For Love or Monster

Author: Ducks, The Anti-Joss!
Email: ducksfanfic@yahoo.com
Website: http://ducksfanfic.denialbubble.com
Livejournal: http://theantijoss.livejournal.com
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit, don't sue.
Rating: NC-17
Content: DARKFIC! Contains graphic violence, adult sexuality, bloodplay, character death(s), BDSM, darkness and disturbing imagery
Pairing: B/A/F and variations thereon.
Timeline: Future
Spoilers: Up to and including Angel S5, though nothing specific.
Summary: Demons just don't care about safe words.
Distribution: Anyone who'd like it, please feel free. Just let me know. My usual archivists are welcome -- Although I wonder if you'll want it. *G*
Dedication: For Glossing.  Many thanks to my betas (especially the ladies for whom this isn't really your cup of tea) for your hard work.
A/N: Written for the Live Journal B/A Ficathon. Requirements at the end. PLEASE keep in mind that this is DARKFIC. It's not happy bunny B/A. Just sayin'.

"For Love or Monster"
Part I: Favorite

by Ducks

~

What are these but grotesque and monstrous bodies, pieced together of different members, without any definite shape, without any order, coherence, or proportion, except they be accidental?
- Michel de Montaigne

~

He wakes precisely at sunset, as though the last fading rays of day are an alarm clock blaring in his hypersensitive ears, ripping him from his dreams.
Which he supposes they are, in a way. The dying sun registers on every preternatural sensory level… he can taste and smell it, as well as feel and see, so he probably hears it, too, in some subconscious shadow he's unaware of. The demon's instinct to wake, rise, hunt, feed - all about survival. All of it hinging on getting his carcass out of bed first. Hence the natural alarm.

But he doesn't have to rise right this particular second. He smiles and tucks his hands behind his head, content to lay here and not be a monster for a while.

((Not think of throats tearing and women screaming and hotthicksweet. He's so famished when he wakes, he'd love nothing more than to turn over, grab her, sink into her flesh and drinkdrinkdrinkdrinkdrink...))

Buffy sighs softly in her sleep, rustles the sheets as she rolls toward him. He turns to watch her rest, so beautiful when she's relaxed - this is the only time she really gets to be.

((Some nights it's worse, when she has the dreams. They all have nightmares of death and being buried alive. Of tearing and burning and ripping and stabbing. Of falling asleep and never waking up. He's never told her that as much as her pain and fear break his heart, as deeply as he wishes he could make it go away; as gently as he cradles her until the terrors pass and she sleeps again...

He never tells her how it turns him on - subconscious sadist meets subconscious agony, and rejoices.))

She and Faith curl around one another like ((hot, juicy)) kittens in a basket. Though she would never admit it, he thinks that this may be the only place that Faith has ever really felt safe or cared for. Truly loved.

He smiles at them as the shadows stretch across their bedroom, dark heralds of the approaching night. Reaches out to brush a wild strand of honeygold from Buffy's face, the better to see her sleepysweet smile. Faith frowns in her dreams and pulls her closer. ((mine))

He forgets sometimes - especially after days like the one they just passed together here in the enormous bed - that there is more than a single relationship between them. More than one set of scars, fears, jealousies and neuroses. Four distinct dynamics bind them together in mix and match pairs and a threesome for cohesion.

Some of those combinations aren't nearly as peaceful and settled as last afternoon's lovemaking makes them seem.

((He bent Faith over the hood of his car once, in front of God and all the citizens of the darker end of Sunset Strip. Ripped her tight leathers right off her fleshy ass and fucked her so hard he dented the Plymouth's tough Detroit steel. Yanked her head back by a fistful of her long, thick hair and called her bitch. She came so fiercely; she whacked her forehead on the hood and ended up with a mild concussion.

They told Buffy it happened in battle. She didn't mention the cruel, Angel-hand-shaped welts she noticed on her younger sisterlover's hips.))

They do get jealous of each other, sometimes. Over their little cliques, which shift and change with the mood and the tides. Faith told him once that she envies what Buffy and Angel share - the tenderness, the soft yet unbreakable bond between them. The way they look at one another, like as long as they're in each other's sight, everything else will work itself out just fine.  She couldn't relate.

He didn't confirm that that was exactly how he feels about Buffy. That the particular hazy green of her eyes, the way her nose wrinkles up when she smiles, how her tiny hand disappears in his much larger one...

These things are home to him.

He's also never told Faith that she looks at Buffy the exact same way, and while sometimes it makes him feel closer to both of them... sometimes it makes him insane with murderous jealousy.

((He likes to watch them fuck after a good battle, when they're hungryhorny. Lick each other's wet and hot, sticky and bittersweet, fingers and breasts and teeth. The only time Buffy ever says the word 'fuck' is when Faith brings her to orgasm.

Then she screams it like a ritual chant. Like a benediction. He's jealous of that power even as he jerks off to the sound.))

Faith would kill for him - in fact, she has. She's vowed a thousand times that she would die before she ever let anything happen to him.

But he's fully aware of the fact that she would dust him in less than a heartbeat, if it meant saving Buffy.

That's one of the twisted kinks he can actually be glad of.

Buffy says she can't - won't - do without either of them. He's not sure if he believes her, but... if it's not true, he doesn't want to know.

~

In the dark, though, they are simply one organism... sharing limbs and trunks, mouths and hands and breath. They move together as a unit - one shifting here so the other can lie there, this one sliding this way so the last can settle that - puzzle pieces in their proper place. It's as though they were made precisely for this carnal arrangement of three, rather than the pairs most believe are "natural". Then, there are no questions, no possessiveness, or petty resentments. Only 'Us'.

It's not the first time he's been part of such a poly... sexual unit. (He hesitates to name it polyamoury. What he felt for Dru, Darla and Spike when soulless came nowhere near his admittedly limited experience of that gentle emotion.) But it's the first time he can remember one being based on affection... hearts instead of blood. Tenderness instead of violence and appurtenance. Because they *want*, not just because that's how it's done, and it's easier than the alternatives…

Which isn't to say that there's never any blood or violence.

It's not really a bad place for someone like him to be. He'd expected to spend eternity alone. Now, he has a family, a purpose, and not one, but two amazing lovers.
And of course, of all the many unusual things that he is, he is still a male, so there is the illicit titillation of having a pair of beautiful, sensual, preternaturally strong, assertive women in his bed. The twisted little joy of knowing that the other males in his pack are jealous, somewhere deep in their most primal subconscious.

Only the Alpha gets a harem, after all.

Wouldn't his friends back in Galway eat their hearts out to hear it? If... he hadn't done it for them, of course.

Spike is so envious that he can hardly speak without spluttering when Angel arrives at the office every morning. To think that not only does Angel hold the heart of Spike's (ostensible) one true love in his hands… he has the other Original Slayer as a lover besides. It's like winning the lottery and coming into a colossal inheritance on the same day. As far as he's concerned, his grandchild's covetous reaction is a reward in itself.

One more among many.

Wesley just gets this subtle half-smirk, half-disapproving frown whenever there's evidence of their unique "arrangement" -- when the ladies come to the office together, or when he catches a glimpse of the photograph Angel keeps on his desk. Vampire in the middle, with the sun on one side and the moon on the other. Angel's never certain if Wes' jealousy is of him, or for him... the looks the Englishman has given him sometimes make him wonder...

Either way, he can see that the irony tells on the ex-Watcher.

They complete him, his lovers. One sweet and light, one acerbic and dark, goddesses assigned to keep him in line, and he's okay with that. It's been over a century since he felt so steady, like he is walking on solid ground and he doesn't have to be afraid of it turning to quicksand at any moment anymore.

Right now, this brief span in his eternal life, it's good to be him. He is making a difference... he has a relationship with his son... and he has love at last, even if it takes a slightly different form than he once dreamt of.

He can't help but wait for the other shoe to drop, because he remembers too well that he isn't allowed to be happy.

~

It all started with a phone call. One of those that comes in the dead of night with earth-shattering, reality-altering news of death, birth or transformation, inevitably something well worth waking up for.

This was a trans-Atlantic call from somewhere in the Great Wide World, person-to-person, from Willow Rosenberg to Angel. She was on one of her planet-scouring excursions to the Far East somewhere. He hardly remembers the details anymore beyond her laughter, her message, and the sound of Oz talking in the background.
He had been so envious of them, then. He was alone, in pain. Grieving for so many things lost or forbidden. So much love and hope ripped from him and thrown to the cold, cruel winds of his eternal punishment: friends, family, lover, and son...

And there they were, finding one another again after thousands of miles, an endless trail of years and limiting sexual identities.

But then, he'd thought, good people should get second chances. And third, and fourth, and sometimes more. People like him... shouldn't.

"I found it!" she'd cried over the static, "I found the spell to bind your soul! It's so easy! We just need..."

She'd gone on, but over the sudden storm of sound in his mind, he hadn't heard another word. The demon screamed in rage and objection from its cage forged of flimsy magick and desperate loneliness, while the rest of his consciousness spun off into dreams long abandoned and a sense of relief so deep it was nearly fathomless, and those were all he could spare attention for at the time.

Later, he'd wish he'd listened more intently. Later, when he found out the central ingredient to his salvation managed to be both horrifying and ultimately unsurprising.
The witch and the werewolf came home to California on the next flight out. On another came Giles. Wesley joined in, driving to the hotel that morning, ending months not speaking to him after the Connor memory debacle. Last but not least came Faith and...

Her.

She'd gained weight in all the right places, but lost something precious and glowing inside her in exchange. How long had her mossy green eyes been so shadowed, and why hadn't he noticed it before?

"We'll need the 'essence of Perfect Happiness'," Willow had told them, translating from a book written in a language Angel had never seen before. Off the gathered heroes' confused looks, she explained, "Buffy's blood."

He was glad it hadn't been Connor, at least. He'd imbibed his son's blood once, and it wasn't an experience he cared to repeat. He was fairly certain at that point he'd spend eternity drinking it anyway... in Hell. Of course, he'd probably be drinking Buffy's too, along with his family's, his friends', and so many others he'd loved and destroyed. A perfect virtual reality nightmare to screen over and over for his punishment throughout eternity.

"You don't have to bite her," Giles had added -- part admonishment, part reassurance. "The magick should be just as effective with a transfusion or from a cup. The blood doesn't have to be... vital."

He'd looked at Buffy then, but she was busy gazing with apparent fascination at the tiled lobby floor. He could smell her arousal and he knew she was remembering -- just as he was recalling the taste of her orgasm on his tongue.

"Good," he'd said. He would never be able to drink her again and make himself stop. For years he'd been so thirsty for her... the demon screaming to huntherdowntakeherfuckherintothefloorsuckherdryturnherkeepherforever...

He tried to avoid fulfilling even the simplest of the Shadow's desires -- but this one more than any other.

"If he drinks it from me, will it be more powerful?" Buffy had asked, still refusing to meet the eyes of anyone else in the room, though all of them were locked on her.

"B..." Faith had cut in warningly. Possessive and protective. The tone hit him like a punch to the gut. Until that moment, he'd been avoiding thinking about the fact that he could smell them all over each other. None of his business. Part of him didn't want to know, but part... Part wanted to know every minute detail so badly that he was hard as a rock and glad he was wearing loose slacks.

Buffy looked up, then, first to the dark Slayer, then to Willow, barely ticking by him and repeated the question. "Would it be more powerful?"

Willow exchanged glances with Giles and Oz. "Yes."

Buffy nodded. "Then let's do it."

~

He stops to buy daisies and chocolate for Buffy and a silver throwing star etched with a dragon for Faith. It never ceases to amaze him how they can be so much the same, and yet always so profoundly different.

As different as the way he feels about them.

Buffy is the only sunshine he's allowed to experience. She's picnics in fields of grass and poetry and the American Dream he still dreams but would never admit aloud. She is sanctuary and home, and all the things denied. She is family, dog and white picket fence. She is... future. Hope. The depths of his heart and soul. The bottom line. Rest.
Faith is... less easily or typically described. She is his darker passions, his struggle for control, the omnipresent memory of death, destruction, and what-can-be-if-you're-not-careful. She likes to tie him up. She saves tenderness and soft words for Buffy. Her interactions with him border on brutal.

If Buffy is his soul's mate... Faith is its shadowy twin.

They balance each other, the three of them, in ways he never thought possible. Someday, he thinks to ask them how they feel about each other.

Just not today.

~

They stood face to face at the center of the circle Willow and Giles drew of salt and powdered gemstones: bloodstone and rubies and garnets and a dozen other reds he didn't think he'd ever heard the names of before. The stink of sulfur and the sweet of lavender hung so thick in the air; they devoured the oxygen and made Buffy waver dizzily before him.

He'd automatically reached out to steady her, and she had flinched away from his touch. Their gazes met, her misery washing the green to grey, but she managed to hold her ground.

His hero. The great love of his life. The bane of his existence.

"We can stop," he reminded her. Half hoped that she would agree: yes, this is a horrible idea. It's setting a precedent that should never be set in our relationship.

"I'm fine," she lied, and it was too late.

The chanting was Aramaic, Latin, ancient Romanian. The symbols on the floor were Alchemical, Sumerian and Ogham runes. Oz had carefully painted them in ochre with a horsehair brush, humming "A Thousand Kisses Deep" all the while. Angel remembers thinking what a bizarre selection that was. He almost wished Lorne were there... would have given anything to know what was running through the werewolf's mind right at that moment. Usually, they tacitly understood each other. Monster relates to monster by the memory of chains and cages and the taste of flesh washed down the throat by blood.

He remembers thinking that in so many ways, Oz had it far worse than he could even imagine. He can't recall exactly why he thought that, now.

Buffy stepped toward him, and he had reached for her arm. The wrist would be so much less intimate and far, far less dangerous... far away from the heart.
But she'd held it out of reach and offered her throat, tilting her jaw up instead. He could smell the changes in everyone's demeanor when she did it... arousal in some, disgust in others...

"Buffy..." he'd whispered. Needed to give her this last chance to change her mind. ((Please)) Give her the choice she hadn't given him the first time, and he'd wondered if she'd still taste the same, or if her resurrection had changed her flavor the way it had changed her eyes.

She'd stood on tiptoe and kissed him, long, slow and gentle, her tiny hands framing his face with heartbreaking tenderness, and he'd heard her heartbeat and smelled her desire and tasted the want on her tongue.

She'd smiled at him then. There was love and hope in it, but not even the slightest undercurrent of fear or dread or distaste.

He'd known in that moment, as he bent to her offering, that they'd never be separated again.

~

Faith jumps him when he comes through the door, like a child when her daddy's home, knowing there'll be presents. She clings to him like a monkey and bites his ear as he lugs her into the penthouse.

He's definitely not her daddy (except maybe in some twisted porn universe). She wraps her legs around his waist and grinds herself against him, breast to breast, crotch to crotch. Grins like she knows some big cosmic secret, when all she really knows is that he got a raging hard-on the instant she touched him.

He refrains from asking where Buffy is so as not to hurt her feelings, which in itself tags him a sentimental fool. Faith is the most secure of all of them -- she never questions the why's or how's or 'is this right's' of their unorthodox arrangement. As far as she's concerned, there is no other way for it to be. Her guy and her girl. Lots of orgasms. The end.

He envies her that certainty.

"B's makin' dinner," she informs him as she takes a break from nibbling along his jawline.

Like she can read his mind. He wonders, sometimes.

"For you, lovely lady," he proffers, setting her down and giving her the little jade box before she can scowl at the flowers or the candy. Her smile becomes brighter... more innocent somehow. She's never had so much giving in her life before, he's fairly certain.

"Thanks, Angel," she says with sincerity.

"You're welcome." He kisses the top of her head as he takes off his coat. "How was Hong Kong?"

"Angel?" comes the Other voice from the kitchen, and now it's he who smiles. Faith always says she's his whore, and Buffy's the little woman. He loathes the terminology, the disrespect inherent in the titles...

But however he may feel about it, he knows it's at least partly true. And he, as always, is moth to her comforting, deadly flame.

She dances when she cooks. A sensual shimmy that makes his already turgid hard-on flinty as steel. He approaches her from behind, wraps his arms around so the flowers and candy enter her line of vision and tries not to grind himself into her rear end.

She spins in his arms, her face a vision of almost-innocent happiness. "Flowers? What'd you do?" she teases.

Arms thrown around him, lithe form pressed against him. Part of him basks in the domestic joy, but part...

He freezes in her embrace -- one of those moments when he's not sure what to do next. When the demon ((ormaybetheman)) screams for her skinjuicesblood ((she tastes so good when she comes)), wanting to toss her up on the counter and fuck her until she screams his name... feel her Slayerstrong inner muscles clamp down around him like the sweetest vice as he drinks her peak from her throat...

But the civilized human being comprehends that this is not the time. The monster wants to rip the human to shreds... as usual. ((fuck you and your rules. Asshole.))
She steps back, a little worried, sensing his sudden tension.

"Are you okay?"

~

As he'd breathed in her scent, that split second it took to shift into game face and sink his fangs into her pulsing artery, he'd had enough time and clarity to wish they were alone. It was like he was brazenly making love to her in this circle in front of her father and her best friend and her other lover...

The sounds they made as he fed from her - his grunting, her moans -- and the energy raised by the magick left everyone twitchy after. Oz and Willow had disappeared upstairs under the pretense of needing to shower off the spell ingredients. Giles had cleared his throat profusely and left quickly once he was sure Buffy was all right. ((bet he jerks off when he thinks about her. Ol' Rupe definitely falls above 5 on the Perv Scale.))

Faith bluntly asked if they all could fuck, 'cause she was horny like a bunny rabbit on 'E'.

He hadn't felt any different when the spell was completed, except for the strange sense that he wasn't alone anymore, and with a gentle arm around Buffy, and his smoldering eyes nailed to Faith, had led them up to his suite.

"I want to taste her too," Faith had whispered in his ear.

~

"Of course," he lies, forcing a smile. "What's for dinner?"

Buffy narrows her eyes at him. "I don't think so. What's wrong?"

He doesn't know why he ever attempts to keep the truth from her. She knows him far too well. Both of them do. He moves quickly away to put the flowers in water, hoping the space will afford him time to figure out a way to prevent this conversation from happening, because eventually, he knows she'll make him tell her.
And that's a Pandora's Box he has no intention of ever opening.

"Nothing's wrong. I just wanted to know what smells so good."

"I'm making that egg-cheese low-carb thing Xander emailed me. Angel..."

There's power in the word this time... love and demand. He stops, turns to look at her, but can't quite hold her gaze.

"Please. Just let it go." He waits for a heartbeat, and when she doesn't push, changes the subject. "So how was your day?"

~

Angel still looks at her like some shining beacon of goodness and light. The virgin doll of 16-year-old porcelain she hasn't been in years, and more than likely never was at all. Except for the virgin part.

Sometimes she wonders if he *knows* her. Her, now, who she's become after death and loss and pain, not who she was when he first ((stalked)) saw her.
She barely remembers that little girl anymore, except that she seems so simple looking back, That broken, pitiful monster that watched from the shadows as her life was shattered into a billion jagged pieces that still rip into her to this day no longer exists either. Why does he delude himself? He doesn't need her anymore. Nobody does, really.

Sometimes, she would swear that he looks *through* her, not at her. That he's seeing the womanchild he knew a million years ago, not the damaged, burnt-out, used-up freak who stands before him now. Who sleeps with him and fucks with him and cooks in his kitchen and watches his big screen TV and shrinks his shirts in the dryer.
Sometimes, she thinks he keeps her because he needs that delicate, golden goddess from his most impossible, unfair dreams of future past. He wants to hold onto a living reminder of a flawless moment that can never come again.

It has nothing to do with curses. No one gets to experience Perfect Happiness more than once in a lifetime. Everyone figures out it's a lie, and that believing in it has deep, dire consequences. The only difference is that his misplaced faith left a trail of blood and corpses and half-devoured hearts behind.

Or she should say... their curse. Because isn't it just as much *theirs* now as his? Wasn't all those people's blood on her hands? Jenny and Theresa and so many others. Because she had to *have* him, no matter what the cost.

Then he smiles at her, and it doesn't matter who he's seeing at all, or what happened then, because that beatific expression... it's the closest thing to sunshine and innocence she's ever seen in him, and she knows his illusions of her are what feed it.

So she never walks away, never calls him on it, because maybe she needs it, too. She likes that dead girl so much better.

~

She cried for an hour after the ritual, holding him so tightly, there were a few moments when he thought she might shatter his ribs. She never said why she was upset - if it was relief for him or for her, or if it was hope for the future, or sorrow never expressed because everyone else expected her to be so *strong*...

It didn't really matter why. It was his job to hold her, comfort her after she had given him so much tonight and so many other nights over the years. He didn't care why she wanted him to hold her. Only that she did.

Faith stood in the doorway, glowering at them, her arms folded across her chest in that way she always did when she was feeling threatened and vulnerable, her entire demeanor a perfect portrait of mock-disapproval.

"Nothing ever changes," she'd declared.

She was right, and she was wrong. He'd reminded her of that later, when they were all scrambling away from each other in shame or embarrassment or inability to know what to do next after they...

How the Hell did they get there? And why? All that skin, all those tears. A mass of flesh and limbs and cries in the dark. What brought them all here? What did they do now? Couldn't any of them do things the easy, normal way, just once?

More questions he would never ask.

"Not everything has to be a drama, you know," Faith pointed out as she slid into her leathers, tugged the squashed pack of cigarettes from the same back pocket she'd produced a condom from before they all... did whatever it was they'd done. He would have laughed at the futile gesture if he didn't fully understand it, and almost agreed that it was the right thing to do.

Not for pregnancy or disease, but just... for vampire. Like some new and horrible STD. Catch soul-loss or hope-loss or gods knew what else from the creature of the night. Communicable horror or ennui, take your pick.

More likely, it was just Faith's long-held habit. No glove, no love.

"We had some sex. It was fun. What's the big?" she'd gone on. Faith hated drama. Detested the wasted time, the wasted words and the wasted energy. 'Wouldn't you rather be fucking or fighting? Seriously.' "It's not like we haven't all done each other at one time or another anyway."

The tiny golden Slayer and the brawny ensouled vampire exchanged matching looks of hurt and betrayal.

"You had sex with FAITH?" they cried in chorus.

~

She relishes the sensory experience of cracking open a cold one. Everything about it is another dramatic climax: the pop of the top. The hiss of the first release of pressure like a first orgasm. Almost the same sensation bubbling down her throat.

She can honestly say that beer comes third on her list of life's great pleasures, and comes pretty damn close to second, sometimes.

They're murmuring at each other in the kitchen. She could hear what they're saying if she wanted to make the effort to concentrate, but why bother? It's probably more of their soap opera bullshit, and she's long since stopped trying to break them of that habit.

She's good right where she is.

"GOD DAMNIT, ANGEL! Don't DO THAT! Don't shut me out like that! Stop treating me like some fragile fairy fucking PRINCESS!"

Faith sits up bolt upright in the chair at the sound of stoneware crashing against the wall. Yeah, B-n-A's ongoing drama is a daily occurrence, but...

B never, ever raises her voice to Angel. Not ever. She never curses at him, and she sure as Hell never throws things.

The second Great Slayer jumps out of the chair and sprints for the kitchen.

~

Faith caught a flight back to Rome the morning after the ritual and their mini-orgy. Buffy and Angel spent that day and the next talking and making love and crying and making love and shouting and...

Pretty much that, over and over again. Until sunset of the third night, when she finally started to feel the effects of what they'd done, and realized...

She couldn't do without Faith in her life, any more than she could Angel. She missed her, more than she ever thought she could. And there was no way she could let things get as bad as they had with him before she did something about it.

"God. What have I done?" she whispered.

"What's that?" Angel had called from the kitchen. If she leaned forward far enough, she could see the pale, hard globes of his rear end, and had a sudden, almost irresistible urge to grab him, throw him down and fuck him until he cried for mercy.

She knew from experience she could do it, and for a little while at least, feel free from this unending tension that surrounded her life like a cursed fog.

"Nothing," she answered. "Just... thinking out loud. Angel?"

"Yeah?" He stepped back into the bedroom, glorious in his nudity, his comfort at living in his own skin for two and a half centuries one of the sexiest things about him. He had two mugs in his hand, one of blood, one of tea. Both said "Wolfram & Hart" on the outside. For some reason, the logo sent a shiver of dread ripping down her spine.

She refused to drink from the mug.

"I need to go back to Rome. Now."

~

They stand across the kitchen from each other like gunslingers poised to draw, backs up, glares in full effect as they grow palpably angrier by the moment.
Faith doesn't think she's ever seen them this mad at each other before. Shards of pie plate sprinkled with blood from the cut on Buffy's hand sparkle red and blue at their feet, and the sink leaks "Plink. Plink. Plink."

"What the Hell's going on in here?" she questions like some kinky hall monitor, and wonders when she became the stable one, the voice of reason, because most times she still feels like anything but. Just getting sucked into the whirlpool along with all the other garbage from their past.

((She watched him kill a Navirk once - big, hairy muscle demon that had kicked her ass halfway across California. He'd ripped the thing's enormous, fanged head off with his bare hands, then stood there afterward for a long, silent time, still in game face, staring at her, coated in demon blood, his shirt ripped to shreds, exposing his hard, pale chest to her hungryhorny eyes.

She'd thrown him down right there in the dirt and demon guts and rode him like a prize bull until his eyes rolled back from amber to white and he'd groaned like a thing dying that wasn't already long dead.

She begged him to bite her, suck her, rip her in two, drill her inside out...))

"Nothing."

The pair of them always lie in the same guilty tone. It's no wonder they're white hats - with suck poker faces like theirs, neither of them would make it five minutes as a hustler, a gambler or a criminal.

She cocks an eyebrow at them. "I'm thinking we can't exactly get therapy, so you might as well just tell me."

Angel is the one who breaks the stalemate; turning automatically like the good anal-retentive boy he is to stir the over-boiling pasta.

"Buffy is upset because she thinks I'm hiding something from her," he tells the pot.

"Don't speak for me," the blonde snaps at his back. "He *is* hiding something. The same thing he *always* hides from me -- *himself*! And I'm sick to *death* of it!"
Faith jumps a little in surprise at Buffy's bark. She's usually a cold hisser, not a shouter.

She wonders briefly if it's wrong that she's hornier than a fuck for both of them right now.

Plopping down in a kitchen chair and kicking her booted feet up on another, she glances back and forth at her two lovers: light-dark-light-dark. But the look on B's face right about then makes the differences between them way less clear than they usually are. It's like she's picked up Angel's talent for glowering along the way. That surly expression reveals that she could very well use that wooden spoon in her hand for a purpose unapproved by the manufacturer.

"Are you?" she asks Angel pointedly.

He frowns. "Am I what?"

"Hiding something from her."

He gets an unhappy expression she's come to know well - when he's faced with a decision that leaves him fucked no matter what (and not in a good way), he scowls so fiercely that his eyes practically vanish beneath his brow.

"Dude, she's not gonna let this go until you 'fess up, so you might as well tell. What's the big?"

Faith: Couples' Therapist. Oh, how the various boy toys she's shared her bed with over the years would *laugh*.

But Hell - this is the Big L they're dealing with here - for everyone involved. Maybe loving them has given her some new shrink skills. Weirder things have happened - like their fucked-up threesome getting it together in the first place.

~

"We want you to move in with us."

Buffy was the one who'd suggested the idea, but Angel actually voiced the question to her. They'd been sleeping together in various combinations for almost a year, and Buffy and Angel had been living together between LA and Rome for eight months of that.

Faith had laughed so hard she strained a muscle in her side.

"I don't see why it's funny," Angel had grouched.

Buffy, on the other hand, had seen clearly what was going through Faith's mind. "You don't have to be monog-dual - um... faithful. You can do whatever you want. We just... want you with us."

She had stopped laughing then, because she could hear in Buffy's tone that she was serious, and some deep-down part of her heart that the tiny blonde love of her life had stomped on a decade ago had been waiting since the moment they met for something like this to happen.

And besides... as far as Faith was concerned, if Buffy wanted it, Buffy got it. She knew it was the same with Angel. As much fun as he had screwing the younger Slayer, she knew he had no desire to make the arrangement domestic, exclusive, or permanent. To have him make the offer meant Buffy must want it pretty badly.

She was almost dizzy from the joy of it.

"You want me to move in here."

They'd been sitting in the big, sunny living room of the LA penthouse at the time, the leather furniture squeaking against her leather pants, and she'd had to squelch the urge to wiggle her ass just to see if she could make a chorus of squeaky leather.

This was serious. This was so many dreams coming true. She held still and waited.

"And Rome too," Buffy went on. "You can come and go however you want, whenever you want, with whoever you want. No questions asked. No strings."

Angel sat forward then. It was increasingly apparent that he wasn't 100% happy with the idea of sharing his homes *and* Buffy with her. "But you have to be safe. Protect Buffy. That's the only rule. Does that sound fair?"

He wasn't talking about guard-dogging the front door, either.

"I haven't said yes yet," she'd reminded him.

She made up her mind to do just that, but his stomping down on her bliss with rules (like she would ever put Buffy in danger on purpose) made her decide to wait two weeks before she told them her answer.

That was four years ago. She hadn't slept with anyone besides them since... but they didn't know that. It paid to keep the upper hand that way.

~

"There is no 'big'," Angel insisted, turning off the stove before facing his lovers once more. "I don't even know where this is coming from."

Buffy hasn't moved, hasn't made a sound since her last outburst. The wooden spoon she's been brandishing snaps, and the noise ricochets like a bullet around the room. All eyes flash to her hand, then to her face.

It's a blank mask, but there's an inferno of rage burning behind her pretty eyes.

"I can't take this anymore. I can't do this."

She slams the bits of spoon on the floor, spins on her bare heel and marches straight to the front door.

Faith and Angel stare at one another in shock, frozen by the completely unexpected turn of events, until that door slams behind her.

"Shit," Faith declares, and they run after her.

She isn't running. She's very calmly, if briskly, walking across the private lobby of their building, her bare feet smack-smacking on the cold marble floor as she reaches the entrance. The doorman doesn't blink, but simply swings open the heavy necro-tempered, bombproof glass to spill her into the busy night street.

Angel and Faith catch up to her on the sidewalk. He grabs her arm. "What are you doing?" he hisses, "Get back inside."

"Get your fucking hands off me!" she shrieks, yanking out of his grip. "Don't you dare fucking TOUCH me, you two-faced, lying, cheating, cowardly BASTARD!"
Even the highly trained doorman, who has been hovering unobtrusively behind them awaiting their pleasure, blushes.

"Whoa, B, hold on," Faith interrupts, but stays out of striking distance. "Don't leave like this. You want to fight, that's cool, but let's take it upstairs."

"YOU SHUT UP!" Buffy screams at her. "This is all your fault to begin with!"

"That's enough," Angel barks, taking possession of her arm once again, and drags her back inside. He doesn't let go through the entire silent ride on their private elevator. Doesn't let go until he pushes her roughly toward the couch and starts to pace. "If you have a problem, don't play passive-aggressive with me, Buffy. Don't play martyr. Just say it."

"Fine," she spits, getting back to her feet. "You want to know what my problem is? Even though I've asked you a million times not to treat me like I'll BREAK if you aren't sweet and NICE TO ME ALL THE TIME? I don't KNOW you! You never, ever show me who you really are! You just show me this special edited version of Angel: censored for a PG-13 rating! You tell me you love me, and then you refuse to be yourself with me! I can't live like that anymore!"

"Buffy, I don't -"

She cuts him off, "Don't say you don't know what I'm talking about! God, Angel, do you think I'm 12 AND stupid?"

Faith settles in the seat Buffy just abandoned, and takes stock of what's going on.

Buffy continues, "You get this look in your eye. I can't describe it. It's like... a red shadow. Like that oil stuff in The X-Files almost. I know you're thinking about something dark. Dangerous. Something you don't want me to know is inside you."

Calmer now that the initial storm of rage and indignance has passed, she steps toward him, reaches up to clasp her hands behind his neck, and looks into his face. "I know that you're a vampire. I know that you're not all romance and deep respect and flowers and candy or whatever. Please stop trying to pretend you are. I want you to be yourself. And I want you to accept me the way I really am. I don't want to play this game anymore."

"Wh-what game?" he stammers.

Faith grins, impressed. She's never seen Angel quite so... dominated before. "Oh shit," she mutters to herself, and settles back to watch the match. "This is gonna be good."

"The game where you treat me like I'm made of glass. Like you'll break me if you get too rough. I want it rough. I want to play, and I know you do too. That's what I see in your eyes. That's what you keep trying to hide from me, even after all these years."

His mouth just hangs open as he stares down at her. Finally, he finds the wherewithal to shut it again, and it resets into its previous scowl. "We're not having this conversation."

"Yes, we are. I want to see what's inside you. All of it. I want you to give it to me. Right now."

Faith sat up. "Okay, now I'm lost. What do you want him to give to you?"

"The Darkness," he answers, like he's saying "A nice picnic."

Worse, she knows exactly what he's talking about.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me."

((Buffy smelled like Ivory soap cut with honey the first time Faith tied her up. She used silk scarves instead of a belt or rope like she usually preferred, because B looked so damn delicate, laying there, all spread and helpless and *hers*.

She hated to see bruises on Buffy's skin, even if she put them there. Even when they were playing bondage, she was still always so careful.))

Angel sits down on the arm of the closest chair and reiterates, "We are *not* having this conversation."

"Looks like we are, Big A. Maybe it's time."

She and Buffy have covered this territory, even if Faith has decided to keep ignoring her wishes. Buffy may be the stronger of them, but she is by no means the hardest to shatter. She knows Angel knows that too, and that's what lies beneath Buffy's anger.

"I don't want you to get hurt," he murmurs, "Either of you."

Buffy laughs, a cold, bitter sound. "That is classic! Did I forget hypocritical before? It should probably go between 'cheating' and 'cowardly' in my parade of insults."

"Speaking of that little tantrum, what are you talking about?" Angel demands. "I have never lied to you. Or been unfaithful. The coward part, I suppose is open to interpretation."

"I'm talking about the two of you. Do you think I don't see you together? Do you think I don't know? I've watched you!" she cries, waving in a general arc that encompasses both he and Faith.

The latter finds herself once again confused. "Huh?"

Before she can blink, Buffy's rage is turned to blaze directly on her, searing her skin. "You and Angel. Angel and you. I've seen how you are. I've seen how you let go with each other. I've seen the bruises and the bite marks. Do you think I'm blind?"

"B, that stuff happens when we're all in bed together."

"Not like this, Faith, and you know it. We've never been anywhere together that you should have grass stains on the knees of your pants. And Angel, as rough as we've gotten, I don't think I've *ever* bitten you in the ASS!"

"Jesus, Buffy, is this about kinky sex? You're not serious!" Angel cries incredulously. "You're upset because Faith and I have rougher sex than you and I do? This is ridiculous!"

"Oh, yes, of course it's ridiculous! Buffy demands something and it's a joke! It's stupid! She doesn't know what she's talking about! She's just a bored goody two-shoes! Let's distract her with presents or a massage or some insipid vanilla sex so we won't offend her delicate sensibilities!" the elder Slayer raged, "Neither of you have any idea what I'm capable of. Or what I like, or don't like, or how much horror or pain or darkness I can handle! Who the Hell do you think you are to decide what's appropriate for ME? You always do this, Angel. You always have."

"What, try to protect you? Yes, you're right! I always have! To want better than debauchery and damnation and hiding from the sun for you? Okay, I'll admit that heinous crime too! I wouldn't change any of it."

"Protect me from you? To give me better than you? Well... I'm still waiting, then. And the only thing I've ever needed protection from was you leaving me. Even now that we're back together, you're still not here.

You carry your secrets around with you, and you only show that stuff to Faith. If you can't trust me to know what I can handle, then we're just going to end up back here over and over again!"

It hits Faith suddenly that this is about more -- a whole Hell of a lot more -- than kink levels. This is a deeper scar, from years before she had known either of them, and the addition or subtraction of a studded rubber bra or a bullwhip isn't going to fix a thing.

Angel rises and approaches her, taking her hand without hesitation. "That's not true. Of course I trust you."

"Not enough to let me see you."

This is starting to turn into a private moment, and Faith's first instinct is to get up and leave. She does that sometimes when they're in bed, and the B/A Show takes off on its own three-hour tour. Which could end up lasting all day. Sure, she likes to watch, but... even pervs have their limit.

Sometimes, they asked her to stay. To watch, to help, to be part of it. Sometimes just because. And when they ask, out loud or with their body language - a kiss, a look -- she always says yes.
Now feels like one of those times.

"See me? Who else has ever seen me but you two? Especially you, Buffy. You've seen the best and the worst of me like no one else ever could."

"I've mostly seen the tired and the worst," Faith mutters, knowing nobody is paying her much mind right now anyway. They might need her there, but they didn't need her input. "The best was over long before I showed up."

"I haven't, Angel. I've seen extremes in you, yes, but I haven't seen that line blur for myself. You don't think I know what darkness is," Buffy plunges on, "I've been across the tracks. I've seen the other side."

"I'd really appreciate it if we could continue our purposeful avoidance of that particular topic. Thanks," Angel pleads.

Denial is the fourth in their bed. And the millionth of a billion frustrations sawing away at Buffy's patience and temper. "YES! Let's avoid it! Because the Powers know that works for us! Don't talk about it, and it'll disappear. It won't eat away my stomach lining and shoot my blood pressure through the roof!!!! I dug myself out of my own grave after I was ripped out of Heaven and was quickly suffocating BACK to death all the while! How the Hell can you say I don't know *dark*?! And do you know the things I did when I came back? Do you know how low I sunk so I wouldn't fade away again?"

Faith's had about enough of this bullshit now. She laughs at her. "Fucking Spike isn't darkness, B."

The look of pure fury on Buffy's pixie features is like something out of a special effects horror flick. "Just because I've never murdered anyone in cold blood doesn't mean I'm not a monster too."

"There's more than just shadows inside of me, Buffy," Angel states slowly, softly, like he's just too weary to make a sound anymore. "It's abject, unadulterated evil. You can't possibly conceive the things that exist in my head. You can't know the kind of control it takes." He bends so they are face to face. "Do you know what I have to do when I drink from you? I have to remember things that happened to me in Hell. I have to recall slitting my son's throat. I have to remind myself what I felt like when you *died* so I know I'll stop in time. The demon is in a cage made out of paper, Buffy. He's on a leash of braided horsehair. It would be so easy for him to..."

"What about the spell? That ritual we did in the hotel? What was that about?" she reminds him. "You didn't want to drink my blood then either."

"It's not a matter of whether or not I have a soul anymore, Buffy! It's more complicated than that. Faith knows -- she saw it herself." He turned to their silent observer. "Would you say that I'm free of the demon, Faith? Would you say there's no evil left in me?"

"Nobody is saying it's not there, Angel," Buffy cuts in. "I know it's there. I can feel it. I have seen it."

"That's what he's saying, B," Faith explained. "It's part of him. It's not a matter of whether his soul is cursed anymore or not. He *is* the monster. He just has to keep it under control."

"There's been a price for walking the line at Wolfram & Hart all these years. And for finding my own peace with what that means," he adds.

"I don't care. I love you. All of you. You know that."

He softens noticeably at the tenderness in her words, something that has been absent from the argument thus far.

"I know that."

"Then you know I can't live with you anymore if you don't let me be a part of everything in your life. Including what you and Faith do when you're alone together. If you can't or won't... I can't be with someone who feels limited by being with me. Maybe you would be happier if it was just you and Faith."

Buffy wants to leave. The realization of it would have knocked Faith over like a power punch straight to the gut if she weren't already sitting down.

She watches Angel. If she feels this, then he's feeling something ten times deeper and more painful. And Faith knows he'll have no choice but to give in.
"No," he avers quietly, "I do love you. And I do trust you. I would do anything for you, you know that. I just... I never want to see you hurt again, especially because of me."

She takes his hand and runs it down the side of her body, from the curve of her breast to the swell of her hip, looking him straight in the eye. "Maybe I want you to hurt me a little. Maybe I need to see the other side with *you*."

~

He'd heard her pleas a million times: harder. Faster. Deeper. More. Don't stop. The way she presses his mouth more firmly into her neck when he feeds from her. Rakes her nails down his back to draw her blood back out of him again.

He's smelled it in her sweat, in her tears. He knew what she'd shared with Spike, and that it had almost nothing to do with love.

He's chosen to disregard it all. Pretend it's not real. And she's right - deny her truth and his own.

In spite of the dread that freezes his soul, he'll be damned if he'll disavow any part of his love for Buffy anymore. That includes the animal as much as the man. What was it Oz had said to him on his last visit to Rome?

"Fangs don't kill people. Monsters kill people. It's all in your approach."

Faith's basement apartment is like a cross between a medieval torture chamber and a twisted playground. He'd bet his immortality that Buffy has never seen a collection quite like this before. Freed from the bounds of parole and living at the Slayer School with a bunch of teenagers, she's gone back to working on her leather and steel collection.

Buffy gawks at all the toys; pauses to touch the cabinet where Faith keeps the whips, but Angel is having none of it. He's almost to the Promised Land, now. This void of bliss he's had nightmares about for years, and he knows she holds the keys to the gate. He yanks her to him, one hand tangled in her thick hair as he dives into her eager mouth. Bruising with his lips, choking her with his tongue. She whimpers with the pleasurepainfearlust, a million darker things she's felt before but never with him - never with her heart as vulnerable as her body.

They'll have this now. After so long waiting they'll finally have it all.

Faith presses to her back without missing a thundering heartbeat, full breasts to lean shoulder blades. Bites down on her taut throat with blunt teeth as they make their way to the back of the playroom together, now one gross form of beast and light.

"Do you want to know what Angel does to me down here, Buffy?" she purrs in her sister Slayer's ear. "Do you want to know how he makes my body feel? Do you want us to do to you all the filthy, dirty things we do to each other?"

"Yes!" she gasps into Angel's hovering lips. "God, yes! Please! Show me. I need it, Angel. I need to know."

~

((He and Spike got sloshing drunk together once, after spending days searching for Buffy in Rome, and realizing that they simply weren't meant to see her right then - or maybe ever again. They'd cleaned the bar of all its bourbon, its Irish whiskey and eventually its vodka as well, and Spike had cried, sobbing stories of the ways he'd hurt her when she asked him to. How he'd tied her up, the ways he'd violated her, and how she'd always begged for more.

Angel couldn't even find the strength of will to punch him in the face for it. After all, even when he had a soul, hadn't he dreamt of doing exactly those things to her?

Of course, he hadn't stopped him from telling the stories, either... for much the same reason.))

He's not an idiot. He knows this is in her... this need to relinquish control, for everyone to be vulnerable and dangerous together. That was why she'd gone to Spike. Having lost Heaven, all she had left was Earth. Gross body, this accident of cellular generation. And even the "lower" animals, even the soulless, the lifeless, celebrate existence or victory with the act that can create life under more natural conditions.

Of course she went to Spike - without a soul, he would have indulged anything she'd asked, no matter how vile.

If Spike can do it, he can do it too. The game has a script; he has a role to play that he's played a million times before. It'll be easy. It'll make them all happy to share this. He can do it.

Like riding a biker, as Faith might say.

"Begging already. What a good little sub she is, isn't she, Faith? Don't you think she should have a reward for her good behavior?"

He doesn't even have to think about not pretending anymore. The veneer of civility slips easily from him in Faith's bedroom dungeon.

"She sure does, baby," Faith replies, and bites down hard on the shell curve of Buffy's ear.

She yelps with pain and surprise, but Angel can smell the bittersweet musk increasing between her legs. She loves it.

"I always knew you'd like it rough, my love," he murmurs, shades of evil clawing to the surface. He bends down to nip her pouting mouth. Draws blood, sucks on the wound, licks it shut. That tiny bit of Slayeressence sends him flying like mainlining heroin. Still the original. Still the best.

Buffy moans loudly, trying to reach for him, pull him closer, but Faith grabs her wrists and yanks them above her head.

"Uh-uh, B. This is our show now. We tell you when to move, when to touch..." she slides her free hand down the front of Buffy's writhing body, clamping down at the juncture between her legs. "And when to come. You got it?"

An incoherent cry is all the response that emits from the smaller woman's strained throat.

He feels like he's sliding downhill headfirst, plummeting recklessly. It's been so long since he's had the sensation; he's as high on it as that sip of her blood. "Are you ready to play, Buffy?" he growls, and some small, still-sane part of his soul cries out, begs for her to say The Word. Or any word. Stop. No. Don't. Something.

"Yes!" she moans, "Please take me!"

Not that. Anything but that. He closes his eyes and prays for them all, because he knows it's far too late now.

Faith holds on to her wrists, lets go of her crotch, yanks on the curtain cord behind them, and reveals the swing-set/rack framed over the king sized bed. She twirls Buffy around so she can get a look.

"You're gonna love this, B. It's Angel's favorite toy."

His groin pulses in anticipation as they work together to strip her and strap her up. Spread-eagle, crucified, dangling above the mattress, she is completely at their mercy. Helpless. Wide open and welcoming and ready.

"Hot," Faith moans.

He steps away to take stock of what they're about to do, the way they're about to change. She is a work of depraved art: glistening wet, panting wildly, twitching in her bindings, full mouth slack, big eyes wide, her fear and excitement sweet and heavy in the air like opium smoke or temple incense. He has a brief flash of dead nuns and Dru ranting and Darla screaming in bliss as he takes her again on the altar in puddles of holy water. Darla burning always smelled like lamb.

Buffy is the altar, this time. The altar and the offering, and he's the god.

"Please," she whimpers, "Please, Angel." She's begging for him to start, but it's easy for him to pretend she's begging for mercy. "I love you."

She has never been so beautiful.

"My wish is your command, lover," he whispers as he steps toward her, toward the buffet, toward this last and ultimate sin, toward the gates of Heaven and Hell in the same hot flesh.

((Stupid girl. Don't you know? Demons just don't care about safe words.))

~

He lounges in bed later, when things are quiet and the girls are resting. It's been a long, hard couple of days.  Literally and figuratively.

Speaking of...

He glances over to where they're going at it again, slow and groggy; takes sensory note of the entire picture to replay later when he's alone. Indulging the ladies' desire for a little kink turned out to be a truly inspired idea - he had never imagined it would turn out quite so perfectly.

((They took her together on the swing, tilted upright with the strap-on up her ass and a vampire in her cunt. She screamed as they tore into her, but they could both feel her throbbing around them.

"Fuck!" Buffy had cried. "Fuck!"))

There were moments that were just custom made for a cigarette. He shook one from Faith's pack on the nightstand, took a long, deep drag, and laid back to enjoy the show. Buffy sinks her razor-sharps into Faith's already abused thigh. The leggier woman shrieks, shifting automatically into game face as she clutches at whatever flesh she can reach.

He shakes his head and chuckles. Fledglings never change. They're randy and starving 24/7 for months after they wake, no matter how in control or sophisticated they were before. He wonders if maybe they'll fuck each other to final death. Which is the kind of action he definitely wants a piece of.

((He was riding some wild tornado, some bucking bitch monster, pushing her face into the mattress as he drilled her ass, rendering her helpless with his weight, his rage, his violence.

"I told you, didn't I? I told you!" he grunted. "You want it? You got it. You got it, baby. Do you like it?"

The Slayer squeaked, but the blankets muffled even that small sound.))

They're so fresh, still. They smell like the lavender he sprinkled all over the bed while they slept. They were new, they needed rest, and he needed a break from them to think and feed.

((He had gotten up, got dressed, ran gel-coated fingers through his hair and knew he was so hot he melted pavement as he strolled out the door into the rain and night. No way he was burying them. The stink of fungus and worms was not his idea of an aphrodisiac. He had twins for dinner in the alley outside the Green Door Lounge and bought a pack of Marlboro Reds and a youngish looking hooker on his way home. He could order the Turkish cigarillos later, and the girls could start hunting their own fare tomorrow night.))

He gets on his hands and knees, bends down to trace the hard line of Buffy's spine from neck to rear and back again with his tongue. She giggles.

((Her heart struggled, but she never did. Faith lay alone in the easy chair beside the bed, clueless, masturbating, watching Angel fuck Buffy raw. She drew long gouges up and down the big muscles of his back, licked his blood off her fingers. He flips her over, pushes her down again, her ass in the air when he slams her. She screams and bucks back. Faith moaned. He grunted like an animal as he rams into her. Picked up the big dildo from the table and crams it in until there was no more room for anything but...

Her screaming and hungry and harder, harder.

He watched his restraint slip away, his tether on humanity snap. He yanked her upright, bowed her backward as she screams that she's coming. Rips into her artery as she delivers on the promise. He hears Faith keening her own ecstasy nearby. And then he drinksanddrinksanddrinksanddrinksanddrinksanddrinks...))

The rest was a cinematic masterpiece - it all happens so fast, and yet, he watches a thousand eternities pass in agonizing slow motion as it does. Too much. Too much just for bloodplay, but he can't stop, and she doesn't try to stop him. Faith sees hisbloodherblood pooling on the mattress, B's eyes dull and wide and unseeing. Empty. Angel in game face with gore smearing his cheeks and mouth, and she wonders if he cries blood. He's forcing his wrist into Buffy's slack mouth. She makes those familiar greedy moaninggroaningsucking sounds and he clamps down his jaws on the welcome he opened in her throat as she takes him in.

"NO! Angel, STOP! STOP! YOU'RE KILLING HER!"

She dives for him, taking a headboard slat with a flick of her wrist as she does. His fist connects solidly with her nose and it makes a satisfying crunch as it shatters and she flies across the room, crumbles down the wall into a heap and goes still.

He can feel himself crying, but he doesn't feel sad. It's too late for that. Too late to be sorry. Too late for any of them to do any more good. "Can't save you now, baby. Can't save any of us. Yes, Buffy, drink. It's your turn. It's your turn now. I love you, Buffy. So much. Always..."

He slips his still-hard cock into the first place he ever took her and he can hear laughter everywhere. It's not his. It's like devils singing. Her soft lips are growing cold even as they seal around the gushing wound in his arm. She pulls fiercely from his veins (who has a fiercer will to live than a Slayer?) and he thinks - now they really will be together forever. Eternity is theirs as he comes like a tsunami hitting and crashes into waves of agony. He knows this pain. He remembers it so well, and he knew it would come again someday. Hell's been right here, waiting for him all this time. He cries as he comes inside her, spurting cold and dead into herwombhermouth and her body keeps taking him, keeps dying, keeps being reborn.

Mine forever, he thinks. Mineminemineminemine at last.

Her heart stops and his world went black.

~

She's fine now. Just fine. This is what she wanted all along; he's always known it: Buffy -n- Angel 4ever.

Death is her gift.

They tied Faith up after Buffy rose, and made her come again and again until she begged for mercy. They took two days to fuck her and drain her slowly before they finally ended it and passed the Gift.

((Death is your gift.))

Now she can be the daughter they'll never have.

Back in the now ((he loses track sometimes)) the sensual kittens of light and dark purr up at him.

"Good morning, sunshine," he drawls, stubbing out his cigarette. "I was just thinking - we've got some impressive resources between us: access to the greatest supernatural army on the planet *and* an infinitely powerful multi-dimensional evil law firm at our disposal. How do you girls feel about taking over the world?"

NewBuffy smiles. "We were hoping you'd propose something like that."

"Speak for yourself. I was hoping he'd stay asleep for a while so I could have you all to myself."

"You two youngsters have to feed," he chastises as he rolls out of the bed. The leathers are still right there on the chair where he left them. So is the hooker's body. He kicks it out of the way. "I won't have you chewing up my arms in the night. It fucks up the lines of my Italian shirts." He stops, glances back at them. "Do I still have Italian shirts?"

"Yes, in the downstairs closet."

He smiles gently. These two will make up for everything. "Maybe we should give Dawn a call - she and some of the others might like to come to the city for a visit. Take a moonlit walk by Sunnydale Canyon, take in a concert, dinner, dancing, dying a horrible and agonizing death. Something festive."

The girls laugh, and he's the luckiest vampire this side of the Quartoth. Or maybe some less-fiery Hell dimension.

Speaking of which, a visit to Connor at Stanford was definitely going on the top of the agenda. He makes a mental note as he continues outlining his plan.

"The way I figure it, there are no more potentials, right? All the Slayers that might have been Slayers *are* Slayers. So... if all those Slayers died, there would be nobody to take their place. We could probably turn them all over the course of a couple of days, if we play it just right. Who's to be the wiser until it's too late?"

The girls tangle tongues in celebration. He chuckles indulgently and kicks back in the chair the corpse just vacated to watch.

He has no intention of ignoring Buffy's wilder impulses ever again.

~

The End

~
Pairing: B/A/Oz or B/A/Faith
Requests: Angsty/dark in tone, which is not to say resolution or momentary delight is out of the question, just to take seriously the characters' dark streaks. Consideration/pondering of the below quotation: What are these but grotesque and monstrous bodies, pieced together of different members, without any definite shape, without any order, coherence, or proportion, except they be accidental? [Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). "Of Friendship," The Essays (Les Essais), bk. I, ch. 28.]
Restrictions: no character bashing, no Spuffy. If you go with B/A/O, no wolfy-rape; bestiality's okay, though.

FEEDBACK: ducksfanfic@yahoo.com

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