Author’s Note: Written for fanon_spuffy's inaugural challenge and first posted there July 25th. This is going to be one of the very few times when I post a WIP before I have most of it completed. It will be finished but updates may not always come quickly. Chapters two and three are ready and will follow fairly soon.

Thanks to Tanit for the banner!

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Chapter One

*~*

“Come on.  I can feel it, Slayer.  You know you wanna dance.”

The words were there, words of denial – harsh, scathing, and meant to strip the impassioned vampire in front of her of his dignity, make him see how far beneath her he truly was.  She could taste them, waiting on her tongue, cold, bitter, and ready to be unleashed into the dim light of the alley. 

It wouldn’t be you, Spike.  It would never be you. You’re beneath me.

But when she opened her mouth to speak, the words refused to come.  

The fire in Spike’s eyes blazed hot and intense, and the place on her arms where he held her burned with unseen flames.  This consuming passion had overtaken him seemingly out of nowhere, but the alarming part of it was that it appeared to be directed at her.  Buffy couldn’t tell if it was re-enacting the fight that stirred him up or something else entirely, but it was that air of ambiguity that stayed her tongue.

“Buffy...” Her name fell from his lips between great, urgent breaths that seemed all the more significant for the fact that he didn’t need them.

Buffy swallowed, noting belatedly that her own breath had quickened and she was starting to feel slightly dizzy beneath Spike’s penetrating, blue-eyed gaze.  “Say...say I do want to,” she whispered, watching through suddenly heavy eyelids Spike’s tongue darting out to trace his bottom lip.  “Why me, Spike?”

He released her then, dropped his hands from her arms and spun around, chuckling, the sound both desperate and incredulous.  He stalked a few paces away, and then whirled back to face her.  “You honestly haven’t figured it out?”

“Figured what? ” she asked, confused with this odd shift in behaviour.  “Spike?”

He was in front of her in a flash, moving with the vampiric speed he rarely displayed, gripping her arms again with just-shy-of-painful force, eyes level with hers and boring hard into her soul.  “Think about it, Slayer.”

Eyes flickering rapidly, oscillating between meeting his piercing gaze and studying the tense set of his jaw, Buffy wracked her brain for the answer he seemed to think so obvious.  He shook her lightly, just enough to snap her attention back to him, and she gasped, sucking in a deep breath, when he narrowed the space between their faces to mere inches.

“You taste like ashes ,” he stated, with a hint of the accent of the vampire he was obviously quoting.  “You’re all covered with her , she said.  I look at you...all I see is the Slayer.

“Dru knew it,” he continued, voice low, husky, his breath tickling her face.  “Knew it before I did.”

It was there, the answer, swirling in the air around her like one of Drusilla’s pixies.  Buffy felt that if she could just reach...something...she would understand, but her head was swimming and her heart was pounding and Spike’s hard stare sent shivers of anticipation down her spine as he waited for her reply. And then it hit her.

Spike was in love with her.

Buffy’s mouth dropped open, her small gasp of enlightenment resonating in the space between them.   The firm hands on her arms loosened, slipped up to her shoulders, and tangled themselves in her hair.  Unable to move, or breathe, or even think, Buffy stood motionless and lightheaded, staring up at the vampire who had just tipped her universe on its side with no intentions of righting it any time soon.

“You’re all I bloody think about,” he admitted, caressing the golden strands in his grasp.  He took a step forward, the toes of his boots blocking hers between them.  His leather coat rustled against her jacket, and he tipped his head, touching his forehead to hers and exhaling a shuddering breath.  “I’m drowning in you, Buffy.”

This couldn’t be happening – shouldn’t be happening – yet it undoubtedly was, and Buffy’s insides roiled with innumerable emotions, intense to the point of nausea, contradictory enough to leave her shivering in utter bewilderment.  She wanted to run, wanted to slug him in the nose, shove him to the ground and drive a stake through his heart.  She wanted to be rid of his presence once and for all, and show him exactly what it meant to have one good day .

And she wanted to kiss him.  Oh, God, she wanted to kiss him, and it was that terrifying thought that freed her from her stasis.

“No,” she murmured, stepping back, her hair slipping soundlessly from Spike’s fingers.  He remained in place, watching her closely, and she held up a hand to prevent him from following.  “Spike, no...I...we...I can’t .”

His parted lips twisted into a smirk, and he stepped closer despite her warning.  “Not the same as won’t , love.”

Buffy took another step backward, hating her thundering heart and the fact that Spike could hear it.  “How can you...how can you love me ?” she asked, the last words barely more than a whisper.

“Might not have a soul,” he replied, placing his hand over the left side of his chest and moving forward again.  “But I’ve got a heart.”

The look in his eyes, open and vulnerable and so entirely unlike Spike, killed her oft-used defence that a soulless demon couldn’t love.  She knew he could, even if she had never allowed herself to admit it.

It didn’t matter that he loved her.  Buffy wasn’t even going to entertain the notion of walking that path again.

“Don’t try and tell me you don’t want it,” Spike said, nostrils flaring as he inhaled, smelling her scent.  “You an’ me, Slayer, we’re more alike than you think.”

Taking another step backward, Buffy bit into her bottom lip, prepared once again to deny Spike’s words – even as it occurred to her that the two of them, both passionate individuals set apart from their respective worlds by circumstances beyond their control, had a lot more in common than was apparent on the surface.  Whatever powers that directed the universe had brought them into each other’s lives under the guise of mortal enemies, but if she were to be completely honest with herself, they had moved beyond that a long time ago.  Any animosity that remained was merely playacting for the sake of denying uncomfortable truths.

Because she certainly didn’t love Spike, but she no longer hated him either.

“You don’t know what I think,” Buffy responded, her words lacking the biting tone she had originally intended.

Spike’s upper lip curled into a hint of a lewd smirk, and behind his teeth, a bit of curled tongue peeked out enticingly.  “I’ve no bleeding idea what goes on in that head of yours, Summers,” he rumbled, the hand at his chest drifting slowly downward, fingers sliding seductively over the tight black t-shirt, highlighting the suggestion of toned muscles beneath it.  Buffy’s eyes followed its movement, and widened in surprise – though she really shouldn’t have been shocked – when his fingers stoked with deliberate familiarity the impressive outline of his rigid cock through the strained denim of his jeans.

Buffy’s audible gasp, accompanying the now throbbing desire pulsing between her legs, broadened Spike’s leering grin.  He cupped his erection, giving it a firm squeeze, and added, “But I do know what other parts of you are thinking.”

Somehow, he’d ended up in her personal space again, and once more Buffy stepped back.  “I can’t , Spike,” she whispered, surprised not only by the regret she heard in her tone, but that she genuinely felt it as well.

Spike wasn’t listening, though – or at least, wasn’t accepting her admittedly weak attempts at saying no as honest refusals.  He stepped even closer, fingers still caressing himself fondly, prompting Buffy to shuffle backward again.

He persisted, though, keeping with her on each retreating step.  Cool breath fluttered over her face, and Spike whispered, “Just one little dance, Buffy, is all I ask.”

Buffy shook her head with rapid refusal, hating the flush she felt colouring her cheeks and the pounding heartbeat even she could hear.  “Riley!” she blurted, grasping for something, anything, to stop the insanity before she fell any deeper under his spell.

“Bugger Riley!” Spike growled, eyes briefly flashing amber in the glow of the streetlight.  “He’s not what you need, and you know it.”

Buffy wanted to deny it, yearned to tell him that no, he was wrong, Riley was everything she wanted and needed in a man, but the whispering demons in the shadows of her mind reminded her in flashes of insight how very much he was not.

“I-I-I don’t...” she stammered, silenced by a calloused finger over her lips.

“Yes,” he insisted, moving forward again even as she drifted backward.  “You do.”

With a soft, resonant thud , Buffy’s back hit the metal wall to the right of the Bronze’s door.  Another step brought Spike up against her, and any concern she felt over him luring her blindly into this trap crumbled into insignificance under the sheer intensity of his presence.  Her world had suddenly narrowed to include only the amorous vampire in front of her, gazing at her as though she was the most precious thing in his universe.

One of Spike’s hands brushed her hair off her shoulder, while the other settled at her hip, his thumb drifting beneath the hem of her jacket to trace a path of tingling fire across her skin.  “Let me prove how bloody good we could be,” he purred, in that rumbling voice that was pure sex, pressing his erection pointedly into her belly.

The motion sent a shiver of lust through her body, and her already soaking panties grew even wetter.  She had acknowledged her physical attraction to Spike some time ago, in a private moment of self reflection.  Faced with this deliberate attempt at seduction, Buffy’s body had answered the call eagerly, no matter that her consciousness had other ideas.  She realized, as she fought her growing need for release, that her resolve to prevent this from happening had begun to dissolve the moment she understood how he felt. 

Of their own volition, her hands rose to grip the lapels of his duster, fingers curling into the aged leather.  “One?”

With the utterance of that simple word, Buffy knew that everything had changed.

A soft smile flitted over Spike’s lips, and he ran the backs of his fingers over her warm cheek.  “Just one,” he confirmed, face drifting closer to hers.

“And after?” Buffy asked, light-headedness flaring anew as she licked her lower lip in breathless anticipation.

“More.”

Spike crushed his lips to hers in a hard, urgent kiss, the force of it stealing her breath and threatening to buckle her knees.  He gripped her by the arms, pinning her to the wall with the full length of his muscular body.  Buffy ignored the sudden throb from her wound for the fluttery throbbing of a different sort, pulsing low in her belly and growing steadily with every movement of Spike’s mouth against hers.  Her hands slipped from where they had flattened on his chest to wrap around his neck, and Spike growled in approval.

The vibrations of his growl rocketed through her chest and Buffy’s fingers dug into his shoulders.  Spike’s hands flew over her – threading through her hair, running over her arms, and slipping beneath her jacket to cup her breasts and fondle her hardening nipples through the silky shirt.  She arched into his touch, moaning into his mouth as he thrust his erection against her in response.

Spike’s tongue probed at her parted lips, and Buffy accepted his invitation eagerly.  Her tongue greeted his, the two of them gliding alongside one another, over and around in an erotic dance of acquaintance.  The kiss became frantic, needy, her desire for more flaring stronger with each passing moment.  Spike’s insistent thrusts against her, the motions of his hand now snaking its way under her shirt, and the way he growled, nipped, and nearly devoured her while he kissed her senseless, left Buffy melting into a molten puddle of arousal unlike anything she’d experienced in the past.  His passion was raw, blistering, and addictive.

One kiss, and she was lost.

Beside them, the door to the Bronze opened, and a raucous group of adolescents moved into the alley.  Spike tore out of the kiss as the youngsters milled around them, his forehead meeting hers in an intimate caress.  The frantic rise and fall of his chest matched hers precisely, his heavy breaths cooling her face against the heated flush of her arousal.

“Oh, my God!” squealed the voice of a girl behind them.  “Like, get a room or something!  Jeez!”

Spike’s fingers dug gently into Buffy’s skin, thumb brushing across the underside of her lace-covered breast, and he exhaled a snort of amusement she couldn’t help but echo.  Caught acting like teenagers, by teenagers.  Another few minutes of kissing like that and she would have probably let him take her up against the wall right there by the door, and wouldn’t they have had an eyeful then?

Buffy tensed with her last thought, and the implications of exactly what she was doing descended upon her.  This was Spike.  She kissed Spike...and she enjoyed it.

Except that enjoyed was hardly the word for it.  She would have gladly forgone breathing if it meant never having to stop.

Spike must have sensed her sudden second thoughts, because his body stiffened and his grip on her tightened.  His hand moved to her cheek and he peppered her face with moist, cool kisses.  “Don’t go,” he murmured into her skin, his tone both pleading and tender.

Buffy didn’t want to go, but the niggling voice at the back of her mind urged her to run, get the hell out of there before she let this go too far.  But she had a taste now – a teasing but succulent hint of Spike’s particular brand of passion – and she wanted more .  Each little kiss, every stroke of his thumb across her cheek, chipped away at the tension until she felt herself growing boneless again under the onslaught of his presence.

Spike nipped at her ear with his blunt teeth, and Buffy’s head fell back, connecting with a soft thump to the wall behind her.  “Oh, God,” she moaned, as his path of kisses and nibbles moved down her neck.

Feelings of guilt lingered, threatening to ruin the moment, but Buffy stamped them down.  She hated to think that her actions would hurt Riley, but she had already gone too far to stop this now.  Spike was right, she did want to dance . . . wanted to so much her body was aching with need.  The reasons for this sudden, overwhelming desire remained muddled inside the intricate tangle of thoughts and sensations relentlessly bombarding her mind and body.  Simple physical attraction couldn’t account for it, but figuring it out would have to come later.  The vampire making love to her neck with impossibly soft lips commanded her attention with far greater urgency.

“Let’s take this elsewhere,” he whispered, nudging her suggestively with his erection as he bit the place where her neck met her shoulder with his human teeth. 

Buffy gasped and arched into him again, acutely aware of what going elsewhere meant.  The teenagers had moved farther away, but she could hear them laughing and jeering at the two of them huddled in the doorway.  She and Spike weren’t going to stop, Buffy realized.  No matter where they were, the outcome was inevitable.  Finding a bit of privacy suddenly seemed imperative.

“Where?” she breathed, fingers stroking the surprisingly soft hairs at the nape of his neck.

His relief was palpable as his anxious posture relaxed.  He placed a feather-light kiss over the place where he’d bitten her, then pulled back to smile tenderly.  It wasn’t an expression Buffy saw often – very rarely, in fact, and never before directed at her.  Instead of speaking, Spike drew away from her, one hand reaching for hers and threading their fingers together.  A gentle tug had her following him as he walked the several paces between their corner and the door before he pulled it open.

Buffy halted, thoughts of out of the frying pan, into the fire running through her admittedly lust-addled brain.  But Spike slipped around behind her, nibbling her neck again and urging her forward with his hands set firmly at her hips, and despite her reservations, Buffy allowed him to guide her through the doorway. 

Spike’s lips hovered at her ear, and his tongue traced its contours slowly, sending shivers down her neck.  “Trust me,” he murmured.

Trust you ?

But when the scoff of denial remained unvoiced, and Spike manoeuvred her deeper into the Bronze, Buffy realized with a pang of alarm that trusting Spike was exactly what she was doing.

And nothing good could possibly come of that.

*~*

Chapter Two

*~*

Ten minutes ago, the world spun around in its usual screwed up orbit as it had, without fail, for each of her nineteen years of life.  Ten minutes ago, Buffy had been happy in her delusion that Spike was evil and that the only vampire she could ever care for had a soul and helped the helpless in Los Angeles .  Ten minutes ago, she’d have shoved a stake through the heart of anyone suggesting that she’d end up here, on the far side of the stairwell in the now darkened back corner of the Bronze with not-so-evil Spike, his fingers dancing over her skin and hers clutching his coat, kissing him as though the fate of the world depended on it.

From the stage, this week’s indie band was playing something loud and upbeat that rattled the walls, vibrated along her spine and tickled every nerve in her body.  Buffy’s brain hadn’t quite caught up with the rest of her, leaving her more than a little dazed over the night’s drastic left turn even as she nipped at Spike’s bottom lip just so he’d make that growly moan again.  He didn’t disappoint, the purely erotic sound rumbling up from his chest and through into hers.

An insistent, flaming throb of desire flooded her belly and shot needy, dizzying twinges of want from her womb straight to her aching clit.  He just felt so good against her.  Too good, with the way he threw his entire self into kissing her, holding her hostage with his body and seeking to possess her with his passion. 

And she wanted it, needed it, more than breathing, more than anything.  It frightened and exhilarated her all at once.

Spike finally pried open the clasp of her bra, and without breaking the kiss, he slid his fingers around and beneath the loosened cups to pinch her already hardened nipples.  Buffy gasped into his mouth and arched her back, and Spike thrust eagerly against her.  A little jolt of pain shot through her belly and Spike’s lips stilled on hers as she moaned, unable to prevent the whimper of hurt.

He pulled back to look at her closely, his right hand drifting down her abdomen to settle over the bandage.  She could see the uncertainty in his eyes, as if he expected her to bolt now that the pain had cleared her head a bit and she realized what she was doing.  But she’d known that well before she let him drag her into the Bronze and from where she was standing just now, the immediate benefits far outweighed the long-term risks.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, Buffy pulled him back into the kiss and took great delight in his lustful answering growl.

He shifted himself slightly to his left, nudging his thigh between hers and pinning her to the wall from her unwounded side.  Buffy swallowed a moan as his erection prodded her hip and he pressed his leg deliberately into her crotch, teasing her clit with just enough pressure to send tingles of pleasure through her belly that washed away the lingering traces of pain.  His right hand tugged at her belt loop, pulling her into him again and repeating the rush of sensation.  She began moving against him, seeking the friction, rocking her hips in a slow rhythm and wanting nothing more than to lose herself in this.  In Spike and the passion he promised.

When Spike broke the kiss, he panted as hard as Buffy, his breathing ragged despite his not needing it.  His eyes had that blazing look in them again, and they grew heavy-lidded when he glanced down to watch their movements against each other, gripping her hips to guide them.  Buffy let her head fall back, biting her lip and moaning quietly with the start of the slow burn building more and more each time she made contact.  Spike took the invitation she'd intended and began to kiss and nibble his way up from her shoulder to that little spot below her ear that made her stomach clench with need when bitten.

“That feel good, Buffy?” he asked, nipping there again with a bit more force, pulling her harder onto his leg and thrusting against her in turn.

“Mmm, yeah,” she answered, half-moaning the words and surprising herself with her easy acknowledgement.  Her highly useful ability to deny just about anything, no matter how obvious, had fled tonight along with her inhibitions and she couldn’t find the will to care.

Spike growled softly against her neck, and looked down again.  “Love how you look when you move like that,” he whispered.

One hand left her hip, making light swirls over her skin with his fingers as they moved upward, until he cupped her breast, kneading it softly. 

“Love hearing your heart poundin’ away,” he said, tapping a finger in time to its frantic beating.  “And your cheeks, all warm an’ flushed...” He leaned in closer, his lips touching her ear.  “Delectable .”

The word, barely more than a whisper, rippled through her in a full-body shiver.

“Oh, God.”

“Want to touch you,” Spike said, a finger from his other hand tracing the circle of her pants’ button.  “Do you want that, Buffy?”

God, did she ever.

Buffy nodded rapidly, not trusting her mouth not to mangle any sort of spoken words. 

Spike pulled the button free and met her eyes with that burning gaze again.  “Do you want me , Buffy?”

No point in denying it, because clearly she did.  Once more, Buffy nodded.

Spike pulled her zipper down half way.  “Say it.”

“I want you, Spike.”

He smiled softly, completely at odds with the look in his eyes and the situation all together.  Touching his forehead to hers, he asked, “What do you want me to do?”

She knew he knew what she wanted, with the way his fingers were toying with her zipper pull and feathering teasing, light touches on her belly, but feeling bold, Buffy answered, “Touch me.”

The smile matched the eyes now, all teeth and tongue and seduction, and she needed him to be touching her, to be stroking her flesh with those masterful fingers until she came apart around him.

He pulled her zipper the rest of the way down and, shifting her off his leg, slipped his hand inside her pants.

“Like this?” he asked, rubbing teasingly along the top of her thong, an eyebrow raised up in false innocence.

Buffy dug her fingers into his bicep and grunted, “Lower.”

Grinning mischievously, Spike pushed his fingers beneath the lace but stopped short, lightly stoking her curls.  “Here?”

Buffy shook her head, nudging her hips forward to encourage him even though she sensed he wasn’t done teasing – which wouldn’t be such a bad thing except that she was going to explode, and not in the good, orgasmic kind of way, if she didn’t get some friction now .

But he wasn’t nearly done, at least judging by that smirk.  Running a finger down the crease of her leg, Spike said, “Need to tell me where, love.”

God, he wanted her to say it!  There was absolutely no way she was going to be able say any of those words to Spike without dying on the spot.  She felt her cheeks burn hotter just thinking it, and decided to change the rules of the game, right now, because he’d taken charge long enough and it was more than time for her turn on top – pun very much intended.

Buffy grabbed his face and kissed him hard, bucking her hips forward against his hand and pushing his fingers exactly where she wanted them.

He growled into the kiss but instead of breaking it, slipped his tongue into her mouth while his fingers slid between her labia and into her near biblical flood of wetness.  His thumb grazed her clit and his kiss swallowed her moan as she rapidly lost the breath to keep up with it.     After a few experimental strokes of his fingers, Spike began making circles of increasing pressure until Buffy, rapidly growing lightheaded, pulled away from his lips, chest heaving as she struggled to take in enough air to keep from blacking out.

Because this?  Felt far too good to miss, and if she were going to end up on the floor, well, it wouldn’t be because she’d fallen unconscious.

It was almost embarrassing how quickly her body responded to his attention – almost .  She had better things to focus on than that, especially when he pushed two fingers inside her without disrupting the steady motion of his thumb.  Buffy arched her hips into his hand and clutched at his shoulders for balance, spreading her legs as far apart as she could as she mentally congratulated herself on her convenient choice of loose-fitting pants for tonight’s death-of-a-slayer discussion.

“Oh, Buffy,” Spike said with obvious affection and reverence, his gaze intense and his pupils wide as he watched her.  “You’re bloody gorgeous like this.”

Buffy couldn’t have answered if she wanted to.  Anything more complicated than a moan of pleasure and the occasional Oh, God! were beyond her means at the moment.  Spike didn’t seem to mind though, just continued pumping his fingers into her, curling them just so with each plunge and hitting that place inside guaranteed to buckle her knees and steal her breath while alighting her whole body with electric jolts of ecstasy.  It took all her strength, at this point, to remain upright.

When the first tingling hints of her impending climax started, Buffy dropped her head onto Spike’s shoulder.  Her internal muscles fluttered in warning, prompting a string of words from Spike she wasn’t able to process due to the icy fire overtaking her body in a slow, rolling wave.   Each slippery plunge, each powerful stroke over her swollen clit brought another moan, louder, closer together, until her muscles tightened around his fingers.

One more thrust, one more twist, and Buffy crashed.

Hard.

The music pounded away in the background, drowning out her cries to all but the two of them.  Pinned between Spike and the wall, Buffy shook with the force of her orgasm, somehow keeping her feet on the floor even though her legs felt like jelly and everything else in the world dropped away into nothing except for the indescribable sensations and Spike’s encouraging voice buzzing in her ear. 

The universe slowly drifted back into hazy focus as the tremors of climax gave way to shivery aftershocks.  Buffy’s bones turned to rubber and she slumped against Spike, who caught her before her legs gave out, still whispering to her and stroking her hair.  Buffy let him hold her. It felt too comfortable resting in his arms not to stay there. His gentle touch was a safe haven in the aftermath of that heady, body-melting storm.

Minutes passed before Buffy figured she could trust her legs again and she shifted to take her weight, but didn’t pull out of Spike’s arms.  Lifting her head, she glanced up at him and couldn’t help the lazy smile that spread across her face even as she tried to suppress it, afraid she’d find a smug, gloating Spike looking back at her.  Instead, Spike smiled softly and kissed her on the nose, and though his eyes glinted with a hint of teasing, this wasn’t the face of a monster that was going to turn around and torment her for letting him under her skin.  Typical Spike, though, she thought.  If he planned to go for the kill, you knew it from the get go. 

So, soulless, yes, but a monster?  Buffy knew she had some serious re-thinking to do where Spike was concerned.  She may have had the phenomenal orgasm, but she sensed that it was a much bigger deal to Spike and not for any twisted, nefarious reasons, either. 

It was a big deal because he loved her.  Because he was in love with her.

There was danger, giving in to that.  Going into this with the knowledge that every time he touched her, it wasn’t about sex.  It was about loving her.

But Buffy couldn’t bring herself to mind, not with her body still tingling in the aftermath.  Not with whatever else she felt at work here, too, something that went beyond the physical, beyond the expected.  She wasn’t ready to look too closely at it yet, but she could feel it, a spark of connection crackling between them, a hint of power, something as supernatural as the two of them running deep below the surface of an intense, mutual attraction.

Buffy stuffed those treacherous thoughts down.  She wasn’t going there, not now.  Maybe not ever.  She’d give him tonight, like he’d asked, as she’d agreed, and then, well, she didn’t know.  She wouldn’t let herself look too far ahead, for fear of what she might see if she did.

“Still with me, love?” Spike asked, touching her chin with a Buffy-moistened finger to turn her face up to his.

He had to raise his voice against the din of the music, but the increase in volume failed to diminish its sultry tones.  A shiver erupted, shaking her body with its presence and curling the corners of Spike’s lips.

Buffy managed a laugh.  “All but my toes, I think.”

“Mmmm,” Spike said.  “Gotta see about making that legs , sweetheart.  You always that much of a screamer?”

Heat flooded her cheeks and she knew, even without a mirror, they would be flushed a deep, blood red.  Spike made the rumbling half-growl, half-purr sound that caused her heart to race as he touched his lips to each heated circle.

“I bet,” he whispered, pausing to trace the contour of her ear with his sinful tongue.  “I can make you scream even louder.”

Considering what he’d done with fingers alone, Buffy had no doubts that he could.  She was also ridiculously turned-on again when just seconds ago she’d been ready to fall asleep.

But turned-on Buffy was also brave Buffy, and brave Buffy wanted to even the score a little.  After all, she was the Slayer, and the Slayer couldn’t let the vampire win. Not even this .

“You don’t look like a screamer to me, Spike,” she said, her heart speeding up at the thought of what she was about to do.  Buffy reached between them to squeeze his erection and grinned when Spike gasped and bit hard into his lip.  “But I bet I can make you feel so good you’ll forget your own name.”

She thought she saw his eyes roll back in his head a little at her words, and when she popped the button on his jeans, he groaned in a way that bolstered her boldness and played to her growing need to be in control.

Buffy dropped to her knees, pulling Spike’s zipper down with her.  She wasn’t surprised to find he went commando; probably thought it made him more of a badass that way or something.  Once freed, Spike’s cock bobbed eagerly out in front of her, and it was Buffy’s turn to groan.

Spike wasn’t a large man.  He wasn’t much taller than her, in fact, and though well-muscled, he was definitely below average in stature.  But there was absolutely nothing average about this .  Thinking of Spike as cocky now took on an entirely different meaning.

And oh, was he ever going to make her scream.  But she would do her best to make good on her promise to him first.

Buffy wrapped her fingers around the base of his thick shaft, and Spike hissed and slammed his palm into the wall above her.  She slowly stroked him from base to tip and he moaned her name, and when she swirled her thumb through the drop of pre-come glistening at the head and brought her hand back down again, he swore under his breath and bucked his hips forward.

Grinning at his reaction – she’d barely touched him yet – Buffy pressed her lips to the smooth head peaking out from its hood of foreskin, loving the way Spike’s whole body vibrated subtly beneath her touch.  She snuck her tongue past her lips and licked him from base to tip, feeling a jolt of arousal surge through her at the way her name sounded when Spike begged her to let him in.

Buffy glanced up at him as she fully exposed his sensitive tip and circled it with her tongue. She caught his eyes, dark and intense as he watched her, and something in his expression, a look she couldn’t place, made her insides quiver with desire and anticipation and a million other things she couldn’t name, but which felt huge . 

She knew the power she held over him now.  While she wouldn’t quite crown herself the blowjob queen, she wasn’t new to this, but the heat in her veins wasn’t just about that, no matter how much she liked to tell herself it was.  Like everything tonight, she didn’t understand it, just that it was .

Buffy blew lightly on Spike’s moistened flesh and watched his eyelids flutter shut.  The instant his eyes closed, she took him into her mouth, easing back his foreskin with her hand as her lips glided along his shaft.  Spike’s fingers curled immediately into her hair, but instead of the half-expected demanding tug, his fingertips brushed her scalp in an attempt at a gentle caress before his hand settled, open-palmed, at the crown of her head.

Spike had more cock than Buffy had mouth, but he didn’t seem to mind that she had to finish her stroke with her hand.  Not at all, judging by the way he moaned her name and massaged her head with his fingers.  He seemed to like it equally as much – with the thrusting into her mouth and the almost-louder-than-the-music cursing – when she experimented with swallowing around him.  After that, as she withdrew while lightly scraping her teeth along his flesh, sounds tumbled freely from his lips but Spike pretty much stopped making sense.

The ache between her legs throbbed in time to the beat of the drums.  Spike’s cock slipped smoothly in and out of her mouth, guided but not forced by his hand as she bobbed her head while he thrust with his hips.  Buffy had enjoyed doing this before, but something about the unrestrained enthusiasm of Spike’s reaction to her made this unlike her other experiences, almost making it completely new.

Buffy wanted him, even more than she had when he’d made her admit it before.

She wanted the cock in her mouth to be sliding its length deep inside her, stretching her farther than she could even imagine.

She wanted the fingers in her hair to be strumming her clit as he pounded into her, driving her wild with that expert touch.

She wanted those lips, rumbling with obscenities and praise and the most erotic version of her name she’d ever heard to be kissing hers until the world around them disappeared forever.

Buffy wanted Spike. 

She wanted him, and she was terrified that she’d never stop.

*~*

  To Be Continued in Chapter Three

Chapter Three

*~*

Buffy knew she should have run.  She should have torn herself away from temptation and taken off into the night, leaving Spike and his intentions to simmer alone in the alley.  But she hadn’t.  She went from wanting to shove him down and throw money in his face to wanting to shove him down and climb on top.  She could have passed it off as being caught up in the moment, a temporary insanity she would deny in the morning and use as an excuse to threaten the vampire with bodily harm.  Then she’d followed him inside, giving meaning to what had happened by choosing to take it further.

And further they went.  She knew they’d go further still, and not because Spike would push her into it.  No, she was more than willing.  Hell, she was bordering on desperate.

Buffy was so aroused she could barely stand it.  She strained her eyes to look up at Spike, hoping to catch his eyes but finding them closed tight.  His brow wrinkled and he gasped, his parted lips quivering a bit before he let out a soft moan.  The noises he made, from the rumbling groans that turned into growls to the breathless panting and barely-in-control whimpers, made her burn for him more and more with each passing moment.  Her pussy ached to be filled and her belly fluttered with ripples of pleasure with even the slightest friction on her clit. Painfully erect nipples rasped teasingly against her loosened bra whenever she made the forward motion to envelope Spike’s cock into her waiting mouth.   Each time she withdrew, sucking hard, grazing it with her teeth or with her tongue, Spike’s fingers curled into her scalp and he moaned her name like a prayer.

Spike worshipped her as she sucked him off, and it got her hotter than she ever could have dreamed.  

His cock stretched her lips with each smooth slip in and out, and his balls felt heavy in her hand.  She never wanted this to end, except she did.  She wanted his knees to buckle and his fingers to pull on her hair until it hurt.  She longed to learn what he sounded like when he came and hear him shout her name in release.

She wanted to taste him.

The world had changed.  Loathing, revulsion, disgust, the back-of-her-mind worry over what would happen if that chip stopped working, all of it gone, poof, unimportant, invalid, ridiculous.  Spike was hers. She already owned his heart and was well on the way to possessing his body.  If he had a soul she’d take that, too.  Greedy?  Oh yes, but she didn’t hear Spike complaining.

She loved the way he moaned, as if he’d happily stake himself now because life couldn’t possibly get better than this.  Buffy flicked her gaze up to his face again, loving the closed-eyed, open-mouthed look of bliss she’d put there.  He was close.   His words became more and more nonsensical and a slowly building tremor shook his body.  Buffy’s heart pounded with anticipation as he moaned loudly and slammed his fist into the wall.  Then his knees did buckle, and he roared – a raw, primal sound that stirred something hidden deep inside her and left Buffy fighting the urge to crawl up his body and take him in right now.

Instead, Buffy pulled back once more, sucking hard and feeling a thrill surge through her as Spike cried out her name and bucked his hips forward, thrusting into her mouth even as she moved forward.  The tremor grew into full on shaking.  Buffy squeezed his cock with her hand, quickening her pace and taking him in as deeply as she could.

He came with a violent jerk and another soul-stirring roar, tightening his grip on her hair as Buffy tasted the first bitter hints of his climax at the back of her throat.  She started swallowing everything he had to offer, fingers curled and still stroking his cock as he spilled his release into her mouth.  She strained her eyes to the point of pain to stare up at his face shifting back and forth at random between its human and vampiric versions, a sight she couldn’t help but find dangerously beautiful.  He stopped making sounds but she could read the word on his lips.

Buffy.

Buffy, over and over again until he went slack above her, forehead hitting the wall with a thud while he uncurled his fingers, releasing her hair from his almost-painful grip.  Buffy let his softening cock slip from her mouth, placing a kiss on the tip before leaning forward, resting her head on his thigh, breathing hard and listening to Spike doing the same thing.  His fingers in her hair combed gently through pulled strands and made her scalp tingle, and she sighed and shuddered as the tickly sensation trickled down her neck, along her spine, and between her legs like a wildfire.

“Oh, God,” she said, unable to keep from moaning. 

Because now that Spike was having his afterglow, and her part in it was finished, all she could think about was her own demanding need.  My turn!  My turn!   Except that unless Spike’s fingers were up to the task, Buffy wasn’t sure how he was going to take care of that, being Mr. Spent and all.  Maybe the blowjob wasn’t such a great idea...

She couldn’t take it any longer, and slipped her hand into her pants.  Her fingertips, slippery the moment she nudged past her rumpled thong, barely brushed her clit, and the resulting stab of pleasure had her biting her lip hard enough to break the skin.  Buffy knew it wouldn’t take much to send herself over, but she’d be lying if she thought her own fingers would be as satisfying as feeling Spike’s touch.

As if he’d read her mind, his hands dug into her shoulders, instantly bringing her attention to his wide, dark eyes and satisfied little smirk.

“Could watch you doing that all night,” he said, tugging her as though he wanted her to stand.

She let him pull her up, bracing against the wall and pushing with her legs to help.  The moment she came upright, Spike pressed in close, sliding his hands from her shoulders to cradle her face.

“Doing what?” Buffy asked, noticing that despite the apparent return of his usual cocky self, his body still trembled against hers.  “This?” 

She flicked her clit and gasped as the sensation washed over her, loving the way Spike’s laugh vibrated through both of them.

“Or did you mean this?” 

She glanced down between them and then quickly back at Spike’s face, sliding her tongue across her bottom lip and curling her mouth into her version of his smirk.  Spike’s eyes did that rolling back thing again and he groaned in a way that made Buffy feel very good about her recent performance. 

“Baby,” he said, brushing her cheeks with this thumbs, “you have no idea.”

Buffy had words planned in response, but Spike kissed them away.  The instant his lips touched hers again, she forgot what she was going to say and melted into the kiss instead.  The heat she felt between them all evening flared hotter.  It was scary how easily they’d gotten here, but she didn’t care so long as he kept kissing her.  She was growing rapidly light-headed again but stopping wasn’t an option.  He could kiss her to death and she’d go happily.

Buffy slipped her arms around his neck as the kiss grew even more urgent, almost frantic, with scraping teeth and bruising lips.  He was hard again; she felt his cock against her belly and groaned when she realized that it was going to happen far sooner than she thought.   Mr. Spent turned into Mr. Stamina, and he was about to kiss the pants off her.

Her feet hung in the air but she didn’t remember Spike lifting her, didn’t know when they’d started moving either and had no clue where they were going.  She just bit his lip and hung on for the ride.  Spike growled and stumbled and Buffy reached out blindly for something to hold onto.  Her hand closed around some heavy, hanging fabric that fell around them and did nothing to help Spike’s balance issues.  He hit the wall and Buffy swatted at the curtain, then gave up and wrapped her arms around his neck again.

They were tangled in the curtain now.  Buffy felt it all around her as Spike struggled to drag them through it.  The thick fabric muffled the music and all she could hear were Spike’s fast, huffy breaths and her own heart thundering in her ears.

A rush of air hit her when they finally tumbled free.  Spike lifted her higher and tugged.  Buffy heard fabric tear and then felt cold metal on her naked backside.  The sudden chill jolted her mind back into focus, and so did Spike’s fingers slipping inside her.  Curled digits thrust in once, twice, three times – just enough to make her legs tremble before sliding out again. 

Oh.  Oh yes, this was happening now.  His fingers disappeared and his cock glided between her slick folds, the smooth head slipping through her wetness and rubbing her clit.  Buffy’s hips bucked forward outside of her control and she suddenly couldn’t breathe.  Her head hit the wall behind her the instant Spike aligned himself with her opening, and she dragged in a gasping breath.

The world stopped.  Buffy looked into Spike’s eyes, so wide and astonished, as if he hadn’t expected to get here despite everything they’d already done.  Slowly, so slowly she felt each and every inch of him, Spike buried himself inside her.

Her whole body shook as his cock stretched her.  Buffy panted, gripping the metal rail beneath her with one hand and digging into Spike’s shoulder with the other.  He was splitting her in half, but it felt...

She didn’t have the words for how good this felt.  The little sting of pain only made it better, and when she had all of him inside her, and he pushed himself in even deeper, she thought she might cry it felt so good.

“Oh.  My.  God.”

“Buffy...”

The way he said her name made her shiver.  Breathless, husky, as if she were something so special he couldn’t believe that he actually had her.  He hadn’t moved, just held her gaze, trembling, as he gave her a bit of time to get used to him.

The burn all but gone, Buffy tilted her hips, finding the motion easy and the height of the railing perfect.  She felt a slight twinge from her wound but the fluttery wave of pleasure rippling through her made the discomfort insignificant.   Spike withdrew slowly and they broke eye contact, hers falling shut from the sensation, only to fly open again when he thrust back into her.

“Oh!” She moaned loudly when his weird but amazing little hip twist at the end of his thrust not only touched that spot, that one that sure as hell brought her to a hard, shuddering climax every freaking time, but did so in a way that had her feeling the near electric shock of pleasure all the way down to her toes and up to her eyebrows.

A little smile came to Spike’s face.  “Oh, you like that,” he said, repeating the twist on his next inward plunge. 

Buffy missed the look on his face because her eyes refused to stay open, but the rumbly purring sound he made when she cried out a second time had her imagining a smug little grin over finding her most sensitive place right away.  Well, she couldn’t let him get away with that.

As she moved her hips to meet his returning thrust, Buffy tightened her inner muscles around his cock, squeezing just enough to make his eyes roll back and bring a raspy groan to his throat. 

“And you,” she said, breathlessly, still squeezing as he withdrew, “like that.”

Spike chuckled and brushed his thumb across her cheek.  “And we’ve only just begun.”

Moving with him felt easy.  Natural, like breathing.  Whether he’d taken on her rhythm or she his, Buffy didn’t know.  She didn’t know what it meant either, except that the prickling in her neck and the swell of adrenaline spreading through her chest both frightened and thrilled her.  The physical pleasure was only part of it and the rest was so out there, so enormous, she couldn’t begin to try and explain it.  And she found it, this whatever it was, with Spike.   Sex had never been like this before, and Spike was right, they had only just begun. 

“Christ, you’re so bloody hot,” he whispered, pulling her away from her thoughts with his words and a body-rocking thrust.

“Ooh...and you’re—Oh, God, don’t stop!”

“Not gonna happen!” Spike answered, timing each grunted word with a hard thrust.  “Like it hard, baby?”

She did, even when she suspected that Spike’s idea of hard meant something different from Riley’s.

No.  No, don’t think about Riley!

Buffy nodded, focusing on Spike’s face and forcing Riley’s out of her head.  It wasn’t difficult, especially when Spike’s thumb began slowly circling her clit.

“Oh!”   She cried out at the initial contact, clutching Spike’s arms with both of her hands.  “God, that feels...”

Spike started trailing little wet kisses up her throat.  “Bloody amazing,” he murmured into her skin.

Her body was on fire, with Spike’s kisses on her neck, all soft lips one second, nibbling teeth the next, and his expert fingers stroking her just right, with just enough pressure to make her moan and clench around him, but too softly to send her over the edge.  And how he felt inside her...filling her, stretching her to the point of exquisite pain, like the forbidden lover in those awful romance novels.  And like those same novels’ passionate heroines, Buffy moaned and writhed and moved with him, squeezed him until he growled, and cried out when he rocked her body with those hard, rolling thrusts somehow just as tender as they were bruising.  

“You’re holding back,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes while he slipped his hand behind her, fingers splaying on her lower back.  “Don’t.”

Buffy shook her head in protest.  She so wasn’t!  How could he think—?

“Yes, you are,” Spike said, slowing his pace until he was barely moving, pressing his hand into her back while rocking slowly inside her. 

While it lacked the punch of their former pace, this way put near constant pressure on that tender place inside and on her clit at the same time.  Buffy’s eyelids fluttered and she groaned, a long, husky sound that couldn’t possibly have come from her mouth, except that it had – her throat felt raw from its raspy passage and before she could finish her thought, she was doing it again. 

“Lovin’ the soundtrack, pet,” Spike said, drawling the words with a curled lip as she joined him in this new but delicious rhythm.  “Now squeeze me.”

The demanding tone to his voice sent a shiver of desire through her, which she found a little strange considering how far past desire they were at the moment.  But she did as he asked, tightened her vaginal muscles around his cock.

Pushing on her back, Spike pressed into her so hard she felt it with every nerve in her body.

“Oh, God!”

He growled and pushed a little further.  “Tighter.”

Tighter?  But...

“You won’t hurt me,” he said, pinning her in place until all she could do was stare at him, panting.  “Tighter.”

Buffy squeezed, tighter and tighter until Spike’s head fell back and he let out a strangled sort of groan.  She would have stopped long before this point had he been...well, anyone but Spike, but there was no denying his enjoyment. 

When he looked at her again his pupils had swallowed up all the colour in his eyes.  His fingers curled into her side and he started moving, slowly like before. 

“Don’t let go,” he said.  “Let’s see what those slayer muscles can do.”

Why hadn’t she thought of that?  Slayer muscles.  She who could break doorknobs with her pinkie and throw objects and demons more than double her weight across a room without effort. 

“Tighter, Slayer,” Spike said, urging her by rocking his hips a little faster now, working his fingers between them to tease her clit.

Her muscles fluttered beyond her control, well past where she thought she could go.  She could feel it now.  Spike was right, she was holding back, but she couldn’t...could she?

Spike’s lips touched her throat again, floating over the place where her raging pulse beat close to the surface.  He was moving faster now, and she met him thrust for thrust without conscious effort, in that same easy way she noted before.  With her muscles tightened, she felt everything more acutely.  More intimately.  The simple act of in-and-out now made her whole body tremble, yet she knew she wasn’t even close to finishing.

“Tighter,” he whispered, nibbling her pulse point.

“Can’t,” she said, moaning loudly when he slammed into her.

“Can.”

Tighter.  Oh, God, tighter.  Spike moaned long and low.  Each time she squeezed, he ploughed harder into her and the feeling intensified until she could barely breathe.  She felt the leather give beneath her fingers’ death-grip on his shoulders.  Spike’s thumb worked steadily over her clit, and her vision grew fuzzy.

And still, he urged her on.   “Tighter. ”

“Spike...”

“I – oh fuck – can take it,” he said, between panting breaths.

“I—”

Spike growled loudly and his blunt teeth nipped at her throat.  “Do it.”

“But...”

“Do it!”

He bit her.  Hard.  Human teeth in her sweaty, pulsing neck.  And she caved, squeezed so tightly she was sure she was going to break him, but she didn’t care because oh...

Oh, God!

The orgasm hit her out of nowhere.  Harder than Spike’s bite or his fast, deep thrusts.  Her body quaked with shuddering waves spreading outward from her core, curling her toes and tearing a hoarse scream past her throat as her muscles clenched and tightened in uncontrollable spasms.

When she started coming down, Spike was still thrusting, still rubbing her swollen clit with painfully rapturous persistence, and still whispering tighter, tighter, tighter. And, God help her, she pulled her brain out of its afterglow-bound fog and did as he commanded.  They tumbled together, her second climax building out of the shards of the first but rapidly overtaking it.  Spike roared as he spilled inside her, rocking her with his powerful thrusts while she squeezed him with everything that she had.

Her body was still twitching with aftershocks for long minutes after as they held each other, gasping hard for breath, foreheads touching.  Buffy didn’t want to let go of him and he didn’t seem so willing to let up his hold on her, either.  So there they stayed, for minutes or hours or something that almost felt like days.  Spike moved his head, turned so that his nose brushed hers, and Buffy found his lips and kissed him.

It was a soft kiss, slow and tender, packed with emotion she couldn’t define.  She felt it bubbling up in her chest and realized she was crying, but it wasn’t out of regret or shame or anything like that.  Spike must have noticed.  Without breaking the kiss, he brushed away her tears and then cradled her head in his palm, fingers twining into her hair.       

The kiss stretched into eternity, deepening gradually and gaining in heat, but lacking the frantic, rushed feeling of their earlier kisses.  Buffy realized after a while that Spike was making slight but undeniable motions against her, and she started moving with him.  Very soon, she felt him harden inside her, and they finally pulled out of the kiss.

Buffy stared into Spike’s face, so different-looking now from hours ago, when he’d been not precisely her enemy, but something to be tolerated, or pitied, or at best ignored.  He didn’t look like that now that he was...whatever he was becoming to her. 

He loved her.  That was clearly written on his face and in the way he made love to her. 

Made love.  

No way it could be anything else.

Their movements continued, and their gazes remained fixed on one another.  Buffy hadn’t known what she was getting herself into when she agreed to his one little dance, and she still didn’t.

All she knew was that she no longer needed to worry about losing herself in Spike.

She was already lost.

*~*

Chapter Four

*~*

Any minute now it was going to end.  He was going to wake up on a cold stone slab next to the wrong blonde and curse his subconscious for this latest experiment in cruel and unusual punishment.  This had to be a dream; there was no sodding way anything tonight actually happened.

Buffy would never let him in.  Except she had, and so he reckoned he must be dreaming.

But what a dream!  This one would surely last him a good long while and make shagging Harmony a little more bearable for the week or two he’d be able to replace her stupid grinning face with images of Buffy’s, flushed and blissful, her lips all parted and pouty while her hot breath fluttered over his cheeks.

On the off chance that he wasn’t dreaming, that he hadn’t gone off the deep end into a fantasy that would never see the light of day – or the dark of night, as it were – Spike resisted the urge to pinch himself and ruin the niggling sense of reality.  He wasn’t a stranger to the fact that one could trick one’s brain into believing all sorts of nonsense if one wanted it badly enough.  But in his hundred plus years of existence, one thing and one thing alone had always been true: Noses don’t lie.  Not vampires’ noses.

And his?  Told him to believe his brain.

The scent of her covered him.  Surrounded him, like he’d bathed in it.  Spike smirked.  More like he’d bathed in her.

A vision came to him suddenly, of Buffy in a big old claw-foot tub brimming with bubbles.  Her arms draped over its sides and her nipples peaked out of the water, rosy and hard as she arched her back and moaned wantonly.

Note to self: get bathtub.

His cock strained at his jeans, hard and eager.  Alone on the back porch of Buffy’s house, surrounded in darkness, Spike unzipped and wrapped his hand around his erection, stroking it slowly while he waited for her to come back outside, reliving in his mind the events of the night. 

He’d thought for sure the spell had broken when the band’s roadie caught them backstage with their pants down, drawing their attention to him with a particularly vulgar observation that lit Buffy’s eyes with that blazing, indignant anger he loved so much.  But then she flushed so deeply he smelled the rush of blood to her cheeks, and hid inside his coat with a whispered demand to find them a closet before she ripped the jerk’s head off, lack of pants be damned.  The nearby dressing room packed with the band’s luggage had sufficed nicely, and Spike smiled remembering his delight at her wicked giggling when he dropped them into a chair and said he hoped it belonged to the grand git himself.

He hadn’t wanted the night to end and whispered as much while he held her in his lap after.  She’d nuzzled her face into his neck and admitted that she didn’t either.

Next he knew, he was following her into the alley.  She looked bloody adorable wrapped up in his duster and little else.  Spike was half sure as they walked, side by side as somewhat more than what they were before, that he’d misheard her.  That she hadn’t agreed to spend the night with him so long as she could check in on her mum and sis first.  Her creative use of that headstone for a quickie on their shortcut through the cemetery must have knocked things around a bit in his head.  He knew she hadn’t kissed him softly before disappearing inside the house with the promise that she’d be back soon.

But she had, and Spike knew he wasn’t dreaming.  No, he was wide awake and had really spent the past few hours making love to Buffy Summers.

And she let him.  God, she let him.  Hadn’t held back, not once he called her on it, and she hadn’t held him back either.  Had she wanted to she could’ve found ways to do it, to deny the feelings he finally admitted to her, but she hadn’t.  He saw that acknowledgement in her tears and in the way she did her best to love him back.

Oh, he knew she didn’t love him – she barely tolerated him most days – but she’d tried hard to give him whatever sliver of affection she could, which turned out to be a hell of a lot more than he’d expected.

The way she felt, looked, sounded!   She’d always been gorgeous in everything she did.  Seeing her sweat and moan and shudder in pleasure, pleasure he’d brought her – he could live for another century or two and never see anything so primal, so beautiful, as Buffy when she came.  The girl was a fireball wrapped in passion, she was.  He’d known she would make an incredible lover, just as he’d known how earth-shattering the two of them could be, if she ever stopped to think about it.

And she had.  He’d seen it in her eyes – the fear, the knowledge that it could never, ever be anything short of everything with them.  He thought he’d been drowning in her before but he’d been a fool.

He wasn’t drowning.

He was burning.

Spike quickened his pace a bit, though he didn’t intend to finish anything alone here on the back porch.  No, he wouldn’t be spilling a drop tonight anywhere but inside Buffy, one way or the other.  Likely one way and the other.

He bit back a groan just thinking of that hot little mouth of hers.   She looked damn gorgeous with her lips wrapped around his cock, peeking up at him all innocent-like while doing naughty, wicked things that felt almost as good as being inside her.  His falling apart the moment she touched him wasn’t cause for debate, but Buffy’s response astounded him.  So wet just from kissing him.  So needy for his touch.  And what a sexual thing she was, hidden behind all that icy slayer exterior.  Once he broke through that, she did as much to please him as he had to her.  And she’d enjoyed both the giving and the getting.   He saw how turned on she was after sucking him off and would have loved to watch her work herself into a frenzy with her fingers had he not had other, more mutually gratifying activities in mind.  Spike squeezed his cock harder as he stroked it, thinking of how her eyes went all fluttery just before she crashed and her muscles – those searing, strangling, bloody amazing muscles – clenched around him like a vice.  He’d never felt anything like it. 

How had she managed being with Riley so long and having to hold back all the time?  Because she couldn’t possibly let go like that with the mortal twerp without breaking him in half.  Now there was a pleasant thought.  Maybe he ought to encourage that if only to take the wanker out of commission...

Spike fought a growl and barely resisted shifting faces at the thought of actually suggesting she go back to Riley.  Could she go back to him now?  She’d probably try.  Spike had enough brains left in his love-and–lust-addled head to realize that.  Didn’t mean he had to like it or sit quietly while she did it.  Nor did it mean he wouldn’t enjoy her revelation when it came that she would never truly be satisfied with this so-called normal man or any other.

And, he realized, now that he’d touched her, been consumed by her fire, nothing and no one else could ever be enough for him, either.

As if you had any doubts.

A soft click drew him out of his thoughts.  Listening closely, he heard it again and recognized it as the sound of the bolt on the front door.  Had she gone out that way for some reason?  But no, the car started a second or two later and drove off.  Joyce then, heading out for a late errand.  Above him, the bathroom window lit up and he heard the rush of water from the shower.

He wouldn’t pretend he wasn’t a little worried that going inside gave her an excuse to talk herself out of it.  Didn’t know what to make of the shower, either.  Was she freshening up or scrubbing him away?  He fretted for a few minutes, listening to the water running and imagining what she’d look like in it, except that whenever he got to the part where he joined her in her steamy haven, his mutinous brain replaced him with Finn instead.

Spike imagined he looked a bit of a nervous wreck when she crept out the backdoor a little while later, flicking on the porch light and smelling of a number of flowery products.  He stuffed himself as best he could back inside his jeans and turned to greet her.  She wore his coat, which would’ve done wonders for his worries if everything else about her hadn’t screamed something’s wrong.   He saw it in her tight little smile she gave him in return and the hunch of her shoulders as she crossed the porch.

She glowed on the walk back here, with her cheeks flushed from sex and her eyes bright and wide and teasing.  Her stride had a particular bounce to it, as though she felt light and carefree.  She laughed and squealed and let him chase her through the cemetery, and when he caught her, flashed him a lascivious grin he couldn’t resist that led to their getting up close and personal with one Mrs. Walters, 1901-1979.  He’d loved seeing that playfulness, even if it existed only for the moment, as he was one half of the reason for it.  Now, she took slow steps forward, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, and though her cheeks were pink from the shower’s warmth, they lacked the lively colour of before. 

“You all right?” he asked, after a brief hesitation.  He didn’t want to suggest she wasn’t, but...well, she didn’t look all right.

She refused to look at him as she slumped down beside him at the top of the steps.  “Don’t stop on my account.”

Of course her downcast eyes would focus on his crotch, where his unbuttoned and half-zipped jeans, strained tight over his erection, easily gave him away.  “It’s precisely your account that’s got me in this state to begin with, love.”

The gentle teasing seemed to work, and her gaze flicked up to his and she smiled softly.  Then she giggled, a twittery, girlish laugh and he thought maybe he’d been wrong.  Maybe she was just tired or something.  But no – the giggle dissolved into a choked sigh and Buffy burst into tears.

Anger he could handle.  Let her scream at him, throw punches, or hell, even threaten him with a stake.  Anything but tears.  He never knew what to do when they cried, especially when he thought he might have caused it.

Buffy had her face buried in her hands and her shoulders shook.  Tentatively, Spike patted her back through the leather.

“Is there...” He paused, unsure, as she looked up at him, her cheeks streaked with tears and makeup and more sorrow than he’d ever seen.  “Can I do something, love?”

She launched herself at him, throwing her arms around his middle and burying her face in his chest.  Startled, Spike froze, having no clue what to do with the weeping bundle of sobbing slayer now wetting his shirt with her tears and shaking his body with her shuddering.  So he did the only thing he could – tightened his arms around her and held her as she cried. 

“Shh, sweetheart,” he whispered, stroking her hair, hoping he wasn’t making things worse by offering comfort.  “It’ll be all right, yeah?”

She burrowed deeper into his arms and cried harder.

He felt like an awkward git trying to comfort her.  It had to have taken a lot for her to break down like this, especially in front of him.  Spike understood pride and he liked to think he understood Buffy, how she hid herself and couldn’t bear to let others see her as anything less than strong and in control.  From one fighter to another, he knew where that came from, that need to cover up any weakness with a confident exterior, lest somebody take advantage of it.  Spike didn’t know whether to be honoured that she felt she could show him this side of her, or terrified over the apparent tragedy that left her in this sobbing mess.  If it were something so horrible she’d have broken down no matter who was with her...

Spike didn’t want to contemplate that.  Might not mean a thing to him, but he hated seeing her this way.  Compassion wasn’t something he, as a rule, let himself feel too often, except he couldn’t prevent it when it was Buffy.  He’d tried and failed often enough to know how hopelessly lost in her he was.  Anything that broke her inevitably broke him, too.

Eventually she calmed but didn’t pull away.  She did loosen her hold, turning to curl into his side with her head pillowed on his shoulder and her palm on his chest.  Spike kissed her forehead but said nothing, waiting with patience he wasn’t sure he possessed for her to decide whether or not to talk to him.

Her breath hitched and she said, “It’s my mom.”

A stab of fear lanced through his chest, bringing with it the buzz of adrenaline usually reserved for a good fight or a thrilling chase.  He pulled away from her to look directly into her eyes.

“What...is she okay?”

Buffy shrugged.  “I don’t know.  She—” She stopped suddenly, looking on the verge of tears again.  “I don’t know if...I can’t—”

Rumbling quietly, Spike pulled her back to him, trying to ignore the pleasant feeling of having her fit so nicely cuddled up to his side.   Now wasn’t the time to bask.

“Whatever it is,” he said, touching his lips to her forehead as he spoke, “you can tell me.”

Her answering sigh sounded very tired.  “If I tell you, then it’s real,” she said, her voice so quiet and timid Spike could barely hear her.

He didn’t like the sound of that.  Not one little bit.  But he waited, not wanting to push, either.  Buffy said nothing for a few minutes, sitting quietly tucked up against him, fiddling with a little tear in his shirt and staring off into the darkness beyond the porch lights.

“I’m scared, Spike.”

That couldn’t have been an easy thing to admit.  Spike looked down at her, at her tear-stained face looking up at him, and brushed her cheek with his fingers.  “Of what, love?”

Biting her lip, she looked away again, and started talking.  The whole story spilled out in halting, hushed words.  Little nothings.  Headaches.  CAT scans.   Hospitals.  Dawn unaware, at a friend’s for the night, wouldn’t tell her until they were sure.  She didn’t come out and say it, but every word she spoke revealed how terrified she was.  How lost.  That stab of fear grew into a twisting knot of worry in his stomach.

If Joyce—

No, he wouldn’t even entertain that thought.

When she finished, Buffy moved away to sit beside him, glancing at him out of the corner of her eyes before quickly looking away, a light flush colouring her cheeks.  She stayed close enough that he was certain her reaction was a result of her breakdown itself and not because of him, but he felt relieved anyway when he patted her leg and she covered his hand with hers.

“Thank you,” she said.  “I—I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“Can’t be strong all the time, Buffy,” Spike answered.  “Something like this, I’d be worried if you didn’t have a cry.”

She exhaled a huffing breath.  “That’s the thing, though.  I have to be strong.”  She looked at him briefly before staring down again at their hands.  “Who else is gonna be if I’m not?”

He wrinkled his nose at her.  “There’s a difference between being strong and being human.”

Her laugh this time held a little more humour.  “Because you know so much about being human.”

His lips twitched and he nodded in concession.  “Point.  But even the strongest need a shoulder to lean on sometimes, you know?”

One corner of her mouth lifted into a hint of a smile.  “Let me guess – that shoulder’s yours?”

Spike wasn’t sure whether her little grin was meant to tease him for being foolish enough to fall in love with her and let her know it, or because she actually liked the thought that he could be there for her, if she wanted.

The former being so typically Buffy and yet not the Buffy of tonight, Spike chose to assume the latter.

“Could be,” he said, removing his hand from her leg to wrap his arm round her.  “Would be in a heartbeat.”  He looked directly into her wide-open eyes.  “You know that, right?”

She held his gaze a moment before flicking her eyes away, and he wondered if he’d wandered a little too far down the emotional road.  But then her head met his shoulder and she softly answered, “Yeah.  I do.”

Well.  Spike hadn’t expected that.  The president of the soulless-equals-heartless club essentially admitted that he, Spike, a vampire in supreme lack of a soul, not only loved her but wanted to love her.  She hadn’t agreed to it, mind you, but acknowledgement was more than half the battle.

Wanker.

Here he was thinking about himself again with his would-be lady still on the verge of tears and probably sick with worry over her mother’s health.  

Spike tuned out his own selfish thoughts – well, pushed them back a bit, at least – and focused on Buffy.  She wasn’t crying now, and he could feel her taking slow, deep, calming breaths.  He started making light circles on her back and she responded by drawing nonsense patterns into his thigh with her fingertips.  After a few minutes, Buffy leaned into his touch and he pressed a little harder, finding knotted muscles even through the coat.  Her quiet moan encouraged him, and he exchanged his fingers for his thumb, touching a nasty spot near her shoulder blade that made her jump and gasp.

“Sore?”

Buffy nodded, rolling her shoulder and grimacing when the motion drove his thumb into the spot again.

“Come here.”

She slid down a step to sit in front of him.  Spike pulled his duster off her shoulders and went to work on the knot, finding its twin on the other side. 

“Oh, God,” Buffy said, groaning.  She snorted and glanced up at him.  “How is it that you manage to find that spot no matter what you’re doing?”

Spike dug his thumbs in, and her eyes squeezed shut and her lips parted around a sighing moan.

“If it puts that look on your face,” he said, “then who cares?”

Buffy chuckled and turned her head to look back out across the yard, making occasional small noises in response to his thumbs’ efforts, but saying nothing else.  Spike worked her shoulder knots for a while, but the temptation to turn his touch into a caress got the better of him and soon he was stroking her neck with his fingertips.  Buffy sighed and shivered with the lighter touch.

“Spike?” she whispered.

“Mmm?”

“I can’t go...to your place,” she said, and he tensed, a feeling of dread rising in his stomach with what sounded an awful lot like the beginnings of rejection.

“Right,” he said, moving his hands to his knees and clenching them into fists.  “Just let me know when I’ve worn out my welcome, then, Slayer, and I’ll be on my way.”

“No.”  Buffy spun around to face him, wincing a little and pressing her hand into her belly.  “No, Spike, I mean—” She laid a hand over one of his fists.  “I should be here, just in case, but...could you stay?”

Spike blinked, certain that she couldn’t possibly have asked that question.  “Stay here? ”

“Yes,” she said, prying his fingers loose and lacing them with hers.  “Here.  Will you stay with me?”

Spike didn’t answer her right away.  He couldn’t, even with her pleading eyes staring at him, waiting.  He wanted to – he’d be an even bigger fool than he already was to doubt that – but he also wanted her, all of her.  Back at the Bronze, she was fully with him every minute.  Making love to him because she wanted to.  Because she wanted him.   But now, with her concerns about Joyce weighing on her mind...

Back to being a selfish wanker, is it?

There she was, fresh off a crying jag because her mother might be seriously ill, with him about to go all emotional blackmail on her because she needed the comfort a little more than she needed him.  It was difficult enough for her to ask in the first place and he was what?  Going to say no just because her priorities changed?

Yeah, great plan, Spike.

He realized he was taking too long to answer when her shoulders slumped and she pulled her hand out of his, moving to sit beside him.

“Dunno, love,” he said, trying for a teasing tone.  “Sure it’s me you want?  Could call Willow, you know, or, uh, someone.”

Buffy’s forehead wrinkled and she pushed out her lower lip.  “Don’t you want to stay?” she asked.

“Course I do,” he said, pushing at her lip and holding in his sigh of relief when she smiled.  “Tonight was...the most incredible night of my life, Buffy.”

He watched her eyes widen with his admission, and then she breathed out heavily.  “Good,” she said, poking him in the sternum with her finger.  “Because I could call Willow, or I could go to Riley.”

When he flinched, Buffy smiled and trailed her fingers down his chest.  “I could , but I don’t want them, I want you.  I...”  She dropped her gaze from his and lowered her voice to continue.  “I don’t do helpless, and I think you get that.”

He most certainly did.  Spike squeezed her hand in response, heartened when she returned the gesture and looked into his eyes again.    

“I-I’m not ready for tonight to end either,” Buffy said in a whisper.  “I want what we had in the Bronze, before this, before—”

She stopped, her next breath shaky, her eyes starting to water.  Spike tucked her hair behind her ear and Buffy shook her head, scrubbing at her face with her free hand.  When she looked back at him, her eyes, though misty, were wide open and sure.

“Please, just love me, Spike, okay?” she whispered.  “Can you do that?”

Spike couldn’t tell if she was being completely genuine, or if she’d already figured out how to get what she wanted by saying just the right words.  He liked to think she meant it; it wasn’t like Buffy to say these sorts of things just willy-nilly like that.  But it didn’t matter anyway.  It should never have mattered.  Buffy needed him, in one capacity or the other.  She picked him over her best friend – over her boyfriend - and he hadn’t the strength or the will to deny her. 

“Yeah, Buffy, I can do that.”

“So you’ll stay?”

“I’ll stay.”

*~*

The moan rolled through her, starting in her belly and slipping past her lips with the same intensity as the thrust that caused it.  Spike’s lithe form was a welcomed weight on top of her and the touch of his cool skin a sharp contrast to the feverish heat consuming her body.  The world existed out there somewhere, but here and now Spike saturated all her senses.  She felt only him.  His shuddery breath and tickling eyelashes on her heated cheeks, feather-light kisses that made her shiver all over and soft, rumbling sighs rippling like waves along her every nerve.  And his cock, buried so deeply inside her, touching those places that made her shiver and uncovering more with each steady glide.  Every time he withdrew, he took a little bit of her with him, and when he slid into her again it was like a long awaited homecoming.

Spike nibbled at her neck, whispered into her skin.  His hands seemed to be everywhere at once, stroking her hair, caressing her cheek, travelling over her thighs with a shivery touch. 

The way they moved together felt like something out of an erotic fairytale, a synergy between them so profound it was the stuff of make-believe, but nothing had ever felt more real to her than this.

Some tiny part of her mind held onto the notion that this was wrong, but the rest of her no longer cared and its protests grew fainter each time they came together.  It couldn’t be wrong.  Not when everything else told her that it was so very right.  She hadn’t realized how much she needed to let everything go and just feel. Now she was unable to do anything else, with her entire body bathed in the raw passion and impossibly huge emotions taking over her world one second at a time.

Reaching up, she caressed Spike’s face and he smiled softly, his eyes drifting shut as a rumble of pleasure rolled through him.

“Love it when you touch me,” he said, arching his back and bringing his forehead down to touch hers. 

Buffy sighed, sliding her fingers into his hair, soft now that the gel had loosened its hold.  The way he groaned sent tingles of excitement down her spine.  He shifted, propping up on his elbows to look at her through hooded eyes.

“Molten,” he whispered, moving slowly above her.  “So hot, all around me.  Burning me up.”

Buffy felt her skin flare hot and prickly in the wake of his words, and her mind whirled with countless things she wanted to say but never, ever could.  To speak, to put to voice everything she felt was a challenge she couldn’t hope to win.  And a little weight of sadness settled in her stomach at the thought that her difficulty with words meant he couldn’t know how it felt making love to him. 

She looked up into his face and he smiled, thumb tracing over her cheek, fingers threading themselves in her hair.  His eyes, so wide they were nearly colourless, glistened with the magnitude of this whatever it was happening between them.  The stirrings of emotions she couldn’t name and didn’t want to bubbled up in her chest, and she felt her reservations crumbling, shattering beneath the sheer weight of everything.

“Oh, Spike,” Buffy said, sliding her hands down his shoulders and heaving a deep, trembling sigh.  “You feel so good inside me. Don’t stop.  Don’t ever stop.  God, I’m on fire!” 

“We’re on fire,” Spike said, voice an intense, rasping whisper that turned her insides into a fluttery storm of adrenaline-laced butterflies.  “You feel it, don’t you?”

“I feel it — oh — all the way to my toes.” 

He rocked her body with a hard, breathtaking thrust.  “Feel me, Buffy.”

“I feel you.” She couldn’t feel anything else.  “God, I feel you, Spike.”

Spike slipped his hand between them, setting it open-palmed over her heart.  “You feel me here?”

Buffy took in a shaky breath, ignoring the little voice in her head screaming at her not to acknowledge what he was asking.  “I feel you everywhere.”

Spike shuddered softly and his forehead met hers again.  “Feel you,” he said.  “In my gut...my throat...everywhere.”

“Drowning in you.”  And she knew that saying it was so much more than a mere echoing of his earlier words to her.

“Drowning.”  He nuzzled her neck, licking her scars in a way that made her shiver.  “I’m so bloody in love with you.”

She knew it already, but hearing it said and with such feeling behind it had the effect of knocking the wind out of her harder than any blow.  Her heart pounded and her head swam, dizzy with the weight of his confession and the enormity of what it meant.

“Spike...”

His lips brushed across hers, a feather-light touch echoed by the path of his fingers on her face.  A silence fell around them that was hardly silent at all.  Though words ceased, the subtle sounds of their bodies moving together, sighs and moans and the infinite sounds of lovemaking spoke louder than anything else either of them could have said.  Buffy realized that maybe they hadn’t needed the words after all. 

She wasn’t blind.  She knew what was happening between them and knew that sex was only the beginning.    As frightening as that was, in acknowledging it she felt the solid thrum of that supernatural connection pulsing through her body alongside tendrils of pleasure and the weightless high of emotions.  Spike pulled back to look at her, his eyes wide and full of awe, as if he were somehow reading her mind.

Buffy touched his face, imaging the sorts of thoughts running through his head, giving form to the things he told her with his body, answering his unspoken thoughts with answers she somehow felt he could hear.  Through it all, Spike looked down into her eyes, gaze riveted to hers with something unseen and unbreakable. 

Their eyes held as Spike slipped his arms around her and rolled them over.  The cool air of the room hit her sweaty back and Buffy shivered, surprised when Spike trembled beneath her at exactly the same time.  His nails scratching lightly down her back drew another joint shiver, and as she moved to sit upright, brushing her fingertips over his chest, Buffy couldn’t help answering his breathy moan with one of her own.

Her thighs cradled his as she moved over him — moved with him, for it wasn’t her motions or his, but theirs together in near perfect sync.  Spike slid his fingers up her thigh and began a tickling, swirling path that made her flesh break out in all-over tingles.  The path ended where their bodies came together, Spike’s fingers circling her clit with the lightest pressure.  Buffy’s mouth fell open but the moan came from beneath her, from Spike’s parted lips.  Her belly twitched from the sudden burst of heat, and she clenched her muscles even tighter, drawing a long, rasping groan from both of them.

The pressure was building quickly, liquid heat filling her belly, curling her toes, urging her to move faster, come down harder onto him as he lifted up to meet her.  Little tremors began in her toes, rolling along her nerves until her whole body trembled.  Spike thrust hard up into her and let out a moan ending in something like a growl.

And then it happened.  Just a flash, a hint of gold and a brief flicker of fangs and bumpies before his human face regained control.  But she saw it, felt inside a surge of adrenaline and an urgent need she didn’t understand.  Tighter.  Harder.  Faster.  Buffy let herself fall forward, pinning his circling fingers between them, rolling her hips, grinding her self into him until she heard him growl again.  His fingers dug painfully into her hip and his cock filled her, stretched her, touched her most secret places in a way that made her cry out so loud she knew the neighbours could hear. 

A bead of sweat dripped from her forehead, landing on his face and rolling down his neck.  She dipped her head to lick away the errant drop, tasting her pleasure on his skin.  The frantic sounds of Spike’s heavy breaths suddenly stopped, replaced by a desperate, growling moan that made her pounding heart thunder even louder in her ears.  Her lips parted again and her teeth scraped his neck, drawing yet another needy sound.  She bit down, felt him seize suddenly beneath her, and her own breath stalled, caught in her chest and unable to escape.

She felt the change in that moment when everything stopped.  A bristling rush down her neck screaming Vampire! Vampire!   And when her breath rushed out, bringing with it a throaty cry, she knew. 

Spike’s fangs grazed her neck, a hint of sharpened points between soft lips sucking gently at her skin.  A jolt of pleasure shot from her neck to her clit, ricocheting, multiplying, spreading out in an icy-hot wave to every hidden corner of her body.  And with a hard, rocking thrust, Spike bit, his fangs piercing her neck in a hot prick of pain.  A blazing flush of fire spread from the bite, out, in, everywhere.  One slow pull, and another, the rush of sensation shooting straight to her womb and setting her vaginal muscles fluttering around Spike’s thrusting cock.

Couldn’t breathe.  Oh, God, couldn’t breathe.  But she needed this.  Needed him.

He took another pull, timing it with a thrust so hard she became dizzy.  Pleasure exploded in twin bursts of heat that lit her body on fire and made her every muscle quiver.  Spots danced in front of her eyes and the world spun, turning upside down and inside out before sending her tumbling out into space, weightless and lost.  Her vision blurred, narrowed to a pinprick of light as she cried out his name over and over again until she could no longer make a sound. 

Each thrust, each pull at her neck left her breathless and unable to move as the staggering surge of sensation roared through her body.  All she could feel was Spike, inside her, around her, drawing her into his body in the same way as she took him into hers.  He roared into her neck, shuddered hard beneath her, and the universe shook around them.  Buffy drifted weightless, floating, soaring, falling further and further into him even as she fell apart.

This was what it felt like to drown.

Chapter Six

*~*

The tiniest little sunbeam sneaked past the curtain’s edge, waking Buffy when its warmth reached her toes, sticking out as they were from the hopelessly tangled mess of bed sheets.  She watched it slowly meandering further into the room as the sun rose higher, hyperaware of its potential danger yet completely lacking the desire to do anything more complicated than blinking and taking the occasional breath.

Spike lay behind her, safely hidden for now from the sunny intruder, his arm and a corner of the blanket tucked tightly around her middle.  He was breathing in perfect rhythm with her, the mimicked breaths punctuated here and there by a little sigh or a mumbled word.  Buffy wanted to turn and watch him, having caught only glimpses of his sleeping face on those few occasions through the night she woke first.  She didn’t want to wake him, so she   remained content lying still and watching the world rise around her

That, and she didn’t think she was capable yet of movement.

Little specks of dust danced in the beam as it moved across the bed, creeping in just as the day was creeping up on her.  Buffy squeezed her eyes shut, silently begging the universe or whoever was in charge of these things to let her linger just a little bit longer in the sweet exhaustion of the morning after.  Her mind felt deliciously numb in the sanctuary of Spike’s arms, even though the real world was dancing in front of her just like the dust motes, waiting impatiently for her to pull out of her blissful haze and invite it back in.

It wasn’t difficult to make her thoughts drift away from the places she didn’t want to go.  A little tremor rolled through her as images of the night whirled past her mind’s eye, clouded in the ecstasy of the moment but no less powerful because of it.  Last night was phenomenal.  Staggering.  Epic.

An eye-opener, too, and not just for the obvious — though it wasn’t every morning she awoke to drool on her pillow and a sweetly aching body with the strength of a rag doll. 

Spike snorted behind her, another sleep sound she found inappropriately adorable.  The sunbeam was nearing the danger zone and if she was going to stop him from a not-so-spontaneous combustion, she needed to do it now.  Buffy untangled her legs from the blankets and started to ease out of Spike’s arms, pouting a little even though nobody could see her.  She wasn’t even remotely ready to get up yet, and cast a glaring glance at the sunbeam.

She was almost out when a low growl sounded behind her and a strong arm tightened around her waist, hauling her back toward the centre of the bed.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Spike asked, the effect of his husky bedroom voice ruined by the yawn in the middle.

“I was—” 

Spike ran his tongue over the still-tender bite marks and the words fell away, forgotten, as icy-hot bursts of pleasure enveloped her body.  The rest of her answer came out in a rush of nonsensical babble that made Spike chuckle his rumbling laugh into the tingling flesh of her neck.

Spike pulled her onto her back beneath him, gazing down at her with eyes that were very blue in the bright light of the morning.  Buffy felt a familiar hardness pressing into her thigh, and a smile came to her lips.  After last night, she no longer had any doubts about Spike’s staying power.

“Mmm,” Buffy said, letting her legs fall open so he could settle between them and gasping as he entered her. 

The sense of connectedness swelled to life the instant he was fully sheathed inside her.  It surrounded her, caressed her, bound them together, and it didn’t matter how tender she was or that she had wanted to tell him something, because nothing, not even an impending apocalypse, could pull her away from him now. 

“Morning, love,” Spike said, brushing his fingers over her cheeks, hips moving with slow, almost lazy thrusts.

Buffy yawned, heard him laugh softly, and smiled when his lips pressed a kiss into her forehead.  “Good morning,” she said, as his fingers tucked into her hair.

She let out a quiet moan, loving the tingly feeling in her scalp as he combed his fingers through tangled strands.

“Good,” he said, sexy voice back in full force, “doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

“You can say that again.”  The words were out before she realized she was speaking, and she could feel her cheeks growing redder under Spike’s amused smirk.

“Caught you,” he said, nipping at her nose with blunt teeth and trailing his fingers across her cheek.  “Love that colour on you, by the way.”

“Oh, stop it,” she said, looking away from his eyes even as the grin crept onto her face.

“All right,” he said, sliding all the way in and stopping there.  “Stopping.”

“Hey!”  She bucked her hips, only to have him press her hard into the mattress.  “I didn’t mean stop that!”

“No?”  His tone sounded innocent, but the tongue-in-teeth grin certainly was not.

Buffy dug her fingernails into his shoulders.  “No.”

His grin widened.  “So I shouldn’t stop it, then?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” she said, tightening her muscles around him and watching his face as his eyes blinked shut and the smug grin faded away amidst a throaty groan.

“No stopping,” he said with a nod, withdrawing slowly against her tight grip and making them both moan in response.

Buffy relaxed her grip on his shoulder to run her fingertips down his back.  “Ooh, much better.”

“Minx.”  His eyes opened, the grin returned, and the slow, lazy thrusts from before gave way to deep, rolling ones that made her breath quicken.

“I don’t know what that means,” Buffy whispered, reaching up to nibble on his chin and thinking now nice this was, Spike and banter and morning sex.

Spike smiled.  “That’s likely a good thing.”

“Know what else is a good thing?”  He arched an eyebrow at her, and Buffy grinned.  “Buffy on top!”

She wrapped one leg around him and used her strength to flip them both over, but her knee came down at the very edge of the bed and they toppled onto the floor.  Spike landed on his back with a startled oof and Buffy came down on top, somehow managing not to break him in the process.

Her panicked apology was cut short when she realized he was laughing, and the sheer oddity of Spike doing anything but chuckling evilly brought on a giggle of her own.  Strong hands wrapped around her waist and lifted her, and she took him in, feeling the vibrations of his laughter through her entire body. 

“Tell me I’m not dreaming,” he said, when the laughter died down and their heavy breaths and pleasured sighs again filled the room.

She had been thinking the same thing.  “No dreams,” she answered, sliding her hands into his.  “Just us.”

The phone rang, loud and shrill, a sound that didn’t belong in this non-dream and caused her heart to skip inside her chest.

“Don’t—”

But the receiver was already in her hand, and as she brought it to her ear she heard Dawn’s voice, trembling, panicked, throaty as though she’d been crying.

“Mom?  Mom, is that you?”

Spike’s fingers gripped her thigh.  Buffy’s body stilled but her heart kept running, thumping and pumping away the dreamlike bliss and filling her chest with a heavy sense of dread.

“Dawn—”

“Buffy!”  A sniffle, a hiccup, a little whimper that tightened a band around Buffy’s chest.  “Buffy, i-is it true?  J-Janice—her mom, she said...but I didn’t—and nobody—”

Buffy squeezed her eyes shut.  No.  No, this wasn’t supposed to happen this way.  Stupid Janice and her big-mouthed mother!  “Dawn, shhh, honey, calm down—”

“Is. It. True?” 

Buffy could hear the steel in her sister’s voice, and knew she couldn’t skirt the truth, not this time. 

“Mom’s at the hospital,” she said, her vision blurring with tears and the band around her chest drawing tighter with each breath she took.  “For tests.  Dawnie, I’m sorry—”

“Can you just come get me?”  Somebody in the background said something, and Dawn answered them with a muffled reply.  “Buffy, please?”

“All right.”

She placed the receiver in its cradle.  Spike’s hand set at her shoulder but she jerked away, startled, only now remembering where she was and what was happening, and how easily she had made herself forget her mother’s illness and everything else. 

“Oh, my God,” she said, sounding pitiful even to her own ears.

“Buffy—”

She pulled herself off him, struggled to her feet and backed away even as he rose from the floor and followed her. 

“I—I’m sorry,” she said, looking down and grimacing at the sight of their naked feet only inches apart.  “Dawn, a-and Mom...”

“Come here.”  Spike gripped her shoulders, nudged her forehead with his until she looked up at him. 

The moment their gazes met she remembered everything, every moment when being with Spike felt like the most real, natural thing she had ever experienced.  Buffy realized that it still did, even now that the real world had butted its ugly head into her dreamy paradise.

But out there her mother was still sick, her baby sister was scared and alone, and she couldn’t think about this, not now.  “I need to go.”

“I know,” Spike said, tightening his arms around her, cradling her head as she laid it on his chest.  “They need you.”

“I’m sorry.”

Spike eased her out of his embrace, brushed his thumb across her face.  “Don’t be,” he said, cupping her cheek.  “Go, do what you got to.  If you need me...”

Her smile felt weak, but she meant it just the same.  “I know where to find you.”
*~*

Chapter Seven

*~*

Calloused hands ran over her skin, fingers trailing heat along her spine, palms following the curve of her ass and the taut line of her thighs.  Buffy tossed her head back, arms draped loosely around his shoulders as she lowered herself into Spike’s lap, taking him deep inside her.

Even after endless hours of lovemaking, each time felt like the first, and Buffy gasped at the feel of him, at how he stretched her, filled her up so completely she couldn’t possibly want anything else ever again.  He suckled on her neck, lips closing over the tiny punctures marking her as his, and she felt the tingling shock of it deep in her womb.  The sensation bloomed, burst free of its internal confines and radiated outward, warming her belly from within, deepening the growing burn slowly setting her ablaze.

She was close, so close.  Those questing fingers of his reached her most sensitive flesh, massaged her slowly, drawing her further and further toward the edge.

“Buffy,” he said, voice rippling through her body like a storm on the ocean.  “It’s time to go.”

“It’s time to go.”

Buffy snapped awake at the sound of the nurse’s voice and nearly slipped out of her chair in her haste to move upright.  She was acutely aware of the heat in her cheeks and between her legs, and felt her face growing hotter with embarrassment at having that kind of dream here.  The nurse wore an unreadable expression as she stepped fully into the room.  Buffy pretended to rub her eyes so she could hide behind her hands, fearful that the nurse’s sort-of smile meant she had caught Buffy moaning in her sleep.  

“Visiting hours were over some time ago,” the nurse said, looking up at the wall above Buffy’s head.

Buffy craned her neck to follow the nurse’s gaze, eyes settling on the clock that told her it was already past ten.

“She needs her rest, and I’d say she’s not the only one.”  The nurse gestured to Dawn, curled up in another chair, fast asleep.  “Go, take your sister home.  Your mother has enough to worry about without you two adding to it.”

Buffy wanted to be angry.   How dare this stranger barge in and tell her what was best for her mother?  But the spark of annoyance fizzled out faster than it came, because the nurse was right.  Waking to find her daughters sleeping in hospital chairs instead of home safe in their beds would only add to Joyce’s already unbearable stress. 

Every part of her wanted to stay and fight, destroy the shadow that was ruining their lives.  She wasn’t just Joyce Summers’ daughter, but her protector — except this thing wasn’t something she could fight.     She felt helpless, knowing she could do nothing more than stay and keep watch.

“Come on,” the nurse said, holding the door open.  “You can come back in the morning.”

Buffy’s bones protested the motion of standing, partly because of the uncomfortable chair, but mostly because getting up meant leaving her mother alone for the night.  She woke Dawn, who stumbled along in a daze until Buffy pushed open the exit door.  The stuffy, sickly smell inside vanished with the fresh burst of sweet and cool air from the outside, and it seemed to jar Dawn into instant wakefulness.

“Oh,” she said, yawning and glancing around.  “We’re leaving?  Why are we leaving?  Mom—”

“Said we should go and get a good night’s sleep.”  It was too easy to lie to Dawn, but Buffy figured the harmless fib would sit better with her sister than, “The nurse made us go.”  

“We’ll come back in the morning, okay?”

Dawn looked doubtful, but said nothing else as they started walking.

A silence settled over them, heavy and smothering, making Buffy feel as though she were struggling to walk and breathe beneath a wet wool blanket.  The remnants of her dream lingered in the corners of her mind, tempting her away from the other things swirling around in her head, words like tumour and biopsy and one out of three.  The stabbing pain from hearing the truth faded away sometime between the doctor’s questions she couldn’t answer and killing Glory’s snake monster.    A dull, throbbing ache settled in its place, the sort that took up residence inside her chest and tucked in for the long haul because there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

It wasn’t a demon and it wasn’t a spell.  Her mother’s attacker was something organic, human, a part of her body gone wrong, and the void of knowledge in her brain about the workings of the real world never felt as huge as it did now. 

Lamplight from the living room greeted them as they stepped into their empty house.  Dawn trudged up the stairs and Buffy followed, lingering in her bedroom long enough for Dawn to finish in the bathroom and climb into bed.  Buffy turned on the shower, shedding her rumpled clothing slowly until steam filled the room.  The water was hot, nearly scalding, and reddened her skin almost instantly.

I won’t cry.  I won’t cry.   I won’t cry.  I won’t cry...

The growing lump in her throat threatened otherwise, and Buffy bit into her lip, hard, until she felt the flesh give and tasted blood.  But the pain did little more than encourage her eyes to blur with moisture, and as she brought her hand up to cover her throbbing lip, the first tears slipped over her cheeks, and something inside snapped, burst open like a broken dam and flooded her body with a roiling, drowning flood of emotion.  She dropped to her knees, the water running hot over her head and shoulders as she fought to catch her breath against shuddering sobs.

When the water grew cold, she struggled to sit.  There weren’t any more tears, but her head ached and she couldn’t stop the gasping, shaky breaths.  Reaching out with a trembling hand, Buffy turned the shower off and forced herself to get out of the tub despite her desperate desire to curl up into a ball and never move again.  She couldn’t remember a time when she had cried so hard.

There was a little less pressure in her chest as she dressed in sweats and a shapeless t-shirt.  She knew she should go to bed, but dreaded the thought of lying awake in the dark alone with her thoughts.  So she checked on Dawn, found her snoring softly, and slipped downstairs for a glass of water to soothe her raw throat.

A flicker of movement outside caught her eye.  Buffy paused, glass half way to her mouth, and let out her breath when the spark of a lighter and the flare of a cigarette revealed the identity of her backyard visitor.

Spike.

The warmth seeping into her belly reminded her of the other situation, the one she hadn’t let herself think about despite her subconscious’ best efforts.  With her mother’s illness at the forefront of her mind and the urgency of the monster situation, it was easy to face Riley, to pretend everything was fine and to ignore the implications of her night with Spike.  Just as easy, Buffy realized, as denying Riley his offer of comfort and forgetting to look to see if he had been waiting for her when she left the hospital.

Now Spike was here and Riley was not.  Despite her growing turmoil about this increasingly messy situation, Buffy allowed her feet to carry her through the door onto the darkened porch and out into the yard where her vampire waited.

He didn’t say anything as she approached, just snuffed out the cigarette beneath his boot and wrapped her in his arms when her feet refused to stop a reasonable distance away.  She hadn’t meant to, but the moment she tucked her head beneath his chin and leaned into his solid body, she stopped caring about the right and wrong of it.  This thing between them was just too powerful to ignore, and his quiet support was a much-needed drug for her aching soul.

Somewhere in the midst of fresh tears, they made it to the steps and Buffy told him in whispers, punctuated with sniffles, everything that happened during the day.

“Oh, love,” Spike said, combing his fingers through her hair.  “I’m sorry.”

She liked that he didn’t say that everything would be okay.  Right now nothing felt as if it would ever be okay again, and words to the contrary sounded like lies or offers of false hope.

“Thank you, Spike.”  She laid her head on his shoulder and sighed.  “I’m glad you came.”

The last part slipped out, a thought that zipped past her brain’s filter before she could bury it.  But that inner voice warning her not to encourage this frightening change in her relationship with Spike remained subdued tonight and she made no attempt to take back the words. 

Spike exhaled heavily and leaned his head on hers.  “Where’s Finn?”

He didn’t have to add that he clearly expected Riley to be here with her tonight, and it tugged a little on her heart that it hadn’t kept him away, despite the risks to him should Riley find him lurking outside her home.

“I don’t know.”

And why didn’t she?

Spike tensed with that, so subtly she barely felt the arm around her stiffen and then relax.  “You want me to stay?”

More than you know.

“I—yes,” she answered, lifting her head so she could look at him.  “But I don’t—I mean, he... He doesn’t know.”

Buffy hoped she looked as apologetic as she felt.

“Didn’t expect it’d make the morning news,” Spike said, looking out across the darkened yard, his tone of voice unreadable.  “It’s complicated, I get it.  Just knowing you want...”

Buffy waited, but he didn’t elaborate.

“I want you to stay,” she said, after a minute’s pause.  “But I don’t want you dusty.”

Spike turned to face her, his eyes wide and glinting softly in the dim light from the window.  “Yeah?”

She felt her cheeks growing warm as she slipped her hand into his and squeezed.  “I was there, Spike,” she said, hoping he would understand what she was trying to say, even if she herself wasn’t sure.

Spike tilted his head and smiled softly.  “I’m hardly the definition of patience,” he said, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb.  “But you’re worth every excruciating second of the wait.”

She knew he meant it.  Here alone with him the choice was easy, even though nothing could be so simple.  Not with her mother’s tumour, or Riley’s involvement, no matter how strained things felt with him at the moment.

But Spike was here, and Riley was not, and that made her wonder if things were really so complicated after all.

Buffy let out a heavy breath and climbed into Spike’s lap.  “I don’t wanna wait,” she whispered, as his hands settled in the small of her back, pulling her close.

“Yeah, you do,” he said, bringing one hand forward to tuck her hair behind her ear.

God, he was making her light-headed with that look, worshipful and lustful all at once.  Her heart beat loudly in her ears, pumping a sudden blaze of heat through her body that dulled the pain, the fear, the uncertainty over Spike and Riley and what her friends would do if they knew.

“Why do I feel this way?” she asked, resting her forehead against his.

His fingers touched her face, brushed her cheek in a gentle caress.  “Don’t matter why,” Spike replied. 

Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes.  “What if—what if it isn’t real?” 

What if I’m only feeling this because I don’t want to feel everything else?

Spike took her face in his hands, brought her head up, forcing her to look at him.  “I was there, too, Buffy.”

Soft lips brushed over hers, not a kiss but a whisper of a touch that left her trembling in response.  His fingertips touched the marks on her neck, his marks, marks so small she could barely see them in the mirror, yet they pulsed hot and deep with that invisible force surrounding them.  

Buffy closed her eyes and felt the world around them start to spin away.  “And you’re here now.”

“I’m here.”  He placed feathery kisses on her nose, her cheeks, all over her face, whisking tears from her eyelids as they fluttered shut. 

Right before he kissed her, she heard, floating in the air between them in a low, dreamlike voice, “I’m wherever you want me.”

*~*

Chapter Eight

*~*

Sleep ebbed away slowly this time, cradling her into consciousness on a warm, weightless pillow.  No dreams or voices interrupted this gentle waking, and when Buffy’s eyes finally drifted open, she felt cozy and content despite the pressure on her bladder and the worries lingering at the edge of her mind.  She shifted, leaning further back against Spike’s chest, but the move failed to solve her immediate issue.  He didn’t wake when she slipped out of his arms, just mumbled something about cheese toast and rolled over, taking her pillow with him.

Buffy dashed naked across the hall to the bathroom and back again, hoping that Dawn would remain securely in dreamland.  Moonlight spilled into her room and over the sleeping vampire, and Buffy stopped for a moment to watch, caught up in the sight of his tousled hair and muscular body barely covered by her flowered sheets.  Though the light breeze from the open window felt cool, the warmth rising in her belly and spreading outward quickly drove away the chill. 

Even unconscious, his presence whispered to her, made her heart pound and her skin hum in memory.  However this played out, Buffy knew she would never be able to look at Spike again without feeling the ghost of his touch wash over her, without remembering the way he soothed the pain in her heart just by showing up in her backyard, and how he seemed to belong amongst her girlish linens.

An ache throbbed behind her eyes and instead of returning to bed, Buffy moved to the window, staring out into the night beyond the screen of gently swaying leaves.  Why couldn’t things ever be simple?  This was why slayers weren’t supposed to have attachments, which was also the ironic part.  Spike hadn’t been wrong when he said the people steadily pulling her life into chaos were the same ones she fought to live for.

She flirted with the idea that if her annoying little headache turned out to be a brain tumour, she wouldn’t have to bother with any of this.  Her friends would be safe, wouldn’t they, without Buffy around to attract the trouble?  But no.  Glory wouldn’t stop until she found her damn Key, and Buffy refused to die, even by accident, without knowing that her family and friends were safe.

Jeez, depressing much?

Spike mumbled something behind her, and she smiled without taking her eyes away from the window.  It was almost funny in a sick, twisted way.  Two nights into this thing with Spike and she’d already travelled too far down the forbidden road to turn back now.  Sooner or later she would have to figure out what to do about it, but the idea of dealing with it felt like a lead weight in the pit of her stomach, cold and nauseating, sapping the energy out of her the longer she carried it around.

Maybe, maybe she and Riley were doomed already, but could she really just give it all up for sex? 

It’s more than that, and you know it...

It was more, but why?  When?  Where did these feelings come from and was her heart really reliable at a time like this?  What about Riley?   If she felt about him the way she was supposed to, would any of this even have happened?    Could she do it again, get involved with a vampire?  Buffy snorted softly, glancing at the bed.  Involved.   She was already involved.  The question was, could she give up normal for a vampire without a soul?

Might not have a soul, but I’ve got a heart .  She hadn’t believed it when he said it, but she couldn’t deny it now.

Her head throbbed harder.  She hated this, hated going behind Riley’s back and hated the hint of disappointment in Spike’s voice when he realized she hadn’t told.  She hated that she didn’t hate this, that she could look inside herself and find no trace of disgust for sleeping with Spike and being stupid enough to fall for him in the process.

Somehow, when the universe was trying its hardest to bring her down, Spike was turning out to be exactly what she needed.

A shiver ran up her spine, a tingling, thrilling quake that quickened her pulse and made her head swim with dizziness.  Buffy pressed her hands against the window and saw her reflection framed between them, fading in and out of focus as her breath fogged the glass.  The shiver spread over her in a gentle caress, smooth as silk, tickly as a feather, drawing her nipples into hardened points and bringing her body alive with sensation as each tiny hair stood on end.  She couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him, but knew he was behind her. 

This reminder of his inherent danger stole her breath and weakened her knees, only not as the wake-up call it should have been.  It was easy to forget what he was, and maybe she had in a way, these years with the chip, but it didn’t make a difference.  For better or worse, she couldn’t shake the gut feeling that she needed to let go and just let it happen.

Spike’s palms slid over her belly, his touch so light that her skin quivered in response.  Fingers shining silver-white in the moonlight splayed out over her stomach and a gentle tug pulled her to him, his body now a solid form against her back, hard and soft in all the right places.  Buffy closed her eyes and let her head fall onto his shoulder, shuddering as his breath tickled her ear before his lips brushed kisses on her neck.

Spike whispered how beautiful she looked beneath the moon, his words ricocheting through her body like a pinball lighting her up from the inside out.  Fingers glided over her trembling skin, painting her body in fiery spirals as he explored every inch of her.  A quiet moan escaped her when his fingers slid into her curls, parting her slick folds, stroking her slowly until the heat from his touch spread through her whole body.  

It really didn’t matter what he was once or what he was supposed to be.  It only mattered, in the minutes before the haze of bliss clouded out all coherent thought, that he was here and that he loved her. 

For now, it was enough.

*~*

 

Buffy collapsed onto the bed, breathing hard, as her last solid bone turned to jelly — her squishy, happily gooey head to go along with the rest of her wonderfully useless body.  Spike hovered over her, one eyebrow raised and a hint of teeth showing behind an obviously pleased smirk.

“I think you broke me,” Buffy said, her own lips turning up in a lazy smile.

“That so?” Spike said, dropping down on his elbows until they were chest-to-chest.  “Where’s that slayer stamina I’ve heard so much about?”

“Oh, God.”  Buffy groaned, her eyes drifting shut as Spike’s lips trailed feathery kisses on her neck.  How many hours had passed since they made love by the window?  Two?  Three?  At least that long, by the weightlessness of her limbs and the tingly ache down below.  “I think cocky vampire trumps tired slayer.”

The cocky part of him nudged at her thigh, and though her legs barely worked, she drew them apart so he could settle between them.  She was so wet he glided in with barely any effort, so sensitized that  her muscles quivered around him and her clit burned with remembered rapture.

Buffy gasped and clutched at his arms as he pulled out slowly, forcing her eyes open so she could look into his.  “Don’t stop.”

How many times had she told him that?  Every time, she thought, seeing the familiar little smile, the barely-there grin he only wore when they were together like this.   He would make love to her forever, if she asked. 

Spike dragged his thumb across her cheek and thrust gently back in.  “Never,” he whispered.  “Harder?”

“No.”  Buffy shook her head, hair rustling against the sheets.  “Like this.”

She wouldn’t last, and she knew it.  Only Spike’s weight on top kept her hips from leaping off the bed, the pleasure almost painful but in the sweetest of ways.  Buffy dug her nails into his skin, her breath escaping in shallow puffs that made Spike’s eyelashes flutter whenever she exhaled.

“Feels good, baby?”  When she nodded, he rubbed her nose with his and tucked his fingers into her hair.  “Gonna come for me?”

Soon.  Too soon.  Her toes curled as the first heated waves reached them, and she barely managed to answer before her pussy clenched tight around his cock in a sudden burst of pleasure.  She arched against him and he pressed her back down, pinning her to the mattress with deep, steady thrusts.  The building pressure burst behind her eyes in a flash of blinding white as her climax washed over her, not the tsunami from before but a tossing wave that pulled her under and set her adrift just below the surface.  She felt the rhythmic pulsing of Spike’s cock as he emptied himself inside, following her into the gently rolling sea.

They lay together for some time before Spike rolled onto his back beside her.   Through sheer willpower, Buffy turned and curled into his arms, head pillowed on his chest.

“Sun’ll be up soon,” Spike said, running his fingernails up and down her back.

Buffy yawned and pulled the sheet up over her shoulders, only now feeling the predawn chill as her flesh broke out in goose bumps, though whether it came from the cold air or Spike’s touch, she couldn’t say.  The sun could stay down, as far as she was concerned.  Daylight didn’t have a lot going for it, these days.

She told him so, and he chuckled softly.  “Can’t say I’m much of a fan, either.”

Buffy sighed.  “This is going to get messy.”

“You going to tell him?”

She hesitated before answering, instead focusing on the way the morning breeze teased the curtains.  “I should.  I don’t want to.  I wouldn’t even know what to say.”

Spike’s fingers paused a moment in their steady path along her spine.  “You don’t even know what you want.”

“I want you,” she said, feeling her face and neck burn hot as soon as the words were out.  Spike stiffened beside her, but she pressed on.  “You know I do.  But I’m not supposed to.”

He sighed deeply.  “Neither am I, love, but look where ‘not supposed to’ has gotten us.”

Naked and sweaty on her bed two nights in a row without an end in sight?

“Ergo, messy.”

“Don’t expect you to decide right now,” Spike said, after a moment’s pause.  “Don’t expect anything.”

Buffy reached up to stroke his cheek.  “I don’t believe you.”

She felt him smile beneath her fingers.   “Always was a wretched liar.”

“I wish I had answers for you,” she said, looking up at him and his sleepy eyes and raging bed-head.  “All I have are just more questions.”

Spike’s fingers brushed her forehead, pushing back a stray lock of hair.  “I love you.” 

Beneath the drooping lids, his eyes shone with moisture, and Buffy tried to swallow the growing lump in her throat.  The words resonated inside her, squeezing her heart and roiling in her belly.  He couldn’t fake this, and it hurt her heart knowing she couldn’t answer him. 

“I know.”    She squeezed his side and felt a cool wave of relief wash over her when he squeezed back.

“It’s just, there’s so much right now, first with Dawn, and now Mom—”

“Dawn?” Spike said, pushing up on his elbows so he was half sitting.  “What about Dawn?”

Buffy realized her error the moment she spoke, and sat up to meet Spike’s furrowed brow and sharpened stare. 

“What?” she said, knowing it was useless, certain Spike could hear her racing heart.  “It’s nothing.  Forget it.”

But when she tried to slip out of bed and into avoidance mode, his hand closed around her arm and stopped her. 

“No, not nothing.”  The furrow vanished and he levelled her with a hard stare.  “What’s wrong with Dawn?”

Crap, crap, crap!

Prickling heat rose up her spine and she tore her eyes away from his, staring at the photo of her and Dawn on the vanity mirror, remembering the way her sister’s face faded in and out of reality the night she learned the truth.  A truth Dawn couldn’t know, or anyone else, either.  Except now she’d slipped and let the cat half out of the bag.   So, should she stuff it back in and listen to it yowl, or let it out and stop it scratching at her insides?

She couldn’t trust her friends with this.  They would never look at Dawn the same way again, and then Dawn would know, and then Glory could—

“Buffy?”

Spike.  She knew it was stupid to tell her biggest secret to a vampire — stupid and dangerous — even if the vampire in question was in love with her.  She shouldn’t even consider trusting him with this, or with anything else for that matter.

Except, she already sort of did.

Buffy turned around, feeling more naked now than at the height of their lovemaking.  She was cold all over, and not just because of the open window or her lack of clothing.  It was one thing to put herself in danger, to drop her defences and let him in, because if the walls came crashing down, she knew she could dig herself out.  It was another thing entirely to let on about Dawn, to let her be vulnerable in his eyes, when so much could go so horribly wrong. 

But wouldn’t it be better to have another set of eyes looking out for her sister?  Someone who had a hope in hell of keeping her safe if the unthinkable happened?  Giles wouldn’t like it, but then she was doing a lot of things lately that would give Giles a stroke if he knew.

Spike touched a fingertip to her chin, tipping her face up so she was looking in his eyes.  Buffy inhaled, her breath shaky, nearly painful as it filled her lungs.

“Dawn is—she’s the Key.  Glory’s Key.”

If she hadn’t known the strength of vampires’ ears, Buffy would have though he hadn’t heard her.  No reaction, only a blank expression greeted her announcement, and for a whole three seconds things seemed so anticlimactic she nearly started laughing.  But whatever connections were struggling to form in Spike’s brain soon succeeded in joining ends, and he blinked and stared at her with his mouth gaping open and his eyes open so wide his eyebrows rose halfway up his forehead.

“But…how—?”

Dropping her voice to a whisper, Buffy told him what little she knew about Glory and the monks and her little-sister-that-wasn’t.

Spike dragged his palm down his face, glancing sidelong at her with his thumb resting on is chin.  “Bloody hell,” he said.  “And she doesn’t know a thing?”

“You can’t tell her.”  Buffy spun further around to face him and gripped his shoulders tightly.  “Promise me you won’t say anything—to anyone.”

Spike slid his hand along her bare arm and cupped her cheek, brushing his thumb across it before leaning in to kiss her forehead.  “I won’t.  But she’s gonna find out—”

“No!”  Startling herself with the force of her cry, Buffy bit her lip and glanced toward the unlocked door, hoping she hadn’t woken Dawn.  “Just not now, please.  Let me get through one crisis at a time.”

By the look of his raised eyebrow and pursed lips, Spike had other thoughts on the matter, but whatever those were he kept them to himself.  Buffy wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or annoyed by it, but decided to let it go for now.  The room was rapidly growing lighter, which meant it was time to stop playing house and start playing life.

“We’re going back to the hospital as soon as Dawn’s up,” Buffy said.  “What are—I mean, are you going to go home?  Cause you could stay a while, if you wanted to sleep.”

He bit his lip, stifling what looked like it would have bloomed into a wide grin had he left it free.  “Afraid I’ll tear my blanket and turn to dust on my way home?” he asked, attempting to twist the smile into a leer, though she had spent enough time with him now to spot the difference.

She whacked him on the chest with the back of her hand, putting on her best annoyed-face, though she was sure he could see through her just as easily.  “Moron.  You gonna stay or not?”

He nodded once, and circled her breast with the tip of a finger.  “Join me?”

A jolt of arousal flared in her belly and her internal muscles clenched at the suggestion, but it wouldn’t be long before the day barged in and tore her away from that promised bliss, and she shook her head.

“I shouldn’t,” she said, and though he nodded and lay back on the bed, she couldn’t miss the flash of disappointment in his eyes or the bulge in the sheet wrapped around him.  “Later, okay?”

Might as well go with the inevitable.  She was no more ready to give up Spike than Glory was to give up searching for the Key.

Spike pulled her down for a kiss, lips caressing hers in a gentle farewell chock-full with promise.  He released her and lay his head on the pillow, smiling softly as she slipped on a bathrobe, gathered some clothes and left the room, pulling the door shut behind her.  Dawn peeked out from her bedroom as Buffy walked by, yawning and brushing tangles out of her dark hair.  As she hopped into the shower, Buffy wondered how long Dawn had been awake and tried not to consider what she may have overheard — not their low-voiced discussion, but other noises that may or may not have woken her.

Don’t even think about it, Buffy.  One crisis at a time, remember?

With that thought in mind, Buffy let out a deep breath and grabbed the shower gel and her favourite pink pouf.

Time to wash away the night so I can face the day.

Somehow, she didn’t think a little bit of soap would be enough.

*~*

 

*~*

“Buffy?”

Buffy wiped the water off her face, blinked her eyes open, and looked toward the curtain and the Dawn-shaped silhouette backlit in it.

“Knock much?  I’m kinda naked here, Dawn.”

“I know, sorry.” Shadow-Dawn started moving away.  “I just—never mind, I’ll go.”

“Wait—” Buffy peeked around the curtain just as Dawn reached for the door handle.  “Dawn!  Come here.”

Dawn stopped but didn’t turn, instead bringing her hand from the doorknob to rub at her eyes, but the tears she tried to hide slid down her cheeks unchecked.  The dull ache in Buffy’s chest throbbed harder and she tried again to swallow that stupid lump in her throat.

“Dawnie, hey, come here.”

Dawn kept her head down, the cascade of hair preventing Buffy from seeing her sister’s face as she came forward to lean against the edge of the shower.  Her slim body shook, but the falling water hid all but the sound of a single pained sob.  Buffy reached out with a wet arm and wrapped it around her, and Dawn launched herself forward, heedless of the drenched shower curtain or the shampoo suds, and buried her face in Buffy’s shoulder.

Her throat lump threatened to choke, and Buffy bit her lip and fought back the tears already blurring her vision.  She couldn’t keep Dawn from the truth this time, no matter how much she wanted to stuff her into a cupboard until the doctors could fix their mother, but she could be the strong one — and that, at least, was a role she was used to.

Dawn sighed and whispered, “I’m just so scared.”

“I know, Dawnie,” Buffy said, and Dawn pulled back, leaning her head against the edge of the shower while the tears fell freely.  “We’re all worried.”

Dawn nodded but said nothing, staring now at her painted fingernails. 

Buffy tucked a strand of hair behind Dawn’s ear.  “We can’t let Mom know that, okay?  We have to be strong for her right now.”

“You mean like happy thoughts and stuff?”  Dawn’s watery gaze met Buffy’s and she scrubbed at her eyes, a hint of a smile stretching her lips.  “I think I can do that. Buffy?”

“Mmhmm?”

“She will be okay, won’t she?”

For once in her life, Buffy wished she had the power to control the universe and everyone in it, if only to make her words come true and drive away the sorrow in Dawn’s eyes.

“Of course she will, Dawn.” The band around her chest tightened and she clenched her fist behind the curtain.  “Don’t you for one minute stop believing that.”

Buffy’s voice must have carried the conviction her heart lacked.  Despite the quiver in her lip and the tears that hadn’t quit, Dawn’s smile widened and she reached out to stoke Buffy’s wet hair.

“You’re all wet and cold!” she said, eyebrows turning in.  “Oh, that’s my bad, isn’t it?  Do you have any hot water left?”

“Don’t worry about it, sweetie.  There’s enough.”

Nodding, Dawn moved away from the curtain and hopped up on the counter to wait.  Buffy finished up before she really did run out of hot water, wrapped herself up in the towel Dawn handed to her, and crossed the hall to her bedroom.

Spike didn’t even twitch when she returned, and though she wanted to linger and watch him sleep a while, the day was waiting.  Buffy quietly dressed, adjusted the drapes to keep the light out, and headed down to the kitchen.

By the time Dawn trudged down the stairs after her turn in the bathroom, Buffy had gulped down a mug of strong coffee and scraped together a mostly edible breakfast of French toast and bacon.  The bacon was a little too crispy and the toast a little soggy, but Dawn cleaned her plate and said a quiet thank you.

“Do I have to go to school today?” she asked, placing the dishes in the sink and glancing at her backpack by the door.

“No, we should both go be with Mom,” Buffy said.  “I just wanna—”

A loud knock from the front door interrupted her train of thought.  Buffy glanced at Dawn and then moved toward the entrance to the kitchen in time to hear the front door opening.

“Hello?  Buffy?”

The sound of Riley’s voice stopped her in mid-step and she stood frozen in place as Riley started up the hallway toward her.

Oh, God!

An explosion of adrenaline roared through her body and Buffy took two panicked steps back, pulling in a gasping breath when her back hit the edge of the island. The contact burst through the moment of panic but the itch in her legs urging her to flee refused to settle, and she dug her fingernails into her thighs to keep herself from running out the back door. 

Riley stepped into the room, nodded at Dawn and smiled hello to Buffy.

“But I thought...”

Buffy spun around in time to see Dawn’s eyes flicking rapidly between herself and Riley, and an extra pain blossomed in Buffy’s gut for having unwittingly dragged Dawn into the middle of this.  Dawn caught Buffy’s gaze and opened her mouth to speak, but Buffy shook her head as subtly as she could manage while her heart thundered like a freight train, and Dawn snapped her jaw shut.  Buffy turned away to avoid her sister’s narrow-eyed stare and greet the oblivious Riley.

He smiled nervously, hands busy fiddling with his bunched-up sweater, and Buffy couldn’t figure out why he should be the anxious one when she was hiding a naked vampire in her bed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call last night,” Riley said. 

Right.  He didn’t wait and he didn’t call.  Buffy exhaled the breath she was holding.

Riley shrugged his shoulders and glanced behind Buffy. “But I see you two made it home safe and sound.”

Buffy uncurled her fingers from her jeans and tried to match his nonchalant shrug. “Yep, all safe and sound, that’s us.”

Buffy swallowed, fearing Riley would see right through her forced cheerfulness and wondering if babbling like an idiot would distract him or clue him in further when Riley came forward, cutting off her internal argument as he folded her into a hug.  He wrapped his arms around her before she could figure out a way to avoid it without rousing his suspicions.  He was still technically her boyfriend, after all, but with Spike upstairs and Dawn glaring holes into the back of her head, Buffy didn’t know whether to hug him back or let him crush her into an unmoving Buffy-shaped ball of uncertainty.

Even without the Initiative enhancements, Riley’s hold was strong and Buffy allowed him to squish her into his chest.  Things could be awkward later, when they didn’t have an audience and her mother didn’t have a brain tumour.  She squeezed her eyes shut and pretended that the arms that once felt so warm and comforting wrapped around her weren’t now so cool and confining. 

Riley loosened his hold and brought his hands up to grip her shoulders, his smile having shifted from nervous to something resembling pleased.  “Can I do anything?  Maybe give you a ride to the hospital?”

Buffy had the feeling that it made her a spectacularly bad person to accept Riley’s offer but she nodded her head anyway and excused herself upstairs for a last minute trip to the bathroom.

Her heart beat loudly in her ears as she walked by her closed bedroom door, not daring to go inside and tempt fate.  Her skin tingled from the proximity to his presence, both her slayer’s reaction to a nearby vampire and Buffy’s reaction to Spike.  It was no coincidence that the warmth seeping into her body at the thought of him asleep in the room beyond quelled her jittery nerves and soothed the twisting in her belly.  She was in deep and she knew it.

When she finished in the bathroom, Dawn was waiting for her outside the door.

“Buffy—”

Buffy held up her hand.  “Not now.  Please, Dawnie, not now.”

Dawn caught her bottom lip in her teeth and nodded slowly.  “I just don’t understand.”

“We’ll talk later, okay?  I can’t—”

“Whatever,” Dawn said, and Buffy was surprised at the hot flash of anger in Dawn’s eyes.  “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

Oh, Dawn, Buffy thought, following her sister down the stairs, I hope so, too.

Riley held the door open for them when they reached the foyer, and with a final glance up the stairs, Buffy pulled it shut and locked up.  She felt Dawn’s eyes on her the whole short ride to Sunnydale Memorial and wondered if things could get any more awkward.  Riley filled the silence with bits of conversation and she struggled to settle her nerves long enough to focus on his words.

Riley sighed as he pulled into the parking lot.  “Are you sure you’re okay?  You look like you haven’t slept properly in days.”

Maybe because I haven’t?

“She was up pretty early,” Dawn said, before Buffy could curb her inner sarcasm long enough to form a response.  “Lots of tossing and turning.”

Buffy whipped around to meet Dawn’s raised eyebrow and triumphant smirk.  “I guess neither one of us slept very much,” she said, glancing at Riley, who was nodding as though he understood completely.

“You should let me help.” He stepped out of the SUV to open Dawn’s door and waited for Buffy to make her way around the vehicle.  “Anything you need, just let me know.”

“I’m going inside,” Dawn said, pushing past the two of them and storming away.

Riley watched her go and looked back to Buffy.  “Is she always so cranky in the morning?”

“No, she pretty much reserves that for the days when her mother’s in the hospital.”

So much for curbing the sarcasm.  Riley had the good sense to look apologetic, though he didn’t say the words.

“So, how can I help?” Riley turned to face her, reaching for her hand and smiling when she let him.  “I want to be there for you, Buffy, you just have to tell me what you need from me.”

And isn’t that the million dollar question?

The wriggly little knot of guilt pulsed in her gut as he laced their fingers together.  “Could you help the gang patrol tonight, so I can stay with Mom?”

Riley nodded his head with enthusiasm that didn’t match the slump of his shoulders or slight furrow in his brow. “Yeah, of course, anything.”

He pulled her forward into an embrace, clutching her to him so tightly she felt as if she would break if he so much as squeezed.  Her arms trembled as she circled his waist and her pulse beat loudly in her ears.  Riley’s fingers stroked her back and she fought not to withdraw from his touch, her mind whirling as she struggled to comprehend the sudden, urgent need to keep Riley at a distance.

The feeling ran deeper than the simple desire to keep him from the truth.  No, the road had taken a drastic turn over night and Buffy didn’t recognize the scenery anymore.

“Thank you,” Riley whispered, his breath hot and jarring in her ear. “Thank you for letting me help you.”

As he kissed her goodbye and drove away, one thought repeated itself in Buffy’s mind.

Shouldn’t I be the one thanking him?

When she pushed open the door to her mother’s room a few minutes later, Dawn was in bed with her, picking at the dry-looking bran muffin on the breakfast tray and chattering as only Dawn could.  Though she glanced up at Buffy with slightly narrowed eyes as she came in, all signs of the snarky, suspicious teenager had vanished. 

“Dawn was just telling me that you made her a nice breakfast this morning,” Joyce said, reaching out for a hug.

Joyce’s arm trembled where it lay across Buffy’s shoulders, and that little sign of weakness was enough to make Buffy want to burst into tears.  But if Dawn could do it, so could she, and Buffy pulled her lips into what she hoped was a pleased grin.

“It wasn’t as good as yours,” she said, sitting at the edge of the bed.  “Dawn probably can’t wait until you get back to active breakfast-making duty.”

“No, no it was good!  She tried really hard, Mom,” Dawn said, snuggling into Joyce’s shoulder.  “See?  Buffy’s doing a real good job of looking after me, so you won’t have to worry about me while you work on getting better.”

“Yep, I have it all under control.”

Joyce sighed and smiled tiredly, trailing her palm down Buffy’s back.  “I have the smartest, most wonderful daughters in the world, don’t I?”

Dawn giggled and tossed a piece of muffin at Buffy.  “Sure do!  But you forgot we’re also good looking and honest.”

The barb flew over Joyce’s head, and Buffy struggled to keep her smile even.  She had hoped to get through today without dealing with Dawn’s planned confrontation, but that was looking less and less likely. Dawn was as bloodthirsty for secrets as vampires were for, well, blood, and she raised her eyebrows at Buffy as if to remind her that she most certainly had not forgotten.

The long day ahead looked impossibly longer, and Buffy sighed as she laid her head on Joyce’s shoulder.  Buffy might be strong when it came to dealing with demons, but it was going to take a different kind of strength — the kind of strength her mother held, the kind she feared she lacked — to deal with life.

Buffy just hoped she could get them through this in one piece.

*~*

“This is called oxycodone,” Dr. Kriegel said, showing Buffy the bottle of round white tablets.  “They’re pretty potent, but then those headaches she has are pretty powerful.  She can have one every four hours if she needs it, just be sure to watch her breathing.”

Buffy nodded, thankful for the drug information sheets the nurse had passed to her.  She would have to look them over carefully when they got home because her attention kept wandering away from what the doctor was saying to Dawn, sitting with her book in the hallway and staring at it without having turned a page in minutes.  Dawn was playing cool but that crazy security guard really rattled her, so much that she hadn’t even dropped a hint about Buffy’s secret since the nurses led the man away.  His claim that Dawn wasn’t real hit too close to the truth for comfort, and Buffy didn’t want to let Dawn out of her sight.

“Miss Summers, are you listening?”

Buffy turned back to face the doctor.  “Yeah, sorry, just checking on my sister.  Potent.  Headaches.  Got it.”

Dr. Kriegel nodded and showed her another bottle of somewhat larger round white pills.  “This is dexamethasone.  It’s used to reduce the swelling in your mother’s brain and has to be given three times a day — breakfast, afternoon, and bedtime.”

Buffy nodded again, and Dr. Kriegel passed over yet another pill bottle, though these tablets were small and yellow.

“Haloperidol.  It helps minimize symptoms of delirium — times when she seems confused or says things that don’t make sense.” He waited until Buffy nodded before continuing.  “One at bedtime, but you could give one during the day if you felt she needed it.”

“I-I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Buffy said, staring at the bottles, wondering if this was how their days would go from now on — endless piles of anonymous pills, none of them meant to fix what was wrong, only hiding the problem so it was harder to see. She felt nauseous just thinking about it.

Dr. Kriegel passed her a wallet-sized brown envelope. “With this type of tumour, there’s a chance she could have a seizure.  Should that happen, call an ambulance and give her these two pills once she is awake enough to swallow them.”

Buffy’s head nodded but it felt as though someone else were driving. Dr. Kriegel continued speaking, his lips moving but with no sound coming out.  Headaches.  Tumour. Delirium. Seizures.  All of a sudden the little room felt too hot, too confining.  She jumped up from the chair, which clattered backward and startled Dr. Kriegel and the two nearby nurses.

“Miss Summers, if this is too much—”

Buffy took a deep breath and jabbed her fingernails into her palms.  “No, no it’s fine, I, uh, just remembered I have to make a call.  An important call, before we go. So I’ll just go and, ah, do that.”

Dawn looked up when she rushed by, and Buffy hoped her forced smile seemed convincing enough that nothing was wrong.  The payphone hung at the far end of the corridor, and she rested her head against the metal framing a moment before dropping in her quarter and dialling the number.

It rang, and rang, and rang before Buffy realized what she was doing.  She started to pull the receiver away from her ear when the line connected, though she heard only the faint hum of background noise coming through the speaker.

“Spike?”

“Buffy.”

Of all the stupid—

“What are you doing answering my phone?” she said, the words rushing out before she could stop them.

On the other side of the line she heard a faint sigh.  “You’re the one who called me.”

“I did, didn’t I?” She let out a breathy chuckle as the shard of anger faded.  “I wasn’t sure you’d still be there.”

“Just got back,” Spike said.  “Patrolled a while, killed a few nasties. Figured you’d be busy, what with the hospital and all.  How’s Joyce?”

Buffy couldn’t deny that the fluttery feeling in her chest, the good kind of fluttery that made her head a little dizzy and brought a smile to her face, had everything to do with the notion that Spike had thought to go patrolling for her.  Riley latched onto that bone like an overeager puppy — almost.  She didn’t quite understand his look of disappointment — but he still had to be asked.  Spike, as he had the night this whole mess started, just seemed to know.

“She’s, well, she’s tired, and going kinda stir crazy in here.” Seeing Dawn watching from down the hall, Buffy gave her a little wave and turned so the telephone box hid her face from view.  “We’re bringing her home to wait until she has her surgery, so, um—”

“Want me to make scarce, then?” 

In her mind, Buffy saw Spike’s shoulders slump and disappointment cloud his eyes, and she wanted to squeeze the resignation right out of him.      

“No, not scarce, just... I don’t know who’s gonna drive us home, but don’t go far, okay?  In case I need you?”

“Need me, hmm?”

She could picture the grin now, the one where he showed just a hint of teeth, and the silky rumble of his voice spread a swirling wave of warmth through her belly and straight to her womb.  She needed him, all right.  There was little doubt of that.

“You know you have an ego the size of a barn, right?” she asked, certain he could hear the way her breath quickened.

“Not just the ego.” He chuckled quietly, and when he spoke again he replaced the cocky tone with a softer one that stirred her heart as much as the other stirred her arousal.  “You get her home, Buffy, and I’ll see you later.”

Buffy couldn’t begin to describe the soothing wave of comfort and relief that notion brought to her. “Promise?”

“Promise. Bye, love.”

The line clicked dead and Buffy leaned against the wall beside the phone box, still holding the receiver to her ear.  Without Spike to distract her, the sounds of the hospital filtered back into her awareness, as did Dawn’s unwavering stare as she walked slowly down the hallway toward Buffy.  Buffy hung up the phone and sighed, telling herself this wasn’t going to get any easier by delaying the inevitable. 

“Was that him?” Dawn asked, raising an eyebrow and tossing her head in the direction of the payphone.  “You know, the guy you’re boinking who isn’t Riley?”

Buffy cringed at her sister’s choice of words, and reached out to set her hand on Dawn’s shoulder. “Dawn—”

Dawn pulled away and set her hands on her hips.  “Well it’s true, isn’t it?” she asked, lifting her chin and shaking her head as she spoke.   “I didn’t hear anything, by the way, just talking.  I figured out the rest on my own.  I’m not stupid, you know.”

Buffy resisted the urge to squeeze her eyes shut and avoid the hurt and accusation in Dawn’s eyes.  “I never said you were.”

“Whatever.  Is he going to be there?”  Dawn tightened her arms around her stomach and looked down at the floor.  “Because I wanna be prepared if I run into some strange guy on the way to the bathroom or something.”

The words hit her like a hard punch to the gut, and Buffy took a step back, struggling to calm her sudden shortness of breath.  “I-is that what you think?  That I—with some stranger?  When Mom—?”

But it did look that way, Buffy realized, from an outsider’s point of view.  It was a logical assumption when Dawn only had one tiny piece of the story to work with, and Buffy felt like an even bigger failure at life for setting such a horrible example for her sister.

“Buffy?”  Dawn’s voice held a bit of a waver now.  “Are you okay?”

Buffy gripped Dawn’s shoulders tightly enough that Dawn couldn’t pull away.  “It’s not like that, Dawn, it’s not.  I-I can’t explain it—I don’t even really get it myself.” 

She released her hold when Dawn flinched, and stepped back further before she could do any more damage.  “All I know is it’s the only thing that makes any sense right now.”

Dawn nodded, though she kept her arms wrapped firmly around her middle.  “Who is he?  If it’s not a stranger, then...?”

Buffy knew by the heat in her face that her cheeks were already a deep red, and the prickly lightheaded feeling that followed only made the temperature beneath her skin unbearable.  Dawn waited, an eyebrow arched expectantly.  Buffy let out a breath and took the plunge.

“Spike,” she said, the word coming out as a barely audible whisper.  “It’s Spike.”

The world didn’t end.  No lightning struck, no earthquakes rocked the ground beneath them, no plagues of locusts swarmed the hallway.  Only the soft thud of Dawn’s book landing on the floor broke the strange calm that settled around Buffy’s confession.

Dawn stared at Buffy with a slack jaw and very wide eyes, not looking away even as she knelt to retrieve her fallen book.  “You—Spike?”

Buffy nodded quickly, afraid that saying anything more about it would break the spell.  “I have to finish talking to Dr. Kriegel,” she said.  “Can you go help Mom get ready to go?”

But Dawn only stared and repeated, “Spike?”

“Spike.  Dawn, please?”

“Mom,” Dawn said, with a little shake of her head, which seemed to clear some of her daze.  “Right, okay.”

She headed toward Joyce’s room, but spun around before she had gone more than half way.  “Oh, my God, Buffy!  This is like—” But she stopped, took a deep breath, and nodded once.  “Mom, right. But you so have some explaining to do later.”

Dawn continued on and Buffy looked back toward the nurses’ station and Dr. Kriegel who was waiting where she left him.  Telling Dawn was easier than Buffy imagined it would be — Dawn almost seemed excited by the idea, once the shock had lifted — but she had a feeling that this particular confession would be the exception, not the rule.  Telling herself to shelve her relationship woes for a little while longer, Buffy picked up the telephone to call for a ride home. 

“First things first, Buffy,” she said aloud, tipping her head up to stare at the ceiling as she waited for Giles to answer.  “Take care of Mom, then worry about everything else.”

But she really doubted that life could ever be that simple.

*~*

 

About Timelines:   This chapter, which immediately follows chapter 8, begins in the morning before episode 5.09 Listening to Fear.  The second half of this chapter is a missing scene during that same episode, and timeline-wise occurs just prior to the scene where Buffy and Dawn take Joyce home from the hospital.   She hasn’t had her surgery yet and will be waiting at home until her surgery date which is two days away.

Chapter Ten
*~*

Quiet was something Buffy normally cherished, like the silence of the world after an epic fight or the still of a summer’s night patrol.  She craved those brief moments of solitude where nobody wanted her to do anything or be anyone—moments when she could just breathe and remember what life was like when she was Buffy without the Vampire Slayer. This quiet wasn’t like that, this strange weighty silence, louder than noise and echoing off the walls of her darkened house, refusing to give her a moment’s escape from reality. She just wanted to scream, or something, anything, to get rid of this feeling, this uneasy tickle at the back of her neck and the pressure of the quiet bounding in her ears.

She wandered through the house instead, tidying up, rearranging pictures and knickknacks just to keep her hands and feet busy.  Her mother was finally sleeping, though Buffy didn’t know if the pills had started working, or if her adventures in late-night breakfast-making with a side order of frightening Dawn had worn her out.  Dawn pretended to be sleeping the last time Buffy checked on her, but Buffy was sure her sister was suffering from the quiet, too, and still trying to think her way through what Joyce said to her.  She wondered if Dawn noticed how similar the words were to those of the crazy man from the hospital.

“I’m not stupid,” Dawn had said just a few hours ago.  No, she definitely was not.

On the heels of that thought, a tingling rush of heat zinged up her spine and lifted the hairs on the back of her neck.  The back door clicked open, the sound of it tearing through the quiet and muffling the roar in Buffy’s ears.  She already knew, even before she looked up from where she was crouched in front of the newly de-cluttered Tupperware cupboard, who she would find.  Spike stepped inside, his boots thumping solidly against the floor, breaking apart the restraints of silence as much as the sight of him untied the anxious, wriggling knot of tension in her belly.

Buffy stood and Spike hovered near the door, drinking her in with his gaze as though he hadn’t seen her in years.

“Spike,” she said, the word carrying more breath than sound.

“Hey, sweetheart.”

The pet name wrapped around her like a bed-warm blanket and she started forward at the same moment as he.

“I thought—I was afraid you weren’t coming.”

It wasn’t what she meant to say.  It wasn’t even what she was consciously thinking, but she could feel the truth of her words in the way his arrival soothed her anxiety.  Spike pulled her forward, tightening his arms around her as she laid her head on his chest.

“Buffy,” he said, voice muffled by her hair.  “Not coming isn’t an issue with you.”

She couldn’t help smiling as she looked up at him, and Spike’s lips stretched into that grin, the special one she hoped only she knew about. 

He swept the loose strands of hair away from her face, his fingertips brushing her temples.  “Got the ladies all settled in for the night, then?”

Buffy nodded, glancing in the direction of the stairs even though she couldn’t see them.  “I think they’re about as ‘settled’ as they’re gonna get.  I hope.”

“Bet Joyce was glad to be home.”

“Yeah.  I mean, I think so,” Buffy said, turning back around.  “Her surgery’s not ‘til the day after tomorrow and I don’t think she could stand the idea of just waiting around for everything to happen, you know?”

“No more than you could, I suspect,” Spike said, lifting his eyebrows.

Buffy sighed and leaned more of her weight against him.  “I’ve never seen Mom look so tired.  Dawn either.” 

“And you?” Buffy glanced up as Spike scanned the kitchen.  “Looks like a clean-up bomb went off in here.”

Buffy sighed, catching her lip between her teeth as she looked down.  “I kinda got carried away.”

“Could do with a bit of sleep yourself,” Spike said, his fingers lifting her chin until their gazes met. 

His eyes held that familiar intensity, as vivid as Spike himself and yet at the same time only a glimmer of the potential Buffy could feel surrounding them.  She fought the urge to look away, the emotions she read there almost too much for her tired self. 

“I-I don’t think I can,” she whispered. 

As much as she knew she needed sleep, Buffy didn’t think she could lie down and face the realities waiting for her the moment her head hit the pillow. Her breath hitched, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the oncoming prick of tears.

“I hate this.  Seeing her like this.  It’s killing me that I don’t know how to make it stop.”

Spike pulled her in closer, cradling her head in his palm as she buried her face in his chest.  He didn’t answer, but an answer wasn’t what she wanted.  Right now the feel of his arms around her was enough, even though her face and his shirt were now soaked with her tears.

Buffy was used to fatigue.  She’d lost count of how many times she had to operate purely on adrenaline, during an especially late night patrol or a fight that took a little longer than anticipated. This was different, and she didn’t understand how doing nothing could be so tiring.  She hadn’t had a physical fight in days, yet the exhaustion ran so deep it leached into her bones, made her hands tremble uncontrollably, and throbbed with an incessant ache behind her eyes.  She could easily drift away with Spike’s gentle swaying and the soothing caress of his fingers across her back.  He was humming softly, some tune she recognized but couldn’t place, washing over her like a punk rock lullaby.   It only encouraged her desire to fall asleep in his arms and stay there for days. 

“Let’s get you to bed,” Spike said, whispering the words into her ear and pulling her out of the weightless warmth of almost sleep.

“You mean us.” Buffy forced her eyes open, squinting in the kitchen’s faint light until she could focus on Spike’s face and the smile lingering on his lips.  She rose up on her tiptoes until their noses touched and slid her arms around his neck.  “Stay with me,” she said, pressing closer, feeling his erection against her belly.  “Please.”

Spike nipped at her upper lip and rubbed her nose with his.  “And him?”

Somehow, she thought it should have mattered more that she didn’t know where Riley was for a second night in a row, but she couldn’t muster up the strength to let it bother her. 

“He was supposed to help the gang patrol tonight, but Giles said he never showed.”

Spike’s grip tightened at her waist and his eyes narrowed as he muttered something under his breath.  Buffy didn’t catch the words, but the   menacing, low growl that followed was obvious. 

She touched her lips to his and stroked the back of his neck.  “Shh,” she murmured, drawing her tongue across his lip.

The growl subsided, replaced by a deep, chesty rumbling that vibrated through her like an earthquake.  Arousal flared hot in her belly, escaping unbidden with a raspy moan that prompted Spike to thrust against her.  She reached between them to squeeze his erection and he walked her backward until she hit the island, groaning as he trailed a path of kisses and nibbles down her neck.

“God, I missed you.” Buffy tossed her head back to give him better access, dug her fingernails into his side and pulled him closer.  Blunt teeth scraped at the barely-there bite marks he’d left her and she bit her lip to keep from crying out as the shivers of pleasure rippled over her skin.

“Missed you more,” Spike said, nibbling his way along her jaw.

“Spike.”  Buffy tugged at his belt buckle, pulling it free, then reached for the button on his jeans.  “Bed.  Come to bed.”

“Got one problem, love,” he said, pressing into her, trapping her hands between them before she could get to his zipper.  “Outside.  Something strange.”

That got her attention, and she freed her hands, laying them on his chest and urging him back just a little. “Strange like how?”

  “Smelled like...” Spike’s nostrils flared as he inhaled a deep breath.  “Like something that doesn’t belong here.”

She didn’t like the sound of that, nor the way the words prickled at the back of her neck in a way that was far too reminiscent of her earlier uneasiness.  Spike said nothing else, waiting for her to make a decision.  Buffy knew he’d forget all about it if she asked, take her up to bed and give her a good reason or two to feel exhausted, but anything that struck Spike as odd enough to interrupt what was heading into serious foreplay needed investigating.

Buffy sighed.  “You should probably go check it out.”

Spike nodded, but didn’t move away.  “I can be quick.”

His velvety tone started a warm, pulsing wave in her belly, and Buffy curled her hands into his shirt, pulling him down and crashing her lips to his. Spike groaned into her mouth and slammed her back against the island, thrusting his tongue between her parted lips at the exact same instant. Her elbow bashed into one of the countertop canisters, sending it crashing into its neighbour, and she dragged her mouth away from Spike’s, panting, to look toward the stairs.

“We can’t—” Disappointment flashed across Spike’s face, and Buffy ran her finger along his brow until the furrow smoothed and the tension left his jaw.  “We can’t yet.”

His lips stretched into a smirk as he leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers.  “Oh, we could,” he said, tilting his hips toward her, cock hard between them.  “You just want your turn on top.”

“There might be some...top having.  Quietly,” Buffy said, her breath quickening just the slightest.  “After your strange, smelly monster’s taken care of.”

“I’ll check out the beastie.”  Spike touched his lips to her forehead and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.  “And you get to bed, all right?”

“I’m coming with you.”

Spike pulled back, his eyebrow raised up in a way that made him look both annoyed and amused with a hint of protective.   “Bed,” he said, stepping back and pointing to the ceiling in the general direction of her room.

Buffy tried to compose her features into something unyielding, but Spike’s expectant eyebrows refused to budge.  The throbbing behind her eyes intensified, heated by a wave of wriggling annoyance sweeping through her. 

“This isn’t your call,” she said, stepping out from between him and the counter and moving over to the door.  She couldn’t see anything lurking out there in the blackness beyond the porch, but she could feel it now that she knew what to look for. 

Spike gripped her shoulder and pulled her around to face him.  “Two minutes ago you were near comatose,” he said, eyes flaring with some internal fire that only fuelled her growing irritation.  “Give yourself a break and let me take care of it.”

“It’s not your family at risk here, Spike!” she said, shaking off his grip as she spun back around to face the window, crossing her arms over her chest.  “Taking care of them is my job, not yours.”

He snorted loudly and his boots thudded against the floor with heavy steps leading away from her.  “The hell it’s not!” he said, his voice hard, edgy, angry.

Buffy turned around and watched him stalk back toward her, vibrating with anger that seemed entirely out of place.  One hand landed on the glass beside her head, the other curled to a fist at his side, and he brought his face down level with hers, jaw clenched, eyes blazing with something other than the lust she was used to seeing there.

“We’ve got something here, Buffy,” he said in that same hard tone, free hand gesturing back and forth between them.  “It’s big and messy and wrong, but it’s fucking real, we both know it, and if it’s days or months or bloody years before we get there, if I have to wait you out through a thousand Riley Finns, I don’t care.”

Buffy inhaled a shaking breath and Spike’s palm flattened over her heart, which threatened to burst out through her chest any moment now.  He leaned in until all she could see were the blue flames of his eyes as he tapped his fingers in time to the beat. 

“’Cause whether I’m in there or not, you’re in here.”  He laid his hand over his own heart, still tapping, a soft but steady pat-pat, pat-pat of fingers on leather.  “A stubborn fire in my chest I can’t snuff out.  I fought it, Buffy.  I fought hard but I never had a chance.”

Awareness trickled through her consciousness like a burgeoning stream, rippling over the jagged remnants of preconception, smoothing out the rough edges of beliefs she once held so closely to her heart. 

“They’re my business because they’re yours,” he whispered, voice softer now, soothing.  “You don’t have to do this alone.”

He was shaking as hard as she, and Buffy thought that maybe this realization, this unwavering sense that there was nothing Spike wouldn’t do for her, was something completely new to both of them.  Slowly, because the world was still spinning, because she couldn’t understand how he could feel so much and love so deeply, but couldn’t deny it, Buffy leaned forward, cradled his face in her hands and pressed her trembling lips to his.

They had shared kisses, endless kisses these past two days, none of which wrapped her body in the swirling, terrifying, consuming warmth of this one.  She could get lost in it, so easily lost to the point where she’d never look back, and so she pulled away after a moment, a short sliver of time that was long enough to leave them both breathless in each other’s arms.

“Okay,” she said, as if that one, meaningless word could somehow make up for the billions she couldn’t find.

He smiled, hesitantly almost, or perhaps awkwardly.  “Just thought you needed the sleep, is all.”

An understatement in all senses of the word, but she could forgive it in the wake of understanding why.  “I think maybe killing something might do me some good.”

“All right.” 

When he stepped out of her hold, he wouldn’t quite meet her eyes.  Buffy reached for his hand, twined her fingers with his and tugged him back.  She traced the scar above his eyebrow, watching his eyelids flutter shut as he leaned into her, and the solid connection of his body against hers seemed to drive away the awkwardness as though it had never existed.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and he nodded, looking down at her with misty eyes through half-shut lids.

He pulled her coat off the counter and handed it to her, then opened the door without a word and followed her into the night.

*~*

Chapter 11
*~*

Everywhere he went, he could smell it.  Old—no, ancient—and foreign, like something long forgotten that crawled out of an Egyptian tomb, or so out of this world that it rode down from the sky on a meteor.  It sent a shiver down his spine just thinking about it, because anything he didn’t know that smelled like that could very well mean big trouble.  The more he tried to hide his unease from Buffy, the more she picked up on it.  After checking around the house, they circled Buffy’s block, then outward until they ended up in a neighbourhood park some thirty minutes and not a shred of luck later.

Couldn’t say he minded the way she stuck close, though, letting him do the leading because he had the nose and she had the brains to realize he was absolutely right about her being too dead tired for patrol.  The girl was as stubborn as a mule and it was a damn good thing he liked her that way, because she might just frustrate the hell out of him otherwise.  Not that she didn’t already, but he couldn’t say he minded that, either.   

“Anything?” she asked, for something close to the hundredth time.

Spike closed his eyes and inhaled, drawing the offending odour into his nostrils.   The same scent invaded his lungs: strong, primal, and caustic.  It was a wonder Buffy couldn’t smell it, too.  He was willing to bet she would, right up close to the beast, but they hadn’t had so much as a glimpse of the thing.  It was everywhere and nowhere at once and he was having a devil of a time tracking it. 

“Can’t make heads or tails of it,” he said, letting his shoulders slump a little in defeat.  “Let’s get back.  Don’t think we’re gonna see any action tonight.”

She bumped his hip with hers, looking up at him with an adorable little half grin and a pointedly cocked eyebrow.

He slung his arm over her shoulder, and she leaned into his side as if she belonged there.  “Well, not this kind, anyway,” he said, sweeping his hand out to indicate the playground. 

Buffy’s cheeks flushed bright pink and Spike chuckled, loving the contrast between the wild woman in the bedroom and the blushing girl beside him.

“I’ll call Giles and ask if he’s seen anything,” Buffy said, glancing sidelong at him.  “Then we can figure out what to do about it.”

Buffy wrapped her arm around his waist and squeezed, holding them together for a long moment before she released him.  She didn’t step away, allowing his arm to drape across her shoulders as they walked.  As much as Spike kept telling himself not to count his chickens just yet, each moment like this, every time she let him have another little piece of her, he couldn’t help but think that maybe it wasn’t going to be so hard after all.  Already this thing between them had gone further than he ever imagined.  He all but pulled his heart out of his chest and gift-wrapped it for her back there in the kitchen, and she wasn’t running away.  Hell, she pulled him back when he tried to.  It wasn’t difficult to let fantasies take over, to imagine spending every night with her, being with her in every possible sense of the word.

That kind of thinking was dangerous, and he knew it, especially when everything about her life was unsettled right now.  He couldn’t stop it any more than he could stop loving her.  At least he thought she was starting to understand that, too.

“Dawn knows.”

“Dawn—what?” He halted mid-step and had to catch her before she stumbled onto the pavement. 

But she wasn’t tired.

Buffy yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand.  When she recovered, she glanced up at him and said, “About us.  Dawn knows about us.”

Words failed him for a long moment during which he was fairly certain he gaped down at her like a slack-jawed idiot.  He hadn’t expected her to tell anyone yet—or ever, that not so tiny doubtful part of him whispered—not when the absentee otherwise known as Finn hadn’t a clue that things weren’t nearly as peachy as he probably thought.  Telling her sister must mean something, he reasoned, unless—

“Oh, hell, she didn’t hear us?”

“God no,” Buffy said, giggling softly.  “Just talking.  But when Riley showed up...”

Spike nodded, starting forward again just a bit faster than their previous pace.  “Smart girl.”

“More like persistent.  She wouldn’t give up until I said it was you.”  Buffy leaned her head on his shoulder.  “I think she maybe wants this more than you do.”

That wasn’t bloody likely, but there were advantages to having an enthusiastic ally.  He knew Dawn had a bit of a crush on him—he’d have to be deader than this not to notice that—but he had assumed she, like everyone else in Buffy’s loyal little entourage, thought the ex-soldier boy was the perfect partner for the vampire slayer.

“I take it back, the girl’s brilliant.” 

He considered it another small victory when Buffy didn’t even flinch at that.  Not for the first time he wished he could see into that head of hers and figure out where he fit in it.

They had to separate to squeeze through the outer gate of the park, and though she didn’t paste herself back against his side, she stayed close enough that their coats swished together as they walked.  The conversation died, but the silence that followed wasn’t the obtrusive, jittery sort, but comfortable, warm in his belly like twelve-year-old Glenfiddich and as blissful as the first mouthful of blood after a good, hard chase.

Spike tried to concentrate on their faceless critter, on catching some subtle deviation he was obviously missing that would give him an idea of where it was hiding or tell him for certain it had moved on, but the distraction of Buffy made a wasted hunter out of him.  He could feel the fatigue pouring off her, could see it in the way her stride lacked its usual don’t-mess-with-me pace, in the droop of her eyelids and the soul-deep yawns she didn’t think he noticed.  The rosy tint was all but gone from her cheeks, leaving her pale and fragile-looking in the moonlight.  It was an illusion, one Spike was coming to understand a little more each minute.  Buffy Summers was more resilient, more determined than any other soul on Earth.

The shortcut down the alley between streets brought them back to Buffy’s house through the backyard.  Everything looked appropriately dark and secure, with just the lamp above the range spilling its orange glow through the kitchen window.  Buffy headed up the steps and turned at the top when Spike didn’t follow.

“Think I’ll take another sniff around the house before I come in,” he said.  “Just in case—”

The scream tore through the dead silence of the night.  Dawn.  Crying out for Buffy with frantic, bloodcurdling fear of the sort Spike remembered all too well.

Buffy took off without delay, throwing the door open and tearing through the house toward the sound of Dawn’s panicked voice.  Spike followed, racing behind her up the stairs.  The erratic pounding of two frightened hearts and the stench of fear, overlaid by that same ancient, alien odour assaulted Spike’s senses as they neared Joyce’s door.  Buffy flung it open and the two of them piled into the room, where the stink was so potent it threatened to scorch Spike’s lungs.

“What?  What is it?” Buffy asked, her wild-eyed focus whipping around the room.

“There’s something out there, Buffy!” said Dawn, wiping at the slimy, putrid gunk clinging to Joyce’s face.  “It’s after mom!” 

“You guys stay in here.  Don’t leave this room.” Buffy turned and grabbed Spike’s wrist.  “Come on.”

She pushed him toward the hallway and shut the door behind them, looking first toward the end of the hall and then to the stairs.  “You check downstairs,” she said.  “Don’t let anything—”

An ear-piercing screech like nails on a chalkboard came from overhead.  Before he could look up, it dropped from the ceiling: ugly, grey, slimy, and still screeching as it landed on Buffy and knocked her to the floor.  She walloped it with a hard fist but it wouldn’t budge.  Spike kicked it in the side once, twice, before it tumbled off and skittered away, wriggling faster that it should have been able to, up the wall and across the ceiling, disappearing down the stairwell.

Buffy jumped up, eyes immediately turning upward.  “Where?”

“Downstairs,” he said, already heading toward them.

As it had outside, the creature’s scent surrounded him, seeming to come from every direction at once.  He couldn’t track it, couldn’t see it either, so he followed Buffy as she stalked slowly through the house.  She was in full slayer mode, body tense and ready to spring, deadly expression etched onto her face—hard and beautiful. It was precisely the wrong time to be letting his thoughts wander south, but he could do fuck all about it.

They reached the kitchen, where Buffy pulled a butcher knife out of the block before heading down the back hall.   “It’s too quiet,” she said, pausing by the basement door.  “Where the hell did it go?”

On cue, the demon launched itself out of nowhere, landing on top of him this time, the acrid stench oozing from the grotesquely human face squealing down at him, burning his nostrils and making him gag.  It clung to him with strength belied by its tiny body, and he tried to roll over, to squish the slimy bastard or at least gain the advantage, but it wrapped its clawed grey hands around his neck and squeezed.  Spike didn’t need the breath but he couldn’t stop the panic of being unable to pull air into his lungs, and he flailed his limbs in a desperate attempt to shake the repulsive thing off him.

His foot connected with something—something that gasped and sounded an awful lot like Buffy and also caught the creature’s attention unlike any of the blows Spike managed to land.  It shrieked and leapt off him, and he got to his feet in time to watch Buffy punch the overgrown caterpillar and send it skittering down the hall.  She jumped up as it charged at her again and a glint of metal lying between him and the beast caught his attention.

The knife.

“Buffy!”

He threw it and she caught it with ease just as the creature knocked her down.  She stabbed at it, drawing an even harsher scream, and kept stabbing until it stilled.

Spike threw the beast off her and held out his hand to help her up just as the front door burst open and half a dozen men rushed into the foyer.  Another group scuttled into the hallway from the kitchen.  The man at the head of the first group separated from the pack, stepping forward and stinking undeniably like Riley Finn.

“Are you okay?” he said to Buffy, though Spike didn’t miss the way his eyes drifted to where her fingers were still wrapped around Spike’s wrist.

Buffy didn’t answer, just let go of Spike and bolted up the stairs while Riley watched her flee.

“You just missed a real nice time,” Spike said.

Riley spun around, finally noting the dead demon lying on the floor behind him.  His eyes widened comically before narrowing again to look back up at Spike.

He reeked of rage as he closed the gap between them, squaring his shoulders as all men did to make them look even bigger and more imposing.  “What the hell are you doing here?”

How he itched to wrap his hands around the boy’s throat and show him and his soldier buddies what a real vampire could do.  The bloody chip had other ideas though, sending him warning shocks for even daring to think it.

“Me?” Spike said, splaying his palm out over his chest.  “Looks like I’m helping your girl protect her family.  What were you doing?”  He glanced pointedly at the men still waiting in the doorway.  “Playing toy soldiers?”

Riley shoved him against the wall and Spike let him, laughing because he knew it would only piss him off more and if he couldn’t use fists and fangs, he’d resort to the only weapon left to him—verbal battery.

“Need backup, Finn?”

“No, I got this,” Riley said through tightly gritted teeth.  Spike heard the second group retreating back through the kitchen as Riley’s gloved fingers tightened around his throat.    “Don’t worry boys, it doesn’t bite.”

Oh, but he wanted to.  Wanted to bite that superior smirk right off Riley’s face before explaining in graphic detail every nasty little thing he and Buffy got up to the night before.  Which might leave him with an angry slayer to deal with, but he could most certainly work with that.

Riley’s fingers squeezed tighter, reminding Spike he had more immediate concerns than finding creative ways to handle Buffy’s ire. 

“Even if I did, I wouldn’t bite you,” Spike said.  “Not worth the aftertaste.”

Riley’s fist imbedded itself into his stomach.  The overgrown bugger was strong even without the Initiative enhancements and the blow rocked him back against the wall, the sound of the impact reverberating through the otherwise silent house.  Spike reacted with a hard headbutt before he could stop himself, throwing Riley off him and falling to his knees as the chip fired, shooting familiar, agonizing jolts of electricity through his brain.

“What—?”

The sound of Buffy’s voice brought him out of the pain-induced fog.  She stood on the last stair, knuckles white from her grip on the railing, eyes wide as she looked back and forth between the two of them.

She opened her mouth to speak again, but Riley charged forward before she could get the words out, stopping when his feet met the stair’s edge.

“What’s he doing here?” Riley said, pointing a demanding finger in Spike’s direction.  “Buffy?  What the hell is he doing here?”

Buffy’s eyes hardened in an instant.  “That thing tried to kill my mother!” she said, jabbing her finger in the direction of the dead demon.  “And you’re worried about Spike?”

“Damn right I’m worried!” Riley said, voice rising louder.  “He—”

“You need to stop yelling,” said Buffy, through clenched teeth.

“I found him sniffing around your room the other day, and now he’s here again!”  Riley glanced back at Spike, eyes narrowed and angry before he turned to Buffy once more.  “I want to know what the hell is going on!”

“I am not—” Buffy stopped and took a deep breath, and when she spoke again she used a low, almost deathly calm voice.  “I am not having this conversation right now.  My mother—”

“Is upstairs absolutely fine!” Riley said, leaning forward as though he were trying to tower over her.

“No thanks to you,” Spike said, standing now with a palm pressed to his aching head.

“Not helping, Spike,” Buffy said, glaring hard as she planted her hand firmly in the centre of Riley’s chest, pushing until he backed off.  “I just got her settled, Riley.  I’m not going to tell you again to stop yelling.”

No sooner did Buffy pull her hand from his chest did he press forward again.  Finn either didn’t notice or didn’t recognize the danger in Buffy’s icy tone and clenched fists, or in the way she dropped into the defensive stance that came as naturally to her as breathing.  Spike had to force himself not to jump into the middle of it.  Buffy didn’t need him fighting her battles, but she had Joyce and Dawn to worry about and Riley just wasn’t getting the hint.

“For Christ’s sake, Finn, give the girl some air,” Spike said, steeling himself for Finn’s retaliation.

As expected, Riley whirled around and caught Spike in the jaw with a meaty fist, knocking him flat on his ass.

“Riley!”  Buffy charged down the stairs, grabbing Riley by the arm and tossing him back just as he made to finish the assault with a solid kick to Spike’s face.

“Enough.”  Riley turned to Buffy, gripping her arms.  “I’ve had enough of Spike getting free rein just because you think he can’t hurt anyone!”

Buffy shook off Riley’s grip and held up a hand in warning when he made to move closer. “This isn’t about Spike and it’s not about you, either!” she said, gesturing toward the stairway.

“The hell it isn’t,” Riley said, voice deceptively calm for the way his whole body vibrated with emotion. 

“It’s about my mother,” Buffy said, eyes moistened now with unshed tears.  “She’s sick, Riley.  I’m trying to look after her and this isn’t helping at all.”

Spike watched from the floor as Riley clenched his fists and bit his lip, then whirled around to face the commando standing at the head of the small group still lingering in the foyer.  Spike couldn’t hear what Riley said, but the commando nodded and the group turned to leave.

“Take your demon with you,” Buffy said, shoving the body toward them with her foot.

Two of the men retrieved the corpse and followed their comrades out into the night.  The last one vanished down the steps, and Riley turned back to Buffy, who stood near the stairs again, arms folded across her chest.

“I begged you,” Riley said.  “Begged you to let me help.  But you don’t need me, do you?  You don’t need me, but you needed him?”

Oh, bugger .  If Spike were the praying sort, he’d have begged any deity who would listen to put a stop to Finn before all of this came out now, tonight, when the last thing Buffy needed was another fight.

“Stop it, Riley,” Buffy said, eyes flicking to Spike before focusing back on Riley.

“Oh, I’ll stop it.”  Riley stomped over, grabbed fistfuls of leather and hauled Spike to his feet.  “Get the hell out!”

Spike landed in a heap on the porch, staggering to his feet because his head hurt too fucking much for coordination.  Buffy stood in the doorway, eyes wide and wet, and a roiling, heavy dread settled in his gut as he stared back at her.

She wasn’t going to do it. 

“Tell him, Buffy,” Riley said, holding the door in one hand and her arm in the other.  “Tell him to stay away or I’ll make sure he does.”

“Spike...” 

Oh he heard the apology there, all right, and the fear too, because Spike knew he could get away unscathed, but Buffy didn’t.  However, it didn’t much matter what she thought when Spike got the boot and Finn got the girl, and unless she grew a pair in the next ten seconds and put Riley in his place, Spike didn’t see this going down any other way.

“Save your breath,” Spike said, turning so he wouldn’t have to see her, gritting his teeth against the shiver of aftershock from the chip.

He heard her whimper but refused to turn around as he all but threw himself down the steps.  The front door slammed behind him, and he paused while the vibration of it echoed through the night, trying to tell himself the moisture on his cheeks was just an effect of the chip firing, and the squirming in his gut wasn’t anything but hunger.  He pressed his back against his favourite tree, kicking at the cigarette butts littering the grass and cursing his fingers for shaking too much to light another.

It was just as well.  As soon as he could walk without giving his legs a pep talk, he was out of there.  Didn’t want to be lingering beneath her window tonight anyway.

Rather be up there with her .

“Bloody not happening now, is it?” 

Giving up, he tossed the unlit cigarette back in its pack and pushed off from the tree, not quite able to resist the urge to glance up at her window before moving on.

Buffy opened the window the moment he turned, and stood frozen there in the dark, staring down at him as he looked up at her.  He held her gaze for a moment, a long, agonizing, painful moment, before he broke the connection and headed off into the night.  He ignored the muffled voices from the bedroom and listened instead to the one in his head, telling him to go find something to kill before knocking off the nearest liquor store and drinking himself into oblivion.

*~*

It felt as though an invisible fist reached into her chest and squeezed her lungs until nothing remained but a fierce, burning pain.  The rage blazing in Riley’s eyes sent a glacial shiver down Buffy’s spine, and though something inside her screamed for her to move, to act, to do something, she stood riveted to the floor as everything came tumbling down around her.

He’s going to kill him.

The words were a mantra in her head as she stood motionless, stuck inside a body built for action that failed her when she needed it most.  The fingers clamped down around her heart like a vise as Spike struggled to his feet, eyes shining with tears.

With betrayal.

“Spike...”

Buffy couldn’t hear his words for the sound of the world grinding to a painful halt.  A mournful whimper she couldn’t stop trickled from her lips as Spike turned away from her and moved down the steps in slow motion.

The door slammed shut, shaking the walls and rattling through her insides until the emotions holding her hostage crumbled to dust and fell away.  In their place rose a hot, prickling wave surging up from her gut until it pounded like a drum behind her eyes and set her flesh on fire. 

Riley turned to face her, misplaced triumph twisting his mouth into an unrecognizable smirk.  He started to speak, but Buffy brought her hand up so quickly his lips snapped shut and he flinched backward.

“Shut. Up,” she said, clenching her teeth so hard her jaw ached.  “Don’t you dare say another word.”

Muffled footsteps sounded overhead and she turned her eyes toward the ceiling, her thoughts whirling, spinning like a top inside her head as her brain struggled to catch up to what happened. 

“Buffy—”

His voice was jarring, grating. Buffy threw her hand up again, stopping him mid-step.  “If you upset her, Riley, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” he said, his tone more derisive that she’d ever heard him.  “Sic your pet vampire on me?”

“My pet—” Her body trembled hard and her face burned as she forced a deep breath of air into her still aching lungs.  “You’re out of line.”

“Am I?”

Something else crept into his voice, jabbing a gaping hole in her anger.  Buffy dug her fingernails into her palms, willing the pain to cover the weeping little wound, to maintain the edge that was the only thing keeping her standing.

“Get out,” she said, turning away, unable and unwilling to look at him for another second.

Whatever Riley said in response was lost to the pounding of her feet as she ran up the stairs.  Hot tears blurred her vision before she was halfway up, and she detoured once she reached the second floor, hoping Dawn could manage without her while she got control of her emotions.  Her mother couldn’t see her like this, not tonight, not now when Buffy needed to be stronger than ever.

The smell of sex assaulted her when she opened her bedroom door, and she raced to the window, opening it to the night.  The cool air, soothing and welcomed, rushed over her flaming cheeks and for a second or two before she opened her eyes, it didn’t hurt so much to breathe.

Spike looked up at her from the shadow of the tree.  She couldn’t see his face, only the glint of his eyes as they unerringly met hers.  She wanted to call out to him but the words caught in her throat, trapped inside the rapidly growing lump she couldn’t swallow.  She could only stare after him as he turned and walked away.

Her bedroom door clicked shut.

“We need to talk,” said Riley in a quiet voice that made her neck prickle. 

Buffy stared after Spike’s retreating back and said, without turning around, “What could you possibly have to say that you haven’t already?”

“I don’t even know anymore, Buffy,” he said, still in that same low tone.  “I don’t know you anymore.”

Buffy turned from the window, a shiver of irritation zinging through her when she found him sitting on her bed.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You tell me,” Riley answered.  “I hardly see you, Buffy.  Haven’t been with you in days.”

Buffy’s head pounded harder, and she squeezed her eyes shut a moment against the pain.  “I have to look after my mom.”

Riley let out a snorting laugh, so bitter she could nearly taste it.  “Yeah, there’s always something with you.”

“So I should just abandon her?” Buffy asked, tightening her arms across her chest as she moved to stand in front of him.  “What do you think she’d be doing if it were me, or Dawn?”

“I get it, she needs you,” Riley said, rising to his feet with his hands on his hips.  “But what next?  Willow needs you?  Xander?  Spike?  I need you, too, Buffy, but when does it end?”

The lump in her throat grew a little thicker, the heat in her face a little hotter.  While she blinked her eyes rapidly, attempting to twist her tongue around some sort of response, Riley came forward until barely a foot of space separated them.

“I understand this, I do,” he said, pointing toward her mother’s bedroom.  “I know she needs your help right now, but after that, even when she’s back to normal, it’ll be the same old thing, won’t it?  I don’t see why you can’t just take a break, let somebody else shoulder the load sometimes.  Why you can’t just let me in?” 

Buffy wanted to scream, to growl her throat raw, or throw something delicate and watch it smash into a million pieces.  There weren’t many more ways of saying the same old thing, and yet no matter what she did, Riley just wouldn’t or couldn’t understand.

Buffy stepped backward and held out her arms.  “This is me, Riley,” she said, in a rasping whisper that somehow seemed to echo through the room.  “The only me.  I can’t take a break from who I am just to soothe your ego.”

“Not about my ego,” he muttered, moving toward the window.

Buffy let her arms fall to her sides and tipped her face up toward the ceiling.  “Well you could have fooled me.”

“It’s not!” Riley spun back around with such speed Buffy had to resist the urge to back up.  “I try to be there for you, Buffy, but you send me away to play with your friends.”

“I needed you to help with patrol,” Buffy said, flinging her arm out toward the window.  “And you couldn’t even do that.  Giles told me about tonight’s no-show.”

“Well maybe I had better things to do than be conveniently out of your way!” he said, picking up Mr. Gordo from the bed and throwing him at the vanity. 

The mirror vibrated from the impact and Riley tried to press forward into Buffy’s personal space, but stopped as she levelled him with a hard stare. 

“You don’t need me, Buffy, that’s the thing,” he said, shoulders slumping as he wilted backward.  “And you can’t even pretend to anymore.”

Her stomach clenched and cramped as though she’d been sucker-punched in the gut.  The room spun slowly on its axis, threatening to tip the floor out from under her feet.  A scream scratched its way into her throat but she swallowed it, though it clawed at her on the way down.

“What do you want me to say?”  Buffy retrieved her wounded pig and hugged him to her chest.  “What’s the magic word, Riley?”

He didn’t answer.  He wouldn’t even look at her as he sat back down on the end of her bed, just stared at his feet as though she wasn’t even in the room. 

The door opened and Dawn walked in, not attempting to make her entrance anything but obtrusive.  Dawn’s eyes met Buffy’s for a split second before she turned and shot Riley a scathing look.

“Is Mom okay?”

“She’s fine,” Dawn said, still staring at Riley.  “No thanks to him.”

Riley’s face was unreadable as he met Dawn’s death glare.  “Don’t get involved in things you don’t understand, Dawn.”

Dawn’s hands slid to her hips and her lips tightened into a thin line.  “I heard everything you said, Riley, and I understand exactly what happened.”

Dawn turned, missing the furrowed-brow confusion on Riley’s face.  She met Buffy’s eyes, softening her expression so much she could almost have been a different person.  When she spoke, her voice was little more than a whisper. 

“Mom’s okay,” she said, standing close in front of Buffy.  “I told her you took care of the monster and I gave her one of the yellow pills.  She’s sleeping now. I just came to make sure you were okay.”

Buffy swiped at the moisture in her eyes and pulled Dawn forward for a quick hug.  “Thank you,” she whispered in Dawn’s ear.

“Want me to stay?”

Buffy did, but also knew that Dawn’s presence would solve nothing.  The significance of the offer wasn’t lost on her.  Tension wound around and between her and Riley, an elastic band pulling tighter and tighter until eventually, it was going to snap and knock them both down.  Dawn knew it—knew better than Riley how bad it was going to get—and it took guts to want to stick around in sisterly support.

“This is my mess to clean up,” Buffy said, with a rush of gratitude for her sister.   “You go look after Mom.”

Dawn just nodded and stepped away, making sure to send another scary glare toward Riley before leaving the room.

Buffy waited until the door clicked shut before facing Riley again.  He stared back at her, dry eyes refusing to betray his feelings to her.  If it weren’t for the tension in his jaw, she would have thought he felt nothing at all.  Buffy searched his face for some sign, some clue to tell her when and why and how this stranger had replaced her solid, dependable boyfriend.

A heart-pounding wave of dizziness came over her, rising up from her chest and sweeping over her head like a shroud.  Buffy squeezed her eyes shut against the sensation of the floor falling out from under her, and slid heavily down on the chair as her thoughts whirled and danced and coalesced inside her head.

That was a lie.  There was no stranger, even if the face staring back at her looked foreign under a new light.  He hadn’t changed, not really.  The lack of Initiative enhancements only brought out what was already there.  Not wrong or right or new at all, just Riley.  Normal, All-American Riley, who needed so much more from Buffy than she could ever give.

“Buffy?”

She blinked her eyes open.  Riley was looking at her with a hint of concern, his hands braced on the bed as though preparing to propel him up and to her rescue.

Buffy let out her captive breath and said, “I’m sleeping with Spike.”

Nothing happened for so long Buffy wondered if she only imagined saying the words.  Then slowly, Riley’s hands left the bed to settle, trembling, in his lap.  He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

“Why?”

She had imagined—dreaded—this moment countless times since that first momentous kiss behind the Bronze, but Buffy hadn’t predicted this lack of anger, the strange calmness in his voice as he asked his question and waited, unblinking, for her to respond.

“I…”

She didn’t know how to answer him, even if she could find the words. Buffy suspected the whys of her and Spike ran deeper than she could ever dream, and she could hardly explain it all to Riley when she was only just beginning to sort it out herself.  Dragging her gaze from his, Buffy got up from the chair and walked to the window.  Except for the light breeze, nothing moved outside.  Inside, Buffy heard the shifting of fabric as Riley stood and the soft swish of the carpet beneath his feet as he walked toward her. 

An arm’s length away from her he stopped. In the glass of the window, his reflection reached out and the air buzzed around her neck, but he didn’t touch.  The two pinpricks that normally flared with heat now ached with a sudden chill, and Riley’s arm fell back to his side.

“Did it hurt?”

Buffy hadn’t survived as long as she had by relying on predictability, but once again Riley’s reaction surprised her.  She turned slowly, brows drawing together as she faced him.

“Did it hurt when he bit you?” he asked again, fists clenching and unclenching in front of him.

A little gust of wind burst through the window, and Buffy wrapped her arms around her stomach to ward off the cold.  “That’s your question?”

Even if Riley heard her response, he didn’t acknowledge it.  He kept on talking, pulling at his fingers with violent tugs.  “No, he couldn’t do it unless you wanted it.  Of course you wanted it, just like you wanted the others.  Because you know they need you and you get off on that, don’t you?”

Buffy opened her mouth to reply, but said nothing.  Riley was staring through her as he spoke, a faraway look in his eyes that made even less sense than his words.  A prickly sensation crept over her scalp and trailed down her spine in an ominous shiver.

“You think I don’t get it,” Riley said, his gaze retreating from wherever it was to meet hers at last.  “You think I can’t understand because I’m not like you.  But I get it now, Buffy.  I do.”

She was missing something here, something vital hidden in Riley’s words that she couldn’t quite grasp.  The prickling intensified in a way that usually meant something was going to happen—something she wasn’t going to like.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Something flared in Riley’s eyes as he stared at her and though she wanted to look away, the force of what she saw there held her riveted to the spot.  Riley gripped his turtleneck and tugged so hard the black fabric ripped, exposing three, maybe four sets of fang marks in various stages of healing.  His finger grazed the freshest set and the change in his face was instantaneous—hard, furious eyes drifted shut, tense jaw relaxed until his lips parted and she could almost hear the moan threatening to spill into the crackling air around them.

The giggle surprised her, rising up with the same burning ache as the scream she withheld only minutes ago.  With an almost out-of-body sensation of detachment, Buffy watched bliss fall from Riley’s face.  It wasn’t funny, not even in the most twisted sense of the word, but the longer she stared at the marks on his neck, the harder she laughed, until her eyes became so clouded with tears that everything, Riley, his bitten neck and confused face, was just a big, runny, jumbled mess.

In the next breath, the giggling collapsed into something more like a sob, except she buried that, too, right down her aching throat with the rest of it.  This wasn’t happening.  Riley, of all people, knew better than that.  Bite me once, shame on me, bite me twice...or three, or four, or five times—

When she rubbed the moisture from her eyes they were still there, tiny spots of deep red glaring at her with a truth more painful than fiction or stupid sayings or the sting of the bites themselves.

“What did you do?”

It took a moment for Riley to snap out of the trance her laugher put him under.  He roused with a jolt that sent him pacing across the room, mouth flapping as he recounted the vilest story Buffy thought she had ever heard.

When he finished, Riley came up in front of her, the gleaming madness in his eyes a fair substitute for his frantic pacing. 

“They needed me,” he said, as though that would explain, or excuse, or make her understand his colossal stupidity.  “Me and only me.  All of me.”

“They needed dinner!” she said, her stomach roiling with nausea.  “Smart of them, really.   Why go out to hunt when the food delivers itself?  How could you be so stupid?”

Riley’s gaze slid pointedly toward her neck.  “You tell me.”

Buffy clenched her fists hard, nearly drawing blood with her fingernails.  “Don’t you even try to compare Spike to your—your whores.  This is different.”

Riley no longer looked mad, just angry, but Buffy wasn’t sure which she preferred. 

“How?” he asked, stopping just short of seizing her by the shoulders.

Buffy lowered her hands, which she raised to deflect Riley’s hold, and set them firmly at her hips.  “Spike loves me.”

Riley shrank back, looking so small and pitiful despite his actual size.  “I love you.”

“You love the idea of me.” Where the thought came from, Buffy didn’t know, but she couldn’t fault the truth of it.  “But you don’t even know me at all.”

“I know what you felt when he fed,” Riley whispered.

Buffy tried to picture it, to imagine the ecstasy Riley claimed at being needed, being used by these faceless, despicable excuses for vampires who cared nothing at all about him except that the right kind of blood flowed through his veins.  She tried to grasp onto the logic, the reasoning that somehow, something in her was so lacking she couldn’t hope to make Riley feel as whole or alive as the dead things who fed on him.  She remembered Spike’s fangs piercing her neck and a shiver passed over her, a memory of the fire, the warmth, the vitality and connection of the moment that just could not be confined into Riley’s cold, greedy notion of feeding.

She tried to process it, but it just wouldn’t take.

“No,” she said, slowly.  “You don’t.”

They fell into silence.  Riley stood like a statue in the center of her room, but her eyes no longer saw strength or security in his size.

“You needed somebody to take care of, somebody to need you,” Buffy said, thankful in a detached sort of way that Riley did nothing but stand there and listen.  “So you offered yourself up to the prettiest bloodsucker you can find.  Spike and I are nothing like that.”

Riley scowled, but didn’t move.  “At least I didn’t fuck her in your bed.”

Buffy snorted.  “No, but I betcha you did it in hers.”

His lack of denial was all the answer she needed, and while she shouldn’t be surprised, the truth settled cold and heavy and aching in her heart. 

“I need somebody who can accept what I am without trying to make me feel guilty about it,” Buffy said, pressing forward before she lost the courage to voice the words screaming to get out of her head.

Riley opened his mouth to speak, but Buffy cut him off.  “You needed me helpless and I’m not.  I needed you there, and you weren’t.”

Riley sighed, a breath as full of feeling as it was final.  His body sagged, shrinking from the statue into a crumpled, fallen soldier.  “And Spike was.”

“And Spike was.”  Buffy looked toward the window, remembering how the moon shone off Spike’s back as he walked away.  “Riley, you need to leave.”

He stammered a reply.  Something about tomorrow, about coffee, about trading more useless words that would only lead right back to where they were now.

“No,” she said, not caring that he was still trying to speak.  “I mean leave.  Go.  Because I can’t even look at your face anymore without feeling completely disgusted.” 

Riley didn’t move.

“We’re done,” Buffy said.  “You need to go.  Now.”

“You’re making a mistake!” He jumped forward, suddenly animated, gripping her shoulders as he didn’t dare before.  “We just need to work through this, talk it out.  Don’t throw away what we have, Buffy!”

All they had were holes.  The ones in their necks and the cold black one growing in her heart.

Her feelings for Riley were bleeding now, aching and sore and mixed up in emotions of the night, but the confusion couldn’t hide the truth, what she’d known all along but hadn’t let herself acknowledge.  Riley loved her, but Buffy didn’t love him, and any chance of that ever changing was long gone.

“Go,” was all she could say, before wrenching free from his grasp and turning back to face the window.

When the front door slammed shut, Buffy spun and fell onto her unmade bed that still smelled of Spike.  Heavy, breath-stealing sobs shook her body and the scream finally clawed its way to the surface, tearing past her throat until all of her was raw and wasted.  Tears soaked into the bedding, hot and violent and endless, and Buffy curled into herself and wept.

*~*

An engine roared to life outside.  The sudden noise pulled Buffy up from her bed and toward the window just in time to see a black SUV speeding off down the street, headlights dark.  She blinked her bleary eyes, shook off the shiver dancing across her shoulders, and scanned the street.  No other vehicles lingered there, at least as far as the streetlights reached.  She knew from experience, however, that Mrs. Henderson’s rhododendrons made great hiding places, and she’d long ago stopped trusting the moral integrity of anyone in a black ops uniform. 

That SUV could’ve been the last of the commandos watching her house, or just the first of them to abandon post, but that mattered less to her than why they were there in the first place.

Riley would claim they were waiting to see if the smelly little demon was expecting company, but right about now, anything Riley might say held about as much weight as a feather.  No, Buffy rather doubted they were just waiting on the demon.

Which begged the question of why. 

They weren’t Initiative, at least if she were to believe what Riley said about it being disbanded, so slayer study probably wasn’t in their mission statement.  They did appear to be in the business of demon hunting, and probably knew Spike was a vampire.  If Riley suggested they should wait around and watch the house in case Spike returned, they would be waiting a long time. 

Buffy rubbed away a stream of fresh tears and stared out at the place she last saw him, staring up at her from under the tree.  No, Spike wouldn’t be back tonight, she’d made sure of that.  None of them knew about his crypt, either, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

A prickling sensation rose up the back of Buffy’s neck and raked over her scalp, and she backed away from the window, not quite able to catch her breath.  The commandos didn’t know where Spike lived, but Riley did.  Riley, who hated Spike at the best of times and now had a pretty damn good reason to act on it.  Spike might be resourceful, but that chip made him vulnerable and Buffy didn’t know if he had it in him to run and hide, either.    

She dragged her palms down her face and sank down on her bed.  Two hours ago, she’d have sworn to anyone who would listen that Riley wouldn’t attack a defenceless Spike no matter how much he hated him.  Two hours ago she wouldn’t have dreamed of him ever whoring himself out to vampires, either, and her blind support of Riley’s honour tasted rotten on her tongue.  Buffy knew what Riley was capable of, now more than ever.  

All the words she didn’t say in the foyer stuck in her chest, hot and spiny.  If she’d only said something, maybe Spike would have a hope in hell of seeing this coming.  But he wouldn’t, and slayer powers didn’t do her an ounce of good with her dying mother and little sister sleeping down the hall. 

She couldn’t leave them, not tonight.

There was no choice.

Except, maybe there was.

Her gaze drifted to the telephone on the table by the bed. It was a stupid idea.  Ludicrous, really, but also her only option.  Buffy lifted the receiver from its cradle and dialled the Magic Box before she had time to stop herself.

“Riley, that better be you,” said Xander after picking up on the third ring.

Buffy couldn’t answer immediately, the sudden pounding of her heart making her words catch in her throat.  She took a breath, willing her body to get control of itself, and said, “Xander, it’s me.”

“Buffy, hi,” Xander said, his voice losing its edge of annoyance.  “Guys, it’s Buffy!  Hey, I know you’re on Mom duty right now, but you haven’t seen Riley, have you?”

Buffy swallowed hard.  “Um—”

“Because we may have a problem,” Xander said.  Buffy heard the voices of the rest of the group speaking softly in the background.

“Let me guess,” she said, glancing in the direction of her mother’s room.  “It’s a smelly, screeching, tries to drown people in gunk while hanging from the ceiling kind of problem?”

A weighted silence followed.  “Does that mean it’s not a problem anymore?”

“Not unless it brought friends.”

“No, this was a one-demon-band sorta deal,” Xander said.  “We figured out what it is, but then Riley up and vanished and we didn’t want to bother you.  But, um, Tara just wondered if—”

“If it might go after my mother?”

Buffy could almost hear Xander cringing through the phone.  “If we’d thought of it sooner...”

“It’s okay, Xand,” she said.  The demon was dead and Joyce was as fine as she could hope to be right now.  

Spike, on the other hand wasn’t, and he probably didn’t even know it.  Her breath hitched, ringing loudly in the silence of her room.

“Buffy?”

She tried and failed to hide the shakiness as she exhaled.  “It’s been a rough night,” she whispered, clutching the receiver as though it might slip from her fingers and ruin her only chance to help Spike.

“Can I do anything?”

Oh, sweet Xander.  The sincerity in his voice sent a trickle of warmth through her chest that thawed out little of the cold.  She could do this.  She could ask him.  He was the least obvious to ask and the most likely to disapprove, but of all her friends, only Xander had a hope in hell of succeeding.

He listened quietly as she explained the situation, her details scant at best and full of holes she wasn’t ready to fill.

“You want me to check on Spike?” Xander said, speaking each word carefully as though she was speaking in a foreign language.

Buffy squeezed her eyes shut against welling tears.  “Please, Xander.”

“You’re serious about this,” Xander said, after half a minute of silence. “You really think Riley might...?”

“I don’t know,” she said, whispering because anything more would betray too much, more than she had already.  “He was so angry.”

A soft sigh, and more silence.  Buffy imagined Xander’s face, pictured him staring straight ahead, blinking as he replayed the conversation in his head, searching for some strand of logic to explain Buffy’s sudden concern for Spike.  She bit her lip and willed him not to voice the questions gathering in his mind.

“I’ll go,” Xander said at last. “And for the record, I’m ignoring the weirdness factor—for now—because it’s been a rough night.”

Buffy released her lip from between her teeth, half the tension melting from her shoulders. “Thank you, Xander.  Just—just don’t say anything, okay?”

A soft clicking sound came through the receiver, the sort of noise a person made when they disapproved but had the brains not to say so. “To who? Riley, or Spike?”

“I don’t care what you say to Riley,” Buffy said, before she could stop herself, but she didn’t have the energy to regret it.

“I’m getting shades of the Twilight Zone here, Buff,” Xander said, and Buffy imagined him holding up his hand to stop her from speaking.  “I know, I know, ignoring.  But Buffy—”

She hated how her breath shook, and hated even more that Xander could hear it.  “I know.  Thank you.”

When they hung up the phone, Buffy fell back onto the bed, her heat thumping now with what felt a little bit like relief.  Involving Xander was only going to cause more headaches later, but if he could stop Riley—

“Don’t say if,” she said to her ceiling. 

If would only drive her crazy.  Or crazier, because she was pretty close to certifiable already.  There was a reason the proverbial Slayer’s handbook didn’t cover heartache and certainly not heartache involving vampires.  Buffy didn’t think there was enough room left in her pounding head for any more drama.

She tried to look at the clock, but her eyes, sore and heavy, only blurred the glaring red numbers.  It didn’t matter what time it was.  She wouldn’t be sleeping tonight anyway.  Buffy pulled off her clothes, smelly demon guts and all, and dumped them in a pile next to the bed.  Pajamas she hadn’t worn in days tempted her with promises of flannelly comfort, but instead she pulled on a fresh pair of jeans and a t-shirt and headed down the hall to check on her family.

Dawn was tucked into bed with Joyce, Joyce’s head pillowed on Dawn’s shoulder, both of them asleep.  So peaceful, their breathing deep and even and unconcerned, nobody would know they’d just been attacked by the weirdest demon Buffy had ever seen.   Thank God for small miracles. 

Buffy shut the door on the sleeping pair and went downstairs.  She left the back door open in case either of them so much as mumbled in their sleep, and slipped out into the night.  The stars, brighter tonight under the waning moon, shone down on her like twinkling companions and she tipped her face up toward them as she sat on the steps.  Buffy breathed an involuntary sigh, thankful for the clear night.  Alone with the stars was an achingly familiar state, but a comforting one when the rest of the universe seemed out to get her.

Her gaze drifted to the back of the yard, and though she knew he wouldn’t be there, Buffy felt a sharp pang in her chest when the half-expected cigarette failed to flare into smoky existence.  He wouldn’t be back, even if Xander—when Xander—took care of the Riley situation.  Spike might be a fool for love, but even he had some pride left in that bleached head of his, pride she ripped to shreds tonight.  She’d only wanted to protect him, the way that she protected everyone she cared about, but ended up breaking his heart instead.  The look in his eyes when he left said it as clearly as a knife to the gut.

She shouldn’t care about Spike or the feelings he wasn’t supposed to have.  She should be a good girl and forget her sins with the vampire and instead pine over the loss of her human boyfriend, no matter that Riley’s actions had as much to do with that as hers.  She should, but she couldn’t, and the throbbing ache spreading through her chest with every beat of her heart proved it.

*~*

When the sky began to lighten, Buffy rose stiffly from the steps and wandered back inside, shivering from the cool morning air only when the warmth of the house touched her bare arms.  Dawn and Joyce hadn’t made a sound the rest of the long night, and neither had the telephone lying silently on the counter.  Buffy hadn’t asked Xander to call, not wanting to make him even more suspicious than he already was, but maybe she should have.  Not knowing made her imagination run wild and she couldn’t keep the worst ideas from wriggling their way into the growing knot of worry in her gut. 

If Xander hadn’t gotten there in time, maybe she didn’t want to know, except that would mean he’d have to tell her in person and there’d be no way she could keep her feelings hidden.  She wasn’t sure she could hide her feelings anymore either way, but if Xander couldn’t stop Riley, what she felt wouldn’t matter.  Something inside her whispered she would know it if Spike was gone.  Their connection wasn’t just a fantasy, even though she hadn’t felt it for long.  Neither were the growing feelings she held for him.  Her whole body was a jittery bundle of worry and nerves, but the threads binding her and Spike together wound ever tighter around her, humming and pulsing soul-deep.

She didn’t love Spike, but she could, so easily her eyes pricked with tears when she let her thoughts linger too long on it.  This knowledge snuck up on her when she wasn’t looking, sometime between the first of many shooting stars and the initial hints of impending dawn, and she couldn’t un-know it.  She couldn’t do anything about it, either.  Not anymore.

The commandos left muddy boot prints in the foyer and through the kitchen all the way down to the back hall.  With her thoughts still a dizzying whirl in her brain, Buffy tackled the now-dried and crumbling piles of dirt, sweeping them up and mopping the floors until they gleamed.  The demon stain on the hall carpet took a little more elbow grease and a lot more gagging, but when she finished she could barely see the spot marking its screeching death.

With the mess gone, Buffy drank some coffee and rewashed yesterday’s dishes.  Dawn came downstairs partway through and, after taking a sip from Buffy’s cup and grimacing at its taste, started drying things and putting them away.

“Cereal?” Dawn asked, when the dishes were done.

“No,” Buffy said, shaking her head as she scanned the kitchen for something else to tidy.  “I’m not hungry.”

A bowl of Fruit Loops mixed with strawberry Mini-Wheats appeared in front of her a few seconds later, and Dawn tapped Buffy’s bowl with her spoon.  “Yes, you are.  Eat it.”

Buffy wasn’t, even though she couldn’t remember the last time she ate anything, but she didn’t want to argue.  The cereal went down tasteless and soggy, but her efforts made Dawn smile. 

Dawn cleared her throat.  “So.  Riley...?”

“Gone,” Buffy said, moving to the sink to wash her bowl .

Dawn set her bowl in the sink, bumping Buffy’s shoulder with hers.  “And Spike?”

Gone?  Dust?  Never coming back?

The bowl in her hand cracked, driving tiny shards of glass into her fingers.  Little swirls of red washed down the sink and Buffy stared at them, the pounding in her ears so loud she barely heard Dawn gasp and say her name.

“Buffy,” Dawn said again, shutting off the water.  “What—?”

Footsteps above their heads brought an end to Dawn’s words and gave Buffy something else to focus on besides the gloomy thoughts swirling around in her head.  Joyce was always better in the mornings, her mind clearer and her headaches less crippling.  By the time Buffy and Dawn reached her bedroom, Joyce was already dressed in fresh pajamas and was brushing away the worst of her bed-head.  Buffy and Dawn got their mother safely settled on the couch, covered with a blanket, and fed a light breakfast.  Dawn put on a movie and snuggled in at the other end of the couch while Buffy tackled an alarmingly large mountain of laundry.

Laundry was another of those tasks Joyce handled in the background and Buffy hadn’t ever really thought about the time it took to keep everything washed.  She had on occasion washed her own clothes when the bloodshed of slaying was a bit too much for her mother’s eyes, but this was normally Joyce’s job and Buffy couldn’t believe the amount of laundry the three of them generated in half a week’s time.

She couldn’t remember whether socks were supposed to go with lights or darks, either, but the process of deciding bought her a few minutes of time to focus solely on the fate of the essential but under-appreciated bundles of cotton/polyester blend.  In the end she sorted them by colour and hoped for the best.

Buffy had washed, dried, and folded three loads before she saw it.  The faded black sock with the hole in the heel tumbled out of the dryer at the end of the forth load, landing on top of the pile she had gathered from the floor in her bedroom.  It stared up at her from the basket as she brought the load upstairs and it sat on her bed, unpaired but not forgotten as she put away her clothes with shaking hands.

When she came back downstairs, her mother called her name from the couch.

“Buffy,” Joyce said, her eyebrows drawn together in worry as Buffy came into the living room.  “You’re zipping around here like a hummingbird.  Come and sit with us.  The laundry can wait.”

It couldn’t, but she didn’t want to argue. Though she had slept well, Joyce looked tired, her skin pale and dark circles beneath her eyes.  As much as she knew she should be spending as much time as possible with Joyce today, Buffy couldn’t stand to see her mother looking so weak any more than she could stand being still.

She sat anyway, curling up in the chair and doing her best to keep up with Joyce and Dawn’s easy banter and humorous comments on the movie they were watching.  Buffy felt Dawn’s eyes watching her when she wasn’t looking, but didn’t acknowledge her.  Her sister was more observant than Buffy had given her credit for, and she didn’t doubt Dawn knew exactly what was driving Buffy to stay busy.

Willow and Tara arrived around lunchtime, bringing with them some trinkets for Joyce and sandwiches and coffee from the Espresso Pump.  Giles came along a few minutes later and made some tea, while Dawn and Buffy brought in extra chairs from the dining room.  Buffy would have thought that a gathering of her friends was the last thing she wanted right now, but her chest filled with warm gratitude for them.  Joyce was smiling and happy, exhausted but content to listen to the conversation around her, and Buffy didn’t think she could ask for much more on the eve of her surgery.

Only when Xander and Anya arrived did Buffy’s heart begin pounding erratically.  Anya dove right into the chatter swelling around them, but Buffy could only stare hard at Xander and hope that what he had to say wouldn’t completely destroy the day.

Without a word, Xander disappeared toward the kitchen.  Buffy followed, a sudden headache thumping behind her eyes.

“Spike’s fine,” Xander said, when she burst into the kitchen to find him leaning on the island, looking at her with an unreadable expression. 

Buffy let out a very shaky breath, unsure what to do with the crashing wave of relief and adrenaline bombarding her chest.  “He’s—”

“Fine,” said Xander, his brow furrowing slightly.  “At least, Riley didn’t manage to kill him.  The Jack Daniel’s still might, and let me tell you, I am never sharing a glass with him again.  He’s totally pathetic and talks too much.”

Oh, God.  Buffy swallowed hard, imagining the sorts of things a drunken Spike might say. Xander was still staring at her, and she looked down to avoid his stare.

“Still,” Xander said, carrying on as though she weren’t trying to hide something.  “I kinda felt bad for the guy.  He did a good job of beating himself up long before Riley got there.”

Buffy’s head shot up. “What happened?”

Xander sighed and his eyebrows rose higher on his forehead.  “I think that’s a conversation you need to have with him.”

Buffy huffed.  “I don’t plan on talking to Riley any time soon.”

“I didn’t mean Riley.”  At the wide-eyed look Buffy gave him, Xander pushed away from the island and moved toward her.

Buffy stared at the floor, avoiding his eyes as though they might burn.  Xander’s shoes made loud footsteps as he came around the counter, stopping when his toes appeared in her field of view.  His hands gripped her shoulders and she looked up slowly, expecting to see anger, or at least disappointment reflecting back at her.  Xander wasn’t stupid and there was no way he didn’t know, especially now, whether or not Spike blabbed the news in his drunken misery.

To her surprise, something like gloomy acceptance resonated from him, in the way his forehead wrinkled and he bit his lip and sighed deeply.  “I don’t like this,” he said, making some vague gesture in the air with one hand.  “Whatever this is.”

Buffy squeezed her eyes shut.  “Xander—”

“Let me finish,” he said, his voice quiet.  “I don’t like it, but I like what I found out about Riley even less, so don’t explain.  Not yet, anyway.  Being angry and ignorant makes it easier to take.”

Buffy fought simultaneous urges to hug the stuffing out of Xander and break down in tears, but quickly lost the battle with both.  She threw her arms around his neck, her eyes growing misty as she pulled him into a crushing hug.  “Thank you, Xander.”

Xander let out a wheezy laugh.  “Don’t thank me yet.  Ignorant and angry, remember?”

“Right,” she said, clinging to him just a little longer before letting him go, still not quite able to meet his eyes. 

Xander didn’t challenge her need for avoidance, and instead went back over to the counter to reach for the phone book.  “How’s your mom?” he asked, flipping through the yellow pages until he reached the restaurant section.

“As good as can be expected,” Buffy answered, glad for the topic change.  “I’m glad you all came.  You didn’t have to.”

Xander looked up from the book.  “Yeah we did, Buff.  We’re your friends.  It’s what we do.”

It’s what we do.

Somewhere along the way, Buffy had forgotten that, but she could see now she shouldn’t have.  Xander ordered some pizza and the two of them went back to the living room to join the others.  Joyce had nodded off with her head on Dawn’s shoulder while the others laughed at Willow’s perfectly normal, non-magical or slayer-related story.  Buffy settled onto the couch beside Dawn, who squeezed Buffy’s hand and started telling her own funny story.

Maybe things were finished with Spike, or maybe not.  He was alive, or at least not deader, and the rest of it could wait.  Maybe her friends would disapprove – okay, definitely – but that didn’t matter.  Not really.    Buffy had never expected to need them like this.  A girl just didn’t stop and wonder if her friends would stand by her side while her mother fought for her life.  But they had, all of them, without being asked, without concern for their own discomfort over Joyce’s illness.  Faced with this staggering show of support, Buffy couldn’t hold it in any longer.  Tears slid down her cheeks as she watched them laughing and loving and holding her together. 

*~*

 

*~*

Morning arrived sunny and warm with just the tiniest hint of a breeze cooling the air.  Buffy watched the sky lighten from the roof outside her window where she spent most of yet another sleepless night.  It must’ve meant something that this day, which should be dreary and cold and verging on stormy, started out so bright and welcoming.  That was odd for November, even in California, and Buffy decided it had to be a good omen.

Time moved strangely.  The night she spent on the rooftop waiting for tomorrow seemed to stretch on for days.  The few hours of morning, between her mother’s first whispered word and the final sips of coffee, passed by in a blur of mere seconds.  Now here they were, pulling up in front of Sunnydale Memorial, where every little memory, all those forgotten moments of life as  Joyce Summers’ daughter crashed over Buffy like a tidal wave.

Walking through the halls was like walking through fragments of time.  Every little thing and every little nothing reflected back at her with some tiny piece of significance.  The flowers on the counter were like the ones Buffy picked for Joyce on a long-ago birthday, and didn’t that clock sound just like the one they used to have in Los Angeles? 

Buffy’s gaze drifted to her mother, who wore her scarf like a fashion statement instead of a way to hide the biopsy scar, who was walking toward the surgical ward on her own two feet, thank you very much. She looked so strong this morning.  Determined, as though it was somebody else about to undergo brain surgery, and all Joyce had to do was offer up a hug and a few kind words and spend an hour or two as a shoulder to cry on.  Buffy wondered if the memories in her mother’s head were the same as the ones in hers.

The nurse who met them at the station had kind eyes and a tired smile.  She spoke many words but Buffy heard none of them, just held her mother’s hand as the IV went in and fought the fear and dread and the thousand other things churning in her gut. All the while, Joyce revealed what she knew about Dawn and made Buffy promise to look after her.  And then Dawn burst in, teary-eyed, but still trying to smile her way through it, ending the conversation and reducing another block of time to a few hazy seconds.  The three of them clung to each other in silence before the nurses came and wheeled Joyce away.

Her friends waited behind her.  Giles, who had spent the night on her couch so he could drive them in the morning, along with Xander, and Anya, and Willow, and Tara.  She hadn’t asked them to come, but they came anyway.  Buffy followed them into the bleak, sterile landscape of the waiting room, still holding onto Dawn as though she might slip away like the figment she was.

*~*

One of these days, Spike figured, he would remember that blitzing himself on alcohol never actually solved his problems, just numbed them for long enough to make them burn like hell when the booze ran out and the buzz wore off.  He threw the empty bottle across the room and didn’t care that the sound of it shattering ricocheted around inside his head like a bullet.  The headache took his mind off things better than the Jack Daniels ever could.  Maybe he ought to go smack around some humans and give himself a migraine. 

If nothing else, that would be a hell of a lot better than this.

Fuck, his chest hurt.  Rather be hurting than dust, though Spike didn’t particularly enjoy the reminder that he now owed his continued existence to Harris and his unexpected but timely arrival.

The sun was up.  Spike’s skin itched in that way it did when the universe tried to remind him that good vampires should be safely tucked away in their coffins by now, but he couldn’t sleep.  Too many things running rampant in his brain for that.  He knew what day it was, knew where she’d be right this minute and how exhausted she’d look while trying to hold everything together.  She wouldn’t have slept either, he reckoned. 

He wondered if Finn even bothered to tell her what he’d gotten himself into.  Part of him hoped she didn’t know yet, but mostly he hoped the fucking fool had told her every last detail.  Let her hear for herself just how far Finn would go to walk on the dark side.  The irony of it was enough to kill him all over again, and nearly did considering how much it hurt to laugh.  Stormed off to avenge her honour, or whatever excuse he dreamt up to account for his late-night mission of un-mercy, yet he’d gone there first for another fix.

Finn had fresh marks on his neck and the scent of vampire clinging to him like cheap cologne when he burst into the crypt.  Spike missed it at the house, with the stink of the demon still heavy in the air, but there was no disguising the truth the moment Riley broke down the door.
Later, if Spike ever got the chance, he might let Buffy think he’d torched the whorehouse so she wouldn’t have to.  He was sure she was hovering somewhere in his brain when he lit the wick and tossed the flaming bottle into the side of the building, though that idea came later, in the dizzy hours after he’d run out of Bourbon.  Been a long time since he’d caused a blaze like that and he’d forgotten how much fun fire could be.  The place had gone up like nothing, causing a car crash out front and few deliciously chaotic minutes where body-shaped objects flung themselves out of flaming windows.  Finn managed to get out—and wasn’t that a bleeding shame—but watching it burn and listening to the screams was well worth the scorch marks on his fingers and the scratch of ash in his throat.

Spike might be a fool.  Likely was, for all he knew.  Maybe he didn’t deserve Buffy after all, but to hell with the world if Riley Finn did, either.

Not that it mattered much.  Finn could still be hanging round or not—and it wasn’t a pleasant thing to consider just how much he would give for the answer to be not—but Spike wasn’t going to make things worse for her by showing up now.  He shouldn’t have left in the first place, no matter what Finn had to say about it.  Wouldn’t do Buffy a lick of good for him to show up now, a day late and no excuse to account for it.  Probably just make everything worse.

Spike growled into the empty crypt.  “Keep tellin’ yourself that, you bloody coward.”

He picked up another bottle and hurled it at the wall, smashing it and splattering the remaining ounce or two of liquid across the wall.  Fuck it, and while he was at it, fuck Riley and brain tumours and bloody daylight, too.  Spike was known for a lot of things but doing ‘the right thing’ wasn’t one of them.

No way in hell was he going to start now.

*~*
 

Somebody—Willow, maybe, or it could’ve been Xander—said something about the time.  Buffy tried not to pay attention but it was difficult with the second hand of the wall clock tick, tick, ticking away above her head.  Time was a funny thing.  She could deal with it when it was running out and she had a world to save.  It was an enemy then, something she could beat, if not physically, then by doing something physical.  Give her something to hit, something she could sink her fists into and pound to oblivion.  This, these seconds of life left behind with the motion of a little plastic stick, miniscule pieces of existence she had to sit by and watch slip away, was something she didn’t know and really didn’t like.

Dawn, using Buffy’s leg as a pillow, muttered something in her sleep but didn’t wake.  What Buffy wouldn’t give to be able to sleep away the gnawing fear inside that the longer this took, the worse it would be.
No.  She couldn’t think like that.  She couldn’t let herself forget the hope she felt at sunrise this morning any more than she could deny how much it meant to her to have everyone here waiting with her.  They helped her save the world.  That had to mean they could save the most important person in it.

“Such a delicate procedure surely requires time,” Giles said.

Buffy didn’t remember speaking, but he looked directly at her as he spoke.  She swallowed.  “Do you—do you really think so?”

“I do,” Giles said.

Buffy decided to believe him.

Chatter continued on around her, but she let her mind wander away from the conversation.  Their voices were more comfort than any words could be, anyway.

It took Xander clearing his throat hard and repeating her name for Buffy’s distracted brain to realize he was trying to get her attention.  When she finally looked up, he wasn’t looking at her at all, but staring over her shoulder, his mouth set in a thin line.  Buffy’s heart was already pounding when she turned to follow his gaze, and belatedly she recognized the tingle at the back of her neck for what it was.

Standing just down the back hallway, only halfway through a doorway marked ‘Restricted’, Spike stood, looking paler than usual under the bright hospital lights, his face a mess of purple bruises.  The sight of that made her shudder, because even if she hadn’t physically struck him, she knew she’d been the one responsible. He stood frozen by the door, alternating between staring at her with those penetrating eyes and watching his hands fiddling with his lighter. 

Buffy slipped out from under Dawn, ignoring whatever Giles and Willow  had said when  her feet moved on autopilot, carrying her toward Spike.  His answering footsteps were loud and uneven on the hard hospital floor.  A million words all fought for voice, tangling on her tongue until she thought all she could manage was an unintelligible gurgle. 
“You—you came,” she said instead, which wasn’t saying much, except that it was everything when she thought about all that had happened until now.

“Buffy,” he said, breathing her name more than speaking it. 

She leaned into his trembling palm when he reached out to touch her face, and went unresisting into his arms when he pulled her to him.  He smelled of blood and booze and a forest fire’s worth of smoke, and was shaking harder than her.  The feel of him, his chest beneath her face, his arms around her like a safety net she hadn’t wanted to admit she needed, was just so unbelievably good she had to force herself to pull away before she melted there permanently.

 “Thank you,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.  “Just—thank you.”

There were more words, but they could wait.  This wasn’t the time for that, anyway.

Buffy tugged on Spike’s sleeve and he followed her back to the waiting room, where wide eyes and unreadable stares greeted them from all but Xander and Dawn. 

Giles cleared his throat.  “Buffy—”

“No,” Xander said, before anyone else could speak.  “Not now.”

Buffy sat back down beside Dawn, Spike sinking stiffly onto the chair on the other side.  The eyes of her friends followed them, and Buffy looked at Xander and nodded, as grateful for his intervention as she was for the others’ silence.

“Excuse me, Miss Summers?”

When she looked up, Dr. Kriegel was standing a few paces away, hands clasped in front of him.

Buffy got to her feet, reaching for Dawn’s hand and clutching it tightly in her shaking fingers.   Her friends stood, too, Spike a solid presence at her back, the others gathered all around her in a circle of strength.

Buffy took a deep breath.  “W-what happened?  Is she all right?”

Dr. Kriegel said a lot of words, most of which made no sense.  All she could hear, before everyone sighed in relief, were the most beautiful words ever spoken in the history of speech.

“Your mother’s going to be fine.”

After that, she didn’t have to worry about what anyone else had to say, because those six little words were the only ones that mattered.

*~*

Chapter Fifteen
*~*

A couple of hours passed before Joyce was released from the recovery room and brought back to the intensive care unit.  The nurses allowed Buffy and Dawn a quick visit, and though Joyce was still on the ventilator, groggy from the sedation, she was able to smile bravely around the tube in her mouth and blow both her daughters a kiss goodnight when the nurses insisted they leave.  Still floating in a blissful haze, Buffy smiled and nodded as another nurse said something she really didn’t hear, and followed her sister back out to the waiting room.  Then Giles was leaving, and the others followed, including Dawn, who hugged Buffy tightly and whispered that she was spending the night with Willow and Tara.
 
The empty waiting room felt a lot smaller with just her and Spike in it.
 
The walk back to Revello brought with it a muted sense of déjà vu.  Although it was Spike by her side this time instead of Dawn, the streets held the same weird silence that had shrouded her the other night.  The weight on her shoulders had shifted, lessened, but Buffy could still feel it there, reminding her that this wasn’t over just yet, despite tonight’s victory.

She might have missed the little piece of paper tucked into her front door if the wind hadn’t chosen that exact moment to blow a little harder and send it fluttering toward her face.  She caught it just as her foot touched down on the top step, the edges where it was torn from a spiral-bound notebook scratchy against her palm.  Buffy unfolded it, recognizing the untidy printing, messier than usual from the hasty way in which it was scrawled.

Her scalp tingled a little as she read, partly from the content of the message, but mostly due to Spike’s questioning gaze boring into the side of her head.  She could see him in her peripheral vision, staring, waiting silently for her to explain.  And she would, but not yet.  Crumpling the note into a ball in her hand, Buffy unlocked the front door and motioned for Spike to follow.

She led him through the dark house and out onto the back porch, finding it fitting they’d be out here for this.  They settled side-by-side at the stairs, an already familiar arrangement, as though this were merely one of a thousand nights they spent sitting out here in the dark beneath a canopy of stars in the waning moonlight.  The house and the trees buffered the breeze a bit, though the air was just chilly enough to make Buffy wish she had on a warmer sweater.  The repeated snick of Spike’s lighter was the only indication of his impatience. Buffy wasn’t certain how long this would take—what time was it, anyway, other than night?—but the idea itched in the base of her skull that this was something they both needed.  Something they needed together.

It wasn’t exactly comfortable, this silence, but it wasn’t precisely uncomfortable, either.  There were so many things Buffy wanted to say but she didn’t have a clue where to start. A little ball of warmth pulsed in her belly for him being here at all, and she tried to hold onto that as a reminder of how it all felt the other night, before the demon and before Riley when everything went to hell.  Things hadn’t been simple, not with everything still hanging over their heads, but Buffy hadn’t forgotten how right it felt, her and Spike.  More than they ever should’ve and too well for her to deny now, even with a few days’ separation hanging between them. 

Spike’s fingers swept gently through her hair, bringing with them both a whiff of smoke and a soft fluttering in her chest.

“Where’s the fire?” she asked, blinking her dry, aching eyes in surprise at the words her brain chose to break the silence.  She glanced quickly at Spike’s face, saw him pursing his lips as though he were deciding how best to answer.

“Not my crypt,” he said finally, his gaze dropping down to his lap a moment before he looked back up at her.  “Thanks.  Er, for Xander.”

Spike set a hand almost tentatively on her knee and Buffy watched his fingers lay still, studied the remnants of black polish he hadn’t bothered to reapply.  With a sigh, Buffy let her head fall against his shoulder, not caring anymore about awkward silences or conversations she didn’t know how to have.  The moment she settled against him, Spike curled his fingers into her leg, caressing her thigh with his thumb through her jeans.

“I wasn’t—” Buffy swallowed, fighting the odd wave of dizziness that hit her out of nowhere.  It spun the world around in a surreal way that left her heart pounding in her chest, and she squeezed her eyes shut against it.

Spike squeezed her leg, and the world stopped spinning, grinding to a halt.  “How long’s it been since you slept?”

Too long, but instead of replying, Buffy just tipped her face up, knowing she’d find him looking at her and that he could read the answer in her face.  She imagined she looked as exhausted as she felt all of the sudden, restless in the way she felt after the battle was won and there wasn’t anything else left to fight.  To his credit, Spike didn’t tell her to go to bed, just moved his hand from her leg to tuck it around her and tugged her to his side. Buffy closed her eyes and rested her head in the crook of his shoulder, breathing in the scent of smoke and blood and Spike.

Whatever this thing was with her and Spike, it was strong enough to survive a few bumps in the road and that’s something she should’ve known that all along.  She could feet it buzzing around them, as strong as ever, that connection, even beneath the weight of all they hadn’t said yet and probably needed to.  Silence stretched out long enough for Buffy to skirt the edges of sleep, where the sounds of the night blended into the dreamy memories rolling in her head.  Spike’s whispering of her name brought her up from the edge and she mumbled in response but didn’t open her eyes.

“Mmm?”

Spike chuckled softly and caressed her cheek with his fingers.  “Missed you, is all.”

Buffy smiled and nuzzled in deeper.  “Where are we going, Spike?”

He smoothed his palm over her hair until he was cradling the back of her head.  “Bed?  Disneyland?  Hell, the bloody moon, maybe.”

Buffy snorted, and sat up to look at him, dislodging the hand in her hair but keeping the other wrapped around her side.  “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” he said, tilting his head ever so slightly.  “You sure you wanna do this tonight?”

Buffy sighed and shook her head, already fearing this was heading entirely the wrong direction.  She should’ve started a different way, said something else or maybe nothing at all, and a little ball of nerves tightened in her gut.  “I don’t—I mean—you came back, Spike.  I thought—”

“Shhh.”  Spike touched a finger to her lips and Buffy closed them, waiting.  Spike’s eyes shone even in the darkness, with that intensity that always surprised her.  “You know how I feel, Buffy.  Nothing’s gonna change that.”

Spike let his hand drop back into his lap and Buffy fought hard not to look away.  Taking in a deep breath, she reached over and took Spike’s hand in hers, threading her fingers in between his and squeezing. 

“I thought I was too late,” she said.

Spike huffed, mouth twisting into a smirk that was anything but pleasant. “Take more than a plastic stake and Riley Finn to stop me, love.”

Something heavy pulsed in her chest, bringing with it a wave of prickling heat over her scalp and a corresponding pounding in her chest.  “A plastic—plastic what?”

Spike reclaimed his hand from hers and yanked his black tee out of his jeans, lifting the edge almost far enough to pull it off if he wasn’t wearing his coat.  The stark white of the gauze bandage stood out clearly in the darkness, paler than the vampire whose heart it covered, stained dark red in the centre.

Buffy gasped and raised her hand to touch the bandage, but drew back at the last second.  “Oh, god.”

She heard Xander’s voice in her head, those emotional words from only a day ago, though it felt more like weeks or months.  I don’t like it, but I like what I found out about Riley even less. Maybe Riley hadn’t ever intended to kill Spike, or maybe the plastic stake mindfuck was just the beginning of some drawn-out, torturous and dusty end, but whichever it was, Buffy clenched her fists and dug her fingernails into her palms until she felt the skin give, just a little.  If she hadn’t called Xander, if he hadn’t agreed to go—Buffy squeezed her eyes shut and looked away, refusing to continue that line of thought, though it knotted in her chest and roiled in her gut anyway.

Spike’s fingers tucked under her chin and slowly pulled her back to face him.  “It’s nothing,” he said, smoothing down his shirt with his free hand while the fingers on her chin drifted up to sweep across her cheek.  “Already healing.  Be right as rain by tomorrow.”

“But—”

Spike’s eyes hardened and he clenched his jaw until that muscle in his cheek twitched.  Buffy swallowed her words and pressed her teeth into her tongue with the same force as the fingernails in her palms.

“Didn’t see your hand guiding his,” Spike said, his tone far softer than the look on his face allowed.  “And Harris didn’t just pop round for a cuppa and some telly, did he?”

Buffy didn’t answer, even when Spike dropped his hand back into his lap.  Couldn’t answer, because what could she possibly say? 

In the end, Spike broke the silence, and though the words he chose didn’t reflect the torrent of self-deprecating statements bouncing on the tip of her tongue, some not-so-little part of her raised its metaphorical fist and roared in agreement.

“Finn’s a bloody idiot.”

The moment of solidarity passed quickly, though, and the sting in her palms and the storm in her belly insisted that she wasn’t exactly innocent in all of this, either.  Buffy swallowed hard and closed her eyes around the well of unwanted tears.

 “Then what does that make me?”

Spike sighed, his breath flitting over her face.  “Glad to be rid of him?” he whispered, so softly Buffy could barely hear him.

As if on cue, a helicopter took to the sky in the distance, recognizable from the whirr of its rotors cutting through the midnight silence.  Buffy snapped open her eyes, spotting it as it hovered in place for a moment, headlights pointed toward her as though giving her one final chance to come to her senses.  Buffy took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, sadness—but not regret—thickening at the back of her throat.  Guilt too, because she couldn’t stop that anymore than she could stop breathing.  But no, that ship had sailed a long time ago.  It just took her this long to swim back to shore. 

When the chopper faded from sight, Buffy pressed the crumpled note into Spike’s palm and watched as his eyes skimmed the paper, able to see the words despite dark.  When finished he growled low in his throat and tore the scrap into tiny peaces, which blew away in the breeze like Riley Finn’s helicopter.

“Like I said, good riddance.”

Even in the dark, Buffy didn’t miss the way Spike’s lips twitched, pursing as they did when he was trying to be tough, but pulling at the corners as though fighting a smile.  He lowered his gaze and ducked his head, snapping both back up again almost immediately and reaching for her hand, eyes wide and dark.  His fingers trembled, so subtly Buffy was certain she’d  have missed it had she not become so intimately familiar with his touch.  Oh.  Oh.  He thought—

She tangled her fingers together with his and covered their two hands with her other one, stroking his abraded knuckles with her thumb.  “Oh, Spike…”

Spike swallowed, and this time allowed his mouth to pull into a smile, bright for all it was shaky.  When he spoke, his voice was quiet and thick, as though the same lump now lodged in her throat had lodged itself in his, too.  “Hoped it’d be me.”

“It—it’s you, Spike,” Buffy said, feeling it with every heartbeat, every hot surge of blood through her veins. “Of course it’s you.”

Spike’s eyes opened so widely she might have laughed, if not for the fact that her own reluctance was once again to blame for it.  “Yeah?”
Buffy nodded, tightening her grip on his hands and hoping he could see in her eyes that she meant it.  “I want this, Spike.  I want us, even if it’s the last thing I should want.  It’s the last thing either of us should want.” 

“Never much cared for should,” Spike said, with a small huff of amusement.  “Should is completely overrated.”

She might not have put it quite that way, but it made sense, too, in a Spike sort of way. 

“This—” Buffy gestured back and forth between herself and Spike.  “—is completely wrong.”

Spike tipped his head, eyebrow lifting.  “And yet…”

“And yet.” She sighed.  “Here we are.  With the wanting.”

“Oh, pet, I do want,” Spike said, and the warm drawl of those few little words sent a strobe of heat through her belly and down between her thighs.

A tingling sense of déjà vu swirled in the air as Spike tugged on Buffy’s hands and she moved to straddle his lap.  She draped her arms around his shoulders, and Spike gripped her waist to pull her forward.  He was already hard in his jeans and Buffy rolled her hips against his erection, a smile stretching across her lips when he groaned in response.

“I’m the worst slayer ever,” Buffy said, a little shiver dancing along her spine, though she only partially meant it.

“Nah,” Spike said, lifting his hips from the step in time with her movements against him, his dismissive tone completely ruined by the glint of his eyes and the rapid rise and fall of his chest.  “Not a big leap from mortal enemies to fucking fantastic lovers.”

Laughter bubbled up from her chest, releasing some of the worry knotted there, and Buffy decided right then to stop wondering why and just accept this as inevitable.  Against all odds, against all reason, she and Spike fit and it was about time she made the most of that.

“They’re going to hate it,” Spike whispered, scratching his fingernails up her spine and grinning, despite his words, when the sensation made her shiver and sigh.

The thought should’ve been sobering.  Should’ve snapped some sort of sense into her brain, except she’d already seen the preview and it wasn’t nearly as dire as her imagination.  “So let them.”

Beneath her, Spike stilled the motion of his hips.  The hands under her shirt came up to tangle in her hair, and he gazed at her with those flaming eyes more full of life and feeling than most humans could ever hope to capture.  “You sure about that?” 

Buffy fell forward until her forehead met his and stroked the soft hair at the back of his neck with her fingers.  “There’s something I learned out of all this, and it’s that they might not like it, but it doesn’t mean they’re gonna hate me.  They’ll come around.”

Spike’s breath flitted over her face.  “And if they don’t?”

Buffy shrugged, and wiggled in Spike’s lap.  “They will.  That’s what friends do.”

Spike chuckled, the sound rumbling through his chest and into hers.  “Alright then, Buffy, you tell me.  Where are we going?”

“To hell, probably,” she said, grinding down hard and smiling when he growled low in his chest.  “I don’t know.  Do we need to know?”

“No,” Spike said, sliding his arms beneath her bottom and rising to his feet.  Buffy tightened her legs around his waist and held on as he headed for the house. “I reckon that’s something we can figure out together.”

“Together,” Buffy said, nipping at his bottom lip before pulling back to see his face.  “Okay.”

Spike shut the kitchen door with his boot and Buffy flicked the deadbolt locked with her toes.  She met Spike’s gaze, and the tenderness in his eyes momentarily overshadowed the heat simmering there.  A rolling warmth surrounded her, wrapping her up in a warm a fleece blanket, spreading through her insides like the perfect mug of hot chocolate—sweet, comfortable, and hers.  The smile tugging at her lips wasn’t wide, was almost secretive in the way it refused to be obvious.  But, as Spike set her down on her feet and traced his thumb along her bottom lip, his own parted in the same subtle way and Buffy knew he understood. 

“Come on,” she whispered, catching his fingers in hers and tugging him toward the hallway. “I need about a week’s worth of sleep, and I’m not letting you anywhere near my bed until you’ve showered.  You smell like a chimney.”

Spike laughed, his hands wrapping around her waist from behind as they climbed the stairs, fingertips digging gently into her belly.  “Wet naked Slayer and little bed for two?  Could think of worse ways to spend a night.”

“Me too, Spike,” she said, pausing at the top of the stairs and leaning back into him, his cool body a solid presence behind her.  “Me too.”

*~*

To be concluded

Chapter Sixteen
*~*

The smoke clinging to Spike’s body dissipated quickly, replaced with the sweet fragrance of orange blossom as the steam rose thick around them.  Buffy stood beneath the hot spray of the shower, eyes closed, head swimming with a dreamy mixture of exhaustion and arousal.  Spike’s hands skimmed down her arms, leaving a path of tingly skin and fruity-scented lather.  His soap-slick fingers slipped between hers, laving each digit carefully before starting on a swirling ascent up her arms through the bubbles.  His palms cupped her shoulders, and Buffy moaned low in her throat, tipping her head back until it made contact with Spike’s chest behind her. 

She felt rather than heard the rumbling in his chest.  It vibrated along her spine and down into her belly, stirring the heat already simmering there as much as the sweep of his fingertips on her skin stoked the flames from the outside.  He circled her breasts, first tracing the undersides with an almost feather-light touch and then moving in ever-narrowing spirals until he rolled her already hardened nipples with his fingers.  Her back arched and she let out another moan, the sound of it mingling with the steam to curl in the air around them.

Soft lips planted moist kisses along the column of her neck, and Buffy tipped her head to grant him better access.  Spike’s tongue darted out between each press of his lips, licking at the water on her skin, tracing the marks left behind from his fangs with its pointed tip.  A shiver of heat bloomed out from the marks, spreading steadily south with every beat of her racing heart.  He murmured her name into her neck between kisses, grazed her skin with blunt teeth, until she shuddered and pressed her ass into his erection. 

Buffy opened her eyes and watched his hands sweep lower, spreading bubbles over her sides, her stomach, not missing an inch of flesh with those long pale fingers.  When he finished coating her entire front in orange bubbles, he pulled his hands away to hold them beneath the shower’s spray.  If not for the caress of his lips at her neck and the hard press of his cock behind her, Buffy might have groaned a little louder in protest.  The hands returned swiftly, though, retracing their path, rinsing away the lather and rubbing at her skin until her whole body tingled with warmth.  Spike splayed his hands out over her belly, fingers of the left circling her bellybutton so lightly it almost tickled.

Her resulting giggle shook her shoulders and Spike held her still with his palm and rocked his hips forward.  Buffy pushed back, grinding against him and gasping when the tickly fingers dipped into her curls, slipping slickly though the wetness gathered there.

“Oh, Buffy,” Spike whispered, parting her folds to tease at her entrance with light circles. “So wet for me.”

He swept his fingertips over her clit and Buffy bit back a groan, forgetting whatever she’d planned in response in favour of losing herself to the sensation. He knew how she liked to be touched and it showed in the way he stroked her, pressing here, swirling there, until her legs trembled and every nerve in her body came alight.  She clenched her inner muscles tightly, feeling the emptiness inside even while the act of squeezing drew teasing frissons of pleasure straight from her swollen clit.

Perhaps reading her mind or the neediness of her moans or maybe the rapid rise and fall of her chest in time to her thundering heart, Spike pressed her forward.  Buffy flattened her palms against the shower wall, arching her back, spreading her legs and lifting up on shaking tiptoes, gasping as Spike’s cock slid between her slick labia.  Without stopping the motion of his fingers on her clit, he slid into her, moving in quick, shallow thrusts that struck her just right. Buffy cried out at the fresh bloom of heat and clenched around him, squeezing hard, her muscles already fluttering in warning.

Her chest rose and fell in quick, trembling breaths, fingernails scraping uselessly against the shower wall.  Buffy couldn’t move, held in place by the heat surging through her, curling her toes, shaking her knees, and coiling tighter and tighter in her belly with every press of his cock, every stroke of his fingers.  Spike thrust hard, his full length slamming into her, threatening to push her into the wall if not for his steadying hand gripping her hip. 

Buffy braced herself, wrists burning, legs shaking from the strain but it felt so good, she was so close, and Spike rocked into her with another deep thrust and placed a slick, twisting stroke to her clit.  The moan started in her belly, rising out of the heat and tearing up through her chest to a ragged, desperate crescendo.  The coil broke and Buffy crashed, losing her grip on the wall, her entire body shaking as the waves of her orgasm surged through her, shouting her pleasure over the roar of the water with Spike’s voice in her ear, urging her on.

Buffy’s knees gave out but Spike caught her, strong arms around her waist, holding her tightly against him, his cock still rock hard and buried to the hilt inside her.  Her chest heaved, desperately trying to pull air into her lungs but hampered by the steam and the shuddering aftershocks and Spike’s cock gliding in slow, rolling thrusts into her still quivering body.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered, needing to say it more than she needed to breathe.

Spike’s breath tickled her ear and he tightened his arms around her waist.  “Bed?”

Buffy tried to answer, but only managed to moan and shudder around him.  He seemed to understand, though, and pulled out of her to set her down on shaking legs.  They both groaned as they separated and Buffy leaned heavily on the shower wall, not quite trusting herself to stay upright.  Spike turned off the water and in the next second pulled her around to face him, hands on her waist, and lifted her up into his arms.

His cock nudged at her folds and Buffy sank down on him, her muscles squeezing tight the moment he was fully sheathed.  She nuzzled her face into his neck and held on as Spike carefully stepped out of the tub.  Every step jostled them together and Buffy squeezed tighter, nibbled on his neck and shivered from the loss of the steam, though the heat rising again in her belly would soon make up for the sudden chill.

Spike dropped them both onto her bed, sliding out of her long enough for them to scramble up toward the pillows.  He settled between her thighs and Buffy draped her legs around his hips, opening her eyes to stare into his as he entered her with a hard thrust.  What shimmered there in those blue depths, almost fully swallowed by wide, dark pupils, should’ve terrified her and it did, in a way.  But it was a thrilling sort of terror, like balancing on the edge of something brilliant she could, so far, only sort of understand.  Spike moved inside her, filling her so full, an exquisite stretch drawing shivers of rapture with each plunging thrust, building the heat inside with each progressively tighter squeeze of her muscles, daring her to let go and just fall, deeper and deeper into him with every answering roll of her hips against his. 

Spike dipped his head and caught her lips in a kiss, and she felt him trembling against her mouth.  Lips and tongues moved together sloppily, the pleasure blooming below too bright, too intense for any sort of finesse.  Buffy bit his lip and he groaned, slamming into her so hard it stole her breath and her belly quivered in warning.  He dragged his mouth away from hers to her nuzzle her neck, licking, sucking, biting with blunt teeth until Buffy shouted his name and ground up hard against him.

She knew it would happen before she felt it, a sort of hazy preconception that quickly coalesced into something vibrant, a flash of gold inside her head.  Buffy dragged her fingernails down Spike’s back, shouting yes yes yes! inside even though the only sound she could make was a hoarse moan that burned her throat and resonated in her ears from the shear force of it.  The bristling rush flared up her neck and raced down her spine, but not in warning.  No, the sensation pooled in her belly as a swirly, tingling knot of icy heat.  The tremble started in her toes, and she curled them into Spike’s hips as it rolled through her whole body and all her breath left her in a shuddery whoosh.

Spike let out a raspy moan and pieced her neck with his fangs, the prick of them hot and soft and sharp and vital, too tender for such a brutal act, too intimate to be brutal at all.  Buffy’s inner muscles clenched, tighter, tighter with each steady pull of blood at her neck.  Spike thrust hard, slamming into her with such force she felt it in her teeth, behind her eyes, all the way to the tips of her fingers.  He thrust again and again, timing each one with a deep pull of blood that began in her womb and blazed with fire through every nerve.  One final thrust that knocked her into the headboard, one final pull at her neck, and the pooled heat exploded.  Buffy cried out into the darkness and clung to Spike as her orgasm crashed over her.  He slid free of her neck and slammed into her one final time, roaring out his release into the dizzying, swirling vortex surrounding them.

Minutes, or hours, or maybe days passed before the speckled blackness cleared and Buffy came back to herself, Spike’s body collapsed atop hers, his chest rising and falling in unneeded breaths.  She giggled and when he lifted his head to look at her, eyebrow lifted almost comically high, Buffy laughed harder and buried her fingers into his hair, unusually soft and free without the helmet of hair gel.

“Gonna share with the class?” Spike asked, sounding more amused than anything, as he levered himself up on his elbows to look down at her.

The giggle subsided slowly and Buffy smiled lazily up at him, stroking his naked back and enjoying the sleepy-eyed face staring back at her.  “It’s just, you’re breathing.  You always breathe.  It’s—”

“Habit,” Spike answered, tracing her cheekbones with his fingers.

“I was gonna say adorable.”

Spike’s fingers stilled and his brow furrowed.  “I am not adorable!”

The giggle bloomed in her chest again.  “Kinda are.”

“Bloody hell, woman,” Spike said, rolling off her and tugging the soggy comforter out from underneath them, before pulling her into his arms and wrapping them in the dry sheet.  He curled around her, his chest to her back, the bend of his knees matching the bend of hers.  “Next you’ll be calling me Blondie-Bear.”

His voice in her ear did terrible things to her despite the ridiculousness of his words, and she both shivered in response and burrowed deeper into his embrace.  “You did not just go there.”

He chuckled warmly, tongue darting out to lick gently at the fresh marks on her neck.  “Not many more places to go I haven’t been.”

Buffy could already feel her desire rising again, but less urgently than before.  She closed her eyes and let the sensation wash over her, sighing softly as she felt Spike harden behind her.   She wriggled back against his renewed erection and he responded by closing his lips around his mark and sucking.

She shivered again at the shimmer of pleasure spreading lazily through her, and ground back against him.  “Whatcha gonna do with that?”

Spike answered by gripping her thigh and lifting her leg to drape over his, shifting a bit behind her until she felt him line up and slide into her.  She was still slick and so tender it was almost too much. 

Almost.  A day might come when she had too much of Spike, but this day was not it.

“You feel so good, Spike,” she whispered, arching her back so he could slide even deeper, biting her lip around a throaty groan.  “Don’t ever stop.”

“Never,” he whispered, fingers stroking her belly as he moved slowly behind her.

Those two things had already become somewhat a habit for them to say, but Buffy knew he meant it just as much as she did.  She reached back to stroke his neck, then threaded her fingers into his hair.  “Spike, I—”

She couldn’t say it, not quite yet, but more than ever she felt the words hovering there, just out of reach.  It wouldn’t be long before they came to her, before she could whisper them in his ear and truly mean it.  And she wanted to, so badly she could taste it.  If anyone deserved it, it was Spike. 

If anyone deserved it, it was them.

“I love you, Buffy,” he whispered, maybe understanding what she was trying to say, or maybe not, but it didn’t matter.  “Love you so much.”

Buffy moaned softly and scratched her nails over his scalp.  “And don’t ever stop.”

“Never.”

Too soon, a slow, trembling orgasm rolled through her body, and just seconds later Spike shuddered against her back and came inside her.  They lay still for a while, sleep nudging at Buffy’s mind while Spike breathed against her back.  Though her legs felt like jelly and she didn’t think she could stand if the world depended on it, Buffy turned around in Spike’s arms.  He drew them more tightly around her, and she snuggled into his chest, conscious of the bandage and the wound he refused to let her see.  Spike rumbled softly, the sound and vibration of it no small comfort as she drifted in the weightlessness of pre-sleep.

She floated there at the edge, warm, sated, and more relaxed than she could remember being in ages.  They weren’t perfect.  They’d barely just begun to figure out what they could become, but they had a chance, and maybe, just maybe, they could be something amazing.

Come on.  I can feel it, Slayer. You know you wanna dance.

Yes, Spike, I do wanna dance.  And it could.  It could be you.

*~*