Chapter Four
“Spike?”
“Yeah. It’s me, love.” He shifted backwards on the bed, a guarded look on his face and wrapped his arms around Buffy, pulling her with him. She didn’t resist.
“What? How—” She broke off, confused. “I thought this was a dream.”
“Tried to tell you,” Spike said, smiling fondly. “Never were one for listening, though, were you?”
“Shut up,” she replied playfully, then sobered when she remembered the impossibility of him being there. “What are you doing here? How— Why?” Frustrated, she stopped and looked at him imploringly.
“I think I’m a ghost,” he said and shrugged, trying to sound nonchalant. Buffy could see by the twist of his mouth that it was nothing but a front. “Know that I’m here, but I’m not really here. Can see. Can feel. Can touch, even. But I’m not real.”
“I don’t understand.” Buffy sat up a little in his embrace, lacing her hand in his, their matching scars pressed together. It no longer occurred to her to think that it wasn’t Spike. Not now, when she realised she was fully awake—when she knew that her mind wouldn’t make up the scar on his hand. She wanted so badly to believe he was there with her.
“I don’t bloody understand, either,” Spike replied. “I burned, didn’t I? Thought that’d be it, final death an’ all. Go to whatever special hell they reserve for us vamps.”
Buffy bit back a gasp, suddenly reminded of her dream the other night and not wanting to think of Spike in hell. “You weren’t—?”
“No, love.” He clutched her hand a little tighter. “Dunno where I was. Somewhere blank. Grey. I didn’t have a body, was just kind of… there. Right boring, it was. Then I started to see things, found that if I concentrated real hard on someone, I could see what they were doing. I saw you. You were on a plane, sitting next to Dawn, holding her hand. She was crying.”
“I remember,” Buffy said. “We’d been… we were talking about you. She was upset, because she never got to make things right with you, before—”
“Yeah.” Spike frowned. “Wish I hadn’t been such a bleeding idiot and just talked to her.”
“You’ll be able to, now,” Buffy said. With her head tucked into the crook of his neck, she missed the sudden look of sadness on Spike’s face.
“Right. That faded, after a while. Seeing you on the plane, I mean. But I wanted to see you again. So I brought you here.”
“Why here?” Buffy wondered why he had picked Lyme Regis, of all places. “And how?”
“I don’t know, really.” Spike shrugged. “Just knew—something told me that if I wanted to see you again, I had to get you here. Got no clue how, maybe I just wanted it bad enough.” He wiggled his fingers and grinned. “Ghostly powers and all that rot.”
She smiled. “So it really was you on the beach earlier? I thought I was seeing things.”
“Yep. Had to concentrate really hard to make myself visible, and I was only there for a couple of seconds.”
“How are you here now, then?”
“I don’t really know how all this ghost bollocks works,” Spike said, “but in the music shop, earlier, you accepted that it might be me trying to contact you.” He shrugged. “Seems that was all it took for me to be able to come through properly.”
“Oh.” With a sudden shiver, Buffy realised that she hadn’t asked the most important question. “Are you staying?”
Spike looked away, and she knew she had her answer. Jumping up from the bed, she wrapped the sheet around herself and started to rummage through her bag, looking for her cellphone. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay. I’m gonna call Giles and Willow, they’ll know what to do. Figure out why you’ve gone all Casper and how we can fix it.”
She got as far as dialling the first two digits when his hand closed over hers and took the phone away. “Buffy.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Don’t say it.”
His arms came around her, pulling her into a tight embrace. She pressed her face against his chest and tried not to cry. “I’m sorry.” He stroked her hair. “I don’t know how long I have. But I do know that this is only temporary. I’ve been granted a—a reprieve. For whatever reason, someone up there—” he glanced upwards— “has decided to let us have some more time. But I can’t stay.”
Buffy was full out crying now, tears falling freely and wetting the skin of his chest. “I wish you would.”
Spike didn’t say anything, but drew her back towards the bed until they were lying down once more. He pulled the covers up and stroked the hair back off her face, brushing away the tears from her cheeks. “We’ve got some time.”
Buffy tried to smile, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “We’d better make the most of it, then.”
***
She shot awake suddenly the next morning, roused from her sleep by the horrible sense that Spike was gone. Looking to the bed beside her, she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that he was still there. He was asleep, and, abstractly, Buffy found that strange—he said he was some kind of ghost, but if that were the case, would he be able to sleep, and so peacefully?
A glance to the bedside clock told her that it was the afternoon already. She bit her lip. She didn’t know how much time she would have with Spike, and they had already wasted half a day.
She reached out and gently shook his shoulder. “Spike?” He shifted and mumbled in his sleep, also very un-ghost-like. Buffy itched to get her phone to call Giles and demand he make with the research.
Watching Spike come awake was a novelty. Every time that she’d fallen asleep in his embrace before now, she had either left before he woke or he’d already been awake by the time she was up. He twitched, eyelids fluttering, before he finally opened his eyes, blinking at the light.
It was then that Buffy realised the room was bathed in sunlight, and he wasn’t burning up. He had been out in the sun on the beach the previous day, too. “Good morning,” she said, deciding to forget about all the weirdness and just try to enjoy being with him for however long they had together.
“Hey, love.” Spike stretched, and glanced out the window. He gave her a look. “Don’t know about ‘good morning’. Looks like it’s the afternoon, to me.”
“Yeah,” Buffy replied and looked down at the quilt, suddenly, inexplicably, embarrassed. “We slept the morning away.”
A peculiar silence fell across the room and Buffy didn’t like it. This was Spike; she shouldn’t feel uncomfortable with him, especially with what they had shared in the days before the battle. She looked across at him and saw the same hesitance on his face that she felt on hers. The quiet was broken when a loud growl emanated from her stomach. Cheeks burning, she pressed a hand to it, mortified.
“Hungry, pet?”
Buffy nodded. “I haven’t eaten anything since a cake at lunchtime yesterday,” she said.
“Well, we’d better fix that, then.” Spike said, getting up from the bed and pulling on his clothes. He smiled at her; a genuine smile that she rarely saw, not a smirk or evil grin, and she found herself smiling back. The discomfort gone, she quickly dressed and followed him out to the dining room.
“So, what’ve we got to eat?” Spike poked around the empty kitchen cupboards, his voice echoing as he looked in the bare fridge.
“Um, pretty much nothing,” Buffy said. “I picked up some bread and pastries yesterday, but that’s about it.” She frowned. “Can you even eat, anyway? Do you need blood? Being all ghosty?”
“Dunno.” Spike shrugged, rifling through the bakery bag that Buffy had handed him and taking out a pasty. “Guess we’ll find out.” He took a bite, made a face and set the pasty on the table.
“No good?”
He shook his head. “Didn’t taste of anything. You go ahead, though.” He pushed away from where he’d been leaning against the counter and moved towards the front door, not saying anything as he went outside.
Buffy stared after him unhappily, hunger forgotten. She followed him out to find him perched on the stone wall that surrounded the house. He was fiddling with a leaf, clearly wishing he had a cigarette, and staring out towards the sea.
“Spike?” He didn’t answer, even when Buffy set herself on the wall next to him and slipped her hand in his. They sat for a while in silence, the only noise the chirping of birds and the far-off sound of waves on the beach.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said, eventually. “Being in that place, that grey blankness, I just knew that I wanted to see you again. Thought it’d be easy, once I knew how to get through… but being here without really being here—knowing that I can’t stay with you…” He clutched at his chest where his heart should have been beating. “It hurts. Didn’t hit me till I tried eating that bloody oggin. I’m not real. Never will be.” He stood up, and kicked at the wall. “I shoulda just left it alone. Left you alone.” He kicked out at the wall again before looking up at Buffy imploringly. “I couldn’t help myself. Never been able to help myself when it comes to you, pet.”
“I wanted you here, Spike. With me. It’s all right.” Buffy said, wanting nothing more than to reassure him that he was wrong, that she was happy he was here.
“It’s not!” Spike said, whirling around and glaring at her. “I was being selfish, only thinking of myself.”
“Well if you get to be selfish, then so do I!” Buffy jumped down off the wall, coming to stand in front of him. “I’m glad you’re here. Back from the dead. And d’you know how selfish that makes me feel? I’ve done the whole resurrection thing and I know how not-fun it is! But I can’t help but be happy you’re here. So stop it.”
Spike started to speak, but she interrupted. “Shut up! You’re a ghost. You’re not here for long. Okay. But you’re here, for whatever reason. Can’t we just be thankful that you are, and forget about all the rest? For now?”
Spike nodded wordlessly, and opened his arms to her.
“Good.” Buffy stepped into the hug, pressing herself as close to him as she could get. “That’s good.”
-TBC-
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank you for the comments to the previous chapter! I'm sorry I haven't responded to them, I've been feeling a bit lazy lately, lol. I will get to them, I promise, and even though I haven't replied, I do very much appreciate the reviews! Beta'd as always by the wonderful Sotia. Thank you!
Chapter End Notes:
Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you thought in a review. :)