sroni

Round 3 of the Circle of Friends Remix is now open for reading at

cof_remix.

This is a bonus fic for

comlodge, since it’s her first Remix.

Title: Hope is a Four-Letter Word (the “Makes Me Feel Alive” Remix)
Author: SRoni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13. Nothing that you wouldn’t see on the show.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Original story: “Do You Even Like Me?” by

comlodge

Hope is a Four Letter Word
(The “Makes Me Feel Alive” Remix)

Spike’s head fell back against the pillow, his skin alabaster against the black satin that represented decadence and fire. His voice was a low, desperate moan when he spoke. Something Spike had been good at for as long as Buffy had faced off against him, and then worked alongside him, was being sexy. Every movement seemed like a practiced moment of sleek sexuality. But this wasn’t a moment of schooled practice. Buffy knew he was being genuine.

That didn’t mean she believed him.

You could be genuine and still not tell the truth, something Buffy knew far too well, from far too much experience.

“God, Slayer, Buffy, the things you do to me, the things I want to do to you, with you. Buffy, I lo–”

No.

Buffy cut him off, covering his mouth with a kiss hard enough to bruise a regular person’s flesh, unable, or at the very least, unwilling, to hear the word he was on the verge of uttering. That word represented hope, a future, and hope was as cold and dead within her breast as his heart was within his own.

Besides, he didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it. Oh, he probably thought he meant it, he wasn’t lying. Hell, maybe he even wanted to mean it, which was already better than most vampires could manage. But Buffy knew the truth, knew who and what he was better than anyone else did. And that meant that she also knew what he was capable of. Or what he was not capable of, in this particular instance. Vampires took things, leeched them off the living, and he didn’t have a soul inside of him to make him want to give something back to the people he stole from. Even the blood oozing from the scratches she’d laid open on his pale chest wasn’t his, but yet another thing stolen from elsewhere. It was someone else’s blood coursing through his veins, and Buffy never let herself forget it. She couldn’t ever let herself forget it.

Besides, even if he did somehow mean the word, that wasn’t what this... arrangement between them was about. This was about the fire between them, the flames that froze her and simultaneously burned her to ashes, breaking through the numbness that had pervaded throughout her heart and mind, infiltrating the core of who she was. Adrenaline junkies seemed to live by “that which doesn’t kill me makes me feel alive”, and Buffy’s life was any adrenaline junkie’s fix. This was hers. Every moment with Spike killed her a little more and made her feel that much more alive.

It was not about love. Never about love.

When they were done, Buffy rolled off the bed and started grabbing for her clothes before the sweat had begun to cool on her skin.

From his splayed position on the bed, he watched her ready herself to leave once more with impassive icy eyes that gave nothing and everything away. “Right, then. Can’t hang around a dead man’s crypt once you scratched the itch that’s been bitching at you.”

Buffy’s voice remained stone, but her tone was almost a sneer. “What, were you expecting us to drink a nice ‘cuppa’, watch some ‘telly’? Maybe some ‘Passions’? Get real, Spike. I can’t stay here, you know that. I have responsibilities at home, bills to pay, Dawn —”

“Do you even like me?” He wasn’t being pushy, despite cutting her off. The words were carefully measured and controlled.

Even so, the question hung between them, the words heavy in the air for a long moment.

Finally, Buffy moved from her frozen position. “Don’t make this more than it is, Spike,” she spoke quietly, her voice empty and those beautiful gray-green eyes devoid of the anger she’d been all but vibrating with only moments previously, the fire thrumming under her skin like the borrowed (stolen) blood did under his.

“And what is this, then?” he challenged her, goading her, obviously trying to get something out of her, though whether it was a rise or an answer, Buffy didn’t know.

She wasn’t planning on giving him either. She was just going to give him a look and leave it at that. She gave him the baleful look she’d intended, but then the words seemed to spill from her lips unbidden. If his unguarded moment had been the almost said “I love you”, this was hers, and she released the torrent of words on him, no holds barred. “It’s sex. It’s getting something out of my system that would go kablooey if I tried to keep it in. It’s a release so I don’t explode all over my friends and tell them how mad I am that they let all these debts pile up and didn’t do anything about them while I was dead and now I have to deal with them because they brought me back. Or how mad I am that they could bring me back in the first place, but couldn’t be bothered to check on where I was.” She finished buttoning her blouse, having given up any hope of finding her bra. She’d either find it later or replace it. She kept talking, her voice low and intense. “There are so many things, so god damn many things, that are my responsibilities. I do the same things every day, and I’m always going to do the same things every day, because life sucks and then you die, and if you have friends like mine who can’t let you go, you get to come back to the sucky suckfest that is life and just keep going through the suck circle of suck.” She glared at him, as though he alone were responsible for all the pain and anguish and bitterness she was feeling. “So what is this? It’s something that makes me feel alive and forget that I’m in the hell my friends were trying to rescue me from.”

Spike touched her cheek gently and she pulled away. “Buffy, you have to have hope —”

Buffy cut him off with a humourless laugh. “Don’t you get it, Spike? Hope is a four-letter word.” And then she was gone, and he was left with only her perfume lingering in the air for company.

THE END