Fic: Hurricane Season

[girlpire]

Title: Hurricane Season
Author: girlpire
Rating: NC17/FRAO
Pairings: Buffy/Angelus
Disclaimer: This story is based on the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" TV shows, with which I am not affiliated in any way.
Distribution: This story is also [available on AO3].
Warnings: Offscreen violence, injuries to a vampire (the sort of thing you maybe would have seen on the show) and associated pain/blood from those injuries, hurt/comfort, a handjob, orgasm denial, sex, general soullessness, Twinkies.

Summary: After losing the soul again, he goes looking for the girl and ends up tangling with a demon. Now, she'll look after him until he recovers... as long as he can hide the fact that things have changed.

Notes: This story was inspired by awesome people from Joyous Rebellion! The setting is vague enough that it could be during the Angelus arc of season 4 of AtS if you want, but in my head it's post-series, disregarding comics. Either way is fine.

*

This time he doesn't lose it in a girl.

To be honest, he hadn't really believed he could fuck his soul away again anyway, not after knowing how it worked the first time. He's thought about this a lot over the years since it happened: he would be too concerned, too careful – the happiness wouldn't be perfect enough because of the risk, because of the fact that taking the risk at all was itself a kind of failure. Giving in, knowing he wasn't strong enough to resist the temptation, would make him feel too guilty to ease his grip, to let the soul slip away into a warm body. Even if it was hers.

Probably.

He never told anyone he suspected it couldn't happen again the same way. That would've opened up too many dangerous possibilities, and besides it was only a theory. No way to test it but to take the risk. No need to get anyone's hopes up.

Not that it actually matters anymore, since that's not how it happens this time.

It's kind of funny, he thinks, standing amid the bodies slung carelessly around the floor of the tiny dive bar, that souls aren't a little easier to hang onto. Sure, he had his for a century before he lost it the first time, but since then it's been coming and going like hurricane season. If souls are so big and important, surely it should take a little more loosening before they come free. Right?

Take these people for instance. He drags a large body up by the collar and peers into its slack face. The soul came out of this guy so easily. He shakes the body a little, watches its parts sway back and forth, the whole broken human shell dangling like a busted piñata. Empty. Where's its soul now, hmm?

He drops the body in a heap on the floor and passes the back of his hand across his mouth. Well, this was a bust. Not that he didn't enjoy it, but the information he wanted hadn't been forthcoming from the snitch. Maybe he ate him too quickly. And maybe he shouldn't have killed everyone else in the tiny bar just for fun; he can see how this might be an issue later. Just got caught up in the moment. There were only five, including the bartender, but someone is bound to notice.

This is her town. She's going to come snooping around now, and that means he'll have to see her before he wanted to. Shit. He hasn't even decided yet what excuse to give her for being here. It's not like he can tell her the truth.

So he's standing there with his hands on his hips, lips pursed thoughtfully, surveying the damage he's done and wondering how he can spin it to his advantage, when there's a loud thump from the direction of a storage closet. Without giving it a lot of thought, he goes and opens the door. And gets stabbed straight through the gut by a thick yellow tentacle.

He almost throws up. It's not something anyone thinks much about, but a tentacle through the gut really jostles your stomach. Blood heaves up into his mouth and some of it trickles out before he can swallow it back down. Not his blood. Snitch blood. But then some of his blood comes up, too. His hands reach down immediately to grasp the slimy tentacle and pull it out, but the... whatever the fuck... isn't having it. Another fleshy tentacle launches out at him from the closet and stabs him in the chest. This one is about as thick as his wrist. It punches completely through his body like the first one, and then the thing spreads itself wide.

It's trying to tear him apart.

The pain of this bizarre stretch is shocking to him. Not just because it happened so fast and unexpectedly, but because his muscles are being moved in a way he's never felt before. After roughly two and a half centuries, not even counting his long excursion in literal hell, he didn't think there was a kind of pain he hadn't experienced, but here it is. He grabs at the chest tentacle and yanks it up, pushes out his fangs and sinks them in. His teeth meet in the middle and then he's spitting out a wobbly chunk of yellow flesh onto the floor at his feet. Some kind of slime is spewing out. It burns.

He manages to gnaw completely through this tentacle before the thing can emerge fully from the closet, but it gets most of its bulk into the bar, still impaling him through the gut. Somehow his spine isn't shattered. He digs his fingernails into the thick appendage at his stomach, trying to tear through it. His body is fighting on its own, though; his mind is somewhere completely else. He's thinking, what the hell is happening, how the hell is this happening, what the hell even is this thing, why the hell is it killing me, was it hiding in this closet the whole time I was in here killing these fucking humans? He can't get a good grip on the rubbery arm where it sticks out of his body, but another tentacle shoots forward and he seizes it before it can impale him. He turns it around and starts beating the thing viciously with its own arm. The slime is getting everywhere.

He eventually wins. Sort of.

When the thing is dead, it drops him to the floor on top of the snitch. He's still impaled through two different places, one connected to the demon and the other flopping free where he chewed through it. He takes hold of the severed tentacle and pulls it from his chest but can't get up to remove the bigger one. He lies bleeding, skewered, thinks about the fact that a few minutes ago his biggest problem was the possibility of the slayer finding a couple of dead bodies, maybe wanting to shove a soul down his throat later.

When he thinks of her, he thinks suddenly that he can smell her, a wisp of that sweet lotion she likes threading its way through the air, a darker thread of power meandering under it. But he's covered in blood and slime and his head has been knocked around and he knows he heard some ribs go crunch, and of course there's still the whole almost-got-ripped-in-half thing, so even though he thinks he smells her and he still hasn't come up with a plan, he doesn't make any move to escape. He can’t. All he can do is pull his other face back inside and wait.

Within moments, the front door of the bar swings open. Unmistakable footsteps approaching. He doesn't see her from his angle on the floor, but in his head he can imagine what's happening: she's walking forward cautiously, probably clutching a stake or an axe or a crossbow, taking in the violent scene in the bar, the bodies and the demon and the slime-covered floor. And lying there in the middle of it all, broken and bleeding around a tentacle the width of a man's thigh, is—

“Angel?” She hurries toward him, caution thrown aside, and almost slides down in the slime. Takes a knee beside him.

He starts to say something, aims for a nonchalant “Hey,” but what comes out is a wet cough and a trickle of blood.

“Oh my God,” she says, looking down at his stomach. Her eyes follow the tentacle to its source and then she quickly moves around him, brandishing an axe. “Okay, just hang on,” she says.

He hears the axe come down, feels the impact resonate through the tentacle in his gut. But he's not sure if the first swing severs it completely. Maybe she has to chop it a few times to free him.

He's not awake to find out.

*

When he does wake up, he’s outside. Being dragged. She’s dragging him. Great.

She’s got her arms wrapped around him under his arms, his back to her, and he’s bleeding all over the fuck from these gaping, seriously gaping wounds, his shoes scraping along the ground through the trail of red he’s leaving behind. He knows she’s strong enough to lift his weight, but their relative sizes make his body unwieldy, and hauling him over her shoulder is impossible because her shoulder would just push right through the massive hole in his stomach.

So: dragged by the slayer. God, nobody had better see this.

He attempts to stand, pushing weakly at the ground with his feet. Excruciating pain shudders through his entire body.

“Don’t try to move,” she says, dragging him along.

I’ll kill you, he thinks. I’ll kill you so hard. Blood vengeance! I—

“You’ll be okay,” she says. “I’ve got you.”

He slumps again into unconsciousness.

*

The next time he wakes up, he’s lying on a bed, but the bed is covered with a vinyl shower curtain and a whole bunch of wet towels. Why are they—? Oh. It’s blood. It’s his blood still coming out. There are tight bandages constricting his stomach and his chest, but the red is seeping through, soaking into this weirdly warm nest underneath him. The wounds are big actual holes through his body; there’s no way to keep the blood inside until his flesh starts to knit itself back together. Which is going to take an inconveniently long amount of time, but will happen faster if he drinks someone.

He can hardly move. Nothing is working right, not even his arms. Everything is just this massive throb of agony. Why the hell was that demon in the closet? His skin is raw where its slime burned him, but he's being cleaned. A cool, wet sponge sliding down his neck. Over and over. Across his shoulder, along the edge of the bandage around his chest, down the bump of his bicep. It hurts, because everything hurts, but this pain is just a stinging burn of irritation, like touching a rash. It actually hurts less than anything else, and that makes it almost feel good.

“Buffy?” he whispers. It makes him cough. More specks of blood come up.

“Shhh, I'm here.”

His instinct is to pull away. She's technically his mortal enemy, after all. On a good day, with some planning first, maybe he could take her. Or at least defend himself long enough to escape with his life. On a bad day, she'd run him through with a sword and send him to hell for a hundred years. But on a twice-impaled plus concussion and broken ribs day, he couldn't even lever himself out of this bed if his existence depended on it, so he doesn't try. He lies there and lets her clean him, the bits of his skin that aren't wrapped up tight, and it's an uneasy feeling, the way he imagines it would feel to be drowning in the ocean but get saved by a shark. Your only choice is to let it pull you to the surface in its teeth, and all you can do is try not to piss it off on the way up.

On the other hand – and the thought almost makes him smile – what's more exhilarating than hitching a ride back from death between the jaws of a goddamn shark?

She doesn't know yet. It's a little funny, and he appreciates that about his situation. He came here wanting to kill her and accidentally got a sponge bath instead. It's a good thing he can't laugh right now or it would probably clue her in that something fundamental has changed since the last time they saw each other.

So, what would he do if he had a soul?

With some effort, he manages to reach for her hand. He finds it near his shoulder, holding the sponge. He rests his hand on top of hers, squeezes just a little. Cool water rolls down over his stinging arm. Her hands are so small, considering everything they've done. She puts her other hand on top of his and squeezes back.

“Try to get some rest,” she says softly.

She most likely won't kill him before he wakes up, so he lets himself black out again.

*

He wakes up to big pain shooting through his chest. “Ahh!” he cries out, then grits his teeth so he won't cry out again, because he knows what this is – it's just his body trying to close, the severed nerves seeking their other halves inside the red tangle of his wound. Firing at each other across the gap. This is good; it's the first step. But somehow it hurts more than it did before. His stomach hasn't even begun doing this part yet.

“Here, this should help,” she says, and there are pills, and there is blood in his mouth. Pig's blood, which he hasn't had in a while and startles him, the gamey taste of it after becoming used to drinking humans again. She's sitting in the bed with him. His head is in her lap and he doesn't even realize until she's feeding him, helping him drink the animal blood from a mug. It's not a good angle and some slips down the side of his cheek. He coughs, and she says, “Sorry, sorry,” and wipes the drip from his skin with the corner of a towel.

The bandage around his chest is so tight that he can hardly breathe in enough air to ask, “How long?”

“Two nights since I found you. Do you remember what happened?”

Yes, but his version is probably very different from hers. “Demons,” he whispers. Which is technically true. Two demons, including himself.

“They killed five people,” she tells him grimly. “The one that did this to you is dead, but whatever killed the others got away.”

Was dragged away, he thinks. By a shark. But what he says is, “You’ll find it.” Also technically true. He can feel the pig's blood draining slowly out of his stomach through his back. It’s a sick feeling, this spreading wetness beneath him. That metallic blood-smell hangs heavily around the bed; it smells like someone is dying. Outside he can hear rain, soft drops pattering down onto leaves and stone. He can also hear her pulse, the steady wave of it through her thigh beneath his head. Her blood and the rain sound like they could be two parts of the same song. He’s not entirely sure where he is but it’s too much work to open his eyes and look.

Her hand, warm fingers brushing lightly against his hair, against the side of his face, his neck. “I haven’t… do you want me to call someone? I wasn’t sure if…”

“No,” he breathes. “Not yet.”

“Okay.”

They stay like this, quiet. The pain lessens a little, but not very much. He can imagine the pills falling whole out of his body, although he knows they didn’t. Her fingers lie on his neck just over the place where his pulse would be, and it’s thrilling, a little, to picture what her hands would do to him if she knew. When she finds out. There’s not a world where she doesn’t find out eventually. But for now, she lets him rest his evil head in her lap, and she touches him carefully to avoid causing more pain. This one spot on his neck that she’s touching, this is the only place that doesn’t hurt. Except it does hurt.

There’s no way in hell he could fight her right now. He couldn’t fight a persistent cotton ball right now. But he thinks about it anyway, thinks about flipping suddenly, biting right into her femoral artery through her jeans. A dangerous move, leaves her hands free. But maybe that would be alright. Maybe she would go on stroking his neck and his hair like this. Letting her knuckles slowly graze the outline of his ear while he drank from her.

He’s still having trouble staying conscious. For a moment, he thinks he’s really done it, really flipped over and bitten her. It's the smell of the blood. But he hasn’t moved.

Very slowly, he reaches up and back. His arm feels like he’s wearing someone else’s arm and their skin is too tight around him. He touches her thigh. Warm. Her other hand covers his.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he murmurs. What he doesn’t say is maybe this will make it easier to kill her. Later, when he’s feeling up to it. The fact that she’s not afraid to comfort him like this, to be this close to his teeth.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says back. “One more round with that demon and you wouldn’t be.”

“One more second with it.” He still hasn’t opened his eyes.

Those fingers. Feather-light against his hair. Quietly, “You wanna tell me why you came?”

No. “Later,” he says.

*

Continued [here]