It was 2:54 in the afternoon and Buffy was the only one home.  It was dark out, overcast to the point of total eclipse.  Rain beat on the windows like a wild thing.  It pounded the glass, desperate for entry, howling out in need.  The lights flickered but came back.  Buffy wandered into her bedroom.  She sat on her bed and pulled her feet up.  Hugging her knees tight to her chest, she listened to the forlorn sounds of the storm.   

It reminded her of him.  But then again…everything reminded her of him.  He would like this.  He would not like that.  The black lace skirt but not the pink satin blouse.  The English Heather not the French Vanilla.  He liked her hair long, her lips glossy and her shoulders bare.  Buffy knew instinctively what would make him laugh and what would make him arch one eyebrow in disdain.   

She sighed and shifted, stretching out a bit on the comforter.  She thought about the last four days.  Long days alone and longer nights.  Four nights ago she had cried on Tara’s lap, sobbing out her confession.  Buffy had begged for condemnation.  She had planned on doing penance.  Tara had given her nothing but a sympathetic ear and comforting arms.  “Love him…or don’t,” the wiccan had said, offering no clear answer.  It was apparently all okay.  There was no right or wrong in Tara’s mind just shades of gray.  She left it up to Buffy to choose her own path.   

Giles or Xander or Angel or her father or her sister, almost anyone but Tara would have given her some sign to go by, a firm stand in black or white.  They would have listed her sins or explained them away.  They would have been sure of themselves and Buffy would have hung her head in shame or maybe come out fighting.  She didn’t really know.  She only knew how to react.  

It was how she lived her life, this new life of jagged edges and shades of gray.  She blocked and parried.  She experienced the moment, adapted to the assault.  She lived by her ability to adjust to whatever came at her, defeating evil and defending good.  But she didn’t know how to decide between the infinite shades of gray. 

And Spike refused to help her.  He wouldn’t be an evil thing for her, not even for the second it would take to dust him.  He had shown her nothing but love and she had beaten him for his tender insolence.  It had been ugly, evil…not of the good.  It had been wrong!  It was easy to see the wrongness in that kind of violence between a man and a woman.   

But Spike wasn’t a man.  Buffy didn’t understand why she had to keep reminding herself of the fact.  He was evil, a demon, a vampire.  Not her lover but her enemy, her prey.  He hunted her kind.  He had butchered the innocent: men, women, children and her fellow Slayers.  It was what he did.  What she did too.  They hunted and killed.  It was simple, clean and easily understood.  Things were always black and white in the predatory dance.  You survived…or you didn’t. 

Buffy looked at the clock again.  It was 3:16 p.m.  If she’d been the Slayer for even one second five nights ago, the rain would be scattering his dust this afternoon, washing him into the sewers.  Buffy slid her feet to the cold floor and stood.  She walked out into the hallway.  Eyeing the thermostat, she weighed the cost of turning up the heat.  It was set at an economical, if frosty, 63 degrees.  She considered changing out of her light cotton dress but didn’t have the energy to re-coordinate.  She padded back into her bedroom and rummaged up a sweater.   

Then she went down the hall to the bathroom.  Dawn would be home from school in thirty minutes.  Willow had a late class but Buffy had asked for the night off.   She planned to spend it with her little sister.  She’d rented a teen-friendly chick flick on the way home from the DoubleMeat.  She had everything she needed to make Mom’s famous macaroni and three cheese casserole.  It was Dawn’s favorite dinner.  Buffy had been practicing the sauce for two weeks as a surprise.  It was finally perfected, nice and creamy.  As soon as Dawn came home they would talk and cook and watch TV and hopefully Buffy would be able to make her baby sister feel important, again. 

The phone rang and Buffy cursed the economy of having only two lines.  The bathroom phone no longer worked.  She heard the machine pick up.   

“Buffy?” Tara’s voice on the line. “It’s Tara! Are you there?  Okay…didn’t think you’d be home but just in case….  I picked Dawn up from school.” 

Buffy squeaked in impotent protest and rushed to finish as Tara went on speaking. 

“The weather is so bad, I wanted to make sure she was okay.  Anyway, we’re going to go across the highway to the mall and wait it out.  We’ll grab a pizza…maybe see a movie and then I’ll bring her straight home.  Didn’t want you to worry if you came back and found her missing.  Talk to you later, okay?  Bye!”  

Buffy pounded down the stairs and snatched up the receiver. 

“Tara?” she yelped. “Tara?” The dial tone buzzed in her ear. “Damn!” 

She dialed star 69 and was reminded by a polite digital voice that her current service did not include this feature.   

“Damn,” Buffy repeated, slamming the phone down.  She immediately picked it up again to check for damages.  They really couldn’t afford a new phone.  It seemed okay.   

Buffy ran one hand through her hair as she looked around the dimly lit living room.  The empty house seemed to expand around her, growing vast and even colder.  She could hear the echo of the rain on the roof.  It was a lonely sound.  The Slayer shivered and crossed quickly to turn on the TV.  She flicked through the channels: soap, soap, news, infomercial and finally an ancient sit-com.  Banal humor and canned laughter seemed like just the ticket to lighten Buffy’s oppressive mood.  She left the sound on for company and plodded into the kitchen, turning on lights as she went. 

Pots, bowls and ingredients were laid out on the counter in readiness.  She considered cooking but dismissed the idea.  Leftover three cheese casserole was Dawn’s least favorite meal.   With a tiny sigh, Buffy began putting the room temperature cheese and softened butter back in the fridge.  She shook the macaroni jar, smiling slightly at the click and clatter of the noodles.  A swift sensory memory came back to her of playing musical kitchen with Dawn and their Mom.  Buffy leaned over to switch on the radio.  She let the top-forty take her to a happier place.  In her mind, her macaroni maracas and Dawn’s pot lid cymbals accompanied Joyce Summers on the wine glass xylophone.   

Lightning crackled outside the window.  There was a bright blue flash and the power slammed off.  The TV made a sizzling noise and Buffy rushed to unplug it.  The cord was hot.  She cursed and kicked the wall, leaving a small notch in the plaster.  She knelt down to examine the damage and cursed again.  Something caught her eye.  A glimmer of silver under the edge of the TV.  Curious, she reached out.  Her fingers recognized the object even as they closed around it.  It was a ring, size nine, a half-inch wide and fashioned in open links like a chain.  She nearly let it drop.   

But she didn’t.  Instead, she turned it in her hand, tracing the pattern of interlocking ovals.  She slipped it onto her right index finger.  Spike wore it there but, of course, it was too large for the Slayer’s delicate hand.  Her thumb worried at it, sliding it around, up and down the length of her finger.  The smoothness of the silver and the boldness of the design intrigued her and stimulated her memory.  She remembered the first and last time Spike wore it.  In the basement of an abandoned building and then through to the following night. 

He had lost it. And he’d probably never missed it.  He had others.  But this one was special to Buffy.  This one had pleasured her in ways that she had never even dreamed were possible.   

She flashed back to just after the car accident that broke her sister’s arm.  Spike had agreed to sit with the pain-medicated Dawn while the Slayer did her patrol.  Buffy had come home to find them curled up on the sofa playing black-jack and gin rummy for trinkets.  Spike’s winnings had immediately captured her attention.  She’d yelped in dismay as she caught a glimpse of the lip balm and hair scrunchies that the vampire was pocketing.  They were Buffy’s things, stolen from her bedroom.  Her sister had scooped up a guilty handful of Spike’s silver and scampered up the stairs, seconds before the fight broke out.   

Buffy hadn’t seen his chain link ring since that night.  So many times she had wanted to ask about it.  But she didn’t want to explain why she’d missed it.  Even now, in the privacy of her empty house, she felt a blush rise in her cheeks as she pumped her finger in and out of the silver circlet.  Buffy moistened her lips.  She slid her left palm along her outer thigh until she hit bare skin.  

Her fingers gathered up the hem of her skirt, raising it to expose the swell of her hip.  Saliva pooled in Buffy’s mouth and she swallowed convulsively.  She glanced toward the stairs.  Her mind was already constructing a self-pleasuring scenario.  No one would be home for hours.  She was on the fourth step when the front door clicked open behind her. 

“Fuck,” she breathed out, making a fist around the ring to hide it.   

Her expletive was barely audible.  It was smothered by the rush of the storm entering the house in the wake of a cold, wet body.  But Spike heard it none the less. 

“Language, Pet!” he exclaimed, in mock dismay, as he slammed the door closed behind him, cutting off the sounds of wind and rain.   

Buffy tried not to turn around.  She didn’t want to see him.  Couldn’t bear to face him. Not after what she’d done.  Not after what she’d learned about herself.  There was no easy excuse for her brutality, now.  Or for her dark desires.  She wasn’t a monster by magical accident.  She was a monster by choice.   

She listened to Spike shake the water off his duster and tried to wish him away.  It was a fruitless wish. Five nights ago, she had beaten him half-senseless in the hope of driving him away.  During their long acquaintance, she had, by turns, loathed him, pitied him, rejected him, insulted him and tried to kill him.  There had been long stretches of time when she hadn’t given him a thought but she had always been his obsession.  She had shown him every repulsive part of herself.  He accepted her completely and never wavered in his single-minded pursuit of her.   

But things were different now.  Tara had told her the truth and the truth should make things different.  Buffy thought she would feel the difference inside, but she didn’t.  Her body reacted to him, regardless of the truth.  Her heart was hammering.  Her mouth was suddenly dry and elsewhere she was growing wet.  He stepped onto the stairs, moving close to her.  Muscles clenched in her lower abdomen and her lips parted ever so slightly. 

“Or was that an offer?” he whispered, stirring the hair on the back of her neck. 

Buffy’s first instinct was to hit him.  Strike back with her elbow and take him down a peg or two.  She could feel the tension building inside her chest.  She could see the scene clearly in her mind; a quick jab, turn, kick, power in, shove, punch, slam him up against the door or the wall and rip open his shirt, lay him bare, drag him to the floor and devour him whole.  It would all be over in a matter of minutes.  And it would go on for hours.  No one was coming home.  No one would have to know.   

Buffy sighed.  She would know.  And so would he.  

“Why won’t you stop?” 

“You know why,” he said. 

“Because you lo-,” she choked on the word. 

“I love you,” he said, having no trouble at all. 

“Why?” Buffy said, turning at last to face him. 

She was almost undone by the sight of him…drenched…broken…openly devoted.  His face was still bruised and slightly swollen.  His hair was a wild tangle of wind-tossed curls.  His clothes were sopping wet.  Buffy was impaled by his intent blue gaze.  Spike seemed to be staring straight into her soul as his lower lip pouted into fullness.  He looked wounded and as innocent as a lost lamb. 

“Because,” he hesitated, dropping his glance to his feet to mumble, “b-because I can’t stop.” 

“That isn’t a reason,” Buffy snapped, stepping down to his level on the stairs.  She moved past him toward the door. “It’s an excuse.” 

“What do you want from me?” Spike snarled, lifting his head to glare at her back. 

“Nothing,” Buffy sighed, as she opened the front door and stood aside so he could leave. “I don’t want anything from you ever again.” 

Spike scuffed down the stairs.  He stopped beside her and stood looking out into the storm.  Neither of them moved for some time and then, reaching out one arm, he wrenched the door from Buffy’s hand and shut it firmly on the outside world.  He turned to glower at her. 

“Wild melon and honey,” he said, with brutal satisfaction.   

Buffy blinked, “And huh?” 

“The taste of your lips,” Spike replied, favoring her with a smug look.  Turning away, he wandered toward the living room calling back over his shoulder, “Reason number one on a very long list.” 

Buffy frowned after him.  She glanced at the closed door wondering why he wasn’t on the other side of it.  Sharp pain drew her awareness to her fisted hand.  She opened her fingers, revealing the remains of his ring and the cutting damage it had done to her palm as her Slayer strength crushed it.   

She leaned sideways to peer around the corner into the living room.  Spike was seated in his favorite chair, dripping onto the upholstery.  He was staring back at her.   

“It’s Raspberry Pizzazz,” she informed him, feeling slightly silly as she edged into the room. 

“Not then it wasn’t,” he corrected, indicating a spot on the sofa opposite him with a gentlemanly wave of his hand.  “Not the first time we kissed.” 

Buffy sighed audibly but walked over and reluctantly took the pre-offered seat.  She pulled her feet up and tucked the hem of her skirt around her knees. 

“In your crypt you mean, after Glory tortu…” she began.  Her voice trailed off and a small frown creased her forehead as her eyes were drawn to his bruised face. Glory had beaten him, too.  It was the sort of thing a Hell God would do. 

“No,” he said, sighing out the word.  “I mean the first time…EVER!” He clarified, as if offended by her obtuseness.   

Buffy continued to look blank and Spike prompted her, “In your sodding Watcher’s apartment?”  His tone, as he continued, was bitter, almost self-mocking.  “Took me weeks to get the taste out of my mouth.  All sweet and refreshing.  Melon and honey.  It kept coming back to me,” his voice trailed off as he stared past her out the living room window.  With a slight shrug, he returned to the present and added, “Still does occasionally.” 

She watched him take out a cigarette and toy with it.  Spike knew that she didn’t allow smoking in the house.  Buffy wondered if he would challenge her rule the way he’d just challenged her perceptions. 

“You hated me,” she reminded him, her voice insistent. “You wanted me dead.” 

“Did I?” 

A thin dagger of fear sliced into Buffy’s heart at his gentle inquiry.   Old memories flooded back to her.  The feel of Spike holding her in his arm, as she snuggled on his lap.  The smell of his skin, earthy and comforting.  The confidence she’d had in him when he’d offered to take care of Giles.  But most of all, the taste of his mouth when they’d kissed, whiskey and tobacco and orange oil.  Long after Willow’s horrid spell had been broken, Buffy continued having erotic dreams of smoke-filled bars and fresh oranges. 

“The way your hair bounces,” Spike continued, after a bit of reflective silence.  Carrying the cigarette to his lips with one hand, he fished out his lighter with the other.  “Even now that you’ve cut it,” he mouthed, around the filter-tip. 

Buffy cleared her throat, pointedly, just as Spike flipped open his lighter to stike up the flame.  She narrowed her eyes at him. He removed the unlit fag from his mouth and placed it on the coffee-table.  

“The short leash,” he growled, stabbing her with a meaningful glare.  

Against her will, Buffy laughed at this, “You like the constraints?” 

“I like the way you apply them,” he acknowledged.  He raked her with an openly suggestive look, making her quiver inside.  “Like the way you rein me in.” 

“That’s lust,” Buffy said, covering her own quick swirl of desire with a ready anger, “not love.” 

“Same difference,” Spike shrugged. 

“No,” she said, with a firm shake of her head. “It’s really not.”   

Buffy stood.  She looked at him with open hostility for a moment.  Then turned on her heel and stalked quickly from the room, forestalling his next comment.  She crossed the hallway and entered the kitchen.  Spike picked up his cigarette and followed her at a more leisurely pace.  He went straight through the house to the back door and opened it.  He didn’t look toward the sink, where Buffy stood watching him.  Lighting up his cigarette, he exhaled into the storm.  Time passed, companionably, as vampire and Slayer silently contemplated the untamed fury of Mother Nature. 

“Joyce,” Spike said, ten or fifteen minutes later.  His voice was flat as he studied the sheets of water lashing over the eaves. 

Buffy’s mind went blank.  She gaped at Spike, feeling nothing but an icy numbness. 

After a moment, she managed to stutter, “I-I-d-don’t…what?” 

“Joyce,” Spike repeated, still watching the rain. “I love that Joyce was your Mother.”  He puffed out a final plumb of blue smoke, sighed and flicked his cigarette butt out into the storm.  Closing the door, he turned to face the Slayer as he asked, “Do you remember our first fight?” 

“At the school,” Buffy nodded, beginning to relax again. 

“Yeah,” Spike agreed, “And Joyce coming into the middle of it with the ax and the attitude.”  He chuckled at the memory. “’Get the hell away from my daughter’,” he quoted, clutching an imaginary weapon in front of his chest. 

“Mom,” Buffy said, wistfully, tearing up.  Spike edged around the free-standing kitchen island, halting a few feet away from her. 

“I couldn’t bloody believe it,” Spike recalled. “Little human spitfire, all puffed up and,” he shook his head at the absurd notion, “protecting the Slayer.” 

“You could have killed her,” Buffy acknowledged, leaning back against the sink edge. “Easily!” She looked down and away and then back up at him to ask, “Why didn’t you?” 

“And then what?” Spike returned. “You would have recovered.  Probably taken that ax to me…lopped off my head.” 

“You didn’t know that,” she said.  

They both paused to consider how things might have changed between them if Spike had killed Joyce during their first fight. 

“I might have fallen apart,” Buffy admitted. 

“Not you,” Spike smiled, shaking his head.  “You would have found your strength.  Like you did with Angel.” 

“I’m not as strong as people think.” 

“I know,” Spike agreed, to Buffy’s surprise.  “But you’re resilient, resourceful, and able to focus yourself in battle.  You don’t collapse under pressure.  You adapt.” 

Buffy felt a warm glow in the pit of her stomach, the smallest ember igniting from his flattery.  She mentally reprimanded herself.  Spike saw her soften.  He basked in the heat as a blush rose in her skin.  Without thinking, he stepped closer. 

Continued...