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This Thing We Have by Sigyn
 
It Was Always This
 
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    “This... bed’s kind of narrow,” Spike told her.

    It was the night Buffy had killed the preacher, Caleb. The night she’d given Spike the amulet. The night after she’d let herself go and finally given her self, unguarded and unashamed, into Spike’s arms. “I think we’ll be okay,” Buffy said sidling in next to him. “We’ll just have to stay close.”

    He made a small sound at the word, and Buffy had looked up into his eyes. They were closed. “You okay?” she asked him.

    “Yes,” he said quietly, but he didn’t look it.

    Buffy thought back to his confession earlier in the evening. Last night was the best of his life. He had never, ever, been close. To anyone. “Are you still terrified?”

    He chuckled, and finally opened his eyes. “More than ever,” he said.

    “Why?”

    He didn’t answer. He just closed his eyes and looked pained, and Buffy squeezed him gently. “Spike,” she said. “Please talk to me.”

    “That’ll only make it worse,” he said.

    “Is that possible?” she asked.

    He sighed. “No,” he said. “Maybe. I just... I still don’t know. You say I don’t have to be scared, but... I still don’t know what that means. And I’m glad... god, I’m so glad you’re here now, love, it’s just... I’m afraid you’d rather be basking in Angel at the moment.”

    “Boy, you really were there, weren’t you,” Buffy muttered.

    “I was following the preacher,” Spike said. “I stopped by the vineyard, like I said, and he was on his way out. I wasn’t trying to spy on you. I just–”

    “I don’t even care,” Buffy said. “I just dealt with all this with Angel, you know. I sent him away. Does that mean anything to you? I sent him away.”

    “Well, that was your choice, I didn’t make you.”

    A wall of tension was building between them again, and it wasn’t what either of them wanted. Buffy realized he’d opened up considerably more than she had. “You’re right,” she said, trying as hard as she could to soften her voice. “That was my choice. Spike.” She placed her hand on his cheek and made him look at her. “That was my choice.”

    The tension lingered another moment, then finally Spike relaxed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to fight with you. It’s just... I know why I’m terrified, and I... I want armor to hide behind.”

    “What frightens you so?”

    “I know how much you can hurt me,” he admitted. He laughed helplessly. “And it’s starkers, ‘cause you could always rend me to pieces with a flash of your eyes, pet. It’s just... it seems so much worse, now.”

    “What makes it worse?”

    “There’s more pieces,” he whispered. “You could rip my heart out, you could torture my body, you could poison every thought, but....”

    “But you never had a soul to rend before,” Buffy said, understanding.

    He swallowed and looked away.

    “Is there anything I could do that would help?” she asked.

    “You’re doing it,” he whispered.

    “Am I?” she asked. “Because I’m holding you now, and you still seem kind of far away. Not like last night.” Spike closed his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you, Spike,” she said. “I can’t promise I’ll never make another mistake, but.... I know you’re feeling vulnerable. If it helps at all... I do too.”

    He looked at her then. “Really?”

    “Spike,” she whispered. “I wanted you last night, like I never had before. You reached out for me, and I felt you, and I wanted you. And not... the way I used to want you, to disappear in you. I really was there with you. I was... lost, and you found me. And I didn’t want to let you go.” She shook her head. “I still don’t.”

    Spike closed his eyes.

    “I wish there was some way I could get you to believe me.”

    Spike laughed.

    “What?”

    “I know that feeling,” he said. “I spent years telling you I loved you, and by the time you finally believed me, it was already over. And you never let me have what I really....” He shook his head. “Buffy. I don’t think you have any idea how much I have longed to just hold you.”

    “I think I have an idea.”

    “No,” he said. “You don’t know long that’s been...” He sighed. “The night of your mum’s funeral, I was there.”

    “I didn’t see you.”

    “I know,” he said. “Don’t think I was stalking you, I actually came that night to pay my respects to Joyce. I had kind of a soft spot for her, you aside, and... she treated me like a human being. But I was coming up on the grave, and... and there you were. With Angel. I could smell your tears. He had his arms ‘round you. I was already half mad with love for you, and you hated me for it. And I looked at the two of you... and I was so glad he was there.” He sighed. “I hated you both the moment I saw you, I wanted to rip you apart with rage. And then I wanted to be him, kiss your tears away, just... hold you though your sorrow. The scent of your tears was potent as blood, I ached with yearning. And there I was, burning with jealousy, and longing, and... I was so glad he was there. Because I knew you needed him. I knew you needed someone, to hold the weakness you wouldn’t let yourself feel unless another was standing as your strength. And I knew he could do that for you. So I walked away. Even though I was choking with envy, even though he was still the creature I hated most in the universe... I was so glad he was there.”

    Buffy realized what he was trying to say. “And last night....” she began.

    “Last night,” he said. “You let me fill that role. You let me stand...” His words sank to a whisper. “As part of you. Your strength, your shield, something. You let your guard down and let me in... or I liked to think you had. And I didn’t think you ever would.” He swallowed. “I was so sure you meant to spend this night with Angel.”

    And he felt the same as he had then, she knew that. Torn in three ways, only this time, it must have felt as if she’d been ripped from his arms first, by Angel’s arrival, and the kiss she’d planted on him. Spike had been there, he’d seen it... and he walked away. The nobility of it touched her. She let her fingertips trace Spike’s brow. “Angel doesn’t fill that role for me anymore,” she said. “He can’t. There are things he doesn’t understand about me. I’m not the person he knew, not the girl he loved. I’ve been through too much. I want too many things that little girl never would have. And one of those things is you.”

    Spike’s head moved, and for an instant she thought he was going to kiss her, but he didn’t close in. “I know you love him,” he said quietly.

    “I did, once,” Buffy said. “I can’t decide if I still do. I know it’s not the same. But I don’t believe in schoolgirl dreams anymore. I know if he stayed that he’d be a destabilizing force. We’ve all been working together for weeks, months, and we all know where we stand. I don’t have a place for Angel in this war. But I know I need you.”

    “I’ll fight beside you,” Spike promised.

    “I’m glad,” Buffy said, taking hold of his bare forearm. “But I meant... that I need you now. This...,” she said, caressing his skin with her thumb, “whatever this is... is too important to me. I’m not going to risk this now that I’ve found it.”

    “This,” he said. “With you and me, it’s always this. This thing without a name.” His voice sank very low. “That isn’t love.”

    Buffy sighed, and Spike shook his head. “I’m sorry, pet,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

    “No,” Buffy said, and she was ashamed to realize her voice sounded like a sulking little girl’s. “It’s not that, it’s just... everything gets so confusing when I start to think about love,” she said. “It’s just got so much baggage to it, so many dead ends and wrong turns, and it feels stagnating and just... painful.” She shook her head. “It’s like, once you call it love, it ends. It’s limiting. I mean, what is it, anyway? It’s not friendship and it’s not trust and it’s not partnership, but maybe it is all that, but who knows? It’s like the word doesn’t mean anything. To the point it starts to mean nothing at all, and... and....”

    “And it makes the thing mean nothing, too,” Spike said, understanding creeping across his face.

    “Well, I don’t know if it means nothing,” Buffy said, unsure what she’d been trying to say in the first place. “It’s just I don’t know what it does mean. And it seems to diminish everything else around it, and... and maybe those things... shouldn’t be made less important.” She almost groaned with confusion. “And maybe it’s not important. I mean... I loved Angel.” She closed her eyes and couldn’t help but squeeze Spike closer. “I was young. I loved him more than I’m ever going to love anything, beyond all sense and reason. Even when he was evil, I couldn’t... see past the love. I loved him with the purity of a child,” she said, as if she were confessing some sin. “And really, there was nothing else between us. There was no trust, there was no honesty, there was no respect. It was all about the love. And then I killed him. What good did loving him do? And Giles and Dawn love me, and they’ve betrayed me. I mean, what does that mean? Love. It’s... it just hurts.”

    “Did it always hurt?” Spike asked. “When I used to say it to you, did that hurt?”

    “I don’t know what it made me feel,” Buffy said. “Sometimes I wanted you to say it. It made me feel warm, and... I don’t know... put sparks in my chest.” Spike smiled. “And other times, it felt like being slapped.” She shook her head. “And what we had... I mean, what was it when it wasn’t love – because clearly it wasn’t always. Not even for you. So does that mean that, before it changed, what we were to each other wasn’t important? I mean, even from the first night I met you, there... there was something between us. But I know that that wasn’t even the vaguest shadow of love. But it...”

    “It was real,” Spike said. “I felt it too, the moment I saw you. It wasn’t love, but it was.... There was hunger in it, and excitement. Bloodlust. Just a touch of fear.”

    “Rampant curiosity,” Buffy said. “And then there was rivalry. Then truce.”

    “Desperation,” Spike added. “Trust.”

    “Distrust.”

    “Both,” Spike said.

    “Lust,” Buffy added.

    “Lots of that,” Spike said with a grin. “And hatred.”

    “Lots of that, too,” Buffy whispered.

    “But, you know,” Spike said, “even in amongst all that hatred, there were times I just... didn’t take that opening. Wouldn’t make that blow.”

    “Wouldn’t throw that strike, that stake, wouldn’t pursue,” Buffy said. “I know. We’ve both been caught up in this. It sort of feels like it would... throw all that away to narrow it down to just one emotion, doesn’t it? This,” she said. “You and me, I mean.... It’s just this.”

    “What does that mean?” Spike asked, the same words he had asked her earlier that night, in almost the same tone, such tenderness and wonder and, yes, there was still fear in his eyes. Buffy frowned. Then suddenly, almost mockingly, Spike asked, “What is this to you? This thing we have?”

    Buffy recognized the question. He’d asked it before, as they were still charged with barely satisfied lust, just before he’d moved their violent lovemaking into something involving more trust, more risk. Handcuffs and binds and reciprocating bondage. At the time it had just seemed kinky and sexy, but now that Buffy looked back on it, he had been drawing them closer together. Forcing trust between them inside the lust, even if she refused to acknowledge it, or talk about it. She smiled. “Well. I suppose we don’t have a thing,” she said. “We have this.”

    “Do we, still?”

    “We always did,” Buffy said. “I guess we always will.”

    She had thought they would. Always changing, always evolving, they were rivals and friends and enemies and lovers. They fought and hated and lusted and wanted and drank and teased and flirted and laughed and played cards and bickered and screwed and knocked each other around. There had been bruises, and kisses, and silence; rejection and acceptance, solace and pain, recrimination, jealousy, need, sacrifice and torture. And always, they had this. This, between them, that was never the same. This, that had always been.

    This between them, that she knew had ended when he died.

    She couldn’t understand. When he was resurrected... why hadn’t this come with him?
 

 

 
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