Chapter 6: Helping Hand
Stake in one hand, axe in the other, Buffy came down the stairs at nine sharp to head out and patrol. Tara and Willow were playing a game of Monopoly with Dawn, and Spike was nowhere to be found. Buffy frowned and walked into the living room, smiling when her friends and sister looked up.
“Patrol time?” Dawn asked.
“Yeah,” Buffy answered.
“Want us to come with?”
“It’s alright. I have a feeling it’s gonna be a quiet night.”
“Well, be careful, Buffy. Just because you heal fast doesn’t mean you should go getting yourself thrown around like a ragdoll,” Willow said with a concerned frown. “You’re sure you don’t want us to come?”
“It’s alright. You guys did enough patrolling while I was gone. You deserve a break. I’ll see if Spike wants to come.”
“I’m sure he does,” Dawn said innocently, causing Buffy to force back a gasp of shock. “Gross, Buffy. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“What have you been teaching her?” Buffy asked her friends. Willow and Tara feigned offence, but Buffy figured she’d picked up quite a vocabulary on her own just by hanging out with Spike.
“He’s probably up for a good fight,” Willow offered. “He’s out on the porch right now.”
“Thanks,” Buffy nodded. “See you when I get in. Dawn, remember, it’s a school night.”
“I know,” Dawn rolled her eyes. “I’ll be in bed in an hour. Promise.”
“Alright. Night.”
“Night, Buff. Be safe,” Willow called out the door. When Buffy stepped out onto the porch, the cool night air hit her, followed by a puff of smoke. She coughed and waved her hand in front of her face.
“Ah, sorry, luv.”
“Up for some patrolling?” she asked slowly, part of her wondering with worry if their kiss-fest from the kitchen earlier today would resume in the graveyard, the other part craving for it to happen. She swallowed hard, trying to tell herself that she was being ridiculous. But, the harder she fought her thoughts, the stronger her desire for him became, and it was impossible to deny now.
He moved toward her, tossing his cigarette out onto the sidewalk. She expected some innuendo or for him to grab her then and there, but he just gave her a cocky little smile.
“Sure, pet. Let me grab my coat inside.” Unable to form words as the scent of his cologne invaded her nostrils, causing her knees to quake just a little, she just nodded. She felt like an idiot. A teenager with no will power when it came to the wiles of a sexy, mysterious older man. For a moment, she began to wonder how old Spike was when he died. How much older was he than her, not counting the hundred plus years he’d spent as a vampire? He was definitely older. Maybe late twenties, early thirties. Body of a god.
She licked her lips unintentionally and leaned against the railing of the porch. Within a minute, Spike was at her side, coat on, lighting another cigarette.
“Ready?” he asked. She just nodded, and he took a long drag. She watched the way his lips moved as he inhaled and then exhaled the smoke. Visions of what he was probably very capable of doing with that mouth ran through her head, and she nearly tripped going down the sidewalk.
“You’re sure you want to patrol tonight, Slayer?”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s not what I asked, pet,” he smiled.
“I want to patrol.” She made a mental note to get back into the training room as soon as possible. Maybe when Giles returned, he’d start training her again until she felt she was one hundred percent again. “You know what they say…it’s like riding a bike.”
“Yeah, but last night, you were almost killed.”
“Was not.” Spike shook his head and tossed his nearly finished cigarette into the street. They walked in silence, brandishing weapons that, quite frankly, Buffy was surprised hadn’t gotten the police called on them. It wasn’t every day you looked out your living room window to see two people coming down the street with shiny, pointy weapons…well, unless Sunnydale was your home town.
The shrill scream of a woman nearby had both Buffy and Spike dashing down the street at full speed. As Buffy expected, they followed the sounds to an alley behind an abandoned apartment building.
“Can you see anything?” Buffy whispered. Spike just shook his head. The scream came again, and Buffy darted ahead, leaving Spike to man the exit, just in case the bad guy decided to make a run for it. The Slayer stopped in her tracks when she saw a woman cowering against the cold, brick wall. Looming over her, was a demon that stood about eight feet high, and his skin was a pale red.
“Get away from me!” the woman cried, shielding her face. A snarl escaped the demon’s mouth, and he inched toward the woman.
“Excuse me,” Buffy said innocently, causing the demon to turn his ugly, yellow eyes in her direction. He lurched toward her, drool hanging off his lips like a big Saint Bernard. “Yeah, you. I got kind of turned around. I was looking for the mall, and…” She playfully flipped her hair, “I guess I just got lost.” He growled louder, and Spike came running, stopping next to the slayer, eyes wide with surprise at the sight of the beast. “Oh, you’re not gonna help me? A poor, defenseless girl who’s lost her way?” The demon came closer, hands outstretched, knife-sharp fingernails the size of tree branches glistening with some sort of slime. “Oh well.” Buffy shrugged her shoulders and moved forward, delivering a swift kick to the demon’s gut, sending him flying back against the wall, hitting a dumpster and leaving a large dent in the side.
“You should probably run,” Buffy suggested to the terrified woman, who wasted no time scrambling to her feet and running off for safety. Buffy stalked over to the demon, kicking him hard in the side of the head, causing him to groan and fall over. But it was only a second before he was scrambling to his feet, charging at her. She came toward him, tumbling forward, feet over her head, catching the demon and tossing him backward.
As she came to her feet again, she heard the sounds of battle behind her, and she turned quickly to see Spike laying into the demon, game face on. Buffy couldn’t help herself. Something about the feral growl coming from Spike was getting to her. In a good way. When vampires went all fangy and bumpy, that was never usually an erotic thing, but the fact that Spike was fully charged at that moment sent her mind to other things.
“Slayer!” Spike barked. Buffy snapped out of her thoughts just in time to dodge a swing from the demon. She spun her legs out, tripping him, but he only stumbled and didn’t fall. He kicked at the Slayer, sliding her several feet back, knocking the breath from her lungs momentarily. Spike sprang forward, tackling the demon, who pushed him off with one arm, slamming him against the dumpster. Spike let out a painful growl, and Buffy, frozen with fear, watched as the vampire fought to get up, only to receive another hard blow to the chest.
Without thinking, Buffy managed to pull herself up, find the axe that’d somehow been discarded in a dark corner, and she ran after the demon, bringing the blade down on its neck in a fatal blow. A gurgling hiss erupted from the neck of the decapitated demon, before it turned to dust, showering down over both its opponents.
Gasping for breath, slowly regaining it, Buffy moved to Spike’s side, kneeling down in front of him, eyes questioning him.
“I’m alright,” he wheezed.
“I thought…” Buffy gasped, “I thought only vampires turned to dust.”
“Guess he’s not a textbook demon either, eh, pet?” Buffy couldn’t help but smile at Spike’s ability to joke at a time like this, and she held her hand out to him, helping him to his feet. He winced and doubled over.
“Spike? Are…are you ok?”
“Think I might’ve bruised a rib,” he muttered. Buffy felt a cold trickle down her back, and she knew that her healing wound from the night before had been busted open.
“Do you have any bandages at your crypt?” she asked, nodding toward the cemetery across the street as they exited the alley.
“Think so.”
“Come on.” Leaning on each other for support, they hobbled across the street.
“What a pair we are,” Spike couldn’t help but utter. Buffy let out a chuckle which made her back hurt.
“Ow. No laughing,” she murmured.
“Right.” Within minutes, they reached Spike’s crypt, and Spike pried the door open. They walked in, and Spike, obviously more able to see in the dark than Buffy, found his matches and lit one, lighting a candle. He went about lighting others to brighten up the place. Buffy looked around in surprise.
“You decorated.”
“Yeah. Had some time on my hands.”
“Right,” Buffy said quietly, shifting out of her coat. Spike immediately saw the blood seeping through the back of her shirt.
“Buffy…you’re bleeding.”
“Yeah. I know,” she mumbled. “Does it bother you?”
“No more than it did the other night, pet,” he said, holding his side, trying not to read too much into the fact that this was the first time she ever really showed any concern about how the scent of human—of Slayer—blood might affect him. He raised up his shirt a little to see a purple bruise forming. “Bugger.” Buffy moved toward him.
“Is it broken?”
“No. Don’t think so. Just gonna be a bit sore for a few days. Lucky for me, I heal almost as fast as you do.”
“Yeah. That’s why you looked ready to run a marathon right after Glory had her way with you.” She tried to pull off a sarcastic tone, but her own discomfort hindered that.
“That was external, pet. For the most part. The internal stuff is different.”
“Well, that’s good to know,” Buffy considered slowly. She shook her head, and moved around, looking for something to patch herself up with. He saw her poking around and cleared his throat.
“Um, it’s downstairs,” he said, motioning toward the steps that would lead underneath the crypt. “It’s better lighting, but I can bring it up here.”
“It’s alright,” Buffy said slowly. “Better lighting sounds better for wound tending.”
“Alright. Down you go. Slayers first.” Buffy started down the ladder and found her feet touching cement soon enough. Spike was right behind her, and as Buffy took the next few steps down into Spike’s underground lair, she squinted into the darkness, until a spark near her head engulfed a torch in flames. She gasped, and Spike took it into his hands, moving about, lighting other torches on the walls, illuminating the large, decorated bedroom. The bed, a large, comfortable looking piece of furniture sat against the far wall adorned in black and red silk sheets. She found herself blushing, and she wasn’t even sure why.
“You really did have a lot of time on your hands.” She couldn’t stop the next words from escaping her lips. “Awfully big bed for one person.” Spike looked up at her as he fished through different drawers for supplies. He couldn’t suppress a smirk at her comment.
“Wishful thinking, I guess,” he uttered. Buffy studied him for a moment, as he went back to looking through his things. Wishful thinking for what? It wasn’t as if he’d known she was coming back. Surely Spike hadn’t gone all those months without being with a woman. She knew how he loved sex, because he practically oozed eroticism when he walked into a room. He’d had some interesting conquests, she knew, like Dru and Harmony, but she didn’t want to know anything about that. The thought made her shiver, and, she realized, a little jealous.
“Here. Off with your shirt.” His words would have made her flinch a day ago, but, tonight she moved over to sit on the edge of the bed, the only available place to sit, conveniently. She raised her shirt off of her body, feeling a tad bit embarrassed by the fact that her bra was black and lacy. What the hell was I thinking? she wondered to herself.
Spike moved toward the bed, his eyes glowing at the sight of the flickering flames dancing over her golden skin. As much as he wanted to make her his, he knew that after the small but definite little glimpse of hope she’d given him earlier, he couldn’t push it. He had to take it slow with her. Control wasn’t an easy thing for a vampire. Especially a vampire who wasn’t the average vampire. He could feel love. He did love. Maybe he couldn’t prove that, but he knew it in his silent heart. When he loved, he loved passionately and with intensity. It had never been like this before. Not even with Dru. With Buffy, it was forbidden, but it was true.
He sat down behind her, slowly running a damp cloth over her bleeding wound.
“You have running water down here?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at him.
“I knew a guy. Did Clem’s cave up. That was before Clem found his own way to make money. Now the git has himself an apartment. His neighbors actually bought it when he told them he has a skin condition.” Buffy couldn’t help herself, and she giggled. I’m giggling for him? God, I’m losing it. “There. Isn’t bleeding anymore.” He rubbed some sort of ointment onto the wound that tingled a little, and then he bandaged her up. “Good as new.”
“Thanks, Spike,” she said tiredly, as his hands moved up to her shoulders. He gave one of them a squeeze, and she found herself leaning into him. Within moments, she was leaning against his chest. He felt a twinge of pain in his side, but at this moment, he didn’t care. He had to control himself. But control was a hard thing to keep hold of at a time like this.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked after a moment.
“What?”
“Is it because I was dead?” Spike said nothing. “I haven’t exactly been Sane Girl since I came back. I’m…I’m sending you mixed signals, I know.” Still, nothing. “Spike?”
“Maybe partly because you were dead,” he admitted. “But you know the other part. I’ve told you a dozen times. It won’t change. It can’t.” Buffy closed her eyes. “It never will, pet. As for the mixed signals, I have all the time in the world. I can wait for you to love me too.”
“What if…” She leaned into him a little closer, resting the back of her head against his shoulder. He could hear her pulse pounding in his ears. He could smell the sweet, tangy scent of her skin. He wanted to taste her.
“What if you can’t?” She didn’t say anything, but she knew. “I’m not a beggar, pet. I might come on strong. I might come at you time and time again, trying to convince you that this isn’t going to change for me, but if you give us a chance, and you try to believe it…try to feel that I love you, and you still can’t love me, I’ll leave you alone.” It would be hard, but he knew he’d do it, because even though he was immortal, and he had his entire unlife ahead of him, he wasn’t sure how many time she could be shot down by the one woman he ever truly loved. Good thing she can’t read thoughts, you bloody wanker, he cursed to himself. Sometimes, he realized, he reminded himself too much of William, the young man he once was; the young man that hated his life so much that he’d ended up as a vampire, a loathsome creature that’s only purpose was to kill, to feed, to destroy.
“Spike,” she whispered, closing her eyes, not wanting to turn around and look at him. The feeling of his cool hands on her shoulders was soothing, and for a fleeting moment, feeling that sensation for the rest of her life didn’t sound too awful. “I can’t even think straight.”
“Don’t think, pet. Just feel. Listen to what your heart tells you. You know I love you. You can feel it.” She was silent. “Can’t you?” Buffy shivered, but she found herself nodding. “And you wonder how I can love, when I don’t have a soul.” Another nod. “I don’t know, pet. I’ve asked myself that a million bloody times. When I fell for Dru…but that was different. It was like fire when it happened with you, pet. It consumed me. Tortured me. I didn’t have an answer. I just knew I had to be with you.”
Buffy continued to tremble at his words, but she couldn’t fight him anymore. She knew he loved her. She’d known for a long time, but the idea of a soulless vampire loving anyone, especially her, was a difficult concept to grasp. Not only did it confuse her about who she was, but it made her question everything she’d been taught in her years as the Slayer.
“I don’t know how,” she finally whispered. Bleedin’ idiots, he thought to himself. She’d been hurt too many times before. She’d died, never thinking she’d have to deal with new feelings like this before, and when she’d come back, he’d been there. He wanted to be there. He wanted to show her everything that love could be, but she had to let him, if she wanted to try.
“You know how to feel. You feel with everything you have, everyday. You fight with passion. That’s feeling something.”
“Not since I came back,” she breathed. “Sometimes I feel like I’m in a fog.” He could hear the tears in her voice. I’m afraid of loving you, because I don’t know what that means, her head and her heart screamed. She felt as if she were giving a part of herself away right now. Something she’d wanted to keep to herself. But she couldn’t help herself with him. She felt closer to him than anyone else right now. As much as she wanted to pretend that everything was fine, it wasn’t. Not yet. But it could be. She just had to let herself feel it. She had to let herself live as if she were alive, not waiting for the next shoe to drop; for another apocalypse to avert by martyring herself. “I want to feel right again. It…it just takes time.”
His hands squeezed her shoulders again, letting her know he was there.
“Then let me help you through it,” he whispered. He pressed a soft kiss to her collarbone, and she trembled, shrugging her shoulders at first, but soon giving in to the way his touch made her body react. She turned her head and looked up, looking into his eyes, seeing for the first time how honest he really was. An honest vampire. That was new. This was going to take some getting used to, especially since he could go from an out and out bastard at one moment and be this sensitive, sensual being the next. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that it was just who he was. She’d known that for some time, but only now was she beginning to truly understand the ins and outs of Spike. Not the demon, but the man.
He looked down into her eyes, wondering if she was about to run off, leave him wondering once again. But she didn’t. She only gave him a little nod, and it was all he needed to know that she was going to let him try to help her. She reached her arm up, brushing her hand against the back of his neck, as she rested against his chest. She closed her eyes, letting herself feel. Letting her body take over for her. No thinking. Just feeling. But the closer his lips neared to hers, the more she thought…and she thought about how desperately she wanted to kiss him.
He pressed the lightest of kisses against her lips, waiting for her to make the move, wanting her to feel right. It was only a moment before she was deepening the kiss, leaning more and more into him, craning her neck further, her fingers softly raking the back of his neck, as her tongue explored his inviting mouth.
As much as he wanted to ignore the pain throbbing in his side, her elbow grazed the bruise, and he let out a groan, a weakened version of what she was used to hearing when his chip fired off.
“Oh God,” she breathed, standing up quickly, pulling on her shirt. She was going to run. He knew it. But, again, she surprised him. “I’m sorry. I forgot…”
“It’s alright, pet. No harm done.” He stood to face her, and she smiled a little.
“Would it be stupid to say I’m nervous? It’s not like…it’s not like I haven’t done this before. This…r…this…”
“You can say it…relationship.”
“Relationship…thing,” she muttered. She wasn’t certain what they had was a relationship. It wasn’t even sex. Yet. She knew that was coming. It was inevitable. She’d seen him naked, and ever since, she couldn’t stop thinking about how amazing it would feel to be pressed up against him. How it would feel to have him inside of her.
“Yeah, well,” he said with a shrug, tossing her the rest of the bandages for her to wrap around his middle, “it means something else when it scares you.” Her eyes locked on his as he said those words. “Because if it ends up better than you expected, it was worth it.”
“And if it doesn’t…”
“At least you’ll have taken a chance to find out.” He grimaced internally, thinking that sounded awfully like something William Pratt, his former self would have said. But she didn’t seem to flinch at it, so he figured they were still alright.
“Can you raise your arms?” she asked, stepping toward him, fingers trembling. He raised his arms as far as he could, which was pretty far. Vampires had a high threshold for pain, but bruised ribs still caused a lot of discomfort.
Smiling slightly, she began to circle the bandage around his waist, not wanting to get it too tight, but wanting it to be comfortable enough that it might protect him from some pain. He’d taken care of her, and now it was her chance to do the same for him.
“There,” she said with a nod of approval when she finished. “All better.” Spike took one of her hands in his, curling his fingers around hers. It was such a simple gesture; so human. Her knees trembled as he looked right into her soul, and she looked into the depths of his gaze, seeing so much more than a soulless demon. He was a man..looking at a woman with more love than she’d ever seen. How it was possible, she didn’t know, but it was comforting.
“Thanks, luv,” he breathed, caressing her cheek with the back of his other hand. He leaned in, brushing his lips over hers again, and in that kiss was a promise that she wasn’t going to regret it. The knot twisting in her stomach told her she hoped she wouldn’t, but something else deep inside told her not to think about it. Whatever happened, happened, but she was ready to experience something new. She was ready to give living another chance, and she was ready to do it with a little help from somebody who loved her.
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