“Really not complaining here.”
“And it’s killing me. I have to be strong about this. I’m sorry, William.”
Spike’s face fell at her words. Tears prickling the back of his eyelids, he refused to look at her, refused to let her see how she’d finally gotten to him with that poncy name of his. He stared at the floor, hoping it would swallow him whole. In the recesses of his mind, he wondered if he wished hard enough, he could turn back the clock and make everything better again, the way it should be between them.
Watching her leave, he took a few steps backwards, collapsing onto the remains of his bed in such a way as to avoid the splinters. Head in hands, he tried to fathom how he could have been as brainless as Angel always accused him of being, not that he would ever tell the sodding puff he was right. He had to have snatched a bag of blood that belonged to a junkie because being high was the only explanation he could think of to dream up a scheme like that. Calling himself the Doctor. Pfft! Maybe if he hadn’t done any of that, Captain Cardboard would never have come back, never returned and made Buffy realise what he and she had amounted to nothing. Shagging on a basis of hatred, selfishness, and self pity didn’t exactly inspire doves and sonnets.
The blond had always known he was just a mindless fuck to her, something she needed to get out of her system. An itch to bloody scratch. A way for her to escape her multitude of problems for an hour... or five. Did he really expect her to fall arse over tit in love with him, as he had done with her?
Yes.
Maybe she didn’t love him today. Maybe she still wouldn’t love him tomorrow. But Spike knew she cared, could see it in the way she always refused to dust him, and that was enough to steel his resolve. He was going to get his girl back, one way or another. If it took him the rest of his un-life, he would find a way to bring her back to him.
Unable to withstand the mounting tension inside the house, Buffy chose instead to sit outside on the back porch, hoping to ease the need to escape to him just one more time. It wasn’t long, however, before she heard the telltale signs of his arrival. Instead of finding the solace she sought, she was now regretting her decision.
She didn’t bother looking up. She could tell it was him, even without the familiar trill that crept along her spine. The Slayer knew him like the back of her own hand; the pattern of his footfalls, the creaking of his trademark leather duster... his scent. Especially his scent, the one she’d been trying to forget. Oh, yes...she would know that vampire anywhere.
“Spike.” She bit out his name like it was blasphemy.
“No need to be like that, pet. Came for a nice, cosy little chat. Have a few things we need to thrash out, you and me.”
“There will be no thrashing of any kind between us, Spike. Now, scamper off back to your crypt like a good vamp,” she said in a bored tone, waving her fingers in a shooing motion.
Tucking his tongue behind his teeth, he gave her a lascivious smirk. “We both know that’s not what you really want, so why don’t you just admit it to yourself, and we can go back to how we were before.”
Rolling her eyes, she tried to tamp down her body’s reaction when he strode over and parked himself next to her on the step, desperate to ignore the way his muscles moved in those tight jeans of his. It was several moments before he spoke again.
“You know I love you, pet.”
Buffy knew he did, could hear the reverence in his voice every time he told her, and it tore her up inside. She wanted to love him, really she did, but there was just something stopping her—something she couldn’t quite work out.
“I know,” she acknowledged with a whisper.
“So why—”
With a swiftness she never knew she possessed, Buffy had Spike pinned beneath her the second his cool hand touched her shoulder.
“If you wanted kinky sex, love, all you had to do was ask.” The vampire chuckled, the sound vibrating through his chest.
“Why do you keep doing this to yourself, Spike?” The frustration was evident in her voice. “It doesn’t matter how much I beat you to a pulpy mess, you still come back for more.”
“You always hurt the ones you love. I’m just hanging around until you suss that out.”
“I don’t love you.” She could so easily grab the stake stuffed in her back pocket and dust him.
As if he knew what was going through her mind, he softened his smug expression. “Not yet, but you will. Give me time is all I ask.”
“Time for what?” Was he seriously this deluded? “Time for you to find another way to fuck me that involves more than handcuffs and the ungrateful dead looking on? Time for you to come up with some other stupid scheme to get me to notice your bleached ass?” Her fingers were just itching to curl around the handle of Mr. Pointy. “I’ll give you time, Spike. Time alone to get over yourself and leave me the hell alone!”
He shook his head. “There you go again. Spouting off about something you haven’t quite worked out yourself yet.” He dared to push her. “Do you get off on it? Does it make you hot, being the one that calls the shots?”
She stared at him, trying to understand his persistence. “Why does everything always have to be about sex? This is about love and the fact that I’m not in it. With you.”
A sudden revelation caused his blue eyes to glint in the moonlight. “You can’t admit it—you’re obsessed with me!” When he saw the tiniest bit of fear enter her eyes, he knew he’d hit too close to home. “I’m like a drug—once you’ve had me, you can’t get enough of me, of what can do to you, what I can give you.”
Her lip curled in disdain. “Ugh, self-absorbed much?” Still pinned beneath her, she rose until she was sitting on his stomach, her fists curling around the lapels of his duster. “I can’t believe I ever even considered sleeping with someone who loves themselves as much as you do. It’s ridiculous.”
He could say something about the position she was in, but he didn’t think it would help his cause. He was just glad she was touching him. “There you go changing the subject again, Slayer. The point is not whether I’m self-obsessed. The point is I love you. Always have, always will.” He slowly rose until he was propped on his elbows, staring the broken girl in the eye. “All I want is for you to admit you love me, too.”
At some point during the argument, Buffy had loosed her hold on Spike, as if her hands burned with the memory of him. He was so close and so earnest; it was hard not to be caught up in the fantasy he offered.
Recognising the confusion in her gaze when coming face to face with a truth she didn’t want to accept, he quietly to her, “I know, somewhere deep inside you, that you love me, that you know it. I can feel it, love... feel it in my bones.”
She pondered her bargaining position for a moment. “If I tell you I love you, will you leave me alone?”
“Not bloody likely,” Spike rasped. He was so close to getting her to admit the truth.
“How about if I tell you there’s a stake in my pocket with your name on it. Will you leave me alone then?”
“Been there, seen it, got the scars to prove it,” he said with a snort. “You’re not going to kill me, pet. You couldn’t do that to yourself.”
Damn it, she hated when he was right. So why wouldn’t she dust him? Was she really that desperate to have someone that understood her that she refused to do her duty and stake a vamp? But this wasn’t just any vamp, this was... Spike. And therein laid all her questions and the answers to them. “Maybe you’re right,” she said hesitantly, trying out the words on her tongue. “I won’t do that to myself.” She pursed her lips. “So what will it take to get you to leave me alone?”
“I will never leave you, Buffy. Not until the day you die. Probably not even then.”
A ghost of a smile graced her mouth. “I don’t think they’d let you into heaven,” she joked.
“Ha bloody ha.”
The pair were silent for a short while, both unsure of one another in unfamiliar territory.
“Spike?”
“Hmm?”
“I do love you, you know.”