cya_ficathon FIC: Tantra (B/A, R)
TITLE: Tantra
AUTHOR: Lamia Archer
RATING: R
FANDOM: BtVS/AtS
PAIRING: Buffy/Angel
WORD COUNT: 8,716
SUMMARY: Giles gets kidnapped and the Scoobies set out to rescue him. Unfortunately, a missing Watcher soon becomes the least of Buffy’s problems.
SPOILERS: BtVS S2, after “Reptile Boy”
CHALLENGE: Written for leni_ba’s Choose Your Author (cya_ficathon) Ficathon.
Dark hands, rose-colored robes. Buffy tried to count, to make out features behind cauls, but she felt heady and overwhelmed. Queen bee attended by a flurry of drones. Buzz buzz.
The air smelled salty and familiar, and it was heavy around her, on her skin, in her mouth. It felt pleasant to be touched by it.
Drowned in it.
Honey.
They laid a conch shell on her stomach. It was heavy and cool, and Buffy imagined being the underwater thing that was meant to live in that shell.
So cool, so heavy. It was comforting, the weight and feel of it, the thrill of it on her bare skin.
Bare. She lay naked on the sand, on sand so dry she could feel the heat of ancient deserts sleeping in each grain. Moses. Take off your sandals; you are now on holy ground. The hot, arid dune baked her shoulders, her back, her thighs. Held her like a lover, conforming to the shape of her body.
Feather. Long, black, thick and shining in the moonlight. Firelight. Magic light. They touched it to her, and she watched, breathless and slightly, myopically, cross-eyed, as it bent to her supple, eager flesh.
It gave, but she gave, too. It was soft, and it tickled, but there was an undeniable rigid spine.
Buffy watched the feather trace down her face and throat, down the valley between her breasts, over her flat, baby-fat soft stomach where the conch shell lay sleeping. Buffy closed her eyes and ground herself into the sand, too nervous to keep watching, her body alive with too much sensation to allow anymore in through her eyes.
She could still feel it, though. She couldn’t shut that out.
And she couldn’t shut out the noise . . . the tide was coming in. Buffy opened her eyes, gasping, as her nude body, the desert beneath her, was overtaken by the warm, salty sea.
***
Buffy woke beached in the unruly, sweat-brined surf of her tangled sheets, delirious with fever. Her head swam; the room swam before her, spinning with a kaleidoscope image’s fractured, frenetic turn. Her flesh was tender, sore, and her breasts and the secret flesh between her legs ached. She panted, her heart beating in her chest like a kettledrum, beating wanting blood throughout her dizzy head, her needy body.
“Buffy! Time to get up! You’ll be late for school!”
Buffy flinched so hard she jerked a muscle in her shoulder past the pain threshold, and then stayed startle still as a deer, eyes wide, daring not even to breathe. The only movement in the world was the intense reverberations of her impassioned heart.
***
Buffy arrived at school early. Showering and going through the routine of making herself up into That Buffy got rid of most of the physical discomfort the dream had left her with, but she still felt needled, and she didn’t really want to sit around with her mother chatting about it.
No; she wanted to sit around with Giles talking about it.
Because he was Answers Guy, not because she was weird.
Ew.
However, life had other plans; as soon as she stepped foot on campus, Willow intercepted her, grinning widely.
“So!” the redhead asked eagerly. “You told me I wasn’t allowed to call or ask any questions or bug you at all until today, and now it’s today. So look forward to lots of bugging and question asking.”
Buffy stared blankly at her best friend. “Huh?”
“The date!” Willow said, looking not unlike a soda can about to burst under pressure. “With Angel! You had a date last night and I wasn’t allowed to call-”
Oh. God. Angel. Right.
“-or anything because I needed time to digest. I remember,” Buffy said. Had that been last night? She’d completely forgotten because of the weirdness of her stupid dream. Unfair! She’d been all . . . basking. Basking in Angel-y goodness.
“So you had coffee?” Willow prompted eagerly, literally bouncing up the stairs into Sunnydale High.
“We had coffee,” Buffy agreed.
“And-”
“And . . . it was kind of surreal. I mean . . . weird to be together and not have it be a doom and gloom thing.”
Willow’s face fell. “So it-”
“Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t, like, Sci-Fi Channel. Parts of it were very-”
“Cinemax?”
Buffy blushed. “Will!”
“I’m just trying to figure out what happened,” Willow said, sounding not at all shamed, but, on the contrary, quite pleased with herself, “since you’re not making with the details-”
Buffy sighed. “Okay. Jeez. At first it was kind of awkward - I think we just need some practice doing normal couple stuff that doesn’t involve weaponry - but then he walked me home, and we may have made a little stop to . . . um . . . hang out . . . and we definitely don’t need any practice at that . . .”
Buffy frowned, looking around the unusually quiet library.
Willow, grinning wildly, jumped up and down a little, her corduroy jumper flaring and falling rapidly over her yellow tights.
“Yay!” the redhead crowed. “That’s so perfect! You two are so right for each other; I knew if you just got . . .” Her face fell. “What’s wrong?”
Buffy had wandered off into Giles’s office. Or she had if “wandered off” is taken in the loose context which means “broken into with minimal force.”
“Where’s Giles?” the Slayer demanded, turning on the light and rifling through some of the Watcher’s carefully organized things.
“Um . . . I don’t know,” Willow said helpfully, following her friend behind the lending counter and into Giles’s usually neat office. “Maybe . . . he’s late?”
“The King of Punctuality?” Buffy scoffed. “Mr. Buffy, If You’re Late for Hand-to-Hand One More Time, I Shall Have a Tweed-Clad Aneurysm?”
“It does seem unlikely,” Willow admitted.
She frowned at Buffy’s rough handling of the Watcher’s things. “Are you sure you should be-”
“What?” Buffy asked, tossing a box full of carefully organized index cards behind her. The cards went fluttering everywhere, a snowstorm of cross-filing.
“Never mind,” Willow said, flinching.
“What if something horrible happened?” Buffy asked, wide-eyed. “What if he was . . . I don’t know, kidnapped by vandals or something?”
Willow frowned. “I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself. There’s not even a sign of a struggle . . .” Her frown deepened as she surveyed the mess Buffy had made of the office. “Well, now there is . . .”
Buffy pouted and stopped wrecking things to stand up and stomp her expensively-booted foot purposefully.
“But horrible things are always happening! And what if something horrible happened to . . . to Giles . . .”
Her pouted lip trembled a little, and Willow stopped being reasonable and took her friend into a comforting hug.
“It’ll be okay,” she reassured the Slayer. “But before you get upset, let’s just check and make sure he hasn’t been stolen by vandals, okay?”
Buffy sniffed. “Okay. How?”
***
Willow hung up after twenty rings or so.
“There’s no answer at his apartment,” she announced. “Maybe he just went out-”
“Without telling us!” Buffy demanded. “That’s completely immature, and-”
“Something you would do?”
Buffy pouted again.
“You guys know the bell’s rung?” asked a voice from the door. “We’re all late for class now.”
“Xander!” Buffy cried, running up to greet him as he entered the library. “Giles has been kidnapped and it’s horrible and Willow’s making fun of me.”
“Well, that’s horrible!” Xander declared with suitable outrage, taking Buffy into a slightly eager, protective hug as she reached him. “I’m on your side, Buff. What do we do? Call up the cavalry?”
Willow rolled her eyes. “You guys are over-reacting-”
Buffy perked. “Do you think we should? I mean, this is pretty much all the cavalry, except Giles, who’s possibly dead in a gutter somewhere and Willow doesn’t care-” Willow rolled her eyes. “-and Angel, I guess; I could call him-”
Xander stopped cuddling Buffy to be very offended by this idea.
“Hold on, now! We don’t even know if Giles is in trouble; maybe he decided he needed a little Watcher vacation! We don’t need to go calling Angel in the middle of the day! I mean, even if Giles is missing, we can find him on our own-”
Willow grinned. “I think it’s a great idea. Angel knows lots of stuff. You should totally call him.”
Buffy grinned back at her friend and hopped over the lending counter to the phone. Xander sighed.
Willow patted his hand. “There, there.”
“This sucks. Worst kidnapping ever.”
***
When Angel showed up in the library - he’d taken the tunnels; apparently everything in Sunnydale had underground access - Buffy had thought she’d be okay. She hadn’t been sitting there waiting with butterflies in her stomach like a lovesick schoolgirl.
But when she saw him, she suddenly found herself in his arms, her mouth buried against his throat, pressing desperately to his. She couldn’t even remember getting up and running to him, but she must have, so fast that he looked startled, that everyone looked startled.
“It’s okay,” Angel whispered against her hair, and she wondered if she was crying.
But she wasn’t.
She was sweating. Her body felt on fire, like it had this morning, and she was a little dizzy.
“I just . . .”
“You’re worried about Giles,” he said, but he was looking at her strangely.
Buffy had suspected for a while that she didn’t get to keep any secrets from Angel, even though there were so many things that he had hidden from her.
“Yeah,” she said, gratefully taking the out, and led him over to the table to sit down.
Buffy, Willow, and Xander - the latter tight-lipped, and begrudgingly - filled Angel in on the events of the morning. He listened quietly, and when they were done, he said, “This may sound a bit obvious, but had you considered checking his house?”
Buffy and Willow exchanged looks.
“We can’t just . . . go to his house . . .” Buffy said awkwardly, squirming a little. Giles was a grown-up. What if they went over there and he was there - thank God, all not kidnapped - but doing something gross? And what if he got cranky?
Angel gave her a look. “Buffy, you’re-”
She deflated. “The Slayer. The Chosen One. I kn-”
He smiled a little. “I was going to say, ‘being silly.’ Giles will forgive the indelicacy because your intentions are good. You should go.”
She looked at him hopefully. “Will you come with me?”
Angel looked a little uncomfortable. “I can’t. It’s light out, and I . . . I haven’t been invited . . .”
Buffy lowered her eyes. “Oh. Right. I . . . I didn’t even think . . .”
He took her hands in his.
“It’s okay,” he said gently, and when she met his eyes, he favored her with a smile.
“I had a really nice time last night,” she said softly.
His smile grew a little. “Me, too.”
“We should-”
Xander rapped his hands smartly on the tabletop. “So! Giles’s place! Who’s going? Buff: you, me, Willow; we’ll leave the corpse here, be back in no time.”
Buffy snapped out of her reverie and stood up from the table awkwardly.
“I guess I should be Slay Girl,” she said apologetically to Angel.
“You should,” he agreed, following her to her feet and on her way out of the library.
“I’m sorry you can’t come; I-”
“It’s okay,” he said, and took her gently by the waist and dusted a light kiss across her lips.
Buffy’s knees buckled a little even from such a light touch; Xander rolled his eyes and stomped out of the room. Willow left, too, but she was in good spirits, winking at Buffy and then consoling Xander as soon as they were out of Angel’s earshot.
“You can play librarian while we’re gone,” Buffy offered, smiling dreamily.
“Will you play with me sometime?” Angel asked mischievously, tracing the hem of her skirt with his fingertips.
Buffy blushed. “Angel-”
He stopped his teasing touch. “You should go.” He paused. “Think about it, though. You can wear one of those little plaid skirts; I can keep you after hours . . .”
She lowered her eyes. She dizzy and feverish again, and she wanted badly to forget about the fieldtrip to Giles’s and just fold against him and see if he was good for his word.
“Angel,” she reprimanded again, breathless.
Angel tipped up her chin so she was forced to look him in the face or look like a petulant child. Buffy chose the former, for once.
“Are you okay?” he asked seriously.
“There’s . . . there was something else. A dream.” She hadn’t meant to say it; it just left her mouth automatically. Damn him. He was impossible to lie to.
He nodded. “Okay. As soon as you get back.”
He kissed her again. She thought she might faint.
She was pretty sure that was all him, though.
***
Giles’s house looked perfectly orderly, even after Buffy got done with it; Willow followed the Slayer around making sure she didn’t destroy anything - even order - in her search for foul play.
“Well, that’s just . . . it’s unseemly!” Buffy announced, going through the Watcher’s fridge for a snack.
“Buffy, are you sure you should-”
Buffy glared, and Willow backed off.
“Recon makes me hungry,” the Slayer grumbled, slapping together the least odious sandwich she could concoct out of Giles’s dubious wares.
“I’m with you there,” Xander said, helping himself to some pastrami.
“You two are horrible,” Willow sighed.
Buffy stuck her tongue out at the redhead, thus killing any hope of that argument ending maturely.
The threesome was, thus, in poor spirits when they tromped back to the library.
“Any luck?” Angel asked, coming to greet them.
“No,” Buffy groused. She frowned at him, zeroing in on the book in his hand. “Were you reading while we were gone? Like, for fun?”
Angel looked a little embarrassed. “You know, some people do read for recreation . . .”
Buffy threw up her hands and slunk off to collapse on the stairs. Angel followed her, sans-book.
“Go away,” she moaned dramatically, draped all over the stairs as though she’d fainted, on hand posed prettily over her eyes.
“We were going to talk, remember?” he reminded her.
“Oh. Right,” she said, and immediately popped out of her spectacular position. “Let’s . . .”
Buffy nodded toward the stacks, and Angel followed her back to somewhere a little more private, hidden in a forest of bookcases and dark, dusty tomes.
“It’s kind of embarrassing,” she said once they were arranged, sitting on the floor leaning against one of the bookcases. “But I don’t know who else to tell. I was going to tell Giles, but-”
“I understand,” Angel said encouragingly. “You can trust me.”
She smiled at him. “Okay. Well . . .”
She recounted the dream for him. It was hard to describe exactly how it had felt - the feelings were so huge, and she always felt the words she picked were inadequate, not big enough to hold the sensations - and she started out trying to respect her modesty, but ended up telling him everything; he listened so quietly, with such understanding, and once she started finding the right words . . . she wanted to tell him everything.
“So what do you think?” she asked nervously once she’d finished. “Am I crazy?”
Angel didn’t look happy.
“I’m a little concerned,” he said finally.
“That I’m crazy?”
“What? No! I . . . do you know what tantra is?”
Buffy stared at him blankly. “What a little kid does when they don’t get their way?”
Angel blinked. “What? No, that’s a tantrum. Tantra is . . . okay. There are religions that believe that some people can . . . become a god. Or . . . more than that . . . everyone already has “god nature” inside of themselves; they just need to know how to awaken it.”
“And that’s tantra?”
“The secrets of attaining union with the divine. Yes.”
Buffy thought on this for a moment. “So . . . it’s not, just, like . . . theory? It’s stuff you have to do? Like . . . ritual?”
Angel studied her face.
“That’s right,” he said carefully.
“And you think what happened in my dream . . . that may have been a tantra ritual?”
“Tantric. And yes, I do.”
Buffy regarded him nervously. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
He wet his lips. “The most . . . the most famous tantric rituals are . . . they’re sex magic rituals.”
Buffy stared at him, eyes wide.
“And I think that because of the way you’re acting today . . . normally I’d be flattered, but because you also had this dream last night . . .”
Buffy’s jaw dropped. “Oh my God. Somebody totally tantra’d me. And without my permission!”
Angel frowned. “Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking.”
She started hyperventilating. “But-that’s-ew! That’s, like, date rape or something! But . . . I . . . I didn’t actually . . . I mean, I don’t think anyone . . . touched me . . . oh, ew, Angel, that’s so gross! I mean, why me-”
Angel tried to put a comforting hand on her, but she shook him off.
“Because you’re the-”
“The Slayer, I know! Oh my God, this is horrible! Am I still a vir-” She blushed. “I mean, did they . . . oh my God . . .”
“Tantric ritual does involve a lot of meditation; it’s possible that they did this without your physical self,” Angel said, trying desperately to comfort her with words, since she kept shaking off his physical self.
Buffy looked up at him frantically. “Really? You think so?”
He nodded. “Really. I think so. The Slayer has a lot of physical strength, but keep in mind, you also have a lot of magical strength, and you’re also a . . . kind of a symbol. The people doing this may not need or even want your physical self.”
Buffy calmed sufficiently to let Angel take her into a hug.
“Okay. Task number one: find Giles. Task number two: kick the asses of these gross date rape tantra guys. Task number three: buy Buffy a chastity belt.” She looked up at Angel. “Do you know where I can get one of those?”
“No.” He smirked. “But I bet Xander’ll be thrilled to hear about it. Maybe he’ll make you one in shop.”
She punched him in the shoulder.
***
They asked Miss Calendar and the usual snitches around town. Willow Nancy Drew’d, Buffy pummeled, and Xander checked all the local hospitals and jails (just in case; being foreign and hanging around cemeteries and underage girls all the time does look suspicious after a while). Angel went out to poke around the underground, which made Buffy slightly uncomfortable. She knew she shouldn’t worry about him - but she did - and also, she didn’t like that there were walks of life she didn’t know about, places she couldn’t go. Especially demon places. She was the Slayer; no one should have more street cred than her!
Okay, so Angel was technically a demon. And she was technically a sixteen-year-old girl who had just recently retired her pompons. But she didn’t like it when things were kept from her.
In any event, there was no sign of Giles anywhere.
And they were also no closer to finding out anything more about her tantra tormenters.
Also, no one in Sunnydale made a chastity belt.
Dammit.
***
She could still smell the sea, but there was something masking it, something sexual and frightening, the smell for running until you couldn’t bring air into your lungs anymore.
Carboncorditefire.
There was a fire somewhere; they’d lit a fire. Buffy thought she remembered a fire before, the light of the flames flickering off the feather, but now she smelled it, and she felt it on her left cheek, on her bare left shoulder, her bare left hip and breast, warming her nervous, ready flesh. She wanted to see it; fire didn’t make her nervous, but she liked to see potential weapons around potential adversaries, but she couldn’t seem to turn her head to look for it. She couldn’t seem to move. She wasn’t tethered down, but she was fixed in that one spot, in the warm, warm sand, all the same.
Trance.
Oh, help . . .
The shell lay on her belly again - still? - like an old friend. An old betrayer. Its weight thrilled and sickened her, and she tried to will herself to push it off, but she didn’t even breathe harder.
The shell caught the firelight beautifully, the yellow and red mirrorflames caressing the shining curves like a lover.
She wondered what she looked like in the glow of the pyre.
From somewhere - from all around her - there came up a great, rumbling hum, like the earth moving, like huge bees purring their song. Buffy’s heart raced: an earthquake? Was the earth going to open and swallow her up like this, naked and unable to move to defend herself? But then, as the noise grew, became louder and closer, she realized that - as impossible as it seemed at first, alien as the noise was - the droning was really voices, if not human then humanoid, contorted into unimaginable, dual-note chanting. Buffy closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see the shell, or the dark sky, or whatever the tantric guys were going to do to her. She would have plugged her ears from the frightening, couldn’t-be-human-but-totally-was humming, but she couldn’t move.
***
Buffy woke up terrified. Perspiration plastered her to the sheets, and all she could remember was the flames, and the otherworldly humming. Her first instinct was to run to her mother, but what would she say? She was too old to claim a nightmare, and Joyce wouldn’t understand if she started talking about tantra and demons; she’d think she’d gone insane.
Buffy looked dizzily to the clock on her bedside table. It was still early. She checked the sky outside; it was still dark outside. There was somewhere she could go.
***
“Can I come in? I had another bad dream.”
Okay, it had sounded a lot less stupid when she’d been thinking of it on the way over, but Angel’s face upon seeing her made the d’oh! feeling of those words actually coming out of her mouth dissipate completely.
He ushered her into his apartment. She loved being here; not only was it awesome to have a boyfriend whose mother didn’t answer the door, but the whole space was so intricate and interesting and so Angel. She could spend all day there. A few days.
Angel sat her down, then asked pensively, “What happened?”
She told him briefly about the dream, emphasizing how she’d figured out she couldn’t move, and the part about the humming. He listened intently, silently, his jaw tense.
“Well?” she asked after the silence continued post-story.
Angel explained - absently, not looking at her - about how tantric monks often chanted spells or mantras to increase concentration, or to open themselves as spiritual conduits.
“It’s a different kind of magic than the Western witchcraft you’re used to. Instead of practicing a range of spells to increase knowledge of the art as a whole, they’ll pick one mantra and study perfecting it for their entire devotional lives. The more accomplished chanters can sing more than one note at a time, which accounts for-”
“-the really weird noise?”
He nodded. He looked tired, even though it wasn’t near his bedtime; Buffy was a little worried. “Yeah.”
“So when they’re done perfecting their mantra, they awaken their ‘god nature?’”
“That’s the idea.”
“Then what do they need me for?”
Angel looked at her, finally. “Somebody’s cheating.”
“Are you okay?” she asked gently. “You look-”
He sighed. “I’m worried about you. I don’t like this.”
A delicate frisson of giddiness fluttered throughout Buffy, despite her horrible night and Angel’s doom and gloom. Shut up, she was a girl!
“It’ll be okay,” she reassured him.
She believed it herself, even. Kind of.
***
Buffy wanted to stay up and be a mature adult with Angel in his grownup apartment, but Angel was actually a mature adult, and he insisted that she get some sleep before going to school in the morning. He put her to bed in his bed - oh my God! Angel’s bed! It smelled like him! - and then went into the other room to read in the dark (to not disturb her).
Buffy snuggled into the soft, Angel-scented sheets, and before she could protest again that she didn’t need to go to sleep, she could stay up with him, she had succumbed to slumber.
***
Feathers lay fanned across her breasts, her pudenda. The humming vibrated the sand beneath her softly, and the fire raged.
Bird sex, she said, except she couldn’t move, even to close her eyes. Her chest rose and fell, and her heart beat, her throat contracted nervously, but she couldn’t speak the words aloud, so they echoed strangely in her head.
She could move her eyes around - the extent of her range of movement - and above her, the sky was endless dark, dark as the feathers covering her, but the sky was dull and the feathers shined with light stolen from the sacred fire. The fire that burned at her skin.
Her mouth was dry.
She looked down from the sky to the fire, to see how close it was, to see if her captors or the missing conch shell was there, and she saw something that made her heart rage within her chest.
Eyes, dark as the feathers scattered across her breast and virgin sex, dark as the dull sky.
Angel sex, her inner monologue amended her earlier statement before she could stop it.
He was mostly hidden by the fire, the thick orange whips hiding his pale marble muscles, but he was lying in the sand, too, naked, too.
He was watching her.
Maybe he had the shell.
Her heart was beating so hard, so loud in her head, that for a long time Buffy didn’t realize that the chanting had grown louder. Not only that, it was getting closer.
Angel’s brow creased, his dark eyes shining with an emotion she didn’t often see in him - fear - and she looked up from him to find herself surrounded by the rose-colored robes.
Please, she said, but of course she couldn’t really say it. Please don’t.
The nearest robe bent to her, and dark hands began to remove the feathers.
***
As consequence of being an old man who had outlived many of his friends and family, and of being a vampire with a soul - and therefore straddling two worlds - Angel often found himself alone with just his books for company. Luckily, he loved to read, and he liked the quiet, and he spent many nights reading until he was tired enough to retire.
He had not, however, fallen asleep reading since he was a youth, and he definitely had never done it when a woman who left him so bothered that he’d been reading the same sentence for fifteen minutes was six feet away in his bed.
So when Angel found himself suddenly dreaming, he knew that something was wrong. And when he heard the chanting, he knew that he needed to wake up, or something very bad was going to happen.
Angel was usually right about this kind of thing. It came from several lifetimes of experience.
***
They’d bared her breasts, and laid the feathers in the sand. The humming was so loud that it vibrated through her bones, made it hard for her to breathe where it rocked her sternum. Buzz buzz.
Angel wasn’t looking at her anymore; he’d stopped looking when they’d started taking off the feathers. Didn’t he want to see her? Didn’t he know how beautiful she was, that she was a goddess? She wanted to see him . . .
Buffy felt flushed, feverish, and wished she could move so she could writhe in the sand, feel it slither all over her bare flesh. Every sensation felt magnified; she swore she could feel each individual grain of sand on her skin.
She wondered what Angel’s mouth would feel like.
She stared at him, willed him to look at her.
But no, his eyes on the sky . . . and then - oh, God, she’d willed too hard - because he was gone, nowhere. And then-
“Buffy! Buffy, wake up!”
Angel’s face, inches from hers. God, he was beautiful. And his hands, on her shoulders, around her . . . he was so strong. . . . She leaned forward, closing the distance between them, and kissed his beautiful mouth.
That was the last thing Angel had been expecting, and it showed; he stiffened dramatically beneath her touch, then pulled away.
“What?” she whined, frowning. “You’re not afraid of a little me, are ya?”
He didn’t relax at all. “Buffy, are you okay? We were just-”
She smiled. “I know. I saw you there. You followed me. We must really be meant for each other . . .”
Buffy trailed off. Talking was hard. She felt dizzy. You know what would help with that? She scooted against Angel and snuggled against him, rested her head on his shoulder. It felt so good to be able to touch him. He felt so solid and real, and when she touched him, it was like her blood caught fire . . .
“You feel so good,” she murmured.
“Buffy, you’re not listening to me,” Angel insisted, a hint of desperation in his voice. “Listen, I didn’t follow you; I think you dragged me in, because the tantric magic they’re using on you is getting stronger, and I just got pulled in because of our . . . our relationship-”
“Because you’re my lover,” Buffy breathed, and pulled him down for a kiss.
“Buffy, stop it,” Angel begged, gently unweaving her hands from his sweater and holding her out at arm’s length. “I don’t feel right, and I can tell you don’t feel right-”
She pouted. “You don’t like the way that I feel?”
“You know that’s not what I mean! You’re still under the effects of the spell-”
“No. I want you; I want you all the time!”
She pushed away his hands, and, since he kept intervening when she went gently to him, decided a little more adamancy was in order and forcefully took him by the shirtfront and brought him to her. She crushed her mouth to his, and tried to slide her hands around his waist; Angel attempted to pull away, but she grabbed him by the arm and pushed him violently to the bed. She settled clumsily atop him, reeling; she felt dizzy, febrile, her flesh burning all over. She smelled carbon.
“Buffy-”
She shut him up by bringing her mouth to his again. There was a harsh taste this time, metallic; Angel jerked suddenly beneath her, and she wondered if she’d done something good and gotten his attention, gotten him in the game finally, but then he pushed her off and he was a half-foot away, staring at her and wiping the blood off his mouth.
She grabbed him again; he tried to pull - he was being defensive, which made him weak, and she was stronger in a fair fight - and she felled him to the mattress again.
“Stop,” he said quietly, and she met his eyes - dark as feathers, as the dull night sky - and a thrill of horror shot through her stomach.
“I-” she said, and folded to the mattress, bathed in sweat, her head swimming too fast, in waters too deep, for her to move, much less try and make sense of what had happened.
She felt Angel’s hand on her back, petting her. He had nice hands, big and strong. She could hear his soft, beautiful voice speaking quietly to her-she couldn’t make sense of anything, but her heart swelled in her chest because she knew they were things meant to quiet her, things that meant, I love you. Everything’s going to be okay.
***
When she could get up - shaky and pale, but not possessed by sex magic; still Buffy - Angel walked her home so she wouldn’t be at a strange man’s house when her mother came to wake her for school in the morning.
He turned his back while she changed into her pajamas, and then tucked her in.
Before he left, he sat on the edge of her bed, holding her hand.
“It’s going to be okay,” he assured her. “We’re going to figure this out.”
“I know,” she sniffled. “It’s just . . . all of this is so scary, and Giles isn’t here . . . I feel so small and . . .”
He held her close. “It’ll be okay.”
He kissed her forehead. “Goodnight. I’ll see you soon.”
Angel paused on his way out the window. “Sweet dreams.”
***
Joyce had an early meeting at the gallery, so Buffy didn’t have to go through the Why do you look like death warmed over? speech before school.
She got there early and went straight to the library. Just in case.
It was so quiet without Giles there. Not that Giles was noisy, but now . . . it was like a tomb.
“We need to talk.”
Buffy jumped, her breath scared from her.
“Angel,” she breathed.
He was leaning against the lending counter, looking pensive and drawn. She wondered how long he’d been waiting. And if she’d hurt him last night. Them.
God.
“You scared me,” she said meekly, instead of, ‘I’m sorry I almost raped you last night; how are you?’
“Sorry,” he murmured, and rearranged his weight awkwardly. “I-how are you?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m okay. I-better, I guess.” She couldn’t bring herself to ask after him. “You . . . you wanted to talk?”
He nodded. “I think we should. I mean, we need to, I-the dream . . .”
Buffy stiffened noticeably enough that he stopped and waited for her to calm.
“I think the dream could be the key to the people responsible for this whole mess,” Angel said once Buffy had composed herself. His eyes were on the floor.
“What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
Angel spoke slowly, measuring his words with the slow hand and slight uneven cadence of separating egg whites from yolks.
“Tantric priests do a lot of meditation, and . . . there were . . . last night, I saw things. . . . I just think that maybe . . . the place in your - our - dream . . . it . . . maybe it’s where they are. I mean-”
A spark of understanding fired in Buffy’s mind. “You mean, you think that . . . the place in my dreams, where they do all those things to me . . . it’s a real place? And that’s where we’ll find them?”
Angel nodded, raising his eyes from the floor to look at her flushed, angry face. “I think so.”
Buffy frowned. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Angel didn’t look upset or, in fact, at all fazed. “Complete lack of study of tantric practice; being overwhelmed by spooky, unpleasantly sexual dreams? Take your pick.”
She continued to pout. “But I’m the Slayer! I should-”
“-naturally know the answer to every question? Says who?”
Buffy didn’t say anything, just glowered.
***
Angel was sketching what he remembered from the dream. (Only things that would be important to finding the black hats; Buffy had made him swear). Buffy had made a list of things she remembered, and she, Willow, and Xander had spread a map of Sunnydale on the table and were trying to narrow down possibilities.
“I think it’s kind of neat that you guys shared a dream,” Willow gushed.
“Don’t,” Buffy said automatically, in a tone so poisonous that Xander was cheered out of his Angel is here again and he and Buffy shared some kind of somnolent recreation funk.
“You know, I don’t get it,” Buffy said to Angel, trying to keep her voice low so that Xander and Willow wouldn’t hear her. “Why was I so affected by the dream as to - you know - go all crazy, and you were . . . you know, mostly okay? Are the monks just throwing that much more juju at me, or what?”
Angel stilled over his drawing.
“I was-it’s not that I wasn’t affected,” he said after a moment, lifting his eyes from the paper to Buffy’s anxious face. “I felt it, too. I did. But . . .” He hesitated, unsure of whether to continue, but then Buffy gave him a look and he frowned a little and went on. “But you . . . all this kind of thing is so new to you, so it’s easier for you to get swept up in it. I’ve been doing it for a long time, so . . . I know better how to . . . control myself.”
He dropped his eyes hurriedly back to his paper.
Buffy frowned.
“Is that what you think?” she challenged, unintentionally raising her voice a bit, slightly offended. “Because I’m the Slayer, Angel; I don’t just fight demons; I’ve had spells cast on me, too-”
Angel looked back up. He looked uncomfortable.
“I wasn’t talking about magic,” he said quietly.
It took Buffy a moment to understand what he meant. Her eyes widened, and a hint of pink dusted her cheeks.
“I-well I know that I haven’t . . . but I’m the Slayer, Angel, I’m in great shape, and-”
“I’m not saying that you’re not,” Angel said calmly. “But this is an arena in which experience does play a role. Say-say there’s a group of vamps, okay? But it’s not just that . . . they’ve got a girl, a hostage, and you need to get her out unharmed while at the same time killing the gang and not getting killed yourself. Who’ll know better how to approach them, you or Xander?”
Buffy paled.
“You think I’m the Xander of sex?” she demanded loudly.
Angel closed his eyes, weary. “That’s not what I-”
Buffy’s voice broke. “It’s what you said!”
“No, it’s not; I was trying to-”
“Maybe you should stop hanging out at high schools looking for girls, then! Go back to your immortal whores!”
Angel stared at her. For a minute, she thought it was because she’d wounded him, but then, when the blood started flowing through her body again, she realized it was because she was shaking and crying.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said. He set his sketchpad on the table and took her gently into his arms.
“I didn’t mean that . . .”
“I know.”
It felt easy to fall against him, to let words fall against him, to let tears fall against him. But maybe it wasn’t right.
She pushed away from him, caught his eye desperately. “Last night I-”
“It’s okay.”
“But I-”
Gently, he brought her back into his embrace. “Buffy. It’s really okay.”
***
Willow and Xander had, from Buffy’s description of her dreamscape, narrowed the possibilities down to half a dozen.
Buffy pouted. “I was hoping for, like, one.”
Willow rolled her eyes. “Because it always works like that. Let’s see what Angel did; maybe that can narrow it down for us.”
Angel handed over his sketches. Willow frowned over them.
“Well, we could take these with us to the stretches of beach-”
Buffy moaned. “That’ll take a thousand hours!”
Angel smiled fondly at his little girlfriend. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“Angel,” Willow said slowly. “What’s this one?”
She held up the sketch in question.
“They were using that in the ritual. It’s a conch shell.”
Buffy blushed a little. She and that shell were good friends.
Willow’s brow furrowed further. “A conch? Those aren’t indigenous to the Pacific, are they?”
Angel shrugged. “Not California’s Pacific, I don’t think.”
“So you’re thinking that our friends brought that with them? That it’s a clue?” Xander asked.
“I’m wondering if maybe they bought it here,” Willow said. “I mean, it’s better for us if they bought it here-”
“-because then we can hassle conch sellers until we find them!” Xander finished. “Good work, Wills!”
***
Xander and Willow went to hassle conch sellers, and Buffy and Angel waited until after dark to go scope potential dreamscapes. They took weapons. Big weapons.
“It’s creepier at night,” Buffy complained, bundling into her coat. “More PTSD triggery.”
“Sorry. I don’t really tan well.”
He did sound sorry, and Buffy felt bad. Really bad. She was the one who should be sorry.
The first three beaches were misses, but they were kind of nice, and Buffy had a really strong urge to just take off her shoes and socks and sit with Angel in the surf, like a normal girl who didn’t have things to slaughter. She thought maybe she wasn’t alone; she caught Angel looking kind of longingly into the movement of the tide a few times.
“Do you like to swim?” she asked as they trudged up the difficult sand hill of the third beach.
“Not anymore.”
“How come?”
He looked back at the water.
“When I was growing up, there was a lake we used to swim in, my little sister and I. Or . . . well, maybe ‘lake’ is kind of a generous word for it, because it was really small, but . . . that was kind of nice, because we were the only ones who knew where it was, all tucked away in the glen, and . . . we’d wait all year for it to get hot enough, and run down there and strip down and jump in, and it-” He smiled, a real smile, teeth and everything - kind of a sad smile, but still a smile - and Buffy’s heart skipped a beat, because he did it so rarely, and it was so beautiful when he did. “-you know how it feels, it’s so cold at first that you almost regret jumping in, but then your body gets used to it, and sometimes you swallow water, and you almost . . . you almost have to learn how to breathe differently . . .” He looked out at the moonlit waves. “And now I can’t go in the sun. And if I could, I couldn’t . . . I don’t have a body temperature, so . . . and I don’t breathe, so I . . .” He shrugged sadly. “It’s just another thing that reminds me how apart I am from everything.”
“Angel,” she started, and then realized that there was nothing she could say to make him feel better.
“We got sunburned every time,” he said, the edge of a smile - a small, enigmatic, Angel smile, not a big one - creeping up, “but I miss that, too. I didn’t even mind, then. It hurt, but the cold water felt so good the next day, and Kathy would always-”
He stopped talking and turned away, started finishing the walk up the hill. Buffy frowned and started up after him. It wasn’t until they were both on even ground again that she realized what had happened.
“Do you remember the last time you said her name?” she asked softly.
Angel didn’t look at her. “No.” He raised his eyes hesitantly to her. “I didn’t-I didn’t even mean to . . . it just came out . . .”
“It’s okay.” She took his hand.
He relaxed a little. “Things are easier with you.” He paused. “Sometimes. Sometimes they’re-”
“Torture?”
Angel laughed. “I was going to say ‘harder.’ But yeah.”
He kissed her.
It wasn’t torture.
***
Beach four looked familiar. And smelled familiar: carboncorditefire.
But it was empty, and there was no fire in evidence.
Or evidence of a fire.
“I think . . .” Angel said hesitantly.
“Me, too,” Buffy said. “Maybe . . . maybe we should test it.”
“Test it?”
“Yeah.” She ran over to a spot of sand near the surf and lay down on her back, staring at the dark sky. Ooh. Very dark here: no stars in this patch.
Buffy closed her eyes and tried to feel the heat of ancient deserts burning her flesh, but this sand was cold. Maybe it was the magic.
The sea sounded right, though.
She heard soft noises disturbing the sand, felt a cascade of the possibly holy grains avalanche into her hair and coat, and startled, opening her eyes and sitting up. Angel smiled at her.
“It’s just me,” he said. It was just him; he’d knelt beside her.
“Don’t do that!” she chastised. “Spooky.”
“Come on, Sleeping Beauty,” he said, offering her a hand up. “Let’s go look for clues. There’s no one here.”
Buffy let Angel help her to her feet. Then she shook and brushed the sand off of herself and pretended she didn’t see Angel’s amused expression.
She picked up her sword. “Okay. Evil beware.”
***
The search of the beach turned up a big nothing. Buffy pouted and griped all the way back to the library.
“So, we think we found my Elm Street,” Buffy announced as they came through the double doors. “But there were no bad guys there, and no clues. It was pretty much a waste of an outing.”
“You should have come with us,” Xander said. “Because we scored.”
Buffy perked. “Oh yeah? Whatcha got?”
“Just the name of the only guy to buy a conch shell in the past month.”
The Slayer wilted a little. “Is that all? Maybe he’s just a regular guy who . . . likes conchs.”
“Nope!” Willow grinned. “We totally spied on him. He’s not a guy, and he has friends.”
“We have an address,” Xander said, presenting a small piece of paper.
Buffy grinned. “You guys are the best. I think we’ll pay them a visit.”
***
The monks, for being demons with an evil plan, were still just . . . well, monks. And monks were not that fearsome.
Buffy felt almost bad beating them up.
She also felt bad that she couldn’t get any information out of them about Giles. It’s not that they were being all secretive and difficult; they genuinely didn’t seem to know.
“Well, poop,” she said, wiping her axe blade clean on a felled demon’s robe. “I mean, it’s great that I can cross something off the list-”
“Two things,” Angel said. “Now you don’t need to worry about buying a chastity belt, either.”
Buffy thought about her overzealous frottage the other night and grimaced. “We’ll see.”
Angel frowned.
“-but I’m still really worried about Giles. I’ll guess we’ll have to go back to square one on that one.”
“We’ll find him,” Angel assured her.
She didn’t look convinced.
***
Xander and Willow met them outside the house post-slaughter, and walked them back to school to collect their things, which they’d left in the library. Then they were going to go home and do homework and floss, because it was a school night.
Buffy had other ideas.
“We kicked evil’s booty! I say we party.”
“Maybe you should keep the partying to a minimum? You haven’t been to French all week . . .”
Buffy pouted. “But I prevailed over the forces of darkness. I deserve to get down, get down with my bad self. Angel, defend me.”
Angel had stopped in the doorway several beats ago.
“Buffy,” he said quietly, and nudged her.
“I’m gone for less than a week and you cut all your classes?” said another, very familiar voice.
Buffy stared.
“Giles?”
Giles was standing behind the lending counter, unpacking a carton and looking just as starched and unharmed as when she’d last seen him.
Buffy’s bottom lip trembled.
“Giles?” she repeated, only this time her voice was more like a whimper.
The librarian started. “Good Lord, what’s the matter?”
Buffy folded against Angel, her hand over her mouth.
“Giles, we thought you were kidnapped, or maimed horribly or something!” Willow exclaimed.
“Well, good heavens, I left word with Principal Snyder,” Giles said, coming around to meet them. “The Council called an emergency meeting in London, and I had to leave immediately, but I did call the school to tell them I wouldn’t be here-”
“Yes, well, good to see you’re not dead, we’ll just be leaving you and the very strong, very upset blonde girl to get in touch with your feelings,” Xander said.
He and Willow left. Quickly.
Angel gently separated himself from Buffy, who had calmed sufficiently, although not before crying a bit and maybe blowing her nose a little on his lapel.
“Are you okay? Do you want me to stay?”
Buffy composed herself, sniffing in as dignified a manner as one can, and wiping her face dry on the backs of her hands.
“No,” she said firmly. “Giles and I . . . we need to talk. You . . . you go. You and me . . . we’ll-”
He nodded. “I’ll be around.”
He kissed her and left the room.
Slowly, Buffy turned back to her Watcher.
“So . . . you were just gone,” Buffy sniffed. “Without telling us. Without telling me.”
“Well,” Giles said gently, “it’s not as though I’d planned-”
“I was scared! I thought something horrible had happened to you! And you were just off-”
“I’m very sorry to have worried you, but-”
“You’re supposed to be the grownup! You’re supposed to be my-my Watcher! And I don’t care what happened, because you-”
“Buffy,” Giles intervened, gently arresting her by the shoulders, “you are ignoring a very important fact.”
She glared. “What’s that?”
“That you’ve done quite admirably in my absence. If I’ve heard correctly, you ‘kicked evil’s booty.’”
Buffy was struck numb.
“But-but there . . . there were these . . . these demon monk guys who used this weird tantric voodoo to-”
“Tantra isn’t voodoo, Buffy, but more importantly, you took care of that all on your own.”
Buffy was stunned. She hadn’t thought of it that way.
“I . . . not alone,” she said finally. “I had Willow and Xander . . . and Angel . . .”
“Still,” Giles insisted, “you didn’t need me holding your hand. You’re competent and-”
“Does this mean that you’re going to be unreliable more often from now on?” she asked, lips trembling slightly, belying the impudence in her voice.
“Not if I can help it,” he sighed.
Buffy’s gimlet eyes lit immediately with joy, but the light soon burnt out and her face furrowed in distrust.
“How do I know that you’re not just going to run off again?” she demanded.
“You’ll just have to trust me.”
She frowned. “But you hurt my trust. You . . . bent it or something.”
Giles tried not to smile; he could tell that he’d almost won her back entirely.
“Certainly you’ll let me try to win it back.”
Buffy couldn’t help but smile herself. “I guess I could. Because I’m such a big person and all.”
“Thank you.”
She let herself be hugged.
“But you totally owe me a present,” she insisted. “For the emotional stress I’ve suffered.”
He chuckled. “Of course. I assume it’ll be from a clothing designer with an Italian name.”
She beamed. “Of course.”
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