madwomanwithabox

Title: Soldiers In Arms
Fandom: Supernatural/BtVS
Pairing: Buffy/Dean
Rating: hard R for sex
Het/Slash/Both: Het

Warning: Spoilers for the tail end of Supernatural S1

Timeline: some time after DEAD MAN'S BLOOD

A/N: Done for Medie's Porn Battle (prompt: duty), and will not be the only fic I write for this little foofooraw. Partial beta and Buffy!aid by lollobrigida and heartisbruised, but I finagled it so all mistakes and general suckiness are mine alone.

For heartisbruised. Because she commanded. And I obeyed. :P

* * * * *

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around this.”

Buffy shrugged, sitting crosslegged on the end of the bed in his hotel room. “Been doing it for longer than I care to admit, but…yeah. To every generation…yadda yadda yadda.”

Dean just nodded, settling into a nearby chair. “Yeah…believe me, I can relate. Been doing this since I was little. Demon killed my mother…Dad’s been kind of hell-bent ever since, y’know?”

Buffy nodded slowly, staring at her hands in her lap for a moment. “Definitely there with the knowing. And all the badness of the knowing.”

“Right. And those things…”

“Not to make all with the Rain Man? But vampires…definitely vampires.”

“And those other things…the ones *I* was after…”

“I made calls. To the people you’d make calls to in a situation like this.” She declared brightly, nodding. “According to Willow…my person that I call…she’s a witch, and my research-y person. You know, very with the ‘knowledge is power’, while I’m more with the plain old actual power.”

Dean smiled slightly, nodding. “Yeah…but the knowledge part has its high points. Like ‘what is it called, and how do I kill it.’”

“Couldn’t agree more.” Buffy grinned with an emphatic nod. “Well, Will says it might be some kind of evolution thing. You know…monkeys were us, and vamps were them. My vamps being the Neanderthal types to *your* vamps. Very of the Darwin…make sense?”

“Not really.”

“Oh. Well…vampire bad, that’s the rule…wherever they come from. So I kill the bad things. I’m an equal opportunity bad-thing killer.”

“Yeah, I got that.” Dean replied with a sigh, running a hand back through his hair. Dad and Sam probably wouldn’t be back from burning that grave until morning, if Sam’s phone call was any indication…

“You want a drink?” Dean finally asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Hmmm, let's see, have a drink in a hotel room in the middle of the night with a cute guy I just met and also has as big a collection of lethal pointy objects almost the same as my own?” She quipped, grinning. "Depends on what's in the minibar…*and* what your intentions are. Hopefully, they're not exactly honorable, 'cause slaying gives me what Faith calls this 'h' factor, and let's just say, it's an itch that shouldn't go unscratched. Faith’s a Slayer, like me…there was a mixup at the cosmic unemployment office, so there’s two of us now."

Dean raised an eyebrow. “So is that a yes?”

She paused for a moment, letting the silence hang. “Yes.”

“Good enough for me.”

He always kept a bottle of Jack on hand for the nights when the hunt was too hard to allow for sleep, but tonight he felt an odd sort of gratitude because, for once, the weight of duty wasn’t driving him towards the blissful cloud of drunken oblivion. The alcohol was a toast as he used the cups in the bathroom to serve it out…a toast to a shared burden he never imagined he’d be making. There was little joy in it, but there was comfort…even if it was nothing more than the comfort of not being alone.

Cups soon went by the wayside as they shared the bottle, along with stories...tasks, responsibilities that came with the weight of destiny and blood, power and loyalty to a duty greater than Fate…the one that’s chosen in the name of love.

He didn’t remember who kissed who, only that the booze had warmed him, inside and out, and that the taste of her lips on his was welcome, a sweet shock of sensation…a softness he could lose himself in.

She was eager as he pressed her back onto the bed, hands roaming his body as he explored hers. When he had her shirt off, he reached up to remove the clip holding up her hair…a golden cascade over slim, delicate shoulders that urged him on to learn every curve of neck and collarbone with lips and tongue.

They undressed each other, and together they learned each other’s scars, whispering how they came to be into each other’s skin…his claw marks from a sasquatch, her bite scars from Dracula, the mutual forming bruises and scabbed over cuts from their fight that night. Her fingers mapped his old wounds like a blind woman reading Braille, and he kissed away the remembered pain of all of hers.

Her hands fisted in his hair as he slid inside her, almost painful…he welcomed the light edge of pain to the pleasure of her, warm silken heat tight around him and so fucking perfect as he began to move. It was a part of both of them…the pain, the inability to exist without it. It was part of their mutual burden…the one that they were duty-bound to carry.

She came with a sigh just before he did…a breath of life in his ear where the death-rattles of good and evil usually rang instead.

Dean knew as they lay there afterwards that he would never know anything more about her than the scars she wore like badges of honor...the battles she’d fought to earn them. Everything else he’d ever know about Slayers would come through Sammy’s computer screen, or perhaps Dad’s journal…maybe even Dad himself.

But he would always know that the burden fell elsewhere…and that, for a night at least, the burden had fallen away from both of them.

He’d never forget that, for one perfect night, they’d both been free.