Sure Of
There had been very little in that time - with resurrection still haunting her body and her spirit caught straddling the void between here and that other place - that she had been sure of. She hadn't been sure if she could forgive her friends, hadn't been convinced of the righteousness of her calling. There had been times when she hadn't been sure that she had love enough in her obdurate heart even for her dear sister.
There had been times in that year when she'd felt so lost she couldn't have told you her own name and been certain that she wasn't mistaken. But there was one thing that she was sure of, even when her damaged mind had lost all sense of certainty; there was one thing she knew to be fact: she did not love Spike.
Sometimes when they had lain together, too exhausted and sated by literally hours of frenzied rutting, she would wonder if perhaps she didn't hate him so much as once she had. When his face would turn soft and vulnerable and his eyes fill with worshipful love, she couldn't have been sure if she detested him for his sweetness or if she felt a little fondness struggling to grow in the barren earth of her drought-plagued heart. But even in those quiet moments of afterglow, before the world in all its callous reality would again pound its angry fists against her door, even then she never doubted that she did not love him.
That knowledge, or rather the certainty of it, was, in her indefinite world something of a comfort. There is surprising quiescence to be found in knowing your own self, and in those days she hadn't often felt that she did. Except in this one thing, this indisputable truth of her existence. Buffy did not love Spike, nor would she ever.
She has a vivid memory of one night in the winter of the year of her resurrection. She remembers that she had been upset that night, although the memory of what had left her so distressed has long since faded. She had gone to him, as she did most nights in those troubled days, and had demanded in silent stone-faced expectancy that he administer her the cold solace of his body. He'd felt like granite under her greedy desperate hands that night and she'd revelled in the certainty that he was no more lovable than she was capable of loving him. She'd felt that night that they fitted together perhaps better than any pair of star-crossed lovers or school yard sweethearts grown old together in comfortable solicitude.
He'd bled for her that night, when the only outlet for her snowballing resentment for a world that would steal paradise from its hero had been in marking his dead and perfect flesh. She'd torn at him with teeth and claws until he'd finally hissed out a frustrated, "Bloody hell, slayer," and tried to pull away. She hadn't allowed it of course, had held him down and ridden him mercilessly until he'd been howling pain and pleasure into the night and she'd branded him hers again in blood and sex.
And so it had gone on, even as her heart woke slowly in her chest and began to pump love again as well as thin tepid blood around the shell of her self. Until other truths had once again taken hold and the rights and wrongs, the indisputable blacks and whites of her world had settled once more like snowflakes on her frozen carcass. And so she'd wrapped her soul in martyr's sackcloth and told him that where there was no love there must be no mockery of it. And even when her heart had cracked in sympathy with his, still she'd known she did not love him, that the pain she felt was not her own but merely his reflected in her human compassion.
And through the worst of it - his betrayal, his soul, his ignominious fall into insanity, and all the heart-wrenching pain of seeing him brought so low, all the aching care she'd felt for him - she had known it was not love. She'd understood that that impossible forgiveness that had flowed so easily from her had been an acknowledgment of shared regret and mutual blame and not the boundless clemency of love.
And when he'd dragged himself inch by tortured inch out of that pit of hopelessness to make himself a hero just for her, the pride that had almost burst her ribcage was born of friendship, respect, and finally affection, but of nothing more.
So he'd been right of course when charity had coaxed the words from her lips as a gift to a dying hero. Of course he had, she knew it. And though she needed no proof, there it was, in how easy it had been for her to go on without him, how quickly other men had caught her eye, how short-lived her grief.
Her motivation for getting on that plane from Rome to Los Angeles, with no more than a kiss and a "be careful" for Dawn and a curt answer-phone message for The Immortal thanking him for giving her so much fun and telling him with little regret that she wouldn't be able to see him again, is a mystery even to her.
The flight had been long and uncomfortable and sleep had stubbornly refused to come relieve the ennui. The movie had been one she'd previously seen dubbed in Italian with English subtitles, but she found she enjoyed it no more with the actors speaking her language. And so there had been little distraction from her merry-go-round thoughts of him, alive and living in LA. He had made Andrew promise to keep his existence a secret, but he should have known the little geek was incapable of keeping his mouth shut because he'd blurted out his secret within a day of getting home.
She wondered why he chose not to come to her. She doubts that it is because he has finally accepted the truth of love unrequited. It is still strange to her that Spike, who always seemed to know the truth of everything, should not know this one thing that was so obvious to everyone else.
The offices of Wolfram and Heart are cooled by overzealous air conditioners that leave the air chill and crisp against the bare skin of her arms and shoulders. She had chosen a simple spaghetti strap vest in sugar pink to come here. Chosen it carefully and deliberately for no better reason than that she looked pretty in it and she had wanted to look pretty for this.
She follows her nose, or rather her tingling spider sense, deep into the rabbit warren of glass and steel and heavy hardwood doors, lets the memory of his distinctive presence lead her past offices and stairwells and talking lifts to the half-open door of what looks to her ignorant eyes like a some futuristic sci-fi laboratory, empty now in the early evening save for a handful of dedicated lab coats and a slender shrew-faced girl with long smooth legs and thick tortoise shell spectacles balanced on her delicate nose.
She's sitting on a desk, her white coat unbuttoned to show off a short skirt and slim, lightly-tanned thighs. She leans back on her hands and laughs a sweet tinkling laugh, the sort of guileless feminine sound that snares men by accident rather than design, and kicks playfully at her companion’s shin where he sits next to her, out of place in this sterile white and Perspex world in tattered black cotton and denim.
She can't make out their conversation from her spy point, just blurred peaks and troughs of sound where her sing-song southern drawl, sweet and girlish, mingles with the rumbling purr of his baritone seduction. So she moves closer, amazed that at this range he hasn't sensed her yet, too wrapped up it seems in flirting with his scientist. He's smiling broadly at her, showing of those gorgeous dimples she so rarely inspired and poking at her tummy with one cheeky hand so that she squirms and giggles and chides in a don't-stop voice, "Spike, quit that."
She'd have expected that a jealousy this vivid would bring with it tearful anguish or maybe vicious anger. But instead she feels herself atop a rolling wave of shifting certainty and glances around with wide startled eyes for something to hold on to, something solid and sure with which to steady herself.
"Sorry, pet." He shifts so that his other hand can join in the fun and his back is completely turned to her as he attacks this skinny stranger with renewed vigour. "Gotta keep the old digits busy. Doctor’s orders."
And by now the girl is squealing in breathless delight and flapping weak human arms and legs at him as she tries in vain to escape his waggish torture. "Spike," she squeaks through helpless laughter. "Please, Spike!"
She's only half begging him to stop. Buffy knows enough about the ways of women to know that much. And it hurts to hear those words on another woman's lips. Words that she had claimed as her own years before when she had only been half begging him to continue and still the power of their lust had outweighed her certainty that he was not the one.
He is not the one, and yet her heart is breaking at the sight of him lost in this flirtatious play. She seriously doubts that she's witnessing love here, or even the possibility of it; the carefree mischief of their game speaks more of friendly teasing, and still it hurts like a knife wound in the gut—and she'd know about that of course— because all of this, every sound and look and touch, is hers by right.
And if her heart is breaking, then has she based her third shot at life on a lie? The floor turns to quicksand beneath her feet and the air is dry and thin so she must gasp for breath. If this one certainty of which she has been so sure for so long could turn out to be false, then what else in her own heart can she trust?
Suddenly the world sharpens, bright and violent, and she shakes her head against that fresh-from-the-grave disorientation that is playing catch-up with her soul. Finally he shows mercy and releases his victim with a deep satisfied laugh. A laugh cut short when his back stiffens with the sudden realisation that she is there.
He doesn't turn to her as her name slips pained and gravely from his lips, and she'd run if she could, just turn tail and let that slayer speed carry her far far away from here. But the quicksand has her and all she can do is breathe his name back at him and wait out his slow motion turn to face her.
And when their eyes meet and she's looking again to his face—not his smiling profile but his open shell-shocked face with all its pained confusion—then she feels the cracking of her lie. Feels in every fibre of her being as it ruptures back through history to that night when she made him bleed and truth turned false without her even knowing it. To the moment in time when if she had been complete, and her heart had not been numbed by death and life again, she would have known the first sparks of forming love.
It's too much. Three years of brand new understanding surging at once through her body so that she has to feel every moment again and all at once without the granite comfort of her certainty.
"The Buffy?" the scientist gasps, eyes wide with surprise for a moment before she collects herself with a quick shake of her head as she recognises the ridiculousness of that question. What other Buffy could there possibly be? "I'll just go. Leave y'all to catch up," she tells them awkwardly, and for a moment Spike's disorientated gaze flickers to her.
The smile she gives him as she nods and squeezes his hand chases away any jealousy that might have lingered in the slayer’s heart. It is a parting act of reassurance given to a friend from a friend. It says, "Good luck," and "You can do this," and it is not a smile you would give a lover. It tells her something else as well, something that she should have known but had in these last few moments of watching him at play begun to fear was no longer true. It tells her that Spike is still in love with her.
Through this stranger's innocent support, Buffy can see suddenly and with crystal clarity how it has been. How he has stayed away from her for some misguided reason, perhaps one born of fear or some ludicrous notion of nobility. How he has sat with this new friend of his and spoken of his love, his loss, his Buffy.
"You didn't come," she accuses in a voice so soft it passes into menace. It isn't what she had thought she would say; she had not believed when she boarded that trans-Atlantic jet with her hastily-packed holdall that she was coming here to arraign him. It had not for that matter occurred to her that she crossed the ocean to reclaim what she had marked her own in a long-gone crypt in an all but forgotten town in California.
Yet here, now, with him standing bemused and floundering before her, she knows that she has come for this. Because he has always been hers and being hers, then, should he not have come to her? And if he had, then perhaps she would not, in one ill-founded moment of jealousy, have lost the one truth on which she built a life again when she had only wanted death.
And it is a good life. A life full of love and laughter. A life in which she can dance and drink light Italian wine with her beloved sister—old enough in Europe to enjoy such things—while they talk of silly girlish nonsense. It is a life with a future that is not shrouded by darkness, in which she can see her longest and most cherished wish come true. It is a life that could have been as she had always wanted: normal.
And it is a lie. It was not a lie just yesterday when he was dead and she was free. But today, with him revived and her a victim of her own dishonesty, it is nothing more than a magnificent sham, a floating, glittering bubble just now burst upon the hard ground that he has laid before her.
"I…" he begins, but he has no words for her and for that she's almost grateful because what could he say that she would want to hear? This impudent thief, this stealer of dreams.
She longs to hurt him now. To see the brightness of his rich, cold blood against the pale canvas of his deathly skin. But she won't because that is not the way she treats the people that she loves. And so she steps a little closer and touches his face with trembling fingers so that the pads can tell her what she needs no proof of, that he is real, and he is here again.
"I didn't realise," she mumbles absently as she lets the reality of his existence soak through her skin and into her blood stream. "I didn't know."
He misunderstands, of course; he really is an idiot in matters of the heart. "Didn't want you to, pet," he tells her with regret. "Easier for you not to know. Got your life all sorted out across the pond, way I heard it. Best to let you to it I reckoned."
"No." She shakes her head and her face creases with irritation. "I…" But it's not something she can explain. Not to him at least, hardly even to herself and certainly not to anyone else. "You should have come."
His eyes are begging for forgiveness but she's not entirely sure what he thinks he has done wrong. She knows he cannot understand how much his mere presence has cost her, how much pain she feels just looking at him now with these new clear eyes of hers.
"Wanted to, pet." So much love in his face, and in his words a sort of frustrated anguish that lets her know that staying away from her has cost him at least as much as it is now costing her.
"I know." It’s one of their more bizarre conversations, and she recognises that that is probably her fault. But what can she do? The certain and sudden knowledge that you have been in love now for nearly three years with the one person you had been so sure you could never love is a little disorientating.
"Buffy, luv, about—"
She cuts him off with a raised hand, hovering just a scant breath away from his lips. "Shush," she orders, and her tone tells him not to disobey her and so he's quiet. He stands still and lets her look at him, waits nervously while she stares into the troubled oceans of his eyes and wonders how come she never drowned this way before.
"Spike," she murmurs eventually when the roll-a-coaster nausea in her gut recedes enough for her to speak. "I—"
"Buffy?" She thinks it’s the first time in history that she's just wanted to slap him. Her name spoken in the subtle accent of his soulful voice had always been a bittersweet joy to her. But not at this time, not when she has revelations piling up against her sanity that she has to share, and soon, or she’ll surely go a little crazy.
"Hello, Angel." The forced smile brushing her lips turns a little genuine when their eyes meet and the ease of loving him, the certitude of it, steadies her. "It's good to see you." And it is. At very least because he seems to be antacid settling her churning stomach, calming the raging heartburn that's gripped her since she first laid eyes again on Spike.
"Buffy, what are you doing here?"
"I…" Her forehead scrunches up; it's a difficult one, especially with both her vampires waiting on the answer, so she shields herself in flippancy and sass. "I heard about Spike's Lazarus impression." Her accusing glare encompasses both of them. "Thought I'd come kick some ass, find out how come no one thought to share that titbit with me."
They both look abashed and she feels a little triumphant at their unease. She really is feeling much better now. So she made a mistake, lived a few years under a misapprehension. It wouldn't be the first time. She only found out a couple of months ago that there are no tigers in Africa. Gotta love the Discovery channel.
And, yeah, she knows this is different. But fair’s fair; she'd been a bit befuddled by the whole back from the dead thing, and it coulda happened to anyone. Besides, she is much better now, much more emotionally grounded. She can cope with this new development. But she really does need to talk to Spike alone.
"Angel," she begins softly, regretful that this might hurt him just a little. "I kinda need to talk to Spike. It's…"
She trails off, but from the look of his sad-eyed, tight-lipped smile, he at least can see the truth when it's doing a striptease right in front of him. He leaves with a resigned nod and she's glad now that he, too, can at least have a little closure.
She draws Spike with her into a deserted office and turns to look at him. He's oddly quiet. It's unlike him to wait so patiently for her to take the lead, but then a lot has happened since those crazy days when he would try to force her to confront a truth it turns out only he could see.
She worries for a moment about the best way to handle this. For a minute she's tempted to go on the offensive, start throwing accusations and punches and let the thrill of the fight carry them into each other's arms. Hell, it's worked plenty of times before. But then before was a bit of a mess and they really do have a shot at a fresh start here.
"I missed you." She settles on gentle and sincere; it's probably the best way to keep him off balance, to win the advantage. And why is she approaching this like a battle plan?
"God, Buffy." His voice comes out breathy and hoarse like when he'd spent the night in Sunnydale's much-ignored Irish bar screaming at the tiny figures of soccer players darting across the TV screen above the bar. "You don't know how much—"
"Yes I do." She cuts him off. She's not being self-centred here, but just for today it's her feelings that matter because his have never been in doubt. "I really do."
He shakes his head in slight confusion, twin furrows forming between his dark eyebrows. "I do," she repeats, willing him to hear the words she's not saying. She'll let her fingers do the talking anyway as she steps up close and reaches up to smooth away his frown and trace a path along the pale skin of his cheek bones to just skirt past his mouth and over his jaw.
"Spike." She must have been into that soccer match, too, because her voice is rough as sandpaper and her mouth is uncomfortably dry. She's not doing to well with all this talking. She must have been here nearly quarter of an hour and she doesn't think she's said anything at all that might let him know how she's feeling.
Action girl. She always was and she always will be. So action it is. She throws herself into his arms with a heady feeling of abandon and a new understanding of how surrender can make you feel so very powerful. His lips taste familiar as if the long months—or is it years now?—since she last tasted him were mere instants. Smokey and bitter enough that she knows he must have fed recently and he's obviously still putting the Jack away enthusiastically because it's there on his tongue when he answers the call of her own.
He didn't hesitate even for a moment, not even a stunned second before he reacted. It's like part of him is always ready, poised for her to kiss him, so that when she does he isn't left behind for an instant. And oh sweet heaven it's good to be kissing him again. Clever, clever Spike, with his soft cool lips and rough gentle hands. Only now does she understand how badly she has missed him, how false her show of getting over him.
"Spike." He's unwilling to let her go when she tries to pull away from him, and of course she succumbs to the temptation of his touch and they surge together again in a mass of passionate kisses.
"Wait, Spike." She forces her body away from his, as far as she can get without leaving the circle of his arms. He's looking at her with bright, unfocused eyes, his lips moist and vibrant red from the force of their kisses. "God, Spike. I love you." So much easier now that she knows the words to be true to let them spill out and splash against him, leaving him stunned and speechless.
"Oh, Spike, I am sorry," she thinks ruefully as she watches him struggle with her words. Had she really buried the truth so deep that even he who always did know the truth of everything had lost sight of it?
"Spike," she repeats more forcefully, his face held firmly in her palms. "I love you."
The smile he gives her seems to light up from the inside of him, bright and beautiful as the dawn. "Irony, thy name is Spike," she thinks in wondering amusement. "My sunlit creature of night."
"Buffy…"
He wants to talk, she can tell. Wants reassurance that she's finally telling him the truth. He wants to hear the how, where, and when of it. But that's a story for another time; right now they have some catching up to do. So she kisses him again and smiles against his mouth at the thought that it's still the very best way of shutting him up.
They don't actually do it there and then on Fred's cluttered desk, but it's a close run thing and Spike'll have a bit of apologising to do when the scientist sees the mess they made. But right now it doesn't matter as they scamper hand in hand across LA like giddy children and burst laughing and kissing into his depressing basement home.
"Eww, Spike," she complains, even as she tears his shirt from his body and drags him towards the narrow unmade bed. "This place is gloomier than your crypt."
"Creature of night, yeah," he justifies between desperate kisses as he gives up on trying to find the fastening of her pretty, fifties-style skirt and just pushes it up around her bare waist.
"Yeah." Although she's lost sight of what she's agreeing with as she guides him inside and the oh-so-familiar sensation of being with him awakens every nerve and neuron until her nervous system is a jangling mess of lust.
It's not the most artful screw they've ever had and she knows they'll do much better next time, "and the time after that," she thinks impishly, but it'll go down as one of her all time faves because boy, was that some reunion.
"Love you," he murmurs against her chest when it's over, and it's more a tentative question than a statement. Still unsure, and she can't really blame him. But to her the feeling now is so certain that she feels she can afford to play a little.
"Thanks," she grunts noncommittally and feels him tense against him. She's being cruel and she knows it, but she can't help herself; she's on a Spike-induced high right now and shouldn't be held responsible for her actions.
He's silent for a while and she has to fight the giggles that want to bubble out of her. "Buffy?" His voice is soft and just a little frightened. Big coward. If he had the guts to look at her he'd see that she was teasing.
"Yep?" She pops the 'P' cheerleader style and yawns nosily.
It irks him enough that he raises up on his elbows to scowl at her and finds her grinning puckishly at him. "That's me." She gives him a plastic BuffyBot smile. "Can I help you?"
"Bitch," he murmurs and lays his head back on her chest with a disgruntled snort.
"Love you too," she whispers sincerely once he's settled again and she can stroke his hair. And she does, so damn much.
He's silent for a moment as his fingers trace a pattern round her naval, then he props himself up again and stares into her eyes so intently that she feels tears welling up as she waits for his declaration. "Buffy." His voice is a worshipful prayer, and she gulps down the aching in her chest as he takes a deep breath and pins her eyes with his.
"Thanks."
Her jaw drops, then snaps shut. He's laughing at her and suddenly she's laughing too as she slaps girlishly at him and calls him all manner of unflattering names, and it's so much better than heartfelt declarations of ceaseless devotion.
It's fun and it's natural and it's real. And now finally it's something she's sure of.
