corner, hoping that she knows in his own way that he does care for her.
V.
They watch as the sun rises over Los Angeles, another day where evil will probably win over good by the smallest of margins. It seems miraculous to them that they can partake in this site and Angel isn’t surprised when Spike minutely trembles beside him. He knows that when he first took in this site and didn’t burst into flames he had broken down into tears.
When he turns to face Spike, Angel is surprised to see need written on Spike’s face. In the last few months, all that’s ever been there before is hate, disgust and jealousy. However all he sees now is naked need and that seems to paralyze him as Spike throws off the black duster and pulls his t-shirt up baring his pale skin to Angel’s eyes.
Spike takes advantage of Angel’s quietness and pulls the dark-haired vampire into a kiss. It’s a kiss full of need and lust and even anger and Angel trembles for a moment under the taste of Spike’s mouth. He wants nothing more than to give in to Spike’s desire but he knows that he can’t. The decades that have passed since they were last lovers have left a Spike-shaped hole in his heart but at the same time Angel has no real desire to go back to the way that they once were.
He pushes Spike away from him gently causing the younger vampire to snarl in anger. Spike looks at him with eyes tinged gold and lips curved into a snarl, before the fight seems to fade from him. There was a time when Angel would have willingly fallen into Spike’s arms but that time has long passed them by.
Spike hangs his head briefly before he picks up his discarded clothing and leaves Angel’s apartment atop of Wolfram & Hart quietly. Angel is left with a sunrise that had filled him with joy only moments before but now leaves him cold.
**END**