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Cotton Candy
by Circe
Thanks to my beta, cerdd_gwen
Summary: Written for the Livejournal Flashfic-A-Thon. Set
post-*Innocence.*
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It's only been three days since Angel lost his soul, but Buffy
isn't going to cry any more.
She's doing something else, something productive, something that
she should have done long before this, though it's only been
three days.
Buffy strides purposefully down the empty streets. There's no one
around, not ghost or ghoul or simple pedestrian. Maybe they see
her coming, a pretty little blonde with fuck-me boots and a
fuck-off scowl. Maybe they understand that today is not the time
to mess the Slayer. It's only been three days, you see.
She crosses Montrose and heads south on McLaren Avenue. This is
the way to the factory. She knows this because once, not too long
ago, she walked this route with her boyfriend. Of course, she
didn't pay much attention, then. When she was with her boyfriend
everything else faded away and there was only him, gentle and
tender and intense. But her boyfriend's left town forever and the
guy who packed his bags has gone to live with his old pals. He
thinks he's too cool to hang out with a bunch of teenagers; he's
got different interests now. The factory is where Spike and
Drusilla hole up. This is where she'll find Angelus.
Three days ago she turned seventeen. Seventeen years. She wonders
if she should define her life by this measure, or by the day a
stranger found her on the steps outside her high school. Or even
by the move to Sunnydale, the baptism by fire that was being a
Slayer on the Hellmouth.
She knows that Angel defined his life by this last. He gasped
this truth into the underside of her breasts and the curve of her
belly that night three days ago. "I live for you," he told her.
"All that I am, you make me. You give my soul meaning. You take
away the curse so there's only love."
*You take away the curse*. She wants to cry, but she's busy. She
has places to go, people to kill. Vampires to slay.
The factory looks quiet. It's daylight, of course, which means
the minions are abed and their masters can't leave. Buffy scales
the chain link fence and makes her silent way across the deserted
parking lot. Once this was a place of industry, now it's a
morgue. The *things *inside are dead. They pretend differently,
but she knows better. She's coming to finish this farce once and
for all.
See her resolve face. See it?
It's not as impenetrable as it may seem. The tears in her eyes
give this away. Because she's come up to a window now and she's
looking in and first time lucky, there's Angel. There's Spike. On
the bed. In each other.
It's like being drawn to a traffic accident, like the feeling in
the pit of her stomach when Xander looks at her *that way.*
Repelled, yet secretly, unwillingly, attracted.
Because Spike, though thin and obviously still in pain, is lying
supine on the bed while her boyfriend--*no*, another man--fucks
him. It's all pale skin and blood-tinged lips and sharp hissing
intakes of breath, which she can't really hear through the thick
panes of glass, but can only imagine by the shape of their
mouths, the arch of their necks. It's all silky sliding of
rippling muscles and fingers pinching nipples and purplish love
bites in intimate places.
It's the sight of Spike's never-before-seen naked body, all
deadly symmetry and feral grace. With his cutglass cheekbones,
the slant of his blue fire eyes, the deliciousness of his taut
belly, the feminine pout of his lips.
It's the sight of Angel's naked body, familiar yet strange
outside the safe cocoon of cotton sheets and candles that marked
their time together.
Was it only three days ago?
And it's crazy, but she sees a look on Spike's face that makes
her draw in a quick breath and press her hand over her heart,
because it hurts hurts hurts to see anyone look at her Angel that
way. But this is his Angelus, and Spike's staring at him like he
did Drusilla that day of Ford's betrayal. There's darkness in his
eyes; something warm, rich, and velvety. And what's that on
Angel's face? What's that in the way he holds Spike's slight body
against his own, the way he fists his cock, and devours his
mouth?
It's primal possession, and in that instant Buffy knows that this
passion is one of those parts of Angel that she'll never have,
can never understand, even if time could roll back and mistakes
could be undone. Even if he'd never lost his soul.
His lovemaking was simple, deliberate, careful, sweet. This is
bubbling fury and raw sex, two male creatures writhing against
each other, dark and light, heavy and lithe, blood calling to
blood.
Buffy drops the stake to the ground. Angel whispered, you see, as
he moved against her, moaning, that she tasted like cotton candy.
And though she didn't at the time, she knows now what he meant.
To him, she tasted of lazy summer afternoons in the garden; of
powder-soft newborns cuddled in their mother's arms; of caramel
apples and laughing kisses and rides on the carousel at the local
fair; of love, free and easy and without despair.
Things he'll never have, never savour, not then and certainly not
now.
She watches Angel as he rides Spike, his head buried in the crook
of the blond vampire's neck, his lips working feverishly against
cool skin. And she wonders what Spike tastes like.
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