Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

This chapter borrows heavily from the episode "Touched", written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner.


SECTION 7 - LAKE OF FIRE

People cry, people moan.
Look for a dry place to call their home.
Try to find some place to rest their bones.
While the Angels and the Devils try to make THEM their own.

(Nirvana, Album - MTV Unplugged with thanks to Zanthinegirl for the suggestion)




Chapter 7.05
Saturday, July 13th, 2002


The sun wasn't long over the horizon when Spike and Wes slipped into the school, the vampire draped in a tartan picnic blanket. After Wes's first stumble in the darkened hallways, he felt a hand take his.

"You tell anyone we were holdin' hands an' I'll make sure they find out about the first record you bought."

"I told you that on the proviso you would never say anything."

"An' how often do I have to remind you do-gooders that I'm E-vil," Spike retorted, as he led Wes around the debris that had been left in the kitchen by the potentials' patching up session.

---

 

Spike stripped away his coat, watching Buffy from the foot of the bed as he did so. She hadn't moved when he entered the room, but he could tell that she wasn't sleeping by the strident beating of her heart. His boots and socks were next and, as he perched on the edge of the mattress to pull them off, Buffy rolled from her back to her side, as if, despite the darkness of their room, she were trying to watch him in return.

"Rough night, love?" he asked in a throaty whisper, as he twisted to run his hand along his fiancée's jaw.

"It was..." Buffy replied. "It just got better." She grabbed a handful of shirt and slowly drew him down toward her until she could brush her lips over his, could reassure herself of every taste and touch and scent.

Spike managed to catch himself on his elbows before he landed with his full weight on Buffy, who was once more lying on her back. He surrendered to her, letting her use his mouth and his tenderness as a balm. His lips met hers as softly as a feather's touch.

The tingling sensation at her lips was matched by another lower down. She loosened her grip on his shirt and wound her fingers into his hair, deepening the touch until the vampire responded in kind.

He slid his body over the mattress until it lay alongside hers, letting the kiss continue until the slayer sank back into the pillows, gasping for breath. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Buffy lifted ghost-filled eyes. "Later," she whispered. "Make me feel... whole. Make me feel whole."

Spike leaned down, and cradling her face in his hand, he pressed his lips to the gap between her brows, and then to the tip of her nose and finally, with frustrating brevity and chasteness, to her lips. His hand moved to brush stray strands of hair from her face and then he was gone, only a slight indent on the quilt showing where he had lain.

There was a spark in the darkness and she recognised the scent and the blue-yellow flame of Spike's Zippo.

Deft fingers pulled a partially burned tea light from the bulb where it rested and held it at an angle to the flame until the wick caught light once more before dropping it back into the holder. One by one, the vampire moved to each of the candles in the room and lit them. That done, he slipped the lighter back into the pocket of his jeans. He whispered slowly into the night as he unfastened his shirt. "I've got a habit..." One button. "When it comes..." Two buttons. "To you..." Three buttons. "Of letting my mouth..." Four buttons and the cotton flapped open to display the firm pale planes of his chest. "Get ahead..." Right cuff. "Of my brain." Left cuff and the midnight-blue cloth drifted to the floor.

"That's why," he added, as his hands moved to the button fastening his jeans. "I need you..." The zipper slid down, each of the tiny teeth sending a shiver through Buffy's body at the sound of its release. "To see me." The denim slipped down his thighs, past his knees and he stepped out of its confines and prowled his way back toward the bed.

"I know you can feel it in my touch," he said as he peeled back the bedclothes to expose the satin camisole and shorts set that she had worn in case she had to get up in the middle of the night. "I know," he told her, as he crawled toward her, "that with one stroke..." He demonstrated by letting one fingertip glide from her shoulder down her right arm, over the pulse point at her elbow and down to her palm which she closed around him to grip the wandering digit. "I can tell you everything you need to know about how I feel." He raised an eyebrow as he straddled her body, and waited until she gave a gentle nod to acknowledge the surge of mingled love, concern, desire and, in the background, fear that travelled through her wherever his skin met hers. "That doesn't lie. Your blood in mine, and mine in yours, it calls out to everything that we are, but there's more than that." He sat back enough to push the straps of her top from her shoulders before his eyes sought out her face again.

Even in the flickering candlelight, his face unchanged from its normal human appearance, his eyes almost seemed to glow with the intensity of the emotion behind them. With every tempting line and curve that her eyes could feast upon, Buffy's gaze could no more release his than she could stop the tears that welled at the corners of her eyes. "Who says you're no good with words?" she asked him.

"I normally take the hint when you go storming off with your knickers in a twist," Spike answered with a wry grin.

An answering smile flickered on her lips and Buffy gave a slight shake of her head as if she should have known it was too good to last. "Shut up, bleach brain, and come here and show me."

---

 

Hours later, Buffy lay all but spent in her lover's arms. Spike hated to break the peaceful mood, but if he left it, Buffy would drift into sleep and, when they woke once more, there would be no break from the burdens of the day until they returned to the room that had become their haven.

"Tell me about it, love."

"What?"

"What it was... other than missin' my tight little body... that kept you awake till near six in the morning."

"We're losing, Spike. It doesn't matter how many of them we kill, how many we take down, they just keep coming back and all I can do is watch them rip us apart. It gutted Massey like he was roadkill. Xander took him to the hospital, but I don't think he'll make it, and Claire Whiz won't be back in the fight for months with her right arm ripped up the way it was and we don't have months. I know we've got to give them the chance to fight. I know we can't win this thing with just the three of us, but are we winning if they're whittling us down until there are none of us left?"

"Listen, slayer, we may be down but we're a helluva way from being out. This thing, this weapon that only you can wield, it's important an' it pissed the preacherman off right royally when he found out he couldn't get it. Don't know why, an' I don't know how, but if he's that brassed off about it, it's important an' it might just turn out to be the key to this whole thing."

"Yeah, right. And when it turns out that all it is is another sword and Invulnero Guy throws us round the room like crash test dummies, or when we can't find it, then what do we do?"

"You're not fooling me, Summers."

"I have no clue what you're talking about."

"You're not a quitter. You're not going to stand back and let this guy walk all over you. You know where that thing is. You know that has to be what we heard the wise monkeys in black robes diggin' for."

"Why shouldn't I quit? Why should it always be down to me? Why can't I just have one day, one lousy day, where I can be with my hunny, get married and not have some wacko monster out to ruin everything. Let's go. Let's just take Dawn and get as far from here as we can. They've got Faith. They've got a whole damn council worth of watchers. I'm done. It should have been over when Kendra was called. That should have been it. I had my turn. Why can't it be over?"

"It can't be over because, guilty as you feel about leading them, you'd be even more guilty if you left them. What if this thing really is just for you? Not just the slayer... Buffy . That message he gave Shannon... 'Tell the one and only, accept no substitutes, slayer'. Isn't that what he said? You want to walk away before the fat lady sings? Before you know whether I'm gonna take you somewhere nice on our honeymoon?"

"I can't do this, Spike. I can't be responsible for taking them out there and watching them get shredded. Massey, well, he was a geek, but he was one of our geeks, like Jonathon if he hadn't gone evil on us... only taller. And Claire, she was hoping she could get a baseball scholarship when this was over and done with. How's she going to get a scholarship if she spends the whole season in physio trying to get the use of her arm back? I can't make plans where I know that people around me are going to die or get their lives screwed up."

"You'd rather I made the plans?" Spike asked with a hint of a self-deprecating smile. "There's always casualties in a war, Buffy. If it makes you feel better, let some of the watchers plan the actual battles, so long as we get the right to tell them when they're talkin' out of their arses, but you have to lead them. You have to be the one to show them how it's done, 'cause if you leave them now they'll collapse quicker than a house of cards in a tornado. If they think you haven't got faith in them, they're never going to have faith in themselves. Way I heard it, the watcher froze. Not much to be done about it. We took him through the drills. We did everything we could to prepare them for what it'd be like out there, but he panicked, an' sometimes that's all it takes."

"Fine. I'm the great white hope. The Amazon warrior. I'm Xena with better clothes. Just forget I said anything."

"You listen to me. I've been alive a bit longer than you and dead a lot longer than that. I've seen things you couldn't imagine and done things I'd prefer you didn't. I don't exactly have a reputation for being a thinker. I follow my blood which doesn't exactly rush in the direction of my brain so I make a lot of mistakes. A lot of wrong bloody calls. A hundred plus years and there's only one thing I've ever been sure of. You." He reached out and took her chin in his hand, tilting her head back until she looked him straight in the eyes. "Look at me. I'm not asking you for anything... not right now at any rate, and it's not like it's that big a deal wantin' you to spend the rest of your life with me. I mean eighty years tops, blink of an eye." His smile faded. His tone became totally serious and the bond affirmed that the sentiments behind his words were equally sincere. "When I say I love you, it's not because I want you, or because you're mine. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I've seen your kindness and your strength. I've seen the best and the worst of you and I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You are a hell of a woman."

Tears began to stream down her face in earnest now and Spike ducked his head to kiss them away.

"You're the one, Buffy."

"What if I don't want to be the one?" she asked tremulously.

"I don't want to be this good-looking and athletic. We all have crosses to bear."

Almost in spite of herself, she smiled and gave the athletic chest in front of her a playful push with the heel of her hand.

"Get some rest now, love," he told her, pulling the quilt back up to cover them from where it had been kicked to the foot of the bed.

Buffy rolled over and wriggled until she was spooned against him, the one-time enemy, who now guarded her back.

"Will you hold me?" she whispered before he had a chance to wrap his arm around her.

"Always, kitten, always."