Summer Of Spike
{ R | Buffy/Spike }
written for the Summer of Spike challenge, 2004
*
| Silent Recluse |
She’s gone.
Tears streak down Spike’s face again as the image of his beloved Buffy, falling hundreds of feet to her death, resurfaces behind closed eyes. He wraps the blanket around his broken body and sobs into his borrowed pillow.
Upstairs he can hear movement; Buffy’s friends going about their daily business, pretending she isn’t dead, living a lie where there is no mourning vampire in the Summers’ basement.
Flying through the air, golden hair streaming behind her, never more beautiful, never -
They are yelling now. Something about the Buffybot. The whelp is pacing, his heavy footfalls echoing in the emptiness around Spike’s heart. “We need someone to patrol!”
Quiet murmuring between the witches. Spike’s eyes follow Xander’s path on the ceiling. The front door opens and closes, Dawn’s voice floats through the house.
The others stop their argument, assume crash positions, and go about pretending nothing is wrong. But it is all wrong.
Her body in a heaping, broken mess. He was too late. He’d failed. The only thing she’d ever asked of him, and he’d fai -
Spike’s eyes sting again. His chest burns. He rolls over and buries his face in the sheets. Upstairs, the microwave whirs. Dawn will be bringing him his dinner soon. He doesn’t want to eat, but Buffy’s friends send the Nibblet down with the blood ‘cause they know he can’t say no to her.
Because he couldn’t save her. Not when it counted.
Flying through the air, screaming Dawn’s name, grasping at girders and scaffolding that was always just beyond his reach -
Falling so elegantly, so pure. She’d gotten her death wish, but what now?
He hopes Dawn won’t come. He wants Red, or the whelp, someone he can lash out at, someone who will hate him. Spike wants to be hated. Spike wants to be hated by anyone but himself.
He would have died for her. But he fucked it all up.
They dragged him from Buffy’s body, pleading with him. Dawn was crying for her, for him, for the impending sunrise. But he wouldn’t leave ‘til he knew for sure, ‘til he felt her cold body.
It should have been him. And he will never forgive himself.
| Saviour |
He drags a weary hand across his face.
“’M not ready yet.”
A put-upon sigh sounds from his side.
“You have to be.”
Warm hands drag him from the cot. He struggles, but he has no energy left, no fight.
A mug of micro-waved blood is pressed to his lips; the scent churns his stomach.
“No -”
But it’s forced down his throat, burning him, healing him. Saving him.
Stronger now, Spike glares up at his saviour.
“Should’ve let me rot,” he spits. “After what I’ve done…”
“Dawn still needs you,” Giles reasons. “And the world needs a warrior.”
| Puss In Boots |
Spike changes the channels abruptly; no infomercials for him tonight. He settles into an old black-and-white, something pitiful but appealing.
A soft brush against his hand draws his attention. “Well, if it isn’t Puss in Boots,” he mutters, petting the witches’ cat. Miss Kitty Fantastico purrs and cuddles closer.
“What, no fear? No loathing?”
She stares up at him with marble eyes.
“Snarky comebacks? Disappointment?”
She mewls and paws him. He scoops her onto his lap and strokes her affectionately. Her rough tongue scrapes his chin; she welcoms his cold hands behind her ears. Spike can’t help falling in love.
| The Pool Game |
“It’s not fair; you get to use vampire reflexes and stuff,” Xander complains.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t've bet money, hm?” Spike sinks another two balls in quick succession.
“You just steal it from me anyway. This way I get some guy time.”
“Guy time?” Another three balls.
“The girls always want to do ‘girly things’, like watch chick flicks and read wedding magazines.”
Spike grimaces at the thought.
“They never play pool or watch football. It’s kinda nice to have a guy around. Even if it’s you.”
“Gee, thanks.” Spike sinks the last ball and takes the winnings.
“Anytime.”
| Shared Exile |
Spike waits in the Slayer’s living room, biding his time. The tv is on, spewing background noise and blasé colour. He sits on the couch, watches the clock, waiting for the signal…
“Got it!” Dawn cries as she races down the stairs. “I knew I had black somewhere.” She hands the bottle of varnish to him triumphantly.
“Thank God,” he replies, “because there was no way I’d wear any of your prissy red ones. Now come on, get over here.”
The girl grins and plops herself cross-legged on the couch beside him. With a critical eye he holds up the nearly full bottle of black nail polish, shakes it, and nods in satisfaction. “This’ll do just fine.”
Dawn snatches it out of his hands and sets it off to the side. “Nuh-uh, I’ve gotta do your cuticles first.”
Spike gives a put-upon sigh before handing her the little bag of cosmetic tools. Though he feels like a ponce for playing make-up with the Slayer’s sister, he’s the only one of the so-called Scoobies who seems to be spending any time with the poor kid. It isn’t like he wants to, after all…
“Can we shut off this nancy-boy crap before my brains start leaking out my ears?” he demands. Dawn giggles again, a sound so precious to Spike it’s like water in the vast desert of his heart. He tries hard to suppress the smile that desperately wants to make its way onto his face.
“I like this nancy-boy crap,” she retorts and turns up the volume. “Besides, it’s the only thing on at this ungodly hour.”
Spike glances at the clock - midnight. Two hours till the Buffybot will be back from patrol with Willow and Tara. Two hours till he has to face reality. Two precious and too short hours to entertain normalcy by engaging in an activity that goes against his entire nature - a manicure.
“Yeah,” he replies, but to what he isn’t quite sure.
“Hand me the bottle,” Dawn demands, and he automatically complies. His focus is elsewhere now, roaming around the room that holds so many memories of Buffy and Joyce.
That’s the table he’d first tasted Joyce’s famous cocoa; that’s where he’d gotten his first glimpse of the Nibblet, peeking through the bars of the railing; that’s where Buffy invited him in, de-invited, and re-invited him; that’s where he fell in love.
Spike suppresses a shudder when he thinks of Buffy. He holds in the cry of anguish that threatens to burst forth. He fights the urge to grab Dawn and run far, far away from this godforsaken town. He blinks back the tears, swallows his pride, and asks, “You done yet?”
Dawn cocks her head to the side, an unconscious imitation of her sister, and Spike smiles. No matter how long she’s been gone, or how much he misses her, a little bit of her is still here with him - his precious Nibblet.
She gives his pinkie one more swipe of the brush and nods to herself. “I fudged it a bit,” she admits, “but I think it’s okay now.”
“Not like anyone ‘cept the vamps I dust are gonna look at my nails. ‘Oh, wonderful manicure you’ve got there Spike! Where can I get one for myself?’” He looks sidelong at her and gives one of his rare smiles. “‘Oh, nowhere - just the Slayer’s lil sis likes to pamper me a bit.’ Can you imagine?”
“Nope, that’s what makes it so funny. You, with a manicure!”
He elbows her in the side. “‘S your turn next, so don’t make fun.”
Dawn wipes the smile off her face and replaces it with a somber look of superiority. With a terrible English accent, she delicately places her hand in his own and says, “Tally-ho William! It’s nearly time for tea - pip pip and all that rot.”
The two collapse into giggles, the mystical Key and the Scourge of Europe, holding tightly to each other like they fear the laughter will explode their bellies. But really, it’s to hold on to the levity, the freedom, for a little while longer.
The laughter subsides but Dawn remains securely attached to Spike’s side. He isn’t complaining - warm human body nestled against him, unafraid, trusting. The next best thing to having Buffy, but really he loves Dawn just for being her. She is Buffy’s sister, true, but the two had forged an unlikely friendship long before he had realized his love for the Slayer. The bond between them is real, made stronger by the loss of her family and the women whom he’d grown to love.
Joyce had been like a mother to him, and he can share Dawn’s grief in that loss. And Buffy…sometimes he still awakens from nightmares where he was seconds too late to catch her from falling, or where he was the one to push her, or where Dawn was the one to die. They’re horrible, nearly unbearable, but then he remembers his promise to Buffy, that he would protect her sister until the end of the world.
So here he is, holding his Nibblet with every ounce of love he has left, and he won’t let her go. Not for death, not for life, not for Angelus or Dru or those sodding Scoobies. He’s her sole protector now, and he won’t take that job lightly.
He listens as Dawn’s breathing becomes deeper and more rhythmic until it finally succumbs to the patterns of sleep. With a tender hand he brushes the hair from her face and places a soft kiss upon her forehead.
Willow and Tara will be home in less than an hour, and he will carry Dawn upstairs before then. But for this time in between, during their shared exile, he will hold her close and love her the only way he knows how.
“Till the end of the world, darling,” he whisperes. “Till the end of the world.”
| Cookie Jar |
Spike eyes the pig from across the room and carefully stalks towards it. Ten feet, five… He grasps it by the ear and tears its head off before plunging his hand inside, seeking the hidden treasure -
“Spike?”
The vampire whirls at the sound of Tara’s voice, chocolate chip cookie in one hand, pink ceramic pig head in the other.
“Did I just catch you with your hand in the cookie jar?”
Spike glances at the cookie, then at the witch. “Uh, no?” He stuffs the cookie in his mouth. She rolls her eyes as he slips nonchalantly past her.
| Red |
“You’re angry.”
Spike ignores her.
“You’re angry at me?”
He plays with his Zippo. “Maybe I just don’t feel like talkin’, Red.”
“Red? We’re back to that now?”
He sighs.
“It’s just so impersonal! Like me calling you Blonde!”
The phone rings and Xander answers. “Magic Box!” He listens.
“Hey, Bleached Wonder!” Xander calls. Spike glares pointedly at Willow.
“Does it really seem right to call you anything but ‘Red’ after all these years?” Spike asks.
Turning to Xander he demands, “What is it, Whelp?”
“Tara wants to know if you’ll be over for dinner.”
“Tell Glinda it’s a date.”
| Penny For Your Thoughts |
Anya shows Spike another swatch, this one green.
“That’s putrid.”
She frowns. “Really? I thought it was regal.”
“And you thought the demons and the humans could sit together.”
“Well, if they were even remotely civilized there wouldn’t be a problem!”
“I still think all your bridesmaids should just go nude.”
A pause. “No unnecessary relinquishing of money on a dress you’ll only wear once. Brilliant!” Anya begins scribbling madly.
“Finally,” he exclaims, “a woman with sense!”
She drops a penny on the table. “That’s for services rendered. We should work together more often!”
“Penny for your thoughts,” he mumbles.
| Sudden Longing |
“I’ve seen the bloody Buffybot before -”
No. No, it can’t be.
Falling through the air, like an angel, some celestial pirouette…
“I - I found her. Her hands…”
“I see.” He reaches out and touches Buffy’s ragged, bloody hands. She flinches, from the contact or the pain or the reality of clawing out of her grave, he isn’t sure.
Vacant eyes staring up at him from her broken body, lips slightly parted, neck twisted at such an odd angle…
“Nibblet, why don’t you get some gauze,” Spike suggests. Dawn scurries back up the stairs, eager to help.
Their eyes meet and Spike feels something shift in his chest. She seems so distant, so empty. Lightly he tugs at her and she descends the last few steps to stand toe-to-toe with him.
“Spike,” she says, as if questioning it’s really him. He tucks her hair behind her ear.
“Yeah, luv.”
Buffy frowns and licks her lips, hesitant to speak, but the pain in her eyes speaks volumes to him.
“Don’t have to say anything,” he promises, leading her to the couch where she gratefully sits down. They stare at each other for long moments, waiting for Dawn to return with bandages for her sister’s hands.
“How -” Buffy coughs, “how long was I gone?”
I’ve come so far; I grieved for you, lived for you, died for you…does it change now? Am I worthless again?
“147 days yesterday. 148 today. ‘Cept today doesn’t count, does it?”
She doesn’t reply, merely squeezes his hands in her own.
“How long was it for you?” he asks. There is something in her gaze that disturbs him, something he saw in Dru’s eyes after one of her visions. Something not quite here yet.
“Longer, I think.” She glances around the room. “Longer.”
Dawn appears at his shoulder. “Here. I didn’t know what you’d need, so I brought everything I could find.” She places a laundry basket filled with Band-Aids and peroxide and surgical gauze at his feet. Buffy stares blankly at it.
Spike begins sifting through the supplies and shooting concerned glances at the Slayer.
“How did I get here?” she whispers.
Dawn exchanges frightened glances with Spike and sits beside her sister. She wraps a protective hug around her while he cleans and bandages her wounds.
“Doesn’t matter how, pet. Just matters that you are.”
–
He’s smoking on the front porch when her friends rush up the front walk. Willow stops abruptly as he steps from the shadows and flicks the flaming nub of his Morley into the black night. Spike’s duster swings menacingly as he clomps into full view.
“‘Lo, Red.”
Xander and Anya fidget behind her nervously, and Tara stands slightly aloof. So it had been her Willow’s idea, then.
“Spike,” Willow nods and made to move past him. He steps into her path, effectively blocking the front door of the Summers’ house.
Fear flashes behind her eyes momentarily before smug superiority settles there instead. “It’s been a long night - I kinda just want to go to bed.”
With lightning reflexes he grips her throat and slams her into a porch beam. Her hands fly through the air, glowing with magic, and he catches her wrists above her head. Xander rushes forward to help his best friend, but Spike vamps-out and growls menacingly at him.
When he turns back to Willow, his features are human again. “What did you do, witch?” he demands.
She frowns and struggles against his hold. “Nothing! We didn’t do anything.”
“Then explain to me why Buffy’s crying in her bed upstairs!”
Willow freezes, eyes wide. The vampire and the witch stare at each other, both seeking lies in the heart of the other.
She tucked the book into her bag, like she was hiding it. He never thought anything of it at the time, but…
Disgusted, he throws her to the ground.
“How could you?” he demands, tears shining in his eyes. “You didn’t tell me. You didn’t tell Dawn! Don’t you think we should’ve known? Don’t we get a say?”
“We need her,” Xander implores. “We can’t do this without her.”
“You’re wrong,” Spike grinds out. “It’s the way things are. One Slayer dies, another is called - it’s been that way for centuries! You can’t go messing with the balance of nature this way!”
“But another Slayer wasn’t called,” Anya argues.
“That’s what we’re here for.”
“Spike,” Willow pleads, “you of all people should be happy! She’s back - Buffy’s back! You don’t have to mourn anymore -”
The front door opens and Buffy steps outside. Shiny tracks glint on her cheeks and her eyes are swollen from crying. Everyone turns to face her, and she contemplates each of her friends before speaking.
“You brought me back?” she asks. The four Scoobies smile at her.
“Yeah, we did,” Willow replies.
Buffy tilts her face toward Spike’s and fists the leather on his arm. “You didn’t know?”
“No, pet.”
She looks at her friends once more before nodding. “I understand.”
–
Spike crashes into the wall of the training room and feels something break in his back.
“Bloody buggering -”
She’s on him in an instant, pinning him to the ground and pressing her stake roughly against the fabric of his shirt just above his heart. Buffy grins down at him and squeals.
“I did it! I killed you! You are so dust.”
He can’t help but laugh at her childlike excitement. She bounces to her feet and haulsd him up after her, and he groans in protest.
Concern tugs her delight into a frown. “Did I hurt you?”
“Yeah, I think maybe something broke.”
Her hands alight on his chest and back, searching through the cotton and skin and muscles for signs of cracked bones. When her fingers brush against his nipple he groans.
“Oh, God!” she exclaims, mistaking his pleasure for pain, “I think it’s your ribs.”
“Buffy -”
“Here, sit down, I’ll get the bandages…” She man-handles him to the bench and tugs at his shirt, ignoring his protests.
Through the pleasure-fog of her hands on his skin, he tries to stay her. “It’ll heal, really. No worries.”
Buffy bends down and looks him in the eye. “I hurt you. I’ll fix it.” Her eyes plead with him, begging Spike to understand that this isn’t just about his own pain - it’s about hers, too.
So he sits back and lets her tend to him, takes the tape from her shaking hands when she can no longer tear it herself. When they’re done, she collapses on the bench at his side and hunches over in exhaustion.
“You okay?” he asks, tugging his shirt back over his head. She makes a vague gesture with her hands before nodding.
“Yeah, I just - I don’t know.” She frowns and scuffs her shoes against the concrete floor. “There’s still stuff I can’t deal with yet.”
“Like pain?”
She meets his eyes. “Yeah.”
The training room door opens and Willow’s head peeks in. Spike visibly stiffens and all but closes himself off. Automatically Buffy’s hand reaches out to rest reassuringly on his arm.
“Hey,” Willow ventures, stepping slightly into the room.
“Hey,” Buffy replies, meeting her friend’s gaze head-on. “Can I help you?” she pursues, letting Willow know in clear and certain tones that her intrusion is unwelcome.
The witch bristles at that, jealousy and betrayal and rage rushing through her petite form before some inner calm quells it. “Are you gonna be home for dinner?”
“Spike and I will stop by, sure.”
Willow frowns. “Spike?” Her eyes tick over him. “I thought he was patrolling tonight.”
A warning growl rumbles through Spike’s chest at Willow’s blatant play of dominance. Who does she think she is, telling him how to spend his evening -
“I invited him. Is that a problem?” Buffy’s chin raises slightly, her trademark expression of defiance. Spike watches the power struggle between the two women with interest. Hereis the spark that’s been missing, here is the Slayer he knows and loves.
It makes him proud and a little bit horny that she’s gotten her spunk back fighting for him.
Willow quails a bit at the force behind Buffy’s glare. “I just - I mean - what I meant was -”
“It’s still my house,” Buffy interrupts. “And I let you live there. So don’t dictate who can and cannot come to dinner, Willow.”
Her eyes lower and a shock of red hair sweeps in front of her pixie face. “Sorry. Um, I’ll go tell Tara we’ll need a vamp-friendly course.” She pops out of the room as quickly as she had arrived, and Buffy deflates once again in her absence.
“Everything’s a power struggle with her lately,” she admits and tentatively leans her head on Spike’s shoulder. He freezes at first, then relaxes and wraps a gentle arm around her slender form.
“Well, you definitely won that argument, pet. Hands down.”
Buffy sighs. “I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of everything, but…” She reluctantly leaves his embrace to heft a battleaxe into her strong grip.
“I refuse to be beaten.”
–
Sudden awareness, crowding her cobwebbed mind with dust and dark and putrid rotting flesh. She can feel her cells dividing.
Tries to breathe but there is no air, tries to scream but she can’t remember how. Her fingers claw at her prison, chunks of satin and foam falling into her gasping mouth.
She punches and kicks even as her muscles are knitting back together. Her body protests, her lungs rebel, her soul mourns. This is Hell. Surely it is.
Pounding through solid chestnut now, pounding in her ears, her own blood splashes her face, pumping in her throat, beating, pulsing. So very wrong.
The dirt clings to her like static; in her nose, under her tongue, beneath her bloody, shattered nails. Her hands find purchase in the grass and she pulls herself up, but it’s too late, she’s done, she’s collapsing into herself, the grave is in her heart now, she can’t escape, she can’t breathe, it’s closing in, suffocating, pressing into her on all sides, squeezing, crushing, breaking.
The maggots crawl across her skin and she falls back into the hole she has dug. They force their way into her ears and her nose and between her dry lips and between her legs and they’re killing her, whatever was still alive, and she fights but they are relentless and she isn’t strong, she’s so weak, so helpless and it’s killing her, killing her, she’s dead inside and -
Buffy screams herself awake. Her clothes are clinging to her sweaty skin and she drinks down huge gulps of air. Every night is the same, waking from some horrid nightmare that is really a memory.
She staggers to her feet and grips her dresser hard enough to crack the frame. Wild eyes stare back from her mirror and she is so tempted to crack the flimsy shell. But she stays the violence in her veins and concentrates on breathing, on living, on breaking out of her fear.
Struggling out of her sticky nightgown she knows this had to end. She has to find peace somewhere, if only for her own sanity.
She doesn’t think she can survive waking in her coffin again.
–
It digs its slimy fingers roughly into her skin as they struggle across the cemetery. Buffy’s grip slips from its gel-covered arms repeatedly, and it’s beginning to crush her ribs.
“Hey Sluggo, I think we got off to a bad start.” She slams her fist into what she hopes is its throat and the demon staggers back, releasing her from its gooey clutches.
“These clothes? Designer. Your life?” Buffy plunges her stake into its chest. “Over.”
The slime demon screams as orange sap oozes from its wound. It reaches for Buffy again and catches her hair in its fingers. Revenge fuels its rage, but the Slayer’s having none of it. In a few neat moves she has broken its arm and pinned it to the ground.
Viciously she rips the stake from its body. The demon screams before she snaps its neck.
“Maybe I should send a memo out to all you demon types,” she mutters to the slowly disintegrating corpse. “You can’t kill me.” She stands and wipes clumps of slime from her clothes. “They’ll just keep bringing me back.”
Buffy turns her gaze to the sky, taking in the wide open space between the stars and the planets and the astronauts. At times like these she feels so small, so insignificant. Here is one girl in all the world, chosen to fight vampires, demons, and other forces of darkness. Here she is, the newest incarnation, and she’s finished with the lies and the threats and the failure and the pain.
She is new, she is reborn. She’s a goddamn phoenix. This is her destiny, and she will meet it head on. No more quitting. No more dying. No more escaping.
“You hear me world? I’m not running anymore.”
–
It’s nearly four a.m. when Buffy arrives home from patrol. After the slime demon there had been a nest of vampires, a lone Fyarl, and a pair of munchkin-sized Boudiccas, all estrogen and pointy objects.
She feels surprisingly energized, though probably less from the workout and more from her decision to live life her own way. It’s refreshing and somehow liberating to finally feel totally in control. She’s decision girl now, and it makes her smile.
Climbing the stairs to the bathroom she ponders this new feeling. It isn’t the peace she’d gone in search for, but it feels pretty darn close. Like there’s just one more element that will finish the mosaic of her ‘perfect life’. She finds it funny that white picket fences and 2.5 kids don’t show up on her ‘List Of Things To Do Before I Die - Again’.
Though the slime from the ooze demon had eventually decomposed, Buffy is still sweaty from all the slaying. A long, hot shower sounds like just the thing to -
She turns the knob on the bathroom door, but it’s locked. Buffy frowns at the offending ball of metal and raps on the hulking oak door.
“Can’t a bloke get a mo’ of privacy ’round here?” replies the voice on the other side.
Buffy pauses. Spike?
“Spike?”
A rattle of glass against porcelain. “Buffy?”
The door clicks as it unlocks and creaks as it swings open. She finds herself face to chest - smooth, creamy, toned, pale and lickable - with the blond vampire. Make that very blond.
“Was just dying my hair,” he offers in explanation. She glances past him at the cluttered sink before her gaze is inevitably drawn back to his bare chest. And naked hips. And towel-clad waist. Oh, to be that towel…
Stop it! Bad thoughts, Buffy. Very bad! No naked Spike thoughts for you.
“Something on your mind, pet?”
You. Naked.
“Um, no?”
He frowns at her. “You want the shower?”
“Yeah,” she replies, but makes no move to enter. She’s too busy looking at his bare feet. “Why are you so naked?”
Her eyes widen. His mouth quirks.
“Well,” he says, silk caressing every word as it wraps itself around Buffy’s heart, “I hear most women prefer me this way.” A seductive hand ghosts over her arm and she has to fight back a sigh.
Where is this coming from? she thinks, breaking out of her Spike-induced stupor and struggling to remember why his sexy body is wrong to want.
Where is this coming from? he wonders, sensing the desire coming off her in waves, as confused at her sudden change as she.
“You’re a pig, Spike,” she retorts, retreating to the other side of the hall, gazing up at him with mild disdain etched across her features. The spell is broken, and he has only himself to blame.
“I’m sorry.” For being crude? For wanting her? For not having a pulse? He doesn’t know why, but he is sorry.
She wants to tell him about the ooze demon, about her newfound inner strength, about her new start at life. She wants to tangle her fingers in his white-blond hair and explore the delicacies of his mouth. She wants him to press her roughly against the wall.
God, she wants him. But there’s one thing stopping her from taking what she knows he’s willing to give her.
“Do you still love me?” she asks.
He freezes. They haven’t spoken of his declaration since Buffy’s miraculous return - there has never been a good time to bring it up. Besides, she had rejected him, and that was the end of their love story. Right?
“Of course I do. Never stopped.” Spike’s blue eyes bore into her, piercing the delicate flesh around her heart. It’s almost painful, his admission, and suddenly Buffy feels like she can’t breathe.
“I can’t do this,” she gasps and turns down the hallway, seeking refuge in the confines of her bedroom. But as she reaches the door he calls her name. She pauses and waits, though she doesn’t dare face him for fear she will break in two.
“What do you want from me?” he begs. She keeps handing him hope, then dashing it against the rocks of her fear. “I’ll stay by your side ’til the bitter end, but - I need to know where I stand.”
This is all wrong. Guys don’t stick around for her, and they definitely don’t dare ask what she wants from them. They crush her heart in clenched fists, leave her when she needs them most, and delude themselves into thinking life with her will be perfect.
But not Spike. He’s here, in her house, asking her to be honest with him. Can she do that? After all these years of lying, can she possibly remember how to tell the truth?
“I’m not running anymore,” she reminds herself in a whisper. He’s her friend, her confidante. The others have accepted him into their ragtag group, Dawn has welcomed him into their broken little family, and day by day, he has earned a place in her heart.
She looks back at him. Eyes so blue they seem unnatural, skin so white it can only be marble. But it’s how he wears his emotions, right there on the plump curve of his bottom lip, and in the loose curl of his hair, and in his clenched jaw and corded muscle and unneeded breath that decide for her.
Had she really thought she could resist the attraction?
In seconds she’s upon him, tasting those tempting lips of his, crushing her soft body against his hard one. His hands cup her bottom and lift her before pushing her against the wall and grinding against her.
Spike growls when her tongue plunges into his mouth; Buffy mewls when his thumb rubs her clit through her jeans. And then suddenly she’s stumbling to her feet and he’s retreating into the bathroom, eyes wide, lips red, and the bulge beneath his towel tells her that he’s very aroused indeed.
Confused gaze meets concerned one, and they stare at each other across the threshold of the doorway.
“What are you doing?” he asks. Buffy frowns and moves toward him.
“This is what I want, Spike,” she replies. Her warm fingers tangle in the curls at the base of his neck and draws his face closer to her own. “I want to live my life, not worry about what everyone else thinks, and be happy.”
When his hands rest on her hips she gives him a pleased smile. “I want a man who won’t run away, who will make me see how beautiful I am inside and out, who will pick me up when I’ve fallen, accept the Slayer in me as well as the girl, love my sister and my friends…”
He gives her a shy smile. “You think I can do all that?”
“You already have,” she whispers, and their lips met softly, tenderly, in the centre of their passion.
–
She blinks the sleep from her eyes and squints up at her closed curtains. They glow with afternoon sunlight and she can feel the warmth on her skin. A heavy arm tightens around her waist and her eyes snap open.
I slept with Spike last night!
Buffy turns her head until she can see his face. He looks so peaceful, so innocent, like all the evil inside him, whatever there was left, drained away as he slumbered. And then another shock hits her.
I didn’t wake up in my coffin.
Her smile rivals the sun in brightness and intensity, and she forces herself not to disturb the sleeping vampire. Her sleeping vampire.
It seems he was the missing piece - or, more accurately, his love. She feels new, whole, and this man, this vampire, this ex-mortal-enemy now friend-and-lover, has helped make her that way.
She cuddles into his embrace, enjoying the feel of his normally cold skin warmed with her own body heat. Buffy places a kiss to Spike’s brow and settles her arms possessively around him.
She isn’t running anymore. And she isn’t letting go.