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Author's Chapter Notes:
There is some William/Dru stuff in this chapter, BUT don't worry. It's there because I thought it would tell you more about them as people. Who they are and how they feel. You'll see. :)

Beta'd by All4Spike.
Chapter 16

As soon as her father’s voice rang from the foyer, Buffy leaped away from Spike.

“You have to go,” she hissed urgently and pushed him towards the back door of the kitchen, all the while determined to ignore the firm chest under her palms. He was evil. He had to be. There was no other explanation for the tingle that radiated from her hands to the tips of her toes.

“Buffy are you in the kitchen?”

“Yes!” she called, glaring at the infuriating wink Spike sent her way before making himself scarce.

“Ah, there you are,” her father said.

She twirled around with guilt written all over her face. “I made cookies!”

“All right.” He gave her a dubious glance. “You’re acting strange. You haven’t made the oven explode, have you?”

“Haha, very funny.”

A shrug. “Wouldn’t be the first time, pumpkin.” Hank’s eyes narrowed at the door, which made her heart double its already increased beat. “I’d swear I heard the door close.”

Think Buffy, think! “Oh… that was me. Just… getting some fresh air, you know. It’s gotten all hot what with the oven and… baking.”

And the almost smoochies with the hot—no, evil—possible criminal whose lips turned her to a puddle of mush. Damn him.

“Hmm… these are yummy,” Hank said with his mouth full and ruffled her hair.

Buffy sat down and finally let out the breath she’d been holding. That had been close. Way too close.

“Shouldn’t you be on a diet?”

“I’ll only have one,” Dad said with his mouth full.

Why couldn’t he have arrived a few minutes later?

“Why are you pouting?”

Buffy rested her forehead against the table surface with a groan she couldn’t quite hold back.

*******

When she went to bed that night, Buffy was determined to find out if she really had been sleepwalking as she suspected. She had a plan. A good one.

She just hoped her dad wouldn’t walk in on her as she poured flour all over the floor around her bed. He’d blow a gasket. Messy or not, this was the only way she could think of that would show if she walked around at night. It would show her footprints.

And there had to be footprints because if there weren’t any in the morning, she didn’t know what she’d do. Didn’t even want to think of the possibility that she might be going insane. As insane as her mother had been. That was one fear that had plagued her since she was a child and she couldn’t handle the thought of losing her grip on reality.

It was bad enough to look into the mirror every day and see her mother’s eyes and lips reflected back at her. Sometimes she wished she’d look lot more like Dad.

*******

They were laughing. Laughing and dancing in the streets under the pale sheen of the moon, William’s heart racing as the adrenaline surged through his veins.

They had done it. They had run away, tossed away the shackles of misery looming in the corners of the foster home.

This was freedom.

Holding Drusilla in his arms, seeing the stars reflect in the depth of her eyes. The world lay at their feet in all its terrifyingly splendid glory.

Finding a place to live didn’t prove to be that difficult. Sure, it wasn’t glamorous but he’d managed to find out how tap the city’s power lines to gain electricity. The man who fixed it for him had been more than a little shifty. It was illegal and would give William plenty of trouble if the authorities found out. Not that he cared. What could they do to him? He had nothing to lose, nothing they could take away that he couldn’t survive without.

He had nothing but her.

William gripped Drusilla’s hand as they ran through the alleys, her giggles warming his heart. With her at his side, he felt alive for the first time since he’d buried his mother. The only thing that mattered was to make Dru smile, to be allowed to hold her when things got rough.

It should have scared him.

The life he led at the age of fifteen was so removed from normal he might as well have been a clown at a circus that traveled a different galaxy. Stealing money to buy food and clothes should have shamed him, but he found himself not caring at all. Everything had been taken away from them both, so who cared if those who had everything unwillingly donated to keep them alive?

“My skin tingles,” Drusilla said breathlessly as they came to a halt in the deep recesses of a dirty alley, facing the entrance to their studio flat. It had been abandoned when they‘d stumbled upon it. The location wasn’t known for its safety and it looked like it had been a part of a now abandoned factory. In William’s mind, it was perfect.

“Feel me, William, feel how warm I am,” she said dreamily and laid his hand above her breast. Her heartbeat pounded against his palm.

They had managed to steal the money without getting caught again. The drunken rich kids leaving clubs were always easy pickings.

“You’re beautiful is what you are,” he whispered against her cheek and unlocked the door.

They stumbled in, drunk on success and the feeling of being alive.

The door closed, the only light filtered from the narrow horizontal windows from above. Drusilla’s face was half concealed by shadows, her slender fingers pushing into his hair.

“You say the sweetest things to me,” she said and swayed away from him, moving to the music only she could hear as she twirled through the open space of the studio.

“You’re my princess, aren’t you? How could I say anything else?” The hunger for her increased from to day to day. When he lay awake at night with her warmth so close he could almost touch it, all he imagined was pressing kisses into her milky skin, tasting her soft lips, losing himself inside her.

Drusilla stopped and sank down on the king sized mattress they used as a bed, her arms stretched above her head. She wore a long white dress they’d bought at a vintage store. He’d never seen anyone more beautiful, more magnetic.

“Come here,” she said with her eyes half closed and extended one leg. “Take off my shoes?”

He was her dog, ready to come to her side at a moment’s notice, eager and desperate to be as close as she allowed. In a world where he had nothing, he’d made Dru the center of his universe.

William knelt down, caressed her calf as he slipped her feet out of the ballerina shoes she so loved to wear. Her skin was smoother than the silk of her dress and he longed to lean down and taste it with his lips.

“Have you had fun today?” he asked, stroking her calves.

“Oh yes. I do love to dance. Can we go tomorrow as well?”

“We can do whatever you wish to do.” He loved to watch her dance. They would slip in through the back door, and she’d move with grace no other girl could hope to match. In the sea of skimpily clad teenagers, Dru looked like a rose amongst weeds. And he wasn’t the only one to notice. She often used her charms to pick the pockets of those narrow minded fools who thought they could seduce her, not knowing or caring she was just sixteen. The pangs of jealousy would always prick at him even when he knew she’d never leave him. Not for any of them.

Dru sat up and stroked the unruly curls away from his forehead. “You’re always so good to me, William. Taking care of me.”

He leaned into her hand. “You’re all I’ve got.”

She cupped his chin and leaned down to kiss him. She did that sometimes, gave him chaste kisses that never crossed the line of friendship but the fleeting contact was always agonizing. It only made the hunger worse.

Except she wasn’t leaning away this time and her tongue parted his lips, leaving him breathless, flushed with desire when he returned the caress.

“Dru, what are you—”

“Hush,” she murmured against his parted lips. “Let me show you.”

“Wait, we shouldn’t,” he offered the protest but it was feeble at best. His brain wouldn’t work properly when she touched him.

“I know you want to.” She lay back against the mattress and his gaze devoured every inch of exposed skin as she slid her dress up to her thighs.

Her eyes were haunted, containing a century’s worth of pain that no one could erase. But maybe he could. Maybe if he loved her, if showed her he cared, that he cherished her…

His hands shook as he knelt between her legs, hesitation battling need.

He’d imagined this so many times, hundreds of different scenarios. The only recurring theme was the softness in her eyes, the words ‘I love you’ rolling off her tongue. The reality was different and a just the tiniest bit terrifying. William had no idea what to do, didn’t want to disappoint her, so he leaned down to trail kisses along her jaw. The skin of her neck was smooth yet cool from the chill in the studio. But maybe it was his lips that were burning.

“Take off your shirt,” Dru said and he obeyed.

Before he could resume kissing every inch of her, William found himself pushed to his back with Dru straddling his hips, her dress still on. The pain raced down his chest in the wake of her nails. Blood welled up.

“Dru, what are you—”

“Shh, I’m playing.”

Fear and excitement and nerves nearly overwhelmed him to the point where he felt almost sick. Something inside him protested that this wasn’t like he imagined, that she didn’t want to be loved. She did. He just needed to prove her wrong.

Tentatively, he reached out to slide his fingertips up her thighs. When he reached her hips, he realised she wasn’t wearing any underwear. “Dru?”

“Hmm?” She lifted up and unzipped his pants. Did he want to ask something? He couldn’t remember.

She gazed at him then, her eyes dark and almost… empty. “You know what my stepfather used to say?” She was touching him, deftly and expertly and all he could think about was, ‘What if she’ll never love me?’

“He and I used to play a game.” Her fingers curled around his length tightly, and she shrugged off his hand when he caressed her arm. William tried to ignore the pangs in his chest. “If I was really quiet, it wouldn’t hurt much, he said. But I was a good girl and I didn’t say a thing even when it did. Because he was my daddy and it was all right. He said he loved me.”

Dru pushed her hips down and the heat of her enveloping him was so sudden, so blistering it took everything in him not to surrender. But how could he when she was breaking his heart even as she was stealing his senses? He gripped her sides to still her movements, wishing she’d take off her dress but unable to ask.

“W-wait, slow down… I don’t want to hurt you.”

Her eyes slid shut and she ignored his words. Even being one with her, he’d never felt more distant.

“Do you love me, William? Like my Daddy did?”

Jerking his eyes to her face with expanding horror, he knew now. Knew why she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—love him. In her mind, the sentiment was laced with darkness, the demons that wrapped around her every second of every day. It left him nauseous. Did she think she had to do this? How could he forgive himself if she got worse?

He never should have let her…

“Stop, Dru. We have to—”

But she wouldn’t listen so he banded his arms around her, rolled them over and carefully pulled out of her body. With her eyes still closed, he felt like she was million miles away. His knuckles grazed her inner thighs when he shifted the silk of the dress to cover her legs but she didn’t even move. She just lay there limply and finally opened her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered hoarsely and curled against her side. “I’m so sorry.”

“Love always hurts.” The conviction of it shone in her eyes. It was as if her view of the world had been distorted and she saw it reflected in a puddle of murky water. “I told you I don’t want you to love me. Tell me you won’t.”

Even as William nodded, he knew he was lying. And the realization that he could never heal her, that he couldn’t make her better made him feel like he failed all over again.

So he did the only thing he could, he rested his forehead against her cheek and cried. For her. For both of them.

TBC


Chapter End Notes:
I'll confess that I put a lot of thought into that William/Dru and rewrote it several times. Which is why I really hope it came through as lot more than just sex. Share your thoughts if you want to. :)



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