Chapter Three
Spike grabbed his coat and started for the door, which had slammed behind the Slayer’s back, only to be stopped by a firm hand on his arm.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going after her, pet. She’s clearly upset and she might get herself killed.”
“She’s been the slayer for a long time, Spike. I’m sure she’ll be fine without your help. She made it pretty clear she doesn’t want to talk to you any more tonight.” Anne tried to sound reasonable, even as every womanly instinct she had was screaming not to let him anywhere near the small blond with the yearning eyes.
“I’m not going to let her know I’m there. Just going to watch her back. It seems like the right thing to do.” He leaned in and kissed her forehead, saying gently, “I’ll be back before you know it.”
She watched him leave the apartment, saying softly to herself, “I hope you’re right, Spike.”
He jumped down the stairs, actually grateful for an excuse to get out in the night air and get some exercise. He was very fond of Anne, and grateful to her for both her help when he was injured and for the undemanding love she gave him, but there were times when he craved a little more excitement in his life. Times when he could feel something missing, both from the relationship and from his life and he suspected the deadly blond he was following could help him find what those things were.
He easily followed her scent in the cool night air, slowing down when he began to feel her presence before he even saw her. He saw her hesitate and look around when he finally began to catch up, and quickly retreated until he could no longer feel her.
(So, she can feel me too. Is that just because I’m a vampire?)
Spike watched Buffy go into the local cemetery and risked getting closer so as not to lose sight of her among the trees and tombs. Suddenly, the ground erupted in front of her and a newly made vamp began clawing his way out of the ground. Before the slayer could decide whether she wanted to stake him right then or to wait and see if he could make a fight of it, several more showed up. They had obviously been waiting for their buddy to rise and began running toward the grave whooping with delight at the sight of a human standing there.
“Man,” said the one in the lead. “Mo gets all the luck. I had to go hunt down my first meal, and here’s his just standing there waiting for him!”
Buffy looked at the onrushing vamps and her eyes lit up with the joy of battle. Giving the still struggling fledgling a kick to his jaw to keep him out of the way, she let her stakes drop into her hands and waited for the still oblivious vampires.
“Hey, boys. You’re just what I’ve been waiting for,” she grinned at them, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet. “I’m going to feel so much better when you are broomable.”
The slayer whirled into action, staking the first vamp before her words had even registered, and spinning around to kick the next one in the face before rolling to come up behind the two lagging behind. Spike had rushed forward when he saw the small gang running toward her, but slowed as he saw the light in her eyes when she faced them. He stayed behind a tree and watched in wonder and admiration as she played with the remaining vamps, quipping and taunting as she worked her way through their ranks.
When the dust from the last one had settled at her feet, she turned and looked right at the tree, saying with resignation, “Come on out, Spike. I know you’re there.”
He came around the tree, clapping his hands slowly as he did so. He didn’t miss her flinch at his actions or the way she squeezed her eyes shut briefly, and he stopped immediately to tilt his head at her.
“I’ve upset you again, haven’t I?” he asked, frowning. “You know, that would be much less likely to happen if you would just bloody tell me the things I need to know.” The exasperation in his voice was so familiar that she laughed shakily as she moved closer to him.
“I don’t see what’s so funny,” he grumbled. “You’re a damned irritating bint, you know?”
“I know,” she smiled at him. “It’s why you lo- It’s part of who we are. We make each other really mad sometimes.”
“You said we fight with each other – who usually wins?”
She just looked at him, smiling slightly as she ran her eyes over his face and body. No longer inhibited by Anne’s presence or Spike’s visible affection for her former classmate, Buffy felt free to indulge herself in the sheer joy of seeing him again. Without conscious thought her hand went to his face and she gently ghosted it over his cheek causing him to shiver involuntarily and lean in to it.
“No fair, Slayer,” he said hoarsely, “You know what’s going on here and I don’t.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, dropping her hand to her side and turning away. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Why not?”
She raised her head and looked at him with eyes that told him much more than he was ready to know.
“Did you want to do it?”
“Oh yes,” she said with a catch in her voice. “I wanted to. It just didn’t seem…right. To do it before.”
“In front of Anne.” His voice was flat and she couldn’t guess what he was thinking.
She nodded. “I mean, obviously you and she…and I don’t have any…not that you couldn’t…but, I wouldn’t want to…and if I started touching you, I might not…Are you in love with her?” The words burst out before she could stop them and she slapped her hand over her mouth in dismay.
“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. Your life here is what it is, and I should just—“
“Buffy.” His voice stopped her embarrassed babbling and she froze, staring at his too-familiar face and the unusually gentle expression on it. She continued to stand, unable to speak or move until he took her hands and led her to a tombstone, indicating she should sit on it.
“Tell me about us,” he said gently, kneeling in front of her. “Tell me why I keep making you cry. Tell me why you can touch me now, but couldn’t or wouldn’t in front of my girlfriend.”
When she didn’t speak, but just continued to stare at him he added quietly, “Please?”
“It isn’t pretty,” she said finally.
“Is it real?”
“Oh, it’s real all right,” she snorted. “About as real as it gets. Real and messy and—“
“Just tell me, Slayer. I have a right to know.”
“I suppose you do,” she said softly. She took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out with an explosive sigh. “Ok, here’s the sitch….”
Without looking at him, focusing her gaze on her hands where they twisted in her lap, she ran through their entire relationship with each other, beginning with his clapping appearance in the alley behind the Bronze after she dusted his minion and ending with his apparent death in the Hellmouth. She smiled slightly when his eyes widened at her description of the first time she met him and he realized why she’d reacted so strongly to his emergence from behind the tree.
He didn’t interrupt to ask any questions, just flinched when she came to something unpleasant like the description of what the chip did to him. He smiled briefly when she described Willow’s spell that had them planning a wedding even as they continued to argue and fight with each other. He frowned when she told him about Adam and his attempts to make a deal with the monster and gasped when she told him about chaining her up so that he could declare his love for her in front of his former undead lover.
Buffy talked about his growing love for her in an unemotional voice, telling him quite honestly about how sure she’d been that vampires couldn’t love and that it was just a twisted obsession that grew out of his inability to kill her. She told him about her faith in his ability to protect her mother and Dawn from Glory, about her mother’s illness and his attempts to comfort her, about Riley’s betrayal with the vamp whores and Spike’s insistence on showing it to her. Her voice softened when she told him about how he had resisted Glory’s torture to protect Dawn, for her, and about her growing trust in him and the friendship they seemed to be forging.
When she told him about her sacrifice to save the world from the apocalypse Glory had begun and about how peaceful and happy she’d been in Heaven, he unconsciously reached for her hand to squeeze it sympathetically. He continued to hold it lightly as she talked about being ripped out of heaven by her friends; about coming back to find that he had kept his promise to her and stayed in Sunnydale taking care of Dawn and helping her friends defend the Hellmouth.
She spoke about her new-found willingness to spend time with him, her complete lack of interest in life and her inability to feel anything except the desire to be at rest again. In a soft voice she told of how she’d confided in him and how she’d begun to spend more and more time in the crypt with him. How much at ease she was where she didn’t have to pretend. He grimaced when she talked about the song he sang during Sweet’s visit to Sunnydale and squeezed her fingers again when she told him how he’d stopped her dancing and saved her life.
And, then, in a shaky voice, she talked about his discovery that the chip didn’t work on her, about their fighting and the subsequent love making that brought down a building. She spared nothing as she told him about the months-long affair in which she allowed him to use his body to bring her back to life, even as she denied feeling anything for him but disgust. Her voice shook as she talked about beating him up for trying to protect her from herself. She didn’t spare herself as she talked about how she’d returned his love and devotion with brutal sex and insistence that there was nothing else between them but physical release. Her voice broke as she spoke about ending the relationship. How destroyed he’d looked and how sure she’d been that it was the best thing for both of them. Of how devastated she’d been when she saw him with Anya’s legs wrapped around his hips; how angry and betrayed she’d felt even though she knew he had every right to move on as she’d ordered him to do.
She prefaced her report of the incident in the bathroom by telling him she knew that she was the queen of mixed signals, that she knew he wasn’t trying to hurt her, and that he was very drunk at the time. The more excuses she made for what she was about to tell him, the darker his face became and when she finally told him what he’d tried to do, he dropped her fingers and buried his face in his own hands.
“That…that’s when you went to get the soul,” she whispered, touching his bowed head gently before going on. “You got it for me. Because you hurt me.”
She told him how she’d forgiven him almost immediately, but hadn’t been able to tell him because he was gone and they didn’t know where he was. He twitched when she told him how much she had missed him those months while he was in Africa, and how happy she’d been to find him back in the school basement, even if he was insane.
He shuddered all over when she described how the First had controlled him, forcing him to kill and making him dangerous to be around. She talked about the potentials, the Turok-han and the torture he’d been through while she struggled to defeat the ancient vampire and find him. Once again, she could tell him about the growing trust she had in him and the way she relied on him for both emotional and physical support in her battle against the First.
Her description of the fear that had seized her heart when she realized that he was in danger from Robin Wood; her relief that he was still alive and her estrangement from her former watcher and the rest of her friends made him raise his head again to watch as she calmly talked about the betrayal and rejection. He watched her smile lightly as she described how he’d found her and given her back her courage and determination in one short night.
She licked her lips nervously as she talked about their short conversation in the kitchen in which she’d admitted to being as affected as he was by their chaste night together. She ended with the destruction of the Hellmouth; with his refusal to leave as the amulet channeled his soul into cleansing fire. Her lip trembled as she repeated what she’d said to him and the way he rejected her tardy declaration of love.
“You didn’t believe me,” she finished quietly. “You didn’t think I meant it. After everything we’d been though. After THIS.” She held up his hand and matched the scars on it up with hers, watching his look of wonder as he linked their fingers and felt the ropy ridges of flesh blend together like pieces of a puzzle.
“And, I guess that’s why you didn’t come to me when you came back,” she finished briskly. “You didn’t think I loved you, so you stayed with Angel and didn’t tell me you were alive. I didn’t find out about it until just before the big fight with the demon army, and then we thought you’d all been killed, so…”
She unlaced her fingers from his and dropped her hands down in her lap again, twisting them around and rubbing her scar.
The vampire was silent for a long while, staring at his own scarred hand and trying to process the things he’d learned about the past six years of his life and the large part the woman in front of him had played in it. Finally he stood up from where he’d remained kneeling in front of her the whole time and stretched stiff muscles.
“When you said ‘complicated’ you weren’t kidding, were you, pet?” he asked dryly.
Buffy gave him a weak smile of agreement, heartened by his use of the endearment even if it was a generic term for him. She sat quietly and watched him pace around the tombstones, his face a study in confusion, amazement and anger. He stopped periodically to stare at her as though he could read the answers to his unanswered questions in her face and body. Then he would give himself a shake and go back to his nervous pacing, trying to process what he’d just learned.
Finally, he stopped in front of her and blew out an unnecessary breath before he said, “You’ve given me a lot to think about, Buffy. Not just us – but Angel, Drusilla, all these people I should know and can’t remember.” He looked at her incredulously, asking, “Did you say I’ve been a vampire for over a hundred and twenty-five years?”
When she nodded silently, he shook his head and muttered more to himself than her, “The things I must have done, the places I must have been, the people I should remember…gone, all of it. Just gone.”
“May-maybe not gone forever. Your memory might come back. I…um, I read up on amnesia while I was on the plane and it said that sometimes the memories start coming back a little bit at a time. Sometimes it’s in dreams, or like – deja-vuey kinda things during the day. And, it said once it starts, then they just keep coming until…”
Her voice trailed off as he raised a skeptical eyebrow at her and she frowned and stamped her foot in irritation.
“Well, they could! That’s what the book said. And even if they don’t, Willow’s this amazingly awesome witch and she could—“
“This is the same witch that had us getting married when we hated each other?” he asked with some humor. “If it’s all the same to you, pet, I think I’ll give that a miss.”
“You don’t want to remember…things?” Her plump lower lip came out in a small pout and he found his eyes drawn to it as he struggled to remember what they were talking about. He unconsciously moved closer to her, never taking his eyes off her lip. When her tongue came out to lick it nervously, he almost groaned out loud.
(Alright, wanker. You need to put those thoughts away right now. This woman is a complete stranger to you and you have a very sweet girlfriend waiting for you to come back to her. Jus’ keep your mind on learning about your past and never mind how suckable that lip looks to be.)
Buffy’s heart rate went up and her breathing increased as the vampire moved closer to her, his eyes clearly focused on her mouth. The common sense that said she shouldn’t force anything on him for which he wasn’t ready and willing was at outright war with her need to touch him, to feel those lips again and to have that body pressed against hers.
She tried to satisfy the battling desires by putting her hands behind her back, but tipping her face up for the kiss she was sure was coming. Instead, to her distress, he stopped before he actually reached her lips, visibly controlling himself and backing away quickly.
“I…I’m sorry, Buffy. I just can’t. I’m not that kind of man. It doesn’t matter what you say we had…or maybe didn’t have, if I understood half of that correctly.” He ran a nervous hand through his hair and tried not to see the pain in her eyes as he continued, “I don’t know you now, and I have a lovely woman who trusts me waiting for me to come home. I’m sorry, love. I truly am.”
He whirled, his duster flaring out around him, and headed for the cemetery’s gate at a brisk walk. He’d only gone a few steps when there was a furious blond slayer in front of him.
“When did you turn into such a coward?” she demanded.
“I beg your pardon?” His anger immediately rose to match her own. “I am NOT a coward. I am an honorable man-er-vampire.”
“You’re afraid,” she said flatly. “You’re afraid if you kiss me you’ll find out you want me and it would spoil the happy little life you’ve got.”
“If I understood your little saga correctly, Slayer, I’ve helped save the world several times, even givin’ up my unlife to do it. I think I’m entitled to a ‘happy little life’ if I want one. Whether it meets with your approval or not.”
Buffy’s anger vanished as quickly as it had arisen. “Yes,” she whispered. “You are entitled to a happy life.” She raised tear-filled eyes to his. “I just expected you to want to have it with me.”
“I don’t know you, love,” he responded gently, his own anger gone in face of her unhappiness. “I know you think you know me, but I can’t give you what you came here for. If the man you’re seeking is here, he’s buried too deeply for me to find him. I’m sorry, pet.”
Buffy cocked her head in an unconscious imitation of his own gesture and studied him for a second. Then, before he could react, she grabbed his head and captured his cool lips with her own soft, warm ones, using her slayer strength to hold his mouth to hers until she felt him kissing her back. Immediately, her tongue came out to lightly trace around his lips, asking, but not demanding that he let her in. With a sigh of surrender, he parted his lips and allowed her tongue to gently probe his mouth, running sweetly around the indentations that held his fangs and stroking his own willing tongue.
Without conscious effort on his part, his arms went around her waist and he pulled her soft but strong body against his own, giving in to the wonderful sensation of holding this heated bundle of feminine curves. While his mind struggled to pull some trace of a memory of the woman he was holding from his blank brain, his body responded to her with a rapidity that left no doubt that she’d told him the truth about their relationship.
Buffy allowed herself joyful minutes to bask in the feeling of having his hands on her once again and to give in to the bone melting kisses she’d never stopped thinking about since the unfortunate spell that Willow was never going to live down. She drank in the scent of leather and tobacco that was so familiar; the taste and feel of his lips on hers, the way his tongue curled around her own and teased it and the way his hard lean body molded itself perfectly to her own, fitting together as though made for each other.
When she’d absorbed what she thought was enough of him to get her through the night and the next day, she reluctantly pulled back and whispered softly, “Your body knows me, Spike.” With a final stroke of his shell-shocked face, she stepped completely away from him and walked away toward her hotel leaving a very confused and aroused vampire behind.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
For the squeamish - we're not quite done with the Spike/other, andthere will be some more in the next chapter that might really make you cringe.... Sorry if it does, but RL is messy and things don't always go the way you want them to- even when you're writing a story. There will be Spuffy eventually - I promise you. :)