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It had first attacked his gut, stricken him of hunger. Made him sick; made him want to heave for the first time in over a century. The pain was growing worse—fuck, more than that, it was growing. The pain was spreading. He felt it in his fingertips. Felt it saturating into his skin. Felt it on his eyelashes, in his throat—felt it everywhere there was to feel.
Spike moaned and peeled his eyes open.
The bloody crypt. He’d collapsed after Buffy left, and hadn’t yet managed to pull himself to his feet. His mind was still swimming with what to make of her little farewell speech. Things had seemed so bleeding fine before.
He’d had her. After two weeks of wanting her, of tearing his heart out for what he’d done to her—combating the knowledge of what he should do to her—he’d had her. And she hadn’t fought him.
He sighed longingly and sat up, blinked, and took in his surroundings while fighting off a yawn.
He didn’t want to think about her. His world would make a lot more sense if he could just bolt and have it over with. If he could forget the taste of her, forget the feel of her, forget the pained understanding in her eyes, and return to the essentials. He needed blood, sex, and violence, and not necessarily in that order. If he left now, he could possibly find Dru and torture her for making him so crazy over the Slayer. And maybe if he tortured her enough, she’d come back to him.
Only that thought made the pain worse. Spike winced and fought to his feet.
Unwittingly, his mind flashed back to the lost look on Buffy’s face. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting. Anger, yes. He definitely deserved her anger. He deserved to be beaten and bloodied for what he’d done to her. She might have forgiven him for his crime, but he wasn’t nearly as prepared to forgive himself. Nights that weren’t occupied with dreams of her were filled with nightmares. And while he was certain his mind was fabricating the memories of her cries and struggles, her pain and fear, he still knew that he’d done more to hurt her than any other bloke out there. He knew he deserved to meet the business end of her stake.
She hadn’t staked him. Fuck, that morning, she’d done more to comfort him than anything. Not that Spike hadn’t wanted to comfort her. It had taken every nerve in his body to keep him from parading across the room and taking her into his arms so he could encourage her to cry her heart out on his very willing shoulder. And while that wasn’t a particularly natural reaction for him—especially where slayers were concerned—he’d written it off as a part of the guilt. A piece of him that was still human enough to feel for her, for what he’d done, and attempt to atone for his sins.
Spike had many delusions of opulence, but Buffy’s failure to end his life that morning wasn’t one of them. He knew she’d spared him out of confusion. Out of something she couldn’t name—something she was likely still struggling to understand. With as much as it had thrilled him to see her at the Bronze—to hold her and touch her, to finally feel her lips against his—he was still more than astonished that he’d walked away with his unlife still intact. That first morning had been a fool’s gamble; what he’d gotten away with at the Bronze he attributed to sheer idiocy. Wanking off in the girl’s yard hadn’t been enough of a bloody death wish—he had to confront her in the flesh. He had to see her eyes, taste her lips, and claim everything he’d been too stupid to seize that first morning.
Why had it taken him so long to kiss the bint? Moreover, why did he care that it had taken him so long to kiss her?
Spike sighed and reached for his shirt. He didn’t know what to do now. He’d been prepared for Angry Buffy. Prepared to the point where he’d almost prefer her angry. Not that he wanted her brassed off per se—even if she was fucking beautiful when she was mad, and he did appreciate the way her chest heaved—but he knew how to deal with angry. Hell, if anything, he’d dealt with angry wankers for centuries. Darla, Angelus, the hordes of people they pissed off, and the occasional mob that had never learned how to properly dust a vampire. He might not like the consequences of Angry Buffy, but he certainly knew how to deal with it. How to respond to her if she raised her voice to him. If she had, after last night, reacted to him with disgust and herself with shame.
Had a speech prepared an’ everything.
It wasn’t as though he didn’t realize how bloody pathetic he was, though knowledge did little to minimize the sting. Last night had been a moment of weakness. After trying half a dozen times to leave the Hellmouth, after promising himself over and over again that he wouldn’t seek her out, after repeatedly wanking off so hard that his cock should bruise, he’d decided to see her. See her out in the open.
He was ashamed at how often he’d found himself following her. Most of the time when he left the factory, he’d go by Willy’s, drink himself into a stupor, get hit by a wave of lust from nowhere and have to sneak off for a wank before he came in his pants, then stumble outside and somehow find himself either at her window or trailing after her while she patrolled.
Spike had followed her much too much these past couple weeks. It was something Angel would do, and he hated it. He hated what she’d reduced him to. He hated that the pain in his gut softened when he was near her. He hated that his mind was filled with so many sodding questions and not even a launch point as far as answers were concerned.
He hated that every time he saw her, he wanted to take her in his arms. That was not a Big Bad thing to do. Shag her until she walked funny—yeah, those drives he could handle. Those made sense to him. Hold her and comfort her? She was the bloody Slayer. He wasn’t supposed to want anything from her but blood, and if he took solace in her body, he wasn’t supposed to care about her dainty little feelings over the matter. He wasn’t supposed to be following her around like a lovesick, Buffy-whipped man slave, just waiting for his mistress to give him some attention.
The world where he knew what he was had collapsed into a different world altogether. These past two weeks had brought out a version of himself that he didn’t know. When he’d touched Buffy the night before, his demon had purred in ecstasy, and even though the shagging was brilliant, he would have been happy simply to hold her all night. To trade jibes with her. To watch her flush when he called her on that bogus pregnancy scare, to feel the heat from her words that only accentuated the warmth of her skin.
Truth be told, a part of him—a sick, twisted part of him—had rushed with hope when word of Buffy’s undead conception reached his ears. Not that he wanted a brat around filled with his DNA, and certainly not that he thought it was remotely possible, but he did know a thing or two about prophecies. Prophecies served as logic’s loophole. They were the clause in every unwritten rule about life and living. And while odds that he and Buffy were prophesied to make a baby were laughably slim, it would have been nice to have a reason to be around her. An excuse. An explanation for his need to see her at all times, be near her at all times, and no one could say or insinuate anything.
Though, honestly, if he was going to have Buffy all to himself, he really wanted her all to himself.
Of course, all of that was sick. Absolutely twisted. It was bad enough that he wanted her like he did. That he dreamt of her. That he could find himself, on any given day, going from thinking of nothing in particular to being randy as hell and pulling his dick so hard it was a wonder the damn thing still worked properly.
He didn’t know what had happened to him. And he didn’t know why he was so sodding miserable over her bloody speech. Why he wanted anger rather than understanding. Except that anger was often passionate and illogical, and always easy to counter. Her calm rationale had thrown him for a bloody loop.
Perhaps it was the shock that she wasn’t going to cut and run. That she stayed long enough to tell him how she felt. To give him an answer beyond “you’re a vampire and it’s wrong.”
She’d thought about it. She’d thought about him. And she liked him.
Spike cast a hand through his hair and laughed shortly. Buffy didn’t want to be the sodding rebound girl? If only she knew how many rebound girls he’d gone through before he crashed into Sunnydale. If only she knew how often he’d thought of her while sleeping beside Drusilla. Christ, he’d shagged her in his mind so often that it was a sodding wonder it’d taken his psychic girlfriend so long to catch on.
Perhaps that was why he’d gone to Buffy that night. Perhaps he’d gotten pissed out of his mind, reverted to some primal state of Cave Spike that he didn’t know existed, and in an attempt to get her out of his system, decided to shag her rotten. Sounded feasible enough.
Only now—now shagging wasn’t all he needed. Not when he had these gooey, wrong feelings about wanting to hold her. Not when he loved watching her laugh as much as he hated watching her cry. Not when he treasured their small trades as much as he treasured touching every inch of her succulent body. Not when he found himself constantly biting back admiration where there should only be loathing.
There was no question: Spike was buggered. He was thoroughly up-the-arse buggered. Buffy had been bloody merciful when she walked away. He didn’t know what he was feeling, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. He needed to do what she told him to do: he needed to let her go.
He needed to go one bleeding second without thinking about her.
He needed to make the pain go away.
Spike sighed again, eying his surroundings wearily. The crypt was nice enough. A bit cozier than he would have expected. He wasn’t much one for holes in the ground, really; his years with Dru had him coached to always go to the finest places, always demand the best bloody service, even if that meant siring lackeys. For the first time in all his life, human included, he was totally on his own.
No more lackeys. No more fine wine. No more extravagant hotels or fancy art shows. Life with Dru had been painted red, yes, but done so in style. She might be off her nutter, but she was a classy dame.
Spike enjoyed class; he was just sick to fuck of it. He didn’t need a sodding mansion, or a burnt out factory. He was a creature of the night, and the crypt would do just fine.
Even if staying in Sunnydale meant staying near Buffy, and therein furthering his self-torment. He couldn’t leave her if he tried—a theory he’d confirmed by, well, trying.
Perhaps if he stayed around, he’d eventually come to his senses and snap the bint’s neck. Or perhaps he’d become even more pathetic than he was now. Perhaps these warm mushy feelings for the girl would transcend into something much worse—something much more permanent.
Something he couldn’t even begin to fathom now. No bleeding way.
Though it would go a long way toward explaining the pain in his gut, the lump in his throat, and the soreness in his chest. He wanted her so bloody badly, and not as he should. No. Buffy should have been a quick shag. She should have been the sodding means to an end. She should have been anything other than what she’d become.
How he saw her now.
The wealth of what he felt for her, undefined as it was, was absolutely terrifying.
He was beginning to wonder what he’d do without her.
To be continued…