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Love Awakened by slaymesoftly
 
Five
 
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Many thanks to all of you who are reviewing so faithfully. I made a stab at catching up, but didn't get too far. I love you all!


Chapter Five

After another uneventful, but later-than-usual night on patrol, Buffy was quietly approaching the mansion when she noticed a light flickering out of the open front door. Thinking Spike had rolled out into the main room to enjoy the starlight now visible where the roof used to be, she entered eagerly only to find a small group of college-boys sitting around a small fire they’d built on the stone floor. The boys were working their way through several bottles of cheap booze, passing them around and singing bawdy fraternity songs.

The arrival of a pretty little blond did nothing to disrupt their good time; in fact, they tripped over each other in an effort to be the first to offer her a place to sit and a swig from the current bottle. Buffy stared at them with wide eyes, wondering briefly how they had managed to live as long as they had when they clearly had no brains at all. She couldn’t sense Spike, but she knew he would not have been able to leave the building in the chair. Looking around anxiously, she saw no sign of him or his wheelchair; not did it seem that the boys had any idea they were partying in the temporary home of a master vampire.

Telling the overly eager boys that she was there to meet a “friend”, she tried to sidle past them to go see where Spike was and if he was all right. She was a little surprised he hadn’t rolled out and helped himself to a warm meal of drunk intruder, but decided he probably was worried about being able to fight that many human males at once in his current condition. She had no doubt that if he could stand and move he could have killed them all within seconds.

As the boys surged around her, trying to convince her that her friend was not there and not coming, it occurred to her that things were beginning to feel a little dangerous. Naturally, she did not have the same fear of the boys that a normal girl would have-- knowing as she did that she was stronger than any of them-- but the increasing physicality of their importuning was beginning to trigger suppressed memories of the unwanted attentions of Angelus and Dru.

When one of the boys tugged on her shirt, popping buttons off as he did so, she lashed out in terror, sending him skidding across the floor and into the wall. Without waiting to see the reaction of the other young men, she ran from the room, calling for Spike and leaving behind the bag of blood she had dropped. She had only run a short distance down the hall when the ridiculousness of her fleeing from a few drunk and rowdy boys took over from the instinctive reaction she’d had to being touched, and she slowed her pace, stopping before she got to Spike’s room.

She was just turning around to go back for the blood, when one of the boys came into the hall holding a flashlight. “Sho, there you are,” he mumbled, coming closer and leering at her. “Shame on you for hitting Larry and running away. We were jush trying to be friendly.”

“Go away,” Buffy said calmly. “You shouldn’t be back here. In fact, you shouldn’t be in this house at all. Take your friends and go home while you still can.”

“Don wanna,” he said, setting down the flashlight. “Wanna show you how to be friendly.”

Without warning, he pushed her up against the wall, pinning her there with his much larger body and sliding a hand up under her skirt. Once again, Buffy flashed back to Angelus and the brutal rape of such a short time ago and rather than shoving him off immediately, she whimpered in remembered fear. She had just recovered herself enough to realize she needed to do something when suddenly the boy was no longer touching her. Instead, he was dangling from the powerful hand of a very angry master vampire. While the young man choked and wheezed, Spike snarled up at him, ”You really should have taken the lady’s advice, mate.”

Recovering her composure, Buffy stepped up and put a restraining hand on the vampire’s arm.

“Don’t kill him,” she said softly. “I can’t let you do that.”

Dropping the terrified would-be groper and glaring at him with disgust, Spike picked up the flashlight and turned it on his own face, showing clearly the fangs he was baring as he continued to snarl at the boy and at the friends who had followed him into the dark hallway. Shrieking in horror, the terrified group fled the hall and the house, the sound of their car’s squealing tires telling Spike that they had well and truly gone.

They remained in the dark hallway, each dealing with the emotions stirred by the scene, until Buffy realized that Spike was actually standing beside her and trembling with the effort to do so. No sooner had she realized that he was on his feet, than he collapsed, grabbing the wall in an attempt to remain erect. She quickly moved to his side and slid his arm over her shoulders, supporting his weight as she led him back towards his room and the wheelchair.

She could feel the tension in his body as he struggled to hold himself on trembling legs until he felt the chair beneath him; she tightened her grip slightly to assure him that she wouldn’t let him fall. Instead of reassuring him, her help seemed to make the vampire angry, causing him to flinch away from her as soon as he felt the chair behind his knees.

“I…I’m sorry,” she stammered. “Was I hurting you? I just didn’t want you to fall.”

“”S nothing, Slayer,” he growled, then relented as he realized she had no idea what he was mad about. “I didn’t mean to shake you off like that, pet. I’m just so bloody tired of being helpless—“

“Oh.”

Surprisingly, she had no trouble understanding what he meant. If her experience with Ethan’s magic powder and its effect on her body had taught her anything, it had taught her how hard it could be for someone powerful to adapt to being weak and helpless.

“But you aren’t helpless!” she said brightly. “You saved me from that guy.”

“You didn’t need me for that, Slayer; you know that as well as I do. He might have surprised you for a second, but you would have been wiping the floor with him before long. I’ve seen you take out that many vamps without breaking a sweat; you would have cleaned their clocks just fine without me.”

“But I wasn’t wiping the floor with him. I froze, Spike. And before that, I almost killed one of them just for touching my shirt; and then I ran away. I totally lost my cool both times.”

She sank down to the floor beside him and rested her head against his leg as she whispered, “I don’t know how to act around boys any more. I don’t want anyone to touch me. And if they do it without my permission, I over-react.”

“Getting’ physical with some wanker who’s trying to touch things he’s got no bloody business even thinkin’ about is NOT over-reacting, Slayer!” The vehemence of his response silenced them both for a few minutes. Then, dropping his hand to the top of her head and stroking it gently, the vampire continued in a much quieter voice, “Now, the not wantin’ anybody to touch you, that’s something that will go away all on its own, pet. You’ll meet somebody you like – not some drunken college boy trying to grope you, but somebody who can love you the way you deserve to be loved – and that feeling of not wantin’ to be touched is going to go right away. It’s jus’ going to take time, that’s all.”

The irony of his stroking the head resting against his leg while they discussed her reluctance to be touched escaped them both as the vampire soothed the feelings of the Slayer who just happened to also be a sixteen-year-old-girl; they sat in companionable silence for some time, neither of the two creatures of the night at all uncomfortable with the darkness surrounding them.

Eventually, Buffy stirred and lifted her head, causing the vampire to reluctantly move his hand back to his own leg. “I should go check on your blood,” she said softly. “See if it didn’t break when I dropped it. ‘Cause if it did, I’ll have to go—“

“I’ll be fine, pet. Not going to starve to death if I don’t get any tonight.”

“You need to eat,” she said stubbornly. “Look how much better you are since I started feeding you every night. You can stand and walk again!”

“That was adrenalin, luv. Heard you callin’ me and that wanker chasin’ you and just reacted. Lucky I didn’t fall on my face sooner than I did.”

Buffy stood up and picked up the flashlight so that she could light some candles before leaving the room. With her back to the vampire, she asked quietly, “Spike?”

“Slayer?”

“Why didn’t you eat one of those boys? I know you could have handled one of them, wheelchair or no wheelchair. You’re plenty strong enough now.”

“Didn’t think you’d like it,” he mumbled, hoping she would drop the subject.

With a little snort of suppressed laughter, she agreed softly, “You thought right. Good call.”

“Didn’t get to be this old by being stupid,” he replied smugly, ignoring her rolling eyes as she went out into the hallway.

Buffy brought the bag with the blood containers back to the room and held it out apologetically.

“It looks like one of them broke and leaked out all over the floor. But I think there’s enough here to hold you until I can come back. Tomorrow’s Saturday, so no school; I can get to the butcher’s in the morning…”

“It’s fine, Slayer,” he said softly, taking the bag from her and setting it aside. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I DO worry about it,” she replied. ”It’s taking you so long to get better. I don’t understand it. I thought once you started getting blood every day…”

“Anxious to get rid of me, are you then?” he asked lightly, keeping his face turned away.

“What? No! I mean, no, I’m not trying to get rid of you – I just want you to be able to…to do whatever you want to do. L…leave, or…whatever.” She looked up at him with an expression he wasn’t able to decipher. “Isn’t that what you want? To leave here? To get away from all the bad memories?”

“What I want isn’t really important, luv. I NEED to leave.”

“If you didn’t eat people, you wouldn’t have to leave. You could stay here and…”

Her voice trailed off as he looked at her and calmly shifted into his vampire features. He remained like that until he could see from the resignation in her eyes that she had received his message; then he shifted back into his normal human face.

When she turned away, refusing to look at him, he sighed and said quietly, “You don’t want a master vampire livin’ here, Slayer. And I don’t want to live where there’s a Slayer on the job every night of the week. Especially a Slayer I couldn’t kill if I wanted to,” he added softly.

“DO you still want to kill me? Is that why you want to leave? Because you’ll want to kill me and—“

She heard the chair’s wheels rolling just before she felt his hand in hers. He tugged gently until she turned around and faced him. His eyes bored into her as he said very clearly and distinctly, “I do NOT want to kill you. If I thought I could stay without doing something that would make you want to kill ME, I would stay right here and do my bloody best to make you the longest-lived Slayer of all time. But I’m a vampire, luv. Nothing that has happened over these past months has done anything to change that. I don’t want to change it. I am what I am. And you are what you are. If I stay here, sooner or later you’ll have to kill me. Is that what you want, Buffy?”

The use of her given name startled her so much she almost missed his question; then she realized what he’d asked and she shook her head slowly. “No, Spike, I don’t want to kill you.”

“But you would if you had to, luv, wouldn’t you?” His voice was soft and kind, doing his best to help her see the truth of the situation.

She met his eyes bravely, tears shining just behind her long eyelashes. “I would,” she said simply. “If I had to, I would.”

“And there you have it, Slayer.”

He squeezed her hand and went to release it when, to his amazement, she knelt down in front of him and took both of his hands in hers, willing him to believe what she was about it say.

“I would do it, Spike. And then I would come here and curl up on that bed and cry for a week. So, if your leaving here means I get spared that, then all I have to say is, don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”

With a choked laugh, he pulled her up onto his lap and buried his face in her neck, allowing her hair to cover his face and envelop him in the essence of Buffy. For long wonderful minutes he kept her there, nuzzling the scar where Angelus had ripped him away from her throat that night that seemed so long ago. Buffy burrowed into his shoulder, trying to hold her tears back but unable to control the occasional sniffle as she fearlessly let a vicious vampire have complete access to her neck.



 
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