herself_nyc (herself_nyc) wrote in herself_nyc_fic, @ 2008-05-07 09:57:00 |
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All previous parts of WAITING AROUND are here (locked) or here (open to all). She was giddy in the lift, the first time they'd stopped pelting at top speed since she'd grabbed him and taken off. The side-walls of the box were mirrored, but luckily they were alone, no one else to see that it was only Buffy who appeared in an infinite parallax of reflections. In her tightly-belted trench coat she looked small and slipping. She looked happy. It confused him. The doors opened. She stepped off, turning towards him. "You okay?" He shrugged. Considered pressing the button, going back down, back to his broken bender. Buffy reached, tugged his sleeve. "I'm not done with you yet, mister." The corridor of the posh hotel was silent, thickly carpeted, everything gilt and pink and cream. As the lift doors closed behind him, she backed him softly against the wall, going up on tiptoe against him. "Don't be angry. It's okay." Girlish whisper. She smelled of dried blood and dried sex. He could still taste her in his mouth. "Kiss me?" She was smiling like a child. How could she be so obtuse? "I'm not your pet." She stepped back, the smile dying. "W-what?" Even as he spoke the words, he felt he was acting daft. "Don't want to play this game." This was madness. She was going to think he'd gone mad. "Let's not talk out here." She started towards her suite. Again he thought of just getting out of there. But the pull she exerted on him was too strong. Inside, she faced him, brow knit. "What are talking about? Did something happen that wasn't consensual? Because it sure felt like your idea to fuck out there. And to bite me." You let me. His eyes burned. If he wasn't careful he'd be crying. In his head, he heard Xander's voice. After every visit with Buffy, Xander would say You going to leave me for her? Xander's original fear, turned to a habitual joke, a sort of juju against all fears of abandonment, of unfaithfulness, of the erosion of love. And depending on what was going on with them otherwise, Spike would answer in different ways: with a snort and an eye-roll. With a muttered, An' what if I did? With a possessive kiss that bent Harris back. It was Harris he loved for a whole life time. Buffy ... Buffy had prompted him to seek his soul, but she wasn't ... they weren't .... He blinked, trying to pull his thoughts together. None of this had anything to do with what he was so angry about. He couldn't even think straight. "Talk to me, Spike!" How many decades since he'd sunk his teeth into anyone alive? "Not gonna be the death of you." That wasn't it either, but it seemed like a good place holder while he waited to able to say what he really meant. Or even to understand it. Shame spurted through him in gobs like spunk. Like when he'd beat off as a lad, knowing he shouldn't touch it, shouldn't feel that way. Thinking no one else ever did such a filthy thing, couldn't possibly. Buffy blushed a little, and didn't meet his eye. "I never asked you to be. Why did you bite me if you're going to be so sore about it?" His throat was a knot; he shook his head. Squinting suspiciously, she prodded him in the chest. "Please tell me you weren't just trying for a little suicide-by-slayer back there. Please tell me you wouldn't use me that way. Especially while I'm making god-damn love to you, you BASTARD." The blow really came out of nowhere, catching him just so in the solar plexus, so he was on his knees, the air knocked out of him. He expected another blow, braced for it. But she was crying now, receding across the room. The bedroom door slammed. No way was he following her in there. Sick with misery, he picked himself up. His hand was on the knob to let himself out of the suite, when the door opened. She didn't appear, only shouted, "Don't you dare sneak out!" Another slam, not quite so loud this time. He dropped into a chair. "I don't have time for this shit!" She emerged in full storm. He didn't raise his eye level past her kneecaps. "Time? We're livin' forever." She stalked closer. "Spike." He was staring at the floor, the agitation of imbibing her still vying with his numbing disgust. "Spike." Her hot little hand on his forehead, rudely tipping his head up so he had to face her. "You began this." She wasn't hollering anymore. The tears still stood in her eyes. "In Iceland, you kissed me, you said we should go to bed and do it the right way. You invited me to come back here. So I don't understand. I thought we were beginning an affair, but you think I'm tormenting you." "An affair," he echoed. "Don't you dare mock my word choice. I am trying to talk to you. Or would you prefer" She stopped. "You would. You really want me to beat you up." She stepped back. "Oh Spike." "Slayer" "Please don't call me that right now." Her voice was soft, she sounded lost. Backing up to sit in the opposite chair, tense and forward against his feigned collapse. He was afraid she'd start to cry again. "I thought we were trying to help each other a little. Be good to each other. I get that you're grieving, but ... I think you're just taking it out on me right now." She turned her head, as if someone else had come into the room. She couldn't even look at him. But he could see the wound on her neck. She'd made no effort to cover it up. "Why'd you let me do it?" She gasped, her attention snapping back on him. "Let you" "You just let it happen." "I! You never tried that with me before! I thought ..." She blushed then. "I thought it meant something." He stared at the drapes. "Never laid a tooth on Harris." She didn't flinch. "I thought, for us ... that's why I let you." Her fingers made a gingerly foray over the broken skin. "I liked it. Is that what you're so angry at me for?" "Not angry at you." "Don't start lying to me on top of everything else." Her reasonableness, her refusal to make herself impregnable and repellant, piled on his shame. "We are each other's oldest friend," she said. A little laugh escaped her. "Is that your idea of hell?" "Might be yours." "It isn't. But if you can't tell me what's really going on with you, then ..." "You know all about it. Smart girl you are. Diagnosed me top to bottom." He rocked to his feet. "I push you away. Then you push me away. And around and around we go." She rose. "We're not really friends after all. My mistake. I could just call you for the next family funeral?" She opened the suite door, held it as if to usher him out. He knew that if he went through it, that would be that. Calm and vulnerable as she was, he could still smell the anger at her core; wasn't so stupid as not to grasp that he'd hurt her. It amazed him a bit, that she still had the capacity for that kind of pain. A century ago he'd have given anything for the chance to have such an effect on her. Now he was just sorry. "I'm a bad rude man. Clumsy bugger." "Is that supposed to be an apology?" He shuffled a little. "Yeah. Yeah, it's an apology. Don't chuck me out, Buffy." She stood by the open door, not closing it yet. Their voices were low, nothing to disturb the other hotel guests. He could hear that people were waking up now, screens were on in other rooms, showers, voices. "You liked it." "I did. I liked it, and I liked that you just took it. I liked that we seemed to be in a place where ... where we were trusting each other so completely." He'd hurt her good. Coming up to her, he pushed the door shut. She let him do it, let him face her, standing close. "Forgive me for bein' a pillock. Lemme make it up to you." "How are you going to do that?" "Dunno yet. But I'll try if you'll stay with me." "I never wanted you to be my pet. I don't need a dog. A friend, a loverthose I want." "That'll be me. Gimme a chance." He opened his arms; she stepped into them.
The action of this story picks up immediately from the conclusion of Some Scenes From The Later Life of Two Heroes. If you haven't read that one, it was a sequel to a longer pair of Spike/Xander stories, which can be read here. The low-down: since her resurrection, Buffy has never aged, and has grown increasingly distant from her surviving adult children and their families. In this far-future fic, after a long lifetime partnered with Xander, Spike has buried him and is at a loose end. He and Buffy have a series of encounters spread out over months, and after averting an apocalypse together, return to London for what might be the beginning of a long-postponed affair. But the morning after, Buffy's not so sure ....
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