a.connor  a.doyle  a.lindsey  a.oz  a.spike  a.wesley  a.xander  a.other  three.somes  het.fic  character.study           
Title: Something in the Blood
Author: Spirit
Pairing: A/S
Rating: PG
Setting: End of S4 BtVS and S1 Ats



Come over to see me, he says. I need to talk to you, he says. Sorry about, you know, everything that happened over the last hundred years,he says.

Okay, no, he didn't say that last, but he bloody should have.

It's not like I get my jollies from letting him take the piss, but from what I heard, he's without a home, without his poxy little office and all those creature comforts he's got together to pretend he's human.

How can I not go and take a gloating look at that?

Course, it's not like I've got an awful lot of anything left either,but he doesn't know that. Not even sure if the Slayer's told him about the chip. Not sure if I qualify under important stuff anymore.

Let's face it, I spend half my time avoiding the Scooby gang, the other half going to them for help.

And let's just ignore the part where I actually help them.

Survival is one thing - spent years before I ever started teething with my first fangs, doing anything and everything to stay ahead of the game. I took risks, did things other people were too chicken-shit to even think about. I was a bastard, but I was winning - I had everything I wanted,everything I deserved, and I didn't give a damn how I got it.

To stay alive is a piece of piss - to win.........is something else.

Angelus knew all about that though - that's what the thing with Dru was about. It wasn't so much that he wanted his little plaything back,or to make sure I knew that she loved him more. Nah, that hurt, but it didn't grate on my nerves as much as knowing that I'd been displaced.

When you have power, he told me once, you have everything.

Just the kind of noncy crap he'd like people to believe. Comes of havinghung about with doped up poets if you ask me. Which no-one does anymore. I've been waiting for him to find a line in Byron or Shelly and say 'I said that to him, that poem would be nothing without me'.

Yeah, right Angelus, you claim fame in that way if you can.

See, being Angelus, scourge of Europe was never going to be enough for him. He'd have taken on the world if he could. Pretty sure that allthat Acathla thing was just his way of throwing a sulk on the matter -If the world won't play nice, I'll destroy it.

Huh, and he accuses me of getting bored too quick.

For him, the power doesn't come from owning stuff, or killing humans and other little nasties. It doesn't even come from having destroyed your sire. It's the fame that gets him every time. Don't try telling me that being known as Angel the souled vampire doesn't give him a kick. I swear he gets off on the pain thing, which is nothing new.

I'm not talking about that human attempt at power play, cause believe me, anything you can do there is tame compared to what vampires do to eachother in play. We're out and out bastards, the lot of us. When a vampire gets fucked so hard he can't walk for a week, it's probably because all his limbs are broken.

Or hers.

Dru was very big on that, much more so than me. To be honest, I couldnever really see the point. What good are broken legs if you can't go out to eat? And don't ask me about romantic suppers either. The number of times I've brought a fresh couple home and she's turned her nose up at it.........it doesn't bear thinking about.

Now Angelus would have appreciated that. Got a mean streak in him about a mile wide. One of his favourite tricks was to feed from a bride on her wedding night whilst the tied up bridegroom watched from their marital bed. Before the main event of course - nothing he liked better than fucking a virgin with her blood dripping down his throat.

I wonder how he intends to atone for that?

I wonder if he wakes up in the middle of the day and remembers how it felt to love doing it?

I wonder if his little helpers know that he still gets off on it?

Oh come on, you can't think that celibate boy doesn't wank, can you? Sure he can't have the big sinking-the-meat-in thing, cause that would put his soul in jeopardy and *oooh* we can't have that, can we? But I'd say that he and his right hand have become on more than just nodding familiarity. And when he's there, in the shower, water dripping down on his icy body as he pumps into his hand, does he think about her? Does he pound hard, wishing it was her tight little body he was plunging into?

Or is his fantasy someone else?

Does he even remember, or is that something else he's trying to pretend isn't a part of him?

I can still taste his body now, just before he groans and pulls away,leaving me empty and alone. I can hear his grunts, the low growl that seemsto swallow up his body before he comes. I can feel his fingers gripping me, holding me where he wants. Because it was always about what he wanted,that's where the power is.

That's where he rules.

So I'm going to see him. Going to find out if he's learned anything about humility in his new life.

It's not about me, Hell, it's never been about me. I'm not going tosee how his being all human and destitute affects me, cause it doesn't. After tonight.........maybe tomorrow, I'll be back in the car and coming home. And so what if home happens to be a crypt. I'm dead aren't I? I don't depend on material things, I'm not one of them, I'm a bloody vampire.

And love isn't a word I care to know anything about.

Because I don't love him, I never did. All he did was take away the life I had and give me a new one in return. He's done it twice, and I didn't want either of them. I was happy being human - there was nothing he could give me that could compensate for losing that, nothing he could say which would make the demon seem better. I didn't need its cruelty or its strength- I had enough of my own. There was nothing I could do as a vampire that I couldn't do as a human.

Except spend all eternity with the knowledge.

So going tonight, going to see him and hear whatever he thinks he has to tell me, isn't about anything I want. It's about his bloody forgiveness.Whatever happens won't change anything between us, because there's never really been an us to change. He's not what he was, and I'm not what I should be. Seeing him again won't do anything except let him pretend that it'sall right between us.

Which begs the question, why the fuck am I even going?

Call it fate, call it the lure of temptation, call it retribution.

Whatever.

It's probably just something in the blood.

*

I feel like a big kid waiting for Christmas.

I phoned him a couple of hours ago, asking him to come and I'm still not sure exactly why.

Wesley translated the scroll, found out that I was going to shanshu -to die. And somehow that didn't really bother me. Being around as longas I have gives you some perspective on death, and knowing that the things you want, you can't have, only adds to the lack of feeling Cordelia was so worried about.

They thought I should worry about dying, as if that would make any difference.

I've done so much, killed so many, and if they're telling me that my fate is to die to save the world - why on Earth would I want to argue.

But they're mortal, they don't understand the weariness that comes with age. They probably won't even when they're old and grey - which with any luck, I'll make sure they see. But when it comes to understanding how I feel.........they haven't a hope.

And I'm going to keep telling myself that's why I called him.

It's certainly nothing to do with the guilt that gnaws at me every day,of the things I've done, the ones Buffy and the others know about.........the one's they don't. It's not about erasing any sense of the past from my memory, cause I know it's always going to be there, taunting me, reminding me what I really am - what the soul can only just compensate for.

It's not because I hurt him.

If you'd seen him as a human - you would have wanted the same thing as me - to take and take and have him for yourself, bending that insatiable will to your own needs. I did that, did everything I wanted and barelystopped to smell the blood. There's something about him, about this neediness he projects that just strikes at the demon within me.

Even as a vampire he's too human.

Maybe that's why I beat him harder, took him to places I knew he didn'twant to go. Maybe that's why I took Dru away.........why I never told him that he obsessed me every waking moment of every day. It's such a damn fool's errand, loving Spike.

He's like his name - prickly and if you hit him in the wrong place,he'll bite you. I should know, as Angelus I spent as much time as I could learning what to hit to hurt him. I concentrated every ounce of energy into breaking him, making him another Drusilla - something unequivocally mine. With Dru, it took a year, with Spike.........twenty years and I still couldn't even get him to say 'please' when I passed over the evening meal.

Why I expected anything to change after a hundred years, I don't know. Seeing him again triggered off memories the like of which I hadn't expected.I saw him standing in the school, cocky, self-assured, slightly bored -still the man I'd lusted after almost a century before. And he looked mein the eyes and he knew, knew I wasn't the bastard he remembered. He could feel it, and nothing has scared me so much.

With Buffy, I could pretend I was a man, could pretend that I was wholly in control of the beast within. She saw what she wanted to see, what she needed to see to protect her sanity. Spike did no such thing. He's always seen down to the truth, no matter how painful it is to realize.

It's what I admired as Angelus, it's what I need now.

He never wanted to become a vampire. There was no Anne Rice moment whereI gave him a choice. So here he is, playing arrogant Lestat to my Louis.........okay,the analogy sucks, but I never gave him a choice - I never gave him a chance.He's tried to kill me, I've tried to kill him, it's really nothing new,except back then when I won, he wouldn't have been able to walk afterwards.

No one ever accused me of being a gentle lover.

When I phoned him this evening, taking the chance that he'd be at Giles'house, I wasn't even sure what I was going to say. For a moment there was silence on the line after his lazy, 'Hello, tweed boy's residence' and I froze. Hearing his voice without the usual disgust he employs for talking to me - I hadn't been prepared for that. I don't think I've ever heardhim utter a sentence to me that didn't include 'wanker' or 'poof' somewhere.The only time I heard him whispering affection wasn't to me.

I've never heard him admit to liking me. Respecting me, fearing me,yes, but I can't think of a single moment when he's looked at me with anythingless than rancor.

I'm his sire, his curse, and he'll never forgive me for that.

Nor do I really want him to.

He'd never believe the hours I spent dreaming I was touching his pale skin, nor would he understand the need the demon felt to taint it. Because, despite what he thinks, this was never about me hating him, or needing to take things away from him. Everything I've done to him was because I was jealous, because he didn't need to be a vampire to realize his ambition.Because he was better than me.

Oh and I hear about that every day. He loved Dru, he was actually capable of loving Dru - you know how rare that is? How unique in a vampire? I'm not saying this to bolster my ego, but she never loved him back. How could she? She was insane, and worse than that, she was undead, unclean, too dirty a thing to touch the edge of love.

And me.........I've seen love, I've even felt a human heart beating at every word I say. I've been given the most sensitive touch, and the Slayer's virginity. And I've taken all that was offered to me, because even with a soul, I'm no angel.

And isn't that the final kick in the teeth? That no matter how hard I try and change, how hard I battle for the daylight, I can never be apart of that. And when Wesley came in and translated the scripture properly, he told me I'd die a human death.

That's my reward - to become weak once more.

To become a nobody.

So I'm sitting here in my office, the wreck that still reeks of fire and ash, sitting on what I think is my chair, the only colour those yellow bands Kate likes to string everywhere I've been. I'm doing the one thing that he'll ever understand is different than Angelus - I'm waiting for him.

And when he gets here, I'm going to tell him about the curse, about shanshu, about the whole deal. And then I'm going to ask him to do me a favour.

I've never had much mental strength. I've never had the guts to do the hard stuff.........that one time with the Slayer almost destroyed me. So when I get my 'reward', when I become human, stuffing the one thing he's ever wanted back in his face, I'm going to ask him to do what he's always wanted.

I'd die for him.

I'd die *for* him.

And if the last thing I ever see is his face, I'll die happy.

Maybe I'll get up the guts to tell him why, or maybe he'll just taste it.

Because it's always been in the blood.


*End


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