*****
Riley Finn was dying. Incontrovertibly, unavoidably dying.
His body had betrayed him. He had been infected supernaturally in faraway lands, and now he had come home to die. That was his chosen way of thinking about it now. For months, when he'd had resistance and hope and other frivolous things like that, he'd done more in- depth thinking about it. He'd thought about the details of what was happening to his body, and the details of how it had happened in the first place, and the details of how he had even come to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. All those details could fill a novel.
But the time for frivolity was over, and what it boiled down to was this:
He was dying.
From a supernatural infection. Apparently uncurable.
In faraway lands, for reasons too mundane to be worth further consideration:
Well, okay - maybe a little more consideration.
Faraway lands, because the country where he'd been born and raised and which he had come to love dearly just wasn't big enough for the two of them.
That's what it had seemed like then. Now, it would have to be big enough for the two of them. Because Riley didn't want to die in faraway lands. He called them "faraway lands" because that sounded romantic, and everything was such *shit* in reality that he fully intended to romanticize whatever he could in order to make it more bearable, while he still had things to bear. He didn't want to die in any goddamned, godforsaken, motherfucking piece of shit faraway land. If he was going to die - and he *was* - then he was going to die in the goddamned, godforsaken, motherfucking piece of shit United States of America.
And besides, he'd never liked leaving things unfinished.
+++
He watched her for awhile, without her knowing he was there. She didn't look quite as beautiful as he remembered her; but then, they never did.
He watched her until he got bored watching - and he was surprised at how quickly that happened, because the sex Buffy was having with Spike was pornographically hot.
Nevertheless, Riley got bored watching. He could have done what he'd do with a real porno. There was no television or VCR to turn off, but he could have stopped watching, turned around, walked away.
But he hadn't come back just to walk away again. So instead, he walked towards them. Buffy was so far gone that she didn't notice his approach at all. Spike, he suspected - and there was the slight turn of head, the almost-wink to confirm it - Spike knew he was there and watching. Riley wondered how long Spike had known. He wondered how much had been for his benefit.
//Because yes, Riley Finn, it's all about you. You are the center of the cosmos.//
It was a good place to be, and he smiled to himself even as his surface remained passive.
He finished walking towards them and when he actually got to them, he found he didn't know what to say. During the intensive-thinking period of his life, he had come up with many, many things to say to each of them, separately and together. He had fully expected to find them together, and when he had come across them exactly as he expected to he hadn't been surprised - though there had been a brief moment when he had thought his lack of surprise might be surprising in and of itself. It wasn't, though. It just was what it was.
He looked from Buffy's shocked face to Spike's smug one. The blond vampire's lips curled in a sneer and started to part, as if he would speak - but before he could get a syllable, even the hint of a sound out, Riley drove the stake through Spike's heart.
He wasn't surprised, either, at how it made him feel to watch the vampire dissolve into dust, but he was disappointed that he didn't feel more *something* about it; that he didn't feel simply more.
He looked from the stake he was now holding in mid-air back to Buffy's face. She still looked surprised, just the same as she'd looked when she first noticed him there three seconds ago. As they looked at each other, he wondered if she even realized she was covered in the dust of her latest lover.
"Riley..." she said then, voice quavering with a muddle of emotions that clouded her eyes.
He looked at her another long moment, covered in dust.
Without blinking, he turned and walked away.
Sunnydale wasn't home, but it was a good enough place to start.
+++
Los Angeles wasn't home, either, but it seemed a good enough place to end. Lots of things ended here in Los Angeles. The Boulevard of Broken Dreams and all. Broken dreams, broken bodies, the consequences and wreckage of living in the world.
He waited until night fell before going. He could have gone earlier and knocked on the door, but he preferred to wait. He did things that didn't matter until it was time to go, and then he went. He thought he might have to wait a little more, but shortly after he arrived at the hotel, a lone figure came out.
//Lone figure.// Riley repeated the words in his head as he watched the lone figure descend the steps. That was a pretty romantic turn of phrase. He thought he could bear it.
Riley had his words ready this time. He would step out from the shadows - as he was doing now - and the lone figure would halt and say, "Who's there?" and Riley would say, "It's me."
He didn't get to say his well-prepared words, though, because as he moved forward Angel said, "Riley?"
Caught off-guard by this recognition, Riley stood there mutely, watching Angel look at him. The hard line Angel had set his mouth in softened slightly as he took in the sight of the man before him.;
"What's happened to you?" Angel asked. It was so unexpectedly sincere that Riley felt a lump form in his throat. He had to clear it before he could respond.
//Got supernaturally infected in a farway land. And now I'm dying.//
"Does it matter?"
He meant it rhetorically, but Angel took a moment to look him over again and consider; when their eyes met this time, Riley caught a flicker in the vampire's eye, and for a strange instant felt that Angel had read his mind.
Then Angel shook his head. "Do you want to come in?" he asked Riley, gesturing at the door he'd just come out of.
Again Riley was surprised. In his head, it happened here in the street, perhaps just down the alley. But Angel was probably right; going inside, away from stray or prying eyes, was the better part of valor. So Riley nodded and waited while Angel fished the keys out of his duster pocket and let them in, holding the door open and following Riley inside.
As he shut the door behind them, Angel asked, "Why did you come?"
This was one of the questions Angel was supposed to ask, but Riley couldn't remember how he was supposed to answer. Instead of a carefully composed response, he said, "I saw Buffy. I killed Spike."
Angel regarded him thoughtfully, shifting away from eye contact again while still looking at his face, dipping down to his hands and back up. Riley stood still and let him look. He caught it again, that flicker in the eye, but it wasn't the horror he'd seen on Buffy's face. It was remembrance of the last time the two of them had met and recognition that the outcome could not possibly be the same this time - Riley's traitorous body now could neither withstand nor give out the blows the two men had once traded. Then Angel looked him in the eye again and for the briefest heart-stopping moment, Riley saw himself in Angel's reflecting gaze, saw the surface of his own body stripped away as surely as the infection was deteriorating it from within, saw the raw human frailty exposed.
"Why did you come here?" Angel asked. "Why did you come to me?"
More questions that Angel was supposed to ask; a series of questions with the same answer. That flickering reflection in his eye reminded Riley of the answer he'd nearly forgotten. "Finish what you started," he said, allowing himself to blink.
Angel just stood there, which was what he was supposed to do. With everything going according to plan now, Riley wasn't sure what accounted for the slight acceleration of his pulse. He tightened his jaw, felt the muscles in his face working futilely.
"Finish," he said. "What. You. Started."
In Riley's well-thought-through plan, Angel was to understand everything at this moment and act upon it instantly, one way or the other. But the Angel standing before him merely continued to stand there. With a flash of infuriation he'd thought was beyond his capacity, Riley moved forward and struck Angel in the face with all the force left to him. Angel reeled back and Riley went with him, punched him again, then again and again, until Riley had Angel back to the wall, his fist aimed at Angel's eye. Before the blow could land this time, Angel caught Riley at the wrist. He did not strike Riley in turn nor push him away, but rather pulled Riley to him and, as swiftly and surely as Riley had jabbed the stake into Spike's heart, Angel sank his fangs into Riley.
The first sensation Riley felt was a great relief, that Angel had given the correct response this time. The rumors he had heard - the death of Darla and the unborn child - and the guesses he'd made based on those rumors - despair and hope entwined with awful, unbearable loneliness - seemed to be true. Or as near to it as made no difference. As the sucking went on and on, the second sensation he felt, which made the first disappear, was of spinning - growing lightheaded and weightless and spinning.
There was no pain.
He wasn't unaware of his surroundings as he spun. On the contrary, he was almost hyper-aware of being surrounded by Angel, of having Angel's mouth fastened at his throat, Angel's arms around him, Angel's body shifting against his as he held Riley's body up.
Then he became almost painfully aware of Angel's fangs sliding out of his veins, Angel's mouth at his ear now as the cold air infected his puncture wounds. "What do you want, Riley?" Angel whispered; and this too, in Riley's wildest imaginings - when he'd still allowed himself wildness and imagination - yes, this too was one of the questions Angel was supposed to ask.
He freed one hand to cup the back of Angel's head, fingers winding in the dark hair; his other hand slipped between them, brushing against Angel's cock, fumbling for it; whimpers of frustration escaped him as his weakened body continued to let him down, then whispers of a sign as his fingers at last curled helplessly around Angel's firm shaft.
//What I've always wanted.//
It had taken a long time for Riley to come to this knowledge, such a long time that it had almost been too late. It had taken time and an incurable supernatural infection that had made him think and re-think and overthink until he'd exhausted his brain.
The epiphany had come then, and the absurdity had made him laugh until he wept, and weep until he'd exhausted his heart as equally as his brain.
And when he'd finally reached the edge of oblvion, when his body and his mind and his heart had all betrayed him and he had nothing left to lose, he'd come back to face the final obsession, to kill the last dream.
To let it kill him, if it could. If it would.
And if Angel would not kill him, then at least Angel would kill his traitorous, betrayed body and maybe then his mind and his heart would come back to him...
Riley was no longer aware of his surroundings when Angel sank to the floor with him. Lying with Riley's dead body in his arms, Angel cradled Riley's head to his own neck, left Riley's hand wrapped around the cock Angel had freed for him, curled his own hand over Riley's. His own eyes closed, his own body as perfectly still, Angel waited through a succession of finite eternities... until the cold, soft lips against his throat parted, and Angel felt at dawn the razor- sharpened teeth of the one in his arms, his childe, his lover, sink into him for first blood, joining him at last and truly.
the end