A/N: Thanks for all the support! Posting two chapters and I so hope it's okay with you guys! Updating's been slow lately, so there it is. Six chapters left - these included. Hope you'll enjoy! All My Love.




Broken Seam




“Is everything okay?”

They were in the living room of her house and she looked around, trying desperately not to feel so disoriented and strange. She met Riley’s quizzical gaze and smiled.

“I’m fine, I think,” she said. “I’m just in the middle of something.”

Really in the middle of something.

“Can I help?”

No, you can’t. You have to go away. No, don’t send him away. It’s good he’s here. No, it isn’t. Yes, it is. No, it...

“You look scared, honey. What’s going on?” Riley asked.

But when he put out his hands to touch her, she moved away.

“It’s nothing. It’s... I have to deal with it,” she replied.

There was a knock on the front door and she headed up to it as she said:

“If there was ever a thing you couldn’t help with, it’s this.”

She opened the door and was met by an empty porch. She raised her eyebrows, stepping outside and looking right and left before going back in, closing it behind her.

“That’s weird,” she said; however she cane to a stop in the doorway of the living room when Riley appeared to be gone, and No Face to have taken his place. “I have got to stop this exchange program nonsense,” she muttered, steadying herself for whatever was to come. “So,” she finally said. “Feel like giving me an expression with that skin?”

He moved forward at that and she blinked.

“I take it no,” she said, ducking as he swung an arm at her, kicking him in the side again and running past him into the living room.

He turned as she grabbed a picture frame off a side table.

“Sorry, grandma,” she said, throwing the frame at the demon, who blocked it causing any real injury with one arm. “Okay,” she mumbled slowly, looking around.

Then she shrugged, grabbing the coffee table and lifting it, tossing it at him and watching as he kicked it to bits. She pouted at the destruction, unsure of whom the blame. She decided it was her time to make an actual move and approached him with what she considered swiftness, but he was ready for her, blocking her hook and grabbing her by the neck, sending her head first through the glass of the living room door. She rolled on the hall floor and got to her feet, brushing glass off her with an incensed frown.

“Well, that’s just rude,” she commented.

She noted he held the dagger in one hand again. He sure seemed set on harming her with that thing, didn’t he? What was so special with it? Why, oh, why couldn’t she have paid more attention to whenever Giles tried to babble books with her?

“We don’t have to do this, you know,” she said, holding her hands up as he began to come closer. “I promise, you leave now and I’ll forget the whole thing!”

But he wouldn’t leave, and she felt herself backed into a corner.

“What if you’re just a figment of my imagination?” she murmured. “What if I could find a loop hole, just like you did...? I could make you leave.”

She contemplated it for another second, feeling the wall of the dining room doorway connect with her back.

You’re in danger, Buffy, she told herself. Now, get rid of it.

And in the following instant, the door swung open and No Face was pulled through it by unseen hands, disappearing as the door shut with a loud bang. It made her jerk, but then she smiled widely.
Spike! she then thought. I have to find him! Oh, no, he can be anywhere...

But when she looked up, he was there.

“Wow,” she said. “I’m really getting a hang of this.”

Only, the heat in his gaze took her aback and made a lazy yearning flare itself to life within her. When he took a step forward the laziness gave way for an urgency which transferred into her own legs and she took a step forward as well.

I don’t want this, she thought to herself.

But it was too late for that. For persuasiveness and reason, when all she could see was him.

She was close to him the following moment, his nose sliding along hers before his mouth caught her lips and she moaned silently, unsure of where the sound came from. But her tongue met his, and she inhaled as her arms wrapped around him, his hands pressing her to him as he spun them around and made her back up against the wall opposite the stairs.

She was burning up, her heart slowing in the most irregular fashion and her every nerve was focused on his touches, on his hands sliding inside her shirt, up the sensitive skin of her back, making her shiver with pleasure.

You’re crazy! You’ve lost your mind completely! a voice kept whispering.

His kisses made it easy to ignore it.

She felt herself give in, and the decision washed away everything else. It was a relief and a thrill unlike any she’d ever experienced before. And man, what a good kisser he was. She put a leg up, wrapping it over his hip as he grinded into her and she drew another breath, his mouth leaving hers to travel down her neck. She leaned her head back against the wall, closing her eyes.

His lips nibbled softly along her throat and she bit the inside of her cheek.

He’ll bite, a thought went fleetingly through her mind.

I’ll let him, she countered, her hands sliding into his hair.

“And what have we here?”

She felt her entire frame grow rigid at the sound of the voice.

It couldn’t be.

But Spike stopped kissing her and stepped away from her as she turned her head to meet the gaze of...

“Spike?”

He smiled with no humor, though there was a definite glint in his eye as he turned it on the image of himself before looking back at her.

“I can tell why you’d be so bloody surprised to see me, love,” he said. “Looks like you were about ready to do the nasty with something nasty.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Cute,” she commented.

“Is that what you’d call it?”

“It isn’t...”

“...what it looks like?” he smirked.

She glanced to the side, but the spot was empty. The other Spike was gone and she was left alone with him, whatever real there was to him. She leaned against the wall again, scratching one arm and trying to find some mingle of words that would explain it all away. She felt nothing but sheepish.

“I don’t know what to say,” she finally murmured.

“Don’t have to say anything,” he assured.

The hall and the house gave way for a painting they both knew. She was standing in the middle of the green-painted bridge, he was at the base. She smiled slightly at the softness of the black of the pond to her right.

“Is this a safe place?” he wondered.

“No place is safe,” she answered, her smile broadening a tad.

“Then what are we doing?” he asked, smiling as well.

She leaned against the railing and he came up to join her. She was wearing a pink dress this time, simple, but perfect. He was in a white shirt and gray pants. They were both barefooted. Casual. Very casual.

“We’re keeping an eye out for the places that could be safe. And then we fight to make them that way,” she answered his previous question.

“Can’t make all places safe.”

“No,” she agreed, looking down at the darkness of the pond. “No, but we can try.”

He observed her for the longest time, then smiled a little, turning his eyes on the quiet waters below as well.

“I believe I was being... what was it?” He began counting on his fingers as he said: “’Murderous, threatening, foreboding, callous’ – that’s it, callous. Before. True, I did feel you were ignoring your darker side, and, yeah – safe to say in ways you are.” She smiled a half smile at that. “But the way you don’t allow it to take over, that’s what makes you who you are.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled, her smile fading. “’The Slayer’.”

“No,” he disagreed gently, looking at her. She turned her head to him when he finished: “You.”

“Isn’t it pretty here?” she changed the subject.

He merely smiled, walking off the bridge and strolling further into the painting. She hesitated, then followed. She didn’t know him. She didn’t know who he was or what drove him or why he was where he was when he was. But she knew what truth there was to read in his eyes. She did know that now.

The trees gave way for an open bay, the grass gave way for sand, and they walked down a slope taking them to a stretching beach. The ocean, steel gray; the sky, white. There was no wind, but the waves lashed up against the shore, frothing at the mouth as they licked the sand before smiling their way back out to rejoin their kin.

The Slayer and the vampire were both soaking wet once more, though they hadn’t been near the water. It was as though they had been spat out of the deep blue to stand before one another on the deserted spot of land, neither knowing why or how they had come to be there.

“What do you want?” he asked.

She eyed him in silence.

What did she want?

She began to approach him, and the ocean and the beach and the sky fell away, and they were in the Bronze, on the dance floor, with the people, as she reached him. Her arms went up as one of his went around her, pulling her to him, his free hand at her chin, his thumb stroking her lower lip, his eyes fierce and the need in them so clear, the longing a dark blue shadow behind it. She met his mouth as it came crashing down on hers, her lips already parted, her tongue rough and playful.

This wasn’t a thought, it was him entwined with her, and it was more real than a lot of things she had felt lately. Raw and pure her desire for this man seemed to finally have shaken itself awake and there was no stopping it now.

And then she was naked in a room unknown, serene and welcoming for the two lovers they were becoming. He was standing before her, eyes in hers. Her heart was erratic, her chest heaving slowly. He circled her, his hands softly gliding over her skin, igniting it, sending goose bumps over her shoulders and down her arms. Facing her he kissed her neck and wrapped his arms around her.

They were on the bed, he entered her and she met his kiss as he filled her, her hips greeting his movements. She was in a slowly building ecstasy, refined in the way it relished in this forbidden fruit.

He thrust into her, his entire being honed in on what she needed from him. Every single look, quake, sigh sent him messages and he listened to them. Knowing that he was loving her, feeling her feeling it, and needing her to believe it. She was warm and soft and like a glimpse of a dream in a state of half-awareness. And so he let her take him over completely, his demon not standing a chance in breaking through with anger or frustration or aggravation as he burrowed himself in the wonders of her. The light of her, which shone like a guide in everything she did. And yet it didn’t scorch him. So he took it, allowed it to access him.

His lips met hers again.

She felt as though she had waited for this forever. The feel of his cool skin against the burning surface of hers, the boldness with which he claimed her. Every muscle in her body was working to make sure he understood what he was doing to her, wanting him to experience it with her. She groaned, filled with a delirious need to disappear into him, become one with this rapture cascading through her.

She kissed him deeply, then breathed him in, arching her back when a quiver of pleasure moved inside her.

She was building towards climax, he could feel it. He brought his head up and looked down at her. His fingers stroked the right side of her throat, where scars still stubbornly remained from the only two bites she had ever received. A fluty question went through his head, of what she tasted like. But he pushed it back.

“Spike,” she mumbled, and for a second there was something new in her gaze, something he couldn’t make out.

She put a hand up and gently pulled it from his forehead to his chin and he realized a second too late what she was doing as the muscles of his face shifted and he could feel the tips of his fangs against his tongue. She eyed him with complete surrender and he realized that she had put that fluty thought in his head.

She looked into the yellow of his demon and she knew, in that moment, that he never would have allowed it to come out of its own. But he hadn’t brought it forth, she had. Her heart was hammering, the adrenaline was mixing with the pleasure he was instilling.

Take it, she thought.

He could read it on her, and as he felt her muscles tighten for the rapture to peak, he parted his lips and let his fangs scrape the clean flesh to the left of her throat.

Her blood was flowing as though singing its concurrence with the deed about to be done. It wanted to be a part of him, to warm him, to grant him life undiluted. To peel through the walls of his veins and flow through him.

She was breathing in his ear, her hold on him hardening and when he felt her shake as the orgasm began its path through her, he placed his bite by her jugular and slowly began to drink.

She was the sweetest nectar and the most addictive drug, and she slid down his throat as though made to do so. He latched on and was sure he wouldn’t be able to break away.

Every new mouthful he took was a new trickle of agreeable sensations which started at the place of his mouth and traveled through her, to her fingertips and all the way to the ends of her toes. It was like cool rain on a hot summer’s day and it was as though a piece that had been missing from her was putting itself right. It was the absoluteness of seduction, the core of intimacy.

His body temperature was rising, he felt like he was soaring out of himself, but then her hold began to slacken and in the following instant he broke away from her.

He stripped his vampire exterior, putting a hand by her cheek as her head lolled to the side. A shiver went up his spine as fear grabbed him.

“Buffy?” he said, voice almost cracking.

She eased her eyes open and he drew a breath of relief.

She put her hands on either side of his face, making him meet her gaze, looking reassuring as a small smile began to play on her lips.

But she was torn from his arms into a place which was red. The wound at her throat began to pound with pain and she put both hands over it as she sunk down on her knees. She was still nude, and when she looked down she realized what it was she was surrounded by.

Blood.

“Buffy,” Angel said and she looked up at him where he was standing a few yards away. “What are you doing?”

She got to her feet, a white dress covering her as she removed her hands from the wound.

“Bleeding,” she answered.

“You don’t have to,” Riley said and she turned around, standing in the basement of her house.

“How do I stop it?” she asked.

“It’s already stopped,” he replied, grabbing the candelabra he had been looking for and she followed him up the stairs, touching the slightly aching scar to the left of her throat.

The door of the basement closed behind him, and when she pushed it open she stepped right into Spike’s crypt.

“When will it matter?” he asked.

She wanted to know what to tell him, but didn’t.

“Spike,” Willow stated to Buffy’s left. “He tried to bite me.”

“Spike,” Xander said, looking frazzled as he came running up to her. “Kidnapped me and Will.”

“Spike stopped by,” Joyce smiled, holding up a cup. “He likes the tiny marshmallows.”

She ran from them, through the door of the crypt and outside, up the stairs of the mansion and coming to a halt before Angel.

“It was you!” she exclaimed. “You brought him here. You make him go away!”

“You want him gone, you’ll have to tell him,” Angel said calmly.

“I don’t want him here!”

“So tell him.”

She stared at him, feeling tears rise for a reason unknown.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Of all the places you could’ve gone.”

Her heart stilled itself, the tears running over in their quiet way as she turned around, facing Spike, who stepped in through the doorway.

“This isn’t...”

“...what it looks like?” he finished for her.

She looked at Angel and then back at Spike.

“It isn’t,” she said.

He didn’t want the jealousy to take over, but Angel always had been a soar spot where she was a weak spot, and those two together was nothing but painful for him. So here he was, seemingly pulled wherever she went. Having to witness this when she was still fresh beneath his palms, when her juices still filled his nostrils with their sweet promise, when her blood still ran through him. She could take it all away with one thought, but she hadn’t, and now he had to live with the question of whether he would ever feel her in that way again. She was quite the little torturer, wasn’t she?

“What then?” he now asked, unable to shut up. “Needing some advice? Some support? How to tackle shagging the evil undead, that it?”

She bit her jaws together.

“No,” she answered. “And... stop.”

“Sorry, did it sting?”

“Stop.”

He regretted it that moment and stood down, looking away from her.

Soft snowflakes began to fall from the ceiling, collecting on the floor and quickly making a carpet for it, a blanket for the couch, covering the room in white cleanliness; the backdrop of the room falling away with every new flake and they found themselves in the middle of a large meadow. Two children were playing, throwing snowballs and making snow angels.

“Do you miss her?” Buffy asked Spike.

“Sometimes,” he answered. “Hadn’t thought about her in a while.”

They flashed into a memory of Spike and Drusilla.

“Do you miss her?” Buffy wondered.

“Sometimes,” he answered, though this time it took a little longer for it to come out. “It was easier with her.”

“What do you think I can give you?” she asked. “I’ve nothing to offer you.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“Now you’re lying,” she said.

They were outside her house. She started for the street. He came up to walk beside her.

“I won’t take it, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he stated and she stopped, turning to him.

“I’m not worried,” she said.

He stared at the scars showing where his fangs had punctured her skin. For a second he felt nauseous.

“Jesus,” he murmured and she looked away from him.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“Buffy, of course it bloody matters. Don’t say it doesn’t!”

She clenched her jaws together. She didn’t know how to feel about it yet. She was in slight shock of how willing she had been to receive his mark, and how suddenly she had been taken from him, and how he had made her feel, and how she should feel about that. She knew her beliefs, and how stubborn she was. And this was anything but easy.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve... let you. I shouldn’t have.”

She did know she felt that, at least.

He didn’t want to hear it.

“Tomorrow it’s all a memory,” he murmured, but there was sadness in his eyes that he couldn’t hide and she took a step closer to him.

She hadn’t wanted to cause him the pain she could see he was under. She was torn down the middle and didn’t know which way to turn.

Suddenly they were both falling backwards. Faster and faster. Blue sparks flashing around them. And with what felt like a small electric shock going through her she woke up.

She drew a breath, feeling dizzy.

“Willow?” she said, sitting up slowly and blinking.

The light outside was diminishing. It must be late in the afternoon. Soon her sight had cleared, but she didn’t believe what her eyes showed her. Standing up from the couch she looked at the room, which appeared to have been hit by a hurricane.

“What the bloody...?” Spike muttered, getting to his feet as well.

“Willow?!” Buffy yelled. “Xander?! Giles!”

She took a large step over the overturned coffee table and ran up to the stairs.

Spike sniffed the air, then kicked the coffee table aside, seeing drops of blood on the carpet. He bit his jaws together.

“Willow!”

“They’re not here,” he called to her.

She came back down, looking shattered. She spotted the blood and her eyes seemed to glaze over. She didn’t want to acknowledge what she had already deduced. That they had been taken. Right under her nose. That they were in the hands of whatever deranged paranormality was after her this time. That one of them, or all of them, could already be dead.