“Come in, Spike.”
Three little words.
Well, not the three little words, but three powerful little words nonetheless, enough that the magicks forming the barrier at the door silently fell away. Gingerly stepping over the threshold, as if he were entering a house of worship, Spike, speechless and breathless, found himself inside 1630 Revello Drive. Just like that. One small step for a vampire, one giant leap for his dreams. Dreams and fantasies, hope and aspiration, everything he had, everything he was, everything he could change, everything he would ever be--if given the chance; and Buffy willing, he would dust trying...He was all in, he knew that, from the moment he decided to hand over his heart to the slip of a girl in front of him. No, not a girl, not just, but the Slayer, latest descendant of a long line of warriors mythically empowered since the beginning of time, standing there, tired but held up by sheer will, stoic and determined, radiating heat and strength and that special Slayer power that set his nerve endings humming with energy--all of that and more, somehow combined together, everything that she was, to set his heart roaring...to sing.
Weapons, here to retrieve weapons, he reminded himself, not turn into William the Bloody Awful Poet, and moved toward the chest in the living room. His breath had returned, because by gods he was dizzy with lungs full of Buffy-scent, layers upon layers, with a youthful splash of the Bit mixed in and, if he concentrated, the lingering faint scent of Joyce, the poor woman, may she rest in peace. There were others, belonging to the frequent visitors of the house, the Scoobies, that he tried to push out of his consciousness, focusing instead on the heady Buffy essence with a longing, barely tamed and contained, that kicked and bucked and jerked against his control like an ensnared jackrabbit. In the viscous, all-encompassing Buffy-ness he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Instead, he prattled on while rummaging through the chest, random words of small talk, all casual-like and meant to assure, just to get ahold of himself.
Buffy had not moved. “We're not all gonna make it. You know that.”
At those words, he paused and forced himself to make eye contact. The general steadying the troops, then, or giving a last chance for those lacking in conviction to desert. Did she doubt him still, scrutinizing him for a potential turncoat, even after his previous outbursts of oaths of allegiance upon his own unlife? Right, he thought, can’t fault the Slayer for making doubly-sure on an evil vampire and his intentions.
“Yeah. Hey,” An ax already in his right hand, he hefted another with his left, feeling its weight. “I always knew I'd go down fighting. Sure as hell never thought it'd be on this side…” he chuckled softly, and added, suddenly self-conscious, “…or for this reason…”
Buffy took a step toward him, her eyes sad but unwavering. “I'm counting on you, Spike. To help protect her.”
He felt himself straighten at her words. “'Til the end of the world--even if that happens to be tonight.” He moved forward as well, passionate in his conviction. “Nobody touches the Little Bit while Spike's around.” Solemn and earnest, begging her to believe, he added, “I promise.”
With a nod equally solemn, she took another step forward. He felt magnetized to her, wanting more than anything to reach out to her, touch her, feel the smoothness of her skin, to prove to himself the realness of this moment. Oh, but it was more than that, so much more than that. His left hand jerked up, and he was glad to see the ax in his tight grasp, to remind him of his place. Just extra muscle.
Buffy took another step forward, her eyes trained steadily on him. The air thickened with her aroma, her body heat calling to him. Another step. God, what was she playing at? Did she have any idea what that did to him? What she did to him? Step. Barely a foot apart now.
“I know you'll never love me,” he blurted out, squirmy under her gaze. “I know that I'm a monster. But you treat me like a man, and that's…”
Fingertips traced his trembling lower lip then, butterfly-light, and he could not go on, for fear of dislodging that welcome warmth, that barely-there contact. So he held still, ceased breathing, just to indulge in the incredulity of that moment a second or two longer, letting his mouth stay ajar, as if a man with a prayer on his lips, slack-jawed in the presence of his goddess. He ought to say something, to strive for understanding, because spell-bound as he was, presumption he could not afford: a vampire before the Slayer, Love’s bitch before his heart’s desire, a condemned monster before his only chance at salvation. His mind raced to catch up: Must not do what he always did, bollix everything to hell.
He felt her fingers skate upward from the corner of his mouth, scaling the sharp peak of his cheekbone to trace the jagged scar in his left brow, then curl into a cup to caress his face. Eyes trailing her roaming digit, Buffy remained quiet and contemplative, as if he were a piece of fine art worthy of close examination, of her attention. Then he saw it, clear as day in her open, up-tilt face, deep in the lucid green of her eyes, though recognition took another beat, with belief on its heels: not gratitude, not compassion, not comradery--desire.
A soft gasp escaped his mouth, shattering the last shackle of his self-restraint to remain passive to her touch. His hands, as if spring-loaded, lightning-fast, shot up and reached out for Buffy: his left to cover her hand and press it firmly to the side of his face, his right to wind up around her waist and bring her into his embrace--so fast that his hands reached their respective destinations before the falling axes escaping their grasp clunked to the rug below.
And Buffy closed that last inch of distance between them with a kiss that bloomed into him as he melted against her, the 7th or 8th kiss between them, ever--too few, so that he resolved to follow immediately with seven or eight hundred more until they both lost count, and made good on it.
How they made it up the stairs, out of their battle-ready clothes and into the sanctuary of her bed, he would never know. Knowledge and logic and reason had no place between them, a study of similarities and contrast, in a dance that predated that of predator vs. prey, Slayer vs. vampire, in the sizzle of flesh against flesh, heat against cool, hard elbows and knees of seasoned warriors against soft curves and tender mounds and yielding craning necks--Christ, what was she doing to me?--of woman and man (more or less a man, anyway), in the eyes and hands and mouths that hungrily mapped each other and committed the sensory data to memory.
There was no need to run a hand down her legs to gauge her readiness; he knew she must be sodden, from the slick slippery wetness every time their bodies rubbed against each other, and the scent of her arousal, so thick and heavy in the air around him that he was drowning in it. It was the tactile sensation he craved, as he slipped a digit into her--Fuck! Such liquid heat!--then two more, and she gushed into his palm, back arched, breath hitched, mouth forming a perfect, soft O. He almost spent himself then, something he hadn’t done since the early days of debauchery under Drusilla’s crafty, knowing machinations--shy, awkward virgin that he had been when she remade him in a curse and a liberation. Quickly, he pushed that thought out of his mind, and surrendered himself back into the near-overwhelming immersion of Buffyness.
She was a vision: golden hair fanned out on her pillow like the halo of a goddess, cheeks flushed and dewy with a sheen of perspiration, lashes half lowered but eyes blazing, a diffused smile tugging at the corners of her lips, swollen from kissing. Spike felt a twinge of regret for their lamentable timing, their rotten luck. No time to do it right by her, not nearly enough; it’d take the rest of his unlife, were it up to him (or least the next eight hours, his horny inner vamp smirked), but by gods, he would give her something to remember.
He wanted to watch her as his fingers pumped in and out of her, faster now, but her hands (tangled in his hair, insistently pulling him closer) and her pouty lips (aiming for his own, with her tongue poking out, beckoning) persuaded him to give into the demand to kiss her again, to breathe her in, as she breathed in him. He could wait no longer--he was so hard now it was painful, the ache radiating out from his center like a second consciousness. Withdrawing his digits, he brought them up, slick and dripping, across his eager tongue and into his mouth. She moaned, low and sultry, and he was about done for.
Then he was poised at her threshold and the frenzy gentled, then stilled completely, their passion roaring but on pause, as if in observance, bearing witness to the sanctity of this moment. With her legs crossed on his back, pressing him to her, he drew back to ease into her, slow and steady, with restrained momentum that belied his fervor, so much that he trembled with effort.
“Don’t hold back,” she whispered.
A truer invitation he had never received.
He let passion take over then, relinquished control, slamming his cock into her as she rose to meet him, in a white hot sizzling crackling shocking jolt of electric heat that coursed through his body and tuned every cell in his body to her frequency, zapped every nerve to a crisp pinnacle of sense overload. Nothing but their bodies, entwined and undulating and beautiful, the universe having fallen away, irrelevant; and not even his body, for that was irrelevant too, if he would let go of his ego. Nothing but Buffy, the perfume of her scent on her moist breath, the supple warmth in the elasticity of her skin, held and cupped and caressed and kneaded and kissed and worshipped, the wonderful, dizzying heat of her pussy, sheathing him like a glove--he would surely dust, any second now, he had to tell her--
No, not going there, not now, hardly the time. Couldn’t this be enough, at least for now? “Oh, Buffy, sweet Buffy”, he settled on murmuring her name, over and over again, like a dying man’s last request. She wouldn’t want to hear those three little words, and he would give her what she wanted, always. Not to mention, utterances of sweet nothings were notoriously unreliable in the heat of passion; he wanted his true declarations to be heard, and taken seriously; and one look at Buffy--eyes shut as if to better feel, a breathy repetition of “uhn uhn uhn” on her lips--told him she was truly beyond conversation at the moment.
Too soon, Spike felt himself edging towards the point of no return, their grinding bodies harder and faster and tighter than ever. Buffy too--he knew from her increasingly breathless gasps and whimpers; her body slick with sweat, taut as a bowstring, desperate for release; her heart thumping out such a rapid, strong staccato against his body he could feel the rhythm in his cock; her nails insistently digging into his back, breaking the skin, marking him as hers; and her heat, oh god, her heat, enveloping him, torching him, purifying him in a baptism of fire. He knew they wouldn’t last, not this time, this frantic, this urgent, this desperate, and more than anything, he wanted to hold on, to the sensation, to the dance, to his golden Slayer, to--
Buffy’s steady mewlings turned into a sudden cry of shuddering release and he couldn’t fight it any longer--it was too much, too wonderful, too irresistible, and he was never one to resist anyway, not when it came to her. So he let it go and followed her over the crest in an unchecked roar, as ten thousand lines of poetry burst free of their imprisonment to flash before his eyes, and everything in his vision sharpened with the burning brilliance of a midday sun. Fuck! How was he not dust? Dazed and still reverberating, he rolled onto his back, clutching her still entwined body with him, her head to his unbeating heart.
Buffy looked up to flash him a bashful smile, and between shallow breaths, managed a single, “Wow”. He might have laughed with pride if he fared any better himself. Quite right. He smirked, having decided he didn’t mind being beneath her after all. Impure and doomed vampire that he was, he could still shag the Slayer till she was speechless, reduced to goo. “Buffy…”, he murmured in a voice thick and unnatural, his hand drawn to a strand of her hair stuck to her face, damp from effort. She fought like a Valkyrie and spent like a goddess, but it was smiles like this, brilliant and disarming, that would bring him to his trembling knees.
Slowly, thoughts and the ability of speech returned. Slayer goo reanimated back into Buffy, who slid off onto her side and pulled him to face her. Were it not for her hand absentmindedly caressing his chest, maintaining the current that fed the live spark between them, the loss of her heat and of the weight of her body would’ve been unbearable.
She seemed to study his face, her eyes flitting here and there. “Hey, “ she said, so soft he only picked it up with vampire hearing, “we sure can dance.”
That made him laugh. By gods, she really was his girl, through and through. “Never felt anything like this, Buffy. You’re--”, he swallowed, looking for the right word, “--effulgent.” It took him a moment to recognize William’s sentiment, a moment more to realize, alarmingly, that in the throes of passion, his demon visage had risen to the fore. It amused--but not surprised--him that both the William and the demon parts of him were in love with Buffy, too. Man or vampire, he’d always been a one-woman kind of guy: when it came to love, he was always all in, nothing held back. All the same, he had no desire to show the woman he loved the face of the monsters that haunted her nights. Ashamed, he shook his head to bring forth his human face.
“Don’t.” The hand on his chest flitted up to steady his head, and he opened his amber eyes to Buffy’s unflinching gaze. “I see you, Spike. I see all of you. I’m done pretending.”
If anything could revive his unbeating heart! His chest tightened and ached, as he took her hand to press a kiss into the palm, “Buffy luv, you deserve more than a monster. What I wouldn’t give to be more, for you…” His voice faded along with his game face.
Buffy shook her head vehemently. “Monsters or men, others left while you stayed. You’re with me in this, and that’s enough.”
What could he possibly say to that, if not those three little words? Biting his tongue lest they slipped out, he pounced on her and poured his feelings into a string of passionate kisses. Buffy squealed.
“Spike! I need...air! To...breathe and...talk--”
“No talk--” a kiss, “enough talk--”, another kiss, “--not now! Sod all else, Buffy--” he said, breathless himself even if he didn’t need air, “Just kiss me!”
And she did.
They would talk later, he thought, after… After. He would make sure of it, not letting Buffy off the hook as Avoidy Girl. When there would be time for such things, sitting side by side on the back porch, with his and hers matching cups of hot cocoa and little marshmallows. Or better yet, patrolling hand in hand through Restfield Cemetery--their natural habitat--falling into battle formation to trade quips and fists as they made short work of demons. Or better still, meeting thrust for thrust in her bed, a tangle of limbs and breaths, with heated touches interspersed between hushed words. Ah, the stuff dreams are made of...
But after. Now, the final face-off with Glory loomed, and he’d had more than enough to sustain him through the battle. Excepting a stolen kiss here and there, they got dressed separately, efficiently, in companionable silence. He could pinpoint the second her shields went back up, a survivor technique, a warrior’s routine. But that was of the alright. He would hold her again, soon enough. After.
They shared one final kiss just as Glory’s tower came into view. This is it. Buffy gave him a solemn nod, like a comrade's salute, like a lover’s promise, as he said, “See you on the flipside.”
~ The End ~