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Chapter 19


They lay still, gazes full of unspoken emotion locked onto each other. Shock. Confusion.


“Buffy?” Spike sat up, his tongue sneaking out to savor the still lingering taste of her from his bottom lip. Buffy couldn’t move, too embarrassed to watch him do that, too anxious to escape his scrutiny.


“I-” she started to say, but the rest faded away as she drew the sheet around her, desperate to cover her flesh when the sudden embarrassment burned so hot she wanted to disappear. Spike had been a first man to ever make her… How could she have forgotten to mention that she was still a virgin? Would he regret taking it so far now that he knew?


“Are you a… but how?” He furrowed his brow. “I mean, after everything you’ve-” Spike rubbed the nape of his neck and muttered under his breath. “Bloody hell.”


“Are you mad?”


“Of course not. It’s just a bit of shock, that’s all. You could have told me… you know you can tell me anything, right?”


“I know. I’ve just… with everything that has been going on, I’ve… forgotten you didn’t know. It sounds stupid, but-” she said, distracting herself with picking at the sheet, avoiding his gaze.


“Not stupid, luv. And if you wanna tell me what happened, I’m here.” Craving to reach to her but denying himself Spike steeled himself for the full story. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done some pretty awful things in his time. No, it was the knowledge of Buffy’s pain, Buffy’s suffering that made his stomach recoil and the borrowed blood in his veins boil in rage as he wanted to tear her captors apart.


“It’s a long story,” Buffy said, hoping he’d let it go and glanced away from him, suddenly feeling dirty as she recalled the reason for her virginity. The way Lukas gloated about it before he threw her to the mercy of a client.


“I’m not getting any older,” Spike replied gently, moving close enough to touch her, but refraining himself. He watched her struggle with words that wouldn’t come, but didn’t say anything. A minute might have passed before she spoke.


“It’s my selling article, you see? Because there’s nothing more tempting for an evil being than to abuse the one thing they hate so much. The others-“ Buffy drew in a shaky breath, the lump in her throat getting bigger and harder to ignore as the leering faces flashed in her mind. “- they didn’t care where they… the only thing they cared about was making me b-bleed. It didn’t matter w-where-“


“Luv, you don’t have to-” He couldn’t stand to see her like this.

“No. I need to. I have to… t-talk about it. They made me feel like I was less t-than dirt. Like-” She couldn’t speak anymore, and the short distance between her and Spike felt like miles. He must have sensed it too, because the next moment his arms were wrapped around her, encouraging Buffy to put her head on his shoulder and let go of everything she’d been holding inside.


Her body shook with sobs, her tears soaking the collar of his tee, one hand clutching the sheet to her chest, the other holding him as if he was about to disappear. She was breaking his heart.


“They m-made me feel a-as if I… d-deserved it,” Buffy mumbled into his shoulder, her words barely coherent through the onslaught of her grief.


“I know.” And he did. He had been one with her, the vile taste of the man’s penis still at the back of his mind. Everything she’d felt, he had experienced along with her. And she’d been living in the hell for months. Spike didn’t think he would be still standing after an experience like that. “But you have to understand it’s never been your fault.”


“I c-can still feel… their hands on m-me… the smell. I just w-want it to stop.”


His jaw clenched and his arms tightened around her small frame. Buffy buried her head into the crook of his neck, his skin burning with the weight of her tears. Spike longed to tell her that everything would be alright, that one day she’d wake up and wouldn’t remember anything at all, seeing the world around her once again perfect and safe just as she had when she was a little girl. If he told her that, they’d both know it was nothing but an illusion of a fleeting comfort. A lie.


“I’m sorry,” he mumbled into Buffy’s hair, rubbing comforting circles on her naked back as her sheet covered chest heaved with shuddering sobs against his still one. There was nothing more he could do.


After a while, she glanced up at him, her eyes wide and reddened, her cheeks stained with tears that Spike couldn’t help but brush away, and asked him, “Can I… stay here? I don’t want to sleep alone.”


“You don’t even have to ask, Buffy. ‘Course you can.”


She had gone to the bathroom to slip into a nightshirt and returned straight into his embrace. They had laid down and talked; words of pain spilling from her mouth like poison that made Spike want to destroy those who had caused it, to seek revenge on her behalf. He held her instead, listening because Buffy needed him to, his heart hurting more than he could ever remember it hurting before. The sun was just about to come up when she fell asleep in his arms, too emotionally drained to do anything else.


'The wankers are going to pay!' He’d seek every single one of them out, torture them and laugh as they begged him to kill them instead.


******


Buffy flopped down on a comfy chair in Spike’s workout basement as she eyed the equipment.


They hadn’t been truly intimate after the day Spike had found out about her virginity. About everything. Buffy knew it was the right thing to do for it gave her the time to sort things out, to heal. They kissed, slept together in the same bed, talked and cried, enjoying each other without crossing the final line. It wasn’t Buffy who held back though. Every time they lost themselves in the sensations too intense to ignore, Spike drew away from her. He didn’t need to say why.


When he was asleep, his mind relaxed and vulnerable, it was easy for Buffy to feel him. If she concentrated hard enough she could almost see his dreams and nightmares flickering before her eyes. His fear of losing control and accidentally hurting her shadowed his every thought. Buffy could see that by trying to rein his urges in, the only thing he was doing was stretching himself too thin. Spike was unreasonably afraid of touching her that way again, and no amount of her assuring him that she trusted him to do the right thing could change his mind, so she had stopped trying.


Buffy rose and approached the punching bag hanging once again from its rightful place. Her eyes darted around as if to find someone watching her from the shadows of the basement, ready to laugh at her. She didn’t feel like the Slayer anymore, so who was she kidding?


The sack swung innocently as she pushed it with her fingers. She circled it, glancing at the bandages Spike used to wrap around his hands during his workouts.


Maybe if she just tried, maybe just once. It wouldn’t matter if she were too clumsy to throw a decent punch; it didn’t matter because nobody would have to see it. Nobody would even have to know she was here. Spike was out, on a scheduled poker night over at Clem’s place.


She’d had the pleasure of meeting the demon several days ago. Clem had been jittery, constantly scratching one of his floppy ears when he first spotted her, knowing she was the slayer and unsure of her reaction to him. Once upon a time she would have thought that every demon equaled bad, ergo killing would be necessary. Things had changed considerably since then. Her whole black and white world view had been turned on its head after she’d been kidnapped, and she couldn’t even think of harming someone as sweet as Clem. Who was the only being that kept Spike from completely starving while he was taking care of her.


As she stood there, staring at the punching bag, doubt wriggled its way into her thoughts. There was the nagging feeling that the night at Clem’s had been just a story to make her not worry. It happened a lot lately. Spike came home late, and sometimes there were bruises on his face and body he couldn’t convincingly explain. Got into a bit of rough and tumble, he said.


Getting into bar fights with demons as a substitute for taking the lives of humans, she could understand. So why couldn’t he look her in the eye when he made his excuses? Why did he always change the subject? Buffy was truly puzzled why he made such a secret out of what he did during the nights he wasn’t with her. She knew for a fact that that Spike hadn’t been with any other woman since he’d met her, so what was he hiding?


Buffy sighed and turned away from the bag. She took three steps when something stopped her and she hesitated in her hasty exit. What was she so afraid of? Wasn’t it supposed to be like riding a bicycle? Spike was right; she couldn’t hide from what she was forever. She had to relearn how to be the Slayer again.


The bandages found their way around her hands, and Buffy let out a long exhale. She drew her fist back, punched the bag and… it felt so achingly, familiarly right.


TBC


Author's note: Next update will be up on Tuesday or Wednesday! :)