TITLE: Auf Wiedersehen(part 3 of Promises and Lies)

AUTHOR: Oni

EMAIL: WasabiOni@netscape.net

DISTRIBUTION: List Archives, JOYFFA, and my site at
www.angelfire.com/id2/WasabiOni. Anyone else please ask.

FEEDBACK: Want it. Need it. Got to have it. The more detailed the better.

DISCLAIMER: None of the characters in this fic belong to me and probably
that's just as well. Because I'd wear the poor boy out, yes I would...

SPOILERS: Vague, through the end of season 4 Buffy and season 1 Angel, but
nothing major.

SUMMARY: She's had a lovely vacation, but now Joyce has to leave. Angel is
not a happy camper.

RATING: NC-17 for sex and violence.

--------------------------------
Auf Wiedersehen

. The west-facing wall of the beach house's living room is made of glass and,
with the deadly light safely filtered by the specially tinted glass, Angel has
a beautiful view of the setting sun from where he sits in the big leather
chair. He holds Joyce on his lap she rests limply against him, utterly
exhausted by the long day of carnal excess. His arms are wrapped around her
holding her tight; he is still buried inside her, unwilling to have it end.
She is still going. Her plane takes off at 11:00 a.m. tomorrow. Their last
day gone, and nothing he has said or done has made any difference.

. He told her that morning. She had been eating breakfast on the sunlit half
of the verandah, he stood on the side shaded by the bamboo blinds, watching
her for a long time, gathering the courage to speak. The salt and tropical
sun had destroyed her perm but added highlights to her hair and she wears it
pulled back into a loose braid, it makes her look impossibly young like an
earlier, happier version of her that he'd never had the chance to meet.

. "Joyce," he said. She looked up smiling.

. "Don't go." He read the doom of his hopes in her eyes even before she
spoke.

. "I can't Angel. This has been wonderful, but I can't."

. "Why not?" He struggled to keep his voice calm.

. "Angel," she spoke gently, conscious of the pain in his eyes. "What kind of
life could we have? How long would we last?"

. "Forever. I love you Joyce." Her eyes widened in shock. Angel took a step
forward but was forced to stop at the edge of the light. "Do you believe me?"
She opened her mouth to deny it, then changed her mind.

. "Yes, I do believe you," she said, her voice low. She shook her head, her
voice rose. "But that's now. What happens when I start to wrinkle up? Do
you really want to be tied to some balding, sagging, resentful old woman? Do
you think I want to *be* that old woman, hating you for never getting any
older?"

. "It's you Joyce, not your body that I love." Wanting to reach out to her
but frustrated by the sunlight.

. "Angel, no. Please don't ruin our last day together," she pleaded. He
could see the steel beneath the softness in her eyes, and knew that pushing
her would only make her more adamant. Not trusting his voice, he nodded and
went back inside to wait for her.

. Now, at the end of the day, he presses his mouth to the side of her neck in
a gentle kiss. "You just need a little time to persuade her," the demon
insinuated. "It'd be easy." Angel stiffened, remembering just how persuasive
Angelus could be. He could change Joyce's mind, make her stay, make her love
him, and in the process twist her heart and soul out of all recognition.
Drusilla was Angelus's triumph, his dark masterpiece, but she wasn't the first
or the last person whose soul he'd blackened before swallowing it whole.

. But he can't help thinking of how easy it would be to let his teeth slip
into her, to drain her just until she's too weak to protest. Her plane would
take off and she would remain here with him. The demon reminded him that her
traveling companion had never seen him, never known his name. This was a
private estate, he could keep her here for as long as it took to convince her
of his love.

. Joyce lay drifting in Angel's embrace, watching the sun being eaten by the
shining sea. She could feel his shrinking presence inside her, a faint chill
radiating into her core. He'd been silent and perfectly still since he'd
kissed her neck. She was so tired. There was not an inch of her body he had
not kissed, licked, nibbled, stroked; not an orifice that he'd neglected in
his frenzy to memorize or possibly mark her. She was going to be walking like
a cowboy tomorrow. Hopefully she'd be able to get some sleep on the plane.

. Angel loved her. That shock delivered that morning over a breakfast of salt
fish & ackee and croissants; she'd been looking out over the blue sea, blue
sky, thinking about how much she'd miss all of this beauty, when he'd said her
name. She'd looked at him, wondering how long he'd been standing there,
watching her. "Don't go." "I love you." His dark eyes so earnest and
compelling in his beautiful face. Shirtless, his pale skin gleaming.
Temptation incarnate.

. She'd seriously considered the consequences of yes. To have Angel, his
devotion, that face, that body every night. To abandon her life in Sunnydale
and stay here in paradise, with him. To never have to argue with another
idiot importer, balance another checkbook, pay another bill, or worry about
being alone.

. Never being able to see her grandchildren, her daughter, or her friends.
Growing older, while her lover never aged. She almost believed him when he
said he wouldn't care, but she knew he was wrong when he said it wouldn't
matter. And last but not least, she didn't love him. She let out a tiny sigh
against his chest, vacation was over, she had to go back to her life.

. "Do it," the demon hissed, hungry for the taste of her. Angel felt her
shift in his arms, shivering as the evening breeze chilled the sweat on her
body. He should let her go, she needed to rest. Needed to eat, to pack her
clothes, to get ready to leave him.

. "Angel," Joyce said. "I need to get up." He didn't respond, except for the
flicker of cold as his tongue slipped past his lips and tasted her neck.
"Angel? Let me go please." She felt his arms tighten around her, and felt a
hint of the true strength in those cool arms. She had the uneasy thought that
there wasn't much she could do about it if he didn't let her go. Then she
felt the tension go out of him and he lifted her up and off his lap.

. Joyce stood up, a little unsteady on her feet, and smiled at him. He looked
at her, his dark eyes unreadable. She leaned forward to give him a long and
lingering kiss, before walking away.

. "Fool," the demon mocked as he watched the last of the light fading from the
sea. Thinking of how tired he was of being left. Buffy, Doyle, Cordelia,
Wesley, Bone, Nabbit, and Faith: all gone, one way or another. Everyone who
he thought had cared for him had, in the end, left him alone.

. He had fought the good fight, and as a reward had his soul, permanently, his
proof that he had atoned, that he had balanced the karmic scales. He was as
free to seek perfect happiness as any other sentient being.

. For months after the final battle, he'd considered hunting down another
Mohra demon and taking its blood to make him human again...but in the end the
truth was that he no longer wanted to be human. For over 200 years he'd been
strong, fast, nearly invulnerable, ageless. Then, on that day that only he
remembered, he'd had a taste of humanity. Had his faded memories of what it
was like to be human refreshed; how it felt to be weak, slow, to be hurt
without the certainty of healing, to know that each heartbeat marked the
inevitable approach of death. He hadn't liked it. Buffy's love might have
given him the courage to face the terrors of mortality, but it was too late
for that now.

. And now Joyce was leaving him and he wasn't sure he had the strength to let
her go.

. He had warned them all, repeatedly, that he was weak. That they should fear
the man as much as the demon. All they saw, all any of them ever wanted to
see was the façade of Angel, the hero, bravely battling the forces of
darkness. Angel, the perfect knight, selflessly sacrificing his love to the
cause. They ignored the truth, that he had none of the strength or purity of
his namesake. That Angelus, not Angel was the strong one.

. Angelus was pure, unameliorated evil, a demon's demon. Angel had always
believed that this was because the personality of Liam, the human whose
memories and body the vampire was heir to; Liam stripped of his feeble
empathy, guilt, and compassion, amounted to little or nothing against the
demon's desire. He'd been a handsome, weak-willed wastrel, 27 years old and
still living in his fathers' house. Liam had loved only gin, porter, and ale,
and when drunk enough, a good fight. Even sex was something he did only if it
weren't too much trouble. Darla hadn't chosen him because she'd perceived
some core of evil potential, but because he was big and pretty and *there*.
She'd been pleasantly surprised by the magnitude of monster she'd created in
Angelus.

. Darla. He saw her dissolve into dust, utter shock on her face as he killed
her again. He still missed her on some level. They had been together for a
century and change, not always together but linked. There were times he even
missed Drusilla. Spike, on the other hand, he'd be more than glad to kill if
he ever got the chance.

. It was full dark now, the unnervingly quick tropical sunset complete. He
stood up and followed the sound of falling water.

. Billows of steam filled the bathroom as he entered. Under the white noise
he could hear Joyce's tuneless singing. He smiled to himself, she couldn't
sing, and he couldn't dance. They obviously belonged together.

. "Angel," Joyce protested as he stepped into the shower, naked. He loomed
over her in what had seemed a generous space. "What...I can't..." Her
protests cut off with a yelp of surprise as he pushed her back against the
shower wall and dropped to his knees. Water poured down over both of them,
warming his skin and half-blinding her as he spread her legs wide. He put one
hand at her hip, bracing her, she was trapped between his cool mouth against
her cunt, and the cool tiles against her back.

. His tongue lazily laved her labia, taking his time, in no apparent hurry.
She felt the heat, the concentration of blood heavy between her legs; she
moaned, her legs buckling she started to slide down the wall, Angel caught
her, effortlessly supporting her weight on his arms. Only when she was good
and wet did he take her button into his mouth, and gently began sucking on it
sending waves of intense, almost painful sensations through her. It felt too
good, almost frighteningly so. She was enjoying this, and she didn't want to
think too much about why he was doing this, now. He'd kept their deal all
day, hadn't begged once or repeated his declaration. His tongue thrust deep
inside her and she shuddered, and came feeling like she was melting,
dissolving into his mouth.

. As she leaned back, trying to catch her breath she suddenly wondered if
subsequent lovers would seem too awkward, too *warm* compared to her memory of
this.

. "God, Angel." She stroked his hair, darkened and flattened by the water.
She liked it better this way. He didn't speak, but continued to hold her in
place his face buried at her core, his tongue busy inside and out until all of
her secretions were gone, before carefully setting her on her feet again. He
turned off the water, stepped out of the shower, and returned with a towel.
Still silent. She could read nothing in his face, and exhausted, she let him
sweep her up in his arms. He carried her into the bedroom where he toweled
her dry, dressed her in a nightgown, tucked her into bed, and left her there.

. As she drifted off, she heard the front door open and close.

***

. Joyce sighed as she put the last few souvenirs in her suitcase and forced it
shut. She carried it out to the hallway and set it down in a pool of
sunlight. Checked her watch, it was a little past 9. The taxi would be here
in a few minutes. It didn't look like she would be able to say goodbye to
Angel. She wondered where the hell he was.

. She'd woken a few hours after his appearance in the shower, and he wasn't
there. She'd wandered through the house, searching for him, feeling more than
a little like Jane Eyre, or Bluebeard's wife, but there was no insane wife in
the attic, no attic in fact, no hidden chamber painted with blood, and no
Angel. She ate a lonely dinner in the kitchen, read a little, and went to bed
around midnight. It was full daylight now, so wherever he was he wasn't going
to be able to get back before she left. Even if he wanted to. She sighed, it
was a sad end to a lovely vacation. She turned to go back to her room to make
sure she hadn't forgotten anything.

. "Angel!" Joyce gasped as he stepped out of the deep shadow next to the
door. How did he do that, she wondered distractedly as he moved forward,
crowding her, making her to step back until her back was pressed against the
wall. She looked up at him, tried to smile, and was chilled by the depths of
sorrow she saw in his eyes. He stood there, too close. His clothes were torn
and full of sand. There was a coppery sharpness to his scent. She wondered
where he'd been and waited for him to speak.

. "Please, Joyce, don't go." He strokes her hair with a gentle hand. There
is something dark, like blood, caught under his nails.

. "I can't. Let me go Angel."

. "No." His voice is soft and even. She feels fear and disbelief as he moves
forward abruptly, pinning her with his body against the wall. He covers her
mouth, pushes her chin up, and puts his velvet soft mouth over the pulsing
vein. She gasps as his teeth go in, razor sharp, exquisitely painful. She
tries to scream through his restraining hand as she feels the horrible
draining feeling as he begins to draw out her life.

. Her blood fills his mouth, and it's sweet with fear, redolent of Joyce,
carrying her essence, recalling to him every time he's touched her skin,
buried himself inside her, loved her. He draws out the moment as long as he
can, rolling the blood in his mouth, memorizing the taste of it, of her and
then swallows, feeling it move into him, becoming part of him, his forever.
Joyce. He removes his fangs and carefully licks the wounds closed, savoring
every last molecule before moving away from her and letting her free. She
cowers, staring at him, shocked.

. Outside, a horn sounds. The taxi.

. "Go. Now." He tells her, and turns his back so he doesn't have to see her
go. He feels the brief blast of heat as the door opens and is slammed shut.
Listens to the sound of the taxi's door being hastily opened and closed and
finally the noisy retreat of the car engine as it carries her away.

Continued in A Year and A Day