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Once again, thank you for all the reviews. it's beyond nice to know that you guys are enjoying the story so far.
Strange Fruit Part Four

"I haven't felt this way I feel,
Since many a year ago.
But in those years and the lifetimes past,
I did not deal with the road.
And I did not deal with you, I know.
Tho the love has always been.
So I search to find an answer there,
So I can truly win.
Every hour of fear I spend,
My body tries to cry,
Living through each empty night,
A deadly calm inside."
- Fleetwood Mac, "Storms"

* * *

I never want this to end.

It was not a realization she wanted to have. Particularly not when she lay naked beneath her vampire lover whose mouth was doing all kinds of wonderful things to her nether regions which caused her to thrash about like a wild thing on the soft grass. At times like this, she didn’t want to be thinking at all. Which had sort of been the point when she’d started this thing with Spike in the first place. She got the sex, with all its illusions of intimacy and very definite mind blowing pleasure, and he got …

Nothing.

The small part of Buffy that could still feel shame flared to life. She ignored it.

But she couldn’t ignore him as he pressed his mouth to hers; letting her taste her own juices on her tongue as he began to work himself inside her. He whispered her name reverently and she shuddered, her eyes closing tightly as she focused on the feel of him sliding softly in and out of her. He no longer told her he loved her, not since that one night in the park last month when she’d broken. He didn’t need to though, she could feel it every sweep of his tongue across her fevered flesh, in the rough way he gripped her to him, in the kisses that made her wish she didn’t have to breathe any more so that they would never have to stop. Actions, she knew, spoke louder than words.

It made her long for something she knew was out of her reach now. Something she was certain she shouldn’t want anyway.

He twisted inside her suddenly, shifting their angle as he bent downwards to tease her breasts, wrenching a moan from her as his hand went between them to push her over into oblivion. He didn’t wait long to follow.

“Someday, love, we’re going to start and finish this in a bed.” The intimacy of the moment struck her abruptly, keeping her still as he rose up on his elbows to smile down at her and one hand cupped her face softly. Already, he was semi-hard within her, his hips making slow half-thrusts as he bent down to kiss her.

Too late.

“Spike.” He paused above her, his eyes looking into hers questioningly, once again rendering her speechless at the expression on his features. She swallowed and the protest died in her throat before it had even really started. She kissed him instead.

She knew that her preference for Spike’s company only confirmed the kernel of doubt that plagued her mind. She was different now and not in the good way she’d always hoped she’d be; she was more demon than human these days. After all, why else would she prefer to whittle away the hours in his company?

Because he doesn’t treat me like I have horns growing out of my head. Or like I’m a problem to be fixed as soon as possible.

“What’s wrong with me, Spike?”

The blond vampire sighed and rolled off of her, pulling her with him so that they lay facing each other, “Aside from your ability to interrupt a perfectly good shag, I can’t say that there’s much wrong with you, pet.”

She sighed, the silence of the night folding around them as they lay underneath the moon. She spread her hand on his chest, her fingers exploring his cool flesh, marveling as he took in air he didn’t need so that it rose and fell steadily. She could feel him watching her expectantly, his eyes half hooded as he contemplated her. In effort to avoid him she pressed a kiss to his chest before placing her head against it as if listening to the heart beat she knew she wouldn’t find there.

“What did I come back as, Spike?”

She heard him draw in a breath, “Does it matter, Slayer? You’re still you where it counts.”

“Am I?” She sat up abruptly, suddenly flush with anger as her hand now dug into his flesh so that his breath exited in a hiss of pain, “Why am I here with you then, Spike? Why aren’t I patrolling or bronzing or hanging out with my sister?”

“I can’t rightly answer that, love.”

The softness of the endearment deflated her and for a moment she just felt numb, drifting on an empty sea, before once again the despair, thick and sluggish, returned to fill her up. Her grip softened but her grabbed it before she could pull away from him, pressing a kiss to her palm and then each of her fingers in turn, “Nothing feels real to me anymore. I try and I try to fit in again, but it’s like the pieces won’t go together any more. Everything seems so far away and I can’t feel the way I’m supposed to about anything except …”

She stopped on a long sob. Her teeth chattering against the truth she swallowed, “Why am I choosing to stay here in the shadows with you instead of in the day with my friends?”

“Maybe because here in the shadows is where you belong now, love.”

“No …” Panic flared inside her at his words and she jerked free.

Clothes. I need clothes.

He reached out for her but she pushed him away roughly, anger mixing with the panic as she scrambled into her clothing. He was angry too now, she could feel it radiating from him in waves as he shrugged into his shirt and duster, “Running away from me, pet? Too bad I didn’t know that the secret to getting you out of my hair was to fuck you or I might have tried it way back when.”

She swallowed back the lump in her throat, ignoring the regret that threaded through her at the ruined evening. She began walking away from him.

“What is it that Angel told me? Oh yeah, I remember now, to kill this girl you have to love her first.”

She took off in a run.

His bitter laugh echoing behind her in the night.

* * *

It was near dawn when he slipped in through her bedroom window. She could feel him watching her even as she refused to turn and face him. Dimly, she was aware of his apology spilling forth in a bubbling brook of words which she let pass around and through her into nothingness.

It wasn’t until he touched her arm that she broke the silence, her voice harsh in the darkness, “Go away, Spike. I have to work in the morning.”

He didn’t even attempt to hide his derisiveness as he settled on the bed, “You’re worried about that sorry excuse for a job? You shouldn’t be working there, Slayer. You’re better than that.”

Not anymore.

“I need the money, Spike. It’s not like mortgage payments and food grows on trees.”

“Oh.” There was a long pause and she imagined she could feel him carefully considering his words, weighing all the pros and cons before finally saying, “I have money.”

“Good for you.”

“I could give you some.”

And there it was: the help she’d been craving for the past few months offered not by her friends or her Watcher or even, long shot as it was, her father. Only this monster, my lover, extended a hand while everyone else looked away. She could feel the bitterness rising in her, the unrelenting anger at being brought back into a like fraught with problems that she’d barely had time to process before they’d been dumped onto her shoulders and she’d been left to fix them. In that moment she hated Spike for being what everyone else couldn’t, for acting so much like the kind of man who could be by her side while all the while he wasn’t, “I can’t take your money, Spike. Everything you touch is tainted.”

Just like me.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Slayer. It’s completely legitimate –“

She cut him off with a shove, “Get out of here, Spike. Just leave me alone.”

She could hear him muttering under his breath as he moved back to the window, “I don’t know why I even bloody try anymore.”

I don’t either.





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