The Penny Series

Ficlet 23) Pretty Penny
Suy: Yy: You look so peaceful sleeping, you don't know that I'm leaving, but I'm gone. (lyrics)

****


Buffy snuck up on him, covering his eyes and whispering, like the little minx she was, into his ear. “Guess who?”

He leaned back into his chair, glad for the reprieve from researching the ascension with Giles, Willow, and Oz. Unfortunately, the books that could have been helping them the most were with Drusilla, Ethan, and the mayor. His eyes were strained from reading the small calligraphy calligraphic script in badly constructed Lati
“H
“Hmm,” he purred, reaching behind his back to tickle her ribs. “Could it be Invisible Bob?” At her giggle, his fingers glided up her arms to cover her hands with his. “No, he doesn’t giggle like you do, Mrs. Angel.”

She pulled her hands out from under his and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Oh pooh, how’d you ever guess it was me?”

Giles looked up from where he was reading through the Codex, taking notes in a journal next to him. His gaze was exasperated, but it instantly lit up when Cordy sauntered into the room. It had taken a lot of coaxing on their part to bring her back into the group; at first the brunette had refused, remembering the painful last months of her abusive relationship with Xander, but Willow, surprisingly enough had brought her out of seclusion.

"Any word from Faith?" Cordy asked in a carefully constructed tone of boredom.

The bitchy queen was back, no longer meek and introverted, and today she was carrying a Styrofoam cup of coffee.

Giles shook his head, letting out a frustrated sigh. "No, not yet."

Cordy handed the cup to Giles, tooktook it gratefully as he rubbed his right shoulder.
"Here is your cup of coffee. Brewed from the finest Colombian lighter fluid," she said with a grimace, as she sat down to the left of Buffy.

"Thank you," Giles murmured, taking a sip, shudderi"Ho"Horrible."

Bemused, he leaned his head against Buffy’s and watched the Brit take another sip. With a quirk of his eyebrow he asked, "Aren't you supposed to be drinking tea anyway?"

"Tea is soothing. I wish to be tense," Giles replied decisively, picking up his pen again.

"Okay,” Buffy said with fondness. “But you are destroying a perfectly good cultural stereotype here."

Oz looked up from the book balanced on Willow’s lap, glancing around at them throughout the exchange. He waited patiently before asking, “Does anyone have an idea when this Ascension occurs?”

Willow smiled brightly, adding onto her boyfriend’s statement. “Yes, we’re so busy focusing on what exactly the mayor is going to turn into when he happens to become a umm-”

“Top of the heap demonic being,” Oz supplied, squeezing her hip.

Buffy looked behind her shoulder, a funny look in her eyes as she raised a brow in his direction. He loved to communicate with her silently, but most of the time he was left feeling confused.

He looked around at the Scoobies. They’d be graduating high school in two days. It was pretty amazing that this scruffy, mismatched bunch had actually made it through the years, and especially through the senioritis. Buffy had been suffering from it these last few weeks, but he had managed to make her go, though it took forever to get her out of bed these days.

“Look at this,” Faith shouted, holding aloft a Sunnydale Gazette as she came bursting through the double doors of the library. “Some dude has a college class on dinosaurs. He supposedly found some giant dino in volcanic ash. New breed, bigger too.” She hopped onto the library table near where he and Buffy sat and gave a conspiratorial wink. “Doesn’t that sound wicked cool, B?”

“If you like paleontology,” Buffy concurred with a shof hof her slender shoulders.

“What about you, muffin butt?” Faith asked with another wink.

“Oh I don’t know,” he offered with a yawn, stretching slightly under Buffy’s warm weight.

“Wait,” Giles interjected, “is the professor Raymond Wirth? I know that gent from the Watcher Academy.”

Surprised, Buffy spun her head around, and he almost feared whiplash. “They’ve got a school where they train you in demonology now?” She demanded, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Since when?”

But Giles ran over her petulant speech with speed. He could almost see the wheels turning inside the prim and proper head. “Back in the third year he went on a safari to Africa to work on an independent study of the Kiliptical demons. He stumbled on something in a town decimated by the nasty buggers and claimed it to be a true demon, not the kind that inhabit the earth now-”

“Wait a minute there, Jeeves,” Faith growled. “If we haven’t been fighting demons night in and night out, then I’m the Queen of Sheba.”

He shook his head and whipped off his glasses to clean them furiously. “No, no, no. The demons that are on the earth now are corrupted through their gene pool by-”

“Human blood,” he filled in, tonelessly.

“Eew, are you saying that nasty gigantic demons slept with humans?” Cordeila spat in distaste.

“Not necessarily,” Giles replied with a shake of his head, resettling his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Quite the contrary. In many cases, they forced their dying blood into human veins or fed upon human blood in seemingly successful bids to kept their horrific selves on the earth.”

Willow raised her hand until Giles nodded at her. “So what’s this all mean?”

Rubbing his hands together, an unholy glitter in his eye, Giles responded, “That the bloody bloke might be onto something.”

“Does it have to do with the mayor?” Oz asked skeptically.

“Ascend means to go to a higher state of being,” Giles started, talking feverishly to himself under his breath as he paced past the group sitting at the table. “What if it meant returning to pure demonic blood and genetics? Yes. Yes, that just might be it. I need to get in contact with Wirth and figure out more on this.”

Cordy looked at everyone. “There’s this girl named Anya that I hang out with. She’s been mumbling about how she needs to get out of town and somehow convince Owen to leave with her. She’s a strange girl, always talking about the time she did this or that to the male population, like making one guy go cannibalistic on himself-”

Buffy held up her hand. “Okay, we get it.”

“I was only trying to help,” Cordy huffed, flopping back against her chair. “Anyway my point was, you should talk to her. She might know something.”

“Right, we’re on it,” Willow volunteered, tugging at Oz’s hand. They gathered their stuff and left the library.

“Faith and I could check out the professor’s place,” Buffy suggested, moving to get off his lap. His hands cinched around her waist, stilling her more effectively than words would have. He reluctantly let her go after pressing a soft kiss to the nape of her neck and one last squeeze of his fingers.

“Good, let me give you the directory of the professors for the university. I’m sure if he’s there, you’ll find him. If not, go find Willow; we’ll need her to use that blasted contraption to find him.” He muttered despairingly, throwing a hand wide at the computer on the checkout counter.

“You want me to go have a talk with Wilkins?” he asked, feeling bereft without Buffy. “Perhaps have a conversation with our friendly snitch?”

“Cordeila can go talk to Willy; I’m sure she can charm him. You go talk to the mayor, and I’ll stay here and research some things in my books.”

He nodded and left through the ss tos to track down the man who had made Sunnydale a hundred years ago.

****

The next day everyone was loitering in the library again.

The news from yesterday was grim; the man Wirth was found dead, but the murderer hadn’t found a box of broken treasures from the past. Giles was currently in his office studying them and the detailed journal Wirth had kept. Willow and Oz had found Anya, but the girl had glared mutinously at them and snapped bitterly, “I suggest you forget about living through graduation. My boyfriend won’t because he’s into daredevil trickery,” thus providing them with a date: tomorrow. The mayor, much to everyone’s dismay seemed to be impervious to all harm, like a letter opener lodged in his skull.

Things were piecing together too little too late. Dread hung palpably in the air, until a last minute idea was proposed: creating an explosion as big as a volcano. Jobs were handed out, and the Scoobies took to them with a vengeance, putting together a mob with a variety of mismatched weapons, a chemical fertilizer bomb, a lure of enticing bait, and an evacuation plan should the need arise.

****

Tomorrow they’d be facing a battle they wouldn’t easily forget. It seemed to him that too many battles like that happened in this town. One day, hopefully it wouldn’t be tomorrow, they were likely not going to fight and live to tell the tale.

Faith was hanging around at their place for awhile before leaving. He just wished she’d leave now so he could desert the inscription Giles was making him translate from a weird dialect of Gaelic, Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon to modern day English. If he were a superstitious Irishman, he might be tempted to say it was the damnable language of the Sidhe. It ws ifs if those blessed faeries had heard and granted him his fondest wish, for right at that exact moment Buffy walked through the door of his untidy office, pausing to lean against the doorjamb.

“Hiya, handsome,” Buffy murmured seductively from her vigil in the doorway.

Cheerfully, he flashed her his most charming smile and patted his lap. “Come here, gorgeous.”

When she had perched herself on his lap, he looked over down at her breasts, lazily pursuing her gentle curves with his gaze. Buffy wrapped herself around him like a living flame, and her fingers tapped idly on his chest to no particular beat. They sat there for seconds or hours, content to let the silence linger for a long time before breaking it. She cracked under the strain of impending boredom and he bit back a chortle at that.

“Tell me a story,” Buffy demanded, lifting her head up so that her chin rested over his heart. “A tall one,” she amended.

He needed a break, so he thought about it for awhile and thought about that odd occurrence down in Mexico in the 1960s. Those masked men, he was sure he could spin that into something that’d make her smile, and possibly laugh. Masked Mexican men. Five of them. Five jumping masked Mexican men in tuxedos, and they were fighting… fighting… fighting what? He screwed up his eyes and decided he’d have to make something up- like shampoo fish.

He held back a bark of laughter and began to spin the tale. Yeah, the shampoo fish were populating all the good watering holes, and these jumping Mexican men went out daily to fight the evil, heart-stealing fish- Buffy’s lips trembled upward in a snickering smile. Despite his blossoming confidence, he obviously didn’t know when to quit, so he kept trudging along until she was laughing so hard tears leaked from her eyes and her side split from cracking up at the stupid - yes, stupid, he knew it was dumb - tall tale, but it was what she asked for, was it not?

“Shh,” he admonished. “Be quiet. I’m not to the end of the story yet.” At this Buffy nodded with exaggerated solemnity; he glared. “Anyway, as I was saying. There they were, these five brothers, all of them trying to pin these shampoo fish like they would wrestle a man to the ground. The fish kept slipping and sliding, and I had a horrible time not laughing. I figured why not leave them to sweat it out a little bit, after all they had rudely told me they didn’t need my help. It was childish, but rewarding at the time.”

“I bet,” Buffy remarked her lips quirking.

“By the time I realized that they were having more difficulty than they should with the slimy water aquamarine creatures, it was too late. Three of them wiped out Brothers Two, Three, and Four. I immediately forged into battle, my black duster billowing around me to the delight of all who watched the mysterious man in black-”

Buffy interjected, amused, “Mysterious and billowing?”

“The slippery shampoo fish-” He got interrupted again…

“Who were sudsy,” she added with a soft laugh.

“Can I tell this story?” he asked grumpily, looking directly into her hazel eyes as she sat on his lap.

The glare she gave him made him smile. “Great,” he said with a clap of his hands. “Now, then I was wearing my billowy duster and charging into battle to save the hearts of the two remaining mortals. The fish were liable to get to them and kill them before I did, buran ran like lightning and leapt onto the back of the first soapy demon fish and poked its eyes out with my thumbs. It screeched and hurled me backwards, Number One just as Brother Five was attempting to kill the attacking pond scum.”

She held her sides and pressed her lips to his to stop him. “I’m starting to question the credibility of this story,” Buffy whispered.

“Yeah but you asked for something that literally means a story nobody’d believe because it’s exaggerated beyond the point of credibility.”

Buffy kissed the corner of his mouth. “Do you win?” She asked quietly.

“Naturally,” he told her, turning his head and capturing her lips in a scorching kiss.

“Why’d you win?” she inquired softly, pulling lowelower lip between her teeth and biting gently.

“Because the shampoo fish didn’t think Number Five and I were heroes… or at least didn’t believe we had the hearts of heroes.”

Shocked, Buffy looked at him. “So they didn’t want your heart?”

He shook his head no, and attempted to capture her lips again, but she held back, placing her hand over his chest. “Can I have it?” Buffy murmured reverently, placing a bid on the silent object beneath her hand.

“You sure you want this dried up bit of jerky?” He pointed out, mocking himself.

Buffy tapped softly with two fingers on his heart, her lips pursed in thought. When she looked up at him, he saw the unholy look of greed lurking in the shadows of green and blue. “I want it,” Buffy insisted. “Does your heart belong to me now?”

He sat there speechless over her fierce fervor, a warm glow wrapped around his heart, squeezing slowly and creating a pang of bittersweet emotion. “Yeah,” he told her huskily, “it’s yours. Forever.”

Satisfied, she laid her head on his chest and watched her fingers trace the muscles of his chest. “I think it has the letters, B, u, f, f, y carved into its velvety flesh. I hear it beating.”

“Buffy honey, I’m dead. My heart doesn’t beat,” he clarified.

“Mm-mm,” she rebuked him, and tapped a fingernail lazily on his chest, flicking the nipple that stood in silent salute. “It’s saying: Property of Buffy; I belong to Buffy; I love Buffy- again and again and again.”

“That’s quite a mantra there, but I have no objections to it,” he murmured, content. “Let’s go to bed. Tomorrow we’ll fight the mayor.”

Buffy hopped off his lap and tugged hard on his outstretched hand. All the way up the stairs they kept glancing at each other, barely containing the urge to succumb to the desire that hid just beneath the surface. By the time they reached landlanding, he was ready to scoop her up in his arms and ravish her until neither of them knew their names or who they were or what was supposed to happen the next day.

“I need you,” he rumbled harshly, a growl ticking in his words.

Buffy wrapped her arms and legs around him as she jumped up. “Kiss me here, so we’re not tempted to do more when we lie on the bed.”

And he did.

Later when the haze of passion had slid beneath their facades and was locked up as tightly as they could manage, both of them still felt the urgency to never stop touching and kissing each other.

He rested on his back for many moments, gathering control before twisting onto his side and curling around her small frame. His arms were wrapped around her waist, and his nose was buried in the silken curls at the nape of her neck. Her scent wafted around him, surrounding him with the comforting knowledge that she was his.

Tiredly, his eyes drifted shut, blocking out the potential horrors of tomorrow. He hugged her tighter, and Buffy returned it with a gentle squeeze before she slipped into sleep, her backside nestled between his thighs. A few moments later he closed his eyes and surrendered to the black abyss.

****

He woke up slowly, wishing to remain in the coils of slumber. He stretched slightly, and his foot came in contact with a cool one. It startled him, and his eyes flew open as he leaned up on an elbow to gaze down at Buffy. A feeling of anxiety grew like a lump of ice in his stomach before she shifted restlessly on the bed. Satisfied also to see that she was still bhinghing, he wedged his feet between hers and tried to warm them up, feeling a twinge of guilt for stealing their warmth to begin with.

Her small feet were nestled between his larger ones as he rubbed vigorously if a little haphazardly. He could just imagine those pretty yellow and teal toenails, and well he should for she had made him do them while she read aloud another tale from his collection. Buffy’s toes and feet were very important, he surmised as he ducked under the covers to where she laid sleeping curled into a ball.

He grabbed her feet in his hands and began tracing their contours with the tip of his tongue. She squirmed in his loving grasp, wrenching the foot away for a precious few seconds before he grabbed it and brought it back to his worshiping mouth. His heart burst to overflowing with her sweet sigh as she rolled over onto her back. Devilishly he nuzzled the sensitive arch of her foot, his thumb brushing lightly against her ankle bone, and he laughed softly at her plaintive whimper.

Attacking the other foot with equal relish, he grinned while pressing wet open mouthed kisses to her tiny heel. He found mirth when she kicked out at him, catching his temple with the side of her abandoned foot.

“An--gel!” Buffy whined, kicking her feet away from him. “Stop it!”

He came up from under the covers with a smug smirk, while she merely rolled her eyes and curled up facing the middle of the bed, her eyes closing swiftly to welcome back the tatters of her sleep. She was beautiful, and definitely not a morning person.

“Come on sleepy head, it’s time to wake up,” he cajoled, bringing her instep to his lips for a reverent kiss

“No,” she croaked pitifully, pulling the pillow over her face.

“I’ll make you pancakes,” he bribed, gently taking the pillow away before pressing kisses to her slightly parted mouth.

Buffy slipped her tongue into the cool oasis of his mouth. “Not hungry.”

“Should I let you sleep?” he asked deviously, drawing away from her in slow increments, breaking the kiss.

“Stay,” Buffy whispered, opening her eyes to gaze up at him.
He gave her a hard kiss and got off the bed. “Things to do, sweet pea. Like get dressed.”

She yawned widely and got up out of the sea of blankets that always adorned the bed, like an exotic butterfly emerging from her cocoon. Blond hair tumbled wildly around her shoulders, in a rumpled disarray that just begged to be twisted and snarled even more as he shifted his fingers through her tresses.

As Buffy walked dazedly past him, her feet shuffling in slothfulness, he repressed a shudder of agony. When the bathroom door clicked shut, he stumbled blindly to the bed and sat down heavily upon it. Bleak moments passed before he collected himself and scrubbed the sleep from his face. The other shoe was dropping; he could feel Angelus rising gloatingly to the surface--- to be happy, all he needed was her.

Waking up beside her had become a sweet torment, bringing light to his dismal circumstances. He couldn’t be with her, near her, without risking her. Bile rose in his throat as he fled from their room and the sounds of the shower running. That lump of ice was back, swelling painfully with every step until he collapsed against the railing of sta stairs.

Determined, he grit his teeth and pushed mentally on the cackling force shoving steadily toward the surface. This wasn’t like the last time, where it had happened immediately; this time, he seemed to have some control to keep the demon at bay. But it was difficult, the curse working to aid Angelus in many ways.

Seeing her the first moment he opened his eyes was a gift too sweet. Numbly he pushed away from the railing, and with minced strides he walked swiftly into the kitchen, mindlessly preparing her breakfast. This might be the last time he got to do it for her. Victory was too close to the demon; he and Buffy couldn’t maintain this relationship and hope to not break the curse.

Happiness came in many forms… his was in the shape of a petite blonde.

Should they fight the mayor today and come out victorious, he’d have to tell Buffy, but should they not, he’d be spared telling her because one or both of them would be dead. Maybe that was why he held some control, because he knew that there was a chance that despite their plans, things could go wrong. Terribly wrong. And knowing that, he understood that should the threat of the bad guys ever diminish he wouldn’t have a prayer of locking Angelus inside. Things didn’t have to be perfect. They just had to be good.

A void was opening up inside him, gnawing through his soul, intent on eating him alive until he had nothing left.

“Angel?”

At the sound of her voice, his eyes closed in despair.

He knew he wasn’t worthy of her, not after all the things he’d done. But this, letting him get so close to having everything he could ever possibly want and ripping it away… he would prefer to spend an eternity in a Sphere of Eternal Torment than suffer this fresh, more lasting misery.

****

The moment the moon was blocked out by the sun, all hell broke loose on the grounds of Sunnydale High. Students reared up with weapons of great destruction, for vampires anyway. They torched and staked and doused with the best of them. His own army wasn’tng tng to bad, Willy pulled through surprisingly. He obviously didn’t like that Wilkins was really like all other politicians, evil rotten lying cheating bastards.

That had been an hour ago, but now, now things were hitting deep shit and sinking faster. Occasionally from the corner of his eye he’d spy Buffy attempting to attack, bait, and lure the mayor into following her into the library of the school, but it wasn’t working like they had hoped. Faith was commanding the graduates of 1999 and forcing them to keep fighting, even though they were not used to the strain and demand on them.

Still vampires and demons poured onto the campus in flocks. Droves of them tried to kill the slayers, but found death before passing by where his team waited. Anxiously he focused on her petite form in the throng and held unknowingly still until she would scramble free of the mess. He longed to go help her, but the mayor’s flunkies would get between them no matter how many he killed.

Oz, Willow, and Cordy were with Giles, frantically setting up more fertilizer bombs in the library. Willow was using magic to keep the smell from reaching outside the room, afraid that it alone might deter the mayor and then they’d be lost. The Ascension wasn’t going well for anyone but the demon lord himself, who glutted on all those too close to his growing form, elongating neck, and wide jaws.

They couldn’t attempt to save everyone today. He watched from where he was fighting tooth and nail for Buffy and Faith, and he knew a few more easy kills when he didn't need to divide his attentions between the two of them and the onslaught of rabid foaming at the fang vampires. Suddenly their two forms disappeared from the mob of students and demons. Worry creased his brow and tied up his already aching heart as he turned away to scan the grassy field.

Something whacked him on the back of the head, and he fell from the stairs onto the concrete below. With a hearty groan he pushed himself up onto one hand and slowly stood up before shooting a look one way. His heart leapt into his throat as he watched helplessly as Buffy got tossed by Wilkins through the door of the high school.

It was time to get everyone into evacuation gear. He made the signal and Willy emerged from beneath an overhang and did whatever it was he was supposed to do to get people moving as far away from the campus as possible. He had to catch up with Buffy and--

The sound of glass shattering broke through the silent thunder which was drowning him in indecision. His gaze snapped to the crash and he saw two figures leap out of the window. In that split second he ran flat out from the cafeteria, hurling himself away from the imminent explosion. When the blast of heat hit him, it knocked him forward, pitching him face first into the dirt.

Cheers rang up from the onlookers, as they dragged themselves away from the wreckage of their high school career with nothing but dreams and tattered diplomas. They were lucky to have made it this far, to have survived the horrors of this small town, and the hellmouth. He was proud of them… he was proud of Buffy. She too had made it, with the added weight of duties and responsibilities of being the slayer.

She ran to him, a big smile lighting up her face, and all he felt was the approaching void. He swept her up in his arms, and held her fiercely to his breast, burying his face in her dirty hair, pressing her blackened face to his shoulder, wishing for all the world things were different. For after all this was a pyrrhic victory. The pretty penny to be spent in happiness and love… cried in blood.

“I love you,” he whispered earnestly, protecting her from the image of the smoldering building.

“Think it’ll go on my transcripts?” she laughed weakly, lifting her face for a kiss.

“Along with that burnt gym? Why Miss Summers, how naughty you’ve become,” he teased lightheartedly, even if he didn’t feel it.

“Can you believe it?” Buffy asked, pulling a piece of loose hair from under her nose and tucking it behind her ear.

Hugging her closer, he started to steer them away from the others. “I’m so proud of you, Buffy.”

Buffy grinned, her teeth shining whiter than normal in her smudged face. “That means a lot. I’m thinking ice cream to celebrate followed by a bubble bath. What about you?”

His head fell forward as he laughed weakly. “I’m thinking a bag of blood and a massage for my tense shoulder blades.”

Buffy glanced up at him from beneath her eyelashes, fluttering them wildly before proposing, “Well if you join me in my bubble bath, I’m certain I could do something for those aching muscles.”

“Tempting,” he replied softly, his eyes full of yearning.

****

He choked, swallowing thickly as he hefted his duffel bag over his shoulder. He stole one last glance at her sleeping countenance, and he couldn’t prevent his fingers from entangling in the hair at her temple. It felt so soft. She smelled so clean. He was helpless to deny himself one last breath of her sweet vanilla fragrance.

His eyes closed as he imprinted the memory into his heart, before kissing her forehead… trailing to her nose… following the line of her cheek… before pressing softly… so softly to her lips…

Then he was gone.