Hee! Some loverly person nominated In Omne Tempus at the Love's Last Glimpse Awards! It's up for Best Challenge Response, Best Saga, and Best Spike Characterization. *bounces* Thank you so much! That so made my day!
Part IV
It was well past noon when she woke, and despite the circumstances, she felt she had never had a more restful sleep. It took a few minutes to remember where she was, a few more to determine if the night’s events had actually occurred, or existed solely as a product of her subconscious. But no, she was in the room that Spike had secured for her. The ashtray on the night stand was compact with cigarette butts that she knew she wasn’t responsible for. Furthermore, despite the vampire’s attempts to doctor her wounds, her body felt worn in that ‘post-fight’ manner. It usually took a day or so to overcome a severe beating. Granted, it had been at least three years since she’d had the crap beat out of her. Not since the days of Merrick burning down school buildings had she found herself so thoroughly bruised.
The room looked strange in the morning light. Smaller, less dreamlike.
Spike had really been with her the night before. Spike had taken her away from her life. Spike. The vampire. Her enemy. The one that was supposed to kill her, and very nearly did. He’d stopped for reasons still beyond her. For reasons that had her thoroughly shaken. Moreover, the looks he’d shot her the night before had left very little to the imagination. He obviously hadn’t brought her to the motel to take advantage of her emotional vulnerability, but he’d wanted to the minute the door was closed.
He’d wanted her. God, Spike had wanted her.
Buffy honestly didn’t know what was creepier: the fact that Spike had wanted her, the fact that she had known he wanted her, or the fact that, despite all sensibility, a part of her had very much wanted him. Wanted him the way she knew he wanted her.
The Spike-lusting portion of her psyche had grown increasingly vocal through the night’s progression. And now, in the wake of morning, the prospect didn’t frighten her as she thought it might. After everything that had happened, she felt she had seen too much to allow a tiny attraction worry her any.
Tiny attraction. And either way, what had happened the night before had served as an eye opener.
Had any vampire but Spike found her, she’d be dead by now.
Any vampire but Spike...
Buffy sighed. There was a frightening thought. Spike was the self-titled harbinger of her execution, and he had stopped last night for reasons that weren’t entirely clear to her. The only thing she knew, the only thing she truly remembered, was breaking down and sobbing for the heartache in his voice. The heartache that seemed to represent the accumulation of everything her sleeping with Angel had done to those she knew—even those she considered her mortal enemies.
Willow had lost her fish. Her mother had lost her respect. Giles had lost Ms. Calendar. Ms. Calendar had lost her life.
And Spike had lost Drusilla because Drusilla loved Angel. Buffy knew that. She’d known that since the first night she saw the crazy vampire in the park. Her eyes had betrayed too much, even at a distance. Buffy had known that night that Dru loved Angel all for the way she looked at him, which was why she, at first, mistook the loony-toon lady for a human. Humans, she’d thought, were the only beings capable of love. Well, humans and dogs. Humans and dogs, and nothing else.
If discovering Dru was a vamp hadn’t changed her mind, seeing Spike last night had certainly done the trick. The agony in his eyes had been too real, the pain in his voice had torn at her insides, and even though his outrage took a tangible ‘kick-the-living-daylights-out-of-Buffy’ form, the heartache he’d emanated had touched a very real nerve. She suspected it would be a very long time before she could forget what had passed between them.
Buffy sighed and reached for the phone. Chances were, Giles was doing a fair amount of wigging at her absence, especially since she’d never checked in the night before after patrol. Her presence of mind had been elsewhere. As long as her mom knew where she was, the rest simply didn’t seem to matter.
Giles wouldn’t agree. He’d probably phoned the authorities within a half hour of her disappearance.
Of course, he’d likely run into a problem while trying to explain why a high school librarian was so worried that a student hadn’t contacted him at one in the morning.
She was likely the only student who had the school’s phone number memorized. The automated answering service picked up on the second ring, and she wasted no time in punching in the extension to the library. If she wasn’t quick enough, the office secretary would pick up—something she’d learned from experience, and it never ended well. Snyder had intervened on more than one occasion to yell at her for not being in school.
Thankfully, Giles was quick to the punch. She imagined him sitting at the checkout counter, casting anxious glances to the library doors when he wasn’t staring at the phone.
“Buffy?”
She blinked. “Whatever happened to ‘hello’?”
There was a long, relieved sigh. “Oh, thank God.”
“Tell me you haven’t been answering every call like that all morning.”
“Well, I wouldn’t need to resort to such tactics if you had reported in last night. Dear Lord, Buffy, do you have any idea how worried I was? I was a hair away from phoning your mother.”
“Good thing you didn’t, ‘cause then she’d wanna know why an old man wants to see me in the middle of the night.”
“You really feel comfortable being so flippant with me after the hell you put me through?”
She sighed. Giles could be overprotective, but he had lost a lot because of her. The adult within knew that it had been entirely insensitive to forget about him, especially with Angelus still on the loose. Especially with Ms. Calendar’s body still cooling.
“Sorry,” she said, her voice falling penitently. “Sorry. Just last night, it was all crazy and I honestly just didn’t...it didn’t occur to me to call.”
“What in God’s name happened?”
“Spike.”
She heard something large fall over. “Spike? What happened? Are you all right? Where are you? I can be there in—”
Buffy smiled softly into the receiver. “I’m okay, actually. He...well, he beat the hell out of me, but I’m okay. I was a little distracted last night and he caught me...thinking about things that I shouldn’t have been thinking about.”
There was silence at that.
“Look, I know—”
“Buffy, you are in no way responsible for what happened to Jenny. I don’t want you focusing on that while you’re patrolling. I don’t want you focusing on that at all. It’s not—”
“Yeah, you say that and I know you mean it, but I can’t control where my thoughts go. Last night was a bad night, and Spike found me. He would’ve killed me, too...he nearly did. But then he stopped because I had a nervous breakdown and I don’t think he knew how to handle it.”
“Just tell me where you are. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Sunnydale Inn.”
Another pause. “Why are you at the Sunnydale Inn?”
“Because this is where Spike brought me.”
“Spike took you to the Sunnydale Inn?”
Buffy nodded to the empty room. “Yes.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask...he was in the middle of...” He paused and drew in a deep breath. “Killing you...and he decided to take you to the Sunnydale Inn?”
“Well, no. I told him I couldn’t go home looking like a piano had fallen on me. And I couldn’t go to Willow, and he didn’t mention you and I’m sorry I didn’t think of it. The night just got really weird, really fast.” She sighed and cast a glance to the mirror. The scars on her face were fading faster than she was used to. Antibiotic. Perhaps the vampire had been right about that, after all. She’d relied far too long simply on the healing powers of water. “He took me to the motel and doctored me up, got me food, and stayed with me all night.”
The silence on the other end was deafening.
“Giles?”
“He what?”
“I don’t know. He...I think my nervous breakdown made him go into a nervous breakdown. It was all just...it was just really weird.” Buffy glanced down. “Look, I don’t know what last night was all about. I don’t know if it changes anything. Spike told me he still wants to kill me, but I think he would have last night if that was true. He said the next time he saw me...look, my head hurts from trying to make sense of this.”
“I’m leaving to pick you up.”
She arched a brow. “And this is a good idea why? Snyder’s gonna flip his lid if you pull a disappearing act without notifying anyone.”
“I don’t give a bloody damn. I’m not leaving you out there where a very dangerous vampire, who has made a career of killing slayers, can come and go as he pleases.”
“Umm, Giles? You know that round, shiny thing in the sky that heats the Earth? Yeah, last I checked, Spike’s still allergic to it.”
“Yes, and he’s clever enough to find a way around it. It’s not uncommon for vampires to travel during the day; they simply have to be cautious. Using underground pipelines, for instance?” She heard him rustling his jacket over his shoulders. “Be watching for me.”
“Okay...but you need to take me home.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have any clothes.” She winced, envisioning all the horrible things that must have immediately started through her Watcher’s head at that. “No. Stop. Don’t say anything. My clothes are bloody and dirty. I’m in a bathrobe, and people will think things if I show up with you on school grounds while practically nude.” Buffy made a face at that. “Really disturbing, gross things.”
Giles cleared his throat. “I heartily agree with you.”
“Okay. So take me home. I need to wash the motel grime off my skin before patrol.”
“You intend to patrol after what—”
Buffy rolled her eyes. How typical. “This would be a good time to remind you that, hello, no other options? It’s not like I can tag my alternate. Kendra’s far away slaying vampires in the magical land of South America. In the meantime? The Hellmouth’s kinda my turf. Spike got the best of me last night, but he won’t again. I won’t let him again.”
The words sounded empty, and the silent voice of reason that she too often tried to smother rang out in protest. Things had changed last night; things she couldn’t have predicted. She had absolutely no idea what to expect the next time she saw Spike. He was so unpredictable—a proverbial loose cannon that could turn with the tide either way, pending on how the wind was blowing.
She groaned at herself. Mixing metaphors much? That sentence was so convoluted that even her young and snappy mind couldn’t follow her logic.
Perhaps the most disturbing factor in everything was her genuine desire to see him again. Her desire that went beyond kicking the crap out of him and staking his undead heart. Beyond seeing him as an enemy. Something had happened between them that went beyond conventional definitions.
She wanted to tell herself it didn’t matter, and believe it. The image of him as her enemy was so ingrained that it felt like her body was switching to default; a resignation of what she should feel, but didn’t. Even though he had come to kill her the night before. Even though he’d sworn the next time they met, it would be to fight to the death.
Something had happened. The demon in her mind, the demon that had turned her life upside down from the minute he’d steamrolled into town, was gone now. The demon was a front for the man she’d gotten to know. The man that had tended to the wounds that the demon had inflicted. Such destruction birthed from his hands; destruction and the power to heal all in one.
She’d never been bothered by irony before.
Either way, she knew she was right about patrol. So did Giles. And while that did little to make anything easier, the notion that she might see the man that had cared for her—in his own, perverse way—filled her with warmth.
She liked the man that Spike’s demon protected. She liked him very much.
And that in itself was perhaps the most dangerous thing of all. Spike wasn’t a man; he never could be a man. And whatever had happened between them last night didn’t matter. She couldn’t allow thoughts of one vampire to dominate her focus, especially since it felt like a cheap substitute for another.
Rather, it felt like it should be a cheap substitute for another. If she was going to be lusting after a vampire that wasn’t Angel, it should be because she couldn’t have the one she loved. However, with as much as she and the blond vampire had talked the night before, her thoughts had not once wandered to Angel. Not unless Spike brought him up in a fleeting fit of rage.
When she’d asked him to stay, they’d both left their pasts at the door. Things had changed the second that she acknowledged that she wanted him with her. Her enemy. And from that point on, they were people outside themselves.
After a certain point, there had been no room for others. Not at the Sunnydale Inn.
Angel had not touched her at all.
*~*~*
Both Buffy and Giles felt it was a bad idea, but once Willow learned what had happened the night before, she could not be swayed. Furthermore, she persuaded Oz to see things her way, most likely with smoochies or by monopolizing Oz’s usual apathy to her benefit. She let Buffy know, in no uncertain terms, that if the Slayer refused to let them patrol with her, they would patrol by themselves, anyway.
The tactic, as expected, worked like a charm. If her friends were going to wander around a cemetery, they’d do it where she could see their every move.
“Could you explain it to me again?” Willow asked the second they crossed the invisible barrier that separated the rest of Sunnydale from Restfield Cemetery. “Spike attacked you and then stopped?”
“Will, I’ve explained this in every way possible. I even drew you a diagram. If you want, I can tell you in French once I, you know, learn French.” Buffy shook her head, tightening a grip on her stake. She didn’t want to acknowledge how hard her heart was pounding; she knew if she did, she’d be forced to look at the cause behind her anxiousness, and that led to a very bad place. Not only had her friends asked her to describe the previous night’s events backwards, forwards, and sideways, but night had similarly arrived much too quickly.
Much, much too quickly. She found herself in the middle of an undeterminable arena. Willow was chatting way too much to count on sneaking up on any baddies tonight, and Buffy’s nerves were much too frayed to depend on should the worst actually happen.
Everything seemed on the fritz.
“I’m sorry,” Willow said, though she didn’t sound it. “I just don’t understand. I mean, when you say ‘Spike,’ you mean the same bleached bad guy whose sole purpose was to have you all kinds of dead when he came to town? You know, three months ago?”
“Unless you know any other vampires named Spike who are both British and bleached.”
“All I’m saying is—”
A dam broke within. She couldn’t help herself. If Spike was out here, the last thing she wanted him to know was that their meeting last night had affected her at all. Beyond, well, the bruises and the doctoring and the buying of food and the kissage that had really come from nowhere. No, she didn’t want him to know that she’d even pictured his face since waking; and she certainly didn’t want him keen on the fact that her heart hadn’t quite made the agreed shift back to mortal enemies.
That wasn’t all. The only thing worse than Spike knowing that she’d thought about him was the chance that Drusilla, Darla, or Angelus himself would overhear the redhead’s loud yammering. If they found out what had happened the last night, she knew that Spike’s life, as well as his reputation, would be a thing of the past. The only thing worse than not killing a slayer, in Angelus’s book, was not killing her—Buffy. If they found out that Spike had let her walk, there was no telling what they’d do to him.
Not that she cared...only, of course she cared.
She really couldn’t help herself, then, with this endless line of questions. She stopped cold and whirled to face her friend, her voice pinging the highest accessible note of cynicism. “Hey, Will. I’ve got an idea: let’s talk about this a whole lot more.”
Her friend’s face fell, hurt leaking into her eyes. “Buffy...I didn’t mean to—”
Guilt pricked at her almost immediately, but the Slayer brushed it off. She hadn’t had time with this to begin with, and now that she’d been pushed to such an extent, there was no reconciling her animosity. “No, really. In a graveyard in which I’m attempting to do my job—you know, the one that entails being quiet so I can sneak up on bad guys and stab them with my pointy stick, why don’t we keep on about my brush with death last night? Over and over and over again, if possible. And hey If Oz is up to it, we can stage a reenactment over here by my favorite mausoleum. You wanna start selling the tickets, or should I?”
“I don’t act,” the wolf replied with a shrug.
Willow frowned and smacked her boyfriend’s shoulder. “You’re not helping!”
“What? Buffy has a point. Stealth is pretty much her one non-action-packed job description, and what we’re doing is, well, not.”
She pouted. “Still, boyfriend. You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I see, but the realist in me tells me to side with the girl who can bench ten times my body weight.” He smiled and kissed her cheek. “And my realist rarely gets distracted by Willow kissage.”
“You’re not the easiest person to love at times.”
“I get that a lot.”
Buffy rolled her eyes and turned away before they could mistake her disgust at their cutesy lovey-doveyness for something much uglier. That had been her such a short while ago. She’d been the one making her friends sick by lip-locking with her creature-feature of a honey. And while she wanted nothing but the best for Willow and Oz, she couldn’t help the pang of resentment that came with the actualization of her calling. If anyone’s non-human boyfriend was going to turn into a raving lunatic, of course it’d be hers. She was the Slayer, after all, and it was her cross to bear.
Of course, Oz had the added benefit of getting to play an active member of the human race unless the moon was looking a bit too round. And even then, the days were still his. Angel could never stop being a vampire. Day, night, Sunday, or Christmas—everything was dog-eared in the vampire-section. There was no halftime position in his particular race. Not even a soul could keep the monster at bay.
So what stopped Spike last night?
She frowned at herself and stamped that thought away. As if your life’s not confusing enough. Let’s add another vampire to the mix, shall we?
The familiar twinge in her stomach came too late. It would never cease to amaze her how quick and silent vampires could be. It was, perhaps, the one thing that hack writers like Anne Rice had nailed on the head. At first, Buffy had thought it was simply an Angel thing, as he was the only vamp she knew that actively attempted to walk on air when he moved. Those suspicions were trashed the second she’d first seen Drusilla in the thick of a fight. The raven-haired vampire always moved as though she never touched the ground. As though all the objects around her were merely in the way of her dance.
It didn’t surprise Buffy to see them, though she couldn’t keep her heart from jumping into her throat.
“Lookee here, grandmum,” Drusilla cooed. “They’re in time for the King’s tea party.”
Buffy felt Oz and Willow still to a halt behind her.
Darla cocked her head to the side and studied them, all the while looking rather pleased with herself. That face had long become one of the more annoying burdens about town. A year as being the Hellmouth’s residential slayer, and neither she or Angel had been able to stake the old bitch.
“Honestly,”the elder vampire barked, “what kind of slayer endangers the life of her friends to save her own skin?” She shook her head, tsking like a disappointed mother. “Makes you wonder what the world’s coming to nowadays.”
Buffy’s face hardened and she tightened her grip on her stake. “Oz,” she said calmly. “Grab Willow and run.”
“No way,” the redhead objected.
“Then stay quiet.”
“Oh, give it a rest,” Darla spat. “We’re not here to fight you.”
“Well, that’s a horse of a different color, isn’t it?”
The blonde vampire frowned. “Can’t two women walk through a cemetery without being accosted by some high school cheerleader and her friends?”
“She dreams of him. Ohhh, little girls reaching for pearls that mommy said not to touch.” Drusilla mewled and placed her hands across her heart, swaying to music that only she could hear. “She closes her eyes and he is what she sees.”
“Aww.” Darla’s smile turned nasty. “Isn’t that sweet?”
Buffy glared at her, her stake-arm not wavering. “If you’re not here to fight, then what the hell are you here for?”
“Ambiance?”
The insane vampire started giggling at that, and found she couldn’t stop.
Darla’s eyes shimmered with malicious humor; the same sort of pleasure a deranged child might experience in pulling the wings off butterflies. “Angelus wants to know how you are.”
“Isn’t that thoughtful of him? You think if I send him your dust, his question’ll be answered?”
The blonde paused, her eyes narrowing. “What an immeasurable ego you have.”
“You’re one to talk.” Buffy flexed her fingers along the wood in her hand, her mind racing, her body ready to leap at any sudden movement. Her heart pounded so hard, she was afraid force could break her body. “So, what? You’re taking orders from Angel now? I thought you made him. Doesn’t that give you...what? Seniority or something?”
“A good woman knows when to stand by her man and when not to.”
“The moon laughs at us,” Drusilla cried, throwing her head back. “Ohhh. Ohhh. It itches. It crawls all over but cannot find the milk. Grandmum!”
Darla rolled her eyes and turned. “Dru, sweetie, if you don’t shut up, the moon’s gonna be laughing at you for an entirely different reason.”
The other vampire met Buffy’s eyes, her face falling into a pout. “She’s cross with me.”
“Yeah,” the Slayer agreed. “You can imagine how bad I feel about that.”
“Ohhh, look who’s bitchy when she’s not getting any.” Darla flashed a nasty smile. “Thanks for that, by the way. Other than the obvious, it’s provided a running joke that I know will stick with the family for at least three generations. Although, I must say...Angelus seems to prefer my reenactment performance to the real thing.”
Willow all but growled at that. “You vindictive little—”
“Be quiet!” Buffy snapped, trying hard to ignore the pang that struck her heart. She suddenly found herself thrown back a number of weeks. Standing in Angel’s apartment as her lover approached with that scornful, mocking look on his face, his lips pulled into a taut sneer as he pinched her cheek and told her what a pro she’d been. How he could have held up her heart and ripped it up before her eyes, and she wouldn’t have known the difference.
There was a definitive void in the place where Angel had once occupied her heart, but it was calloused over now. Hardened. He couldn’t hurt her anymore.
If anything, her night with Spike had solidified that. Angel couldn’t hurt her anymore. Not if she didn’t let him.
“Daddy likes it rough.” Drusilla giggled nastily. “He makes me quiver.”
“Shhh,” Darla admonished, a false scold falling across her face. “We mustn’t brag, Dru. That would be unseemly. After all, poor Buffy’s never gonna know. Well, unless he forces her. I guess we shouldn’t rule that out.” Her brows flickered teasingly. “He does so love it when his women squirm.”
The starry look in Drusilla’s eyes at the prospect of being ploughed by Angel left a bitter taste in her mouth. Darla was a given; she knew that Angel and Darla had been together in the years before the soul. Drusilla, though...Drusilla was another story. She’d seen the open lust in the crazy vamp’s face when Angel met her for the rendezvous in the park. She’d seen the glee that came with standing by her soulless sire’s side. However, for everything, it had taken being beat within an inch of her life for Buffy to understand just how many lives her ex-boyfriend’s turning had ruined.
Honestly, until the night before, she’d forced herself to live in a world of denial. But Spike had told her about Dru and Angel. Hell, that was why her skin was marred with healing bruises in the first place.
“So, is this it?” Buffy demanded, fingers tapping against her stake. Her arm was beginning to hurt, but she wasn’t about to waver. “You came out here to, what? Bully me? What kind of vampire are you?”
“Daddy has dibs,” Drusilla cackled. “Mummy came to make sure the dolly does what we want.”
The Slayer’s eyes darkened. “I’m not going to play for you.”
“And according to our sources, we should thank our lucky stars.”
“Uh huh. And where does Spike fit into all this?”
Buffy heard Willow gasp from behind, as though saying his name was suddenly taboo.
Darla cocked a brow. “Spike? You’re joking, right?” When she received no reply, she turned to the silent duo behind the Slayer, prodding them with a look. “Tell me she’s joking.”
“What? Isn’t he a part of the team?”
“My prince dances all alone,” Drusilla said, looking downward, almost forlorn. “He likes the light, you see. And Daddy wants us in the dark. We’re not to wander. We’re not to be disobedient dollies.” The despondent countenance vanished without warning, and the malicious grin that Buffy was beginning to loathe sprouted once more across her lips. “Daddy rewards us so nicely when we’re good.”
The Slayer swallowed hard. She was sticking her hand into a boiling frying pan, but she couldn’t help herself. Whatever had happened the night before with Spike had her loyalties split down the center. Despite her reservations and fears for warming to another vampire, this one entirely sans soul, something had happened that made them allies, if only in spirit. She knew from the way she ached how Spike felt about those he loved. How his emotions affected every inch of himself. How Drusilla’s infidelity hurt.
Dru obviously didn’t give a damn.
“I thought that you and Spike were together,” she ventured slowly, hating the sound of her voice against the mocking night. The stake in her hand was warm and clammy. Whatever was going on here needed to stop. Darla could change her mind at any moment. There was a reason beyond what was stated—a reason she had yet to attack, and Buffy had the sinking suspicion that it had nothing to do with Angelus.
“My Spike,” Dru replied nostalgically, however emotionally detached she sounded from the one she considered. “His touch is not like Angelus. His touch doesn’t make Miss Edith burn.”
“Buffy!” Willow hissed. “We need to—”
She honestly didn’t know what came over her. One second, she was standing there like a rational person, talking to two of her greatest enemies in a graveyard; the next, she was a blur of movement, tackling Drusilla to the ground with what could only be described as jealous fury pumping her veins. A betrayal of someone she cared about. A betrayal of Spike: the man that she’d touched despite his attempts to hide beneath the demon. This was, after all, the woman who was supposed to love him forever. The woman whose affection could seemingly be bought and paid for at the price of a soul. Souls were supposed to be nothing of consequence to vampires, but Angel’s had made all the difference.
Angel’s stupid soul tore people’s lives apart.
The stake had rolled away somewhere in the midst of her outrage. She’d lost sight on her objective. The only thing that made sense to her was to see Drusilla bleed for turning away from someone that loved her. Someone that would have done anything for her, as so recently Buffy would have done anything for the one that she now hated with every molecule in her body.
It lasted only seconds. Darla snarled and seized her by the shoulders.
“You fucking arrogant little bitch!”
Willow screamed her name. Buffy was too forgone to even recognize its sound against the night air.
Then in a blink, Darla was gone. Gone and replaced with eyes of the fiercest blue eyes she’d ever seen.
“Spike!” she gasped just before his fist collided with her cheekbone.
It all happened in a flurry of confused seconds. She remembered hitting the ground. Remembered the pang of betrayal that again stabbed at her stomach, only now for her own sake rather than his. The look in his eyes was anything but sympathetic, though at the same time, he looked so conflicted that her breath caught in astonishment. It only lasted a beat; the next thing she knew, a large branch crashed down on the peroxided vampire’s back, and he fell with a surprised grunt.
Willow dropped her makeshift weapon the minute Spike collapsed and grabbed Buffy by the wrist. “Come on!” she urged. “Come on!”
There was no arguing with that logic. She wasn’t about to go against three aged vampires unprepared, especially while her friends were with her. No more lives were going to be lost at her expense. She wouldn’t allow it.
So for the first time since she was called, Buffy abided her first instinct.
She ran like hell. Oz and Willow, predictably, were hot on her heels.
*~*~*
There were times when she could not be more thankful for Oz’s van. After seeing Willow home safely, he dropped her off at Revello Drive and waited until he saw her cross the threshold before pulling out of the drive.
Buffy only lingered inside for appearance’s sake. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew that Spike would be by tonight. Call it an inkling, Slayer intuition, or wishful thinking. For as abruptly as things had begun and ended in the graveyard, she knew that he would come after her, either demanding a proper end to their fight or answers as to why she’d thrashed the living hell out of Drusilla.
As though she, the Vampire Slayer, owed a vampire an explanation.
But Spike wasn’t just another vampire. Not to her. Not anymore.
Her cheek hurt where he’d punched her. God, it hurt worse than the accumulation of all the other wounds he’d given her within the last twenty-four hours.
Serves you right for trusting him, logic scolded.
There was no trust, though. There couldn’t be any trust.
Buffy didn’t have to wait long. She sat on her front porch, her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes tracing the cracks in the pavement.
“Slayer.”
She’d felt him the second he was close. That didn’t make it any easier.
“I did what I do, Spike,” she replied, looking up slowly. His eyes were wide with anger and incredulity; two sentiments she was feeling in spades at the moment. “You made it perfectly clear this morning that the next time we met, anything goes.”
“Yeh, I did,” he ground out.
“That’s right.” She held his seething gaze a beat longer, then sighed her resignation and glanced back to the pavement. “Look...she was...I know it’s crazy, but she was saying things...about you. Not that I owe you anything for, you know, not killing me, but there’s an explanation if you need it. She was saying things about you and it just...the way she talked...something snapped.”
Silence settled between them. It took a few minutes to gather the courage to glance up again.
And God, when she did, she was bathed in his awe.
“What?” he rasped.
“Something snapped.”
“Somethin’ snapped?”
“Yeah, something snapped. It doesn’t make sense to me. Nothing does, as of late, but there it is.” She glared, daring him to poke fun at her. To tell her she was some British word for crazy, laugh at her expense, and saunter off. He didn’t. He just kept looking at her.
Just kept staring.
“You kissed me this mornin’,” Spike said, rattling her with his straightforward approach to the one thing she’d refused to let herself mull over all day. The kiss that should have never been. “Why did you do that?”
Buffy found herself gazing at the pavement again, her body twitching with discomfort. “I don’t know.”
“You know you have me thoroughly buggered over, right? I can’t bloody well think straight because of you.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that.”
“Yeh, well, what did you bloody well mean for?”
“Hell if I know Look, are you here to fight, or what? My mom’s going to be home from the gallery soon, and I really don’t want her to see this.” She gestured between them. “I just got her to get off my back about Angel, and I’m really not looking to have a sequel to The Talk. So let’s fight. Let’s get this over with already. You’ll dust or I’ll die, and that’ll be that. No more worrying about Dru fights or kissage that really shouldn’t happen or freaky mortal enemies who beat the crap out of you just to patch you up again.”
Spike’s eyes flared. “Fine!”
“Fine!”
The next thing she knew, her back was pressed against the front door and his lips were mauling hers. Hot, hungry kisses. Real kisses. Kisses unlike the one she’d teased him with that morning. Kisses that started fires only to lead them to explosion. His tongue plundered her mouth, stroking hers with sensuality she hadn’t known to touch. He ignited things within her that were downright terrifying. She heard herself mewling against him, felt his own moans rumble against her chest.
God, her kisses with Angel had never been like this. Never.
She remembered thinking that morning that one taste would make her a junkie. Understatement of the century. He was a creature damned by nature, and she didn’t care. She’d let the flames of Hell lick her insides if it meant she got more of this. More of Spike. More of his mouth whispering words against hers, of his tongue exploring her, his hands mapping out her body in ways that should have shamed her for her brazen disregard of the one that had so recently broken her heart.
Buffy didn’t care. Screw the rest. That moment, the lines dividing black and white, good and evil, right and wrong vanished altogether. She was young and recently burnt, but she wanted back in the frying pan. She wanted the imprint of Angel washed away completely.
More than that. She wanted Spike.
How screwed up was that?
No more so than her mouth suckling hungrily at his tongue, or the thrill that ran down her spine when he moaned into her.
It felt that years passed before they pulled apart, gasping together, his brow resting against hers. It was oddly the most erotic moment of her young life. Knowing that she, an inexperienced and recently scorned ex-virgin, could make him pant like that. Could make him forget that he didn’t need to breathe. Could make him nuts for her, the enemy, just as she feared she was nuts for him.
“Spike,” she murmured against his lips. Softly. Sweetly.
And evidently, gentility was the only thing that could break the spell around them. It was over. Whatever had happened was over with such a small word. Such a heartfelt plea to sensations that she knew were forbidden, but couldn’t help but sample. She felt his body freeze beneath her fingers. The passion evaporated from his eyes. He knew her, then. Remembered who he was—and more importantly, who she was.
Who they were to each other.
The azure of his eyes melted into yellow. His roar of confused fury pierced the silence around them. Then he shoved her back against the door, angry and violent, and was gone the next second. Gone. No billowing exit. No snappy insult. He was there one second, and gone the next.
Buffy stared after him, shaken and disoriented.
He was gone.
But more than that, he’d left her without saying a word.
TBC |
