full 3/4 1/2   skin light dark       
 
For Better Or Worse by Sigyn
 
For Better Or Worse
 
 
 


    It was very late at night, and Buffy had come to Spike after Dawn was in bed. They were both pretty tired, but Buffy wasn’t quite ready to go home yet. Endurance was a game with both of them, and if they ended their love making after only one session it always seemed rushed.


    Spike was looking into the fridge. “Here, rehydrate,” he said, tossing her a bottled lemon spritzer. He slid back to the makeshift nest they’d wrestled onto his carpets with blankets and chair cushions. “Better to hear your blood pumping,” he purred, and ran his teeth gently over her throat.

    Buffy rolled away coquettishly and took a pull at her white wine and sparkling lemon water. He settled back to watch her. “How’d you know I liked these?” Buffy asked.

    “What do you mean? You told me.”

    “Since when do we discuss wines?” she asked.

    He rolled closer and gazed at her, amused. “We planned a whole wedding together, love. Remember? Wind Beneath My Wings.”

    Buffy blushed. “It was a spell,” she said, embarrassed. Then she looked up at him. “And if I remember correctly, you wanted watercress finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off at the reception. Very vampiric.”

    “Oh, shut up,” he said. “I had ‘em as a kid.”

    “What, your mom used to make ‘em?”

    He rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “I think we can find a better subject,” he said ruefully. He glared at Buffy’s teasing eyes, and his face changed. “Actually, bringing that spell up is suddenly really hot. Excuse me.” He launched himself from the edge of the nest and jumped her, pushing her back against the wall in a passionate kiss. The half empty bottle of wine spritzer spilled forgotten to the floor.

    “I tried so hard to forget that,” Buffy said when Spike shifted his attention to her throat.

    He looked up. “So did I,” he breathed. “Until the taste of all those spell-touched kisses started to haunt me.” He kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, sending shockwaves of confused pleasure through her.

    Then very suddenly, she pulled away.

    “What?” he asked.

    “I just remembered why I was trying to forget that,” she said. “You absolutely disgusted me. What exactly has changed about you?”

    “Nothing,” he growled. “I’m still the big bad, and you know it.” He lunged for her neck and bit at it, just hard enough to hurt, not hard enough to bruise. “ You love it,” he whispered.

    His words were heady in her ear, but she was suddenly feeling uncomfortable. She pulled away again, and Spike realized she meant it. Not that he intended to let her go. “No, you wait,” he said, pinning her to the ground. “You changed, not me. You walk in the dark long enough, some of it’s gonna get on you.” He bit at her throat. “Crawl inside you,” he added. His bedroom voice was working at full strength. “You belong with the creatures of the night,” he told her. “Burning shadows in the dark as you dance with the devil.”

    He hadn’t really stopped kissing her this whole time, and Buffy’s skin was flaming with it. She couldn’t entirely deny it, but he was getting off on the fact she couldn’t deny it, and it annoyed her under her heated breath. “Well, what about you?” she countered in his ear.

    “What about me?” he growled.

    “Still the big bad?” she whispered. She rolled him over and pinned him down, pulling him inside.  “What have you been doing that’s so bad lately? I’m all sticky with the night, you got the light bleeding all over you.”

    “I do not.”

    “Oh, don’t you? Playing babysitter for teenage girls?” she asked. “Ridding the world of demons?”

    “That’s just more fighting, love.”

    “Falling in love with a human?” she sneered against his mouth. She forced her kiss on him and then pulled back again. “Saving lives? Letting yourself be tortured?”

    “That’s enough.”

    “Acting the gentleman all the time? White wine and finger sandwiches, where’s the big bad now?”

    “I said that’s enough!” he growled. With a strength more potent than usual he pushed her off him and sat up. The passion between them fizzled and died, and resentment streamed from him. For a long moment she stared at his naked back as he breathed hard. “Do you want me to kill you?” he said, half over his shoulder. Buffy didn’t answer. “Don’t taunt the demon, love, nothing’s holding him back but me.”

    Buffy sat up and put her hand on his shoulder. “You are the demon,” she said quietly. “What do you mean?”

    “I don’t know,” he said, flustered. “I don’t know, I don’t know what’s happening to me. I haven’t for years, now.” Buffy almost wanted to hold him in his confusion, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She just sat back and listened. “Drusilla was willing to kill for me, you know. Quite poetic, really, since I used to do it for her when she was too far gone. But I gave that up for you.” He chuckled. “With no real hope, I might add. I mean, that’s just madness. There’s all kinds of evil I could be doing, chip or no, but I’m not,” he said. “And you like that, and I love that you like it, and I live it everyday. When I found I could hurt you, I thought the chip was broken, and I tried...” He closed his eyes. “God, never mind.”

    “You tried to kill,” Buffy said quietly. “I gathered that when you said it was just me. You’d have had to test it.” Spike looked over at her, a little amazed. “I know you’re a vampire,” she said. Then she looked down, disgusted, ashamed of herself.

    Spike, in the annoyingly insightful way he had, knew what her look meant. “Well, if it makes you feel any better about going to bed with one, love, I tried to kill, but only part of me wanted to. I had to talk myself into it. And if you don’t find that disgusting, I do.” He looked down. “I was almost relieved when I couldn’t. God, what is that?” he muttered, covering his eyes for a moment. “But then I knew I could at least hunt you, and I didn’t want to kill you, either. I don’t... erg!” He rubbed his forehead for a moment with the heel of his hand, and then hit himself with it, as if he were trying to crack open his own skull.

    “Spike,” she said, catching his wrist before he could do it again.

    He looked back at her. “Don’t tell me I’m good, it hurts,” he said. There was such confusion in his eyes. “It makes me want to prove you wrong. I live it. I love you. I love what you love. If I stopped, I’d be miserable. But if I think about it too much, it hurts. It burns like a cross.”

    “I don’t understand.”

    “Yes, you do. Just turn it around. You’ve done evil, I know you have. Maybe you had to do it. Maybe I have to be this. And you live with it, and you’re fine with it, but when you think about it, doesn’t it make you feel sick?” She looked down, and he knew he’d struck a nerve. “It’s a corruption, one way or another. Pure good, pure evil. Makes the whole thing a bloody mess.” He shook his head. “Don’t tempt the demon out, love.” He shifted to stare at her, longing in his face. “Let me corrupt you,” he said. “Let me violate you. Let me play the big bad.” His voice faded to a whisper. “It’s the only shadow between me and the sun.”

    Buffy rested her head on his shoulder. “I don’t want to be evil, and you don’t want to be good,” she whispered.

    “For better or worse,” he said ruefully.

    “This is really sick.”

    “And don’t we both know it,” he breathed back. With a sudden movement his hand was around her throat, and he pushed her against the wall. “I’m not good,” he whispered, heady, seductive. “I could kill you.”

    “I could slay you,” she whispered back.

    He grinned, the mischief and lust back in his eyes. “Well, aren’t we the old married couple?”