FicWad

Title: 'Til the End of the World
Author: Lillian Morgan
Pairing(s): Spike/Angel, Spike/Buffy, Spike/Angel/Buffy, Spike & Dawn
Rating: R (mainly for language and sexual situations)
Setting: post-/Not Fade Away/, the beginning of 2005, London
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. Joss and ME do.
A/N: Thanks to yourlibrarian for the wonderful beta job.
Each character narrates his or her part and these are separated by their own unique idioms, because it's all in the first person.

'Til the End of the World

Part Four

Although I am an old man, night is generally my time for walking.

Back at the hotel, the bed was a comfortable bed, as hotel beds go, but with the three of us lying on it, Angel taut like a piece of steel, not wanting to touch anyone, and Buffy sprawled between, wrapped up in the sheets, sleeping on her stomach, one arm flung above her, the other draped over me, her legs making like a starfish, it was a little confined. I lay with my boots hanging off the side, and one arm propping up my head. Time to light up another cigarette, so I did.

"Probably not allowed," came Angel's first sentence since we'd carried an already slumbering Buffy into the room and arranged her on the bed. There'd been one or two awkward moments with the issue of whether or not to remove her clothes, but, well, we'd both been there before, hadn't we? It had taken some time for us to move ourselves to the bed too, but you could only put up with one of those metallic chairs digging into your back for so long.

"Yeah, well, who's going to tell me off? Sleeping Beauty here?"

Angel chuckled. "This wasn't how I imagined spending the night."

"Oh is that right? Tell me what you expected." I licked my lips.

"I can't," he said, his voice terse, "Buffy's in the room."

"For god's sake, she's bloody well asleep!"

"Yeah, but she might wake up," he whispered, "especially with you yelling your head off."

"'M sexually frustrated, is what I am. One night without sex and I'm a loose canon."

Angel dignified that request with silence.

What seemed like hours later, he said, "Got to admit, William, that our tastes in women run a bit too close for comfort."

I'd been snoozing, or dreaming about the next level of Crash Bandicoot, so he'd startled me. "What?"

Angel gestured at the sleeping Buffy between us, but didn't say anything other than a raised eyebrow.

"OK," I said, "I'll grant you. We both love Buffy. But that does not mean we are anything alike. I like my women all shades - blonde, brunette, blue. You, Liam," punctuating the moment with a finger pressed to his chest, "have a type. Small. Potent. Peroxide. Ha."

"Yes, alright, blondes get me hot." And what went for a leer crossed Angel's face. "But don't deny that you're of a...like mind."

"I'm open-minded, me. Willing to try anything once."

"Oh come on, Will," a light teasing edge had entered Angel's voice, like he had his dart poised for the bull's-eye. "I saw the way you used to look at Darla. Why d'you think I was so hard on you in Bratislava?"

I stared at the ceiling, hoping I wouldn't have to say this, but not knowing any way out. "I thought Darla was a treasured memory. What with being the mother of your son, an' all?"

Angel's smile turned into a frown. "No talk of him. It's too dangerous."

"But, Angel, he's your blindspot. You have to think about him-"

"I do, Spike. All the time."

"But not just like that, Angel. Realistically. Rationally. Stop using him as an excuse for Hovenden and Illyria to get at you. Take control of the situation. Fight back."

Angel muttered something but turned over so his back was facing away from me. "I'm going to sleep now Spike. I suggest you do too. We should be heading off tomorrow anyway."

I sighed and continued to stare at the discoloured paint on the ceiling.

**

/Thought of the moment: Cosmo can't explain this away/

I woke up and thought, "This is nice." There was a very broad expanse of chest that my face was pressed against, only it was a bit chilly. I looked up and saw Angel, sleeping, his body so very still. As I turned over in the bed, I was met by a pair of blue eyes, alert as ever.

"Nice, eh, luv?" Ooops, I must have said it out loud.

I snuffled and yawned a bit, and then memories started coming back. I glared back at Spike. "Well, apparently, you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"

He sighed and stretched out onto his back. "Buffy, it's hard to beat one hundred plus years of history."

"Wait. You've been doing it for a hundred years? But you two hate each other!"

"Well, look how well that worked out for us, pet." Oh and after he said that smirking all the while, he did that thing where he sucked his lip into his mouth, and my stomach flipped and I couldn't think til - focus, Buffy, FOCUS!

I huffed. "Can he have a moment of perfect happiness with you? Because that right there - I'd rip you away from him-"

Spike said, softly, "No. I don't think so."

Then I raged. "I mean, are you sure? After all that time you said you loved me and now it's just, what, gone away? Really? You can't have stopped loving me! You can't!"

"Buffy it's not always about you all the time." Huh, not answering that question.

"Spike." Then I stopped yelling, calmed down, stilled all my movements. He knew this look - he'd probably seen it too often before. He called it defeat. Maybe I called it something else.

"You can't," I whispered finally.

Spike turned to me, his eyes full of sadness. "In the end there's death or glory and sod all else. Isn't that what I told you all those years ago? Must have been right, then, just as those words are now. And look at me. I've had my death and my glory so can you tell me what've I got to look forward to now? What's going to keep me striving onwards?"

"Well," I whispered, testing the words in my head before I could say them out loud, "You've got me. I can give you love, isn't that what you've always wanted?"

"Yes, luv, it is, more than you can ever know. But can you, Buffy? Can you love me the way that I want you to? The way you want to? It's tearing you up inside just to say the words, isn't it?"

"That's not fair. I love you, Spike. I do. Look, I can say the words. See?" I paused and placed my two hands on his cheeks, rubbing my fingers down his cheekbones, forced my flaring green eyes to stare into his, "I love you."

**

His hart in me, keeps me and him in one/My hart in him, his thoughtes and sense guides:/He loves my hart, for once it was his owne:/I cherish his, because in me it bides/My true love hath my hart and I have his

I couldn't look, think, process. I'd always been the strong one, hadn't I? The one to face up to the truth like a speeding train, rattling over the rails. But instead I fell back on what I knew in these situations. How best to cope, what memory had taught me. "Buffy, they're words. But the meaning behind them...?"

Her hands dropped, as if my face now scalded her and her eyes looked anywhere but at me. She reached for the sheets and drew them up around her ears. The action must have set her thoughts in motion, because her eyes flew seconds later to mine again. But there was a different kind of fire there now, an intensity fuelling their green depths. "This isn't about me, is it? It's about Angel! Can he love you? Can he love you better?"

"Buffy, with him, it's complicated. It's the blood, you know? It's family. And we're vampires; we just don't share, we've never shared. But in these last few years since we've actually been forced into each other's company, I've come to respect him. He's very brave, Buffy. Things have certainly changed since I thought I first loved him, granted, because then it was all about hero-worship. But I will always love him because he's my Sire, just as I will always love Drusilla, I will always love Dawn and I will always love you. But my heart is big enough for all those loves and then some. Besides, don't you love Angel, pet, somewhere deep down inside?"

Buffy threw her hands up in the air, pulled the entire part of her bottom lip into her mouth, looked wildly about the room, then made to get out of the bed. But then stopped. And turned around and looked at me.

Sliding back in, she said in a small voice, "You've never walked away from me, Spike. You never turned your back and gave up. What makes you think I'm going to now?"

I tilted my head, because what else could I do, when she'd said the thing I'd been striving to hear her say ever since I'd recognised the fire had gone. And frankly with a near-naked Slayer getting all hot and bothered and a slumbering Sire (at least I hoped he was still slumbering) mere inches away, there were only a few things passing through my mind.

I started to glare but somehow it turned into a lopsided grin. "Payback's had a name-change has it?"

I reached out and patted her hand. And was rewarded with a smile, so bright and intense I couldn't recall having ever seeing it before; it simply dazzled me. Perhaps the year off had done her good; but the getting back into business would do her better.

"Yes, I am payback, hear me roar!" And, curiously, she started tickling me. "Plus? I know your weakspots!"

We subsided after a while, me looking for a cigarette before finding one, fiddling about with my lighter, placing the cigarette in my mouth, looking at Buffy, removing it, then stubbornly putting it back in and lighting it. Buffy laughed.

"Death or glory, isn't that a song?"

"Someone been learning their history lessons then?"

"Yes, Spike. In the months after you...left...I missed you, so to remind myself I'd do stuff. Like read poetry. And I started smoking, but that didn't last long because ewwwwww. And I went on iTunes and looked up all the punk classics."

"Did you?" My voice had taken on a reverential tone that sounded poncey even to my own ears.

She laughed. "I started with Dawn's help, but we got waylaid by the shiny new Usher tracks."

"Wanker."

"And...oh!" she said sitting up with a start. "Oh! Dawn, where's Dawn?"

"Relax, kitten," I said sinking down underneath the duvet, "she told me to tell you not to wait up. And before you ask, I did the proper thing, checked it with her chums who was drinking and who was driving and how they were getting home. Wasn't happy, but she wasn't much with the third degree and truth be told the kids stood up to the questioning."

"Ok. That's...good. I mean she's getting older y'know? Older and much more sensible. She doesn't have me around so she shines a lot better."

I nodded, a little alarmed at her sense of introspection. I brought her back to the previous topic, before the silence settled in too deep. Besides, she was talking about /me/.

"But after a while it became too much for me," she continued, "and I had to give up. No more thinking about you or Angel or anything else. It caused me so much pain; those memories. So I started to build some new ones."

"Made a few mistakes too eh?"

"Yeah," she said, glumly. "And don't start. I know you know because Andrew told me. And that's water under a very old bridge."

I tried very hard not to smirk.

"But seriously, Spike," she said, turning a piece of her golden hair behind her ear, which must have really meant business or possibly just a subject-change, "when you talk about that night and wanting death or glory because there's nothing else, how much of what you said that night was true? I was always a little suspicious of the 'Oive always bin bad, lovey'."

"I do not talk like that!" I replied indignantly.

"Did you always?" she probed.

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"See!" she said stabbing me with a finger, but it bloody hurt, nonetheless, "how can I believe you on anything when you never admit to anything?"

"I admit to the important stuff, Buffy. The rest is mere window-dressing from an era long forgotten."

"Victoriana's coming back you know. Have you see all those skirts in the shops? Didn't girls used to wear them?" And there was hope in her voice and a desire I couldn't recognise til now that she wanted to connect.

Still, I had to play the game, aloof as ever, "As underwear, yes, Slayer, I'll grant you that."

"Ooo, you're back with the nicknames. You must want something." Ah clever girl, saw right through my aloofness to the heart of the matter then.

"Might do," I said in my most subtle voice.

"And I can only guess, can't I?" she said, smiling from beneath her eyelashes.

"If you're so much in love with me, Slayer, then you'd know straight away," I replied as calmly as I could.

"You are such a pig, Spike," she said, turning away from me to look out the window. But then she turned back, a half smile on her face as if she knew the punchline to a fantastic joke and was about to reveal it to me in all its glory. "But I still love you. Even if you do just want to get into my pants."

I gulped, attempted a very weak, "Vixen!" and then looked down at my cigarette. "Fancy it then, pet?"

She smiled and nodded her head. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, indeed.

"Shall we ask Angel then? Because I do remember there being a fantasy about oil and wrestling, wasn't it?" I asked low and silky like.

"I thought you'd never ask," grumbled Angel, opening one eye to look at us, just to prove that he'd been listening in. And Buffy turned to smile at him too.

"Angel's got a lovely chest that's very nice for exploring with kisses. And Spike does that tongue thing...yum," Buffy suggested, almost dreamily.

"You're obviously the expert, pet." And just to make my intentions clear, I tilted my head.

"No, that'd be you, Spike. Angel and I have only done it the once, and, well, we really need to put some distance behind that." Buffy's eyes were large on Angel but she turned to me to check my reaction. I smiled.

"Just as well you never fucked him back in the good old days, pet. He could be an exacting buggar," I added saucily, but grinning at my Sire over her shoulder.

"As I recall," she started to giggle, "maybe those things don't change. And maybe we really need you there, explaining how it works to refresh our memories. Because, hey, it seems to me there's an awful lot of fun going on and I'm feeling a little bit annoyed that I'm getting left out."

"Perhaps we should all test that theory? As we find ourselves in this improbable situation of being in the same bed together?" suggested Angel.

"So go on Spike," said Buffy, her lips sliding into a smug grin, "show us how it's done."

"Yeah, Spike," countered Angel, "why don't you show us?" But ever the domineering old man, his arms slid under the sheets to take Buffy and me in hand.

TBC

A/N: The quotes that begin each of Spike's sections are as follows: (i)The opening line of Charles Dickens', "The Old Curiosity Shop"; (ii) Philip Sidney's "My True Love Hath My Heart and I Have His"