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A/N Thanks as always to April, she's a rock.

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She remembers vividly the day Angel arrived in Rome. She had been at Buffy's apartment drinking fine Italian coffee and telling her friend about her latest expedition—Astral projection to a plane of existence far more abstract than our own and actually kinda trippy—when he'd knocked at her door.

Buffy had known immediately. Whether it had been a slayer thing or a Buffy and Angel thing she'd never been quite sure, but she'd known even before he pressed her hand against his chest that he was human.

It had been a beautiful scene, a perfect Hollywood moment of lovers reunited. She remembers that she had felt honoured to witness it. It had been an illusion as it turned out, but who knew that then?

This is not an illusion, of that she is sure. It is neither perfect nor moving; it is awkward and painful and she wishes deeply that she were anywhere but here.

They make a lopsided triangle of stunned disbelief. Her just the two steps she took back away from the open door, Buffy to her right and deeper within the room, and him framed in the doorway like some life-sized portrait of the returning prodigal.

No one has spoken since his bleak, "Hey Red," when she opened the door. No one has moved since she took two steps back and let Buffy see clearly what she surely must have heard. She's not sure how long they will stay like this, trapped in emotional amber, but surely someone must act soon or it will set and they will never escape.

"Buffy." By all rights, the word is spoken far too softly for the slayer to hear, but the silence is so dense that the sound must carry because her body jerks as if slightly shocked and her eyes widen to huge saucers in her suddenly pale face.

The word frees her a little and she makes to escape a scene in which she has no place, but Buffy's eyes catch her mid-retreat, wide and panicked, and she stops, waiting to offer what support her friend might need.

Slowly, Buffy's dry eyes leave her and swivel back to focus on the man in the doorway. "Spike." It's more a croak than a word, and it offers neither welcome nor rebuff.

He leans heavily against the invisible barrier that Buffy has not yet removed and sighs a sigh so exhausted and desolate that she pities him with almost physical intensity. How is it possible that he looks so old? With his wild, honey-brown hair and dark-rimmed eyes. He has a scar on his right cheek, bisecting his unnaturally jagged line of his ever-prominent cheekbones. A scar on un-dead flesh? A blessed blade, perhaps, or mystical adversary.

There is no way she can know where he has been, and yet his gaunt face and weary pose tell the tale of his travels more vividly than words ever could. He has suffered, and the defeat in his eyes declares that it has been for naught.

"I couldn't find her." He speaks the words as though he does not believe them, and there is an effect of guilt in the slump of his shoulders. "I looked everywhere," he continues as if in justification. "I couldn't find her."

…………………….

She looks well, or at least she would if the blood had not drained from her face, leaving her temporarily pale and ghostlike. She has put on weight and it suits her, just a little softening of the hard bony angles she'd worn when he'd last seen her. Perhaps she is content.

He had heard her laughter as he'd stood outside her door, and had almost turned away. If she is happy here, then what good can his returning bring? Perhaps she has moved on, perhaps the roundness of her hips is the product of candlelit dinners and sunshine picnics.

He wishes she'd say something. Even if she turns him away, it would be better than this strange, oppressive silence. His lips begin to move, to say her name again although he doesn't know what for, when she interrupts him with an unexpected statement.

"Your hair is brown," she blurts out, as if that could matter in the slightest right now.

He frowns, and annoyance pricks at the edges of his numbed mind. What the buggering hell kinda thing is that to say to a chap who's just turned up after two years of a living bloody hell chasing shadows to the nastiest corners of the globe? "Yeah." Her eyes flash at his sarcastic tone, and the blood returns to her face in a rush that colours her cheeks to pinked radiance.

"I should go." He'd forgotten Red was there. Forgotten, too, somewhere along the long road of his journey, that she is to blame for so much of their pain. Maybe he'd just run out of energy, and hating her was too much like hard work to bother with.

They both ignore her as she brushes effortlessly through the invisible wall that to him is such an impenetrable barrier between him and the girl who has dogged his footsteps all across the globe.

"I'm fine." Another strange, blurted statement, but this time so nonsensical that he merely raises and eyebrow and waits for whatever explanation the crazy bint might or might not deign to provide.

"I'm fine. Here, being the slayer, and I have my friends and Dawn and I'm fine." Ah, so that's what she means. There is no place for him here, no room in her life for the complications he will inevitably bring.

He nods and fails to force a smile. "Sure," he murmurs and straightens up. What the hell had he expected? That she'd be waiting, a Spike-shaped hole in her life ready for him to just slot into? Funny how when it comes to love, a century of life hasn't made him any smarter.

Her voice stops him as he begins to turn away. "A-and how the hell dare you?" She's fuming when he looks back at her, hands set firmly on her hips. "How dare you come back here just expecting me to be waiting?" She throws her hands up in the air and gives a bark of almost hysterical laughter. "I have a life, you know. I worked a lot of things out while you were gone. I can live without you. Look." She waves her hands expressively around her pristine apartment. "See me living without you?"

He nods, ashamed now of coming here, of hoping…what? That she hadn't been able to live without him. "Sorry." His boots are interesting, so he looks down at them as he mumbles his apology. Very interesting. Worn and battered from the longest of journeys. He'll need a new pair because, just like him, they are completely worn out, practically falling apart.

"Two years." All the anger is gone from her voice, and it breaks with the sudden appearance of tears. "You've been gone two years."

As if he needs reminding. He's counted the days away from her, marked each one and hated it. Two years of knowing she loved him and living without her, of searching for another lost love and hoping all the while that today won't be the day he finds her, because then, one day, maybe—just maybe—he can find his way back to Buffy.

"I know," is all he can say, and it doesn't seem enough for her because suddenly she's right in front of him and her little fists are darting through the barrier to pound girlishly against his chest.

He grabs at them but she pulls away, retreating behind whatever power blocks the door and keeps his kind away from hers. "So what am I?" she asks, tearful and indignant. "The booby prize?"

He's at a loss for a response. She can't think that he's come to her in default. Surely she knows better than to think she could ever be second best to him, a consolation for Carlotta lost. Doesn't she know? How can she not realise that she is everything—absolutely everything—to him? All the time that he searched, all the demons he fought along the way, all the leads he so diligently followed, he was wishing that he could just abandon his duty and come back to her.

"If I were a good man," he begins without knowing were he is going, "I would still be looking for her. If I were a strong man, I wouldn't have given up so easily."

She's listening and he wishes he had thought of some eloquent speech before he dragged his weary carcass to her door, a sinner at the Abby gates crying out for sanctuary. "I'm not a good man. I'm not a man at all. I'm weak and I'm selfish and, God help me, Buffy, I couldn't stay away from you."

The pools in her eyes break their banks and crystals glisten prettily on her cheeks. "Spike." And it's too good, too bloody good to be true, but there's love in her big wet eyes and her voice trembles as she reaches for him, leaning across the threshold to take his face in her hands and hold his eyes with hers. "Oh God, Spike."

……………………………..

Was his skin always this cold? He'd never seemed as dead to her as he did leaning against her open doorway and professing his failings like an oath of fidelity.

She'd been so shocked—so far past shocked—in seeing him that she'd reacted with a defensive anger that was no surprise to her. Because part of her had wanted it not to be true, had wanted for him not to really be here, because wherever there is Spike there is love, and with it pain and craziness.

And she had thought that she had moved past the craziness of love, that she was master of her own emotions. She is not. In the first instant of seeing him, the serene contentment of her life had shattered like delicate glass in her suddenly clumsy hands. And, yes, she'll admit that she had been afraid, that she'd wanted the calmness back. That she had thought for a moment that love, even this great tumultuous love of theirs, would not be worth the risks.

And then he'd told her he couldn't stay away and his gravelled voice had been conflicted, and she'd seen her own fear reflecting in his murky, deadened eyes, and she'd loved him with an intensity that stolen all the air from her body and known that if she didn't touch him, she'd never be able to catch her breath again.

His skin is so cold, unnatural even for him, as if he had spent too long outside in the Cleveland winter, and perhaps he has. Perhaps he has stood outside her door for days. His eyes are bleak and tearless and he has never seemed so dead to her.

But it's okay because he is her Lazarus and she has always been a miracle to him. She can see him come alive in her hands, feel his skin warming under her hot palms even as that flame, the brightest she has ever known, sparks again faintly in his eyes. She can bring him back to life and she will.

His lips, too, are cold under hers at first, though not for long, because her kiss has revived him and he is eager and hungry and alive. But when he reaches for her, the house declares that he is still dead and bars the way. Foolish place. Don't the walls and doors and windows know that she has resurrected him? That while she lives she will never let him be dead again? "Come in," she whispers, and he does, reaching for her with needy, greedy hands as he pushes her roughly back into the warmth of her life.

"Missed you," he murmurs against her skin as his cool kisses scorch her throat. "Missed you so bloody much."

She makes a hoarse, guttural sound of agreement and claws at him in illustration. God, how she has missed him, too. How could she have been so foolish as to believe her hard-won contentment was worth even a fraction of the love-crazed happiness and misery he can bring her?

Her top is torn, although it hardly matters. What matters are his hands, assured and demanding on her breast as he kisses her. What matters is that he is here and she was not fool enough to turn him away.

"I love you." She is glad to be the first to say it. Gladder still when he freezes at her words and pulls her crushingly close, whispering that he loves her still so very much. But passion can only be forgotten for so long; they have been apart for two long years after all, and within moments their hands are travelling again, needy and desperate and oh so very good.

He sits her on the sideboard and mumbles a muffled, "Love you," as he parts her legs and pushes up her skirt. It's hardly the stuff of fantasy, a hasty shag on her hall furniture, but candles and rose petals can wait. Right now all that matters his getting him inside her. She breaks the zipper of his jeans in her haste but it's okay because now she has him in her hand and she can guide him past her dislodged panties and draw him into her body so easily.

He stills awe-filled eyes locked on hers and it is so reminiscent of their first time that she can't help but smile. Different, though, too. Very different, because now they are in love and he is smiling, too, and when he begins to move inside her she could cry with happiness.

She does cry afterwards, when he holds her still-trembling body and pulls her with him to lie on the couch. Cries and laughs and slaps his arms as feebly as a kitten when he teases her about the soft curves she has acquired in his absence. She knows they look good on her and she knows that he loves them.

Then suddenly they become serious in perfect sync, and understanding flows between them in the silence. No, it will not be easy to make a life together, and yes, they have much to talk about, so much left to work through.

What was it he'd said once? "You'll fight and you'll shag and you'll hate each other till it makes you quiver…" Right sentiment, wrong couple. Unless he was always talking about the two of them because she knows they will: she'll hate him almost as much as she loves him, they'll fight but not quite as often as they make love, and they'll make it work because it's worth it.

"I love you," she tells him with deliberate emphasis, and he smiles that boyish smile she adores so much.

"I love you, too, Buffy."


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A/N I got lots of great reviews for the last chapter unfortunately I don't have time to thank everyone personally. (Damn work)

So for all who reviewed a massive Bear Hug and a sloppy snog.





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