a.connor  a.doyle  a.lindsey  a.oz  a.spike  a.wesley  a.xander  a.other  three.somes  het.fic  character.study           
Title: On Impermanence
Author: Dale Edmonds
Rating: R

On Impermanence: Buffy

Fifty dollars and chicken wings bought Buffy three hours on how he killed two Slayers. Fifty dollars and a blowjob get her two hours of Angel.

She's pretty sure it has something to do with Riley and his little habit. She did pass Psych 101, dead professor and all.

That and a buck'll buy her a cup of coffee.

There's symmetry here, and that's all that matters right now. In her bedroom with the white paneling, the bedspread she's had since she was ten - and a vampire leaning against the wall, looking at her.

Down at her because she's on her knees and his jeans are half-pushed around his hips, god knows how as they're skin tight, but Spike manages. Buttonfly and tiny dark hairs that she buries her face against, breathing in. Her favourite part, the warmth of the crook of thigh and groin, the soft crinkle of hair and all that skin rubbing against her cheek.

Spike's not warm. If she keeps her eyes shut, he feels like Angel. But he smells like Spike, cigarette smoke and unwashed denim, and something different, sweeter, sharper underneath. Not Angel.

He's panting and that makes her smile. Breathing hard just at the sight of her licking his thighs, rubbing her closed lips against him.

Sweat's not beading down his spine, his heart's not racing like hers because he's dead, a corpse with a hard-on, forcing air through his lips because the body remembers. Angel used to make a sound like that, a half-moan when they kissed, and Angel is gone too. She buries her face against Spike, her against silver buttons, worn jeans and velvet-taut skin. She can't see him
breathe.

"Slayer," he says, and she likes that. Not Buffy. Slayer.

When she goes down on him, she doesn't bother with the tricks she's learnt. Straight strong sucks, one hand wrapped around the base, fingers brushing his balls, another hand holding him back at his waist.

She watches him while she sucks. Licks to keep her chin from getting wet, and his gaze doesn't leave her face. Shoulders to the wall, hips pushing out and gameface stealing over him.

When he comes, he grabs her hand at his waist, threads his fingers through hers and squeezes. Holds tight while he comes. It's cold and she swallows, not wanting to spit in her own neat room. He hasn't let go of her hand. She lets him slip out, tries to tug her hand away but he holds onto her. Pulls her up and against him. She didn't want to get messy, but he rubs himself against her skirt, wet and she rubs back, arches when he bends his head and runs his teeth along the curve of her neck. "Slayer," he whispers.

In bed, he talks to her of Angel. It's a small bed and he holds himself up on his elbows, covering her. He's thin and strong and she looks tanned next to his paleness. She wraps her arms around him while he tells her about Angel fucking Drusilla, Angel fucking Darla. About Angelus in a carriage in Europe, orgies with men, women, demons.

"He liked blood, Angelus did," Spike murmurs as he slides in her again. She's so wet she can barely feel him, just a drowsing, drowning pleasure. "He would turn me over and use his teeth along my back, lick the wounds while he rode me, like this, Slayer." His fingers are cold and wet and she bites down on his shoulder when he enters her. "I can feel you," he says. "From both sides. Fill you up. Angel and I would take a woman like that."

At the end, he strokes her hair back, cleans her sweaty face with the bedsheet and wraps it around her. Tucks her in and sits, half-dressed in unbuttoned jeans, next to her.

"We had time, Slayer." She's sleepy, exhausted and it's early evening, the quiet time before night falls, before she has to wake up again. "We were with Angel for decades. Sometimes we'd bugger off for a while, a year here or there, but we were together for decades. Spend a whole week fucking each other and know that twenty years later, we'd be doing the same. I can see
him in my sleep. Trace his body blind."

He kisses her forehead. "I'm sorry," he says. There's no sneer in his voice, no mockery. Sympathy perhaps.

"Go away," she whispers. She's barely past twenty. If she's lucky, she'll make it to twenty-five. She hates Spike.

He kisses her again and she closes her eyes. She cries quietly and Spike tries to touch her, to still her shaking, to hold her. She pushes him away and turns her face into the pillow. Her hair spreads across the pillow, tangled and wet where it covers her face. He combs it out with one hand, lights a cigarette with the other. Waits.

When he's finished smoking, she's asleep. He wipes her face with the corner. When he's finished smoking, she's asleep. He wipes her face with the corner of his shirt. Lights another cigarette.

Waits.
 
 

On Impermanence: Xander
 

Xander's adding a picture of Anya to his wallet.

There's one there already, a small black and white that she took for her library card, Anya looking grimly at the camera. She'd handed it to him along with his list of to-do's. My photo in wallet, buy shampoo, call your mother, my dress to drycleaners.

He tried getting pissed at her for alphabetizing the fridge and leaving Oprah affirmations on the bathroom mirror, but he's read the lists she makes, "Ten conversation starters", and she studies for the quizzes in her magazines, underlines paragraphs in the self-help books she buys, so he just laughs and uses the filofax she bought him.

Sometimes he scribbles new to-dos at the end of her lists. Give Xander a blowjob. Steak for dinner. She's figured out they're suggestions, not demands, and if the shop hasn't been too busy and the world isn't ending, he gets steak with a smile. It's good.

Which is why he's putting in a new photo. The black and white goes into the album, a label underneath with the date she gave it to him. The day she said she loved him. He makes a note of that too.

The new photo is from a booth. Four pictures, Anya and him. The traditional stick-your-tongue-out, make a face, quick kiss, and then just Anya grinning, and he's looking at her, not the camera. He folds them carefully, slips them beside the others.

They make his wallet a little difficult to pull out of his back pocket, but hey, that's what cargo pants were made for. That and the extra stake, flask of holy water, cellphone and a bunch of pine-scented amulets.

Mostly photographs, with a couple of clippings. The Magic Shop's ad from the Yellow Pages. A note Cordelia passed him in class. Oz's cellphone scribbled on a bus ticket.

He's got seven shoe boxes in the closet with negatives and albums. Thinks sometimes about arranging them chronologically, but gets lost in looking when he brings them out to do that. His parents' pictures of him growing up fill one album, the free mini-ones you get with a roll of film. Copies of all Willow's pictures. Some that Jesse's parents gave him before they left town. Two boxes of life pre-Buffy.

When Jesse died - no, he reminds himself as he has to each time - when he killed Jesse, he started carrying the last note Jesse wrote him in class. "Bronze 4 U + Will? 8 pm!!" Sitting in ER, empty apartments, waiting for bad news or bad demons, the wallet's meant he has his family with him.

All of them do this. Buffy's mom bought a video camera and has a closet full of tapes. Willow digitizes them onto CDs. But they all carry pictures. Everyone in Sunnydale seems to do it. Town has as many photo labs as cemeteries

In his wallet, it's all mixed up. Mostly group shots to save space. Wesley and Angel trying to scowl while Cordelia grins, the new guy, Gunn, half in the frame as he rushes around the camera. Willow, Tara, Anya and Buffy on the couch. Jesse, Willow and him, twelve years old and laughing. Giles from the school yearbook. He clipped out Larry and Jenny Calendar as well. Two mug shots of Faith and Kendra from the Watchers' files that Wesley managed to get for him without asking questions. Oz just before he left. His parents with his uncle, smiling for the camera. Anya's new pictures.

He spreads them out on his bed. Resorts them and folds Anya's picture in front. She's bound to go through his wallet looking sometime this week, and when she sees the pictures, she'll be pleased. He's looking forward to that.

He leaves Angel's picture out till last.

A headshot, cut out from a group picture, taken a long time ago. Nearly three years now. He tried getting it blown up, but he lost the negative and the picture had creased badly, so Angel's just a tiny thumbnail head. Vampires don't do so well with flashlights, and he's really just a pale oval with a few lines for hair, eyes and mouth. Barely recognizable.

Before Angelus.

He'd never liked the guy that much - taller, darker and way more handsome was bad enough, but he'd done research on vampires. Library time wasn't just for mocking Giles. A couple of books placed out of reach of Buffy, and he'd, well, stolen wasn't the word. Appropriated them. For an evening.

Watchers apparently got off on vampire porn. Demons too, but more arms than an octopus did something to his stomach. The careful ink drawings of vampires did something further south. No photographs; the books were old and he was fairly certain most of them were drawn from memory. What Watchers did in the line of duty.

Which - when he wasn't thinking about Buffy - had been funny in a kinky sort of way until Spike turned up. And he'd felt Angel's teeth brush his neck, gone rock-hard and remembered as Angel held him closer that vampires can sense pheromones.

Maybe he hadn't been down both sides of the street, but he was pretty sure that wasn't a stake in Angel's pocket.

Outside the school, Angel had walked off, his knees had started shaking and he'd known that this was it. Let him walk off and this would be forgotten.

Police cars flashing their lights, the school still blazing with lights, a banner flapping loose against the door. Parents stood around in clusters, Buffy and her mom moving among them, calming them down while Snyder stood at the side, glaring. In a minute, she would look up, she would see Angel can come running over. In a minute, they'd be swallowed up by the crowd, Buffy's mom checking him for bruises, Giles stammering out an explanation - another crazy Sunnydale night.

Angel's duster floated behind him as he walked Xander could see the way his hair curled at the nape of his neck. His hands had been huge and cool on him. When he shifted to gameface, claws had left neat halfmoons on his skin.

"Hey, what's the deal with you being Spike's sire? What's a sire?"

Second thing that came to mind, because he was pretty sure he didn't want to risk Buffy overhearing the first.

Angel disappeared in the shadows, and Xander was just another kid wandering around the school that night. Wandering to the corner where the smokers went, where the bushes could be pushed back to leave just enough space for three or four people to stand.

Angel held the branches back for him, and Xander paused, half-forming the polite "Thank you" then shut his mouth and brushed past him. Leaning against the brick wall, his knees gave out and he trembled, a few violent shudders before he could stand up again.

Angel stood as far away as he could, not moving or speaking while Xander struggled to his feet.

"What do you want?"

"What's a sire?" He already knew. They weren't supposed to do any research on Angel; Giles had quietly locked those books up, but there were plenty of other texts to read.

"Ask Giles. What do you want?"

He's not sure even now if he hates Angel more or less because of the kiss.

Cold mouth, hot tongue, tang of iron. Brick wall against his back, hands combing through his hair, tugging gently while he gave way to Angel's mouth, to Angel's body.

Later, he thought of Buffy, thought of two hundred plus years of experience, who Spike had been to Angelus, the rush of sex after near-death. Still the best damn kiss he's ever had.

Gameface, and he stroked the ridges with his fingertips, heard Angel groan. Tongue travelling down his neck, delicate slice of teeth barely breaking the skin and Xander moaned. Pushed him back, bent himself to the hollow of Angel's throat, his hands pulling up the silk shirt, running feverish-hot over his chest. He'd never wanted to touch so much, felt so naked dressed, bare where he wasn't against Angel, wasn't touching, licking, kissing.

He broke the spell when he whispered "Angel."

His fingers slipped from Angel's mouth, still bleeding, still wet. Angel turned his face and his shoulders shook. When he turned back, he was human-faced again, and staring silently at Xander. His hair was messed and his shirt crumpled. His mouth gleamed in the moonlight.

"I can't," he'd said and Xander had nodded, dumb with desire.

Then he'd been alone, slumped behind the school bushes with the smell of stale cigarette smoke in his clothes and a dozen tiny cuts that had already stopped bleeding.

And twenty minutes more of "Xander Harris: This is your life" went into the closet, with all his Christmases and Buffy dead on the ground and the taste of ash in his mouth when he killed Jesse.

Angel was good about it though. No lingering glances, no stray touches. And maybe, in bed at night, restless from another night of stumbling through a graveyard, he'd want more. Replay the twenty minutes until he couldn't remember exactly how Angel'd kissed him, only the taste.

But between Ampata and Cordelia, he had plenty of practice not thinking about Angel. Or Larry. Or the disturbing number of other men at school. Giles, he'd been relieved to discover, did not feature in his morning dreams. Oz, unfortunately, did.

He studies the photograph, brings out the other one to compare. Willlow took the second one after Angel came back because he couldn't stay in the same room as the vampire for long. It's a better picture; Angel looking straight at the camera, candlelight glowing in the background and he looks like Dorian Grey, perfectly beautiful, perfectly preserved. Buffy's got a copy of the same print.

Grave eyes look up and Xander traces Angel's face. Angelus smiled more, but when he'd finished, when he was lying next to him, talking about all the exquisitely painful things he planned to do, he had the same expression. Thoughtful. Solemn.

He'd been grateful for the books then. Knowing what was going to happen made it a little easier. Meant he was prepared, knew which salves, which antibiotics.

Giles noticed what he was reading and went on a doughnut run with him.

Standing on the street in twilight, munching on doughnuts and watching Giles stammer through the questions he'd been expecting for weeks, was kinda funny. What with the icing sugar on Giles' face and the polite euphemisms.

"You mean, is Angelus fucking me?" He kept his face blank. Waited.

Giles didn't try to touch him. Sighed, and looked drained, drained of colour and life, but maybe that was the dusk light, freezing the world before night fell.

"We could send you out of town. To England, even. The Watchers have safe houses."

He hadn't been expecting that and his eyes stung and he had to blink a couple of times before he could speak. "What would you tell Buffy?"

In hospital, she'd been so little. He remembered running to the ER, Buffy incredibly light in his arms. She'd been so little, and everything in the end, came down to Buffy who was so easily broken.

"I can't tell her," Xander said. "He says he'll kill her if I don't. If I go, he might hurt the others."

Which made the sickest kind of sense and Giles had nodded and helped him cover up. Bruises and excuses, notes from Watcher Diaries, bandages and Gile's couch to sleep on.

Later, he'd been able to return the favour. Clearing rose petals from Giles' flat and splinting broken fingers. Picking him up off the bathroom floor and changing bedsheets.

Giles doesn't have any photographs of Angel.

He's okay now. Giles made him talk about it when Angel came back, and since L.A., there've been phone calls there. Wesley taking the phone sometimes when they were both crying too hard, and talking in that calm British voice that sounds like Giles'. He's thinking of going to L.A. to see Cordelia next year. Bring Anya along and let them go shopping and talk about him. They'd get on together.

Because afterwards, it was Cordelia who kissed him with her eyes closed, demanded flowers and compliments, asked him to slip his hand up her shirt, past the lace of her bra. Blushed when they were in the car making out and she wanted to go down on him. Didn't complain, but look relieved when he wouldn't, couldn't sleep with her.

And Oz didn't spend the night, but left early the next morning, leaving some kind of peace, true, but it was Anya who spent the night. Anya who lives with him, wakes him up from his occasional nightmares. Anya who demands he tell her everything, listens to the end and then does her thing.

He tucks the second photograph behind Anya's.

So it's weird. Ropes, spanking, the dildoes, the stack of specialized videos. But he can stand in front of a mirror now, without flinching. Anya bought gold glitter lube last week, and she fingerpainted all his scars. Turned him into a strange swirling creature, pain transmuted to gold.

She makes him feel like a man.
 
 

On Impermanence: Faith
 

Bells ring and Faith thinks "Vespers." It's a private joke. Angel smiled when she told him, the sudden sweetness of it silencing her for a moment. She'd reached out and traced his lips and then - she shakes her head. Not the right time to be thinking about that. She's learnt to be disciplined. Pure of mind and spirit, if not body, here in the Penal Institute for Women.

Bells ring again, and down the corridor she can hear footsteps. Off to chapel. Exercise rooms and the library, really, but it's all ritual. Guards instead of priests, solitary confinement instead of self-flagellation. Novices and mother superiors, exiles seeking a state of grace. She likes that expression. Whispers it to herself. A state of grace, that's what she hopes to find in this nunnery. Along with her Angel.

Not surprisingly, he has a thing for convents, so she now has a stack of Catholic histories on her bookshelf. An old rosary that he taught her how to use. Click clack of the beads when she's trying to calm down, looking at her little sandalwood buddha, the seashells and the photographs. Cordelia, Wesley. Lindsey and Darla, for Angel. Candle for Finch, another for Lee. Mary Suzkin, the woman she left in critical at the hospital. All the others. Light the candles, sit and pray every night. One unlit. She hasn't forgiven Buffy yet.

She lets her mind wander while she moves through her tai-chi. Lets it go back while her arms flow through the air. Buffy with the sunlight in her hair. Dancing, hands slipping all over. Swaying in the Bronze bathroom, pushing their way into a stall, up against the wall. Effortlessly holding each other up, and really, who else can a Slayer screw but another Slayer? Or a vamp with a soul. Nothing human can keep up with them. She heard about Riley from Wolfram & Hart. Offered the info to Angel and didn't see him for two weeks. So she keeps that to herself, turns it over in her head while she's exercising. As much of a Slayer as the military could create, and still, she bets, still not enough for her B.

No-one's enough for her B. Abruptly her leg begins to shake and she halts. Ungainly, awkwardly frozen with her arms above her head, her legs half-crooked. She wants to hit something so she forces herself to breathe. In, out. In, out. Finish the pose. Bend, bow, release.

Guard's been waiting while she worked out. It's Johnny, the guy with way too much cheer for jail. Probably helps that she's wearing nothing but her underwear for this. He pushes himself up from the wall he's been leaning on, slots the mail through the bars. "Parcel of books getting checked. Want some cigarettes?"

She nods and he slides a pack on top of her mail. With a lighter. How thoughtful. "How much they paying you, Johnny?" He laughs and she grins. "Not enough, eh." Lindsey's got to justify his expenses. So she doesn't get satellite, but hell, it's the little touches. She can see Lindsey writing a memo on that. He's the kind of man who doesn't need a woman to tell him what flowers to get. Pot of marigolds, little earrings in her birthstone. Notes of encouragement, a new CD every now and then. Aside from being evil, he's pretty damn sweet.

She lights two and passes one to Johnny. Sorts through her mail while she listens to the prison gossip. Fatal knifing in Block D. Another werewolf being brought in. Damn commission investigating corruption. Drugs are getting worse, someone managed to smuggle in crack. She shakes her head when he offers her some. St John's Wort is about as doped as she gets these days.

Mail's good. A letter from Joyce, full of photographs. Sunnydale newspapers, a week's worth bundled up. A postcards from a half-demon who was in the cell across from her. Elly's made it to Texas, ends it with a wish-you-were-here. Copy of the secret memo Wesley sends to the Watcher's Council, which she then hands over to Angel. Note from Lindsey, a Dilbert strip on lawyers clipped to it.

Bells ring again and she waves bye to Johnny. She's picked up the social graces, even learnt to eat with a knife and fork. Knives and forks, the whole fucking spread on white linen. Birthday treat from Lindsey. Had to resist the temptation to stab Lilah who smirked when she fumbled with the damn lobster clips. Sitting in an empty cell with catering staff running in and out, candles hiding the graffiti on the walls, Brahms playing softly. Nice. It'd been a nice way to turn twenty. Better than B.'s, which had left her gasping for breath, laughing as hard as Lindsey who'd snorted champagne out of his nose, and that had left the two of them sprawled on the floor, Lilah stiff-lipped. Lindsey kissing her goodbye, and she'd whispered "Angel came by", slipped his hand down her skirt to where she was still wet, still Angel. Lilah scowling at them, unable to figure out why Lindsey was licking his fingers. Stupid bitch.

Peace, she reminded herself. Everyone's worth something. Lilah's probably got inner qualities. Not just a vapid, petty cow.

She's working on it.

Every day, she wakes up, Cell 43, Special Units, Block F, St Belle Vue Penal Institution for Women, California. Prisoner WX8742. Wakes up and thinks, is this the day I choose?

A phone call to Wolfram & Hart. To Angel Investigations.

Some days, she thinks she'll just bend the bars back and walk out. She's pretty sure she's strong enough. Walk out and walk away from L.A.. Do a Wes and be a Rogue Demon Hunter. She daydreams about him forgiving her, the two of them riding off into the sunset, dressed in matching leather. Watcher and Slayer, the way they were meant to be.

Or she could catch a bus back to Sunnydale. Find B., and she has no idea what would happen after that.

So no phone call. No breaking out.

Angel comes to visit and sometimes they make out. Sometimes he comes in still filthy and bloody from fighting. Wound tight and battle hungry, smiling the same bright manic grin that fooled her once. Angelus just below the surface, aching to break out. Biting and fist-fucking and breaking everything in her cell as they fuck and fight.

Sometimes, he lies next to her on her bunk and he doesn't talk. Just kisses her. She can talk about B. then, and the words she wants to say to her come stammering out. Angel listens and tells her at the end that she's not ready. He wants her back out there, another Slayer tilting the balance, but she's not ready.

She's not ready and the days slip by. She thinks about killing herself, calling the next Slayer, someone better but she's afraid it won't work, that she'll leave B. all alone.

She finishes her cigarette, puts the mail aside for after dinner. Stretches and begins the tai-chi again. Lets her mind drift. Back to Sunnydale, back to B.. Angel and the way he wept last time he came. The damn vase on her altar, the candle she lights grudgingly. Holds her position, and for a moment, she's floating, serene and quiet.

She'll pray over Darla's soul tonight.

Pray for her own.

She wants to die in a state of grace.
 
-End


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