It Begins Again
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Illustration By Black
Robin Author: Dark Star Email:
eternity_ds@hotmail.com Website: Dark Star's Portal Summary: How had they
reached this point? Disclaimer: Joss
Whedon is creator and owner of
all things Angel and Buffy Rating: Adult Warning: This story
deals with sadism and BDSM Notes: This is the
sequel to Hollow, and it’s best if you read that first. More notes: Dlgood, SJ
Smith, Leni and Jo asked about the events that
led up to Hollow. So this, guys, is for you… Pairing: B/A Category: Dark , future Distribution: Just ask,
please ** How had they reached
this point? Buffy pulled herself
upright, using the heavy chains to support herself. Her shoulders ached, her
muscles locked tight from standing still so long. She flexed her fingers to
get the feeling back in them, pins and needles stinging her hands in response
to the stiff movement. She knew that Angel was
seated behind her although she couldn’t see him. It pleased him to watch her
and admire his handiwork. Buffy found it unnerving, because it gave her far
too much time to anticipate his next move; during those breaks her body tried
to heal itself, and Buffy reflected that slayer healing was not a bonus if it
meant prolonged periods of misery. The chains rattled as Buffy
tried to shrug her shoulders to clear the tension in them, but the action
caused searing pain up her arms and she bit her lip to remain silent. She was
bored with staring at the wall; she knew she needed to distract herself from
her morbid musings or it was going to be a very long night, and her thoughts
returned to how it all started. ‘Once upon a time
there was a vampire’ she thought wildly to herself, and resisted the urge
to giggle hysterically. She was often stunned by the odd direction her subconscious
would take when trying to deal with Angel’s torments. ‘The vampire met a
beautiful slayer and they lived happily ever after.’ Buffy winced; that was how it should
have been, but Angel had told her once that this ‘Wasn’t some fairytale’. And
he was right, it wasn’t. Because this – pain, blood and misery - was the
harsh reality of living with a vampire. Everything had been
great at first; they had been so happy to finally be together again, and for
good this time. They had their ups and downs, like most couples, but then
Angel started to act a little oddly. It wasn’t anything specific at first; he
was just a bit more cranky than usual. He brooded more often, became more
aggressive during sex, more vicious when they went slaying. Sometimes she actually
felt sorry for the slayee having his rage vent on them. She knew something
was wrong, although he refused to talk about it. But she knew suppressed
emotion when she saw it, and she tried to figure out how to help him. Angel’s sour mood grew.
He became snappy with his crew, irritable with her, and it seemed as though
he went out of his way to upset everybody around him. One day she returned
early from a shopping trip, and as she crossed the lobby she heard a terrible
squealing noise coming from the basement. Fearing that some evil creature had
accessed the building, she abandoned her purchases on the counter, and headed
downstairs. Halfway down the stairs
the noise stopped abruptly, and she saw Angel standing in the gloom, the limp
body of a rat in his hand. “Angel?” she frowned.
“What’s going on?” “Rats.” Her gaze travelled from
his blank expression to his hand, and he went smoothly to the trapdoor that
led to the sewer and dropped the body into it. “It’s just a rat,“ he
said again, going past her and up the stairs. Buffy stayed motionless
on the stairs. ‘Just a rat’ didn’t explain the horrible squealing that
she’d heard or the guilty expression she’d glimpsed on Angel’s face. Maybe
he’d been feeding, and was embarrassed about doing that? She turned and
went slowly back up the stairs, replaying the scene that she’d just
witnessed. That had to be it, she decided. He was embarrassed. And
she tried to ignore the blood she’d seen on the little creature’s body and
the unnatural angle of its limbs. The ache in her
shoulders brought her painfully back again to the present, and Buffy moved
her feet in an effort to make her stance less of a strain on her upper body.
Her whole body felt stiff and sore, and the blood that had trickled down her legs
and dried there made her feel sticky and dirty. She jumped when a cool
hand touched her lower back; she had been so
deep in thought that she hadn’t heard Angel move. His hands went round to her
front to grasp at her breasts. She tensed, fearing that he would twist hard
on her nipples, but that wasn’t what he had in mind. Instead, he groped and
squeezed at her sore breasts and lightly caressed her stomach. He ran his
hands up her arms until his fingers passed over her manacled wrists and he
gripped her hands with his own. He pushed his body tightly up against hers,
forcing her tender skin hard against the wall. She whimpered at the
undignified assault on her abused body, and tried to disregard Angel’s hips
thrusting energetically up against her damaged rear. Although she could feel
his erection straining at her, she knew he wouldn’t use it. He no longer
included sex as part of the session. She remembered, before
they got into this, how violent Angel could get during sex. It wasn’t just the rough handling -
she could cope with that. Hell, there were times when she instigated it.
There was something very erotic about being taken hard, thrown against the
wall and screwed frantically against the solid surface. It was more than
that. It was the feeling that he was doing it deliberately to hurt her, and
every so often she’d respond with anger and he would back off for a while. It
seemed to run in a cycle – with Angel getting more and more brutal until she
called him on it, and things settled down again. Things might have jogged
along like that for ever if they hadn’t found the nest. A tip-off sent them to
an abandoned building in downtown LA, and Buffy and Angel quickly took care
of the stray vampires in the lounge before heading upstairs. The noise was appalling;
and Buffy was horrified by the sight that greeted them in the huge bedroom.
Vampires sprawled everywhere, and the savage coupling that was taking place
all around her made her want to heave. To cover her embarrassment, she turned
to Angel, intending to make a quip about ‘rutting time at the zoo’ but saw
the expression on Angel’s face and the words died in her mouth. Following his line of
vision, she saw that he was looking at a shrieking, naked woman spread-eagled
face down on the bed, her limbs tied securely to the four corners. The whole
area between her shoulders and her knees was torn and bleeding; the male
vampire beside her was viciously laying into her with gusto, and Buffy winced
as she saw the lashes of his whip bite deep in her pale flesh. She turned questioningly
back to Angel, but his expression was carefully neutral. Before she could say
anything, he stepped forward, his stake in hand and went to work. Buffy
joined him in the slayage until finally, they were the only beings left standing
amongst the thick dust in the room. Nothing was said about
the nest, and Buffy tried to forget what she had seen. But that night, as she
waited for sleep to come – her subconscious dredged up the events and
continually replayed them in her head. Not for the first time, she wondered
if it bothered Angel to kill his own people. Did it sadden him to do it? When she had first seen the bound
woman, she assumed that Angel knew her; perhaps she was an old flame of his.
She didn’t think so, because he hadn’t hesitated at dusting her, so she
didn’t think it was personal. The whole scene sickened her because it had
been so incredibly gross; the enthusiastic violence, the eager feeding, the
whips and other implements she’d seen laying around had really shocked her.
But the image that haunted her the most was the wistful longing that
she’d glimpsed on Angel’s face. The next day, Angel was
irritable and moody. When she could stand the tension no longer she snapped,
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” “Wrong?” he repeated,
and Buffy didn’t like the leer he gave her. “Nothing’s wrong with me,
Buffy.” He turned and strode away without another word, and furious, Buffy
watched him go. This couldn’t go on, she decided, and when she left
the hotel and walked into the sunshine a few minutes later, she had a mission
in mind. That evening, after yet
another run-in with Angel, Buffy silently handed him a brown paper bag. Intrigued, Angel took
the bag and pulled out the object inside it. “What’s this?” Well duh… “It’s a whip, Angel.” She replied dryly. “I… I know that,” he
stumbled, staring her curiously. “But why have I got it?” “Because I want you to
use it,” she said boldly, and Angel’s eyes widened. “You know you want to.” She knew she’d said the
wrong thing the moment the words were out of her mouth. Angel’s expression
closed right down, and he abruptly dropped the whip back in the bag. “No.” He replied firmly. They faced each other
without moving, and Buffy didn’t know what to do next. She didn’t want to
back down, and she mentally checked through her options. Aware that Angel was
a creature driven by his instincts – probably more than most people realised
– she suddenly peeled off her tight sweater and dropped it on the floor. She
hadn’t worn a bra because she hadn’t wanted to leave any distracting marks on
her skin, and she slowly turned round and offered her bare back to Angel. “Do it.” Feeling incredibly
self-conscious, Buffy waited to see whether Angel was going to take the bait.
Long moments crawled by, and Buffy was just beginning to wonder how she could
retrieve her sweater and beat a dignified retreat, when Angel said gruffly,
“Not like this.” Yess. Carefully composing her
features so that she gave nothing away, she turned unhurriedly back to him. “How, then?” she asked
gently, afraid that by speaking too loudly he might back off from her.
“Angel… I’ll do anything that you want.” Angel cleared his
throat, his expression an odd mixture of desire and alarm. “Come with me,” he
said lightly. He took her hand and led her into the bedroom. When they
reached the room, Angel paused and looked around, as though he was searching
for something. Then he escorted her over to the side of the bed and asked her
to bend over it and use her arms to brace herself. Excited and a little
afraid, Buffy did as Angel asked and waited to see what he would do next. He
moved up behind her, and she felt his hands fumbling with the button of her
jeans, before peeling them back and sliding them – and her underwear -
smoothly down her legs. Buffy moved to stand up so that she could help him,
but the palm of his hand came down hard on her rump and made her yelp at the
unexpected pain. “Stay down,” he ordered,
in a tone of voice he had never used with her before. Startled, Buffy
hurriedly returned to her position and wondered what on earth she had gotten
herself into. When she was naked,
Angel returned to stand behind her and gently smoothed his hands all over her
soft curves. Buffy wanted to stand up, but she didn’t dare to. Since she had
told him that she would ‘do anything that he wanted’, she thought
she had better obey him. She was beginning to question if that had
been such a good idea after all. “Beautiful,” Angel
breathed, his hands becoming still as he leaned forward, and asked, “Are you
ready, Buffy?” “Yes.” Her reply was
firm and strong, and she was immensely proud of herself for managing to do
that. She heard Angel rustling with the bag and pull the whip out. Oh god…
“It’s a good one, “Angel
said approvingly. He dangled the whip over her shoulder and let the leather
strands trail down over her breast. “You chose well.” Buffy gulped, and
shuddered with excitement when the strands touched her bare shoulder; she was
absurdly pleased that Angel accepted her choice of whip. She hadn’t had the
faintest idea which one to buy, and had chosen at random from the vast range
of them in the store. The strands tickled her
breast as the whip was removed from her shoulder, and Angel stepped back. In
a businesslike voice, he warned, “Brace yourself.” Buffy braced. She tensed
up everything that she could possibly tense, and waited fearfully. The first sting of the
whip made her gasp, but she was relieved that it hadn’t been as painful as
she had expected. Perhaps Angel was just trying it out? The second and third
lashes created a similar effect, and by the fourth, Buffy was beginning to
relax into the pain. This isn’t so bad, she thought with relief. I
can do this. She had been afraid that she would shame herself by not
being able to take it, and she was thankful that it hadn’t been as bad as she
thought. She stayed bent over for
a long time. Angel developed a smooth rhythm with his whip, concentrating
mainly on her upper back and shoulders. Buffy tried to be brave, doing her
best to stay quiet and flinching as little as possible. It was easy at first,
but after a while her skin grew hot and sore from the constant stinging, and
she began to dread the next strike. She tried not to make any noise but in
the end she couldn’t help it, and gave in to the instinct to squeal with each
stroke of the lash. The whipping
seemed to go on forever, and when it was over, Buffy felt exhausted, her throat
was dry, and her body was shaking from the rush of adrenaline. But Angel wasn’t done.
“Up on the bed,” he instructed bluntly, and he helped her position herself
shakily on her hands and knees, while he took her roughly from behind. Buffy
came almost as soon as he entered her because she was so worked up, and when
the session was over, they discussed the things that they had just done. When Angel tentatively
asked if she would ever do it again, Buffy surprised herself by admitting
that she found the pain a powerful aphrodisiac and had gotten something
incredibly erotic from the session. By mutual agreement, flogging became a
regular – and strangely enjoyable - feature of their lives. Angel channelled
his darker instincts into the sessions, and the improvement in his behaviour
at other times made her feel that the whole thing was worth bearing. Angel took things very slowly,
gradually increasing the pain that he gave her and introducing new things to
keep it interesting. Buffy’s pain threshold – already high – increased in
line with Angel’s careful training, and she found that over time, her body
learnt to take more and more punishment. She became blasé with
the whole pain thing, and she laughed the first time Angel had told her that he
was going to cane her. Was that meant to worry her? British schoolboys got
the cane – what fear did that have for a slayer? She’d glibly told Angel that
‘It couldn’t be that bad’ - and his simple reply chilled her. “It is the way I do it.” She didn’t laugh any
more; Angel had taught her that lesson. The cane could be a very painful,
vicious implement, leaving her bruised skin in a weeping bloody mess, and her
respect for British schoolboys went up dramatically. But still Angel kept
pushing her boundaries, kept introducing new things to use. The first time he
had included outright torture in a session had been a nasty shock, and not a
development that Buffy approved of. It worried her that Angel might have been
holding back before then. Did he think she was too weak to cope with it? She
decided then that she would take whatever Angel wanted to do to her. She
could handle a little pain anyway, couldn’t she? Weren’t slayers tougher than
normal people? The torture element
increased as Buffy learnt to handle the pain and it became a much bigger part
of the sessions. Angel also introduced bloodplay as a regular event; although
he never opened a vein, he liked to beat her until she bled, or cut her and
drink from the wound. The bloodplay replaced sex, and Angel stopped fucking
her although he still enjoyed bringing her to a screaming orgasm. After several sessions
where the real pain began after she’d come, it dawned on Buffy that it was a
kind of trigger, and to postpone the agony she started holding back. She knew
that it was futile; that it was a battle she couldn’t possibly win. But it
was her way of trying to take back a little control of her body, because she
hated that Angel could make her do anything that he wanted her to. She had a
nasty suspicion that Angel was playing with her – in all senses of the word –
and that he could bring her off whenever he wanted. Nor could she shake the
feeling that Angel was indulging her, and it made her more determined to hold
out. On one occasion she managed to last for four hours before he sent her
shrieking into the abyss, and with the release came tears that she couldn’t
stop. The tears came in great heaving sobs, and she let them come; giving in
to her anger, resentment and frustration that things had worked out the way
they had. When she had calmed, she
was aware that Angel still knelt between her legs, his hands on her hips and
he was watching her closely. He hadn’t moved at all, and his face was still
damp from being buried between her legs; the lethal combination of his
experienced tongue on her clit and the fingers of both hands probing at her
sensitive tissues had been enough to finish her. Angel waited patiently
for her recover her composure. She did this sometimes, and he lost her to her
emotions or the overwhelming pain. He always waited for her to come back to
him before he did anything else - he liked to make sure that she was
completely aware of everything he did to her. The chains on her wrists
prevented Buffy from wiping her eyes or her nose, and she knew she looked
pitiful, but she was too exhausted to care. She had no dignity here; Angel
had put her though so much, seen her through her all her worst moments that
it no longer mattered what she looked like. Angel had seen it all, every last
degrading thing, and he didn’t care either. She didn’t want to look
at him, but he waited her out, and in the end, she had no choice but to meet
his unfathomable gaze. He hardly ever spoke to her during a session, usually
only a command or some words of encouragement, and now he uttered just two
words. “I’m impressed.” Buffy snorted. Fuck
you. Angel stood up, and Buffy groaned inwardly. She really, really,
didn’t want Angel to hurt her anymore tonight, and her body still ached from
the assorted whips and floggers he’d already used. Reaching for a cloth, he
tenderly wiped her eyes and nose, his face expressionless as he generally
tidied her up. And then, unexpectedly, he unchained her and caught her when
she slumped forward. He took her in his arms and carried her to the door. The
session was over, finished early, though Buffy never really understood why
Angel hadn’t ever used sex in a session since. Behind her, Angel was
reaching up to unfasten the chains on her wrists. Her elation turned to dismay
when he turned her to face him, and skilfully rechained her to the wall. She
moved stiffly, and she was so tired that she just wanted to lean against the
wall and rest. But her back had been so lacerated that it would be a very bad
idea to do so until she had at least begun to heal. Before Angel finished
with her tonight, she knew she would need the wall’s support, but she could
forgo it for now. Angel’s knee
was pushing persistently at her legs, prising them apart. She complied as
best she could, her sore joints protesting at the extra strain on them. She
watched him kneel down, his hands travelling down her body with him, until
they encircled her ankles. She knew what was coming next, as Angel spread her
legs even further apart and secured them with a metal bar. She didn’t like
the bar very much; it made her legs ache, and stretched the muscles in her
thighs. It was an undignified way to stand, affected her balance and made the
strain on her shoulders even more acute, when she was chained like this. But
it was why he was using the bar that bothered her; whatever he was
going to do was something she wasn’t going to like, and the bar was insurance
that she couldn’t close her legs against it. Angel looked up from his
kneeling position, and Buffy’s
heart sunk. She preferred it when he worked behind her and she wished
sometimes that he would use a blindfold so that she could pretend that it
wasn’t really him causing her such suffering. But Angel enjoyed watching the
emotions that played out in her eyes far too much, and he never used them. It
was hard not to take his actions personally, and it upset her to see how much
pleasure he gained from hurting her. Once, the sadistic smirk she’d glimpsed
on his face had reminded her so much of Angelus, that it was almost more than
she could take. Angel stood up, and
stepped back. He was looking down at her legs, deep in thought, and turned
away to cross the room and headed over to the chest. Buffy looked away, and
concentrated on shifting her position to make herself more comfortable –
focussing on other things so that she didn’t have to think about what he was
going to do to her. At any other time, in
any other place, Angel would protect and cherish her with everything that he
had. The rules in this place were different, though Buffy knew that she could
call a halt to the proceedings at any time she wanted to. Angel would stop
immediately, no hard feelings and no recriminations. So why had she never
asked him to stop? Why, even though he could make her scream in agony, beg
him to back off or curse him with every fibre of her being – had she never
said no? It was a question Buffy
had asked herself hundreds of times, and there was no easy answer. All she
knew was that Angel needed to do this, and she needed him; every last
sadistic, beautiful, brave and loving inch of him. All of him. Because when
it came down to it, being without him hurt much more acutely that any
physical pain ever could, and this was her way of making sure forever worked
for them. After all, wasn’t that
the whole point? End. Part Three ~ Limits
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