Betad by Carol and dawnofme


Banner by dawnofme


Disclaimer: the characters do not belong to me - they are used purely for fun and not fiancial gain





Chapter Twenty-Four


A Brief Respite


Xander was waiting impatiently in the car for Giles to arrive. He was parked where he’d said he would be. He checked his watch again. Giles was late and Giles was never late. He couldn’t call him, oh no, because, Giles being Giles refused to own a cell phone. Xander was starting to think it was about time that he got over his phobia of technology and bought one of the damn things, even if only so they could call him, if he didn’t want to make calls himself. Then he spotted him - Giles was carrying a large holdall bag. Xander honked the car horn, and then Giles saw him, waved and walked over.


“What took you so long?” asked Xander as Giles got in the car. “Run into any trouble at your apartment?”


“No, no trouble at all, just took a bit longer than I thought to find the right books,” Giles replied.


“Feeling cold?” said Xander.


“What?”


“Your sweater,” replied Xander.


“Oh, er, yes, I think the mansion gets a bit chilly at times,” said Giles.


His roll neck sweater had been put on to hide the mark where the Lorac Bug had been implanted.


“You OK?”


“Yes, I’m fine,” said Giles.


“I’m sure you and Buffy will be of the good, you know,” said Xander, wondering if that was the reason Giles seemed a bit off. “This Adam’s got her majorly wigged out, and what Spike’s been through has really upset her.”


“I know. I was harsh about Spike, but it is hard to think of him being on our side because he wants to be, rather than because he could only fight demons,” said Giles.


“Tell me about it,” said Xander. “But I do honestly think he’ll protect Buffy and whoever’s important to her, and I guess that includes us.”


They drove back to the mansion.


Ooooooo


As Buffy was holding Spike in her arms, her mind was racing with questions, but she held back from asking any of them for now. Whatever Spike had been going through when she’d arrived had shaken him badly.


“Spike?” she said softly. “Um…where are your clothes?”


“I put them in to get washed. They stank and were filthy.”


“Oh, that’s OK then,” said Buffy. “I had visions of you running naked through the streets; very nice visions they were too.” She smiled at him.


He returned hers with a weak one of his own; he felt battered from his dream, hallucination, vision or whatever the hell it was.


“I’ll go see if they’re finished and put them in the drier.”


“You’re not leaving me?” asked Spike anxiously as she let go of him and stood up.


“Only to see to your clothes. Wait here. I won’t be long.”


As she started to walk out of the door, Spike picked up the towel, wrapped it around his waist and followed her out.


“You’re coming?” asked Buffy.


“Um, yeah, I need to have some blood,” said Spike, trying to hide the fact that he didn’t want to be left alone in that room in case he started to think it was a cell again.


“Have we got some here?”


“Yes, I checked before I showered,” he replied.


She walked into the kitchen in front of him, pulling the window blinds down to keep the sun’s lethal rays away from Spike. Buffy went down to the basement and Spike took a bag of blood out of the refrigerator and poured it into a mug before putting it in the microwave, needing the warmth of the blood inside him. He was shivering slightly although he wasn’t cold. He resisted the urge to follow Buffy into the basement. He didn’t like to admit it but he was afraid of being alone. What if the visions started to happen without him actually sleeping first? At the ‘ping’ he got his blood out of the microwave, gave it a stir and drank it. He watched the door to the basement anxiously.


When Buffy got into the basement she could see the washing cycle had ended, so she took his clothes out and put them in the drier. On the shelf near the washing machine was a pile of dollar bills, a necklace and a photograph. She picked it up and looked at it curiously. It showed a very ‘proper’ looking couple: the man standing, the woman sitting on a chair, and standing next to them, a young boy. She peered closely at it and realised it must be Spike as a child. They looked like Victorian gentry, well-to-do folk. Spike had always led her to believe he was of rougher stock


She smiled as she looked at the old photograph. It would explain quite a lot about Spike’s puzzling character. He’d obviously been a true gentleman before he was turned; perhaps that was why he seemed to have retained more human traits than other vampires. Angel had been a lout, layabout and a trouble maker before he was turned. Was that why Angelus, as he called himself then, was so utterly evil, the man already acting like a demon, even before he was one? But Spike, despite the killing of two slayers, had proven that, although being able to be as vicious if not more so than the next vampire, he had a depth to his emotions that others didn’t have.


She picked up the money and the necklace and, along with the photo, took them with her when she went upstairs and back into the kitchen. She didn’t miss the look of relief that passed across Spike’s face as she reappeared.


“Just put them in the drier for fifteen minutes,” she said. “I thought you might want this stuff brought up.


She put the items on the kitchen table near to Spike; he pulled the photo towards him.


“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” he said. “My dad died the next year.”


“How old are you there?” asked Buffy.


“I’m twelve. My father was determined to be one of the first of his friends to have a photograph taken of his family,” said Spike.


“You look…well you look…”


“What? Posh?” supplied Spike.


Buffy nodded.


“I suppose we were; we had money, a couple of servants, and I was educated. Had it all, I suppose, more or less.”


“So how come you were accosted by Drusilla in an alley?” asked Buffy.


“My usual reason for getting into trouble of course; a woman.”


“So it’s not just me that gets you in to trouble then?” said Buffy with a smile.


“No, not just you. Cecily was the first. She was all I ever thought I wanted in a woman - beautiful, refined; a real lady.”


“Oh,” said Buffy, knowing she could never be defined as refined.


Spike grinned at her, accurately reading her thoughts.


“What I didn’t realise until the night I met Drusilla, was that she was also a total snobbish bitch.”


“That’s OK, then,” said Buffy in relief. “So what happened?


“Well, she didn’t appreciate my affections: said I was beneath her,” said Spike, knowing Buffy would remember how she’d uttered the same words to him one night. “Anyway, I stormed out of the party and literally into Drusilla’s embrace. But one good thing is that if I hadn’t been vamped, if I’d just lived a normal human life. I would’ve died in the nineteen twenties or thirties and would never have met you. So I guess in a weird way, I’m quite happy that it happened.”


Buffy felt her tears begin to form in her eyes. She had treated him so badly in the past but her love for him now was immeasurable.


“God, Spike, I love you so much,” she said, going towards him. “Since your clothes won’t be ready for a little while yet, it seems a shame to waste the fact that you’re sitting there naked but for a pink towel, which, it has to be said, isn’t your best look.”


“Oh yeah?” said Spike, raising an eyebrow at her. “And what would my best look be?”


“That would be when you’re like this,” she said with a smile, putting her hand beneath the towel and feeling him harden to her touch.


“Why, you saucy--”


She cut off his words with a kiss. He picked her up and carried her into the sitting room and onto the sofa. He slowly took off her clothes, covering her exposed skin with kisses. Once she was naked, he laid her on her back and kissed down her body until he opened her thighs and reached her most intimate parts. She lay back giving herself completely to his attentions.


Oooooo


Some considerable time later, as they lay in each other’s arms, desire well and truly sated, Buffy’s cell phone rang. She sighed and picked it up, seeing from the caller i.d. that it was Willow. She pressed the ‘answer’ button.


“Hi, Will,” she said.


“Buff, are you OK? You’ve been gone ages,” asked Willow anxiously.


“Yeah, I’m OK.” She looked at Spike thinking “more than OK.” “Sorry, I didn’t realise I’d been gone so long. Everything all right with you?”


“Xander and Giles are back with plenty of supplies. I’ve found some bits and pieces in the Initiative files, but nothing too exciting or very helpful.”


“OK, I’ll be back soon,” replied Buffy, hanging up.


She gave Spike’s lean muscular body a long lustful look as he lay there on the sofa, hands cupped behind his head. He looked more relaxed than she’d seen him since he got out of the Initiative; well, one part of him wasn’t looking too relaxed. She smiled at him suggestively.


“I don’t think I need to leave just yet, do you?”


“You’re insatiable, Slayer,” said Spike with glee, pulling her on top of him. “Your turn to do all the work.”


Oooooo


“Your clothes will be ready,” said Buffy eventually. “I’d better go, otherwise they’ll send out a search party.”


“Oh, OK,” said Spike. “Not sure I’ve got enough energy left for the sprint to the sewers, love. I’ll come to the mansion after dark.”


“You’re coming back?” said Buffy.


“Well, yeah, unless you don’t want me to?” said Spike, suddenly uncertain but desperate not to be alone.


“Of course I want you to but, don’t take this the wrong way; you only stormed out this morning. Are you sure it’s what you want? You’re not just doing it for me?”


“To be honest, Buffy, I’m scared. I don’t know what would have happened to me if you hadn’t found me, it felt so real. I’m certain it’s real, it’s just not happened yet.”


“What do you mean, Spike? I know I must have been in your vision upstairs from what you said, but otherwise the only thing you’ve told me is that you were back on the table before I rescued you. How is that the future?” said Buffy.


“That was the first one, Buffy, and yeah, that was like what had gone before, but the next one,” he paused - the memory of it still terrified him, “in the next one, Michael completed his operation but on my left arm not my right.”


“But that’s just your mind playing tricks on you, Spike, surely you can see that’s what it is?” countered Buffy.


“No, pet, see, in that dream Michael had a hand made of metal. He attached the Polgara demon’s arm to me and just…um…just threw mine away. That’s why I was so freaked when I heard you telling the Scoobies what that soldier boy had said. I’d had the dream before you were back, before I knew about his hand. It’s going to happen, Buffy, I’m sure of it.”


“Oh God, Spike, why didn’t you tell me? Tell us all?” cried Buffy in horror.


“I hadn’t seen you in the dreams up to then, and I reckoned if they were going to get me I’d be better away from you. You’d be safer if I wasn’t with you. With everybody edgy about me being there in the first place, I figured if I told them what I’d seen they’d insist I stayed tied up for sure, and I meant it, Buffy, that’s the one thing I can’t deal with again, not even for you.”


“You won’t be chained, Spike, and you won’t be recaptured or hurt. I promise you,” said Buffy. “So, what was going on in the bedroom?”


“This time the dream went further back in time. I was in a cell, waiting for them to come and get me. The door opened and I thought it must be you come to rescue me. I ran and tried to get out, but then Adam was there and he broke my leg; just snapped it” said Spike, looking at his leg and running his hand over it. “Christ, I felt it break, Buffy. They broke my leg in there one time when I’d been disobedient. OK, so it heals quickly, but it really bleeding hurts, and then I saw you on a gurney getting wheeled away. They’d implanted a chip into you, Buffy. I was too late to save you, again.” Spike stopped, too choked with emotion to talk.


“Shh, Spike, it isn’t going to happen. We’ve defied prophecies before; the future isn’t set. Let me get you clothes,” said Buffy as she dressed. “Then I’ll go and get the others. The Initiative hasn’t been watching the place so I think we should move back here. It’ll be a lot more comfortable and Willow can run a protection spell around it. Then we’ve got to work out how to take them down.”


Buffy got his clothes from the basement and once he was dressed, she went to the door.


“You’ll be OK ‘til we get back?” she asked.


“Yeah,” said Spike with a confidence he didn’t feel.


To be continued…