The best thing about tonight's that we're not fighting
I look at her, and I simply bask in the awe that my mind has grown accustomed to feeling whenever its eyes meet her form. She’s beauty, in so many more ways than one. She’s everything that I’ve ever wanted, all in one beautiful, graceful woman. She represents what I’ve been searching for, through my entire existence. I don’t think I realized it then, but what I felt for Drusilla was nothing but a mere flicker of the flames I feel for Buffy. She doesn’t know it, refuses to believe it’s anything real. But I know it is, I can feel it deep down somewhere in my body. I may not have a soul, but I do have a heart, and it’s belonged to her ever since I laid eyes on her. Whether I cared to acknowledge it at the time, I know now that it does. It belongs to her in so many ways. She has my love, devotion, everlasting support and care.
A soft smile graces my sharp, angular features as I watched her curl into herself as she sleeps, her blonde hair splayed out messily on the pillow she is resting on. My hand is itching to stroke her beautiful mane but I know that tenderness is not permitted with her. I wonder why she refuses to become intimate with me, if she knows that all we’ve ever done is be intimate. Whether it’s the smoldering looks she sports at me, when she believes I’m not looking, or the sexual tension that either of us cannot withstand, all we’ve ever done is dance.
Why won’t she accept that she likes to dance?
Could it be that we have been this way before
I know you don't think that I am trying
I awaken to him closing his eyelids in a sleepy haze, finally giving into the beauty of resting. He thinks I don’t know how he feels. He thinks I don’t try and simply take what I want from him. An outsider would probably testify to the fact that I abuse his love to my advantage, but an outsider doesn’t know either of us. An outsider doesn’t realize what power we both hold, and how crucial our places are in the world. How important it is to please everyone so you’re not alone, ever. He claims that he’ll stay, he’ll never leave me. But why should I believe him? I’d like to say that Angel used to look at me with the same eyes and expression, and he still left. But I can’t, because I would be lying. Spike doesn’t look at me like that.
He looks at me in such a way, I am left awestruck. I feel like the richest woman in the world, rich from his love and devotion and all the wonderful ideas he promises me. I try, I truly do. I try to become what he needs, but I fear that my emotional ties to this world have been forever severed by all of the rejection I have encountered. But, then I feel ashamed. Spike has been through so much more rejection than me, so much more hurt, I feel that I owe him an ounce of respect. He deserves that much, I know. Even after all of the dismissals of his undying love, he never fails to simply love.
So dear I love him that with him,
All deaths I could endure.
Without him, live no life.
~by William Shakespeare~
I know that without him, I had nothing. I was his way to the light, he was my way to the darkness. Without each other, without our strengths, we would be forever lost, wandering the streets aimlessly and listlessly, only hoping that death would come soon. So why could I not reveal this to his broken and fragile heart?
I know you're wearing thin down to the core
I don’t think she realizes that I do know, that she does try. Outside, it looks as if she’s not. But I’ve learnt that Buffy is the kind of person who refuses to let anything show. So, I search inside of her. When I look into her eyes, when we’re making love, when we’re just talking and fighting. I search and search, and I see it with inwardly tearful eyes, I see her light burning low but bright. I see it struggling to overcome her love of pain. She is comfortable with being miserable, since no one can touch her, no one can falter her progression through misery. All she’s ever known is misery and it’s beginning to eat her insides up, leaving nothing behind. Soon, she will be nothing but a hollow shell, a true killing machine.
I, Spike, the master vampire of one hundred and twenty years, have surprised her. I have been the malfunction in her system. The moment we kissed, the moment our mouth fused together in a passion like no other, she was stricken. How could she possibly revive any thoughts of misery when she had felt a love like no other? I know my love is sometimes overbearing, though hardly obsessive, and she was overwhelmed by it. Now, she was thrown. How could she be happy, when she had spent all her life being unhappy? How could she teach herself to love again, fully and completely?
But hold your breath
Because tonight will be the night
That I will fall for you
Over again
Don't make me change my mind
Or I won't live to see another day
I wonder if sometimes he realizes how much of a beautiful face he has. Granted, he’s arrogant and cocky and believes himself to be God’s (or possibly Lucifer’s?) gift to creation, but I don’t think he truly understands the extent of his beauty. Not just his outer beauty, but the incredible splendor that seeps through his skin, and runs straight to his heart. Whether it’s a beating heart or not, it loves more than any other heart I know.
I watch him sleep, his body deathly still. His chest does not rise and fall like humans do, rather maintaining a stubbornly hardened position that refused to move. I am not scared of him. As I watched him sleep, his lips parting slightly as he fell deeper into dreamland, I raise a tentative hand to his magnificently created face. It is not custom for me to touch him. I fear that touching him would bring me closer to the edge that I was so tempted to jump off of. But for some reason, on this particular night, I felt drawn to him. Earlier, before we had indulged ourselves in our lust-induced passion, he had quoted some poem of some sort, that had sent shivers up and down my spine.
“The worst thing is holding on to someone who doesn’t want to be held on to.”
He had said it so softly, so chillingly, in a voice filled with so much pain and hurt that I had almost broken down to reveal to him of my everlasting love for him. He was mine, and I his. But for some reason, I was not as willing to repeat the three words that would forever mend his heart. I knew that somewhere, a major part of my destiny revolved around him. Spike. William. Whatever you called him, whatever you wished to see him as, he was still the same person. He was still my chosen mate, I knew that. But why couldn’t I say the words? Perhaps I was simply not good enough at saying them as Spike was, though I already knew that deep down. Spike always was the vocal one, in our twisted relationship. Whether it was during sex, or during a fight, he always spoke because I think he feared I would never speak the words I truly wanted to for myself. He would say the things I would never dare say. A part of me was grateful to him for saving me the trouble. Another part, a much greater part, was simply ashamed and resentful that I couldn’t speak the words for myself.
So, instead, I had taken our bond in stride and tonight, I struggled to convey my feelings through my actions. I touch his face, my tiny, tanned hand looking ridiculous atop of his pale face. I allow a small smile to form on my lips as my hands caress his forehead with a feather light touch, so as not to wake him. How could I possibly explain my actions to him if he awoke? Did I need to? I ignore these troublesome thoughts as my hands move down from his forehead straight to his gorgeously soft lips. My smile dissipates into an expression of awe, as I stare at this man before me, sleeping beside me. I know that I do not deserve his love, but I am selfish and I bask in it anyways.
I swear it's true
Because a girl like you is impossible to find
You're impossible to find
I feel her touch on my head, and it feels unbelievably wonderful. Words cannot explain the emotions running through me, as she touches my forehead and then my lips. I force myself to remain asleep, for fear that if I awoke, I would scare her away and then I would never again feel her talented hands on my face. No one has ever touched me like this before, and I have never felt this loved before. I try to push away the hurtful thoughts that scream at me with a vengeance, telling me that this is not love and that whatever she feels for me is simply lust. But a smaller part, a part that I hatefully call William, tells me that she does love me and that I do have some sort of chance of being her one and only.
She’s one of a kind. Buffy Summers, there will never be another one like you.
This is not what I intended
I always swore to you I'd never fall apart
I see his eyelashes flutter for a moment, when my hands begin to touch his cheeks. I know that he is awake, but he is doing his best not to openly react to my ministrations. I know what he is thinking, because it’s what I am thinking. I will be fearful, having been caught at a vulnerable position. I don’t want him to know this side of me, this tenderness. This used to be only reserved for certain people, but after those people all left, I felt that my love belonged to no one. My father left me, my mother died, my sister does not appreciate my tireless efforts, Angel deserted me, Xander and Willow judge me with cold conviction and even Riley was threatened by my power. Why should I love anymore since it obviously went unnoticed?
I have fallen apart in my life more times than I’d like to count. When my father left our house on that stormy night back in Los Angeles, I recall running away to my favorite art museum downtown. I had managed to hide away there for three days, trying to cope with the pressure of losing a parent by myself, before I was found. Then, Dawn was born shortly after Dad left. All of the attention that used to be on me, was now gone. It sounds like the typical sob story of a once-only child, but it was so difficult having to deal with the grief of being fatherless on my own. My next big loss was Angel, which left me heartbroken. I had run to Los Angeles, too shocked at my own actions to deal with the judgment of anyone else. How could they understand something, when they refused to? They claimed they did, they claimed that the Slayer was some big job and that yes, I did have to go through a lot. But when the time came that I confronted them about her personal and emotional problems, all they did was nod and brush it away, hoping it would never resurface to disrupt their pleasant lives.
I’ve lost so much in my short life and I think, in some sense, a little part of my soul died when my mother did. Mom was really the only person, besides Spike, who understood my pressure. My friends used to find it funny when she would demand why I had to be the Slayer, and that it wasn’t fair for a young girl to be placed with such a burden. I hated them for laughing at her because she was only being sincere and honest, and she did actually care about my responsibility. They didn’t like it when they brought up the negative sides of Slaying. They liked to believe that hey, there’s a Slayer, we’re all taken care. When Mom died, I was left with a disrespectful younger sister who refused to acknowledge the work I put in to give her a half-decent life. As if she were the only one going through pain, I was left to pick up the pieces that Mom left when she shattered our lives with her sudden and unexpected death.
I have fallen apart on so many occasions but for some reason, when Spike is around, I feel the urge to stay strong. It would make him proud if his girl was strong, right? Stay strong in public, cry in private. Never show your weaknesses to other people or they would use it against you, he had warned her. Spike motivates me to do better for myself, to try more. I don’t want to fall apart on him.
I don’t want to disappoint him anymore.
You always thought that I was stronger
I may have failed but I have loved you from the start
I’ve done so many things in my past that I am undoubtedly ashamed of. I think that I would even go as far to say that I would rather be the sniveling, bloody nancy boy I once was, if it meant winning Buffy over. But then I realize that she would disagree. She would want to love all of me, not just a part of me. Angelus had taught her that through painful lessons of hurt. She knew that to fully love anyone, you had to be in love with every inch of their being.
I try to be her guardian, her knight in shining armor when she’s down. When she’s wounded, be it her pride or her body, I try to make her strong again. I’d like to think that I’m her rock, her stability, like she is my way back to the ground. I want her to know that she can cry on my shoulder, that I won’t look at her with disgust or contempt. Never. I would never do that to my girl.
Except, she never really was mine, was she?
Oh, But hold your breathe
Because tonight will be the night
That I will fall for you
Over again
Don't make me change my mind
Or I won't live to see another day
I swear it's true
I want to be his, tonight and for forevermore. I want to belong to him in every way possible, physically, emotionally, spiritually. I want our bodies to be fused together in passion as we mate and finally fill the space between us. I want us both to be happy, to both overcome our painful past to finally bring each other happiness.
I sit up in bed slowly, glancing around swiftly at his crypt. There is a beautiful glow around us, created by the flickering lit candles placed strategically around the room. I look down and see his black silk sheets twisted around my body, witness to the night’s passionate events.
Who knows how long I've loved you,
You know I love you still.
Will I wait a lonely lifetime?
If you want me to I will.
~by The Beatles~
A million thoughts raced through my mind at that moment, most of which involved what Xander, Willow and Dawn would think. But then, a small part of me, the formidable part that I refer to as the Slayer, whispered something that caught my attention.
‘Whose life is it, Buffy? Theirs? Or yours?’
I realize that Spike had tried to effortlessly convey this to me, with no success. Yet, hearing if from the primal and distinctive part of me, that I try to separate from my “Buffy” self, shocked me. It was the Buffy part of me that struggles to deny what I have become, what I am to evolve into. A hardened but youthful who has so much to offer, but has been silenced forever more to save others from a terrible fate. It is tragic, but my destiny nonetheless. The logic in the Slayer’s reasoning is astounding and for the first time in all of my time of being the Slayer, I find myself connected with my Slayer side. I close my eyes slowly, but refuse to remove my hands from Spike’s face. I am pulled into a trance of some sort, like a vision. I see my Slayer self, standing in front of her, chin held high and face taut with determination. She looks just like me, no different than my titled “Buffy” side. I realize, through this unheard of metaphor, that we truly are one and the same, two sides of the same coin. I tentatively hold out my hand in welcome, and I see some sort of radiating glow emanating from my skin as my hand makes its way into hers.
I look, confused, behind me, hoping to find the source of this glow that appears to give me additional strength as the Slayer and I eternally link ourselves together. The Slayer, the Chosen One, is now part of me, Buffy Summers. When I turn, I see a whitish glow that looks beautiful in the dark skylight behind it. I see little ribbons of blue painted over the white and I know who it is, who I need. As the Slayer walks into me, into my body, to finally join ourselves, she whispers words to me that I will never forget.
“Listen to your heart first, Buffy, before you tell him your goodbye.”
My eyes snap open and I find myself staring into the strangest pair of blue eyes, that unmistakably belong to the man who, no doubt, belongs to me as long as I will have him. The Slayer, who was now fully part of me, had warned me to listen to my heart before I said goodbye to Spike. I think I know what she meant. Did I really intend to say goodbye? Ever? If I did, was it my heart talking or my head? I knew the answers to all of those questions and I knew that tonight, the night of our endless sexual encounters, would be the night…when I would have to face the consequences of answering those questions.
Because a girl like you is impossible to find
It's impossible
So breathe in so deep
Breathe me in
I'm yours to keep
I see her with her eyes closed, but I know that she is not asleep. She is seeing something, and I wait patiently for her to reawaken from her vision. Perhaps she was imagining what her friends would say if they saw us together. Tonight had not been our first, no, definitely not. But I think it was truly magical, as I always thought of our nights together. She didn’t, she refused to believe anything we had was magical, only a “mistake”.
I look around at my crypt and though I know I have nothing much to offer her except my everlasting love, I realize that even if she leaves and deserts my life forever, I will always be hers. My heart will always belong to her, until the day I dust. I think the day I dust will be the day she leaves, though. Drusilla, Cecily, Harmony. They had all been ideas of what I yearned for, but they weren’t real. None of them were, because none of them were Buffy. Buffy was light and grace and beauty and darkness, all in one. I drowned in her like water, unable to submerge because surfacing meant returning to reality, where all the sadness was. If I stayed underwater forever, who could hurt me? Only the water could.
And hold on to your words
Cause talk is cheap
And remember me tonight
When you're asleep
I see him waiting for me to speak and I do, clearing my throat and feeling somewhat wary when his blue eyes snapped curiously to my face. I hate his eyes sometimes, they’re so expressive, and they allow him to see my soul, every bare inch of me. It frightens me and excites me at the same time, to know how deep he delves.
“Spike,” I whisper his name, so softly that I am almost inaudible, but luckily his vampire ears picked up my voice.
I can see him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with the motion as he looks nervous, frightened and vulnerable. I do not believe, I refuse to believe, that I had ever made him feel like that before. But I have, to my sadness.
“You’re so beautiful , you know that?” I don’t know how to start, but to tell him of his beauty.
"Not just on the outside,” I assure him, as he directs his eyes up to the ceiling with a resentful expression. I know that he thinks I use him, and abuse his good looks for my own satisfaction. I do, in a way, but not in the way he thinks.
“You’re beauty, I can see it inside of you too,” I say quietly, drawing a finger up and down on his sternum, watching with mild fulfillment as he closes his eyes in contentment. I can tell he is awed by what I am saying and doing.
“I…” My voice trails off uncertainly, unsure of what I want to say. Then I speak again, for fear that I may never find my voice again.
“You’re my ocean, Spike,” I declare loudly, the strong tone of my voice reverberating against the walls of his crypt, and startling him as his eyelids snapped open. He instantly sat up, leaning against the headboard as he watched me from under his eyelashes.
“You’re so big and full of possibility.”
He tilts his head in that adorable way of his, and stares at me with a penetrating gaze. “Possibility of what, Buffy?” He says my name with such a low and husky tone, I am undeniably aroused. He senses this too, and seems to prepare himself for the end of what was a promising discussion. Under normal circumstances, I would have simply pounced on him, fulfilling my sexual needs and then left to go back to Revello, ending yet another painful night for the both of us.
But these are not normal circumstances.
I position myself on the bed so that I am sitting, cross legged, in front of him. The glow of the candles brings about a godly appearance to his beautiful form and I swallow hard.
“The possibility of happiness,” I reply, feeling a red flush creep up my neck. I was never good with words, as it always felt sappy for me.
He raises his dark brows, and they meet his blond hairline. “Happiness?” he repeats, as if he had not heard me the first time, like he refused to believe that he could bring anything but pain into her life, as the last few weeks had proven.
I nod, wringing my hands nervously in my lap. “There’s a lot to be said for my behavior, Spike. But if you never forgive me for what I’ve done, at least let me say one last thing,” I continue, holding up a hand to silence his almost instantaneous response to my grave words.
Then, I say in a much softer voice:
“"I would give up everything for one moment with you; for one moment is better than a lifetime of not knowing you." I recall this quote from grade twelve English. It had touched a part of me in a way that my younger self had not quite recognized yet, as anything but strange.
He looks at me then, as a most peculiar expression crosses his face.
Because tonight will be the night
That I will fall for you
Over again
Don't make me change my mind
Or I won't live to see another day
I swear it's true
Because a girl like you is impossible to find
Tonight will be the night
That I will fall for you
Over again
Don't make me change my mind
Or I won't live to see another day
I swear it's true
Because a girl like you is impossible to find
You're impossible to find
“Buffy,” I whisper her name reverently, my mind reeling as I try to process her words. All I know is that she’s offered the crumb I so desperately wanted, and despite all of the hurt she has put me through, I am undoubtedly taking it.
Her eyes water at my loving use of her given name and she looks at me with those glassy, green eyes that had won me over from the moment I laid eyes on her.
“I-I love you, William. I love every inch of you and I’ll never stop.” She is sobbing openly now, the years’ attempts of trying to conceal her emotions opening a floodgate of feelings. I take her in my arms instantly and draw her close, inhaling the beautiful scent of her golden tresses.
“You have me, Buffy, for as long as you want me,” I whisper, trying to conceal the tears running down my face as she pulls away to look at me.
“And I belong to you, Spike. Your girl, always.”
“Always?” I say in a hoarse voice I no longer recognize.
“Always.”
Fini~
Author's Chapter Notes:
This is a song ficlet based on Secondhand Serenade's song, Fall For You. No copyright infringement intended, for entertainment purposes only.
1) Warm thanks to Christine for beta-ing this.
2) Mucho appreciation go to Ryn for creating the SPECTACULAR banner for this! Love you hon! *muah*
3) A side note you should read, prior to reading this fic. Though you may understand how the POV thing works in this fic, I'll let you know beforehand anyways. The POV changes between Spike and Buffy after a set of lyrics. Ex.: Verse 1: Spike POV. Verse 2: Buffy POV, etc.
Lastly: Two quotes have been used directly from this site: http://www.mydearvalentine.com/famous-love-quotes/lost-love-quotes.html
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
1) Warm thanks to Christine for beta-ing this.
2) Mucho appreciation go to Ryn for creating the SPECTACULAR banner for this! Love you hon! *muah*
3) A side note you should read, prior to reading this fic. Though you may understand how the POV thing works in this fic, I'll let you know beforehand anyways. The POV changes between Spike and Buffy after a set of lyrics. Ex.: Verse 1: Spike POV. Verse 2: Buffy POV, etc.
Lastly: Two quotes have been used directly from this site: http://www.mydearvalentine.com/famous-love-quotes/lost-love-quotes.html
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
Chapter End Notes:
I would sincerely love a review from anyone who is willing to offer an opinion on this ficlet! Loved it, hated it, let me know! =D