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Annie Sewell-Jennings
E-MAIL: Auralissa@aol.com
SUMMARY: After the world is destroyed by nuclear apocalypse, Buffy and Spike meet up in Australia for what may be the last summer on Earth. Buffy/Spike
RATING: NC-17
SPOILERS: Post-"Restless"
Author's site: http://geocities.com/anniesjennings/index.html
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This story was inspired by the story of "On the Beach" by Nevil Shute, as well as the updated version of the story as soon on Showtime, starring Armand Assante, Rachel Ward and Bryan Brown. The film is poignant, exquisitely shot, and subtly moving, as it displays the end of humanity in a very calm and remarkable way. I can't stop thinking about the movie. I dream about it. I contemplate it. I fear its possibilities. And I am inspired by it.
Thanks to Phillip-Morris, the unwitting sponsors of this work. Without my Marlboros, I don't know where I'd be. <plug plug> Also thanks to Alanna, for making me read "Iolokus" (XF genre by MustangSally and RivkaT, and a truly inspired piece of work) and therefore helping me acquire the bitterness that inspired Buffy and Spike's dysfunctional relationship in this piece. The Mooselet will always kick ass. Most of all, thank you Heather, for keeping me on the right track and keeping me writing this story, no matter what reservations I may have had about writing two fics inspired by the same film. This one is the fleshed-out version of what I truly wanted to write, and I'm glad that I could take the time to write this story in the way I wanted to write it.
The scene was destructive. Painted in the cool lime of a
streetlight, his mouth berry red and glistening with ripe
moisture, face shifted into the immortal and distorted visage of
the demon that she had ignored since his arrival, Spike held the
young girl limply to his body. The girl was dead, blue hair
glimmering around her face like a pixie, her slender body clothed
in tight zebra pants and a sequined top. Death had already stolen
her - she was gone. Absolutely gone.
Pained, Buffy staggered backwards, and Spike threw the body to
the ground, his snarling face shifting back to its more human
visage, if anything about the bastard of a vampire could ever be
considered human. The very sight of her anguished expression
infuriated him, and he stepped closer to her, knocking the stake
out of her hands with his bloodstained palm. Caught red-handed,
Buffy thought dazedly. She had caught him red-handed.
"So what!" he shouted at her, an inhuman snarl catching his
words. "Yeah, I killed her. I'm a bloody vampire! It's what I do.
You didn't think that fucking me would change that, did you?
You're not *that* naïve!" The angular cheekbones stood out
gauntly, and his eyes flared with a mixture of cerulean and
amber, so passionate that she felt burned just by looking at him.
Rage flooded her body, pure and uncontrollable, and she slammed
her fist into his face, hair flying around her face in a fury of
multicolored gold. She was a portrait of danger, of death and
destruction, in her black tank top and flared jeans, the Doc
Martens heavy and her hair a frenzied mass of fragmented gold.
She smelled of cigarettes and hormones, and he knew that in this
state she'd kill him just for the adrenaline high that would
follow. "I know what you are," she said harshly, her face clean
and unmarred by her heavy hand and eyeliner, flushed the color of
exploding roses. "You're a pathetic bastard of a man who's
terrified of death and kills to make up for it." He was floored
and she knew it. "Yeah, Spike, I know that you're scared of it.
You tiptoe around the windows during the day and you can't bring
yourself to actually kill yourself. I've watched you and waited
for you to go Nike and just do it, but you wimp out every single
time." She twisted her face into a sneer. "Loser."
Rage uncontrollable. Lust undeniable. Anger irrevocable. He had
never hated her more than in that singular moment, with her self-
righteous sea eyes and her dusted clothing, her hair a myriad of
ridiculous colors and her chin tilted in the lift of the arrogant
and stupid. Outraged pulsed along with the lights inside of the
warehouse, and Spike grabbed her by her hair, his chipped
fingernails sinking into the raging rapids of her blue and gold
hair, and she hissed at the pain, never giving him the pleasure
of whimpering. "You're a ripe one to talk about fearing death,"
he hissed. "You with your bloody warehouses and little whelps,
your sodding *stupid* hair and your badgering. You're nothing,
you know. You're just a good shag and that's about it. Everything
that was decent about you died in America with the rest of your
friends, and now you're worthless."
With that, he tugged once more on her kaleidoscopic hair, the
strands flying out like parrot's feathers when he released her,
and she stumbled briefly, regaining her balance and approaching
him with a voice like cut glass and barbed wire. "I'm *not*
worthless," she said boldly, and Spike arched his scarred eyebrow
at her. "None of us are worthless. That's something that you
don't understand and something that you never have understood.
We're all worth something on this planet, and everyone thinks
that we're just nameless bodies. Statistics." She glared at him
as though he had pressed the button and started this mess. "Well,
I'm not a fucking statistic! I'm Buffy Summers!" Her voice was
becoming mangled by tears that she shattered before they could
fall. "I'm the goddamn Slayer! The Chosen One! The one who saved
everyone's asses but still got screwed in the end because no one
knew who I was!"
Furiously, Spike yelled at her, his mouth inches away from hers,
gesturing emphatically as he spoke. "Yeah, well what about me?"
he demanded, his voice broken and dark, like hard candy. "You
think you know everything that there is to know about old Spike,
don't you? That I'm just a bad-ass, chain-smoking, murdering,
bad, rude man? Well, I've got a little confession for you,
Summers - it just so happens that I *like* this planet. I like
its style. I like living my immortal unlife and I don't fancy the
idea of giving it up any time soon. I'm supposed to be bloody
immortal, and I feel a little cheated on that whole end of the
deal!"
Thunder rumbled in the distance; lightning the color of his
bleached hair and just as malevolent flickered in between the
spires of glass and metal. Wind whispered, and the entire world
seemed electrified with the violence rippling between the vampire
and the Slayer. Desperately, desolately, Buffy threw her hands
up, her wrists seemingly chained and shackled by the myriad of
black bracelets that decorated her gold skin, eyes brimming with
the emptiness that came from being sentenced to death. "Don't you
get it, Spike?" she said, her voice hard and brittle all at once.
"We were *all* cheated. Every single one of us. We all got
screwed over because of this."
Lightning blistered through the skies, and the clouds exploded
over them, showering them with pelting rain. The world had turned
on her again, a storm unfurling and unleashing a devastating
assault of liquid and electricity, and Buffy closed her eyes,
tipping her head backwards, feeling the rains falling on her. It
made her feel like crying and it made her feel like killing
someone. These were the rains that would one day kill her. Maybe
they were killing her now. The rains sweeping in from the
Northern Hemisphere, weeping tears of radioactive liquid,
bringing damnation and precipitation in a flood that not even
Noah's ark could survive.
Oh, fuck, they were all so screwed.
Descending in a whirlwind of impassioned destruction, Buffy felt
her emotions spiral in an earth-shattering tornado of tumultuous
discord, falling into despair, and she fought tears with a skill
less sufficient than her abilities as a Slayer. She wanted to
weep, wanted to scream, wanted to do something rather than remain
in this state of helpless anticipation. Waiting for death was a
long and drawn-out process of anguish, and she felt useless, felt
worthless, just as he'd said that she was.
Slowly, terrified of seeing the whorl of death's cloak in the
twist of storm clouds above her, Buffy opened her eyes, looking
at the storm that was pouring on her in a torrent of ruining
rain. Palms outstretched, waiting for the nails to drive through
palms and feet, Buffy let it rain, and he watched her silently,
wanting to draw her into himself, to swallow her wretchedness and
digest her despair. He understood it. Understood the feeling of
absolute uselessness, the desperation of knowing that death was
knocking and there was nothing that he could do to stop it. They
were bound together now. Tethered by turmoil - it was a bond that
they would never have experienced if the world hadn't destroyed
itself.
Leather licked at his legs as he walked to her, and she opened
her eyes slowly, looking at him in his exquisitely defiant
beauty, water sluicing down the carved angles of his cheekbones,
catching on the incongruous pout of his lower lip. That mouth,
soft and luxurious, was the antithesis of who he was. Such an
oddly soft mouth for a man who was so malevolent and sharp. She
reached her fingertips out and touched him, and she crushed her
body to his in an embrace too brutal to be kind or sweet. Water
poured down on them as she kissed him, her hair a drenched mass
of color and design, never colorful enough to hide how achromatic
and numb she had become.
"I don't know who I've become," she confessed in a hushed murmur,
and her murdering priest threaded his hands through the tangle of
reds and blues that had swallowed the purity of her hair.
"Neither do I," he said, and it wasn't as comforting as she had
wanted it to be. Didn't matter. She would kiss him anyway, make
love to him here, because she could understand passion better
than she could understand herself.
Water poured down in a constant timpani of percussion, soft and
hard all at once, and that was him as well. Shaking fingers
pulled his duster off his shoulders, and it fell to the ground in
a puddle of leather and liquid. She set herself to work on his
mouth, tossing her hair back in a fan of magenta and cerulean,
the gold as white as his peroxide hair. Hooking her arms around
his neck, she felt his hands ascend her spine, fingernails
digging into her skin with a pain so pleasant that it was
delectable. Scratch the surface, she willed. Remove the scar
tissue.
It was too thick for her to ever deal with.
Crying out into his mouth, she arched her back, edges of
flamboyant hair tickling his wrists, and he grabbed the skin of
her back, wrenching a throaty moan that was mixed with agony and
ecstasy from her mouth. Coarsely, he kissed her, holding back
nothing, lusting for her in a thousand ways, and it was a
heartbreaking want that propelled her to a mouth that tasted like
melted pennies, coppery from the blood that he had stolen.
Pennies from heaven, swallowed by hell - that was the flavor of
his mouth, and she was addicted. Hooked. She was hopeless.
Rain slammed down on them both, coursing down the lines of their
bodies, painting them in opaque waters. Safe, clean, supposedly
redeeming; these naïve rains. She was filth that required more
cleansing than one thundershower, and yet she took this for what
it was. She took it because it temporarily filled her. Sad, that
the only time she felt alive anymore was in the embrace of the
undead.
Bodies separated for a whisper of a moment to remove clothing;
she commandingly and brutally tore off his tee shirt and revealed
his milky skin to the rain, as though it were some sort of
twisted sacrifice to the gods. The gods were silent these days.
Perhaps they were ashamed of the foolishness of their creation;
she didn't know. The black tank top that revealed a sliver of her
taut abdomen slid off of her slicked body with less ease,
stubbornly clinging to the moist curvature of her svelte figure.
Spike couldn't blame the article of clothing; he wanted to remain
plastered to her skin for the short remainder of his life. She
was the best thing left on earth, even if she thought herself
hollow and criminal. It was criminal for them to do this, but
Spike had never been one for rules in the first place.
Black satin clung to her breasts, shimmering with the rainwater
that dampened it, and she felt so heated from arousal that she
thought she'd exude steam from her body heat. He was so cool that
he personified rain, and maybe that was what flowed through his
dead veins. Water instead of blood. Precipitation instead of
pulse. She tipped her head back as he caressed her, and the
street light died suddenly, plunging them into darkness. The
power had gone out, the lights slamming them into pitch, and the
lightning increased with an intensity comparable to a natural
strobe, flickering and giving images in flashes and spurts.
Percussion matched with thunder, creating a synchrony of arousal
and storm, and she was as taut as an electric wire with want.
And the lightning revealed it all in fragmented glimpses:
Scarlet fingernails scraped up his back, a sharp contrast of
crimson and porcelain. Flashes of magenta and blue, dark and
damp, fanning in the air as she tilted her head back from
pleasure. Her face a mosaic of desire, eyes closed and lips
parted, a symphony of sensuality pouring from her mouth in an
operatic score. Breasts round and ripened, chipped black
fingernails tracing juicy underside and sliding underneath satin
to caress coral nipples. Hardness straining for soft warmth,
navel hollow and filled with perspiration and precipitation.
Magnetic cerulean eyes underneath fringes of black, lost with
lust and impossible to surface from, deeper than tidal pools and
oceans. A mouth too soft to be his, exuding shaking rasps of want
that were incomprehensible to anyone but her, sculpted in a
fashion that rivaled Adonis.
Fingertips delved inside the waistband of her ebony pants,
tracing the line down to the soft rise of her satin-covered mons,
and he slid his fingers inside of her panties, tracing the
swollen and moist folds in a fashion that made her strangle a
scream. Taunting, like silk scarves cooled and poured over muscle
and bone, and she clawed his shoulder frenetically, not caring
who saw them or who knew. No one to tattle on them now. No one to
damn them for their tryst, this affair between vampire and
Slayer. No one to care.
No one to stop them.
Brutally, his fingertip slid inside of her, and she moaned, her
head flying forward and resting against his chest, gasping into
the soft skin that seemed so hard, like marble, but was as gentle
as milk and cream. Slowly, he pumped one finger inside of her, a
second one joining the first in a rhythm that seemed to delicate
to undo her, but she was being unlaced anyway. Hissing in a
breath, she begged for more, thrusting her hips against the palm
of his hand, and he teased her with an agony. She would make him
go faster; she kissed the juncture of his shoulder and neck and
nipped at it with her teeth, scraping at the skin, and he groaned
loudly and suddenly, aroused beyond control.
He was losing it. Losing his sanity, losing his cool, losing the
malevolence that kept her away from him and kept him effectively
away from her. Desperation replaced taunting as her daring little
teeth swept at his throat like a kitten's, her tongue and teeth
undoing him in a thousand different ways. She knew what he was
and instead of loathing him for it, she turned the tables on him.
She embraced his vampirism and used it against him, turning him
into a raving lunatic, mad with desire. He'd never wanted anyone
like he wanted her, if only because she was the most original
creature he'd ever known. More magnificent than Drusilla - and he
was almost afraid of thinking that.
Raspberry lips stained his throat with her juices, coloring his
throat a soft mulberry with her lipstick, and Spike actually
whimpered, hating how she could make him lose himself so easily.
His fingers circled her clitoris, so hard and so aroused that he
almost felt warm with the stolen blood that pumped through his
veins. He was shocked by the heat that flooded through him and
around him, as though he was borrowing blaze, and she was burned
clay in the sculpture of a beautiful girl. She lavished attention
on his jugular, and she cried out when he finally touched the
swollen berry between her legs, her head tossing back an arch of
colors, and her teeth nipped the underside of his chin. "Oh,
Christ!" Spike cried out, his other hand grabbing her hair in a
needy attempt to still his arousal for just a few moments longer.
The downpour of water continued, showering them both with
liquefied diamonds, and Buffy thrust her hips in rhythm with his
fingers, feeling herself nearing orgasm, nearing climax, all from
the combination of the taste of his skin and the way that his
cool fingers rotated the bundle of nerves that demanded his
touch. She was going insane, and his fingers flew with a frenzy,
as she bit down on his hardened male nipple, deriving a hiss from
the vampire she'd grown so attached to in the course of a couple
of days.
Suddenly, in the flash of lightning, he'd pulled his hand away,
roughly turning her to the wall, and her hair trailed behind her
in a banner of blues and reds, like a tarnished flag. "Now," he
said, his voice broken and shaking from the power of his desire.
"Right *now*." With that, he undid the fly of his jeans, and she
followed suit, yanking down her pants and panties, smelling the
salty aroma of her own arousal like a marsh in summer. She was
shaking, quaking from arousal, and her lower lip trembled as it
only did when she was on the verge of tears or climax. White
light flickered again, and she saw the look of frenzied need in
his eyes, and she kissed him as he lifted her up against the
bricks. Threading her arms and legs around him, Buffy kissed him,
soaking strands of dyed hair clinging to both her skin and his.
A scream shattered the air and was swallowed by thunder when he
entered her, hard and thick, cool skin underlined with the heat
of his borrowed blood, and she gasped, eyes wide and alert with
the force of his thrusts. The angle of his cock hit her clitoris
as he pumped in and out of her, and she suddenly felt his cock
slide inside of her, brushing the sensitive spot inside of her
that made her want to melt with arousal. Elusive and real, a
place that only she knew about and Spike had almost instinctively
found. The satin that bound her breasts heightened the heat that
had been released, and she arched her body against his, drowning
her screams in his mouth as he thrust in and out of her. She
suddenly came with a fury, biting down hard on his lower lip as
she climaxed, making them both taste his blood.
Frenetic pulsing surrounded his cock as her orgasm hit, and the
spasms tugged at him insistently. The pleasure-pain of her bite
brought him over the precipice, and he followed her swiftly,
merely seconds behind her hard orgasm. Groaning with a strangled
insanity, Spike threw his head back when he came, hips pulsing
inside of her, and he came so hard that his knees trembled under
her meager weight. Rain shot down the hard angles of his razor-
sharp face, and she cupped the nape of his neck with her
fingertips, softly massaging the nape of his neck as he emptied
himself inside of her, sighing out a nonexistent breath from
their coupling.
Slowly, tremulously, he pulled out of her and lowered her to the
ground, both drenched beyond belief, and she was nearly panting
with the exertion and unabashed passion of their coupling. Water
clung to her eyelashes as she looked up at him, and he braced
himself against the wall, his lungs panting dead breaths in a
parody of respiration, pressing his forehead to hers. She found
herself locked in the tired eyes of the blond vampire, usually so
dangerous, now exhausted and tired, and she did what she thought
she'd never do.
Sweetly, she kissed him, dragging her lower lip against his, and
her carmine fingertips traced the sharp line of his jaw, smiling
a little at him with the old innocence of who she once had been.
Startled, Spike looked at her, and he found himself almost
laughably mad when he thought that he might be falling in love
with her. "You know, I hate you too much to let you go," he said,
and Buffy just chuckled at that breathlessly, her mouth twisted
in a cynical smile.
"Well, if you can't spend the end of the world with someone you
love, you may as well spend it with someone you hate," she
finally decided, and he laughed at that. She ducked down, picking
up his black tee shirt and handing it to him, soggy and drenched
from the steady flow of rain. "So don't leave me."
When he spoke, it was with a strangled earnestness. "I don't
think I could leave you," he said, and she shivered at that, at
the frightening prospect of actually falling in love with this
monster.
"No," she whispered. "I don't think I could either."
And they stared at each other, helpless in the idea that they
were all that was left.
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