- 2 -


Once the decision to live with Spike had been made, Buffy expected things to change. Life had certainly changed; she was no longer the naïve teenager forging a path to womanhood while struggling to balance the weight of her calling. Her experience in loving Angel had sufficiently ripped the rose coloured glasses from her immature eyes, in that respect. She had thought being called as the Slayer had opened her eyes to the horrors of the world and the things that went bump in the night, but is seemed that knowing what was out there was only half the battle. Angelus had been the first monster to truly touch her life; he had made the monsters she fought night after night real. Sleeping with him had seemed the next logical step in their relationship at the time, she had loved him and he had loved her, what possible reason could there be to wait? Since then it had become her biggest regret.

The experience had forced her to grow up and face the consequences of her actions, even when the result wasn’t intended to begin with. The fact was that together they had unleashed Angelus on the world and more people than just herself had had to pay the price. People like Jenny Calendar, her Watcher and countless victims Angelus had snacked on.

Life had certainly changed. Yet despite that, waking up next to Spike—as she was quickly becoming accustomed to—felt like second nature. They had effortlessly slipped into a routine together—his habits falling in synch with her own. It amazed Buffy how easily she had adapted to Spike’s constant presence in her life as both a friend and companion. Somehow, he had managed to wheedle his way into her life and heart so smoothly that she hadn’t realised that he had been doing it until he was already there. Now she wouldn’t have it any other way, she couldn’t imagine her life without Spike in it anymore.

His friendship was more intense than anything she had ever experienced in her young life. More so than even her short love affair with Angel. He brought a whole new level to the concept of friends. Spike didn’t expect her to be anything other than what she was. Not the perfect daughter, nor the perfect Slayer or friend. She was more than just Buffy and she was more than just the Slayer and he seemed to understand that better than anyone else had ever been able to before. Neither side was forced to come first—she was a whole, and the feeling of freedom it gave her was liberating.

Life had definitely changed, but the transition had been so smooth that she had felt no jarring as she settled into new routines.

“I tell you, pet, that bloody painter is taking his sweet time finishing off that room so he can charge us more on purpose,” Spike grumbled as he entered the kitchen.

Buffy grinned at him from her position on top of the newly installed marble countertop. “Yeah? How does that work?”

Spike gave her a pointed look as he opened the fridge and reached for the carton of orange juice. “Labour costs. They charge you by the hour for the time it takes them to complete the job. This bloke is trying to screw the system,” he said as he pushed himself effortlessly up onto the counter beside her and took a swig of the bright orange liquid straight from the carton.

“That is so gross.” Buffy wrinkled her nose at the carton in distaste.

“You don’t like orange juice?”

Buffy gave him a look and plucked the carton from his hands. “No, the juice I like, it’s the part where you’re drinking it straight from the carton that I have a problem with.”

Spike watched as she pulled out a glass from the cupboard and filled it up with orange juice before handing it back to him. He took it dutifully and began to sip from it as she replaced the carton in the fridge. “Bossy bint.”

“The guy laying the flooring is almost done,” Buffy said, ignoring his comment as she came to lean against the bench beside him. “The only rooms left are our room and the room your little painter friend is still working on.”

“Yeah? Well, at the rate he works, I’ll be an old man before he’s finished,” Spike grumbled as he swallowed the last of the orange juice and set the glass down beside him.

Buffy rolled her eyes as she picked up the glass and carried it over to the sink to wash it out. “You don’t age, stupid.”

“My point exactly,” he told her with a smug smile.

Buffy turned away from him with a smile, “What I was trying to get at,” she began with a good natured gleam in her eyes, “was, that once the floors and walls are finished, the only rooms left to be finished will the bathrooms, which means we can start buying furniture!”

“Oh, goody!” Spike replied sarcastically.

Buffy frowned and punched him in the arm, “Well if you like having nothing to sit on, then don’t bother!”

“I was joking, Slayer,” Spike said with a smile as he slipped off the counter and moved to pull her into his arms. “Buffy, the house looks wonderful. Seriously, even with just floorboards and carpet covering the old cement floors and fresh paint on the walls… it looks nothing like what it did when Angelus bought the place.”

Spike was right. The mansion had undergone a complete makeover in the few short weeks it had taken them to hire contractors to redo the place. The bedrooms had been carpeted, and the main rooms now had floorboards instead of the cold cement that had previously been there. They had chosen warm colours to paint the walls in, giving the mansion a warm glow which chased out the cold dark memories of the past. Buffy had even arranged for a shade sail to be to be put up over the small garden connecting to the main living room of the home to keep any direct sunlight from reaching both the garden or the living room. This allowed Spike to move about with a bit more freedom throughout the day.

Once the cobwebs had been cleared and the place cleaned up, it seemed like another place entirely from the one that had seen the downfall of her first love and her life before Acathla.

“I’m sorry, love. I’m a bad, rude man who is getting impatient with evil little painters. I most definitely want something to sit on,” Spike said as he pulled her firmly into the circle of his arms.

Buffy smiled and pulled back to look up at him. “You could always flash him a little bit of fang. See if that doesn’t hurry him up.”

“What’s this? The Slayer suggesting that I scare someone into hurrying up?” Spike teased. Buffy slapped his shoulder half-heartedly. Spike grinned down at her. “He’s part demon himself, pet. I doubt attempting to scare him is going to work at making him finish the job any faster.”

“Our painter is half demon?” Buffy asked as she poked her head around his shoulder to try and catch a glimpse of said demon. “How come I didn’t know this?”

“They all are. How do you think I got someone available to work for us so quickly? Technically I am the Master of Sunnydale now, pet.”

“Wow, so in that case, maybe I should go in there and scare him into finishing the job.”

Spike stared down at her in wonder of her easy acceptance of him. In all his life—both human and vampire—he had never been so completely or readily accepted by anyone, least of all by someone destined to kill his kind. He had expected Buffy to make some comment about his Master status, or at least question his motives, but like everything else she had taken it in stride. He had tried for days to try and rationalise the ease with which she had agreed to allow him to feed from her. Like she had said, she was the Slayer and as the Slayer, nature had created him her natural enemy. So it didn’t make sense that she would so readily offer up her own neck.

It would have been easy to file her more astounding reactions away in the box he had created in the back of his mind, labelled with a big red stamp reading *claim*, but the fact was the claim he had placed on her was only a partial claim. It did nothing more than bind them together in the most basic of senses. It wasn’t like a mating claim, which allowed the couple to share thoughts and feelings and sometimes more—it was far less intimate. Vampires had been known to place partial claims on a number of individuals. If anything, it was a strengthening of the bonds of family and friendship. Buffy’s trust was completely non-manufactured, and the thought that anyone could trust him like that made his heart swell with warmth for this tiny slip of a girl.

Already he could feel his affection for her growing and mutating into something more powerful and overwhelming than simple attraction. He was falling for the Slayer, and he was falling hard. She was a light for him at the end of a long tunnel of darkness. Drusilla, as much as he had loved her to begin with, had kept him in that darkness. She’d seduced him with her feminine wiles and he had been none the wiser the whole time she had been manipulating him. His lack of reaction to her death had called into question the love he had felt for her. Had it all been one of her mind tricks? Had he really loved her so desperately? Or had his sire been keeping him in line the only way she knew how? He had seen her coerce many a victim into believing something other than what was right there in front of them. It was possible he had been just another victim in her games.

Either way, he had never known how much he had craved the light because she had him so convinced that it was the darkness he loved. Although he wouldn’t change anything that had happened in the past for the world, would he have been able to appreciate Buffy’s light if he hadn’t spent so long emersed in Drusilla’s inky darkness? Possibly, but it was not a question he was willing to risk learning the answer to. Everything that had happened in the past had shaped him into who he was now, it had moulded the decisions he had made and guided him to this moment.

Perhaps if he hadn’t spent so long worshiping his Dark Princess, her death wouldn’t have been the breath of fresh air it was after years of constant stress and trickery. Perhaps then he would have turned around and killed the Slayer, rather than nursing her back to health only to embark on a new life at her side. Of course the darkness he had lived in for over a century still held its allure, but for the first time in as long as he could remember he was truly content with his life. He was happy where he was and tricks or not, he had only Dru to thank for getting him to where he was now.

And now Buffy was keyed up about going furniture shopping with him—proof that she was as excited about this as he was, and here he was shooting her down with sarcastic comments over his irritation with one slow working demon. He was completely insane.

Dropping his hands from her waist, Spike’s hand found Buffy’s. “Run and get your things ready, pet. If we’re going to go furniture shopping we better get moving before the shops close.”

“Now?” Buffy asked as her head whipped up to look at his face.

“Yeah now. We’ve go some rooms completed right? We might as well be spending our time doing something useful.”

Spike couldn’t hold back his own smile as a delighted grin broke out across her face. He barely had time to hold his arms out so he could catch her before she had launched herself into his arms. An elated laugh escaped her lips as she clutched him tightly.

“I’ll be two seconds, I promise,” she said as she removed herself from his arms and bounded up the stairs.

Spike rolled his eyes and smiled as he walked off to have a chat with their painter. There was no way in hell that she’d take anything less than half an hour to get ready.





AN: As always, a massive thanks to Andrea for the beta and to everyone who reviewed so far :D Comments? Feedback? Still enjoying it?