A/N: BIG thanks to Megan for betaing.


Chapter 11: Little Green Monsters.


Buffy felt her inner walls clench as an orgasm ripped through her body. She screamed out her release in a long keening wail, her nails clawing deep channels into Spike’s back. The vampire in question reached his own climax seconds after Buffy, a guttural growl escaping his lips as he thrust into her one, two, three more times before collapsing bonelessly on top of her.

A giggle escaped Buffy’s lips when she used the momentary reprieve to survey her surroundings. The bedroom was Spartan. Apart from the bedside table and small single bed, not much else occupied space. Excusing the clothing that now littered the apartment floor, it was also relatively clean, which was a little surprising. Spike hadn’t exactly been known for his hygiene when it came to the crypt.

“Find somethin’ amusing, pet?” Spike queried when he finally lifted his head from Buffy’s naked breast.

After making it back to his apartment in record time, they had wasted no time in depriving each other of clothing, before finding any and every surface to lay themselves upon or against. Conversation had been bypassed as their need to feel, to be with each other had taken over. After making use of the kitchen counter, the sofa and the living room floor, they had finally made their way to the bedroom. It was on the small bed that they currently found themselves ready to take some time.

“This bed,” Buffy giggled again. “It’s just so small.”

“Well I never had the company that would require anything larger,” he said wryly. “The one time th--” He cut himself off before the words were completely out of his mouth, but he knew Buffy must’ve figured what he was talking about when he felt her tense beneath him.

“The one time what?” she asked, trying to keep her tone neutral.

“Nothin’,” Spike mumbled.

Buffy shifted beneath him until Spike rolled off from on top of her and moved to her side. “The one time what?” she repeated with more insistence.

Spike tensed in preparation for the inevitable response his admission would surely cause. Once more he mentally cursed his seeming lack of control over his mouth, sure it mustn’t be properly wired to his brain else he wouldn’t constantly slip up so many times. “The one time I almost—” He struggled to find the words to put it delicately, but came up seriously lacking. “Well, you know.”

“I don’t think I do,” Buffy replied in a huff. Anger was slowly simmering and it would only take a few careless word choices for her to explode. It was understandable that he would move on with his life, she had, but she hadn’t blatantly thrown that fact in his face. The nagging voice of reason in the back of her mind that told her that she had no right to become angered by his soon to be heard admission, was quite brutally being stamped down by a little green monster.

Spike rolled off the bed and put some distance between them, just to be safe. He began pacing the room, headless of his naked status. From the corner of his eye he saw Buffy sitting up in the bed, sheeting wrapped tightly around her torso as her eyes followed his movement. “The day I became solid, fleshy – all corporeal-like,” he began as he fisted his hands by his side, stalling in his movement across the room. “Well I’d been all ghostly for months and I--”

“Jumped the first random piece of ass that walked by?”

She’d been trying to reign in her temper, trying to quash the unsettling feelings that were growing in the pit of her stomach, but it hadn’t exactly been easy. Ever since the body-swap with Faith back in freshman year of college, Buffy had found that it didn’t take so much to cause jealousy to rear it ugly head. And she didn’t like the thought of Spike getting his rocks off with some random female the day he became human—vampire again.

“NO, I bloody well did not!” Spike exploded in anger, his pacing resuming. “The first thing I thought to do was come to you.”

“Then why didn’t you?” Her voice was quiet, almost afraid of his answer. Buffy’s original anger had subsided when the voice of reason slugged the green monster, and reminded her that she was more in the wrong here. Doing something she had sworn when her parent’s marriage had broken she would never do; cheat on a partner.

“Couldn’t,” was his simple response. “Didn’t know how you’d react and really didn’t fancy gettin’ my nose broke again.” At Buffy’s puzzled expression, he continued, “Oh don’t tell me you wouldn’t have been mad. Hit first, ask questions later. That’s always been your way.”

“How I’d react?” Memories of her conversation with Lorne in the parking lot came to mind. “I would have been thrilled, I would have…” She trailed off.

“What?” he urged, desperately in need to hear whatever she had been about to say.

“Do you know that I cried for you?” she asked, the question rhetorical. “I mourned your death like Xander mourned Anya’s.”

“Anya didn’t make it?” Spike said quietly. He hadn’t known that little fact and it became one more thing added to the list of things he was going to hit Peaches for. He and Anya hadn’t exactly been close, but she had been a decent person—when she wasn’t dishing out vengeance that is.

“She died in the school,” Buffy informed softly. “Protecting Andrew’s life of all things.”

Spike chuckled half-heartedly before his expression sobered. She had to know how much he cared about her, how much this meant to him. “Buffy, I --”

Once more he was cut off. “I missed you,” Buffy admitted, her eyes filling with tears. “So much. So much it felt like my heart was never going to recover.” She laughed sarcastically now as she remembered her unsuccessful attempts to remove all memories and thought of Spike from her mind.

Spike closed the distance between them in a matter of seconds, the small bed dipping when he sat down beside her. Tentatively his right hand found her left, fingers interlocking until their hands were pressed palm to palm. A jolt of electricity burst up his arm when their matching scars brushed against each other, sending a flood of warmth to his heart. They were two halves to a set, he and Buffy were. And he would spend the rest of his un-life showing her just how perfect they were together.

Buffy’s chest heaved once, twice as she inhaled deeply before continuing. “I spent my days keeping myself busy with training of the girls and setting up the school and at nights I threw myself into patrol. Anything and everything to keep busy. Because when I stopped…” A lonely tear slid down her left cheek. “I felt like I was dying. I should have been rejoicing, no more Sunnydale Hellmouth to worry about. But I wasn’t, not even close. I even went to Willow about a spell.”

At this Spike frowned. He knew from past experience that spells designed to alter emotions were dangerous and he didn’t like thinking that Buffy had felt so desperate, so hollow, that she had resorted to that.

“And what’d Red do?” he asked when she didn’t continue after a few moments.

“What do you think?” Buffy shook her head. “She refused. Offered me a shoulder to cry on, promised nights of girly fun but refused to perform the spell for me.”

Spike made a silent promise to thank the witch.

“I tried to bottle everything up but one day, a few months later, it all burst out. It scared the girls in the class that day—seeing me, their and I quote ‘bitch task-master of a trainer collapse into a puddle of tears like some sissy human,’ end quote.” At Spike’s frown she explained. “Cassidy, one of the older newly called slayers. Kinda like Faith, if she was hopped up on sugar 24/7.”

Spike blinked in surprise. Sounded like on hell of a scary girl. Dawn on a sugar high had been hard enough to handle.

“Needless to say the guys decided it was time for me to take a vacation. So Xander, Willow, Kennedy, Dawn and myself spent a week in sunny Rome. All paid for with Council funds.”

The bed shifted slightly and Buffy lifted her eyes to meet Spike’s, seeing the struggle to remain calm deep within those azure depths. He knew what was to come, what happened in Rome, and she also knew that he wasn’t a big supporter of her choice of bed partner.

His nostrils flared at the mention of Rome. Spike knew what that meant and it was going to take all of his self control not to explode at her for the foolish decision she had made. When it seemed that she wasn’t going to address what she had alluded to, Spike felt the need to ask.

“Why him?” It came out more abruptly than he had planned, but it couldn’t be helped. The fact that Buffy had even dated that… wanker, was hard to digest. “You do know he’s soulless, right?”

Buffy nodded. “Yes, I know.”

Confusion swept his chiseled features. “But… how could… you made such a big deal of not being with me when --”

“I know,” she repeated her words. “It’s part of why I began dating him.”

Buffy dropped her gaze to their interlocked hands, her thumb gently rubbing his back and forth. “I wasn’t ready for something serious, and if he’d had a soul I would have felt like I was betraying your memory.” A deep breath was inhaled before she continued. “It was just physical, something to numb the pain. And the funny thing is, it was working. I was getting over you, and then there you were—standing in Angel’s training room. Breaking my heart all over again.”

Spike was trying to understand but he was still stuck back on the betraying his memory bit. Then his brain caught up with his ears and his expression cleared, his eyes becoming distant.

“You shagged him?” he asked even though it was a question that had already been answered. At her nod he huffed in annoyance, but continued. “But you don’t…” he paused nervously before continuing, “you don’t love him?”

“No,” Buffy said, a hint of a smile curling at her lips.

Buffy knew why she was dating Juan--the Immortal. It was because he was safe. She didn't love him, so he couldn't hurt her. It was wrong to use him like that, she knew it. But she also knew that he wasn't exactly faithful either. That fact however didn't detract from the minimal guilt she felt right now.

A soft sigh escaped his lips. “Well that’s something.”

“Good something or bad something?” she queried nervously.

“Good something,” he affirmed with a smile of his own, tugging on her hand until the other released its hold of the bed sheet and curled around his waist. Spike pulled her close to him, chest against chest, and forehead against forehead. “I love you, Buffy.”

Buffy’s breath hitched in her throat, her lips seeking out his to resume in the kissing of earlier. Any ideas of continuing their discussion were abandoned the moment his tongue slid between her lips, dancing with hers in gentle seduction.

Treating her as the most precious thing on earth, Spike lowered them gently to the bed, covering Buffy’s body with his own. His left hand trailed the length of her body from shoulder to thigh, the gentle tracings eliciting shivers from the goddess beneath him. She was truly beautiful and the fact that she didn’t seem to realize it astounded him on so many levels. Which is why he was planning on occupying her time for the rest of the day with showing her just how she affected him, how much he cared about her.

She was his princess, his goddess, his love. Buffy was his match, his equal and each moment spent with her only convinced him of it further.

Her sigh of contentment when his lips abandoned hers to move to her neck spurned him onwards. Spike nibbled and suckled the length of the column of silky skin, finding the pulse point and paying it extra attention, before dipping lower and into the valley of her breasts and making his intentions of going further south known when his wandering hand dipped beneath the sheets and settled between her thighs.

Spike was going to show Buffy just how much he loved her as his worship of her body began.

~~~

Several hours later, feeling beyond sated, Buffy sat up in bed. Alone. After their last coupling they had fallen asleep in each other’s arms, which is how Buffy had expected she would wake. But Spike was not to be seen.

Momentary panic coursed her system before the sound of water spraying against tile and glass made its way to her ears.

He’s in the shower…

That little thought gave her all sorts of ideas, but she knew that if she walked into that bathroom she wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. And there were still things she needed to deal with.

Sliding out of bed, she quickly moved about the small apartment and tracked down her missing clothing, dressing in record time. She cast a yearning look over her shoulder at the bedroom door and then further inwards towards that of the bathroom, and she hesitated. She didn't want to leave. But she knew that this was the right thing to do.

She got half way to the door before she turned around and quickly moved to the kitchen counter. Grabbing the pen off the bench she quickly scrawled a note on a piece of scrap paper. Figuring that he would be hungry after their lengthy bed session, she stuck it to the fridge with a magnet.

With determination, she turned away and moved towards the apartment door.

It was time for some answers…



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A/N: Sorry for the delay, hope you guys like!