The haze of delirium was too thick for my mind to form a rational thought like understanding I was dying. Instead, there was just red, foggy pain. And I was warm. Hot, even, and if I had been more conscious I would have understood the strangeness of that. But I was in the grip of fever and hallucinations, and did not know.

Everyone was Buffy. Oz came to take his turn, and he wasn't Oz, he was sunshine and daffodils. Willow, too, was Buffy, and I know that if the others had dared to step into the sickroom, they too would have been Buffy. Hallucinations and fever and white pain made it so.

Dying, but ignorant of it.

Until she really did come, and it wasn't the poison trying to fool me again because nothing or noone can fool me when it's really her. Her calm, cool presence in the room cleared my eyes as soon as she touched me, and I too became calm, as I realized that I had been dying all along, but waiting for her before I could let go.

I struggled to tell her so. "I didn't want to go before...before I..."

She hushed me with her small hand against my mouth. "It's okay," she soothed. And then, "Angel...I can cure you."

I started to shake my head. "No. There's no..."

"Drink," she said calmly, though her eyes were terrified and ancient.

In my pain, I felt I must have misunderstood her, because I just stared blankly.

"Drink me," she ordered firmly.

What she was telling me suddenly broke through the barrier of my dreamy haze, and for the briefest of moments, I hated her with everything I was. How dare she? How dare she be so selfless as to offer herself to a demon? I hated her for being everything that I wasn't, and would never be again. What remained of my un-life was not worth the blood of a sewer rat.

The hatred passed instantly, and then I felt only anger at myself for getting angry at her, and with the last of my strength I launched myself unsteadily from the bed. I had to get away from her, had to put distance between us before she offered herself again. I would not drink from her. Death was preferable to subjecting her to what I really was.

Naturally, she followed as I wove shakily into the next room, only to find that the few steps were too much. I grabbed for the table as I fell on to it, the last bit of my vanity crumbling under the realization that she was watching me, and then I felt her capable hands on my shoulders, steadying me.

She helped me to stand, and when I stood there wobbling in front of her, she took my shoulders in a firm grip. "The blood of a Slayer," she said. "It's the only way."

"Faith..." I whispered, grasping for something, anything.

Her eyes flickered, and she went away inside her head for a minute. "I tried," she said hollowly. "I...killed her."

"Then it's too late," I gasped, wrenching away and stumbling across the floor. *Please, please, God, it's too much, make her go away and let me die.*

"Angel," she pleaded with me, a little bit of desperation creeping in despite her efforts to remain calm. "Angel. Please."

"Don't ask me to do that," I hissed at her, wondering why the floor was tilting.

I saw her mouth tighten and her eyes flash, and recognized the determined look only a split second before her fist shot out to crack against my jaw.

I almost fell, but didn't, and I shook my head and brought it back up to look at her incredulously. She had struck me. The idea of it was so foreign that I just stared, puzzled, while my jaw began to throb.

She understood my puzzlement to mean that she had not accomplished her task. Again, her arm drew back, and it was in slow motion that I watched it come toward me with a fierce cross punch. This time my head began to ache, and my nostrils flared as I again stared at her incredulously. My stomach tightened as I felt something stir to life inside me.

The third time she hit me, it was sudden and sharp and I stumbled back, again almost falling to the floor but saving myself, and the dam opened. I jerked my head up with a snarl, knowing that there were now prominent ridges on my forehead and my fangs had lengthened of their own accord.

She stood there, composed, and nodded slightly in satisfaction. I watched in disbelief as she tilted her head gracefully to the side, drawing her shirt off her shoulder and exposing the delicate feast of skin between her neck and collarbone. "Drink," Buffy murmured, snaking her hand around my neck to tangle in my hair, and I was hypnotized. I could not have broken her hold, and she knew it, and I could feel her drawing my head down to the soft, warm hollow of her throat.

It would have been easier to resist breathing, had I needed to do it. It had been a century since tasting blood from a living human. I was helpless in her arms. With every last vestige of strength, I paused momentarily before biting, breathing in the scent of her skin, feeling it under my lips, my tongue, similar to tasting wine, drawing out the utter pleasure of the ultimate act. With one last gentle lick at her neck, I took her.

As soon as I pierced the skin, I couldn't support myself anymore. I fell toward the stone ground, taking her with me, feeling her grip on my head become stronger, and then suddenly I was no longer aware of her beneath me. There was only her warm, nourishing blood, sliding easily down my throat, and the pain was mercifully receding. I wanted to swallow all of it, all of her, and I could not have stop suckling at her had I even wanted to.

As I drank more and more, and the haze of pain and fever vanished, I gradually became conscious again of the warm body under mine. I could hear her biting back soft murmurs, and I growled low in my chest while I fed. Her leg came up to clutch at my hips, the movement fitting her securely against me, and I instinctively ground myself against her. I hadn't even realized that I was hard and throbbing inside my pants. It was as if her blood was rushing straight to my center, making me hard as steel for her, and the sheer eroticism of drinking from her was suddenly surrounding me.

Her small hand was still entwined in my hair, her other hand clutching helplessly at my back, and I realized that she was lifting her hips off the floor to nestle them in line with my crotch. The realization that perhaps Buffy was as aroused as I seemed to be was only fuel for the fire, and in desperation I reached down for the waistband of her pants.

I did not ask her permission, nor did I even bother to lift my head from her neck. I tore her pants down, while she lay there helpless to stop it, and then fumbled for my own zipper. I vaguely remember her hand reaching weakly to help me, but falling to the ground beside her instead. I should have stopped right then.

I did not. The demon that dwells in the corner of my heart was too ecstatic to stop. I didn't realize then that she had already weakened far too much, that I had taken too much blood from her, but now I look back on it with shame, as if I didn't already have enough shame in my heart to last a hundred lifetimes.

I kicked off my pants and then we were naked together, and I still took the nourishing liquid from her, nuzzling deep into her neck and embedding my fangs as far as they would go. She continued to rub up against me, gasping softly now, her eyes closed. I did not spend any time readying her, another fact of which I am deeply ashamed, but thankfully she did not need any preparation.

I positioned at her entrance, the tip of my shaft brushing her, and already I could feel the wetness that had leaked from her. I meant only to slide the tip in, but she was so open and wet that I sunk into her in one swift stroke, grunting against her neck and feeling her do the same. She tightened around me instantly, her legs hugging me, and she limply hooked one arm around my neck. "Angel," she barely breathed, so softly that I may have imagined it.

It was salvation, being inside of her and having her be inside of me simultaneously. I intended to begin slowly, to stroke with care, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and I couldn't stop myself from quickening. It was just that she felt so warm and tight and slippery around me, and I was so hard and throbbing for her, and her blood still trickled sweetly into my mouth.

I rose onto my knees, my mouth still in the sweet hollow of her neck, and gathered her underneath me. She followed limply, trying to make her muscles comply, but she couldn't do it, and of course I didn't notice. I began to pump into her, squeezing my buttocks together as I did, and lifting her up to me with every stroke, feeling the slickness cover me and begin to ooze out between us.

She lolled her head limply to the side, her tongue darting out to moisten her lips, and a light sheen of sweat covered both of us as we mated on the floor. Buffy began to breathe deeply, as if she were trying to get enough air but couldn't, and she opened her mouth in a wordless cry. I had the presence of mind to realize she was reaching for her orgasm but was too weak to obtain it, and so I slid a hand into the wetness between us and found her pulsing bud. I placed two fingers on it, rubbing against her. She closed her eyes gratefully and arched her neck slightly, and then almost immediately began to shudder sweetly in satisfaction against my hand, not even having the strength to lift her arm to me.

I took one last swallow of the blood of the Slayer before my own orgasm hit, and I clenched deeply inside of her and let it shoot out, feeling the remains of her own pleasure still rippling around me and milking me. I could only lie as she had done while it washed over me and took control, gasping against her neck, feeling it like I had never experienced it before.

There was no warm, soft afterglow. I was still twitching inside of her when I came back to myself, and I jerked away in horror. She lay still as death next to me, pale against the granite, her hair fanned out about her like cornsilk. I stared, waiting for her to move, to blink, but her eyes remained open, fixed on nothing, and a single tear lay stained on her cheek.

"Buffy," I gasped, leaning over her. "Buffy!"

Help was needed, the kind of help I couldn't give, and I frantically gathered clothes and belongings to begin the race to the hospital. *There isn't time, there isn't time, hurry hurry hurry,* sang the insane voice in my head, while I gathered her close to my heart and raced into the night.

I ran all the way, and burst into the bright light of the emergency room shouting for help, and then she was gone because they took her. And then came the accusing looks from her friends, fueling my already guilty soul, and Giles gently ordered me home. So I went.

*There was a drop of blood on my stone floor, and though I was frenzied with worry and plagued with murderous guilt, I couldn't help but think of what had happened, and what truth remained.

I was not the angel. The Slayer was. And she had given me redemption.

 

The End

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