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A deserted hospital, it turned out, was even more creepy than a deserted office building. Willow didn't have any desire to stay. She never liked hospitals much to start with. They reminded her of bad times: childhood visits to decaying, old relatives, and later, frantic searches for injured friends, the week she spent there herself after Drusilla's minion crushed her with a book case, Joyce's illness, the day Buffy and Tara...Well, there were a lot of bad memories. But this hospital was worse than any she'd been in before. This hospital was huge, and empty, and there were artifacts of human life everywhere- even more than there had been at Plethocorp. Sweaters and knick knacks and pictures behind the nurses station in the ER, an admissions form half filled out on a chair in the waiting area, a plate of Jell-O, uneaten, on a tray in a random room Willow decided to poke her head into, and God, the smell. It still smelled like a hospital, and that was the worst part of all somehow.
They moved quickly, gathering provisions and chattering mindlessly, unnecessarily loudly, to fill the empty space. There was food and water for Willow, blood packets for Spike and Angel, and a large box of Willow-didn't-know-what that Spike pilfered from a darkened supply closet.
They showered in the men's locker room, in three separate but adjacent stalls. The water wasn't hot, but it wasn't cold either. It was a relief to finally wash for real, but it felt wrong somehow. Eerie. Willow didn't belong here, and she didn't like being even this far away from Spike and Angel. She was terrified that they'd disappear the moment she let them out of her sight. She scrubbed herself as hard and fast as she could manage without breaking the skin.
They changed from their filth-encrusted clothing into clean but surprisingly uncomfortable scrubs. Willow's were pink. They didn't match her orange sneakers, but she supposed she was lucky they fit at all. Spike's were blue, and the bottoms dragged on the floor, under his feet. It felt wrong, wearing somebody else's scrubs. Some intern, probably. There was a nametag on the shirt- Sheryl Milton. She was wearing Sheryl Milton's scrubs. Sheryl Milton was dead.
They loaded their supplies into the van near the main entrance, and when they were done Spike handed Willow a small, heart shaped box. She turned it over in her hands and looked at him questioningly.
"They're chocolates," he told her. "From the gift shop."
She didn't know when he'd had time to sneak off to the gift shop, but she didn't particularly care. It was chocolate. The promise of chocolate was almost enough to dispel the unpleasant feelings the hospital had inspired. Almost, but not quite.
She smiled gratefully, and reached out to hug him. Her second hug from a vampire in the past couple of hours. She was becoming a pro. She didn't feel the bizzarro urge to kiss Spike, though, which cemented her view that her earlier urges with Angel were an anomaly- an outgrowth of the general weirdness of their situation.
"You want me to drive awhile?" Angel asked, but Spike was already headed towards the driver's seat.
"Nah, I'm fine. Keeps my mind off stuff."
Angel nodded, and climbed into the back with Willow again. She sat cross-legged on the mattress and began devouring her treat. It was incredibly good. A little stale, probably, but sweet and full of chocolaty goodness. And carmelly goodness. And nutty goodness. Even nougatty goodness, and Willow had never been much of a nougat fan. Normally she would've felt like quite the piglet, stuffing the candies into her mouth, one after another, but normal wasn't an appropriate word now, and she was too depressed and frightened to care what she looked like anymore.
"He really shouldn't have gotten those," Angel said.
"Muuh?" Willow asked, her mouth full of goo.
"If we're gonna get extra food for you, it oughtta be something healthy, don't you think?"
She shook her head furiously, and he smiled. If anything, she should've been rationing the chocolates the way she had been with the other food in the van, but that just wasn't a plausible option.
Spike was eating too, in the front. The van had a microwave, but he'd already bitten into a packet and was drinking it cold.
"You gonna eat?" she asked Angel.
"Not right now. Not hungry."
She didn't really get how that could be possible, especially given the way Spike was voraciously devouring his dinner, but she figured Angel knew what he was doing.
Soon the van was starting up, and the music was back- the Doobie Brothers this time- and they were Rockin' Down the Highway again. It was warm and comfortable and the light was dim and soothing compared to the harsh glow of the hospital. Willow should've been relieved, but once the chocolates were gone she found herself even more troubled than before.
"How you feeling now?" Angel asked. Must've seen it on her face. She turned to answer him, and noticed suddenly how very close he was sitting to her. His thigh was touching her knee. Had he been this close a minute ago? She didn't remember him being this close.
"Um, I'm okay. The hospital was sorta...nightmarishly terrifying, but, you know, other than that..."
"It was pretty disturbing."
"It's just, every time I start to feel almost normal, I get an uber-creepy reminder that we're living in the Twilight Zone. And I find myself imagining things getting even worse. Like, what would I do if you guys disappeared too?"
"We're not gonna disappear," he told her in a soft, soothing voice. Then his hand was on her knee, squeezing. Nope, not going anywhere. It was comforting, but strange.
"I miss having a home. I mean, the van is really cool, but it's not....secure. I'm afraid it's gonna break down or explode or something. I feel like I'm just floating, you know?"
"Uh huh."
The hand was still squeezing, and the strangeness was continuing. She found herself wishing for another hug, longing for the relative comfort of Angel's bulky, solid arms. She found herself remembering his smell and...other things.
She had a crush on Angel, once. It only lasted, well, sophomore year, and, now that she thought of it, part of junior year too. Pretty much up until he went all psycho stalker and killed her fish, but before that, yeah. She never would've acted on it, never even considered it a possibility in the realm of reality, but she had her thoughts. What teenaged girl wouldn't have, really? Best friend's boyfriend or no, he was like the prototype for tall, dark and handsome, with a big fat helping of mysterious to add to the allure. She thought about what it would be like to be Buffy, to have someone like that wanting her, kissing her, and those thoughts were sometimes distracting enough to get her mind off Xander for a few hours. Of course, they were equally hopeless and depressing.
But now here he was, still tall, dark and handsome, though considerably less mysterious, and he was touching her leg, and looking at her like a kiss wouldn't be completely out of the question. It was stirring something in her, and she wasn't entirely convinced anymore that it was all coming from her need for comfort and her lack of moorings.
It had been so long since she'd kissed anybody at all, and even longer since she'd even thought about kissing a boy, but she couldn't deny the desire was there again. Wanting to kiss a boy certainly wasn't the strangest thing that had happened to her recently, but it was still confusing.
"We'll get you home, Willow," he said. "One way or another, I'm sure we'll get you home."
"Do-do you think anyone is still alive?"
"Maybe....yeah. Somewhere. I think so."
She nodded, ducking her head and trying not to burst into tears. God, her emotions were all over the place. It was enough to make a girl crazy.
Then the hand was off her leg and on her hair, which was still wet from the shower. Leg to hair- definitely a thing. A not comfort thing. It was a thing.
"You look cute in your pink scrubs," he told her. Oh yeah, this was a thing all right.
"Um...thanks?"
She didn't know how to do a thing with a guy anymore. Did she even want to? It would be breaking every conceivable rule she'd set for herself in the past. No friend's exes, no vampires, no boys. But that was the past. That was before. She was the only person left on the planet who wasn't a vampire or a boy or an ex-boyfriend of Buffy's. Did those old rules really apply? It seemed almost ridiculous to even think of them. And Angel looked really cute in his scrubs too. And she really really wanted to be kissed.
"Angel, I..."
He was kissing her. Oh, he was really kissing her, and it was soft and nice and good and she was liking it. She parted her lips and his tongue swept gently between them, making her shiver. Yes, this was definitely something.
He pulled back after a minute and looked at her curiously.
"S'this okay?"
"Y-yeah," she nodded. "It's...nice."
His lips were still very close. She wanted them on her again.
"Feels good, doesn't it?" he asked.
"Not...not too good, though, right? I mean, you're not gonna get like, super-happy, are you?"
He smiled ruefully and brushed some hair away from her cheek with the back of his hand. "Don't think that's really possible, under the circumstances."
Of course. Sex is nice, but when your friends are dead and the world has vanished the big happy is pretty much unimaginable. It wouldn't make her blissfully happy either, she knew, but it would be good. It would be nice. And when did she start thinking about sex, anyway?
It didn't matter. She'd already pooped in the woods and slept in an abandoned office building and eaten a freaking fox. If she wanted to have sex with a vampire in the backseat of a van she'd damn well do it.
She leaned into another kiss, and this one was longer and nicer and even more shivery. She held onto his arms and let him lay her down on the mattress. There was more kissing, and some touching, and soon he was on top of her. She didn't know how he wound up on top of her, but it felt really good. He was heavy and probably twice her size, but she didn't feel crushed. It was comforting. Like a big sexy blanket.
Then she spread her legs and he ground himself against her and it was quite a bit more than comforting. She let out a tiny gasp and he did it again. Kissed her. With his tongue.
He was hard. She hadn't been around one of those things in a very long time, but she remembered the hard and the good that came with the hard. She couldn't remember exactly how to touch it, but it didn't seem to matter much. Angel was making them both happy with the rocking and the kissing and she thought she'd probably be okay if they just did this forever.
She moaned loudly against his lips and the music suddenly got louder.
Spike. Spike was in the front seat. God, that couldn't be right.
She pulled away from his mouth and he started kissing a wet trail down her neck.
"A...Angel, what-what about...Sp-Spike?"
"What about him?"
"Well this...I mean..." Oh, she knew this couldn't be right. But for the life of her she couldn't figure out why. Having sex with someone else right there was a bad thing normally, wasn't it? Or, if not bad at least very dirty. But again, this wasn't normally. Where else were they supposed to go? What did it really matter, anyway? She was sure it wouldn't be the first time Spike had been in the vicinity of people having sex. And yet... "I-I don't want him to feel left out."
And strangely enough, that was really it. They were a family now, the three of them. It didn't seem fair for her and Angel to share this comfort and goodness while Spike was up there driving all by himself.
"He won't feel left out," Angel murmured against her collar bone. "If anything, sweetheart, you've been the one left out so far."
Well, that didn't make any sense. But then again, maybe it did. The bite marks on Spike's neck, the weird replies she'd gotten when she questioned them about the vampire attack, Spike's seemingly random attitude improvement...it all came together for her finally and she felt like the world's biggest idiot.
"You...you two...with the..."
"Uh huh."
She wasn't sure what to think about that. It didn't really make very much of a difference, she supposed, except in that it freed her from the guilt she'd been feeling. And it was kind of a little bit exciting, in a very weird way.
She relaxed into Angel's embrace again, pressed herself tightly to him and let herself feel him. And boy, could she feel him. The scrubs were very thin and neither of them were wearing underwear. And wow, he was really really hard.
Her hands slid down his back, onto his ass, and she squeezed, pressing him closer. She could feel herself building already. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd had an orgasm. Months and months. Her body was overwhelmed with the sensation of contact.
She thrust her tongue into his mouth hungrily and arched upwards. He was moving faster, rubbing and thrusting against her, humping her like Oz used to before they actually started taking off their clothes.
"That's it," Angel whispered. "You wanna come for me, don't you, sweetheart?"
She whimpered and dug her nails into his backside. She did want to come. She wanted that a lot.
And it was gonna happen. Angel was gonna make her come in the backseat of a van and the world was broken and for a minute she almost didn't give a damn.
When it happened she felt it everywhere. Her stomach, her eyeballs, her pinkie toe. Every part of her tingled and throbbed and she cried out much louder than she'd intended to. Angel watched her and smiled.
She was still trembling when he pulled her pants down and pushed himself inside her. It wasn't a sensation she was used to. It hurt a little. It had hurt with Oz too, at first, but it seemed like Angel was bigger or something. Something was different. It felt...more somehow.
"Okay?" Angel asked as he started slowly moving in her.
"Yes," she nodded, and squeezed his now naked butt in encouragement. It was absolutely okay. Not super-orgasmo-okay, but it was good. It was a connection.
He buried his face in her hair and groaned, and she ran her hands up and down his back, over his arms, everywhere she could reach. He needed this too. They all needed this.
He finished fairly quickly, most likely for her benefit since it was probably pretty apparent that she wasn't gonna come again, but she clutched his body to hers for a long time afterwards.
He kissed her face and her hair, and when he looked at her she was relieved to see that he was the same old Angel. No super-happies for them, which was fine. They might be in hell, but they had this. They had something.