Epilogue





Over two weeks in, and it still felt surreal to him. Like a dream. One of those desperate, clichéd fantasies of domesticity he used to conjure up when he was human and lonely. He realized that it wasn’t one, of course. Enough time had passed that he knew he could trust in its reality. Nevertheless, it didn’t quite seem like reality. Because things were too pleasant, altogether too comfortable in his life, and he knew that he didn’t really deserve it. To wake up each morning in her bed, with her body wrapped around him. Tangled limbs and soft hair, one hand lying splayed across the silken expanse of her back. The warm rasp of her breath against his neck; the steady throb of her heartbeat in his ears. Of course he didn’t deserve that.

Yet he had it. That was the amazing thing; that was what wouldn’t quite sink in. The fact that yesterday and today and on each one of the endless stretch days to follow he would have it.

Despite a concentrated effort to be less obsessive this time around, watching her go about her morning routine had quickly become a part of his own. He just couldn’t help himself. And long after she had risen to the shriek of the alarm clock, he still lay sprawled in a mound of bedclothes, his eyes following her as she darted from the bureau to the closet and then back again, leaving a trail of discarded garments in her wake. Even after she slipped out of his sight, he listened for her step in the hall, for the creak of the bathroom door as she closed it behind her, tracking each of the familiar movements with his keen predator’s ears. She sang as she showered. The same tune every morning, he knew all the words. All the places where her voice, which was lovely but a little thin, would struggle to hold its pitch. He knew that it would be at least a quarter of an hour before she would reappear and that when she did, her long hair would be damp and it would smell of coconut.

He pillowed his cheek on the crook of his arm and breathed in that scent, watching with his eyes half-mast as she rifled through the clutter of cosmetics on her vanity table. She would paint herself with the contents of no less than half a dozen of those containers before she was done. It never failed to baffle him, her doing that, although it was as steadfast a part of the routine as any other. Yet when she finally considered herself to be presentable she would look exactly as she always did, only more so, which left him to wonder why she bothered with it in the first place. She looked beautiful—she was beautiful—and he could not fathom what feature she thought she might be able to improve upon by using that junk. He’d asked her that once, but all she had done was smile.

She smiled again when she finally noticed him staring at her. Perched on the edge of the bed, one foot raised so that she could put on her boot, she said ruefully, “I didn’t mean to wake you. Did I wake you?”

He shook his head, but she apologized anyway, reaching out with the hand not holding her boot. Her skin smelled like violets and he nuzzled her open palm as it passed over his cheek, brushing his mouth across the smooth circlet of silver on her second finger. His girl; his ring. He could not imagine what he might have done to deserve this.

“God, Spike,” she sighed then. He opened his eyes to find her frowning at him, her fingers dropping from his face to touch the bruise on the side of his neck.

“Doesn’t hurt,” he told her, which was true. In fact, it actually felt pretty good. Tender and deliciously real.

“Yeah, but still…” She traced the perimeter of the blemish with her fingertips and then leaned down to kiss it. She didn’t understand; she thought she’d been too rough the night before. But the truth was that he liked it that way. He reveled in her leaving marks. Buffy had a bracelet and a ring; he had a bruise on his neck and a dozen shallow, half-healed scratches on his back. When you came right down to it, they really weren’t all that different. Just symbols of possession. He could’ve had a ring if he had wanted one, but he liked it better this way.

“Guess it’s just a vampire kink, love,” he told her now, a little amused by her obvious show of concern. But Buffy’s frown deepened, as if she suspected he was not being wholly honest with her. Spike couldn’t really blame her for that. After all, the kink might have been harmless, but it was far more human than he was letting on.

“You shouldn’t want me to hurt you,” she insisted. She didn’t realize that she wasn’t hurting him. That this was, in fact, the whole point. He could be trussed up, and she could use her teeth and her nails and whatever other weapons might reside in that delightful arsenal of hers…and he knew that she would never hurt him. It felt incredible to know that, to lie there with his hands above his head and let her demonstrate it.

Anyway, even if she wanted to hurt him that wouldn’t have been the way to go about it. It would have been much easier for her to bloody him with a sour look or an angry word than with her fists.

He tilted his head at her and tried to find the words to explain, but before he could speak, her arms had gone around his shoulders and her mouth was against his ear.

“Come with me today.”

He flinched a little at that, although both her tone and her touch were gentle. And he wanted to go with her. He really did. He wanted to be with her when she brought the Bit home from the hospital. He would have gone had it not been for her friends and the goddamned party they insisted on throwing afterward. Despite the uneasy truce that had been struck for Buffy’s sake, Spike had a feeling that peace wouldn’t hold if they were all trapped together in a small room with access to alcohol. But it wasn’t only that. He had his pride, as well, and he didn’t much fancy hiding beneath a blanket while Xander drove them all to the hospital. He didn’t much fancy Xander driving them to the hospital period, actually. If the De Soto hadn’t packed it in then he would have been the one to fetch Dawn, and there was still a lingering sense that he should have found a way, regardless. That by not, he was somehow shirking his responsibilities.

Or that his responsibilities were being taken from him.

He scowled at the thought, one that had been dogging him for a few days now. But it was difficult to stay angry when Buffy was nuzzling at the side of his neck that way.

“Come on. There’ll be decent food…free beer…what have you got to lose?” She kissed his throat and trailed her fingers along the curve of his naked back, wheedling with considerable skill for a woman who usually got her way with no effort whatsoever. But it was no match for his own stubbornness.

“Well, there’s always your good time, I suppose. I might lose you that.” He attempted to pass it off as a joke, but his tone was leaden and Buffy did not smile.

“Don’t say that. You wouldn’t ruin anyone’s good time. I mean, the gang knows you’re coming—you’re invited to come—”

“Sure I am,” he interrupted. “But they don’t want me there. Can’t say I blame them for that, but they’ve made it clear. If they did—”

“If they did…what?”

“Well, if they did then it wouldn’t be there, would it? It’d be here. That’s just another rub, them having it at the Watcher’s place. Just another way to show that they don’t want—”

He stopped abruptly, too agitated to finish, but Buffy didn’t press him. “Spike,” she said instead. “I want you to be there, and so does Dawn. You know that.”

Spike did know that. She had proven her loyalty more than once over the past two weeks, and it was her trump card. But he still wouldn’t allow himself to fold. He couldn’t.

“Think you’ll live, pet. As for Dawn, she knows I’m not coming. I talked to her about it and she said she understands.”

Buffy looked skeptical, but he wasn’t lying. He had talked to the Bit, the night before. Visiting hours at the hospital ended before sunset, which made it difficult for him to see her when the rest of them did. But he’d gone a few times, after hours. One of the night nurses was young and lonely; she’d let him onto the ward just so long as he flirted with her for a while first. He tried explaining this to Buffy, who seemed suitably annoyed by the idea of him flirting with anyone, for any reason.

“You went to a lot of trouble to get out of it.”

He shrugged. “It’ll make things more pleasant all around, my not being there. Won’t be nearly as awkward for you and Nibblet.”

“Well, how do you expect things to ever not be awkward?” Buffy demanded in an exasperated tone. “You go out of your way to avoid being in the same room with them.”

“And they don’t do the same with me?” His temper flared under the criticism, but her next words extinguished it almost as quickly.

“Of course they do. And you’re right when you say that they should have had the party here. But can’t you overlook all that for one day and meet them halfway? They won’t make that effort for me. Can’t you?”

Her voice sounded weary now, and Spike felt a sharp dart of pity for her. Poor love. She’d tried this line of reasoning before. With him. With the Watcher. With her friends. And none of them ever budged an inch. He wished there was some way of making her see that while he wasn’t unwilling to make the effort, it was it was utterly pointless for him to try. Her friends would be polite—he would be polite—and they would all feel stiff and uncomfortable. Nobody’s fault, really. It was just how things were, how they would most likely always be.

He looked at her helplessly, wanting to do both what she asked and what he believed was right. Yet those two things seemed to be mutually exclusive and he was stuck, once again, with a Catch-22. Do what she wanted and make her unhappy, or make her unhappy by not doing what she wanted. Either way, she would end up hurt.

“And there’s nothing I can do to change your mind?” Buffy’s expression was a mixture of defeat and pity, her tone gentle in a way he really didn’t feel he deserved. Not when he had upset her.

He shook his head and she sighed.

“Stubborn vampire. What am I going to do with you?”

But Spike couldn’t answer her because he didn’t know, couldn’t imagine, what place she had found for him in her life, or how he might hold onto it now that it had been given to him.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~





He lazed around in bed for a while after she left, but sleep had suddenly become an impossibility. He had a sinking feeling that he had done wrong in not going. That both his girls were going to be angry with him. And it wasn’t his fault, goddamn it. He was just trying to prevent more unpleasantness. They should be grateful that he tried. That he cared.

Agitated, he kicked back the bedclothes and climbed to his feet. His jeans and t-shirt were heaped on the floor beside the bed and he quickly wriggled into them, but he had to search for his boots. Not surprising, considering how cluttered their room was. Neither he nor Buffy was inherently neat and although they kept the downstairs presentable for company, the bedroom had suffered from a lack of attention. Oddly, despite the inconvenience it caused he felt a certain amount affection for the mess—for the odd socks and the empty coffee mugs. For the unsteady, druidic stacks of books and CDs that dotted the floor in regular intervals; even for the weapons that lay scattered around the opened wooden chest. Because it was this hodgepodge of their respective belongings that had made the room cease to be wholly Buffy’s and become theirs. He couldn't help but love it.

He never did find his boots, so he padded downstairs with bare feet, drifting into the kitchen in search of breakfast. Or of lunch, rather. It was well past noon.

The refrigerator was well stocked, but he sifted through the blood carefully, examining each packet and choosing the one nearest its expiration date before dumping it into a mug. The frugality was probably overkill; after all, the Council was paying Buffy a wage now. Not a great wage, certainly. Not what her life was worth. But it was enough to satisfy the mortgage and to keep the sisters in food and clothing and small comforts, and Buffy would have bought his blood if he had let her. However, he did not intend to let her. He gambled for his cash, gave Buffy whatever was left after buying blood and booze; but it was never much. It was never enough to help in a substantial way.

Not going to live off you forever, pet.

It made her angry whenever he said that. She would invariably call him an idiot and insist that he was doing more than his part. And he did do a lot. He did everything he could. Two or three nights a week, he would patrol the cemeteries alone, allowing Buffy to have time off to be with Dawn, at the hospital, or with her friends, at the Bronze. The nights she did patrol, he always went with her. Yet, it hardly seemed like work; he enjoyed it too much. He felt as if he should be doing more. He felt as if he should be doing it all.

The microwave beeped shrilly, and he pulled out his blood with a sigh. By now, Buffy and Xander would have collected Bit from the hospital. They would be on their way over to Giles’ house to celebrate her recovery.

And it’s better that I’m not there. They’ll have a better time, not having to worry about the Big Bad screwing everything up.

He frowned into his mug, feeling jealous and hurt even though staying home had been all his idea. Yet, despite all his insistence to the contrary, he wanted to be part of that aspect of their lives. He wanted to be welcome. He wanted—

Not to be such a goddamned needy ponce all the time. That’d be a good start.

Annoyed with himself, he reached for his cigarettes before remembering that he didn’t have them anymore, that he’d given them up. For her.

Not that she’d asked him to, but he knew she disliked the habit, the way they smelled. And there was the money issue, as well; fags weren’t cheap.

Jesus Christ, you’re on a short tether these days.

But unlike all the previous thoughts, this one made him smile.

He’d swallowed the last of his blood and was debating the possibility of having seconds when a sudden, sharp bang at the front of the house startled him. Dropping the empty mug to the floor, he charged through the kitchen door with his fists clenched, fully prepared to do battle with whatever nasty thing had burst into his house in search of the Slayer.

A good plan but for the fact that the moment he stepped into the dining room, he ran smack into the Slayer.

“Whoa,” she exclaimed, gripping his shoulders. The force of the collision had almost knocked her down. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

Spike gaped at her stupidly for half a second, and then he found his tongue.

“What are you doing back so early? Is Dawn all right?”

“Dawn’s fine. I left her on the side of the road to find her own way home. I figured the fresh air would do her good.”

“Buffy—”

“She’s in the living room, Spike. She’s fine.”

It was only then that he noticed the bags at their feet, the warm, greasy smell of Mexican takeout.

“What about the thing—the party—at Giles’ house—”

Buffy shrugged.

“You’ll have to ask her,” she answered. Then she indicated the bags. “I’ve got to dish up this stuff before it gets cold.”

Bewildered, Spike watched her disappear through the kitchen door. For a moment, he considered following her and demanding to know what had happened, but something told him that she would be no more helpful than before. Instead, he continued on his original route to the foyer.

Dawn was standing just inside the entrance to the living room, an assortment of DVD cases fanned in her hand like playing cards.

“We rented Back to the Future,” she said, as if they had been in the middle of a conversation. “I mean, it seemed kind of appropriate.”

His eyes darted over her, taking stock of her appearance: a little pale, a little thin, but smiling. In fact, he thought it almost looked as if she was laughing at him.

“What about your party, Niblet?”

“The food was lame,” she told him. Her voice was airy but she was looking at him now, and there was something in her eyes. It wasn’t sad or reproachful—it wasn’t even serious—but it made him ache. It made him feel—

“Welcome home, Spike.”

—ten bloody feet tall.

He swallowed, forced out a hoarse chuckle.

“Same to you, Bit.” He wanted to hug her, but somehow it seemed too awkward. He was afraid she would think he was a ponce, or weak. Instead, he reached out and ruffled her hair. “Welcome home.”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~





“Still with me?”

Spike stirred at the sound of her voice, struggling to pull himself out of the daze that he had been in throughout most of the Back to the Future trilogy. His torpor had little to do with the quality of the entertainment, although he certainly felt as though he’d seen more than his fair share of saccharine 1980’s films over the course of the evening. But it was the overabundance of food that did it: blood and salsa and a burrito the size of a small suitcase. He always felt like napping after a particularly good meal.

Dawn must have felt the same way because halfway through the second film she had drifted off to sleep, curled up on the end of the sofa with her folded legs resting on his feet.

Buffy was half-lying on top him as well, her cheek on his shoulder, one leg thrown across his hip to keep from falling off the narrow ledge of the couch. It should have been uncomfortable, being hemmed in by them like that, but it wasn’t. It was just very warm. No wonder he wanted to sleep.

Still, he struggled not to let it show.

“I’m awake,” he told Buffy. “I’m with you.”

One hand slid underneath the tail of his t-shirt, her fingertips tracing the lines of his abdomen as if to measure how much weight he had put on. The answer was a good bit. Since moving in with her, he’d regained what he’d lost and some more besides. Not a lot, but enough so that he looked less like a jungle cat and more like a fireside tabby: lean and agile but nevertheless very clearly domesticated. Spike knew he should probably be bothered by the thought of it, but he wasn’t. He closed his eyes and breathed to the rhythm of her stroking.

“Why’d you come back for me that night?”

Although the question might have seemed to come out of nowhere, he had actually been thinking of it all night; he’d been reliving it as he dozed. That strange, surreal moment when she had come back for him.

Ask me...

Buffy raised her head from his shoulder to look at him. Despite the drowsy tone of his voice, his eyes were wide open and alert, clearly intent upon getting his answer. He had always been afraid to ask the question before.

“Why do you think I came back?” she countered gently. Her fingers threaded through his messy hair, combing it in a way that did not help to keep his thoughts on track.

“Well, I don’t know, do I? Last I knew, you were telling me that you’d never be mine. And then—”

“And then?”

“And then you just showed up out of nowhere and wanted me to ask you—” He paused. Then, very softly: “Why’d you do that, Buffy?”

She didn’t hesitate, not for a moment.

“I did it because I love you.”

That should have been enough for him. After all, it was everything. Yet, somehow, he still felt dissatisfied. Uncertain. Yes, she loved him. But for how long? How could he possibly keep her love when he had no idea how he had won it in the first place?

“Oh, Spike.” Buffy looked as if she could read every thought in his head. “I know I was wrong to tell you all those things before. It’s just that I felt so—”

“What?”

“Guilty.”

It wasn’t the word he had been expecting. He tensed a little in her embrace and turned his head to the side.

“Guilty for loving me, you mean?”

Buffy shook her head. “For hurting you,” she whispered. “For lying to you, back in London. For making you—”

“—into this,” he finished bitterly. “Would you rather be back in London? If Willow offered to send you—”

“Do you really think I would do that to you?”

He didn’t know what to believe. And he felt confused. The person back in London was just a younger, infinitely more naïve version of the person who lay here with her now, and it seemed idiotic to feel jealous of himself. Yet there it was: envy so strong that it almost choked him. Because if she still wanted that life—a life he couldn’t possibly offer her now—

“Why would I do that?” she asked softly, interrupting his thoughts. “Why do you think I would want to go back there when you’ve worked so hard to get here?”

A sudden hitch in his breath at that. At the way she nuzzled the bruise on his neck. Mindful of Dawn sleeping at the other end of the couch, he swallowed back a moan.

“Back then I could take care of you—I would’ve taken care of you—and now I want to and—”

And I'm not able.

He couldn’t finish the thought; it was too humiliating. But he could see in her eyes that she knew what he had been about to say.

“You do take care of me,” she argued. “You do all kinds of things to—but the point is that you shouldn’t feel like you have to. That was where I screwed everything up…making you think it was your job. I can support myself.”

Spike was silent, thinking about that. What she was saying made sense. It made him feel good. But at the same time, it went against all his instincts.

Buffy was watching him with a small frown.

“Hey,” she said, lightly chucking him under the chin. When he looked at her, she asked, very seriously, “Do you want to go back? Is that what this is about? Do you wish that we could have stayed there together? Is this not enough—?”

His eyes moved from her face to Dawn’s and then back again. He was living here with them, wanted by them. Loved. She was lying against him with her arms around his waist…with her hands on him. It was a far sight better than he deserved, and she wanted to know if it was enough. The absurdity of it was almost enough to make him laugh.

“Why would I want to go back to that time, love? All the things I wanted back then…all the things I used to dream about…I’ve got them here. I’ve got everything I ever—” He choked, feeling oddly bashful. Unable to go on.

Buffy smiled at him then, and lowered her head so that she could kiss his throat.

“So you’ve got everything you want. Now relax and learn how to enjoy it.”

Spike was glad that her head was underneath his chin and she couldn’t see the foolish smile that had spread across his face. Because for the first time in over a century, he found himself actually entertaining the possibility of it: a happy ending that would last.




The End

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