Chapter Eleven
Buffy burst in the door of the shelter, heedless of the startled looks from the few men left who had not found a bed for the night.
“Where is she?” she snarled at the closest one. Eyes wide in terror at the expression on the face of the petite blond in front of him, he pointed silently toward the basement stairs and moved quickly out the door. When an equally angry-looking Spike appeared right behind her, everyone left in the room headed for the open door; confident their chances of living through the night would be better outside than in the suddenly less-safe appearing sanctuary.
As Buffy reached the stairs, Spike caught up with her and grabbed her arm.
“Slayer. Buffy. Let me do this, love. I’m the injured party here.”
She stood rigidly, trembling with anger, then relaxed and let out a deep breath.
“All right. You can do it. But I’m coming down there with you. Who knows what she’ll try next.”
Rolling his eyes at the idea that Anne had anything else left, he stepped in front of Buffy and jumped quickly to the bottom of the stairs. His sudden arrival on the basement floor brought a startled shriek from a woman he’d never seen before. It took a few seconds before it registered that in spite of her obvious fear of him, the only heartbeats he could hear in the room were Anne’s and Buffy’s.
Amber eyes flashed at him from the only other man in the room, and he felt his demon respond to the threat. Although there was no mistaking the pallor of the three thin women with him, they made no attempt to vamp out, but huddled together in fear behind the skinny demon. Anne was still holding the linens she’d been about to hand to them when she saw Spike’s face. She froze, bedding in hand, and began to back away from her ex lover and the clearly angry woman behind him.
“Slayer…” he said calmly knowing she would understand him.
“I’m on it.” She stepped to his side, stake in hand. A little voice inside her whispered, “Let them have her. Then you’ll have a good excuse to slay her.” and she said with some reluctance, “Step away from them, Anne. You know what they are.”
“I know they’re homeless. They need a place to live, just like anybody else.”
“You’re going to let them set up a lair in your basement?” The slayer’s voice went up an octave. “What are you planning to do, serve them any clients that give you a hard time?”
“W…we don’t kill people,” one of the women whispered. “We…I don’t bite anybody unless they want me to.”
Spike and Buffy took another look at the three heavily made up and scantily clad women. While Spike sneered and muttered, “Bloody hell, Anne” Buffy rolled her eyes. “Oh, even better, you’re setting up a vamp whorehouse.”
“You don’t need to be so high and mighty,” the male vamp sniffed, feeling braver now that no one was dust yet. “Living here was good enough for your boy friend until you came back.”
Barely maintaining control over his demon, Spike snarled, “And you would be what – their pimp?”
“He takes care of them,” Anne said bravely, stepping between Spike and the growling vamp. “If I let them live here, he’ll take your place working here when you leave.”
While Spike was struck speechless, Buffy gestured to the three cowering female vampires and hissed, “Get out of here. Now, before I change my mind.”
She stepped further into the room so that they could skitter past her and up the stairs, resisting the urge to hurl her stake into someone’s back as they went by. Meanwhile, Spike was stalking toward his former lover and the vampire hiding behind her.
“It was never about me, was it?” he growled. “It was all about having a vampire. Is that why you did this?” He pulled the Lethe’s Bramble from his pocket and waved it in her shocked face. “So you could have your own pet vampire?”
He slipped out of vamp face and allowed the hurt to show through the anger as he said, “You never loved me, did you? You couldn’t have done that to me if you did.”
“I did love you! I loved you before you ever came to live here,” she insisted with a sob. “I still do! But you never looked at me. You would have left LA after the battle if you’d remembered who you were. You would have left me to find Buffy. Just like you’re leaving me now. You’re leaving with her.” She pointed to a still angry slayer. “In spite of everything, you’re going back to her and—“
“Everything? What everything?”
“Nothing, love. I don’t know what she’s talking about.”
“Oh yes, you do. If you’ve got all your memories back, then you know how she sent all those slayers to get the crazy one that cut off your hands. Where was she then, huh? She couldn’t even be bothered to come when you were hurt. You know that when Fred got sick the council refused to help. They let her die. And when you and Angel took on all those demons and dragons, where was your precious slayer then? Where was the help? You would have died if I hadn’t found you and pulled you in out of the sun. She didn’t care.”
“She didn’t know,” Buffy said in a deadly tone. “There was good reason not to trust Angel with an insane slayer, especially after he took over Wolfram and Hart. And what does she mean, Dana cut off your hands?”
Anne continued as though Buffy hadn’t spoken. “What about Fred? Gunn told me, Angel called and asked for help finding out what was killing her and your watcher turned him down. Told him to deal with it himself.”
Buffy looked at Spike for confirmation and when he nodded she shut her eyes briefly. “I’m sorry about Fred. I didn’t know. Giles handles the council business. He never told me Angel called.”
“Nice to know the wanker is still his compassionate self,” Spike muttered.
“Spike, we thought Angel might have turned evil again. We were afraid to trust him. I…I told Giles not to trust him. I’m sorry.”
“You see!” Anne’s high-pitched voice interrupted their muted conversation. “She didn’t trust anybody. She didn’t trust YOU.”
Slayer and vampire stared into each other’s eyes, ignoring the other two people in the room.
“I would have trusted you,” she said softly. “If I’d known, I would have trusted you.”
“It’s alright, pet,” he said with a sigh. “We didn’t trust him ourselves for a while there. No reason why you should have.”
They stepped closer to each other and Buffy asked softly, “Do you think we’ll ever get to a place where we aren’t apologizing to each other for something?”
“I hope not,” he grinned lasciviously. “The more fights we have, the more often we get to make up.”
While Anne glared at the flirting pair, the other vampire tried to use their focus on each other to sneak up the stairs. He eased around Anne and edged along the wall, moving swiftly and silently until Spike’s hand shot out and grabbed him around the neck.
Never taking his eyes off Buffy’s, he asked, “What do you want to do with this wanker, love?”
She glanced at the frightened, snarling demon Spike was holding and said, “You know if we leave him here, she’s going to take him in sooner or later.”
Spike looked from the scrawny vampire to the woman he’d thought loved him for who he was and shrugged.
“She deserves what she gets,” he said, dropping the vamp to the floor.
“I won’t hurt her,” he snarled, rubbing his neck. “I know how to appreciate what I have.”
“So do I,” Spike said, pulling Buffy closer. “And I’ve got the real thing. A woman who loves all of me, not just the demon inside.”
With one last look of contempt at the woman he’d thought was in love with him and at the pathetic vampire cowering against the wall, he took Buffy’s hand and started up the stairs. He stopped when he felt Buffy halt behind him and turned to see her staring at Anne and the vamp with the cold eyes of a killer.
She waited until Anne met her gaze; then said clearly and distinctly, “I slay vampires, Lily. You and your new friend there need to remember that. If he turns you, I’ll be back…for both of you.”
Anne lifted her chin defiantly and glared back. She fingered the fading scars on her neck and said stubbornly, “He’ll be back for me. He won’t be able to stay away from my blood.”
“Nice try,” Buffy sneered, “but I know that’s not a claim.” She tilted her head and pushed her golden waves to one side. “THIS is a claim,” she sniffed, turning her back on the other woman’s stricken face and triumphantly following Spike the rest of the way up the stairs.
They were silent until they’d walked most of the way toward the hotel, the slayer still seething and the vampire trying to reconcile the pain of finding out it wasn’t the man that Anne had loved with the joy of hearing Buffy announce that she belonged to him. Their only conversation consisted of Buffy’s remark that she would ask the LA slayers to keep an eye on the shelter and its manager and do whatever needed to be done.
Spike nodded silently and pondered the changes that had taken place through the years. The slayer he first met in Sunnydale saw the whole world in black and white. Vampires – bad, slay; humans – good, protect. This new, mature slayer was able to see the shades of gray that surrounded them and always had. He wondered when she had started seeing things that way and how much their twisted relationship might have had to do with it.
Without discussion, they entered the hotel and went directly to her room. While Buffy went into the bathroom briefly, Spike called room service and ordered a bottle of iced champagne sent up. She looked at him curiously when he hung up the phone, but didn’t ask what he’d been doing. Instead she sat down and took off her boots, then started to remove her halter top.
“Best leave that on for a few, love,” Spike said, stoking her arm appreciatively and nuzzling the low neckline.
Her lip came out in a pout when the knock on the door interrupted his tongue’s exploration of her bare chest. Laughing gently, Spike gave one last lick to her exposed nipple, and tugged the top back up before he walked to the door. He quickly took the icer and champagne from the waiter, handing over the tip he already had in his hand and closing the door on his face before the man could respond.
He set the bottle and bucket next to the bed; then turned to look at the puzzled slayer.
“I thought we might get thirsty…later,” he offered as an explanation.
“So you got champagne?”
“Well,” he said, nibbling on his marks on her neck and smiling when she shivered all over, “I also thought we might want to have a toast at some point and—“
Her lips on his effectively stopped his explanation and he willingly let her push him backwards until he fell onto the bed. He pulled his arms around her lower back and held her hips against his as she continued the kiss until she had to stop for air. While she panted against his neck, he slowly unzipped her pants, sliding an appreciative hand over her smooth bare ass as he pushed them down. With a moan, she slid off to the side and lay bonelessly while he slowly removed the only two pieces of clothing she’d worn that night.
When she was naked and spread shamelessly before him, Spike stopped to soak in the sight and revel in the lust and love glazing her eyes. Without bothering to remove his own clothes, he began to worship her body with his lips and tongue, beginning at her hairline and trailing wet, open-mouthed kisses down her jaw, across her throat, and onto her collarbone. He paused at each rosy nipple to suck and lick on it until they were both standing up into little hard peaks and Buffy was pushing them toward his mouth with small mews of contentment.
While his mouth was busy at her breasts, his hand was stroking down her sunkissed skin until he found the neatly trimmed hairs at the bottom of her abdomen. He ran his cool fingers all around the area that she was soon arching up at him, stroking the insides of her thighs, lightly walking them across the skin of her stomach and smiling when he saw the muscles clench in anticipation. He dipped one finger into the moisture pooling between her legs and spread it up her cleft to coat it in her juices. He did that several more times, smiling at the way she gasped each time he reached her needy clit. Then he brought his finger to his mouth and sucked off the wetness there.
Her moaned, “Spiiiiiiike….” And the way she spread her legs even more for him put an end to his teasing and he buried his face in her, lapping up the moisture he’d help spread and worrying her clit lightly with his blunt teeth. He sucked it into his mouth, pulling on it with the strength of a creature that drinks its meals from the veins of live, unwilling hosts, until he felt her begin to tremble around him and gasp his name.
He held on to her while she bucked and moaned until she fell back with a final shudder. Then he released his hold on her hips and stood up to remove his own clothes. Stripping quickly, he joined her on the bed, pressing his erection into her hip and nuzzling at her throat.
“I want you, Buffy,” he breathed into her neck. “Want to make you mine forever.”
“All of you wants me?” she managed to whisper, still shaking from the orgasm he’d created.
“All of me. My body craves your touch, my demon wants to possess you, and the poncy poet inside wants to write sonnets to you until you run screaming from the room.”
“I don’t want all those people mad at me,” she smiled into the curls tickling her face. “So I guess we’d better give them what they want, huh?”
“Only if you want it too, sweetheart,” he said, suddenly serious. “This is going to be for as long as we live. You’ll be mine. Even if we’re not together, the connection will still be there. Need you to be sure, love.”
Instead of answering him, she asked, “And you’ll be mine, right?”
“I’ve always been yours, my love. I always will be.”
“Then I will always be yours,” she murmured.
“That works out nicely, then,” he purred happily, covering her body with his and sliding into her waiting warmth. He rocked his hips gently at first, still getting used to being back in the place he wanted to stay until he dusted. It wasn’t long before the tightness and heat in which he had buried his cock was making slow and gentle a thing of the past and he began to pound into her harder, causing Buffy to grab the side of the mattress to prevent being smashed into the headboard.
She let go long enough to flip them over, leaving her riding his hips, pushing down onto him as hard as she could while he continued to drive up into her. Her nails dug bloody furrows on his chest as she clenched around him and she leaned forward, licking the blood that trickled from them.
“Mine,” she growled against his chest, feeling her orgasm building and knowing what was coming. She stretched out along his body, hips never stopping, and presented her neck to his true face. Spike’s surprise at hearing her make a claim first quickly evaporated in the face of the succulent blood pulsing scant centimeters from his fangs.
“Yours,” he gasped before sinking his canines into the marks he’d already put on her soft throat. When he began pulling deep draughts of her blood, she screamed in ecstasy as she was caught in spiraling waves of pain/pleasure. His own release continued for so long he thought he was going to lose consciousness from the sensations flowing between them.
Somewhere in the part of his brain that wasn’t completely lost in pain and pleasure he realized that he was pulling too much from the willing woman in his arms, and he tore his mouth away with a guttural “Mine.”
“Yours,” she whispered before passing out. “Yours forever.”
It was several exhausted minutes before it occurred to Spike that Buffy wasn’t moving and he felt his heart freeze when he couldn’t hear hers beating any more. An anguished scream was already working its way out of his throat when he felt, more than heard, a faint thump against his chest. Clutching her to him and praying to a god he wasn’t sure he believed in, he held as still as only a dead man can, waiting to feel another thump.
When he felt and heard the slightly stronger thud, he felt his eyes flood with tears and he began to shake. By the time Buffy’s heartbeat was steady, if slow, he had moved her off to one side and was trying to force some champagne through her pale lips. When her eyes fluttered open and she was able to rasp, “Ok, so THAT was a claim. My mistake,” he collapsed onto her stomach sobbing with relief and regret.
“Not exactly feeling the happiness here,” she whispered, lifting one weak hand to pet his head. “What’s the matter? Are you sorry you did it?” A trace of uncertainty slipped into her attempt at cheering him up, and at the sound of her fear he sobbed harder.
“Spike?” Real concern was now present and she struggled weakly to push him off so she could sit up and look at him. Forcing himself to gain control, he rolled off of her, still clinging to her body, but swallowing his sobs until he was able to answer.
“I almost killed you,” he gasped out. “I almost let the demon drain you with the claim.”
“Kinda woulda defeated the purpose, wouldn’t it?” she asked, sounding slightly stronger as her slayer healing kicked. “Claim me for the rest of my life and then kill me off? Not too smart.”
“You don’t understand, pet. I want you forever. If you’d died the demon would have wanted to turn you. Make you immortal, like me.”
“Would you have done that?” her voice shook as she finally understood why he was so upset.
He shook his head vigorously. “No, love. I wouldn’t do that to you. Know you wouldn’t want it. I’d have let you go to the peace you deserve. And then I would have walked out to meet tomorrow’s sunrise. God, I am such a bloody fuck-up!”
There was silence for minutes as they were lost in their own thoughts. Through the claim, Spike could feel Buffy’s confusion and compassion. He could also feel the love that still emanated from her. He felt no righteous anger, no fear, just a calm acceptance of what had happened.
Buffy could feel his intense pain at his actions, the fear of losing her that still lingered, and over all of it the abiding love that he’d held for her in the face of years of rejection, abuse and abandonment. She could feel the love washing over her, soothing the pain of the bites and surrounding her with warmth and a fierce desire to protect her from harm.
“Hey,” she said softly, “buy a girl a drink?” She waved a hand at the glass of champagne he’d set down when she awoke and he scrambled to raise it to her lips watching eagerly as she sipped slowly.
“As soon as I know you’re going to be alright, I’ll go get you some orange juice,” he said apologetically.
“Orange juice, grape juice, same thing,” she said, taking bigger sips as she began to feel stronger. “This will do me.”
She sat up and began to drink it in earnest, switching glasses when the one she was drinking from was empty. She drained the other glass and looked at him expectantly.
“More, please,” she said imperiously, holding out her glass.
“You’re going to get snockered, pet,” he said with a tentative smile.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” she said cheerfully, waving her re-filled glass around. “You’ve gotten me drunk before.”
“I was trying to get you into bed then. Now I want to get you out of it.” At her disbelieving look, he amended, ”Well, maybe not out of it, but at least strong enough to get out of it should there be a reason to.”
“I think I need to replace my fluids,” she said primly. “And you should be helping me do it since you took them away.”
Spike sighed and reached for his pants. “I’m going to get you some orange juice and water. You just wait here and rest.”
As he watched her toss down another glass of the rapidly disappearing champagne, he grimaced. Crossing to the bathroom, he filled the glass in there with water and brought it to her, saying, “Try to stay sober until I get back, please pet?”
“Fine, Mr. Party Pooper,” she grumbled, replacing the champagne flute with the bathroom water glass. “But you better be quick.”
“Back in a flash, love.” He dropped a kiss on her head and looked into her eyes. “Do you have any idea how much I love you?” he mused almost to himself.
“Almost as much as I love you,” she offered softly watching him walk out the door.
While he was gone, Buffy drained the water glass and, feeling much better, got up to wander around the room. She decided to blame her dizziness on the blood loss rather than the champagne and poured herself another glass when she passed near the bottle.
“Shhhh,” she said to her reflection in the mirror. “Don’t tell Shpike. He’s a worry-wart. Thinks I can’t hold my likker, but I’ll show him…”
She held the glass up to the girl in the mirror and offered a toast. “To Buffy and Shpike. They’re claimed. Mates forever. I wonder what forever feels like?” she mumbled as she drained the glass.
Staggering back over to the bed, she poured some more champagne into two glasses, spilling only a small amount of it on the nightstand. “Go, slayer coordination,” she giggled, swiping at it with her discarded top. Which caused her to notice her lack of clothing. She was frowning down at herself as Spike came back through the door carrying a sixpack of water and a half-gallon carton of orange juice.
“Did you know I was naked?” she demanded, kneeling up on the bed to glare at him.
“I did notice that, pet,” he answered, staring suspiciously at the two filled champagne flutes. “Been replacing those fluids again, have you?” he said, with a smile.
“You told me to,” she said self-righteously. “I was just obeying my mate.”
“Good thing to do,” he grinned, shedding his clothes quickly. “Think you might be able to make it a habit?”
“Nope!” she said, poking him with her finger. “I jus’ did it caush I wanted ‘nother drink.”
“Have I mentioned how adorable you are when you’re drunk?”
“Even when I throw up on your boots?” she asked meekly, indicating that she might not be quite as drunk as she seemed.
“Even then,” he agreed, sitting back against the headboard and pulling her back against his chest. As it always was around her, his cock was hard enough to be nudging against her back, but he was content for the moment to ignore it and just enjoy the warm body leaning against him. He tilted his head and looked at the angry-looking marks on her throat. Lowering his mouth to her neck he gently laved the fang-shaped punctures, smiling at Buffy’s contented sighs as he did so.
“We need to make our toast,” she said finally, turning her head so that he could kiss her.
“All right, love. Hand me one of those glasses, won’t you?”
Buffy turned around to face him, sitting on his lap and wrapping her legs around his hips as she clinked her glass against his. His now fully erect cock was sticking up between them, making Buffy smile.
“Is that thing ever asleep?” she giggled, dribbling champagne onto it and bending with slayer flexibility to lick if off. Spike groaned as her warm tongue moved over the tip and made him even harder.
“Not when you’re around, it isn’t,” he growled, lifting her hips up until she was poised over him. “Why don’t we just put it away where you don’t have to look at it, yeah?” He lowered her until he was fully sheathed inside her and her warm ass was pressing against his balls.
“Mmmmmmmm, good place for it,” she agreed, wriggling slightly and sighing with pleasure.
“Now then, where were we, pet?” he asked, picking his glass back up.
“We were toasting Spike and Buffy cause they’re…claimed? Mated? Married? What are we?”
“We’re us, love. We’re together in a way that very few couples, human or vampire, can ever be. It doesn’t matter what we call it, we’re just us. Buffy and Spike.”
“To us,” she whispered, touching her glass against his gently.
“To us,” he agreed, for the first time in his life feeling as though he truly belonged to someone completely.
Never taking their eyes off each other, they drank deeply from the brimming flutes. When the glasses were empty, green eyes that sparkled with mischief met equally delighted blue ones and they turned as one to hurl the glasses against the far wall. Slayer and vampire strength left no doubt as to the fate of the unfortunate flutes as they shattered into thousands of tiny sharp shards.
Spike looked back at his mate, fully prepared to finish the celebration in the most appropriate way, only find her eyes drifting shut as she slowly slumped forward to begin to snore on his chest.
“I guess the honeymoon’s over,” he grumbled with a smile as he slid down on the bed so that she was lying on top of him, his cock still safely inside her warm depths. With a happy sigh, he turned off the nearby lamp and settled down to protect his mate as she slept in his arms.
The end
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Author's Chapter Notes:
That's it for this story. There may be a line or two of dialogue here and there that was borrowed from the talented writers on BtVS, so if something seems familiar, it probably is. :) I hope you enjoyed my wistful little wish for a post NFA reunion.