Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike/Angel/Buffy, tangled
She can never see one without the other. Somewhere, deep in the back of her mind, she knows they are separate entities. She knows that there was a time when it was only Angel, with no thought of Spike, no knowledge of his existence. No longer.
He’s everything Angel is not. Angel blends into the darkness, barely visible in the night. Spike almost shines. Angel is soft-spoken and silent more often than not - but when he does speak, it means something. Spike, she can’t get to shut up, and it’s like a puzzle, trying to unravel the sincere statements from the constant stream of sarcasm. She gets the feeling that Angel hates the world, has withdrawn from the reality he no longer - perhaps has never - belonged in. Spike revels in the world and its pleasures, everything from cigarettes to television…to her.
She can no longer remember what sex is like with only one other person. She imagines it would be lonely, all the warmth on one side and only cold, empty space on the other. The thought makes her shudder, and the small movements of her body bring them instinctively closer.
They like to fight a bit, at first. She understands that - old habits, after all. At first she worried that it would get too intense, that, with a few cutting words, someone would reopen an old wound and in the next breath be nothing but dust. It took months of watching them before she realized that, for them, the violence was essential to the desire. She wishes she could attribute that to simple vampire nature - but there are nights when she feels it, too, and nothing else is quite as good as too-rough hands gripping her neck.
Eventually the struggle ends, and their hands intertwine as they roam over her body. They like to mirror each other in their actions, the light and the dark, a pair of lips on each earlobe, then a warm tongue on each taut nipple, fingers moving in unison within her as they take turns drinking the cries from her mouth. Her mind works frantically as they manipulate her body, and when she comes, it is always, always to the memory of being bitten. She knows that there is a day, not so far in the future, when she will ask them to bring the fantasy to life, and it will be good, and there will be no coming back.
She does not know if she loves them. All she knows, all she needs to know, is that she could never bear the pain of losing them.
Sometimes, when they are fucking her, she sees how they look at each other, and she understands. They have been tied together for centuries, but only when she was brought into the web did everything become irrevocably tangled.