Put the Masks Away

Part One

Spike flicked the silver plated lighter over and over again; small fire erupting beneath the lid before he closed it, sharply, with his index finger. He could see the sun setting from the faraway window that let in the smallest slivers of light, in the morning, and now at night. The glow danced around the basement, casting shadows on the old furniture, pipes and weapons that were being safely stored downstairs until the hellmouth opened. Even the tip of his black boots glistened.

He scoffed while he heard the door at the top of the stairs open. He was positive it was someone who would cause him annoyance but the more he listened to the clicks of heels on the wood planks, the less annoyed he became. Anticipation washed over him delicately, grasping all the right corners of his soul. Click, thump, click, thump, until Buffy reached the ground of the basement; heels along cement.

Spike still couldn’t get his head around how she could wear such shoes, especially while killing, and fighting vampires and demons. Neither of them said anything, staring at one another. There was just the sound of his lighter flipping open and closed, heels crashing almost in sync to the noise while she walked toward him, throwing herself onto the cot next to him. Spike was fully aware of their arms touching; bare skin uniting.

Buffy sighed breathlessly as she leaned over, lifting the bottom of her jeans up and rolling the zipper down from her left boot, quietly slipping it off her foot which was covered in a white cotton sock. He watched her do the same thing with the right boot. His head cocked to the side in interest, waiting for some words to be spoken as she slid her feet onto the cot and pulled her knees to her chest. Buffy pushed her back into the wall, strands of her hair caught on painted, cement bricks. Spike tossed his lighter in between them where her hand was mingling, out-stretched fingers.

“Hey,” Buffy said, flashing him one of her innocent grins as if their encounter was just made out of normalcy and nothing for him to question. He smiled back, somewhat shyly, tilting his head downwards to stare at her hand that was grabbing the lighter, playing with it. Her fingers wiped along its edges, silver glowing on her fingertips. “The sun’s setting,” she commented, nodding her head towards the small window that was still casting shadows, now along her face.

“I noticed,” Spike teased, looking over at the window that shone yellows and gold’s from the nighttime sky. She rolled her eyes at him, placing the lighter back down between them.

“Needed some time away from all that chaos?” Spike questioned, glancing over at her. He inhaled the smell of her soap, quietly. He was somewhat disturbed by the fact that he knew the soap she was using was different from the year before. It was softer, lighter, and more delicate. It had a flowery scent, opposed to the clean, fresh scent from the time when he used to rip her clothes off and kiss every part of her.

Buffy stretched her legs out, placing her feet on the floor next to Spikes boots. “The chaos that is my life,” she took a breath. “You’d think by now I’d be used to it,” she raised her eyebrows at him, wanting him to see the bit of her mind that was being lost every time she was left upstairs for too long. “My is house being taken over. Ever since mom died, it’s not like anything has been normal,” she finished and he could feel her body squirming on the cot in an attempt to get comfortable, which he found amusing.

“There was the whole you dying thing,” he responded, pulling a cigarette out from the pack that had been lying underneath the cot seconds before. He slipped the cigarette into his mouth, resting on his lips. She closed her eyes as he lit the tobacco edge and breathed in, although he wasn’t technically breathing. They sat side by side in silence. Buffy grew uncomfortable and opened her eyes, flipping her hair over her shoulder and looking up at the smoke gliding to the ceiling.

“Then there was the whole you and I having sex thing and that whole…” she trailed off as the memory of their last encounter, (before he’d disappeared), spiraled in her head. That wasn’t him, she reminded herself, not him now. “And now, you with the soul thing,” her eyes rested on his lips, which were blowing smoke, easily, as if the smolder was being embedded in his lungs. Buffy still wasn’t sure why he smoked. It was one of those unsolved mysteries, something she’d never bothered to ask him about. “The potentials, Xander always running into the demon kind of women,” she continued on. “I guess Xander and I have more in common than I thought. I mean not that I like demon women,” she babbled on nervously, fidgeting with the hem of her sky blue tank top.

Spike laughed, ignoring most of her comments, not having the ability to discuss what their past was, once again. And he couldn’t break the awkwardness that was so obviously overwhelming her. He tapped the ashes of the cancer stick in between his fingers, to the floor. “I just…” he started to say, but was cut off immediately by her lips opening and the words that emerged.

“Stay out of everyone’s way,” she frowned. The curves of her lips formed a downward heart. Her green eyes were filled with longing and despair, something he wasn’t sure he was making out correctly as he finished off the last of the cigarette. He bent over to place it under his boot and break the smoke that was still climbing from the tip.

Spike made a grumbling noise acknowledging that what she said was true, relieved that around her he did not have to talk very much, at least not in the recent months. He could count the words they’d spoken since he’d started living in her basement, showering in the same bathroom. But the words weren’t many. He understood that he was a vampire who probably didn’t deserve any of her time or affection. It was obvious most of the “scoobie” gang had grown tired of him but he was more concerned about Buffy than them. She had taken on a haggard, weary look, always looking worn down and most of all, older than she actually was.

In more ways than one, this pained him. He’d spent so much time proclaiming his love for her, long before she’d ever paid him any attention. Spike wasn’t sure he felt concern for her until he saw her face at night after she finished teaching the slayerettes something new. The look was of someone who always had a sense of complete and utter defeat, knowing that soon some of those girls would die, if not all of them. He thought that maybe it was the soul, to love her without wanting her for himself. Deep down he knew he could never have her to himself, that she was not his and yet for so long he’d wanted nothing more than to own her in the way she owned him.

Spike ran his hand over his face, wiping the tiredness from his eyes. Her head was still leaning on the cement wall, hair clinging to the dips in the bricks. The shadows were becoming less, as the basement grew darker and darker. He could see her from the corner of his eyes as she leaned over, legs looking mangled. She found the bottle of Jack Daniels he’d been hiding away for fear of someone besides her finding it and drinking away one of his solaces. Buffy made a quick, whispering noise as her fingers latched around the base, pulling it up off the floor.

“What is this?” she practically screamed in excitement, showing him the bottle as if she were showing him something he’d never seen before. Spike smirked a little, nodding his head in an innocent fashion. Her lips were stretched wide open and he could see her soft, ripe, red tongue as it licked her lips. He patted his leg, closing his fingers around the top of his thigh trying to fight off the enthusiasm that was forming underneath his clothing.

Spike thought about pulling out another cigarette but quickly declined the notion. Instead he took the bottle from her hand, which proved to be an effort, since her hand was wrapped maliciously tight against it. The top popped off like a million other times before and he took a swig, throwing his head back, desperately trying to get rid of her scent, which now tainted his fingertips. He couldn’t get away from his feelings or her, no matter how hard he tried.

“Hey!” Buffy cried out taking it back from him once he’d swallowed.

Spike didn’t bother to watch her drink every bitter taste that entered her mouth and swirled around along her tongue, into her throat, gliding down into her system. He stood up, stuffing his hands in his pockets, pacing the length of the cot back and forth, thoughts blending with desire and reality.

“Where did you get this?” Buffy asked, smearing the alcohol from her lips with the back of her hand. She watched him skeptically, as he continued to walk around nervously, hiding whatever it was he was thinking. Her eyebrows rose waiting for an answer, inhaling the equivalent of another shot before she spoke again. “What are you doing?” her voice was filled with wonder, eyes successively riding over him as he moved.

Spike stopped mid-stride, his head dropping to the side to glance over at her. “Nothing,” he answered, biting back his tongue. She gave him an odd look and extended her arm out to take the bottle.

The wind was blowing, making whistling noises as the moon began shining along the corners of the basement, splashing small amounts of light. “Why are you wearing that?” he asked. He was talking about the light blue tank top that showed just as much skin as the one she’d worn out on her date with the principal, except this time he was almost sure she was wearing it for him.

Buffy cocked her head down, shrugging her shoulders. “It’s hot out,” she replied, twisting her lips tightly. He shook his head, placed the round opening of glass to his own lips and chugged down half of what was left, trying not to stare at the gaping dip in the tank top where fabric met breasts. She noticed his eyes searching over her chest and blushed, causing him to look away. He handed the bottle back to her, their fingertips hitting the other’s skin.

“Are you going out on another date with the principal?” he shot out effortlessly like he’d been practicing the words in his head all along, waiting for the most inopportune time to mention that the layer of cloth on her skin reminded him of that night. Her fingers were lapsed around the bottle. She placed it between her legs and began to move the straps of her tank top up, hiding the dip in her flesh. Spike sat back down, sinking into the cot and his boots made a large clanking noise, bellowing out his own frustration.

“I don’t have a date, Spike,” she said condescendingly, only because she was nervous and his childish behavior made her want to grab a hold of him and bestow all the feelings she’d been leaving crumbled up inside of her. She took another sip from the bottle. The taste sunk into her throat and through her bloodstream, making her slightly dizzy. She laughed a little, watching the room slip away before her eyes. The only thing that was really left, aside from the dizziness and darkness, was him.

“Spike,” Buffy whispered, lust dripping from every part of her. She could feel the electricity sizzling between them, burning holes into their souls. His aroma enveloped her. Everything came at once, wriggling through her mind. She wrapped her hand around the neck of the glass, handing it to Spike, but before he had a chance to grasp a hold of it, the sound of glass crashing to the ground, rang out before them. Alcohol splashed over cement, gliding to his boots. Her hand reached for the back of his head pulling him down on top of her. The smell of the Jack Daniels soared into their nostrils once their lips met.

It didn’t take Spike long to react to the jolting kiss. His tongue glided into her mouth knowingly, striking her gums with an effortless ease. It was awkward at first while her body twisted around to form fit comfortably along his. He could feel her fingers lifting up his shirt. Once she’d relaxed underneath him, the palm of his hands rested on her cheeks, hauling her lips closer to his, licking every bit of skin that he could.

Buffy would pull away to catch her breath. She was shaking and he could see goose bumps dancing down her arms. He moved his hands away from her cheeks, leaning an elbow down on the cot, tracing her arms with his fingertips. The bumps under his skin were making him nervous.

This was not the Buffy and Spike from the year before.

At least that’s what Spike thought until her teeth sunk into his neck causing him to drive out a small shrilling noise filled with pleasure. He closed his eyes savoring her tongue as it licked the not yet bruised skin. A part of him wanted to be gentle with her lithe body beneath him, tug at her clothing softly, slip it off, in a delicate manner, more gentlemanly than he’d ever been before.

The other part of him was enraptured as she was kissing his neck, pulling closer every few seconds. He was sure if clothes didn’t come off soon they’d return to their nature of having sex with their clothes on. He didn’t want that. Spike was sure it was just a slip on her part, something that would not be repeated and wanted desperately to relish every part of her so that he could breathe in this new Buffy, this more mature Buffy, into his brain where the old one had been lingering for so long.

They both became more aware of where the encounter was leading them as seconds ticked by. He kicked his boots off, clothing flooded to the floor landing, on and around the alcohol that was seeping into the cement. The moon glowed over their faces, and did salsa in her hair, making her look ethereal. Buffy’s breathing was fast and hard, coming out in sections, instead of lapses as if she’d stop breathing and then start again to keep herself from sinking into an abyss. She breathed in his potent scent while enveloping her naked legs around him, yanking his body nearer.

Their eyes hadn’t locked since they’d started kissing, even when slipping and sliding clothes off one another. It was a practice they’d meticulously perfected, no eye connection during sex, especially when Buffy commanded it and she would keep her eyes closed. He’d grown used to it, even settled for it since he’d much rather have the opportunity than to not have it at all. Spike was assured whatever was happening meant more to him than to her until she grasped a hold of his jawbone and looked intently into his eyes. He noticed a glimmer of passion and understanding in that ocean of green he was so in love with.

“Come here,” she whispered and the basement’s darkness faded away as he sunk deep inside of her, feeling her warmth all around him. Every bit of cold he’d been feeling for months on end rushed past him like a gust of wind, blowing away like dust. He could only feel her hot, sweating, quivering flesh all around him, her lips on his, biting and nibbling as if he were a dessert she couldn’t get enough of.

There were no noises from upstairs; no thudding of shoes hitting the ceiling and everything was silent except her sharp gasps for air. Buffy’s long, thin fingernails sunk deep into his back when his thrusts became rampant, gliding in and out of her with more knowledge than any other lover she’d had. Every turn, switch of bodies, waver of weight was met with a whimper or a heart-pounding kiss.

“Buffy,” his voice was so soft that her eyes searched his for answers to the reflection of her name residing on his lips.

The taste of alcohol was propelling them further into a different universe; one where they had no interruptions, where the world didn’t revolve around the hellmouth and “the first” didn’t want him dead, a universe where she was no longer the slayer and he wasn’t a vampire. They were just a man and a woman, having sex on a cot in a basement where the moon crossed paths with their bodies and the sky. Buffy raised her hand in the air, brushing his eyelids with her balmy fingertips. Spike’s eyes closed and he dropped his head into the nape of her neck, sucking the sweat off that dripped down her lightly tanned skin.

Buffy moaned slightly at the mere touch of his tongue and her body slid up, pushing against his hardness, entrenched inside of her and the goose bumps that had emerged before from nerves exploded once again on her arms from her gnawing excitement. Spike could feel the impact of her anticipation and raised his head from the shadowy spot between the cot and her neck. He pulled her upwards with the back of his right hand. Her legs wrapped around him Indian style and as her breasts clung to his chest, swept together, they came, all at once, both letting out noises that would’ve made no sense to the outside world.

The words, “I love you” never come. Spike didn’t expect them while holding onto her. Buffy could see the look of sadness on his face and wanted to console him, tell him that she wouldn’t forget that they had sex, that maybe in someway they made love although she still wasn’t sure of what making love consisted of for them. There is still the possibility that one day she will find out. She is almost sure of that, even if she never tells anyone, never says one word to him about it. Buffy hugged him, her arms plastered around his neck as if they had been molded in that position, afraid to move, to break the crystal ball that seemed to have twisted it’s way around them in some magical pretense. But the spell had to be broken. They couldn’t stay that way forever.

Buffy smiled, kissed the tip of his nose and gently hoisted herself up off of him, clasping onto his shoulders while doing so. Spike held onto her waist letting go once she’d regained balance and placed her bare feet onto the cold floor. She looked uncomfortable as she searched around for her clothing. He grabbed his pants off the floor from behind him and stood up, putting them on. His hands shook as he zippered them and buttoned the top button. He tried not to stare at her naked flesh, tried so hard to not lick his lips or smile as his feet mingled with the Jack Daniels.

“Bloody shame you wasted all that alcohol,” Spike spoke, watching her turn around to look at him. Her eyes slanted downwards, looking at the dampness that had formed a strange misshapen figure of darkness on the floor.

Buffy made a grunting noise and smiled, picking up her jeans and stepping into them. “I didn’t hear you complaining,” she teased. “Bra?” she asked, crossing her arms over her bare chest. Spike’s eyes investigated the dim room and noticed a glimpse of white, dangling from the beams in the ceilings. He started to laugh and Buffy followed his gaze. She frowned. “Well – get it,” she whined, glancing at him long enough to give him a puppy dog, childlike look.

Spike shook his head, smirking as he jumped onto the cot, making it creak. He clutched onto the wall and reached for the white bra that dangled from the ceiling. He laced his fingers around the straps and pulled it away from the wooden joist. He spun around on his heels, stabilizing his weight and ignored the desire to tease Buffy. He threw it at her. She caught it with her left hand, turned around and slipped her arms into the straps and clicked the clasp. Spike stepped down from the cot feeling sick from the tension that was escalating between them every second that ticked by. He saw her shirt, thrown over the cots edge and took it into the palm of his hand, swinging it around. He walked up behind her, waving it in front of her face.

“Thanks,” she muttered uncomfortably, and raised her arms in the air, placing the light tank top over her bra and bare skin. Spike noticed the light from the moon that glistened over her golden hair and felt his insides melting, but he was afraid the coldness would continue to embrace him once she left and their kisses were forgotten. He hadn’t even noticed that she’d turned around when his thoughts began to run circles through his mind.

Buffy had positioned her hands on her hips, leaning to the side, staring questioningly at him. “What?” she asked, blinking her eyelashes in an attempt to see him better in the darkness which was filtering the room even though the moon’s rays were leaving enough light for her to see his eyes and silky shadow.

“Nothing,” Spike answered, running his hand over his face as he’d done earlier trying to wipe away every sensation he had left inside of him. He cursed his soul because he believed it was the soul that created the lingering sadness that weighed him down; except that whenever she was near him, he felt a certain peace encompass him and once she was gone he would have to live with himself again, alone.

Buffy looked intently at him, she, herself, overwhelmed with sorrow, not wanting to leave him, craving his arms around her once more. There were times that she knew choices had to be made and if she went upstairs this would be forgotten for her. She would do her best to pretend the whole event never took place but not for the reasons he would think. For the simple fact that if she thought about it, remembered it, there was the increasing chance it would distract her from the hellmouth, from the girls, from her own sister’s life and eventually she would drive herself mad with wanting to be close to him, physically, away from all the craziness in her life. He couldn’t understand that because he was still punishing himself even if she’d forgiven him, in her own way, for the things he’d done. She’d even learned to forgive herself for the things she’d done to him.

“Do you want to take a walk?” she asked, still feeling the aftershocks of the liquor, churning inside her body, still leaking into her blood making her sense that no matter what she thought, everything was incoherent, aside from the fact that she wanted to touch him again, feel him inside her but she resisted that urge and settled for the idea of them outside, away from the house. This delusion was rapidly sucking all the life out of her. If anything, Spike could make her feel like the rest of the world was just a figment of her imagination.

“Okay,” he said, bending over and taking a clean shirt from under the cot where he’d been storing his clothes, afraid to put them anywhere else. Buffy saw the black cotton shirt cover his chest and couldn’t help but smirk at how predictable he was or rather how well she knew him.

Put the Masks Away

Part Two

The graveyard was filled with new headstones and they were practically falling on top of each other.

Spike’s boots sunk deep into the ground where the dirt had been dug up. Buffy could hear the muck being kicked up as they walked. She’d never noticed that they walked in sync until she watched their shoes getting dirty. Buffy silently cursed herself for wearing Amanda Smith’ shoes, while in a graveyard. Spike didn’t seem to mind his boots getting filthy but sometimes she caught him cleaning them with “Touch of Glass”, something he’d gotten from the Dollar Store.

Buffy smiled at the image in her head of Spike leaning over, wiping his shoes with a paper towel doused with the cleaning product. “How unpredictable”, she thought. She would have to use his little trick at getting filth off her own shoes, once she got home. Of course that would end up becoming impossible considering the amount of alone time she got when she was there.

Before heading to the graveyard, they’d stopped at the liquor store and bought some vodka. Apparently their theme to the night was to be glass bottles and warm liquid. It only seemed appropriate that Buffy continue to drink, even if she’d probably end up having to kill something.

Spike couldn’t get drunk so she figured she was safe. At least safe enough from complete disaster and in some way that was comforting. Buffy had been surprised by how easy it’d been to leave the house undetected and was sure Spike was even more shocked that no one had seen how disheveled they both looked. He’d already downed more of the vodka than she had and she was almost certain she’d seen his hands shaking whenever he handed the bottle to her.

The graveyard was lit by the moon and neither one of them could remember when the last time it was they’d seen it so large, seemingly taking over the sky and illuminating everything in it’s sight.

Spike would’ve mentioned the craters that could be distinguished, indented in the moon, pointed them out in some lame attempt to make conversation but he was still reeling from the fact they’d had sex. He couldn’t believe the cot could even hold two bodies, let alone with that much activity. He wasn’t sure what had made her ask him to come on a walk but either way he was grateful for the time away from the house and for the gesture. While in town, near the liquor store, he’d almost taken her hand, guided her away from the crowd but stopped himself, leaving her unaware of his intentions to protect her. It wasn’t that he truly believed she needed protection it was just a reflex he’d picked up out of habit.

“When did you stop wearing underwear?” he asked chugging down a good percentage of what was left of the vodka. He let the bottle’s neck slip in between his fingers and dangle as they walked. Spike wasn’t sure how the question would go over but was convinced it would ease the ever-growing tension between them considering no matter how much alcohol she drank, she still seemed uncomfortable.

Buffy stopped in her tracks, not sure of how to respond and yet she couldn’t help but laugh knowing full well Spike was the only person who would ask her that question and risk the possibility of getting punched for it. She looked down and took the bottle out of his right hand, which within these hours had become a pattern. The rim of the glass touched her lips and she tilted her head back relishing the taste on her tongue, which quickly slithered down her throat, making her insides warm.

“Ever since clean underwear became a rare commodity,” she paused pushing the bottle into his chest. He fastened his right hand around it, while she let her arm swing at her side. “Laundry isn’t my top priority these days,” she finished, starting to walk again.

Spike stepped beside her, walking along, nodding his head. His bleach blonde hair was glowing in the night. The rest of him seemed to fade into the graveyard perfectly. He didn’t respond, knowing he could go on and on about how many times he’d raided the Laundromat because there were loads upon loads of laundry at the Summers’ household waiting to be washed. Astonishingly enough he’d become more interested in looking good and smelling good since he’d taken up residence in Buffy’s house.

“I’m sorry,” Spike whispered, the bottle sloshing in his hand. Buffy gazed at him curiously. “For – tonight,” he took a long swig of vodka, cringing at the flavor while looking at the ground.

Buffy stopped again. Spike continued walking a few steps until he realized she was not in stride with him and twisted around. She was standing hastily a few feet behind him, digging the heels of her suede shoes into the soil, ruining whatever grass lied there. Her eyes were glazed over with drunkenness and every silent second where the wind blew past them, against them, around them, made him yearn to take back his words. He was ashamed of being so childish around a woman but it was not the first time and most likely would not be the last time he apologized to one for something he was not sure required an apology. He did always feel the need to apologize to her for things that had been done in the past year or the year before and wasn’t sure that desire or need would ever go away.

Spike noticed the scar on her neck not that he hadn’t a million times before and every time the same reaction came, the same sense of never being good enough would filter through him casting a horrible fever of frustration with in him. Buffy bit her bottom lip, her teeth pulling at the dry, dead skin and he could tell that she was blocking out her emotions and could sense himself growing more impatient as time continued to go by.

“Don’t be sorry, Spike,” Buffy finally said, shaking her head, the strands of her hair from the end of her ponytail, bouncing on her shoulders. She started to tread towards him in what seemed like slow motion. He watched every small movement; the way her body was showered with moonlight, her hips swaying back and forth. By the time she reached him, he had closed his eyes, sure that when he opened them it would all be a dream. “Spike,” she whispered and it sounded like she was literally in his ear or at least close enough to be so. He opened his eyes to find her fixed to the ground before him.

“I kissed you,” and she moved away from him, sitting down on a head stone that read someone’s name. He couldn’t make it out with her legs dangling in front of the engraved words. Spike sat down next to her. Their clothing was close enough to touch. Buffy took the bottle from him and stared at it for a second, before drinking what was left. She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and leaned her head on his shoulder, dropping the bottle to the ground once she was finished. Buffy made a mental note to pick it up before they left the graveyard. Her head was pounding so hard that she could hear ringing in her ears. “My head,” she moaned, rolling her head back and forth on Spike’s shoulder.

Spike wasn’t sure of what to do. They’d never been the type of couple to share certain intimacies like comforting one another. He remembered his time with Dru and knew if it had been her, years ago, he would’ve put his arm around her, pulled her closer to him and rubbed her back so that was what he did with Buffy, although with less knowledge of the movement. He drew circles around her back with the palm of his cold hand and she sunk into his side and it took every fiber of his being not to scream with pleasure.

It wouldn’t last. He understood that because nothing did between them.

The air was growing cold around them and she shivered, again with goose bumps running up and down her arms but not for the same reasons as earlier. He gazed at her hand that had snaked itself onto his and he was taken aback by how soft it felt, how warm, but mostly, he was amazed that she was capable of doing such a thing. He dug his boots into the ground, keeping his balance on the stone.

Spike pushed the hair that had escaped from her ponytail away from her face and noticed that she had closed her eyes.

“Head spinning,” Buffy murmured as his hand grazed past her forehead. She opened her eyes to look up at him. He smiled at her, lips curving to the sides a little bit of teeth showing.

“Maybe we should go back,” he stated, about to stand up.

“No,” she said pulling at his arm. “I don’t want to – yet,” she clung to the fabric of his shirt with her fingers. “It’s so crowded there…” Buffy paused, rubbing her head. “And loud, can’t do loud right now,” she whispered, leaning her head back. His hand had wrapped gracefully around her waist, keeping her steady.

“Okay pet,” he whispered into her ear. His breath was icy but it soothed her, gave her chills in a pleasant way. The kind of way she’d learned how to enjoy the year before, even if it had always led to a purely sexual feeling. Spike watched a bunch of fluffy gray clouds cover the moon, leaving the graveyard completely dark.

“Dark,” she breathed out, eyes open, staring up at the sky whose stars were briefly covered by a light haze. Buffy lifted her head from his shoulder and twisted around, getting up and shaking her head. He stood up as well, feeling the loss of her body, no longer close. “Do you miss your crypt?” she asked seriously, wobbling over to another gravestone where she held onto the headstone for support.

“Sometimes,” Spike said, planting his hands in his dark jean pockets and slouching over, a little awkwardly. Buffy sighed, memories spinning cobwebs in her brain, making her head ache more. “I miss the privacy.”

“Don’t we all,” Buffy replied and threw her hands in the air only to realize she couldn’t stand on her own. He reached for her, grabbing hold of her left elbow while she rested the other hand on the granite again. Her breath smelled of alcohol, the mixture of Jack Daniels and vodka along with their kisses. There was a tint of cigarette on her tongue but she didn’t mind. She partly favored the taste, over the rest because it gave her the delusion that everything in the past between her and Spike was long gone and they could just be them, without all the pretenses.

The gray cloud stopped hiding the moon and dispensed luminosity over them. Buffy turned her head and relaxed her eyes on him. He was still holding onto her elbow and something ticked inside of her. She wasn’t sure what it was but the fact that he was standing there beside her, holding her, protecting her from falling over with drunkenness, was more than endearing. It was in all respects sexy, in a way she’d never thought sexy could be on Spike.

“I miss your crypt,” Buffy said. She removed her arm from his grasp and leaned her backside into the headstone, which stuck, out of the ground at a strange ninety-degree angle. Spike stepped backwards, looking over his shoulder at the small but vacant tree behind him. “It was cozy sometimes,” she blathered on, obviously letting her incoherent thoughts drop from her brain to her tongue and lips. Spike grunted up against the tree, branches blowing above him in the wind. He stared at her lovingly, taking in her stance, securing the memory in the back of his mind, to bring up whenever he was alone.

“It did have it’s advantages,” Spike tilted his neck back, looking up into the sky where the moon could be seen once again, glistening against the obscurity. Buffy nodded her head, agreeing with him. She rubbed her face with the palm of her hand, in an attempt to see better through her glassy eyes. “We should really get you back. I don’t think there’s any Vamps out tonight,” he waited for her reaction before he would move.

“They’ve probably all left or something – scared of the Hellmouth,” she mumbled, shaking her head. Her ponytail bounced back and forth in full swing. He laughed under his breath, gazing at her with his blue eyes. “Lets get another drink,” Buffy raised her eyebrows at him mischievously. She was shimmering in the radiance of the moon and he couldn’t help but comply, simply because she was stunning even while drunk and tired. He wanted nothing more than time with her even if it meant she wouldn’t remember any of it in the morning.

Buffy pushed away from the crooked headstone and kept herself steady for a few seconds before Spike was at her side, holding onto her once again. She inclined into him, her waist almost meeting his. Their bodies snapped together like a perfect equation. His arm meandered around her, tugging her closer. Unbeknownst to Buffy, he bent his head a little and inhaled the smell of her raspberry shampoo. She was too busy to feel the slight inclination of movement on his part. She was perfectly content to feel Spike next to her. Buffy grinned to herself when she felt his grip on her and she was sure that anyone who might’ve had the opportunity to see them, would think they looked like just another perfectly happy, normal couple.

Put the Masks Away

Part Three

Buffy had insisted on going to “The Bronze”, saying she wanted an Apple Martini and to dance since her head had begun to feel better. Spike had argued that at that point it seemed nearly impossible that she’d be able to dance in the first place.

She held onto Spike’s hand as they entered through the crowded doorway and she kept turning around every few seconds while they squirmed through the crowd of bodies, to tell him that he would have to dance with her. Spike shook his head no and held her hand in the air as they passed a group of college guys who were drinking way too much Budweiser. They reached the bar, still in tact and he was proud that she hadn’t stumbled or fallen.

“Well that was bloody hell,” he blurted out referring to the effort it had taken just to get to the bar. Buffy had already dropped her hand from his. Her back to him, as she waved to the bartender who immediately smiled at her, making Spike want to punch the young man in the face.

“Apple Martini,” Buffy called out over the music, which was blasting from the sound system. Live bands had become rare as far as “The Bronze” was concerned since anyone with brains didn’t want to come within ten miles of Sunnydale, let alone play at one of it’s infamous clubs. She turned her body around to face Spike. “Want something?” she asked knowing he would say no. Spike responded by shaking his head in the exact way she had already predicted in her mind.

Someone bumped Spike from behind, shoving him into Buffy. Her chest met his, bones crashing into one another and their eyes locked. She placed her hand on the indent of his waist and stopped herself from leaning up and kissing him, feeling the heat that had transpired between them hours before, erupting between them once again in the inevitable way it always had. She smiled as he put his hands on the counter, leaving her with no escape, not that she needed one. Surprisingly enough, she could tell that it was him who was nervous instead of her. During their walk through town, as well as, the tumultuous walk to the bar, holding his hand, her nerves had melted away. Why deny what I really want? she thought, and stood on her tippy toes and surprised him with a razor-sharp kiss.

Spike reciprocated by dropping his hands from the bar’s smooth surface and positioned them on the small of her back, pressing her closer to him. She tasted different, a mixture of vodka from her lips and tongue and raspberries emanating from her hair. He wished at that instant that he was alive, just for that kiss so that he could know what it was like to feel a pulse beating as fast and as hard as her’s was. Somehow the idea of it, made the kiss cavernous, never ending. He buried his wet tongue into her mouth, mingling, dancing with her own sultry tongue. She could feel her lips growing numb and the sounds in the club glided away.

Spike could make out the song humming over them. Must be your skin that I'm sinking in. Must be for real, cause now I can feel. The lyrics were perfect. He was sinking into her, forgetting the past, drowning himself in her lips, lifting the hem of the small baby blue tank top he’d ripped from her skin earlier and ran the inside of his hand up and down her back. She grew hotter underneath his fingertips and pressed her clothed body nearer to his, driving him wild in the process. If they hadn’t been standing there, he would’ve slipped his hand into the back of her jeans and teased her in the delicious delectable way she was tantalizing him. She moaned into his mouth, pulling onto his shirt and making a ball of fabric with her fist.

They were rudely interrupted by the bartender who was saying ‘miss,’ over and over again but had been masked by their ever-growing passion for one another that was bursting at the seams. Buffy broke the sweltering kiss and threw a few bucks onto the counter from her back pocket, glaring at the bartender, annoyingly, for ruining a perfectly good kiss. “Dammit,” she shrieked, downing the drink in one gulp and then licked her lips. “C’mon,” she said, taking Spikes hand in hers feeling the yearning piercing through her insides. She wanted him and not just his lips on hers, she needed him inside of her because it was the only thing that would make the sting in her muscles go away. He enfolded his fingers over hers, feeling the sweat that was indented in the curves of her soft hand.

“What? – Where?” the words came out fast as she dragged him through the crowd once again except this time towards the door. “You want to leave?” questions still formed on his lips, completely oblivious to her motivation. Spike was suddenly more aware of how strong she was now that she seemed to have sobered up. His hand was growing red from her clenched fingers. “Ow,” he got out before they’d made it outside.

She hauled them past a group of girls and she stopped, shoving Spike into the brick wall burning her lips into his. His eyes widened then closed to appreciate the feel of her body urging him on as he bit her lip, causally tugging at it. He opened his eyes to a pleading look of longing in her eyes. Buffy was growing impatient. It was obvious to him but before he had time to react she was unbuttoning and unzippering her jeans, shoving his hand next to her hot, wet skin.

“I need you,” she whispered, biting back a scream as his fingers slid into her. He knew her body better than his own, the curves, what made her tick and what didn’t. He’d never truly wanted to give her pleasure for her own benefit, mostly it had been to maintain something from her, gain access into her life. They had fucked time and time again and her flesh was not an obstacle to him but he knew this was different. The look in her eyes was unlike all the times before, even earlier that night. Buffy wanted and needed him the same way he wanted and needed her. It wasn’t about love, at least not at that point. It wasn’t about pain either and in more ways than one, it made him more inclined to dig deep down inside of her because the time might not ever come again where he got the chance to feed his own want.

Buffy breathed hot air onto his neck as he pummeled his fingers around inside of her. She clung onto him with her arms and bit into his neck trying to prevent herself from screaming in gratification. She ran her tongue over where she’d already bruised him. Spike closed his eyes feeling the breeze from the midnight air wash over them. The sound of the music from “The Bonze” chimed in their ears. I needed us. When we wanted us less. I could not kiss just regress. Her lips brushed past his. He licked her bottom lip, biting into it gently as to not render any blood. He sucked on it, bringing it nearer to his own bottom lip where he inserted his tongue into her succulent mouth.

Buffy slithered her sweat-drenched hand into his pants and he gasped in her mouth, taking his free hand and placing it on the back of her head. They smacked their lips together, over and over again while he untangled her ponytail and enveloped her golden locks with his fingers. She played with the zipper of his jeans, signaling that she was ready for him to become a part of her. Could've been easier on you. He removed his hand from her insides as she gave him another insistent look and as quickly as it had started he found himself entering her with the effortlessness that had been consistent in their sexual encounters. Buffy sucked in a gasp of breath when his lips left hers and he sunk into her. Spike picked up her legs and circled them around his waist.

The alleyway had grown quiet; time seemed to melt away as he thrust into her, fast, and then slow, following her jerks. Buffy didn’t close her eyes. She stared at him, one hand against the brick wall, her nails breaking as she pressed them into the crevasses where mortar had been positioned inside each brick. The other hand was inside his shirt, near his collarbone, stroking his skin with her fingertips. Spike forced himself down into her, freeing his left hand from her waist where he was keeping her balanced and reached up inside her shirt to her bra and pushed the elastic aside, rubbing her nibbles which made her squirm sinking her teeth into the other side of his neck, making a new bruise.

“Spike,” Buffy panted pulling him closer. He repositioned her legs and bent his knees thrusting himself upwards into her until he felt her legs buckle around him, squeezing him harder as she reached her climax. The craving for him wasn’t dying. She’d hoped that if she got him alone even if it was outside where people could’ve caught them that she would get over the need to have him inside her. Buffy made circles with her body, around his erection until she felt shivers run up her spine. Her muscles tensed with excitement and then collapse when the orgasm was over. “Fuck,” she breathed not letting him go. She wasn’t satisfied although she knew he most likely could go another round she was too nervous and the drunkenness that had been affecting her before, was slowly returning.

“You okay?” he asked, his eyes skimming over her, waiting for a reaction. Buffy bobbed her head dizzily making sure he understood she was all right, relieved. “Okay,” Spike smiled timidly, taking himself out of her and zippering up her pants, patting them lightly before zippering his own pants. She grinned back at him, fixing her hair and tucking loose strands behind her ears.

Buffy could tell he was panicky and since she felt the same way it was hard for her to articulate her own feelings into words. She wanted him to understand that it wasn’t about sex. That she’d just needed to be close to him. She wanted him in a way that wasn’t just talking or pretending that they didn’t want to kiss. She just desired a certain sexual intimacy so that she did not have to feel so alone and responsible anymore. She knew that Spike was often very good at taking on her emotions even if it was short-lived and she was thankful for that. The reason it wasn’t about sex for her was because she couldn’t imagine being that way with anyone else anymore. Her friends saw it, her sister saw it but she denied that what she felt for him was anything close to love even if it was. Subconsciously she understood that, yet she was not ready to face that fact.

“Do you…” he trailed off pointing to the bronze’s door.

Buffy opened her lips that still had his taste permeating them, causing her to lose her train of thought for a brief moment. “No,” she answered knowing he was about to ask her if she wanted to go back in. “Lets just walk for a little while,” and with that she pulled the straps of her tank top up on her shoulders.

Spike took a cigarette out of the pack of cigarettes that had been wedged in his left pocket, and stuck it in his mouth. Buffy made contact with his jeans and heaved her hand into his pocket, taking out his silver plated lighter. She flicked the top and pulled back the spin that executed fire. Her free hand blocked the wind that was barreling down on them as she lit his cigarette. She watched him inhale the tobacco easily. She slanted her head to the side, staring at him lovingly.

Spike didn’t catch the look, though it was probably for the best.

He didn’t want to have to return to walking around on eggshells with her just to protect the fact that this night had happened. “Thanks,” he said as she handed the lighter back to him. He blew smoke into the air, making strangely shaped triangles saunter up to the clouds.

“Yep,” Buffy replied as her heals clicked along the pavement, hands bouncing at her sides. Spike watched her out of the corner of his eye, smiling to himself. She looked so innocent, walking beside him. It was the first time he’d seen her look happy over something that didn’t involve Andrew running around like a maniac. He laughed to himself, shaking his head as he tapped the ashes of the cigarette to the ground. “What?” Buffy asked referring to his laugh.

“I was just thinking about Andrew,” he answered not realizing how it sounded. Buffy raised her eyebrows inquisitively. “Not that way,” Spike stumbled over his words while peeking over at her expression.

Buffy started to laugh. “I didn’t know you had those kind of feelings for him,” she hit him lightly in the ribs spinning on her heels before he grabbed her shirt, making her stop in her tracks. “Hey,” she cried out brushing his fingers off her shirt and smoothing out the wrinkles.

“I thought you looked happy” he paused. “The last time I really saw you smile was when Andrew was running around with some hot pockets,” he whispered, tossing the cigarette to the ground and crunching out the line of smoke with his boot.

The look came again. Her eyes glistening with pure love. “Oh,” and she was sure that if she smiled any wider her jaw would break apart. “I am happy,” she answered the question that had been hanging in the air for some time. “With you,” Buffy finished, smirking at him taking his hand in hers. Spike clasped his fingers around hers, knowingly. “I only wish it could last,” and sadness dripped from her lips. The idea that they would have to return to the world where she needed to make believe that she did not want to touch him, feel him or even really be around him made her inconsolably sad.

They walked along in a heavy silence for some time, just the sound of their shoes snapping along the street and the whishing of their arms swinging together. Buffy stretched her fingers every few paces, while tracing the scars on his knuckles. They were similar to her own blemishes.

They fed off the other’s unhappiness and each step that guided them closer to her house made their walk slower. Buffy sighed every so often, gazing up at the stars that were peaking through a blanket of clouds She resisted the urge to pull him down on the dry grass on someone’s front lawn, persuade him to lay on his back with her and stare up at the sky because it would just hold up the inevitable journey back to reality.

“Maybe when this is all over we could go somewhere,” Spike didn’t look at her just let the words fall from his lips. Buffy knew what he meant and she wanted to believe that there would be an “after”, so she went along with the idea in her head, imagining them somewhere other than Sunnydale, drinking wine and him smoking cigarettes at night.

“That would be nice,” Buffy commented, smiling up at him while bumping him with the side of her hipbone. He instinctively draped his arm around her waist, hugging her closer to him.

When he’d told her a some time ago that it was still about her, he’d meant that and he didn’t think that his actions would ever express anything else. Although, in the mean time, he’d never imagined that they would act the way they were now, regardless of the sexual encounters. Something was changing between them and he felt more hope than he had before. Spike still wasn’t expecting anything from her. He’d even try not to take it personally if she ignored him the next day.

“What are you thinking?” her voice interrupted his thoughts as she blocked him from moving any further down the road that wasn’t unexpectedly vacant. She’d learned over time to read his countenance since neither one of them were good at communicating through talking. She stuck out her bottom lip, jokingly in a manner that reminded him of the little girl that was wasting away inside of her; the one that would die off at some point from all the stress of her life. He’d always thought there was something fatally wrong with Angel when he was in love with Buffy, until he’d realized how vulnerable and beautiful she could be, then it all made sense.

Spike’s arm had fallen from her waist and he placed the palms of his hands on her bare shoulders. “Cold love?” he asked, rubbing her cold flesh even though he’d barely be any help in warming her up.

Her green eyes twinkled. He hadn’t initiated a kiss all night long but looking into her eyes, then down at her lips, made him tilt down and without much thought kissed her in a way that made him scared for his undead life. Buffy kissed him back while his hands tugged on the strands of her hair lying loosely on her shoulders. Her lukewarm hands found their way to his cheeks and tugged him closer.

Their lips met like a perfected “on-screen” kiss, one that actors would be asked to recreate time and time again in big budget films. The small streetlights tapped on and off. If someone had seen them from their bedroom window they would’ve smiled. Buffy and Spike were fixed in a tender, loving position. Their arms curled down to the other’s hips, lips entwined as if, were they to break apart, a spell would be broken. No one would’ve suspected that they could not reach the pinnacle of happiness that was dancing all over them. The kiss happened to be the most passionate so far, milked with the intense desire to never let the other go. Alcohol lingered on their lips but soon they would break apart in complete wretchedness.

Once the kiss ended, Buffy licked the saliva off her lips and brushed the hair that had fallen into her eyes, away from her eyelashes. She stared at him with an intensity, aching for so much more; an eternity of things that would not come. A tear fell from her eye and she quickly swiped it away, hiding her pain and frustration with a fake smile.

There were a thousand things that were running through Spike’s brain. The fact that daylight would come soon, being one of them as the moon faded slowly into the feathery clouds. He was haunted by the idea that he would never get to kiss her again. The overwhelming dread made him want to turn around, run back to town and raid the now closed liquor store for anything and everything to drown his sorrows in. Spike had tried so often to convince himself that all he needed was to be near her, to know that she believed he could be a better man but it was a lie. He wanted more, he always would and they both knew it, partly because she desired the same thing, something he’d never imagined until that night.

“I don’t know if I could’ve done the whole crypt and the white picket fence deal anyway,” Buffy snorted through her un-fallen tears, grabbing a hold of his hand. Spike was grateful he didn’t have a heart, wondering if it would’ve caused him more pain. If being human made it all harder. At the same time being human wouldn’t have put them in this predicament in the first place.

Spike silently cursed himself over and over in his brain for all the wrongs he’d done, for all the things he would never have and for loving a woman he could never fully give everything to. The alcohol didn’t change that or the sex and kisses but it still left him with some shred of hope that they would be okay, that their connection was deeply rooted, overriding time and agenda.

“Yea. Me either,” Spike answered smiling meekly, slouching his shoulders a little bit, sadly.

Put the Masks Away

Part Four

“Who so loves believes the impossible” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The night was gone, cut up into pieces of their memories.

There were just flashes left of the night Buffy and Spike had together, burning gaping holes in their souls where the other had taken a tiny piece of them. They could chalk it all up to coincidence, to a night where everything seemed to fall into place and yet the idea of having to distance themselves from it was strikingly painful.

Buffy didn’t know how to say goodbye, how to wipe away the tears that were fighting to distribute themselves onto her cheeks and spill down to the dip in her collarbone. She knew they would fall when she was alone. If she could run into the bathroom, close the door behind her and drop to the floor she would cry every bit of the saline that she fought to keep inside now, beside him.

Spike was shaking on the porch, standing away from the rising sun that teased him with the idea of death. He was smoking. The smell of the cigarette was burning into his fingertips and the taste, laying a home on his lips.

She could see that he was hurt, upset and like her, trying desperately to hold back his emotions, even if they weren’t tears. Every few seconds she wrestled with the idea of standing close to him again, of taking his hand in hers and not dropping it, not pushing it away once they walked inside. Who would really be surprised by her actions? Her friends would bitch and moan of course. Anya would remind her he was just killing people not too long ago. Giles would silently blaspheme her for being so stupid.

The truth was that no matter how much she wished she didn’t care about what anyone thought, she did. It was her job to care. If she did have the ability to turn off her emotions, she wouldn’t be prepared for the continuing months till the hellmouth opened.

Spike leaned against the doorway, tapping on the doorknob with his finger, flicking ashes onto his black boots. Buffy watched him with the ease of the lover she was, absorbing every one of his movements into her brain, tragically reminding herself that their hours together would slip away like sand once they entered the house. When she thought of sand and the end of the night, she choked on her own saliva and began to cough. He threw the cigarette to the porch floor, not bothering to knock out the smoke with this boot.

“You okay pet?” he asked, stepping forward and reaching for her, which quickly turned into his hand on fire from the suns rising rays. “Bloody hell!” he cried out, patting his hand on his jeans getting rid of the fire. Buffy’s eyes were wide as she continued coughing into her hand. It was just a reminder of what they couldn’t have. He would never be able to stand in the sun with her and that was something Angel had once decried to her. His speech was long forgotten in the midst and madness of her life. Spike would never leave her because of that. Buffy wouldn’t want him too. But could he love her if she lived to her forties or eighties and he stayed the same?

“This sucks,” Buffy said once she’d regained her composure and had stopped coughing. Before Spike could answer she was opening the front door quietly, grabbing his other hand and pulling him inside. “You need some ice or something,” she whispered, glancing into the living room at the girls wrapped up in blankets on the floor, sleeping and snoring.

Spike stopped in his tracks, wrapping his fingers around Buffy’s, causing her to halt with him. “Does that one always snore?” he asked, nodding to a wisp of black hair where a girl’s head was covered by a navy blue blanket, leaving just small trails of her hair out to the open.

Buffy suppressed a laugh. “Yea,” she responded getting a grip on Spike’s hand and urging him forward, towards the kitchen.

“Good thing I sleep in the basement,” Spike whispered as he followed her, laughing softly about the snoring blob on Buffy’s living room floor. She kicked the kitchen door open with the bottom of her slender boot and held it open for him with her free hand.

Buffy let her fingers sashay away from his as she walked to the refrigerator, opening the freezer. “Sit,” she told him pointing her finger at one of the wicker chairs perched near the island in the middle of the kitchen. He raised his eyebrows at her, skeptically but sat down anyway and looked down at his mangled hand.

“That really ruined the moment,” Spike spat out trying to hold back his sarcasm and pain. Buffy looked over her shoulder at him, placing ice into a paper towel.

“What moment?” she joked, pressing her stomach against the island’s side and leaned over, taking his burned hand into the palm of her vacant one. She put the ice filled towel onto his dead skin. “Were we having a moment?” Buffy asked, her green eyes glimmering with mischief.

Their eyes locked and the sentiment of caring behind them wasn’t missed, just shadowed by reality. Love could not enter the picture even if sex had, for just a flicker of time. “How does that feel? Better?” she questioned as the ice began to melt, water spilling out of the towel delicately onto his knuckles.

“Better,” Spike answered. His other hand moved on top of hers, not purposely, it was an ever-growing reflex to touch her when she was touching him. He’d spent so much time afraid of being around her that now when she gave him an opening, an okay, it was a part of him to react, to savor the action before it was gone.

Buffy threw her chest over the counter and kissed him, tenderly on the cheek. The lip-gloss she’d applied while they were walking back home left a small mark. She removed her hand from underneath his, creating a smile that looked more like a frown.

She opened the refrigerator door again, taking out the orange juice container and clanking it down on the counter near the sink. Her back was to him. He let his eyes roam over the bit of skin that was exposed under her silky blonde hair. He closed his eyes as his head began to ache from the ongoing sorrow that seeped into his bones, making him feel incredibly weak. Spike could hear her pour the juice into a plastic cup, imagining her glossy stained lips touching the rim, leaving a lip print while she drank away.

When he opened his eyes, he didn’t know why he was remotely surprised to see her staring at him. The cup still in her hand, lips wet and red. Her hair glowed, differently from the night’s rays. The sun’s quiet, damper emission through the window left an angelic glimmer to the scene before them. Him vampire, her human, not that either of them were capable of being an angel even though she’d been to heaven and back.

She didn’t say anything, just continued to stare at him, eyes intent on his. Thoughts coursed through her brain, to her blood and veins, making her heart and soul ache with glorified pain. The pain was different from dying. It wasn’t fast. It was slow, tearing out her insides and placing them back all inside out and mushy, making her feel like she was going to lose her mind if she did not once again feel him inside her, around her, on top of her.

“I should get to bed,” Buffy blurted out, shaking her head, trying to brush off the desire to engage in sexual intercourse with him all over again especially in the kitchen where anyone could find them. She made an awkward face at him, stuck the plastic cup into the sink and quickly walked the distance between the island and the doorway. Spike stood up abruptly. The chair he had been sitting in making a screeching noise as it scratched against the floors surface.

“Buffy, wait,” he called out, seizing her wrist. She stopped, swinging around to look at him, tears forming in her eyes. It has to be over. It has to be over. It has to be over, she repeated in her head. She was sure it was killing her, that he was killing her just by touching her. Buffy knew that it was exactly what she’d done to him so many times; that she would continue doing, although not because she didn’t want him, care for him and crave him. It was simple. She needed him too much, so much so that his grasp on her was sure to burn into her skin.

“I can’t,” Buffy made a pleading noise filled with sadness and disappointment. Her eyes glazed over with a blank emotion, something he couldn’t make out and she slipped her wrist out of his grip and kicked the door open again with the bottom of her boot.

In an instant she was gone.

Spike could hear her steps clawing up the stairs. He was alone again. This didn’t shock him. He told himself that he hadn’t expected too much even though he paid attention to the tears creeping to the surface of her eyes that probably weren’t real. They weren’t for him. She was an actress, deep down, constantly obeying someone else, some character instead of jumping into her own skin.

Spike tried desperately to forget that she was just a girl that made constant blunders that caused chaos but the truth was he loved her. When a person truly loves someone else their flaws disappeared. They twisted and churned into some part of good in that person even when you knew exactly who the person was or is. Spike still wasn’t fully capable of facing her dark sides; the sides that could rip him apart in a second, like then when he couldn’t move his feet to drag himself downstairs to the basement.

Love was about letting the other person make mistakes, even if they didn’t let you do the same. He’d learned that. She couldn’t love him, not in the way he loved her.

In retrospect it wasn’t completely her fault. Buffy was the slayer. She had a job, a stance on human existence that sometimes he didn’t even understand. Her mother had died. She’d found the body. Spike, even after killing his own mother, twice, couldn’t articulate that type of pain that had inhabited her after that, let alone what it was like to sacrifice herself for her own sister and then to be pulled out of heaven back to a place that seemed like hell.

Spike forgave her, time and time again because that’s what people do when they love someone. He couldn’t forgive himself though, not yet, even if she’d made it perfectly clear that she had forgiven him, or given him the slightest suggestion that she loved him. It didn’t make a difference, because to him he never would get the girl.

Spike slouched back down, hands in his pockets, leaving the ice and the paper towel on the counter, letting the water drip down to the floor, making a small puddle. He headed towards the basement door, opening it and walking down the wooden stairs, sliding his hand against the wall as he walked. He lifted his arms once he reached the floor and pulled his shirt off, tossing it to the floor. He crashed onto the cot, lying on his stomach. He formed an oval with his arms, placing his cheek on top of his skin. He closed his eyes, blocking out the sun that was spiraling in from the distant window.

The dizziness of the night’s events coursed through his mind all over again, forcing his eye to twitch unpleasantly. He had some strange desire to the listen to The Beatles, which was rare for him although the lyrics to ‘here comes the sun’ rang restlessly in his head. Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter.

Buffy stared at herself in the mirror, brushing back the stains of black eyeliner left by her tears. She noticed the small wrinkles that probably shouldn’t be there but she felt so old and had been through so much already. She wasn’t sure what she was doing or why she had to literally run away from Spike even if that was another theme to their relationship. He tried to make amends and she would pull away or push away, depending on the instance. Her hands were shaking, as was her body. “I can’t keep doing this,” she said to her reflection, sounding crazy.

Buffy dropped her body a little bit and leaned her elbows on the countertop, turning on the cold and hot faucets watching the water fall into the sink. She didn’t bother pulling her hair back as she dipped her face into the water, washing off her make up, coming up with a clean, fresh face. She looked back at her reflection and turned off the faucets. She dried her face with a clean washcloth from under the sink and threw the cloth onto the floor where all the dirty towels had been chucked. She made a mental note, in all her melancholy to do laundry in the morning or to get someone else to do it.

She turned the knob of the bathroom door that opened to her mother’s room, which was now her room. Potential slayers had overtaken her bed. There was no room for her anywhere. After all she had never explained where she’d gone or when she’d be back.

“Fuck,” Buffy cursed under her breath, tiptoeing around the room to her dresser, taking out a pair of sweat pants. She went back to the bathroom, taking off her boots then jeans, flinging them to the floor with the towels. Buffy then decided to pick them up and carry them, pulling at the drawstrings of her sweat pants. She threw her jeans over her arm as she walked down the stairs, going slowly, making sure as to not disturb anyone as they slept.

Her body moved swiftly, silently through the house towards the kitchen where she was half hoping Spike would still be. It shouldn’t have made her sad that he wasn’t, since she shouldn’t have expected him to stay around. She noticed the water dripping to the floor where Spike had clearly left the paper towel.

Buffy frowned, throwing her jeans onto the chair, not feeling the least bit hung over. She suspected that was only because she was trying not to think about how much alcohol she had consumed. She walked to the sink, grabbing the dishtowel. She strolled back to the other side of the island where the water was dripping. She picked up the wet paper towel and threw it across the kitchen into the sink. Then bent over and soaked up the water on the floor with the towel.

Buffy stood up, walked to the sink, and then stared out the window at the rising sun. The sky melted into a mixture of colors, blue, purple, pink, yellow, and orange. She thought that if she’d ever had picked a major in college maybe she would’ve liked photography. It seemed appropriate that she’d discover some sort of creative inclination when she stared at a sky painted with so many diverse colors. Something other than hell had to exist if there was such a beautiful image exploding into the atmosphere. It was strange that such a small thing, just looking at the sky could give her hope in her future, in the world’s future.

She could hear Spike’s voice coming from the basement and grabbed her jeans off the chair, dangling them over her arm as she opened the door to the downstairs, to Spike. Her feet made light pounding noises on the wooden planks as she walked, letting the palm of her hand slide along the railing.

Spike caught her eye as she barreled down the last step, standing awkwardly between him and the way out. He didn’t say anything. He’d been singing a little bit of ‘here comes the sun’ and almost whispered, ’little darling, it feels like years since it's been here’, to her but stopped himself, realizing he would sound crazier than he was. She waved to him, feeling awkwardly, desperate for his attention, for his love, for his arms around her.

Buffy stayed still, jeans still hanging from her arm, eyes blood shot from fatigue. “What are you doing?” Buffy asked, staring at his bare chest then up at his eyes that were shooting explainable daggers at her. “I’m sorry,” she shot out at rapid speed, the words rushing past her lips. Spike was sitting on the makeshift bed, showing very little emotion, making her feel hollow inside. She could feel the tears erupting in the back of her tear ducks once again and fought them back, feeling like she would throw up at any second.

Spike noticed how pale she looked and grew concerned. He threw the deck of cards, he was about to start playing with, onto the cot as he got up. “What is it?” he asked, getting close enough for her to fall into him. Her head buried in his chest, tears exploded down her cheeks, onto his skin. He could feel the saline dripping down her face. He resisted the urge to cry himself. Instead he pulled her into him, drowning his hands in her hair, resting his chin on the top of her head.

Spike finally understood that it was all just as painful for her as it was for him. He didn’t want to let her go, didn’t want to remember the past, unless it involved something happy between them, like the past few hours. They hadn’t once fought or belittled one another. Of course, that didn’t count her running away from him minutes before. It was heaven, at least a heaven that he’d wished for, time and time again.

Spike knew that every time he fought by her side he would’ve easily surrendered his life, knowing full well that he’d lived as much as he could, (being undead and all) beside her, for a good deal of time and that was heaven enough.

If they’d been at his crypt he would’ve lit candles, covered her in a blanket and told her how beautiful she was but it was her basement; a place that would never be completely his, leaving him always slightly uncomfortable. Buffy, finally, not out of want, took her head away from where it rested on his chest and wiped her tears away with her fingertips. Spike tilted his head downwards, gazing at her and brushed his own fingertips over her salty tears, wondering if it would’ve been appropriate to tell her how beautiful she looked. He knew she would’ve shrugged him off, never fully grateful for a compliment.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “I had something in my eye,” Buffy grimaced at her words, trying not to betray her emotions. He grimaced as well, feeling like he’d just been punched in the stomach even if she was partly joking. Spike turned his back to her, flopping back down on the cot, his feet hanging off the edge.

Buffy didn’t know how to ease the tension she had built. What am I doing?, she thought. She wasn’t sure if she should close the gap between them by sitting down next to him on the cot, or if she should just walk back up the stairs and wash the memory of his lips on hers away.

Buffy scowled, waiting for the words in her head to form properly. “I’m an asshole,” she quipped, the words not exactly coming out the way she’d expected.

Spike glanced up at her, blue eyes beaming with questions. He appeared more pale than usual to her and she could sense his sadness seeping into his skin and bones. She began to feel even more horrible for not being the person he deserved, for not being the Buffy she felt he loved. She often wondered if she would ever properly be ready for someone to love her, especially the way he loved her so unconditionally. In a lot of ways he loved her in the way she loved Dawn, like family. He accepted her flaws, her annoying ability to shut off and push people away with continuing ease. With or without the sex he loved her.

Spike grumbled, pulling out a cigarette, lighting it effortlessly. Buffy felt she’d become addicted to cigarettes as well. Whenever she was around him, around the scent, she inhaled, letting the nicotine invade her system. Over the summer, when he’d been gone she was restless, wondering where he was, although she had never admitted it to anyone. She would stare at a pack of cigarettes at the drug store, wondering if she could pick out his brand and if having just one would kill her. It was only a fraction of the many things that reminded her of him over the summer. She’d barely asked him about Africa, still afraid to believe that what he did, everything he did, was for her and everything he would do, would be because of her.

He laced his lips over the cigarette, sucking in the nicotine that flowed nowhere, just in and out. She smiled as a triangle shape cloud of smoke wafted out from his lips.

Spike jerked his body forward, dropping his bare feet to the ground where the alcohol stain still lay, dried up in a funny shape. He patted the empty space beside him for her to come and join him. She obliged first by flinging her jeans across the wooden railing and then padded towards him in her white socks. She collapsed down next to him, smirking a little bit as he peeked at her curiously. He raised his dark eyebrows at her. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her in sweatpants.


Spike shook his head, biting back a sharp laugh.

As if reading his mind Buffy said, “I told you about laundry.” She began playing with the drawstrings around her waist. The air was heavy with dissatisfaction and an undeniable yearning. It bounced off each of them and flooded the room. “Why do you smoke?” she questioned, eyes still laid upon her hands that were wrapping the small fabric around her fingers.

Spike stared at the cigarette in his hands, smoke floating up to the ceiling. The question appealed to him on numerous levels; when and how, popped into his head and even why, was an obvious question but he had no real answer. His memory was blanked out in places. It just seemed to have happened at some point, that nicotine became a crutch he could bury himself in and not get hurt by. “I don’t remember,” he responded honestly, placing the stick to his lips watching her face contort into palpable interest.

Buffy’s head rested into the cement-covered bricks of the wall, hair clinging to the indents where brick met brick. She curled her legs up Indian style, trying to get comfortable but the situation, no matter how well they knew one another, was awkward.

Spike was content either way. He was better at remembering the good opposed to the bad. The reminiscences of the nights’ events that would flow through him, time and time again were those where she was not timid or scared, where she’d kissed him, proposing some sort of newfound hopefulness between them.

Buffy cemented herself with the bad and the good; taking on, both fully and completely, but her brain tended to remember the bad over the good, afraid the good would cloud her judgment.

She wondered about Faith sometimes, if things had been different. If Faith hadn’t turned into a murderer would she have had these problems? Could she have faced her feelings for a vampire who had gotten a soul just for her? Would Faith push the good away and force herself to face the bad? Buffy wasn’t sure anymore. Faith was a killer. She always would be. So comparing her own feelings and emotions to a girl who had switched her body to fit into Buffy’s was probably not the best thinking pattern for her to have while trying to sort herself out.

Spike didn’t know very much about Faith but at times Buffy imagined they would’ve liked each other, a wave of jealously crossed paths with her soul and heart causing her to let out a brittle laugh. Spike gazed at her in a hopelessly romantic way that made her laugh harder. She could feel her mind running away, inside of her, skimming the edges of sanity.

Words were not their specialty. They never had been but she wanted him to say something comforting, something that would make her feel less crazy. She quickly learned that he didn’t have to say anything, just his eyes on her, tenderly, drew out all the fear and apprehension from the night’s events. He was sad. It was laid all across him, in his pupils, in the crystals of blue and flecks of green of his eyes.

It wasn’t a reaction or reflex it just happened. Her head in his lap, while he instinctively stroked her hair reminding her of the times she’d been sick when she was younger and her mother would delicately stroke her scalp, making her feel better. Spike was caring like that although she’d never have admitted such a thing to herself a year ago.

Things had changed. She had grown up while he was gone. He had gotten a soul so maybe they were both grownups now. Buffy often tried to convince herself that he was always Spike with or without the soul but after their altercation before he left, it was hard for her to believe that. Instead she believed that the soul made him different, made him more human, less evil.

The echo of sunlight merged with the room, making small swirls of light jump along the floor to the ceiling. Buffy closed her eyes, still inhaling the nicotine that waltzed around the room.

Spike ran his fingers through her golden locks while glancing over at the window, at the sunrise. In their corner of the room, he wasn’t in any danger of being burned, not physically, emotionally was a completely different story. He didn’t ask her why she had come downstairs. He figured there was no room for her in her bed. Spike knew that questioning her motives on carrying herself down to darkest area of the house once more, would only make her run in another fit of panic. He didn’t want that.

She looked peaceful, lying there on the cot with her head in his lap. She would’ve been magnificent to paint in the day of Renoir. The impressionist artists he had run past, sometimes even killed would’ve found her features magnificent in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The curve of her jaw, piercing green eyes, lips fashioned like a heart and skin the color of porcelain. It was no wonder he had fallen in love with her. Despite her internal flaws she was insanely beautiful and always equally stunning in bed, regardless if they were having sex or if she was just sleeping. It had been the image of her fighting him off that propelled him to Africa but it was the image of her innocence that brought him back.

“I heard you upstairs,” Buffy whispered, eyes opening, pushing her head up as his hand glided out of her hair. He took a last drag from the cigarette and dropped it to the floor bending slightly to press it into the ground.

“Were you spying love?” his thick British accent drawled out. Buffy moved her body upwards to sink into his waist where he welcomed her. She stuck her tongue out at him, making him laugh.

“I was not the one talking to myself,” she pointed out, rolling her eyes. “And I have issues,” Buffy made a rolling noise with her tongue to signal she was being sarcastic and rested her lips into a smile.

Spike usually spent his nights, staying up late and attempting sleep during the day. Sometimes Andrew would come downstairs and they would play a card game where Andrew would always argue he won.

Most of the time, Spike hated the mornings because he was alone, while Buffy was sleeping upstairs. But, this morning was different. Instead of thinking about her, she was there, melting into his body. Second by second he was realizing that the extraordinary night had turned into an extraordinary morning. No, they would never really be what he wanted but he could always settle for whatever she was willing to give him. That was the balance in their relationship. She would offer up something, anything, and he would take the bait because he had to.

“I wasn’t talking to myself,” he quipped back, pinching her waist playfully with his fingers as he shifted his body around to face her more eloquently, instead of jerking his neck back and forth to see her. She lifted her eyebrows, waiting for an explanation as to why she’d heard his voice earlier. “I was singing,” Spike responded, looking in her eyes.

Buffy elevated her body, curious about his answer. “What we’re you singing?,” she asked, her eyes wide with interest. She curled into him further as if they were one person, with one heart, which they technically were. She had reached the point where she wondered if her heart beat for him too, if living had become fascinating because she was doing some of it for him. The thought had occurred to her more than once even though she’d never talk about it with him or anyone else for that matter.

Spike mumbled, shaking his head at her. “Nothing,” he answered. She responded by punching him in the ribs, not knowing her own strength. “Bloody hell, pet!” he rasped out grabbing onto his stomach where a bruise, would later emerge. “It was ‘here comes the sun’,” Spike looked over at her, still holding onto his stomach.

Buffy looked confused. “You want me to do something about the window?” she asked, standing up, bumping him with her thigh and rushing over to the window. She tried to cover it with a blanket that was hanging on a shelf near her, then a large book that must’ve been her mother’s, since she never had time for reading anything that huge.

Spike shook his head, watching her as she placed her toes forward onto the floor and lifted her heel, trying to cover the sun. It was endearing to see her so concerned about him and highly amusing that she hadn’t understood what he’d said. “No, pet, the name of the song,” he dropped his hand from his stomach and moved it to his forehead where he massaged his temples, feeling a headache brimming as she continued an attempt to cover the sun that was dancing through the window. “Buffy, it’s okay,” He said calling her back over to him.

Buffy twisted around, her blonde hair glowing in the sunrise. It shined purples, blues and yellowish gold’s on the lighter strands of her hair. Her skin looked tan, tanner than it had in the dark and he wondered when and how her skin had reached any point of crimson considering how little time she spent out in the daylight.

It was painful to think that he couldn’t share that with her. That they couldn’t go out in the sun together and bathe in it, kiss under it, hold hands under it, even make love under it, if they ever reached the point of turning sex into love. He thought they were close, so close he could literally taste it, touch it, feel it binding them together more equally than ever before, even if he let that hope evaporate, constantly, even with her standing only a few feet away from him. Hope was always there, no matter how he distinguished its fire, it hid in the shadows with him, sometimes even with her but it was just that; hope, an intangible emotion. Nothing really came of it. He could tell himself it was hope that had put them together hours before, but it was just chance, just her need to be away from everyone else that placed them together.

Spike remembered their fight over the gem of Amara years ago, how easy it would’ve been for him to appear in the daytime if she hadn’t ripped the ring off of him. He’d learned later on, after returning to Sunnydale from L.A, that Angel had crushed the ring. How stupid, he’d always thought. Although if Angel had kept the ring, that would mean that it could’ve been him instead of Spike staying up with Buffy, watching her try to hide away the heavens.

Spike wasn’t completely sure he would’ve been the same person he’d grown into if he’d have been able to keep the ring but the sound of it was still appealing. It would’ve really helped him through the fight that was coming and even with whatever was happening between him and Buffy. He wondered if he could still tan in the sun.

Buffy quickly broke him out of his thoughts. “Oh,” she paused, leaving the book on the small indent of a windowsill, a sliver of radiance coming through, between the edge of the book and the rest of the window. She strode back to him. “I thought…” Buffy trailed off as she sat back down on the cot. Spike couldn’t help but laugh. There seemed to be no use in explaining the song to her. He was sure once he said ‘The Beatles’ she would’ve squirmed around, wondering where a beetle was. He would just blame it on her drunken tiredness and his unwillingness to explain what he really meant through words.

Spike raised his arm in the air, pressing it along the wall, signaling for her to fall into him again. Buffy reciprocated, blending her own waist with his.

She squirmed uncomfortably, moving herself upwards. “I’m sitting on something,” Buffy pulled the deck of cards he’d flung on the cot before, out from underneath her. “This,” she threw them into his lap and rested her head on his shoulder. He could smell the raspberries, emanating from her hair, still. Her scent soothed him, it always had. “You play cards by yourself?” she asked, somewhat sadly, looking up at him with crystal-like eyes.

“Sometimes,” Spike answered opening the deck of cards and shuffling them in his hands; the sound of each card hitting another echoing in the large room. “Or with Andrew,” he finished, glancing over at her. She snickered slightly, curious as to how Spike and Andrew had become hanging-out buddies. She figured it was just that Andrew was amusing and was probably less annoying than the potentials, which was true. “Don’t get any ideas, love.” He smirked at her, small bits of his teeth showing.

“Do you know how to play spit?” Buffy asked, taking the cards from his hands and shuffling them herself. He watched her hands. The way her fingers tilted upwards to each new card that entered the second pile between her fingers. The way her broken nails sounded along the surface of the tough paper edges. He could see small bruises that he hadn’t bothered to see until then. She had punched something so hard; it’d left a knock, a cres, indented in her hand. A wave of concern washed over him. Spike worried about her, about how much of herself was going into this upcoming battle and how much of her would be left if and when it ended.

“I can spit, yes,” He replied jokingly, still watching her hands with a brimming trepidation.

Buffy shook her head, catching the look in his eyes, briefly, as she tossed cards into his lap.

She stopped, holding the rest of the deck of cards in her hand. “What is it?” she asked, commenting on the distorted look on his face. The look usually only happened after he’d been knocked down by a hard punch, or a kick to the gut.

Silence fell over the large, hollow room and Spike wrestled with the idea of telling her exactly what he felt. He could sense the words about to slip from his tongue and yet he couldn’t find the courage to say anything about what lingered in his mind. “It’s nothing, love.” He twisted his lips into a smile, curving his eyebrows up, near his forehead.

Buffy watched him, knowing he was lying. A part of her wanted to press the issue, to push him for more information but she couldn’t bear the idea of causing either one of them added pain. Especially when the whole house awoke in a few hours. In her mind it wasn’t dropped, or bitten away, just there, resting, something she’d bring up again, someday. Mostly because she believed the look would come again.

She ignored his last comment completely, distancing it from her mind.

“You’re just a barrel of laughs this early in the morning,” Buffy started again with the tossing of cards into his lap and then hers. She reached the last card and put it into the pile that rested on her thigh, positioning herself away from him on the cot.

Spike picked up his cards from the space between his thighs and made a block with them. He moved his back and waist to face her, but kept his feet planted to the ground. They both, in sync, began their pile of cards. Buffy looked up at him then down at his cards to see if he had finished placing them in short solitaire form, which he had.

“Okay. 1-2-3 Spit,” Spike said both of them plummeting cards to the space between them.

Authors Note: I’m sorry this part took so long. Real life things sort of took president over writing unfortunately and being sick. But I really love this part even though I’m pretty sure I’m reaching the end. I hope you enjoy!

Part Five

“Love is a fiend, a fire, a heaven, a hell, where pleasure, pain and repentance dwell.” – Richard Barnfield.

Buffy still remembered the first time she really kissed Spike.

The way his bruised, battered cheek felt along her smooth, unscathed skin; how he had flinched the moment he realized it was her kissing him and not the robot. Buffy still believed it wasn’t a very good copy of her. She could still pick out the details of the way it all felt. She stormed into his crypt, hoping he would give her some reason to kill him but nothing came. His words pierced something in her, making her finally realize, even if only for an instant, that he was capable of being a man.

When she found Spike or rather stumbled upon him at the beginning of the school year in the high school’s basement, she was eerily relieved that he was not dead. Although she had never really considered the possibility all that much. After all, he did attack her before he left town and she had to put on a good game face, pretend that she wasn’t the least bit interested or concerned about where he had gone. Learning he had gotten a soul, for her, was another thing altogether.

Buffy cried for him, in the tiny church where he burned himself on the large cross. She cried for both of them, for the things they’d never have, for the man in him that was fighting so hard to stay strong and the woman in her that was breaking apart while seeing him struggle so openly with all the things he’d ever done wrong. For her it was a defining moment. Spike had changed, fought and won a soul, for her. Every day since she invested some of her thoughts to the redemption he was so obviously seeking.

Spike listened to the sound of her breathing, as she sat across from him on the cot. When he closed his eyes he was positive he could count her pulse, the rhythm of her heart, just by her breathing pattern. Of course that was a common thing for a vampire and it had somehow become more powerful with the soul. Her ragged breath pumped through him, whispering in his ear and slithering into the blood that melted underneath his skin. For a second he thought he felt his heart beat but it was just the echo of hers beating in his eardrums.

The scent of alcohol and orange juice that had emanated from her mouth had dissipated over the course of the hour they’d been playing games of spit. It was another thing he noticed other than the fact that the alcohol she consumed beforehand made her cheeks red, reminding him of Shirley Temple in old black and white films. They used so much makeup on the little child making her seem like some zombie from Halloween. Buffy didn’t look that flushed, just childlike. She kept pulling her hair away from her face and shoulders, wrapping it around in a twist, and then letting it fall against her shoulders. He would smile every time she leaned over and her hair would once again fall in her face causing her obvious distress.

Spike had stopped himself various times from rushing his hand to the strands of hair that would pester her forehead, eyes, and cheeks, lying across her neck. Even after all their time together he still felt like a little boy, hoping for her to love him which only led to nervous behavior on his part.

His lips felt chapped whenever he ran his tongue over them, trying to get rid of the brittleness. Buffy would glance at him briefly, observing the way he was obviously annoyed at how red his lips were becoming. She quietly enjoyed their flush, the color of blood, of their kisses. It left her wanting and craving more from him once again.

She knew now that if her calling had been anything other than a slayer she would’ve been able to lie her way out of anything. The past hour with Spike only proved that; the way she’d throw down cards, hurriedly, avoiding any contact with his hand. Her self-control was frightening. It was hard and easy all at the same time. She had to keep her yearning to throw her arms around him, lay on top of him and kiss him so hard that they both would forget what it was they were hiding from. It by no means meant that at some point she wouldn’t just give in, silently hoping he would ease himself on top of her so that she did not have to feel so guilty for wanting to do it herself.

The sun had risen higher over the course of the few spit games. Both Buffy and Spike had learned to read the patterns of the sun and the moon; when and how they would meet again being part of it. Buffy could tell by the tiniest bit of sunlight, that the element of light had changed.

“What are you waiting for?” Buffy asked, breaking them both out from their thoughts.

Spike tilted his head; peeking over at her, with a cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth, smoke gliding up and around them. She could smell the nicotine sinking into her hair, reminding her that once she got back upstairs she’d have to wash her hair quite thoroughly with whoever’s shampoo happened to be in the shower. Buffy never thought she’d start using other people’s shampoo but apparently all the other girls had been using hers and she ran out. “Everyone uses my shampoo,” she blurted out, shaking her head stupidly after realizing the words had left her mouth.

Spike looked at her curiously not sure which admission he should respond to first. “Well…” he began to say but stopped himself before his scrambled thoughts turned into words. “Buy more?” he said skeptically. He looked down at the last of his cards, placing a five of spades on top of a five of clubs.

Buffy sighed annoyingly. “The salon closed a few weeks ago, everyone is leaving the hellmouth,” her bottom lip stuck out a little bit, again reminding Spike of her innocent appearance. “Well not us,” she said.

“I see,” Spike said nodding his head, taking the cigarette between his fingers and tapping the ashes to the floor. Buffy looked up at him amused. “Ready?” he asked referring to the cards that were before them. She was the only one that had any spit cards left and they’d ended up holding up the game while he lit and smoked some of his cigarette.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she answered, feigning irritation at his question but smiled anyway. “1-2-3 spit,” Buffy threw one of her last spit cards down to the pile she had created earlier in their third game.

They both stared at the ten of spades and back down at their own cards to see if they had anything that could go on top of it. Buffy reacted quickly, not wanting to lose another game throwing her jack of hearts on top of the ten. Spike watched her fingers move to turn over a few of the cards that had been hiding underneath others and decided to wait till she threw her queen down to engage in the game. “What are you doing?” she slanted her neck to the side, peeking up at him through the hair that was falling in her face.

“Waiting for you,” Spike answered, moving his chin up a little as it nodded to her cards. Buffy scoffed, rolling her eyes. He laughed a little at her reaction, tossing the cigarette to the floor and leaning over to put it out into the cement of the floor. He could see Buffy; bend over towards his cards, out of the corner of his eye, as she switched one of her cards with his. “I saw that,” he said straightening his back. Her mouth fell open as she suppressed a laugh, throwing the rest of the cards up in the air.

“Fine! I’m done with this stupid game,” and the cards fell back down on top of them, some to the floor. Then she stretched back over to his cards, picking them up between her fingers and into the palm of her hand, throwing them into the air as well, where they crashed down on his head. He shook the cards off picking one from his cheek and flinging it back to the cot.

“Sore loser pet”, he alleged, looking over his shoulder at the cards that had fallen behind him.

Her breathing was faster, harder. He could feel it through his own veins, making it’s way through him, pounding in his eardrums. The Beatles ‘Here comes the sun,’ clanked through his head once again. The lyrics collided into him.

Spike had never been quite fond of The Beatles, although he respected their music for being so influential to the dynamic of every spectrum of sound after and during the sixties and seventies. He did believe ‘Abbey Road’ to be a particularly good album, which would explain his immediate obsession with ‘Here comes the sun,’ as it seemed to be playing out right before his eyes. “Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces”, he hummed, almost silently, but Buffy heard the soft whisper against his lips and it cradled to her ears.

“I’m not a sore loser,” She protested as his humming beat down to a low murmur. “Are you humming?” Buffy queried, bending over to pick up some cards that had fallen on the floor, in one fell sweep.

Spike let the song slither out of his head, somewhat embarrassed. “No,” he answered, following her lead and picking up a few cards from the floor and behind him, throwing them into the pile between them. Buffy muttered something about him under her breath and once he looked back over at her she shut her mouth. “What?” he asked, staring questioningly at her. He watched as she ran her tongue over her Lolita shaped lips that were the color of a burning pinkish red. He imagined they tasted still like her lip-gloss and orange juice, laced with small bits of alcohol even if he could no longer smell those things. The memory of them remained.

“And I’m the crazy one,” Buffy responded, grabbing the cards from between them and picked them up making a small mound in the palm of her hand. She bit into her lip and he could see flecks of skin turning a bright, crimson red where the blood would rush forth if she did not break her teeth away from the sensitive flesh. “You were so singing,” she purred, rolling her tongue against her cheek. He could see the pink of her mouth when she spoke, wanting to jerk his own tongue forward into what he considered to be paradise.

“Whatever you say Slayer,” Spike quipped, reaching his arm forward behind her to grab a card that was lying by her thigh. Buffy flinched a little, wondering about his movement. He felt her body ease backwards as he leaned forward. He flashed his eyes towards hers and there was something hidden within the pools of green he’d dreamt so often about in Africa. “Now what are you doing?” Spike asked, almost condescendingly of the way her voice had sounded every time she’d asked him the very same question, over and over again. He moved his body back again, with the card in his hand, showing it to Buffy who was blushing.

“Nothing,” she answered, yanking her body upwards, uncurling her back from where she had started to heave herself down when Spike’s body had leaned forward. Buffy wiped her face, trying to get rid of the redness she knew was erupting on her cheeks. Spike smirked realizing that the sexual tension he had been feeling was not unreciprocated. She lifted herself up on her knees, the fabric of her sweatpants making soft scratching noises against the cards beneath her.

He could see from the sun’s shadow of light that her lips were still dipped with gloss, glistening in the darkness. Buffy wasn’t sure what she was doing, rearranging her weight out of nervousness or simply just moving closer to him, wanting and needing the upper hand in whatever it was that was happening between them.

Spike, his eyes level with her chest, looked down and randomly but very sweetly pulled down her tank top around her waist, leaving her bellybutton unseen, hidden beneath the fabric of cotton and color of blue. Her eyelashes fluttered down to where his hand had fallen back into his lap and slunk her thighs back down on top of her calves.

In an instant Buffy’s hand traced his jaw, then ran against his lips where he’d set them closed tightly, seconds before. Her fingers were soft, curving around his bottom lip then down to his chin. Spike stared at her; the delicate way her skin had grown rosy instead of brightly flushed as before. She did still smell the way he’d imagined earlier, orange juice, alcohol, raspberries and the vanilla of what he presumed was her lip-gloss even though he had for some time let the scents commingle in his nostrils and on his skin. Their eyes locked, so completely and beautifully as they had the first time they’d kissed after months of un-quenching thirst for one another.

Spike’s gaze fell away from her eyes, apprehensively staring at how close their bodies were from one another, her heartbeat only inches away from his chest. Buffy brought his chin back up. Their eyes meeting, her lips separated to speak. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Look away,” and she rested her lips upon his, softly, tenderly, running her tongue over his bottom lip.

He closed his eyes feeling himself being lifted into a promise land. It was a fantasy he told himself, something he’d dreamt up and eventually he would awake and realize nothing had happened; that she had never been there, never found the Jack Daniels, never kissed him and he would be left devastated but no more than he would be if it were real and he awoke later to find her gone. It wasn’t a dream, he told himself, just something his mind still couldn’t comprehend.

Buffy pushed herself on top of him, his head hitting the edge of metal on the cot as he went down. He didn’t mind, didn’t utter a word of pain as her thighs buckled around his waist, lips still cemented on his chapped, brittle ones. He could feel their dryness evaporating with each lick of her tongue. The images of the spell they’d been under when they’d first kissed spun around in his mind, although the images were just slices of time, things he’d forgotten simply because they didn’t add up to the realness of everything afterwards. Like her, he remembered the first real kiss with his bruised and battered face.

Those kisses from Willow’s spell meant nothing. They weren’t real, just lips touching lips with no other meaning except the magic that had ensued. This was not a spell, as much as he’d imagined it was Buffy kissing him, again, slipping and guiding her tongue into his mouth so strongly that he was sure if he had any breath he would’ve choked on it. The coldness he was constantly cursed with was heated by her warm, blood-pumping humanness struggling above him in attempt to get nearer, to get inside him, which was impossible. Once his brain caught up to his movements he realized his hands were already unhooking her bra underneath the small tank top, instinctively.

Spike opened his eyes, blinking fast as she ran her tongue down from his chin to his neck, sucking delicately at first on his pale soft tissue then bit into him where she’d already bruised him earlier from teeth hitting skin. He moaned and she rapidly threw her hand over his mouth in a desperate attempt to keep their encounter separate from what was above them. He wanted to say, ‘I love you,’ but even after her hand left his mouth he didn’t dare utter the words. They were too real, too unlike the point they were at. Buffy knew he loved her. He didn’t have to say it no matter how much he desired to. The words lay thick between them; always, regardless of how unsaid they happened to be.

He moved his head away from the metal that was stiffening his neck and grasped her waist as he lifted his knees up. The bottom half of her body fell onto the cot still littered with playing cards. Her lips no longer positioned on his neck and as she lifted her head back up, their chins knocked roughly.

“Ow,” she muttered, sliding her fingers through her tussled hair.

Spike laughed, taking his right hand off her waist and coiling it under her chin, rubbed it with his thumb. Buffy kissed him kindly on the lips as if to tell him how sweet and kind he was, especially in a moment that was filled with so much anticipation that she could feel her body trembling.

Spike could feel it too and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, away from where it had been dangling in front of her striking green eyes. In a matter of minutes their biting and sucking of lips turned into something more tame but still wild with the potential that sex was about to turn into making love.

They lay still, staring at one another for some time, longingly. Buffy then lifted her abdomen up and jerked the bottom of her tank top over her shoulders and head, dropping it to the ground below them. It made a swooshing noise.

Everything that happened next seemed to flow in slow motion through Spike’s eyes, manifesting in a flight of imaginary proportions. She lunged into him, gracefully. Her warm chest collapsed against his chilly naked one; lips mingled on each other’s before they let their tongues dive forward to the others in the open air then shut their lips together, like a lock and key.

He tasted like cigarettes, alcohol and even the orange juice she’d drank earlier. If she closed her eyes tight enough they were anywhere but in the basement, where she’d once found a dead cat, a flood and a forlorn chained up Spike. They could’ve been at a beach in Tahiti, a hotel room in Paris, dancing at The Plaza in New York, anywhere but the cold, shadowy cellar of a room. She’d never mentioned the dreams she sometimes had of them in different places, acting normal, like a couple that had no real problems aside from what movie to watch on a Saturday night, or who was going to make the coffee in the morning.

As much as she tried to deny the part of her that wanted something that resembled a kosher looking life, she did want pieces of something that was considered normal. Not twisted, not a girl who could be in love with a vampire but she was that girl and no matter how much she tried to force herself away from that aspect of her emotional core it was true. The things she’d hated about herself for so long, Spike had fought to make beautiful, to make real and she’d detested him for it. Buffy even had gone as far to beat him up for it in an attempt to rid herself of all her demons, he, being one of them. She couldn’t get rid of him, not even now, not even with a soul that still blocked her with confusion as to who he really was, she couldn’t let go of him. He was a part of her through the good and bad. The part of her that was Spike remained, always in tact.

Spike was the only man in her life who never treated her like a child. He was always fully aware of what type of woman she was capable of being. Although at first his attraction to her rendered disgust on her part, it eventually grew to intrigue. Buffy blamed him for so long for not having a soul, for being inhuman and incapable of feeling love the way she could. He would never be Angel, she always thought and tested him; breaking Spike apart in order to beat his psyche down further. She was cruel because it was the only way she knew how to keep herself from actually loving him, from seeing that without a soul he was still a better man than she’d anticipated him to be all those years ago.

If there was anything Buffy knew about love it was that you couldn’t really love someone if you didn’t truly accept the person. She was too young to know that with Angel and too desperate with Riley to understand that concept, but with Spike it had become unmistakable. Spike could be a better man. Spike could run off to Africa and get a soul because he needed her to accept him and with time she had, with time she’d forgiven him and with time she’d come to realize what it was really like to care for someone, to love someone without being in love completely, without giving herself away to the fullest extent. Not that she’d ever really been capable of giving herself away completely.

Their lips broke apart for a brief second while she opened her eyes and then smacked her lips back into his. The noise of the cot creaked underneath them and Buffy slid her chest away from his, kissing him softly before she started to unbutton and unzip his jeans. He moved his head upwards while watching her fingers ease his pants open and in perfect motion he lifted his backside up, letting her slip the jeans right off him.

Spike leaned forward, spreading his legs apart, feet landing on the floor where Buffy stood on the cold, dreary cement. In the shadows their nervousness melted away, breaking into the soft pieces of their hearts that had already been broken. He skimmed her sweatpants off with particular ease. Buffy stepped out of them gracefully, standing on her tiptoes like the dancer he’d always imagined she could’ve been if she’d been born anything else but a slayer.

The words, ‘I want you’ never came but they held no real value in the open air. Body language spoke volumes. Spike guided his hands up her back, pulling her down on top of him where he glided into her, gasping for the breath he didn’t have. Buffy looked at him intently, crazily, having wanted nothing more than for this moment to happen again, for him to be inside her and her on top of him, like some tainted dream she could never get out of her head. Her lips plummeted onto his desperately.

Buffy felt battered and broken from the war she was waging that was about to play out on the hellmouth; when and how she still wasn’t sure. Her psyche was damaged and every uplifting part of her was dying off bit by bit. Her dreams had become nightmares and she’d lost the real feel for sleep even the need for it. The only thing she could feel now was Spike, within her, beneath her and it seemed ironic that everything she’d heard in the past few months had been about power or something beneath her. She didn’t feel powerful now, just weak, smitten with a ghost, with a dead body that pumped what it could just for her. A long time ago the feeling of weakness never would’ve tripped over her if he walked into a room but something had happened between them. It was more than just his soul. She’d begun to fall for the man, deep inside, fighting his way out.

The version of their lives they’d been hiding from disappeared, nothing could be heard but the sound of their kisses and the pounding of her heart that beat extra spaces of time for his cold, unmoving one. Spike threw his back down, bringing her with him while her hips grinded rapidly on top of him, seething pleasure through both of them. There were brief moments where their intercourse, especially when Buffy made eye contact with Spike, biting into his lip where he thought they were doing anything but having sex, where it felt more like making love. He could never be sure. Spike had done things with her he still couldn’t articulate, the night and now morning being one of them. They’d spent time together before in large quantities but nothing of what he’d experienced for the first time when she walked down the stairs, fell onto the cot and acted as if they were just normal, behaving as friends.

In an essence of artistry they erupted together. He could feel her pulse as he held onto her wrist, bringing her lips closer to his face while her elbow gave way and clanked to the surface of the makeshift bed. She respired deeply, painful breaths onto his skin. Her body was warm and the sweat that dripped from both of them, made a pool on his stomach. She didn’t bother pulling herself up right away, letting the part of him that had reached inside of her stay there for the time being.

Buffy rested the right side of her face in the nape of his neck, leaving small kisses where she had drawn a soft trail of blood with her teeth during climax. Spike had felt no pain, only ecstasy washing through him. He closed his eyes, wrapping his arms around her in a protective manner that instilled the feeling of safety for Buffy. She drew ‘I love you’ on his chest with her pointer finger, knowing his eyes were closed but still wondered if he could make out the pattern of words just with her motions. Her hand fell onto his sweat stained, muscled chest and Buffy suddenly wondered if in another universe they had met, fallen in love and stayed together if their alter egos would’ve suffered so much.

“Spike,” she whispered, leaning her elbows up then fingers bent onto the cot. His eyes opened, eyelashes fluttering. Spike let one arm drop from her waist and flung it behind his head, hoisting upwards. He mumbled a little, quite softly. “I wonder…” but she stopped her contemplation, realizing how incredibly cheesy she would sound, so unlike herself. “Forget it,” Buffy smiled, bitterly throwing her head back.

“What?” Spike questioned, feeling the strands of her hair that were left on his chest dance around with every small movement she made. Buffy didn’t respond, stirring her body up and easily moving herself off him and looked around for her clothes, timidly. He stared at her unclothed form in the shadows. The way the curves of her waist fell perfectly in time to the dip of the small of her back. Helen of Troy had nothing on Buffy of Sunnydale, he thought. Spike fidgeted on the garage sale bed of fabric and metal, slamming his feet to the ground while picking up his jeans.

Buffy was silent, not answering him, just breathing deeply as she dressed herself back in the gray sweatpants and applied the pastel blue, skinny top to the upper half of her frame, without bothering to put her bra back on, leaving it alone on the floor near her bare feet. Her white socks lay across from the bra where she’d thrown them during the second game of spit.

Once Buffy finished dressing herself she ran her fingers through her knotted hair, cringing at every pull of the scalp. She turned her back away from Spike facing his semi clothed self, legs wrapped in light denim jeans. He wasn’t looking at her, just down at his thighs and she contemplated asking him what it was, what he was thinking but her desire to know was small, unlike anything that burned deeply inside of her so she stayed hushed.

He lifted his head, drawing it back against the wall when she set down beside him. He licked his lips, the taste of her still slept there. “What is this?” he asked, the palm of his hands resting on his jeans.

Buffy glanced over at him, not sure of what he meant. She raised her eyebrows. “Um, you’re jeans,” she answered nodding her head.

Spike laughed, bitterly. His feelings were in some sort of contempt rage, hiding behind the surface. “I mean this, Buffy… what we just did,” he said hoping she would understand what he was trying to say without breaking his heart even if the heart was dead, lifeless.

It was a figure of speech, the breaking of the heart as if a real-life heart could be more broken than a person’s psyche. It was the soul that felt more than the heart. The heart was just a mechanism against the soul. It was his mind and his newfound soul that loved her. Those were the parts of him that could be broken by any swift motion of words on her part.

Buffy sighed, feeling out of place. She kicked her legs out in front of her and swung them up, away from the floor. “Do we really have to…” she paused staring up at the ceiling, then over at the tiny window where she could hear the faint sound of birds chirping. “I don’t know,” she responded, feeling that it was the only way to really answer his attentive question. This was something she didn’t understand, yet. Not yet.

She let her hand grasp onto the gaps in between his fingers that still relaxed on his thigh and the heat that she had provided his body through his internal clench of her no longer inhabited him. The touch she now left on his skin lit him silently on fire. He felt a clawing of emotions. Words unsaid were drinking up his timid blood and making him faint. He clung onto her fingers, turning his palm up, combining their fingers like a quilted pattern of yarn, fitting together so perfectly that when Buffy looked down she drew in a breath before tears fell down her cheeks.

Spike could hear her sobs, shaking her arms and creating a chill in the air around them. He could see her free hand rubbing at the saline that fell down her cheeks and let go of her hand, leaving her reaching for his other. He wrapped his arm around her and she fell into him, their bodies forming to fit against each other. Buffy’s head rested on his chest as she dug her still broken fingernails into his other hand. He placed his lips forward then down and kissed the top of her head. She smiled, faintly through the mess of tears.

Spike gazed over at the window where he too could hear the birds chirping but a smile didn’t come for him, just the underlying fear that had been threading a line all throughout his stomach making him nauseous. How does he give this up? How does he let her leave when the house awakes and their dreamland is disturbed by the reality of the lives they lead? These were are all valid questions that menaced around his head, making it incredibly hard to enjoy the fact that Buffy was falling asleep within his grasp. Nothing seemed peaceful anymore, just broken and shattered on the threshold of more despair. Happiness was fleeting and everything else was more real than he’d like to know.

He closed his eyes and obscurity ensued.

Part Six

“Love is the strange bewilderment which overtakes one person on account of another” – James Thurber & E.B. White

Love was not always a fairytale. Fairytales were overrated, no one ever knew what happened to Prince Charming and Cinderella after they got married. Apparently, they lived happily ever after but is that believable? Do people really live happily ever after? Relationships take work to maintain. They can’t always be full of sugar and spice, and well, everything nice. Two people in love face trials beyond whether or not their love can last forever. There are very few stories where the passion and madness of two lovers did not destroy them in the end. The fairytales of lovers never showed these unhappy endings, unless one traded in Disney’s remakes for the Brother’s Grimm fairytales. Their endings always made more sense to the reality of human beings. It was the idea of the unhappy ending that kept Buffy and Spike in their dreams, both afraid and sickened by the idea of waking up to the reality of their world where their hours together would have to be hidden like a disease. Their infatuation was of the worst and most fiery kind, the kind that was a secret that could destroy the makings of their strongest and most vital qualities, if they ever gave into it completely and lovingly.

Spike had begun dreaming in black and white the first night after his soul laid inside him in Africa. He’d never dreamt that way before, shades of white so cryptic and sullen that he looked paler than his vampire skin would allow in reality. Dreams weren’t reality though. According to some psychologists they meant nothing. That would’ve been easy to believe if the dreams hadn’t been so vivid, so traumatizing and when he awoke, didn’t fill him with bone crushing madness. Some nights he was killing Buffy, thrusting a knife into her abdomen and screaming from the agony the loss would eventually cause him. He’d awake, sweat dripping from his forehead and ache for the taste of human blood. That ache wasn’t as normal as it had been years ago, then the ache was so potent and real it had made him feel guilty. He couldn’t fill the thirst, and he couldn’t get rid of the dreams. The dreams of her with her head thrown back, and his body above her thrusting forward with so much ease and certainty it was difficult to awake and remember what had happened, what had sent him to the African desert. There was no peace, and the desert at night was no man’s land except for the occasional sounds of gunfire and when he heard it, he’d get up the urge to run towards it, to be someone’s savior but he never did. He couldn’t play that role when his mind was combusting within him. It wasn’t until Buffy slept beside him those early morning hours did his dreams turn to color again. The nightmares didn’t come, at least not the ones where he was killing her, although when he awoke all he could remember was the color of the sun.

He could feel her heart beating against his chest, her legs sprawled out on top of his own, while his back was pressed against the wall. He counted the beats, as he’d often done in his earlier years as a vampire before he murdered a victim. She was still asleep, breathing softly in and out through her nose, her fingers still latched onto his as if even during her sleep she was afraid he’d slip away. The smell of alcohol seemed to bleed off her body and into the air between them. The scents of their hours together had dispersed and he could no longer smell the spring weather in her hair, or the smell of orange on her tongue, all that was left was that god-awful scent of too much alcohol consumed. It was still too early to hear the pitter-patter of girl feet upstairs, and yet the mere idea of it coming, disgusted him.

Buffy would have to leave before the house erupted with noise as to not draw attention to herself, that he knew, and in his mind had already forgiven her for. The small amount of sunlight that drifted through the window where Buffy had sheepishly placed a book, drew shadows along the concrete floor, ending right next to the stairs where he already had visions of Buffy taking her leave. Spike tugged her body closer to his. She moved like a rag doll, easily and steadily sinking into his body as perfectly as when their eyes had closed. The wind blew loudly against the window, shaking dirt from the ground upon it; making the noise of small pebbles hitting glass. He stared up at the ceiling, and then closed his eyes as he remembered her lips upon his own, and the way her teeth tore into his skin in fits of ecstasy. If his emotions weren’t so slaughtered, if he didn’t feel so weak he would beg her to leave for his sanity was already lost, locked up inside those kisses and orgasms. The way her hand felt in the palm of his much larger hands, was beyond torturous, it was malicious, his punishment for all the lives he’d taken, this he was sure. The woman he loved in his grasp and he must give her up to save the world, to save all those lives he took so that she could never be his, not completely, not always. A tear rolled down his left eye, but he didn’t bother to wipe it away as it slid down his jaw and landed on his collarbone. It was too far gone to be seen. Buffy stirred against his body, removing her legs from atop of his and stretched them out as her eyelashes sputtered open. He opened his eyes just in time to see hers, the color of jade, looking up at him from where her head rested on his chest.

“Morning pet,” Spike whispered, in what he hoped appeared to be a semi cheerful voice, although he was sure she would see through such an attempt either way.

She managed a tiny smile in between nodding and yawning. He felt cold alongside her warm body and she sunk deeper into the curves of his body to warm him, shifting herself comfortably so as to not break the makeshift bed. She imagined after the war between the “first “ ended, and she was still breathing that she’d find Spike an actual bed to sleep in opposed to the hardness of a cot that left something to seriously be desired. Buffy could already feel the cramps in her back seeping in, although she was indeed the slayer, so hopefully the pain wouldn’t last too long. Her lips felt bruised and battered from their kisses, and she glanced briefly at his to see if his lips looked as her felt. They did, and out of some innate reflex she waved her free hand up to his lips and ran her thumb along his bottom lip where bits of skin looked as if one more kiss would tear them right off. She felt him flinch a little, surprised by her touch and she quickly placed her hand back down to her side and wondered if anyone would notice that these lips of theirs looked as if they’d just waged a war between two countries, when they had to return to reality.

“What time is it?” she asked, letting go of his hand in order to stretch her arms out before her.

Spike looked down at his empty hand, and held back the desperate plea within himself to him to beseech her to hold him again. He brushed his fears away, momentarily, in order to answer her question. “They’re not up, if that’s what you mean.” He responded, his eyes never looked down at her, just straight up at the ceiling. The less he saw of her, felt of her, the more stable he could think; the less he would feel he’d lose his mind.

She sighed, and stretched her body upwards, away from him, as her feet settled on the cold concrete. She ran her fingers through her tussled and knotted hair, grimacing at the pain she caused at breaking some of the knots within her scalp. “Well that’s not what I asked but that’s fair,” she whispered, twirling strands of her hair in between her fingertips, lifting hair up off the back of her neck. She was sure if he could breathe she’d be able to feel warm breath lingering there. It was a fair response he’d given, although it did irk her. She often wished their relationship did not have to feel like a ping-pong match, one always wishing to get to the punch before the other. “I’m sorry,” Buffy said and released her hair from in between her fingers and dropped her hands to where her sweat pants touched her thighs. Spike looked away from the ceiling long enough to see sadness lacing her eyes, and felt a pang in his chest. He’d almost forgotten that she’d been crying before they’d both drifted to sleep the hours before, and now he felt insensitive and hypocritical. He had to put up a shield in order to deal with the fact that she was leaving.

“That’s life, love. You have a war to fight,” he mumbled, reaching under the cot for his pack of cigarettes, aching for the taste of nicotine on his lips. He needed something to soothe him. Buffy stood up, placing her hands on her hips as she watched him search for his pack of cigarettes. She bent over, looking under the cot and found them near the end of her bare toes and quickly swiped them up with her right hand and threw them onto the cot. His lighter popped out of the opening, and she raised her eyebrows at him and smirked. “Thanks,” Spike said, grabbing the lighter and pulled a cigarette out, and threw it back between his lips where he lit it sharply, sucked in and let the nicotine take it’s course in his undead body.

Buffy nodded her head, while Spike placed his own bare feet on the ground and leaned his back into the wall where he felt the bone of his spine meet the bricks. Buffy picked up a playing card from her foot and made a scoffing noise with her tongue, then threw it onto the cot and crossed her arms, suddenly feeling naked and cold. She could smell the alcohol she’d consumed sweating off her, and could still taste him on her lips, flashes of their lovemaking danced through her mind making her feel nauseous and dizzy. She placed her hand to her forehead and tried to shake the sickness off. Spike watched her, letting smoke drift out of his mouth and up to the ceiling where it danced in circles.

“You okay?,” Spike asked, watching her skin turn pale. Buffy took her hand away from her forehead, and shook her head yes, stretching her arms up in the air above her trying to crack the pain out of her back. He laughed. “This doesn’t make for good sleeping,” he said patting the fabric beneath him that covered only metal.

“No, it really doesn’t,” Buffy replied throwing herself back down, slithering herself up against the wall, inches apart from him while she brought her knees up to her chest. “We’ll have to get you something else when all of this is over.” She looked over at him, just as more smoke escaped from his lips.

In her mind she could see herself leaning over and kissing him, briefly on the cheek and then he instantly would grip her chin and bring her lips closer to his where their bruises mingled together, although it wasn’t until she could feel his tongue thrust against the side of her mouth did she realize it wasn’t in her mind. It was actually happening. He let the cigarette burn out in between his free fingers then let it drop to the floor so that he could wrap his arm around her as her body began to inch closer and closer to his. Neither one of them understood what was happening, although that had been the theme to all their lovemaking and the need and desire to be fulfilled by one another before their tie was cut. She bit into his bottom lip with the knowledge that it probably couldn’t take much more aggression but she couldn’t help it. It was some sort of reflex that had developed. Spike grimaced a little as her teeth made another mark on his lip, and he let go of her chin and placed both hands on her waist, easing her upwards so that she landed on top of him, straddling her legs along his thighs. He leaned his head back, causing their lips to part. He then stared at Buffy who was about to go in for another kiss until she realized he wasn’t taking a moment to breathe, and she realized he didn’t do that.

“You need to go upstairs,” he said, looking down at where their bodies seemed to meet in-between their clothing. Buffy felt that dizziness collide with her again, although she couldn’t let it come over her completely, so she pressed the palm of her hands onto the wall behind him and removed her body from on top of his without looking into his eyes. Spike closed his eyes, feeling sick. He was amazed he could show such self restraint but they ran the risk of being found out if they escaped within one another again and he couldn’t live with the guilt of that, although selfishly he wanted desperately to be inside her one last time. Spike could hear Buffy’s heart pounding beneath her flesh and bones, and the rhythm began to play music inside his brain. Sometimes she looked like a child, forlorn and broken, waiting for someone else to pick up the pieces, this was one of those moments but there was nothing he could say, nothing he could do to come to her aid.

“Well that killed the mood,” Buffy mumbled, rolling her eyes. She paused, staring at the window where the sun seemed to be glaring at her. “But you’re right,” and she hated to admit it.

Buffy was used to tragedy in her life, in fact it’s essence was something she’d grown accustom to in her early teen years and then became much more aware of after her mother’s death. As she stood there, her body cold and tense from her own emotions, she couldn’t help but think of how tragic her love life had always been and whether or not this was her doing. Was it people she chose to attach herself to romantically or if it had just always been in the cards for her to never be happy with someone? Spike had changed, and grown up even, but their relationship still held the intangible qualities it always had and she was starting to believe that that was all her fault. She had used her lovers to fill something up inside of her she’d always felt she was initially missing, and when they did not fulfill that need, she quickly blamed them for her own misgivings. When she left Spike that morning, which she was sure she would, she’d do her best to ignore the feelings that had transpired between them. It was not because she didn’t care for him but because she wanted to keep something to herself. Now it wasn’t about being ashamed as it had been a year ago. It was about not wanting to expose her emotions to anyone around her but Spike. She wanted to scream, ‘I don’t want to go,’ like some child whose mother was dragging him or her out of “Toys r Us” but it wouldn’t be appropriate or even the rational thing to do. If she told him she loved him, even though she wasn’t sure what kind of love it was, would that ease his own pain? Her thoughts were all in shambles, broken and shattered, breathing agony and heartbreak into her veins.

“I’m going to stay here till everyone is up,” Spike said, lighting another cigarette.

Buffy shook her head, spinning around on her heels before walking towards her jeans, laid on the wooden railing. He wanted to ask her to stay, but this wasn’t a drama where if the guy asks the girl to stay she suddenly throws down her bag on some expensive couch, runs to the guy, bats her eyelashes happily and the end credits roll. This was not a movie. Spike would have to watch the woman he loved struggle up the stairs with her jeans in her hands as she held onto the waist of her sweatpants and listen to the click of the doorknob as the door opened and try to drown out the noise of it closing behind her. He already missed her and it throbbed inside him. And once again he’s reminded his heart doesn’t beat but it seems surreal since he’s positive it’s breaking inside his chest, like pieces of glass ripping through his intestines. He coughs as some smoke catches in his throat and he flicks the cigarette to the ground where Buffy turns from her position to watch smoke twist up off the ground. She thought about moving to pick it up, to put it out but it felt like something a lover would do and she had to resist such ventures. After the cough left him he stood up, bent over and put the cigarette out then grabbed one of his many black cotton tee shirts from the side of the cot and slipped it on over his head covering his bare chest.

Buffy’s back was turned to him as she played with the fabric on her jeans that were still suspended on the banister, nervously. Spike could feel himself edging closer to her, although he was unsure in the moment if that was the best idea but the way her hair fell on her shoulders and along the straps of her tank top, sparked a hunger in him to touch her again, to consummate the fire that was burning between them. When he was finally in touching distance he couldn’t touch her, it felt like a violation since he’d been the one to stop their intoxicating kisses only minutes before. She could feel him standing behind her, even if there were no noise or indication of breathing. She’d learned a long time ago that her body had adjusted to his presence long before they’d ever become lovers. Buffy closed her eyes, stepped backwards and let her back rest against his chest.

As a child, she’d always been drawn to Disney’s version of Beauty and the Beast, although she’d never expected any of the story to play out in her own life, in any context. Belle was a naïve little girl, and once upon a time so was Buffy but she entered into a dark, mysterious world that was tempting and this Buffy learned later on in her own life, that being normal and being the slayer didn’t connect. Buffy had loved Angel, even as a beast and she’d been attracted to Spike because he had been beastly in past lives, had even tried to kill her. Most women would not be attracted to such negative, haunting traits but eventually Spike’s beastly qualities became what she desired and needed, to survive her own ugliness. They weren’t beauty and the beast. Spike wouldn’t suddenly become human once she gave herself completely to him, and they wouldn’t live happily ever after like all those pretty pictures in the fairytales. This had been pounded inside her head ever since she’d become a woman, and sometimes she desired to go back to the girl who could believe that love could overcome all.

The space between them, or rather the non-existent space, was suffocating both of them especially since neither of them moved to touch the other. They just stood near one another. Buffy held back the onslaught of tears, and stepped forward taking the jeans off the banister and swung her body towards the edge of the stairs where the sunlight crept upon her face making her sadness that much more visible. “Okay… I’m going now,” she uttered, her olive colored eyes glistened at him. Spike managed a small, tight lip smile and winked at her before her feet slipped up the stairs. He had stepped closer to the stairs, placing his hand on the railing and as she passed, her fingers lightly stroked his knuckles. The sound of a click and a thud came seconds later. Spike walked back to the cot, and noticed that she’d left her socks. He shoved them under the cot, where the evidence of their lovemaking had gone. He knew where she was heading, like him she desired to remove the scents of the night whether that entailed the scent of alcohol or not.

Buffy closed the door softly behind her, and leaned against it, breathing in sharp deep breaths until she could breath normally again, whatever normal was. She felt like she was just a shadow of the girl she was constantly trying to be, that girl would never wake up in his arms, seemingly unaffected by the genuine emotion that was rushing through her. “Breathe Buffy,” she whispered to herself, pressing the palm of her right hand onto her abdomen as if that would control the depth of panic that was seething throughout her entire body, echoing in the corners of her soul. The house was quiet, which was odd, considering usually, someone would be up by the time the sun shone so brightly through the windows. She took another deep breath in, let her hand drop and threw her jeans over her right arm. She walked away from the basement door, then around the corner towards the stairs where she ran lightly up the stairs, skipping as many as she could. Once she stood in the bathroom, she turned the light on and closed both doors, locked them and shed her clothing. His scent was all over her. Despite the alcohol sweating off her, she felt as if it was some sick joke it made her feel as if he’d been tattooed to her skin so that she could never hide from what happened between them. The hot water came spiraling out as she turned the knob in the shower and soon enough she stood in the shower, behind the curtain.

The water burned on her skin, making splotchy red spots on her abdomen especially where the water hit hardest. His scent was stuck to her, no matter how hard she applied the soap, body wash and someone else’s shampoo to her hair, it remained, choking her, reminding her that she’d left him down in that cold basement by himself. She closed her eyes, letting the steam take in her tears. She turned around letting her back face the harshness of the water while she used her hands to wash out the soap that dripped over every strand of her hair. The smell of something tropical wafted through the air as the soap dripped down the drain, making a trail down her legs before doing so. She hadn’t bothered to look at the scents of anything she’d used. It didn’t seem to matter when she was trying to replace one scent with another.

The pounding on the door came after she’d rinsed out the conditioner. It got louder and louder as the seconds ticked by. “Okay, hold your horses!,” she screamed through the shower curtain. She turned the shower knob off, rung some of the water out of her hair and grabbed whatever towel she could find to wrap her body in. In her frantic emotional state she hadn’t thought about getting a fresh towel, or clothing to put on after her shower. She opened the door, and her mouth getting ready to scream at the person who was no doubt one of the potentials until she saw the person standing in front of her. “Spike,” she said gently, stepping backwards while holding onto the towel next to her chest to let him into the bathroom where steam resided.

“What are you doing?” Buffy asked, as he closed and locked the door behind him. He looked down at his left hand where he was holding her socks.

“You forgot these,” he mumbled handing them to her. She took them with her free hand, looking at him with an eyebrow raised curiously.

“Um… okay,” Buffy responded, throwing the socks to pile of clothes that were accumulating with time. “You do realize you could’ve left them downstairs, right?”

Spike rested against the bathroom counter, where his reflection couldn’t be seen. “Yea…” he ran his fingers through his messy hair, where curls had started to sprout from the dampness in the small room. “I don’t know, what I’m doing.” He rubbed his face with his hands as if trying to shake himself back to his senses. Unfortunately it wasn’t working. Buffy stood, watching him, still holding her towel close to her chest. It seemed funny in a sense, since he’d seen her naked numerous times but she still got shy around him, especially now. “I should go.” He moved his body forward and planted his hand on the doorknob, hoping she would say something, anything. The fact that she was naked underneath the towel felt like some cosmic joke, last year he would’ve taken full advantage of such a moment but now all he could think about was getting out of their fast enough, before his own sexual arousal was not exposed.

“Spike,” Buffy whispered, reaching out to touch his arm and in that moment her towel dropped and the space between them collided full ahead. It didn’t matter that they were now upstairs away from the seclusion of where their hours together had begun. She wanted him, and there was no turning back from that. His body needed to become a part of her own. Even though the satisfaction would be momentary, it felt like the only thing to do and she reached up and felt their lips meet and her body buckle against his as he held onto her while her legs wrapped around his waist. That was all he’d needed to stay. He regretted not taking the opportunity to be inside her again, and now he couldn’t hold himself back. Their tongues were wet, entangled together and her heat bounced from her to him. It felt as if together they might combust before he was able to get his clothes off.

“In the shower,” she managed to sputter out during one attempt at some air. She unwrapped her legs from around his waist and stepped back to the tiled floor where she tugged at his shirt, bringing it up around his neck. Spiked lifted his arms up while Buffy slipped his shirt over his head, letting it fall to the floor. Buffy rammed her lips back to his, her bare chest pressed against his own while his icy hands laid gently on the small of her back. They weren’t close enough, not yet and their bodies understood this as Buffy unbuttoned, unzipped his jeans but there didn’t seem to be enough time to step out of his pants before Buffy was beckoning him again with ravenous kisses that screamed more, more, more. Finally Spike’s body was clear of clothing and Buffy breathed hot warm air onto his skin. He could feel her, wet and anxious, next to his body, and he quickly placed his hands around her waist and moved her to the side so that he could turn the shower on. The water came spurting out, hot and clear, falling into the drain. Buffy squeezed his hand, kissed his lips sharply and intently before she stepped in. Spike followed, pulling the shower curtain across its line letting the steam dance around their bodies.

She couldn’t think, her brain seemed to have drawn a complete blank and all her insecurities and fears had been wiped away. All she wanted, all she could see was Spike as he lifted her body upwards and back against the tiles in the shower where he easily slid into her. When she could feel him, her eyes closed and she wrapped her arms around his neck, buckling her legs once again around his waist. She pushed herself over and over again along his pelvis where her hip bones hit hard. They didn’t talk but she’d never understood conversation during sex unless it was to tell the person to go faster, harder, or to slow down in that last moment of ecstasy. Their eyes caught momentarily as Spike ran his thumb over her bottom lip and as she went to bite him he dropped his finger and pressed his lips into hers. Their kisses seemed to hold more passion and hunger then their actual lovemaking, as if they were trying to pass along all that desire upon one another’s tongues but they knew the desire was too extreme, too wild to be tamed in any manner. It was impossible for either of them to think that it could ever reach a level of normalcy. There was so much between them and not between them, things that had never been said, and harm that had been caused over the years and yet when they orgasm together something was released. Buffy regained her breath, placing her feet back down and brushing her once again wet hair out of her face. She touched her lips and imagined the bruises their kisses left, plumping them up further.

“Here, I guess it’s your turn to take a shower.” Buffy said smiling awkwardly and pressed her hand along his waist and moved around him. The water had left splotchy red marks on both their skin but neither had noticed how hot the water had gotten. It really didn’t matter since they’d been trying to fulfill a thirst that kept leaving something to be desired. “You can turn that knob for the cold water,” she mentioned, waving her right pointer finger at the right knob as she walked to the back of the shower where she’d started to pull the curtain back. Spike grabbed her elbow, causing her to turn back and look at him with a question in her eyes.

“Buffy…” he whispered, not sure of what he was trying to say or wanted to say but all he could think about again was how he didn’t want this to end, whatever this was. There was a masochistic theme to it all since it wasn’t as if they could even walk out of the bathroom together. It would cause too much suspicion if someone saw them and they were already riding on all their free passes. They were bound to get caught soon as any minute the house would explode with voices and girls pounding on the bathroom door ready to shower and start their day of training. It was going to end whether he wanted it to or not and the end was riding right up on his heels, and there was nothing he could say or do to stop it. “Never mind.” Spike let go of her arm and turned back to the water, rinsing over his abdomen. He clutched the bar of soap that had been sitting on the edge of the tub and began to scrub it against his flesh as the sizzling hot water left more marks on his pale skin.

“I’ll wait for you, since it will sound a little weird if the shower is still running and the door opens again,” Buffy said, stepping out of the shower. She grabbed the towel that had fallen off her skin and wiped the steam off the mirror and her reflection surprised her. She did in fact look as she felt, sad and confused with a bit of heartbreak mixed in there. She hadn’t expected for her appearance to show even the slightest bit of what she was feeling deep inside. Most of the time she was able to disguise her emotions and put a mask on so that no one could see that there was something else going on with her. She quickly pinched her cheeks trying to get the rosy tint back to her face but the pinching was useless. She started to smack her cheeks a little bit, not too hard but enough to pump some life back into them.

Spike heard the sound of skin hitting skin and peaked out of the curtain, raised an eyebrow then went back to rinsing out the shampoo he’d applied to his hair. Once Buffy felt satisfied she wrapped the towel back around her and began searching for a comb for her hair. She figured while she waited for Spike she could be sort of productive, although she couldn’t find a comb that resembled one of her own and felt a little OCD about using one of the other girls. Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the water turning off in the shower and the curtain being thrown back to reveal a very wet and naked Spike. She tried not to stare as he had tried not to stare at her earlier before her towel dropped to the floor.

“Towel?” he said blinking back the water on his eyelashes.

“There,” Buffy replied pointing to the pile of towels next to the pile of clothes. Spike frowned. “Hey, I’m sure someone just used it to clean off their clean selves,” her voice sounded like a song towards the end of her words. Spike couldn’t help but smile when he went to pick up one of the towels and dry himself off. Buffy turned her head away from him. Wiping the mirror with her hand, she smirked at her own playfulness. Somehow he’d brought that out in her more than anyone had in the past few months. She bent over and picked up his pants tossing them onto the toilet lid that was down.

“Thanks,” he said dropping the towel to the floor and kicking it back into the pile. He stepped into his jeans and zipped and buttoned them. Buffy had plopped herself up on the bathroom counter away from the sink and was kicking her legs in and out, waiting for him to put on his shirt before she planned their escape.

“All fresh and so clean?” Buffy asked as he smoothed his shirt over his stomach. He let out a small laugh.

“It appears so,” and his eyes drifted towards the door.

Buffy opened her mouth about to speak but her words were quickly lost as Spike brushed his thumb along her chin and kissed her delicately even lovingly on the lips in one last attempt to say goodbye. When he parted his lips from hers Buffy couldn’t help but run her fingers along her lips where the purity of his emotions had laid. If there was a quick pill she could take to make this tumultuous affair easier to deal with, she would’ve swallowed ten at a time, but no such things existed so she placed the kiss inside her brain and locked it up for the time she would need it to re-emerge to bring her affirmation that the moment had actually happened so childishly and beautifully.

“Alright. I’ll check the hallway,” Buffy said jumping off the counter while holding onto the towel wrapped around her body. “Oh, wait can you grab those for me?” she asked nodding her head towards the jeans she’d hung on the towel rack before she’d stripped herself of clothing. Spike took them off the rack and hung them over his left arm. “Thanks,” Buffy grinned, hiding the sadness in her eyes and the worry that they might be on the brink of getting caught and that would destroy the innocence of their connection, of their lovemaking and she couldn’t stand that idea. It was too taunting, too wretched of an idea to even comprehend fully so when she unlocked the door and opened it she was terrified to see Dawn standing there waiting for her turn for the bathroom. “Dawn!,” she screamed using her right leg to hit spike in the knee in an attempt to push him behind the door. He of course followed the gesture and stuck himself behind the halfway opened door still holding onto her jeans.

“Buffy,” Dawn said, staring at her sister strangely. “Why are you screaming?” she asked scrunching up her forehead, holding a towel, her clothes and toothbrush in her hands.

Buffy stepped into the hallway a little, closing the door slightly but still held onto the doorknob. “Oh, sorry. I was just surprised to see you up this early.” Buffy answered, grasping at the towel draped around her chest.

“I have school today, Buffy.” Dawn responded, still staring at her sister as if she had two faces.

“Oh, yea. That’s right,” Buffy replied thinking about what she was going to do with Spike.

“Can I get in there now?” Dawn asked taking a step closer to her sister. Buffy stepped backwards, still holding the doorknob tightly.

“One Second. I have to get my jeans,” Buffy said slipping back into the bathroom and closing the door sharply behind her and locking it. “Fuck,” she turned to Spike who was looking down at the floor trying not to laugh at the audacity of the situation.

“Looks like we have a dilemma, pet.” He whispered handing her the jeans. She tossed them over her left arm.

“Quick, get in the shower,” Buffy screeched quietly pushing him towards the shower.

“Wait a minute,” he hissed. “She’s going to get in the shower.” Buffy continued to push him, her strength overpowering his feet being able to stay in one place enough to stand some sort of ground.

“She’ll turn the water on before she gets in,” Buffy replied. “Just stand at the back and you won’t get wet,” Buffy tossed open the curtain. Spike shouldn’t have been surprised that Buffy would’ve thought of how to get away with it all. Dawn would open the curtain put one leg in and Spike would quickly step out before Dawn ever got a glance at him then he’d wait for the sound of Buffy’s soft knock on the bathroom door to let him know he could leave without being seen by anyone but her.

“Okay then,” Spike said, his accent soft and wispy as he stepped into the back of the shower, he gave Buffy a look of annoyance as she closed the curtain. Buffy went to unlock the door, and let Dawn in.

“It took that long to get your jeans?” Dawn asked curiously.

“Um, yea… okay.” Buffy answered, stepping out of the bathroom and closing the door behind her. And just as Buffy had thought, it played out, as far as Dawn and the shower were concerned. Dawn turned the hot water on, waiting a few minutes before the steam started to rise then turned on the cold faucet. She put one leg in as Spike put one leg out. It was at times like these that he didn’t mind not having a reflection. Once his whole body was on the other side of the curtain he took the few steps to the door where he pressed his ear against it, listening to hear if he heard anything from Buffy.

Buffy stood outside the door, leaning against the wall ready to knock on the door to let Spike know it was clear until Willow came striding by, still in some strange cartoon pajama pants and a white cotton tank top. She stopped in her tracks, noticing Buffy. Buffy hid her nervousness and tried to stay in control of the situation, whatever that entailed.

“Buffy,” Willow called, enfolding her arms across her chest and stared at Buffy whose hair was dripping with water that fell to the carpet in little round droplets. Spike stepped back from the door, tucking his hands in his pockets when he heard Willow’s voice, shaking his head and thinking about the mess he’d gotten himself in, regretting a little, his impulsive decision to return her socks to her. The water was still going so he assumed he had a couple minutes to make it out of there free and unscathed.

“Hey Will,” Buffy replied, wiping her eyes with her hand.

“What are you doing?” Willow asked, curiously.

“Oh, I… um… left something in the bathroom. I’m just waiting for Dawn to finish her shower to get in there,” Buffy answered with a tight lipped-smile, waiting and hoping she would leave soon so that Spike could escape that steam embedded room where her sister was naked in the shower and the idea of Spike seeing any of that made her terribly uncomfortable and even, in some way, concerned.

“Oh, okay.” Willow said. “Well I’m going to go downstairs to make some eggs. Want some?”.

Buffy shook her head yes, anything to get Willow out of there. “Sure. Yea. Okay.” Buffy replied. Willow shook her head and began to pad away towards the stairs. Buffy turned her attention back to the door, and whispered “She’s gone,” then knocked on the door lightly. Spike unlocked the door, opened it a little and twisted the lock so that it would lock behind him.

“That was close,” Spike said in reference to, well all of it. Dawn and Willow had almost uncovered their big secret. Buffy shook her head, trying to hold back her laugher. The stress was making her feel delusional. She thought maybe if she hadn’t been so concerned with keeping it a secret, it would’ve made things, everything, so much easier for her and Spike along the way. “See you for breakfast?” he asked, hopefully.

“Eggs it is,” Buffy nodded yes. “I did tell Willow after all,” she winked at him before turning around.

He watched her for a few seconds, the way she glided across the carpet down the hallway like some non-human entity, although sometimes he couldn’t believe she was any part human considering the strength and stamina she possessed. It was over now, he thought, although the taste of her and the feel of her remained potent on him and inside him but he assumed that was the way it would always be. He’d get drunk off her, no matter how or why. The cards had been dealt for him as far as she was concerned and he couldn’t complain. The cards played their tricks, but it was his soul that in some essence made their goodbyes much easier to deal with. He had to live with it, or not live with it depending on how one saw him but he’d never regret one moment he spent with her and he’d never regret any kiss he had the opportunity to lay upon her lips that was returned fully and passionately.