Disclaimer: Not my characters, Joss Whedon’s. Never owned ‘em, never will. No copyright infringement intended. This is, as ever, femfanfic, impure and simple. I should note this was written in the early summer of 1998 after the events of Becoming, Part II but well before the premier ep of season three, Anne aired.
Warning: Not only is this not for those under 18, this is not for the fainthearted. "We’re talking…adult content here," as Buffy said in WTTHM. The warnings are meant to keep the underaged and those who might be offended from this page. If you somehow managed to circumvent the warnings before your 18th birthday, or if you are uncomfortable with explicit material, Turn Back Now!
Original Disclaimer: More shameless NC-17 FanFic for the delectation of our adult female audience from the purple pen of Margot Le Faye. This piece is rated TV17-DSV for dialogue, sex and violence, and WAW-SXA for Spike, Xander and Angel. Enjoy.
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..on the Highway of...
or
Spike and Buffy Redux
part 1
Time: June 1998
He liked to prey on the ones in the park, the ones too ashamed, or too confused, or too lost even for the homeless shelters and the teen runaway hotlines to help.
Especially the teens.
He had found a young boy reduced to prostitution, whose parents believed in "tough love" and wouldn't take him back unless he gave up the one thing he couldn't give up: being gay. He had made that one last for days before he killed him. His tastes were not exclusive, however, and there had been young girls, as well.
Now, another possibility had shown up on a bench in the L.A. public park; a petite girl whose bleached blond hair was growing out soft brown; a girl with haunted eyes and full pouting lips, despite the hunger which had made her wraith-thin, and allowed her overalls to hang almost off her shoulders.
He wanted her mouth. He wanted to be kissing her mouth when he used his knife on her. He might be able to make her last a long, long time. He hoped so, but doubted he had the patience. He was too eager to find out what it would be like to be inside her when she died.
Now, hours past sunset, the temperature did what it been doing all week long: dipping to an unseasonable low that only made the ensuing heat of the day more unbearable. The park began quieting as its denizens bedded down for the night. Except for his intended victim. She continued to sit, as she had been sitting all day; huddled around a back pack, her coat and a knit cap beside her, staring into space at some distant, tragic vista that existed only in her mind's eye and some lost, inaccessible corridor of time. He smiled, slipped his knife out of his pocket and headed toward her.
The girl on the bench realized that the approaching man would not be offering her a hot meal or a way home, neither of which she wanted, anyway. But he might be offering what she had begun to think she needed, if she could provoke him into dispensing with the gratuitous torture he was probably planning. Her few days on the streets had taught her what men like him wanted from girls they thought defenseless. She wasn't defenseless, but she wondered why she bothered.
As he came closer, she troubled to look up at him; beefy build, thinning hair, dressed in nondescript jeans and T-shirt that would let him blend in almost anywhere. But seeing his eyes, the obsessive, mad light in them, and the rictus-grin of his insane smile, she remembered why she bothered. It almost gave her the energy to fight him off, but tonight she had sunk a little too deeply into despair to follow up her instincts. She closed her eyes and waited for what would come.
And had it not been for a second figure approaching in the darkness, what would have come was ugly death, much prolonged. Instead, what came was something with much more practice in dealing death, and much more finesse in delivering it.
Spike took out the stalker with one snap of the neck. The guy was entirely too skanky to make a meal of...even if Spike had been interested in feeding, which he was not. And had not been, for weeks. Taking a last drag on the cigarette dangling from his mouth, he tossed it away and turned his attention to the girl on the bench.
"What's a nice girl like you doing in a park like this?" he drawled.
Eyes opening, she looked at Spike, who smiled bitterly when he saw recognition in their green-brown depths. His smile faded when he saw what followed: not the anger he had expected, but something else...something oddly like hope.
"You promised..." she began, her voice sounding a little off, whispery, as if she hadn't used it for a while. Spike could not believe that she was going to throw his promise to leave the country in his face when he had just saved her life.
"I promised to help you, pet, and I did," he said. "And it looks like it worked, the world still being here and all." He laughed sarcastically. "At least one of us got what we bargained for."
"Not that..." she said, in that fading, haunted voice.
"When I said I'd leave the country--" he began impatiently.
"That it wouldn't hurt," she cut him off. He stared at her blankly, lost. "You said that, as a personal favor from you to me, you'd make it quick. And it wouldn't hurt a bit."
Spike drew in a breath, remembering. When he had first swaggered into Sunnydale and promised the Anointed One that he could take out this Slayer, because he had taken two of them out before, he had gone after her. Confident of the outcome of their battle, he had generously made her the offer of a painless death. But she wasn't like other Slayers. She was too sassy, too streetwise, too shrewd. And she had friends and family backing her. She had won that encounter, as well as every one thereafter.
Spike had all but forgotten his rash words, and couldn't believe she would attempt to hold him to them now. But one look at her convinced him. She was absolutely serious. Buffy Summers, the Slayer who had defeated him at every turn, the woman who had gummed up his best plans, and put him in a wheel chair for months --the woman with whom he had made a desperate, uneasy alliance not much more than a month past-- was looking him in the eyes and offering him the one life he had long wanted, above all others, to take: hers.
But that wasn't all he saw in her eyes. He saw despair, and sorrow, and grief that were too much like his own.
He deliberately chose to misunderstand her. "What, you fancy eternal life, all of a sudden?" She was off the bench in a heartbeat, delivering a punch that rocked him back on his heels...where before a punch like that one, from her, would have knocked him to the ground. He knew he could take her, finally, if it came down to it.
But he was no longer interested in trying.
"Become a vampire? I don't play that," she said, with more anger and energy than he'd bet she'd felt in weeks, "and you know it. And you know what I want from you and it's what you've wanted from the start, so what the hell is your problem?"
"The problem is," he prevaricated, "that this is a little too public a place."
She gave a short bark of laughter. "There's a dead body at your feet but killing me here is too public?"
"But you don't want it to hurt," he pointed out. "And two dead bodies in one place might be a bit much for the police hereabouts. They aren't nearly as stupid as the ones in Sunnyhell," he spat out his version of the name as if it were poison on his tongue. "So if you want me to take care of things, love, you'll do it my way. Or not at all." He held her gaze, staring her in the eyes, and if the eyes were a window on the soul, her's was in hell and torment. Spike almost remembered what it had been like to feel pity, when he looked into her eyes. Buffy watched him for a moment, then nodded her head.
"Okay," she said, and turned back to the bench for her backpack. Spike grabbed it away from her, scooping up the coat and hat as well.
"Just see if you can manage to carry yourself," he said sardonically, convinced that she was too shaky to manage even the short distance to his car. As ever, she surprised him. He tossed her things into the back, settled her in the front passenger seat, and drove them to a rough area of town and the deserted building where he had made himself a new lair.
Buffy stared dully at the spacious loft Spike had appropriated. A small kitchenette took up one corner, with a battered, ancient stove, and the sort of half-sized refrigerator more common to offices than apartments. But then, vampires didn't usually have a lot to keep refrigerated.
In the center of the loft, a clean futon mattress, made up with crisp sheets and a light blanket, was spread on the floor, while four or five packing crates had been set up to hold a few books, some candles, an ashtray and a bottle of red wine. An overstuffed chair beneath a floor lamp, a small wooden table and two matching chairs were the room's only other furnishings.
Most of the space was open; wooden floors swept clean and sanded smooth, columns standing stark and unadorned. Whatever debris had been left behind in the abandoned building had been carted away. The place was orderly and Spartan, rather what she had come to expect from Spike.
It was as good a place as any to die.
"Where's Drusilla?" she asked, suddenly realizing that there was nothing visible that seemed appropriate for the other vampire.
"Not here," Spike said flatly, in a way that did not invite further questions. But she didn't need to ask any. His tone said everything, explaining the remark he had made earlier about one of them getting what they had bargained for. She supposed she had gotten what she had bargained for. She just hadn't expected the additional costs.
"The bathroom is this way," Spike said, with a jerk of his head, setting her things down in a corner.
"I don't need--"
"A bath? Not to be impolite about it, darling, but even with the temperature plunging after dark most nights, it is summer. In L.A. You're a little...ripe," he turned away, adding under his breath, "Ripe enough to eat." Spike was uneasily aware that her ripeness appealed...and not to his blood hunger. She didn't smell of sweat or dirt, so much as of warm female. She was the last person on the face of the earth he wanted to find appealing, however. She hadn't caught his last remark, and took what he'd told her at face value, looking away from him, embarrassed.
"Okay," she said softly. Spike nodded.
"I'll find you some clean clothes."
The bath was a derelict, chipped, porcelain mammoth on cracked clawed feet, a perfect mate for the chain pull toilet beside it. How Spike coaxed pure, warm water from the rusty looking pipes, she neither knew nor cared. He had even fitted it with a plastic hose and nozzle that allowed him to turn the faucet into a shower. Shower curtains in a handsome pattern of browns and golds and greens had been pulled to one side with a moss green cord, keeping them out of he way. It was, for a derelict, surprisingly luxurious.
Buffy sank into the full bath, stretched out, and dipped her head back to wet her hair. There was a bar of glycerin soap, unscented, and a brand name shampoo with a reputation for being additive free. Spike, the ecologically concerned, health conscious vampire. She laughed dryly at the bizarre image as she cleaned up.
He didn't bother to knock, when he found clothes for her --a cotton shirt and a pair of lightweight jeans, both garments worn soft and smooth by age-- just opened the door and tossed them onto the top of the room's antiquated radiator. But the look he sent over her seemed impersonal enough, and Buffy was beyond concerns of modesty. She had come here to get things over with. A few indignities along the way were less than nothing to her.
"Anything else you need?" he asked, fighting to keep his expression neutral and his voice cool. He had hoped that, thin as she had grown, looking at her naked body would end the inexplicable attraction he had suddenly developed for her. The alluring view just below the water's surface put paid to that idea, ratcheting up the tension coiling inside him one notch tighter, instead.
"Only one thing," she responded instead. "And I already have your promise on that."
"Come out when you're ready, then," he said, avoiding, as he had all along, committing himself to making good on the old offer.
When she came out of the bathroom, her hair towel dried and curling slightly from the damp, the clothes he had found for her hanging loose on her frame, she saw that he had set the table with a place-mat and a ceramic bowl, from which wafted a homely, well remembered odor.
"What is this?" she said uneasily.
Spike set the wine bottle he was carrying down at one of the table's two chairs... the one that had not been set for a meal.
"Take it from me, you don't want to die on an empty stomach. Did that myself, once. Can't recommend it." She shook her head in disgust, not wanting a delay.
"And the best you could do for my last meal was Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup?" she asked wryly.
"Figured it had a better chance of staying down than say, Campbell’s Tomato Rice. When was the last time you ate?"
Buffy looked away from him. "I don't remember," she whispered. He wasn't surprised. He couldn't remember his own last feeding, either. He moved over to the other chair and pulled it out for her.
"Come on then," he said. She nodded and sat down. In an incongruously courtly gesture, he waited until she was seated, then pushed her chair closer to the table. She eyed him warily as he walked back to his seat, waiting until he was settled before she picked up her spoon, and sampled the contents of the bowl. It was little more than lukewarm; trust the cold dead to think that tepid soup was ready to eat. Buffy grimaced. In her current state, it was.
He had done better with the bread. Spike cut two thick slices of sourdough, spread them with a thin layer of unsalted butter, and handed them to her. She bit into one, savoring the slightly tart taste.
"Wine?" he asked with that same incongruous politeness, as she turned her attention back to the soup. Buffy shook her head.
"I'm not old enough to drink," she said.
"And you won't ever be, will you?" he pointed out, filling a glass and pushing it toward her. He was right. Buffy shrugged and took a cautious sip. It wasn't too bad. Almost like grape juice, just fizzy, and with a slightly bitter aftertaste she could ignore. He set the bottle back by his elbow, content merely to watch her.
"So then," he began. "Why don't you tell me what happened?"
"What happened, when?" she asked, taking another sip from her glass between spoonfuls of soup. It struck her that, when he wasn't stridently threatening her life, bragging about his kills or swearing to end the lives of her friends, but instead spoke in low, conversational tones, his voice was...pleasant, and the accent... Buffy pushed the thought away, disturbed.
"With that whole end-of-the-world gig," he said, not noticing her momentary distraction.
"There was a point there when I thought he was really going to kill you." There was no need to mention whom Spike meant. "But here you are. And, shape you're in, I don't think he got away Scot-free."
"No," Buffy said quietly. "He didn't get away Scot-free." The soup had cooled even further, and she couldn't deal with it any more. But she'd managed half the bowl, and that seemed to be enough. Setting down the spoon, Buffy emptied her glass, and held it out to him. He filled it up.
"Well then?" Spike prompted gently, and that was odd, too, his gentleness.
"He pulled out the sword," Buffy began after a moment. "You were fighting Drusilla, and I had just staked that other guy. I don't know why I was still standing over the ashes. I keep asking myself, if I had turned as soon as I staked him, could I have stopped Angel?"
"Probably not," Spike offered. "Our Angelus was determined."
"Probably not," she agreed. "But the thing is, I'll never know. And I can't keep living with that."
Spike shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Look, love, don't tell me your going through all this because you had to kill your ex. That was the plan, remember? Put him in the bloody ground, save the world?"
Buffy smiled and once again drained her glass, holding it out for another refill. Spike poured one for her.
"Yeah. That was the plan. Only it didn't work."
Spike paused in the act of lifting the bottle away.
"Come again? I mean, the world wasn't swallowed by Hell, and the only way you could have pulled that off was to kill him, so--"
"No. That wasn't the only way. That wasn't the way at all," she said softly. Spike frowned, setting the bottle aside. She went on. "See, once he used his own blood to open the gate, only his blood could close it. So I drove a sword into him and sent him into Hell."
"Sent him to...?" Spike said. Then he laughed. "Oh, come on! Can't you see the poetry in that? Angelus tried to bring Hell to earth, and you sent him to Hell instead. So he's exactly where he wanted to be, just without the rest of us along for the ride." She smiled humorlessly, her eyes brilliant with tears. Buffy tossed back her third glass, and held the empty out again. Spike raised a brow but filled it once more.
"That would have been poetic," she agreed. "And I really would have liked that. Only it wasn't Angelus I sent to Hell. It was Angel. Willow had restored the curse, and Angel's soul."
Spike looked at her, shocked, understanding now. "Oh, God," he said softly.
"God," Buffy said bitterly, "didn't have a damned thing to do with it." She drained her glass again. Spike hoped he hadn't misjudged the dose.
He hadn't. She didn't quite manage to set the glass back on the table, stared at it owlishly as it rolled on its side.
"Looks like somebody's had enough," he said, pushing his chair back.
"Yes. Somebody has," she agreed, not meaning the wine at all, unaware of the tears streaming from her eyes.
"Come on, then," he said, pulling her chair back from the table. She knew she'd never have the strength to stand, nor did he expect it of her. Spike scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the futon mattress. Buffy noticed fuzzily that he had turned down the sheets. It was a nice touch, she decided. She was going to die in bed, tucked up like a small child. Buffy felt at peace for the first time in weeks.
"You promised it wouldn't hurt," she reminded him.
"It won't," he reassured her, laying her gently on the futon, pulling the sheets over her.
She smiled at him sleepily. "Thank you," she said, just before she drifted off. Spike stared down at her for a long while. Even in her sleep, her tears continued falling. He sighed, and turned away, going about the task of securing the loft against the coming daylight.
When she woke up alive, she was going to want to fling open every window in the place, flood it with sunlight, and kill him. But he knew she had enough honor not to try, unless he was awake to fight back. With the shutters fastened tight, and the blackout curtains drawn, he stripped off his shirts and boots, settling beside her on the futon. Above the covers, and still wearing his jeans. He had enough honor, for this, as well.
She slept past dusk the next night, deeply, the Lethian sleep of the desperate and despairing. A sleep promoted by the tranquilizers he had added to her grape juice and seltzer water the night before, when he had deliberately underheated the chicken soup, so that she wouldn't get too full and the "wine" could be effective. Spike had been to the grocery store and back by the time she began to stir. A supply of fresh fruits, salad greens, milk, and juice now crowded the tiny refrigerator that normally only held a few beers.
He smiled grimly, unpacking the Chinese food he had brought up from the take out place a few blocks away. The he opened the bottle of wine he had gotten to replace the one he had dumped out the night before, and took a long drink from it. Likely, he was going to need it.
He heard the covers rustle as she came to, and sat up in bed.
"Time you were up," he said cheerfully, setting down the bottle and returning to the food cartons. "Breakfast will be ready in a moment."
"What the hell is this?" she said her voice low, lethal.
"This? Nothing too fancy, I still think you have to take it easy for a few days. Just plain wonton soup, and chicken with bean curd and veggies."
"No, Spike. What the hell is this? Why am I still alive?"
He walked toward her holding a large mug, from which steam was rising. He held it by the body, indifferent to the heat radiating through the ceramic.
"Think of it as my contribution to saving the world," he said fliply, offering her the mug, handle first.
"You already made your contribution," she said, turning her head away.
"Yeah, well, that's the funny thing about charitable donations" he said. "Give once, and you find you have to keep on giving."
"No. You don't. You can just say no."
"Doesn't work that way, pet. Anyone should know that, you should. Now be a good girl and take the soup."
Buffy looked at him again, her eyes flashing with resentment, her mouth slightly pouting. He took her rage as a hopeful sign. Despair was more about apathy than anger. She took the soup. Spike fetched his bottle of wine, a new pack of cigarettes and the ashtray, then settled into a chair at the table, turning it so that he faced her, and they could continue their conversation.
"You were telling me what happened," he said as he opened the pack and placed one thin white cylinder between his lips.
"There's nothing more to tell," she said, watching him light up. She had always disliked people smoking. It was entirely fitting that her worst enemy would be a nicotine addict. Spike was far more her enemy than the Master, or even Lothos, had ever been; an intimate enemy, with whom she shared too much.
"There's a lot," he countered, taking a drag of the cigarette. He blew out a stream of smoke and lifted the bottle to his lips. He was, she thought, a walking advertisement for vice. He had every bad habit your parents, the school board and the Surgeon General warned you about; smoking, drinking, late hours and rough company. It was entirely unfair that he made them look good. Spike set the bottle down and continued speaking. "Like, why the Slayer is spending her nights on a public park bench a few hundred miles away from the Hellmouth. And where your Watcher is." He took in another lungful of smoke. "Or any of your friends, for that matter."
"I'm hiding. In plain sight. I got thrown out of school. And I got thrown out of my house." She picked up the spoon he had placed in the mug, and tried the soup, which was very good, continuing the story between mouthfuls. "I'm from L.A., and I figured, if I didn't go to my father, they'd think I ran off someplace else. Did I mention that the Sunnydale police thought I killed Kendra, the Slayer your girlfriend murdered? Oh, right; you already knew that. As to my friends..." she looked away from him, setting down the now-empty mug.
"Yeah?" he prompted, taking another drag from the cigarette.
"My friends... I have two best friends, Willow and Xander. Willow decided to try to restore Angel's soul while I was fighting him. And Xander decided not to tell me about it."
Spike nodded, beginning to understand. She went on.
"So, I fought Angel, and you were right, he was going to kill me." She shook her head. "You know, I couldn't believe it until he thrust the sword at me? But I stopped it, and I fought back and I brought that son-of-a-bitch to his knees. I was about to cut him and I didn't care that he was going to Hell...then I saw him change, and God, I didn't want to believe it, not then, but it was my Angel, and he was back and..." She stopped speaking again for a moment. Spike said nothing to prompt her, knowing that whatever she was about to say was the crux of the matter. Her voice, when she resumed, was soft, wistful.
"I kissed him. And I told him that I loved him. And I drove a sword into him and sent him into Hell." Despite her calm, her tears were back, falling down her cheeks unheeded. "I can still see his face, you know? He was holding out his hand to me. Because even with my sword in his ribs, he still loved me, and he didn't understand what I had done, or what was happening." She picked up the empty mug turning it idly in her hands.
"I didn't go back to my Watcher. Or my friends. I can't face them. I can't tell them what they did to me." So there it was, Spike thought. Her friends had failed her, or betrayed her, forcing her to condemn, not the demon who had murdered her lost love, but her lost love himself, to the unending torments of Hell. All for the sake of a world that knew nothing about her sacrifice on its behalf. No wonder she was such a basket case. But he didn't say that aloud.
"Seems to me that you can't face anything," he said instead, with deliberate callousness, stabbing out the cigarette in the ashtray. She glared up at him, setting the mug back down with a faint clatter of crockery on wood.
"Seems to me I've faced enough," she said coldly.
"Yeah, well it was a tough break, kid, no argument," he said, looking at her with studied indifference. "But we all get them. Time you got beyond it." She reacted exactly as he had hoped, flinging herself out of the bed and attacking. This time her punch knocked him out of the chair
"What the hell do you know about it?" she demanded.
He bounded upright and returned the blow, knocking her down, though he tried to pull back at the last, knowing she wasn't at full strength yet.
"I had my own tough breaks," he said, staring down at her. He wasn't about to give her a hand up, aware she'd only use it to pull him off balance. She flipped back to her feet with a show of her old grace, and they stood almost toe to toe, glaring at each other. Almost like old times. He smiled savagely, and kept up the pressure.
"You noticed the singular lack of Drusilla. She took exception to the little arrangement you and I had for Angel. When she woke up...God, she couldn't get away from me fast enough." They were circling each other, and he began to fall backward, leading her out of the living area into the more open space of the loft, where there would be nothing in the way of what he expected to happen.
"So she was as big a ho as I said she was," Buffy taunted, following him. "You were together for, what, one hundred and fifty years and you couldn't figure that out? How lame is that?"
"Keep your mouth off of her, bitch," he said icily, watching her closely. She snarled and sprang. He let her cannon into him, bracing himself to take the impact. She landed one punch before he threw her off, and came after her. He dodged the roundhouse kick she aimed for his head, coming back at her with what could have been a lethal chop to her larynx had he wanted it to be so.
It was the most intense ten minutes he could remember spending in a long, long time. They fought a grim, silent, furious battle. She got better as it went on, finding old rhythms, falling back into the pattern of combat that she had abandoned for weeks. But he was a long way from fighting for his life.
Eventually, he had her: she was just that fraction of a second too slow that makes the difference between connecting a blow and windmilling for balance. He pulled her farther off balance...then broke her fall. Spike turned, still holding her, so that he absorbed the impact of their crash to the wooden floor, and she landed on top of him.
Buffy was crying wildly then, not the quiet, almost unaware tears he had seen before, but gut-wrenching sobs that shook her whole fragile frame. Spike sat up, pulling her onto his lap, then held her and let the storm take her, roil through her, anchoring her while she allowed herself to feel the grief and rage she had not had the privacy or the solace to indulge in before. Long moments later, when she had cried herself out, and was only giving the occasional sniffle, she spoke.
"Why are you doing this?" She wasn't looking at him, still curled into a ball of misery in his lap, her head resting against his chest, his arms around her, one hand stroking her back soothingly. It occurred to her that she liked her current position, and that thought was unsettling. But she had too much to deal with now to pursue it further. Spike was quiet for a few moments, trying to put his thoughts into words.
"When you went after Angel," he began, "I was all you had. Now that Dru's left me, you're all I've got. There's an old saying about keeping one's friends close, but one's enemies closer that comes to mind."
She pulled away to look at him, wariness evident in her large green-brown eyes.
"I don't understand," she said.
"What, and you think I do?" he said with a snort of laughter. "I could ask the same thing. Why haven't you driven a stake through my heart? It isn't as if you haven't had an opportunity."
"I..."
"Well? Isn't there something about sacred duty that transcends the little bargain we made last month, now it's concluded?"
"I guess because you're the only one I can trust," Buffy said slowly. "You kept your word with me, when we went after Angel. You kept your word with Ford, I know. Even though you couldn't keep me trapped, you made him a vampire, because that was what you'd promised. And you didn't actually agree to kill me last night, did you? So you've kept your word there, too."
The wariness left her eyes. She regarded him steadily, now.
"But I can't trust my friends. Not because they want to be dishonest, but because they want to protect me. I can't trust them not to help me when the last thing in the world I need is their help. If Willow had told me she wanted to try the spell again, I'd have told her that I didn't want her to, that it would be easier to kill Angelus with his soul resting in the aether, and me only fighting the demon. And if Xander had told me she was trying it, even if I didn't have time to send him back to stop her, I'd have gone into that battle prepared."
"What about your Watcher?"
"When Angel killed Jenny, and Giles came after him...he almost left me alone. Then, when we faced those ghosts, Giles was so focused on Jenny, he thought it was her trying to come back to him. He isn't over what happened to her yet. I can't trust his judgment, 'til he is.
"So, what it comes down to, is I'm the Chosen, the Vampire Slayer, and the only person in the world I can trust is...a vampire."
"Yeah," he nodded. "And I'm a vampire who can't trust anyone but the Slayer. Other vampires...we're not exactly known for our loyalty. My boys only followed me when I was on top. Then they became Dru's, when she was stronger, and finally Angel's." Buffy said nothing, but continued to stare at him solemnly. After a moment, something new showed in her eyes, as if she too, were becoming aware of how her human warmth, as she sat in his lap, might affect him. Spike began to feel stirrings it would not do to reveal. He set her aside, got to his feet, and leaned down to help her up.
"I meant what I said about you're not being alone in this," he told her. "For more than one hundred years, everything I've done has been for Dru. And he came back and took her from me in the blink of an eye. I helped you send him into Hell, and she's still his, not mine.
"So, I know about breaks, love, and I know about hell. Now come on and eat." She sighed, but followed him back out to the table. He surprised her by getting a second bowl, dividing the food between the two.
"What, you like Chinese?" she asked.
"I like whatever this stuff is," he told her, "which isn't Chinese. I survived the Boxer rebellion, pet. Trust me on this one."
"I said I did," she said softly. He gave a wry grin in response. "This isn't bad," she said in surprise a few moments later.
"Hunger makes a good sauce," he said. "But you're right, it isn't bad. Just don't over do it."
"You really missed your calling, Spike." Buffy said sweetly. "You should have been head nurse on some hospital ward. I mean you're bedside manner alone..."
He gave a bark of laughter, amazed at her resilience. But then, if she weren't the toughest Slayer he had ever met, or heard of, she wouldn't have succeeded so stunningly, in every encounter they had ever had.
Until her own success undid her. She had been strong enough to send the man she loved above all else into the unending, eternal torments of Hell. She had not been strong enough to live with the memory of having done so.
Or, she did not think she was. Spike thought otherwise.
"All right then," he said, grabbing the carton and dumping the last of the contents into her bowl. "Eat as much as you like. But if any of it comes back, you get to clean up the floor."
Buffy wrinkled her nose at him. "There's a word picture, for you. What is it with you? First, you're making me eat when I don't want to, then you're trying to keep me from eating when I do want to. Conflicted, much?"
"More than you could possibly imagine," he said dryly, keeping his gaze carefully averted from the jugular pulsing so fetchingly against the tanned skin of her throat. Damn! He hadn't been remotely hungry for weeks. Why did his appetites have to stir now? But he had taken other Slayers before. He knew her blood would be sweeter than normal human blood, the taste of her flesh against his mouth would be more satisfying. And he knew she had more to offer him than her blood and her life, neither of which any longer represented her chief temptation to him.
Spike also knew that she was still weak, and that if he wanted to, he could force her down, taking blood and flesh and more from her. But he knew one final thing; in his own current depression, the momentary satisfaction of forcing her would leave, in its aftermath, an even bleaker despair. And he couldn't imagine her willing.
Buffy's trust had, after all, been well placed. But keeping his desires in check, knowing that he would have to do so indefinitely made him a touch irritable. He let that irritation show in his voice when he went on.
"Look, you've got to build your strength back up, because none of this is really over, you know? There'll be something else, or someone else, along in a little while. Some other threat to the world, or just to the part of it that you happen to be in."
"I know that," she said softly. "You're right."
"Good," he nodded. "You get it. Well, then. If it's been as long as I think it has since your last serious combat, you're muscles are going to react. After you eat, go soak in the tub for a while, then go back to bed. I'll take your things down to the Laundromat. When I get back, we can do another training bout."
"Oh, is that what you call what we were doing earlier?" she asked sweetly.
"It worked, didn't it?" he said coolly, with a quirk of his scarred brow.
"I guess," she shrugged. She was quiet for a few moments. "Spike?" she began then. "How often do you need to...feed?" She looked him in the eyes, and he saw not so much uncertainty, as regret, in the green-brown depths of her own. Under the circumstances, he supposed the question shouldn't have surprised him. Spike understood what she was really asking: Did she have to kill him, despite the help he was giving her, to protect the lives of countless innocents?
"I've been rather off my stride since Dru left," he told her, unflinchingly returning her regard. "But there's a butcher's shop not far from here. That should be all I need." He laughed wryly as a few unpleasant memories surfaced. "I've lived on worse than a diet of pig's blood, believe me." Unspoken between them was the realization that such would not content him forever. This was a truce in their ongoing war, not a victory for either side. A time would likely come when they'd take up the battle once more. But that was for the future. For now, they were okay.
Buffy merely nodded her head, finishing her meal in silence.
When he got back, she was still in bed, sleeping. Her hair was curling once more from the damp of a bath. Spike stared down at her, gritting his teeth. He had gone to the butcher's shop and purchased enough blood to glut himself for a week, drinking it all before he got back. And looking at her, sleeping in his bed, he found thirst roaring up out of the pit of his stomach, the black beast that always drove him into a frenzy of blood lust.
Or, as now, just plain lust. Spike turned away from her and headed toward the bath, hoping cold showers worked as well on dead flesh as they did on living. It had been too long since the last time with Dru. He was going to have to find a willing partner, sometime soon. Before he made Buffy an unwilling one.
He let her sleep instead of practice, and it was the next night before they actually tried combat again. She was good, but nothing like what she had been. That first night, he took her down easily. She was not happy. Another hopeful sign.
But over the course of the next few nights, she improved rapidly, as they continued their mock battles. He shouldn't have been surprised: Slayers always recovered quickly, bruises and even breaks healing almost over night. But her injuries this time were emotional, not physical, and he knew she was still a long way from top form. So he kept pulling his punches with her. For now.
Between combat practices, and the efforts of the Chinese chefs from the take out place, Buffy got back her lost weight fairly quickly. Her hair regained the gloss of health, her skin looked clearer, firmer. Spike was making the owner of the butcher shop he'd found very happy, glutting himself on blood almost nightly, to minimize the temptation Buffy presented. The irony of his attraction to her did not escape him. It wasn't her blood he wanted to feast on, anymore. It was her petite, curvaceous body, her tender flesh that he wanted to devour. And he wanted her to devour him right back.
He was unaware that Buffy's feeling were undergoing a similar metamorphosis. But then, she herself, still sunk in grief for her lost Angel, didn't perfectly understand what was happening. She knew she was feeling more and more comfortable around Spike, had begun to enjoy his scathing humor. And they still shared the same bed; she beneath the covers, and he on top of them. The whole situation was so bizarre, she didn't question that part of it.
A week into their odd partnership, Spike thought Buffy's fighting skills had improved enough to go to the next level. She was dressed that night in soft gray sweatpants and a black tank top. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, making her look less the waif and more the martial arts student.
After about an hour, it seemed to him that they had done as much as they could productively do with hand-to-hand. He signaled for a halt.
"Do you want to try weapons?" he asked her. "Ninja stars, nunchucks, quarter staffs, swords?"
"Not swords," she said flatly.
He winced remembering. "Sorry. Okay, no swords. Quarter staffs?"
"Sure. Why not?" Why not, she realized moments later, was because of how good he looked stripped down.
The realization hit her full-force, unexpected, out of the blue. Yet not really. Twenty-twenty hindsight told Buffy she had been gradually moving in this direction for a while.
Spike had discarded his red shirt when they started their hand-to-hand. Now, he tossed aside his habitual black T-shirt, baring a chest with well-defined, combat-honed muscles. Oblivious to her covert regard, Spike walked over to one of the walls, pulling open a panel that proved to be the door to a storage cabinet. She watched the play of muscles over his back as he took out two lengthy poles of wood, closed the door, and walked back to her, hefting the staves in his hand, trying their balance. Her gaze was riveted by the muscles rippling along his arms and ribs and shoulders as he tried both staves, then tossed
one toward her, which she caught instinctively.
It wasn't so much the sight of the vampire's bared, pale flesh, as her own reaction to it which jolted her. Not just the fact that she could look at another male body, no matter how physically perfect --and Spike's was, she saw instantly, physically perfect-- and feel stirrings of desire, but because it was he, Spike, who stirred her. She had begun to see him differently ever since the night he had brought her home from the park. She just hadn't been conscious of it.
Now, Buffy saw Spike for the first time not as some deadly, immortal monster it was her duty to prove mortal, but as someone attractive, handsome even. His cheekbones were blade sharp, his mouth full, mobile, sensual. His night-black eyes smoldered beneath his oddly scarred eyebrow. God, how had she ever missed the fact that he was gorgeous? What was she going to do now that she had realized it?
She fell back a pace, taking up her position. Spike raised one end of his staff in the en garde salute, and Buffy followed suit. But she almost missed his first lunge.
Well, this is insane, she told herself fiercely, concentrating on the battle at hand, striving to meet his attacks and keep him from landing any telling blows. She wasn't doing too well, as the bruises on her hands and thighs would soon attest. I'm in a practice bout with the guy this practice should be preparing me to kill, and I suddenly think of him as a cute boy? She countered a blow aimed at her hip, barely in time. Spike was frowning at her, clearly aware something was wrong. She knew he was holding back.
Buffy experienced a flash of irritation at his condescension, grabbed onto it, let it blossom into out-and-out anger. It gave her the strength she needed to go on the offensive. She moved her staff to engage his, forcing him to change directions and back up. He gave her an acid smile, and beat her back. She picked up the pace. It was another grim, silent battle, like the one they had the night she woke up alive. She was good, he admitted. But though she was gaining strength, she hadn't built up endurance. So, although it took him a while, ultimately, as he had before, he got her off balance. And as he had before, he tried to break her fall.
It was easy. The instant he knocked the quarterstaff out of her hands, all he had to do was let go of his own staff, and grab her. He did so.
And without thinking, drew her right up against his chest.
Buffy inhaled deeply, startled, her gaze flying to meet his. What she saw was oddly reassuring. Spike was as shocked as she was, surprised both by his own action, and by her reaction to it. Buffy didn't make any move to pull away, just continued to stare into his unsettling jet-black eyes. She was very aware of the sweat pouring off her body, while his, in contrast, retained the pristine chill of death. She was very aware of his sculpted mouth, inches from her own, very aware of the long lashes of his eyes as he looked down at her, of the smooth muscles of his chest pressed against her soft breasts, the swelling and stiffening of her own nipples. She knew he could feel them, could tell by the sudden flare of heat in his eyes, that he liked the feel of them.
And it was in that moment that Buffy learned how deeply, how absolutely she could trust Spike, because he didn't vamp out on her, lusting for her blood, as she knew any other demon would have, and he didn't pull her into his arms and kiss her, as she knew he wanted to do. He simply went very, very still, and left everything up to her. Her gaze drifted down to his mouth.
This is definitely insane, she thought again, leaning in toward him, wanting, for no good reason she could think of, to find out what he tasted like. Then she stopped thinking at all.