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Author's Chapter Notes:
Sweet and somewhat short. Still thinking about what I'm going to do next. :) Thanks to everyone who's been reviewing. I know that you've all been waiting for this update for a while. ~Duchess
Chapter 8 – Sleeping Beauty

Demon Bar

Spike was out drinking again. He had gone to Wolfram & Hart hoping that there would be some assignment he could wrap himself up in for the time being. He needed a spot of violence to get his head back in the game. Seeing Angel and Buffy together though… threw him for another loop.

It was the last thing he expected to see. He didn’t even know that Buffy was in LA or that she had plans to come. “Angel,” he said the name with seething hatred.

They both loved her, and they had both thought that she had moved on and that the best thing for them to do was move on too. Now he had seen what Angel really thought about that. The first chance he got he had the slayer wrapped up in his arms again, and she wasn’t pushing him away. Spike jumped to the logical solution in his mind: Buffy came back to LA to be with Angel.

He had no reason to believe that Buffy even knew he was alive so why would she come back for him. More than the usual anger he would feel over Buffy and Angel he felt pity, a pity that only more drinking would help. So, he continued to think about the love he had for Buffy and the soul mate that he thought he had once found, and he drank and drank until he could drink no more (which was a hard thing to do for a vampire).


Spike’s apartment

Buffy had taken a cab from Wolfram & Hart to Spike’s apartment. It didn’t take long to get there, and she quickly paid the driver and hurried into the building. She made her way to the basement level of the building and stood at the door of Spike’s apartment.

She tried the door, but it was locked. She knocked, but there was no answer. She looked around and saw that this wasn’t an apartment building, but rather a place where Spike had just found a convenient place to live, away from the sunlight. Even the hallway outside his door was dark. She waited a few minutes to see if he would show, but she knew that it was still daylight outside and there was a lot of daylight left. She pulled out her cell phone for the time and saw that it was about 12 noon. “Plenty of daylight left…” she said to the dark hallway around her.

“Well… do I wait outside for him?” She weighed the option in her mind. “Or do I break into his apartment and wait there?” She smiled at the thought of him finding her inside his apartment for him. “He’d prolly be upset too,” she said with a smirk and a shrug. A moment later she gave the knob a sharp turn and felt the lock give way. She pushed the door open and tip toed inside.

Peering around the apartment she couldn’t see much at first. She moved her hand along the wall until she found a light switch. She flipped it and successfully lit up the room. There wasn’t much to the place, but she could tell that it was his. She wasn’t sure what it was, but there was a feeling in her gut that just told her it was his place.

Buffy walked around the main room, not wanting to enter any further into his sanctuary at the moment. It felt comfy, and she remembered how he had made up his crypt to be almost homey with the bed and rugs and such things. She smiled and sat down on the couch. She sifted through what little was on his coffee table, mostly magazines and papers of this and that. After a few minutes she put her feet up on the couch and lay out, waiting patiently for Spike to come home.

She looked at her watch. It was about 3 in the afternoon. Wherever he had gone off to he wouldn’t be able to come back for a while. So, she decided to turn on the TV and pass the time while she waited.

Before long all of her traveling and stressing caught up with her and Buffy fell fast asleep on Spike’s living room couch. Her legs were stretched out as far as they would reach. One hand was under her head while the other was tucked against her chest. It would definitely be a sight for Spike to come home to… the slayer asleep in his living room.


Just after sunset

Spike left the bar and began walking home. He wasn’t feeling like himself after all the drinking he’d been doing, but he wasn’t completely knackered. It wasn’t like Spike to get depressed and drunk over the one he loved… well, unless you count the time that Dru left him and he got depressed and drunk. Since then he hadn’t really had a reason to get really depressed and drunk. He fell in love with Buffy and while she never really committed herself to him, Spike gave all of himself over to her.

That was it for him. When he loved someone he gave all of himself to that person. For more than a century that person was Drusilla, but ever since he met Buffy he was passionate about her. First, it was trying to kill her. Then, once he realized that he loved her it was trying to win her over.

Now he was walking the streets of LA thinking about her getting back together with Angel. He knew that they had some great love affair, but he thought with all that they had gone through back in Sunnydale would have changed who she wanted to be with in the end.

“Maybe I should have told her I was back… or gone to see her right away… but NO-O! …instead I join forces with the great poof… and he wins her again…” Spike rambled on dejectedly.

He continued walking sullenly, mumbling incoherently to himself every now and then. When he reached his apartment building he walked downstairs and said somewhat loudly, “No! He’s not going to win her this time! I will find a way to get her back. She’s mine!”

He stopped in the middle of the stairwell and put his hand on the wall. “She’d never admit that though.” As those words came out of his mouth he slipped down the last few stairs. Suddenly he caught a whiff of an all too familiar scent. It was vanilla and something uniquely her. Spike shook his head. “It’s not her though.” It never crossed his mind that she could actually be there.

A few more steps and Spike put his hand on his door. The door pushed open easily. Buffy had never closed it all of the way. “Who the hell…” Spike began to ask when the door swung open and he laid eyes on the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.

His feet were frozen to the spot for several minutes. He took unneeded breaths while trying to focus on the sleeping beauty on his couch. When he had regained some of his senses he walked quietly over to the couch and knelt by the couch where her head was lying.

He looked over her sleeping form for a few minutes before lightly tucking some hair behind her ear. She sighed, but remained asleep. He smiled and brought his hand to her face. He cupped her cheek in his palm and brushed her soft skin with the pad of his thumb. She wriggled a little, but was still fast asleep. He had to smile again at how cute she was when she wriggled.

Finally he leaned in and kissed her softly on the lips. Mid kiss she began to stir a little more and Spike backed off gently and leaned back on his heels to watch her for a moment. He wondered at how she could turn him to mush. He ran his hand through his hair, loosening the ever-present gel, and sighed.

“What the bloody hell?!?” he exclaimed quietly.

Spike stood up and stared at the wall for a few seconds before his gaze fell once more to the sleeping beauty on his couch. She looked so peaceful while she slept. He knew that peace would not stick around after she awoke. It was never peaceful when they were together. Even when they were friends, or playing with the boundaries of friends and something more, things were not peaceful. And yet he knew he would have to wake her sooner or later. Half of him wanted to wake her now, and the other half wanted to watch her sleep.

He wanted to keep the peace for as long as possible, but peace between a vampire and the slayer was not to be. Buffy slowly opened her eyes and saw the figure standing over her. She opened her eyes more and stretched her arms. She looked up and wore a small smile on her lips, but she did not speak.

All the feelings that rushed through him at just the sight of her somehow rushed through him once again as she put on the faintest smile. A smile could make him feel things he never thought he’d feel in his entire life, much less the afterlife he had now. And yet here he was looking down at her and he couldn’t help but soften his expression. He couldn’t hold onto his anger toward her. He couldn’t think of anything other than how gorgeous she looked and how badly he wanted to kiss her again.

Without another thought about it he knelt down and kissed her firmly on the mouth. It was slow at first, but Spike knew no boundaries and the kiss deepened quickly. No hands, no words, just lips and tongues working at each other. The kiss went on for a few minutes, each dueling for some level of control before Buffy had to breathe. She broke the kiss reluctantly by pushing her palms to Spike’s chest.

His heart soared when he was kissing her, and it sank when he felt her push him away. He cast his face downward, ashamed of forcing himself onto her. That only lasted a few seconds while Buffy regained some semblance of a normal breathing pattern and then put her hand to his chin. She tilted his face back up to look at him.

“I missed you,” she said earnestly.

He looked at her with a slightly bewildered look in his eyes. Buffy thought it quite endearing.

“Did you think I wouldn’t miss you?” she asked.

Spike remained quiet. He couldn’t find the words to say to her at the moment. ‘What can I say?’ … ‘I missed you too sounds like the Poofter.’ So instead he just stared back into her eyes intently.

Buffy looked at him and knew that she was still in love with him. She’d known that when he sacrificed himself. A part of her knew that she loved him before that moment, but she had been stubborn. Then she found out that he was still alive and it knocked the wind out of her. Now she had another chance. This was her chance to make things right with Spike, if she ever could. What would she do with her chance?

…to be continued…





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