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Author's Chapter Notes:
Okay, so here's the last chapter - though there's still an epilogue to come. I don't know why I'm not counting that as a chapter, when it is in fact a separate chapter, but those are the rules that my brain has set out and gosh darnit, I have to follow them!

Ahem. Anyway. This last one is hopefully a reward for all the ooky (but yummy) angst we've suffered through. A healthy dose of fluff. But not too fluffy, I hope. I'm always very concerned about the levels of fluffiness. Imagine this chapter is a jumper (or sweater, to you crazy Americans). What I aim to have done is put it in the dryer on an hour and a half long cycle, but I've taken it out only 45 minutes into it. See? It's still warm and nice and fluffy but you don't have to worry about your dryer (or your lungs) being clogged full of jumper oose. Am I making sense? Are you even still reading this author's note? Well fine. Screw you. Hope you enjoy the chapter *grumblegrumble*




It's tough, this whole living to make yourself happy thing. For instance, I don't think I can fully explain just how tough it is to sit here in the little fort we've made of my bedroom for the last four days, staring at the naked glory of my boyfriend (oh god, he's my boyfriend! Mine, mine mine!). My eyes travel all over his perfect body but I'm not touching him. Why am I not touching him, a sane person might ask. And I'd tell that sane person that my utterly insane boyfriend (happy dance, happy dance) suggested that I dust off one of my other dreams and attempt to capture his likeness using the only tools we could scrounge without leaving my apartment; namely, a silver crayola crayon and the back of a rather large Chinese take-out menu. So we're here, on my bed, me in my crappy, scraggy old t-shirt that barely covers the top of my thighs (that Spike told me he infinitely prefers to all the sexy lingerie in the world) and him lying completely naked at the other end of the bed facing me. And we're not touching. The rules are to watch him, study him, draw him to my heart's content but not touch him.



I'm finding it difficult to keep to the rules.



"Stop wiggling," I say, pinching his foot.



"Ow!" He jerks his foot a little, which earns him another glare from me.



"Summers, maybe you spent too much time with me in school and not enough in class, 'cause pinching someone isn't the way to get them to not move."



"I wish I'd spent more time with you. Screw my education," I say regretfully.



"I would have welcomed you with open arms, baby," he says softly, his eyes full of adoration. God, I love his eyes. So blue; so very, very blue. And always changing. Sometimes they look like deep pools. And then other times they look like they're on fire. Usually for me. All of a sudden, a massive blush breaks out over my face at the memory of one of the many times in the past few days that I've dozed off only to awake to the sight of his face between my legs, his mouth devouring me, his blue eyes boring a hole in mine as I scream in orgasm.



This whole fuck-each-other-senseless-then-cry-and-laugh-cause-we're-finally-together thing we've been doing for four days now hasn't helped me with my attacks of shyness or blushing. I'm thinking it'll take a few years or decades to get over them and that can't come soon enough for me. Spike said he hopes my blush attacks never leave 'cause he thinks they're adorable. Which I hate. I can be more than adorable. I think. I can be a vixen. I'm free now, I can do and be whatever the hell I want. He just doesn't know it yet. Hell, I don't really know it yet but I'm gonna give it a good-old Summers try. I'm going to train myself to be brave - to be who I want to be.



"I really wish I had a blue pen to do your eyes. I love your eyes," I say, willing my face to remain its normal colour.



He looks surprised and, dare I say it, slightly embarrassed at the compliment.



"You do?"



"Uh-huh," I answer coyly.



"What else do you like?" The smirk is back.



"What else do ya got?" I snark in a put on New York accent and one of those beautiful smiles of his breaks out, the kind that lights up his whole face, as he laughs at me.



"That too," I say, pointing at said smile. "I love that."



"What, making me laugh at you 'cause of your lameass accent?" he teases.



"Don't make me pinch you again, buster!" He quickly withdraws his foot before he twists round on the bed so he's lying face to face with me. He grabs my half-finished drawing of him out of my hand and throws it over his shoulder.



"Hey! I just spent the last --" I glance at my bedside alarm clock "-- ten minutes doing that, at your request I might add, and you're just throwing it around all willy-nilly."



"Willy-nilly?" he chuckles, pushing me onto my back and hovering over me.



"Yes. You should recognise that word. It is your name, after all. Willie," I tease.



"Bitch."



"Dickhead."



"Oh, I love it when your mouth gets all dirty, baby," he growls, nipping at my jaw with his teeth making me giggle. "Besides," he says, pulling back to face me again, "I don't really care if I see your drawing or not," he sighs, but before I can be offended, he continues, "because it's not about whether I like it or even if it's good. It's just about doing what you want to do, what makes you happy and you said drawing makes you happy so I'll be encouraging it as much as I can. I want you happy. That's what matters to me."



"Oh."



"Oh?" he prompts, smiling. "Oh that's sweet or oh my new boyfriend's a dick?"



"Oh the man I've been secretly, desperately in love with for the whole of my adult life is lying in my bed, telling me exactly what I need to hear, exactly when I need to hear it. That oh."



His eyes are doing that thing where they look like they'd eat me if they had teeth. I love it.



"Say it again," he says. His voice is husky, demanding, needy and his eyes are positively burning.



I've said it a million times over the past few days and if possible, I think he's said it more but it's not getting old. Not at all. The freedom to say it, finally. It feels incredible.



"I love you, Sp--"



"William, call me William."



"I love you, William."



He exhales heavily and drops his head to rest on mine. My hands come up to run through his hair, my nails lightly scraping his scalp.



"God, I love you too, Buffy. I love you so much."



"So I don't get an Elizabeth option?" I tease and his head lifts to regard me seriously before opening his mouth to reply.



"No," he says, laughing abruptly.



"Meanie," I pout.



"Oh, please don't do that, Buffy," he says seriously. I worry for half a second that I've done something to break our bubble of happiness, before he cuts into my thoughts with a kiss that steals what little breath my body had in it.



"Do what?" I ask breathlessly when he pulls back to look at me again.



"Pout with your gorgeous Buffy lips. You have no idea how many times I've watched you do that in the last ten years and wanted to pounce on you. I've had so many dreams about it that it's a little obscene," he says, half laughing, half lusting at me but I can tell he's still so fragile. We both are. All the time we've lost; all the years spent miserable thinking we'd never have each other.



"I used to dream about you, too," I offer quietly.



"You did?"



"Yes," I say in a small voice. "Usually we'd just be together, like this. Sometimes it would be a replay of a real night we'd seen each other, only it would end differently. Instead of going home to her, you'd turn up at my apartment or chase after me when I'm walking away and tell me .."



"What?" he prompts softly, when I trail off.



"That you loved me and you always had," I finish sadly, only I don't know why I'm sad because he's right here. He reacts instantly.



"Look at me."



I do.



"I love you. And I always have, Buffy."



I stare at him for a long moment, thinking of all the hurt we've created for ourselves. God, it was all so pointless.



"I'm so sorry," I say quietly, looking him straight in the eye, my hand resting against his cheek. "I'm so sorry we wasted all that time, Spike."



"Me too, baby," he replies with an adoring, apologetic expression on his face. "I wish I could go back in time and kick my arse."



I laugh, teary again. It's a wonder I haven't cried my eyes right out of the sockets the last few weeks. He joins me, our soft laughter mingling in the small space between our faces.



"When? When would you go back to? When did we let it all slide away?" I ask him.



He regards me silently for a minute before pressing a soft kiss on my lips. "We haven't let it all slide away, baby. We're right here and we're not going anywhere. Are we?"



"No!" I reply immediately, somewhat forcibly but he doesn't seem to mind. I think he kinda likes it actually because his half-smile is back.



"Well, there you go then. But if I could go back and redo it all .." he muses, his gaze drifting downwards, his hand sliding deliberately slowly up my side, pausing to run over my stomach and breasts, caressing my neck, my throat and finally up to cup my chin, his eyes which had followed his hand's progress now coming back to rest in my eyes, ".. I'd go back to when you starfished in front of me and just grab you and do you against the stacks," he finishes with an adorable little smirk. I'm almost mad at him for getting me all breathless and throbby only to make me laugh.



"You're such a guy," I say, mock-slapping his shoulder.



"Hey, at least it would have been a pretty clear signal though, right? None of this 'um, maybe wanna go get a drink' crap that nearly resulted in our individual suicides."



"Yeah, but I think you're forgetting that no matter how gorgeous I thought you were, I still wasn't the kind of girl that would let a perfect stranger 'do me' against the shelves in a library."



"That was policed by the sandwich Nazis," he adds.



"Yeah," I grumble, still to this day pissed off at the 'no food around the books' rule. "Fascists."



His eyes are twinkling as he's looking at me grump.



"You're so bloody adorable," he says leaning down to capture my lips in a kiss. I can feel his erection once more pressing into my thigh and I think of what that younger Buffy would have given to be in the position I'm in right now. I'm struck with the sudden urge to show this man just how mine he is.



Before he can reach my lips with his, I push his head away from me, with the heel of my hand on his forehead, until he's almost staring at the ceiling and he makes this funny little frtph noise.



"Uh, Buffy?"



"Yes, Willie?" I ask him sweetly, holding his head back, bent up to the ceiling.



"What are you doing?"



"Just figuring out where to put it," I reply absently, stroking his neck with my other hand.



"Put what?" he says, sounding thoroughly confused.



"The 'Property of Buffy Summers' stamp," I say, releasing his head which immediately returns to hover over mine and before he knows what's hit him, I'm flipping him over on his back, straddling his waist and reaching down between us to pump him and align him with my body's opening. He's staring at me with wide eyes and a half-smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, which is hanging slightly open. I push down onto him, taking him into my body for what feels like the millionth time since we secreted ourselves away, swallowing as much of him as I can get inside me until my pelvis is flush with his. At the sound of his moan, I lower the top of my body so my breasts are touching his chest. I stare straight into his eyes with as much confidence as I can muster and lick his bottom lip before taking it in my mouth to nip it with my teeth.



"I can be a lot more than just adorable, Willie," I say, pulling back up to begin riding him and when his surprised but overjoyed, lustful face meets mine I can tell that this man will love me whether I'm playing blushing school-girl, flirty vixen or whichever place in between I eventually find myself. When I do find myself, that is. In other words, he's perfect.





----------------------------------------------------------





I've quit my job. I am unemployed. I was standing there looking at my boss's face as he yelled at me for being AWOL, without so much as a phonecall, for five days and all I could think was, why am I doing this? Why am I putting myself through this? For a job I hate? To afford an apartment that Dru picked, in a city that Dru dragged me to? And the next thing I knew I was laughing my head off and Melvin Wishart (not Wishard, as he told me so condescendingly when I accidentally misspelled his name on an in-house memo two years before) was looking at me like I'd just escaped from the looney bin. But I couldn't help it. All I could think of was that I was finally free - I was free and a grown up and my own goddamn person and I didn't need his job any more than I needed a hole in my head. So I told him. I told him to take his job and stuff it up his ass. Loudly. So loudly that Melanie, his secretary, poked her head around the door frame and gaped at me like a fish. Which just got me laughing again. I was still laughing when I was collecting my things, going down in the lift and hailing a cab (it's extremely difficult to hail a cab when you're balancing a box of stolen staplers and office supplies in one hand and loudly guffawing but I managed it somehow).



I'm on my way to Spike's office. It's somewhere I've never been before, a part of his life I've never seen but I'm on my way. Because when we finally parted this morning, after a week of secluded time together, it was almost physically painful to watch him walk through the door without me. He found it equally difficult, I think, because he only made it to the lift before hurrying back for one last panting hot make-out session in the hall outside my apartment. I'm surprised we didn't leave dents in the wall. And he only left after I promised him that he'd see me as soon as I got out of work and well, technically, I'm out of work now. So I'm on my way.



He still has to get his things from the apartment. His and Dru's apartment. He had to go buy a suit to wear to work this morning after he left my apartment, which he found funny but it bothered me. He's told me so many times not to worry about the technicalities of their split; that it couldn't matter less to him what she takes and what she leaves him but I can't help but think about it. What he's losing to be with me, what he'll have to wade through. But I'm not thinking that in the way the Buffy of old would have. I'm forcing myself not to. I know that he's gaining me, which apparently he prizes above everything else in the world. But he is going to have to deal with shit that I don't have to deal with. There are practical things to be dealt with when an engagement ends; money to be split, family members to inform, apartments to sell etc. The kind of relationship I had with Dru doesn't end with lawyers sitting around a table arguing over who gets what lamp, how much money is owed to whom and screaming matches over custody of the family dog.



No, the kind of relationship I had with Dru ends not with a bang but with a whimper. It ends with her quietly picking herself off the floor of my apartment and not glancing back once as she almost silently walks out the door. Out of my life. I haven't heard a thing from her and I can't say I'm surprised. I'm also not surprised that it hurts me, as I'm sure she's hurting right now. But there's nothing I can do about that. It's over. It's been over for a long time. I just didn't realize until it was almost too late, almost at the cost of my future. It doesn't mean I don't miss her, because I do. When I told Xander about everything that had happened, after he had whooped so loud that Spike, sitting next to me on the bed, had heard him, he'd said it was just the idea of Dru that I missed but he's wrong. He never got it and he still doesn't. I don't even think Spike gets it.



I love Drusilla. I do. I always, always will. I just can't be in her life. And she can't be in mine. What she needs from me I just can't give her and the only thing I need from her is for her to let me go. I was only half alive for so long and I can't blame it all on her. The more I let her rule me, the more she needed to and because it was such the norm for us as we were growing up, it warped who we both became. And now I'm unlearning that and learning about who I really am. Dru needs to do that too. I don't know if she knows it. I hope one day she will know so she has a chance to move on and grow and finally be happy. But I can't be the one to show her how. She'll have to figure it out on her own, like I did. She thought she needed me to fill her spaces, as she put it, but she only needed me because I let her mould me into what she needed. And after a while she needed someone to put down and I needed someone to put me down. I guess, in the worst interpretation of the word, we really were soulmates.



Sometimes I think if life hadn't broken our cycle we'd have been stuck together forever. But life has a funny way of slapping you upside the head, as Xander would say. And my slap came with peroxide hair and an ass you could bounce coins off. I guess I'm just lucky.





----------------------------------------------------------





I can see him through the shaded glass panels of his office. I take a moment just to watch him. The time apart, though only a few hours, feels considerable and the ache when not with him reminds me so jarringly of the years I spent without him that I almost feel the ever-present tears flood my eyes. But then I remember. I have him. I don't need to cry and wail and be weak. Because I'm Buffy Summers. I can have what I want. I can hardly believe that all I have to do is open the door and I'll be enveloped in his arms and yet I'm standing here watching him furrow his brow at whatever it is he's reading, sat at his desk. This thought pulls me out of my contemplative gaze and I reach forward to open the door to his office.



I shut the door behind me but he hasn't even looked up yet. He's sat behind his desk, his elbows and forearms laying on either side of whatever it is he's reading. His head is hanging so far over it I almost think he might be falling asleep, when he finally speaks.



"I'll be ready soon, Tom. Quit bugging me," he mumbles, eyes still trained in front of him. I feel a smile begin to edge over my face and before I know what I'm doing I'm dropping the blinds on his glass wall. He hears the whoosh of the blinds and finally looks up at me with confusion written on his face .. and then he sees it's me. And he smiles beautifully. His eyes are dancing with happiness. He stands and walks around his desk. I meet him in the middle of his office floor, a goofy smile on both our faces.



"Hey," he says softly, his hand tangling in my hair.



"Hey yourself," I reply, turning my head to nuzzle into his hand. His other comes up to join its twin in my hair and he pulls me toward him. He runs his tongue slowly along my upper lip before pulling me into a languorous, dazzling kiss that seems to last forever. When we pull back, I'm convinced the smile on his face could single-handedly power New York during a black-out and I can feel my heart doing a happy dance in my chest.



"You have no idea how many times I've sat in this office and dreamed about doing that," he says, looking at me like I'm a fantasy come to life.



"To me?" I tease and he gives me this 'duh, you retard' look. I grin at him like a love-struck fool, which I guess I am. "Glad I could fulfill that little fantasy for you."



"One down, ninety-nine million to go," he says with a happy sigh, his eyes twinkling.



"I have news."



"Good or bad?"



"Depends. If you're Buffy Summers it's good. If you're Melvin Wishart, not so much," and the way his face scrunches up in confusion makes me want to pet his head.



"Who's Melvin Thicket?"



"Wishart," I say, laughing and his little 'oh' in realization just makes me giggle like a school-girl and he apparently can't help but join me. I'll bet people other than us think we're sickening in our happiness but I really can't find it in myself to give a damn.



"I quit my job," I tell him when we've sobered.



"You did?" he says, smiling softly at me and god, it just makes me love him so much more. He just gets it. He knows I hated it and wanted out but didn't have the strength and instead of hitting me over the head with the practicalities of living in New York without an income, he's just smiling at me like he's proud I've done something to make myself happy. God, I love him.



"Yeah. I don't know what I want but I know what I don't want and that job is top of the list."



"Good for you, baby," he says encouragingly. I'm halfway drawn back to his lips when the door opens.



"Will, you've got to get that .. oh. Sorry."



"No, Tom, it's okay. I'm just about finished reading it." Spike says.



"Liar," I whisper so only he can hear me, nudging him in his side.



He turns to me and grins. Without taking his eyes off me, he says, "Tom? I'd like to introduce you to my girlfriend, Buffy Summers."



"Nice to meet you, Buffy. But I thought your girlfriend's name was Dru?" Tom says in polite confusion.



Spike's eyes haven't left mine yet and we're smiling our goofy grins and staring into each other's eyes as he replies.



"Sorry, mate, I think you're losing it. Me and Buffy have been together for years."



And we have. We just didn't know it.




Chapter End Notes:
Onward to the epilogue ...



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