"What?"
Willow raised her auburn head."What, what?"
"You said something," Buffy told her.
Willow shook her head. "I didn't."
Buffy half-smiled. "The research must be making me kooky. Where's Anya with the mochas?"
A half-hour crawled by at a snail's pace.
//the light ... for his darkness ...//
"*What?*"
Three heads jerked up from their books and stared at Buffy, who was in turn staring back at each of them. "One of you is whispering," she accused. "Whispering weird things."
The three glanced at each other before focusing again on Buffy. Giles spoke quietly to her. "In all honesty, Buffy, not a word has been spoken for at least thirty minutes. Quite a rarity," he added under his breath.
Xander and Willow nodded in agreement. "Maybe you're tired," Xander offered.
"Maybe you heard Anya in the front," Willow added, casting Buffy a worried look.
"No," Buffy snapped, "I didn't." Willow glanced away, and Buffy was immediately contrite. "I'm sorry, Will. I guess I'm ... tired. Like Xander said."
The three nodded sympathetically. If Buffy wanted to pretend she was tired, who were they to say she wasn't? After all, the annoyingly stuffy Council members hadn't been gone but four days, and it had only been several weeks since Riley ... well, Buffy was allowed to feign fatigue.
"What say we continue tomorrow?" Giles said, closing his book and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I could use a bite, myself."
"Big Macs all around!" Xander announced cheerfully. "I got paid today."
Giles looked mildly pained. "I had something else in mind," he said. "Something ... edible."
Buffy only distantly heard the good-natured bickering that followed. She *was* tired, it seemed, either that or under the influence of strong antihistamines. Suddenly, bed seemed wonderfully appealing.
"Uh ... I'll see you tomorrow," Buffy said as she rose from the small table. "Same bat-time, I assume?"
"What?" Giles appeared vaguely puzzled.
"Pop-culture reference," Willow apologized, and attempted to explain.
I won't walk by the cemetery, I won't walk by the cemetery, I won't walk by the cemetery ...
Buffy unfortunately found her thoughts to be on a different course than her feet. With a resigned sigh, she found herself on the fringe of the graveyard, scanning the newly lain graves for any protruding limbs.
To her relief, there were none, and she turned toward her mother's house.
"Shirking, Slayer?"
Oh, perfect, Buffy thought. The Peroxide Wonder. "Go away," she sighed.
Spike frowned. "That wasn't very enthusiastic," he said. "I'm hurt."
"Go the hell away," she tried, hoping it would work.
"Now, Buffy," he said, "I'm only trying to walk you home. Can't find fault with me fer that."
She looked at him disbelievingly. "Spike, I could find fault with you if you were helping old women across the street."
"Well, I'm not," he said peevishly, flicking his lighter and holding it to the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. "I'm helping *you* across the street."
"No thanks," Buffy replied, setting off in the general direction of home, and feeling vaguely irritated when Spike dogged behind.
They made their way through the soft night in silence, the quiet only broken when Buffy reached the tree in her front yard. "You can't come in," she informed Spike.
"Don't want to," he lied, leaning casually against the tree. "Got somethin' to tell ya, though."
"I don't care," Buffy yawned, starting up the porch steps. "Go tell it to the stars."
"Somethin' about Angel," he said carelessly, inspecting a black-tipped nail.
She turned slowly, focusing in on the fair-haired vampire. "How in the world would *you* know anything about Angel?"
"Oh, I keep tabs on Peaches," Spike replied. "Know yer enemies, or some such rot."
Against her much better judgement, Buffy slowly descended the steps and advanced across the yard until she was standing within inches of Spike. To her chagrin, she briefly noted that the top of her head barely reached his chin. She comforted herself with the thought that the taller they were, the easier it was to beat their ass.
Something like that.
"I am going to ask you what you know about Angel," Buffy said clearly. "And you get one chance to tell me. If you don't -"
"If I don't?" Spike interrupted insolently. "What will you do, little blonde bit?" He lowered his head until his mouth was a breath from her own, and repeated the question. "What will you do?"
He was rewarded with a solid fist in his stomach, and bent double with a gasp.
"I'll do that again, only next time where it counts," Buffy said. "Now here we go. What do you know about Angel?"
"Wait," Spike wheezed. "Can't breathe."
He abandoned the ruse of breathing when Buffy narrowed her green eyes and folded her fingers into another fist.
"Okay!" he barked, straightening up and holding his palms out. "Lemme light another cig."
Buffy restrained herself while Spike dug for his pack of Marlboros and then finally took a deep drag of his cigarette.
"Here's the deal on Gel-Boy. He's takin' a stroll on the wrong side of good lately." Spike looked satisfied with himself, but Buffy was still confused.
"He's ... huh?"
"Got himself a taste of the old days," Spike clarified. "Ah, those were the good old days, too ..." he trailed off with a dreamy look on his face but came back with a jerk when Buffy grabbed a lock of his hair. "Ow! Jesus, Slayer, leggo. I'll tell ya the rest."
"Then do it fast. You're saying a whole lot of nothing."
"Angelus is doin' what he does best. Causin' quite a spot of trouble for some people up there in the City of Angels." He snorted. "City of Angels! That's a laugh. Ain't no angels I've seen lately. Anyway, yer sainted Angel ... isn't."
"Angelus?" she breathed, feeling a familiar panic rise in her chest. "You mean ... Angelus is ...?"
"Naw," Spike dismissed her question with a wave of his hand. "We couldn't be that lucky, now could we? No, Angel's still got his bitch of a soul. Only you wouldn't know it. He's turned into a one man vigilante crew, and soul be damned. Out fer vengeance, looks like. All on account a' Darla."
"Darla!" Buffy's panic mounted. "Not ... Darla, Darla?"
"Yeah, yeah. Darla Darla. Anyhow, Slayer, thought you should know. You can thank me now...hey! Where you goin'?"
"Go home, Spike," Buffy tossed over her shoulder as she hurried toward her front door. "Just go home."
"Go home, Spike," he repeated to himself, watching as Buffy disappeared inside her mother's house. "That's all she's ever gonna tell you to do, mate. Go home."
//you are the light for his darkness//
Bolt upright in her bed, moonlight streaming in the window, Buffy trembled. She was alone, yet not.
//the light ... for his dark//
"I'm not," she spoke in a small voice to the emptiness. "I'm not his light, not anymore."
//light ... dark//
"I couldn't be," she said, swallowing down the rising tears of indecision. "I wanted to be, and I wasn't. I wasn't enough to be his light. I was Riley's light. Angel -" and even saying his name was difficult, as if a very old scar had cracked slightly - "Angel wouldn't let me be his light."
There was nothing, only silence and derision from the frowning moon.
"I'm not," Buffy said again in a tiny voice. "I'm not."
But she knew she was.
And she knew she would go.
She didn't wait, rather, she knew with certainty that to wait would only mean prolonging the inevitable, so she went.
Pretending that there was no reason for her mother to need the car in the morning, Buffy backed out of the driveway and headed toward the northbound freeway.
A short drive, and yet an endless one, with her thoughts to keep her busy.
Angel. Angel in trouble. Angel and his darkness. It was too much, too big a responsibility for her to handle, and Buffy banged a small fist against the steering wheel.
Their paths would always cross, and it was something she had to face. The Powers that Be, the ones she silently raged against every day of her slaying life, had predestined them and Buffy could not avoid that fact.
She would always be Angel's candle, whether either of them liked or wanted it.
It was her job to make him do both.
He stirred at about 6 p.m. The last vestiges of smog-colored sunlight were reaching saffron fingers across the floor, threatening to touch the legs of the easy chair that Buffy sat in.
She trained her eyes on Angel and did not give in to the urge to yawn and stretch. "You're up early," she remarked. "It's not even dark."
He rolled over in bed and became very still, his fathomless, unreadable eyes watching her. "Who brought you here?"
"I brought myself," she answered, tucking a leg beneath her in an attempt to be casual. "And, hello to you too."
Angel rose from his rumpled sheets, chest bare and his pants unbuttoned at the waist. He strode by Buffy's chair without looking at her and jerked the curtains over the gap in the window. "Then you can bring yourself back."
"Oh, I will," she said. "After I bring you back."
"I'm not going anywhere," he replied shortly, rummaging in a drawer for a shirt.
"I don't mean back with me. I mean back from wherever you've gone, Angel." Buffy willed her voice not to have a desperate quality, but did not quite succeed.
He barked a laugh. "You have no idea what you're talking about. Go back and play with your friends, Buffy. Let your Watcher watch you."
"I watch myself," she snapped, annoyed.
Angel turned in the fading light and faced her, standing bare-chested with his shirt dangling from his fingers. "Well, haven't you turned into the big girl," he taunted. "You brought yourself here. You watch yourself. What else do you do by yourself, Buffy Anne Summers? Do you do anything alone, by yourself, at night in your bed?"
"Stop," Buffy whispered, cringing from his leer. "Don't say things like that to me."
He laughed. "You're still a child. You may have celebrated your twentieth birthday, but inside you're seven years old, begging for someone's attention." Angel shrugged his shirt on, leaving the buttons undone. "Go home, Buffy. Tell your Watcher and your gang of misfits that you couldn't save Angel this time. Tell them I didn't want your salvation."
Buffy paused mid-turn. "How old am I?"
"What?"
"Tell me how old I am."
He narrowed his eyes. "You're twenty. You just had a birthday."
"Yes," she said slowly, "I did. You knew that."
Angel let his belt slide from his fingertips as he strode toward her. Taking her upper arms in a punishing grip, he gave her a violent shake. "Of course I knew that," he nearly shouted. "I know everything about you. Which is why I want you to get out, Buffy. Just go away. Don't go home, for all I care! Go to hell!"
It was a moment she had been waiting for, and she took advantage. She lifted a simple hand and laid it on his chest.
Angel stared at it. "Stop touching me."
"Angel," Buffy whispered, "don't you get it? I've never stopped touching you."
"Don't play games."
She laughed. "Angel, sometimes I think the only thing in my whole twisted life that isn't a game is what I feel for you."
He opened his mouth to say one thing, then changed his mind and said another. "You don't know what's happened to me. You can't fix me, Buffy."
"You're not broken," she whispered, her mouth a hair's breadth from his. "Just ... bent."
Something flickered behind his eyes and was gone.
"Bent I may be," he murmured, "but I have no reason to be straightened out. I'm on my own, Buffy, back to the way it used to be, before ..."
"Before you were brought to me," she finished. "Angel, don't you see? I can't walk in the sunshine like you wanted me to. There can't be sunshine if there isn't night, and vice versa. I'm here, I came because I was supposed to, and whether I can help you with your problem or not isn't even the issue. The issue is the fact that we've both been wandering like the opposite sides of a magnet, the kind that repels everything but what it's supposed to attract. I *have* to be your light, Angel, just like you have to be my dark. Otherwise we'll wander forever, spiraling further and further away from everything."
Angel bit his lip in concentration, and Buffy was encouraged enough to go on. Her hand still lay on his chest, and though he continued to grip her arms, she slid her other hand up to rest next to the first. "There's a battle to be fought, no doubt about that," she whispered. "But why you insist on doing it alone escapes me."
He drew a shaky breath for support and said in a tired voice, "Right now, at this minute, it escapes me too."
It was an invitation for Buffy, and she accepted. Leaning up against his broad chest, she brought his head down to hers and kissed him.
Familiar and yet new, the kiss was tender and forgiving while lending strength at the same time. Buffy felt Angel relax slightly and slide his hands to her waist, finally releasing the punishing grip on her arms. She tasted on his mouth all the things he had been striving desperately to hide: fear and desperation and longing. Buffy knew his body couldn't lie, had counted on that fact.
When she felt Angel nudge her hair away and dart his tongue out to lick her ear, Buffy wondered for a moment if she really had accomplished what she had come to do. Then his tongue traveled to her jawline and she stopped wondering, at least while he continued to do delicious things to the soft skin of her neck. His palms traveled upward, nudging insistently at the soft underside of her breasts, and Buffy wanted to cry with the wonderment of being simply kissed and tasted and loved.
A dam had burst in Angel, it seemed, because where before he had been reticent and aloof, he now behaved as if he wanted to bury himself in Buffy and be lost. Nuzzling at her softness, he couldn't touch enough of her, and slowly he sank to his knees with her following.
But of course there was a problem to be addressed.
"Angel," Buffy murmured, her hair fanning out on the plush carpeting, "I assume that some things about you haven't changed."
He lifted his dark head from the hollow of her neck, knowing instinctively what she was referring to. "There's the curse, yes."
"Well...?" Buffy arched a brow, waiting for him to come to a conclusion.
Angel paused, looking very serious and very handsome in the last bit of sunlight from the window. "Buffy, I have some things happening in my life right now that make it impossible for me to be perfectly happy." When her face fell, he hurriedly continued. "I don't mean I can't ever be again. I just mean -"
"It's all right," she hushed him. "Your perfect happiness is never a good thing."
For the first time that night, Angel's mouth curved up in a semblance of a smile. Time later to tell her of shanshu.
"Can we kiss now?" she demanded, looking very saucy and tempting, lying there on his hotel room floor.
In answer, he lowered his head to her and closed his eyes, savoring the fresh sweet taste of her lips under his. Buffy's hands roamed his back, holding him close when he kissed her and grasping in protest when he pulled away to remove hindering clothing.
Cool against hot had never felt so good to Buffy, and she realized she hadn't even known that she had been so far from home. Now they sheltered each other, and Buffy knew that to lose Angel again would be one time too many for her battered heart. He continued to rain kisses on her now naked flesh, filling his hands with the mounds of her small breasts, rubbing rough thumbs over the hardened points and making her arch eagerly into his palm.
His hand grazed her bare thigh and she raised both legs to wrap around his waist. It was then Angel knew there would be no more lovers' foreplay, at least not this time, because when there was a thunderstorm outside, you didn't wait around to see if it would stop. You sought shelter.
Angel slid a strong palm around to cup her buttocks, and Buffy whimpered and lifted herself in invitation. The heat of her body was driving away the chill from Angel's icy heart, and he slid between her legs without hesitation. Concentration came naturally to him, yet he hovered on the brink of losing it when he felt Buffy writhe beneath him, her hips rising and falling in a natural rhythm while his own body roared in protest.
Finally, he filled her. They lay perfectly still for several moments, absorbing the impact of their joining, watching a myriad of emotions flit through each others' eyes. Buffy felt Angel stretch her beyond comprehension, felt him thrust deeper than she had ever thought possible, and still wanted more fulfillment. She moved with him, lifting herself up to him when he would have pulled away, and meeting each downward thrust with passion.
For a while, Buffy tried to keep up with him. But it seemed that Angel was on his own course, and finally Buffy just gave up and let go, letting herself get lost in him and counting on him to find their way. Angel felt her resistance give way and took advantage, thrusting deeply and insisting silently that Buffy follow him over the brink.
They climaxed together, both of them trembling and shivering and clinging to each other, both of them fighting back the urge to let tears well up and spill. Then they just lay together, entwined and entangled, just like they'd always been.
The crest of the blue moon interrupted their idyllic silence. It peeped through the crack in the curtains and stared down at the spent lovers. Buffy and Angel rose together and sought the warmth and softness of the bed.
Deep into the night, they talked and whispered. Occasionally, they laughed, and once, both of them cried.
And when the dark became too oppressive for both of them, they lit a candle.
The End