Chapter Eighteen – All is Better in the Morning
It was snowing out, not heavily, just enough to be pretty. The kind of snow you saw in post cards or on movies sets. Buffy wasn’t sure how long she sat watching it after Raj had gone. There was something about snow that quieted everything else, even indoors, it shut everything out, all the clamor and clutter of life just sort of fell away.
In the lamp light the snow looked like falling glitter.
So very pretty.
It was so much easier to just sit and watch the world be covered in the pretty, pretty blanket. Just watch this and let everything else fall away. But Buffy was never that lucky. Even now her mind kept trying to break out of the serene contentment of just watching to bring Buffy back to the world of noise of everything she needed to figure out.
Shut up, real world. There is snow happening.
Ever the California girl, Buffy associated snow with Christmas. So it was weird to her that it was snowing in almost-February. Somehow, it felt wrong that it was snowing after the holidays. Something was wrong with the weather, and she had missed Christmas.
She had missed Christmas.
She had been in that place for Christmas.
Christmas when her mom would make a fire despite the perfect Southern California weather. And Dawn would insist presents could happen as soon as it was technically Christmas so she would try and stay up until midnight.
Buffy pushed those thoughts away. She has missed it. It was done. There was nothing she could do about it. Thinking about it only made herangry about what she was forced to miss.
Instead, she wondered how long the snow would stay pretty in the morning.
These days she rarely allowed herself to think about Sunnydale. She had been trying to keep herself busy so as not to make herself homesick. It was hard sometimes because Wesley reminded her of all things Sunnydale, even though it had been years since he left. But everytime her brain made her want to reminisce, she forced herself back to the task at hand, back to where she was now. Wesley had told her that everyone back home was safe for now, and she had to be here. She may not love the arrangement, but she was keeping away. And that meant they were safe. And she needed to keep her family safe, the Sunnydale family and—she hesitated even in her mind—this new one.
She pressed a hand on her tummy.
Family. That’s how Wesley described her and Spike. She supposed that was true, in many senses of the word.
She was going to have a baby. She was going to have a baby with a vampire, but somehow that was less horrifying that the fact that she was going to have a baby. The enormity of it had registered a while ago but Buffy had pushed it aside, just like she did everything thing else while they were evading capture, when other things were more important in the meantime like keeping Spike alive and figuring out how to get Alex across international borders.
Well, now the meantime was over and she was going to have to face it.
So here she was, sitting in an old Victorian house trying not to think of how much she wanted to hit up the 101 and find herself passing Espresso Pump on Main Street. The longing was ignored to the best of Buffy’s ability but it still made watching Raj fret and rant and rave and then head back to his home oddly cathartic. He had just walked right back to that house that had been his before his whole world was torn apart. If he could go home again, maybe someday she could.
She took a sip of her tea and grimaced, it had gone cold and bitter. She set it down on the table, she wasn’t sure what she was doing sitting here, But she had needed a little bit of physical space between her and the ruins of the living room. She needed to be away from there to figure all this out.
She had slept with Spike.
She had slept with him. Him being Spike. Not that in any universe last night could have been called sleeping. Last night was sex. last night was crazy, ridiculous, acrobatic super sex. And she needed to work out how she felt about that because she really, really wanted to do that again.
She had thought that reminiscing about Sunnydale no matter how briefly and thinking of her mom and Dawn would snap some sense into her, but it didn’t seem to be working.
She had thought that it would make her feel like she had done the wrong thing and guilt would show up to show her the way. It would come and make her feel bad about what she did. But sexing up Spike was still in the good column in her head and she had to convinve herself to sit and stay and not jump his vampire bones and ruin a library or a solarium or something.
She knew intellectually that she should think sex with Spike was bad, but she was having trouble convincing herself the reality of that when her headspace was all angular cheek bones and soft lips and whispered word of encouragement and seeing Spike come apart in front of her.
It felt good, and nothing had felt good in such a long time.
She had thought that after that place she would never feel good again, but kicking the shit out of her goons and storming their damn facility felt good; and fighting with Spike beside her felt good; and fucking his brains out after felt really, really good.
We’re not mortal enemies anymore.
Was it only two days ago he was prone on the floor bleeding out of his ears and she was begging him with all she was to come back to her? She hadn’t hesitated to cut herself open, offering her blood despite knowing he was starved and injured and could have easily drained her dry—but then, this wasn’t the first time she had been in prone position around him. He had had lots of chances to bag his third slayer.
Even the thought of Spike as an evil vampire didn’t seem to be dissuading her as she thought it would. Focusing on Spike’s past only served to remind her that Spike was a warrior, a fighter who had, on more than one occasion, saved the world.
Was she trying to talk herself out of a good thing because of a set of rules that didn’t seem to matter anymore? Or was she an addict who had a really, ridiculously good hit and would say anything even in her own mind to justify it?
Describing Spike like he was a drug made her feel guilty. All he had done in the last few weeks had been to keep her alive and safe. He had brought her and Alex back to the most painful part of his past because it was buried so deep no one would ever find it. There was only one reason he’d do those things, Buffy had seen it before, she had seen him give up everything he held dear for someone else, but even sitting alone in a room she couldn’t couldn’t give those words shape, not even in her mind. Neither of them was ready for that—he had almost said it before in Prague when he was looking at her like they were the only people in the whole world.
Wasn’t she ready to remove the one thing in the world that supposedly kept him from being a homicidal maniac? That chip that someone else had put inside his head. It was punishing him for even thinking of hurting a human. He had managed to get himself out of there and yet there was the reminder when he did anything to harm a human even if that human wanted to capture, experiment on, and rape his daughter.
She shook that thought from her head physically. She hadn’t realized until now what that chip must be doing to him. She cringed at the version her that had made fun of him for it a year ago. She understood it now. She knew what it felt like to be doing your own thing and then suddenly wake up in a sterile room with experiments being done to your body while you were powerless to stop them. She was disgusted at herself for ever treating him with anything but respect for not curling up into a little ball of misery and desolation after an episode like that. She had basically done that. The anger didn’t come until much later.
That chip needed to come out.
Could she be with him if he could kill again? Even in her head that seemed like a stupid question. He could always kill, he just couldn’t hurt. He had come after her with a shotgun once, it may have even been painless, but he had put it down and sat with her instead. Because she was sitting there so worried about her mom, and something must have told him that because she knew now he understood that better than anyone else.
Maybe she couldn’t say the words yet even in her head, maybe she wasn’t sure if she was right about them, but being with Spike felt good and someone unfathomable up there seemed to agree with her, since bizarre-o-world Buffy, the Buffy that had borne Alex, made him her champion. She had named her child after a person who had meant something to him.
It wasn't really a choice.
And once she made the decision it felt like she had jettisoned about a hundred and fifty pounds.
She stood and marched up the stairs. She thought she’d be nervous, but didn't. She felt better with every step. Usually she was shy about this kind of thing or indecisive, turning it over and over in her head but for once she it was all quiet.
Which meant that the only problem was that Spike was nowhere to be seen.
The panic hit her like a wall.
God she was an idiot, she was all sure this was the right thing to do, what if he hadn’t. What if she confronted him and he pulled the “slow down Buffy” card. Her confidence drained a little. She had been under the operating presumption that he would just go with it, be ready and waiting for her.
Shit.
*****
When Spike woke, she was gone.
He tried and failed not to be disappointed. He had known that this was going to happen, it was the last thought he managed to keep in his head before she burned it away with her lips on his. But he knew the slayer, and he would bet anything that she was off saddlin’ up her high horse about now.
He supposed at the very least she didn’t stake him in his sleep.
He needed a cigarette.
They had made good work of the room, there wasn’t a piece of unbroken furniture or surface that could have held her weight that they hadn’t used last night. He wondered idly, if he should feel some sense of loss. I was a room he could never re-create again. But then that had never been his style. The room could be remade, probably better. They could probably make a new room of it, knock down the wall to his father's study make a centralized base, maybe even put demon-like books in there. That was if the slayer was still even around and she didn’t just up and take the sprog and the minion with her.
The thought was a little too depressing to entertain. Spike busied himself with looking for his cigarettes and found the remnants of his trousers and the pieces of his shirt a few feet away. He pulled on the jeans, they were ripped but serviceable with the belt. His duster had, of course, made it through the carnage, even as drunk on slayer as he was he would have the presence of mind not to ruin that. He pulled a battered pack of smokes from it and lit one up.
The first cigarette was quickly followed by another.
Spike stretched. There were muscles under muscles that were sore, but thankfully the slayer blood had worked wonders on anything else that needed knitting together because last night may have stretched out those stitches.
He could use a bed, he decided. He headed out of the ruined parlour and padded up the stairs.
He had been distracted before, by memories, and then by Buffy, so it had failed to register just how odd it was to be back in this place again. He remembered the day they came to this house and he had found it stifling and too cramped and too dark. He had never really loved it. It had eventually become home because it had to. Because those things mattered to him back then . He was another person now, a different creature all together but he felt instantly transported back to who he was, worried about his mother, devastated over the death of Alexis. He turned at the second floor, automatically heading for the room that had been his.
But it wasn’t was it?
Spike froze. It took him a few minutes to decide to stay in another room. He turned to a set of double doors. It had been his father’s many years ago—kept empty since he died. This was his place now.
Deciding that he already had enough to brood about without thinking about his father’s legacy or just who the master of the house was in any philosophical sense of the word, Spike pushed all of that from his mind. Whose ever room it was before, it was his now. He crossed to the bed and collapsed.
Without meaning or wanting to he cast his senses around the house. He couldn’t hear her, even her slayer-ness which usually burned brightly was faint. He wasn’t sure if it was because of her infernal pregnancy or just she was hiding out.
She was somewhere else hiding from him because he had royally fucked this one up.
She knew him now, she knew where he came from she knew who he was more than anyone else. And she had been kind about it. And he had just thrown caution to the wind because she had pressed her lips to his and he had never been that good at keeping himself from going all soppy when a girl gave him even a crumb of encouragement.
Bloody stupid idiot.
Why couldn’t he stick to the damn plan? He had very clearly spooked her. He didn’t know why he was unable to make himself wait, stick to the carefully doled out bits of seduction he hadthought out for the bigger pay off. But even as he was thinking that he knew it was immaterial. Patience had never been a virtue of the vampire he had become.
He lit another cigarette.
He had wanted to wait, wanted to take her slowly. He had wanted to tease her until she was a quivering mass of need. He would use everything he had learned, a considerable amount in the last century, to make her beg until she couldn’t take it anymore. Instead she had blown right passed that and pressed her hot little self against him and he was lost. There was no finesse, very little teasing or technique, it was two people taking what they wanted from each other. Usually he’d have been all for that, until he woke with a distinct lack of Buffy and his mind went through all the ways he could have showed her how good it could be just to distract himself from how much it stung.
He had realized some time ago what he felt for her. Falling in love was not the right idiom, it was more like being whacked in the head by a two by four. Spike had had experience both these things and he was sure Buffy was the latter. It didn’t happen slowly, it was a sudden realization one day that he had tried to deny until he was having dreams so vivid he woke with a hard on that he could hang a hat on. He knew now why that was, because being with her had been unlike anything Spike had ever experienced in a century of debauchery.
When Alex happened, when he realized who and what she was, he felt himself start to hope. Maybe he wasn’t certifiable, maybe this thing with her wasn’t pure insanity on his part. Another Buffy had made another Spike her champion. Alex was the other Buffy’s reward, that other slayer had wanted a piece of Spike more than anything else. She had named her daughter for him. He wondered idly how she had found out about Alex, he was going to need to plug up that breach in security.
But that didn't seem too important right about now. RIght now, the feather bed was important.
The downward spiral of self pity had seemed to have broken and Spike felt himself start to succumb to the comfort of being in a large bed with good sheets and comfortable pillows. He felt his consciousness melt everything out of sharp focus.
He hadn’t gotten very much actual rest in the last few days, his mind had been on continual crisis mode trying to keep his family away from the specter that haunted even a monster’s nightmares.
Now he put out his cigarette and let himself drift, pushing even thoughts of last nights monumental cock up from his head. He was Spike, he’d suss it in the morning. Everything was sinking into slide focus, fuzzy around the edges.
Which was why he didn’t hear the door open or sense Buffy tip-toe into the room.
****
Buffy approached Spike’s supine form on the bed as quietly as she could. She wasn’t sure what surprising him would do but it was probably going to less awkward than waking him and asking permission.
Buffy shook off the sudden influx of very awkward opening lines. What do you say to someone you abandoned after one night of monkey sex? what if he is also your ex-mortal enemy? current baby daddy?
We’ve got the consequences so what about some of the fun?
Inward cringe. She was going to have to wing it. She was a winger. She could do that.
He was laying starfish-like on a huge four poster bed, looking like he could have just drifted off. Buffy had been around a slumbering Spike quite a bit, he rarely looked this calm. Usually he looked on his guard, even in his sleep. Now, however, he looked peaceful and boyish. Just like he had a few nights ago, but now when she was unworried about his chip-addled state she could appreciate it. She paused for a second at the edge of the bed to study him. He looked like a classical painting which is not the way she would have ever thought she would describe Spike. But now he was all titian golden brown curls and full lips and marble pale skin. The only thing that marred the image was his scar bisecting his eyebrow. She let her gaze travel downward passed his strong shoulders to his back and—
She had paused for too long because she was very suddenly pinned to the bed with a couple hundred pounds of master vampire pinning her down.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised this is what you like.” the quip came to her head without a moments conscious thought.
Winger.
Spike glared at her with yellow eyes and fangs bare, her name was growl low in his throat. This should scare her, or perhaps make unsure of her decision but Buffy couldn’t help the ache that travelled right down to the core of her. She wanted him so badly her body wasn’t so much preparing for him as it was demanding she take him now. She could no more to stop herself from wrapping her legs around his hips and pulling his face down to hers than she could stop breathing.
She had a speech prepared, a whole to-do about how she needed to think, but being with him felt good and she wasn’t going to make herself feel bad but there were still things that were not so much okay to talk about yet because of complications and pregnancies and Alex and this world’s Alex and all of that disappeared in a millisecond. She didn’t even spare a thought to how fucked up it was that Spike’s game face made her so wet she could feel her desire coating her thighs.
Spike was still for only a moment before he was plundering her mouth, his fangs making tiny cuts on her lips that juxtaposed the tenderness with which he held her to him, which was fine since she had latched on to him like a vice. Her hands were in his hair preventing him from going anywhere and she was rubbing herself wantonly against the already hard length in his pants.
Spike groaned and wrenched himself away from her.
She mewled in protest and reached for his belt, determined to rip it apart to get at what she wanted.
It looked physically painful for him to shift back into his human features.
“Buffy, pet, please—want to make it good for you.” He said his hips unconsciously pressing against her fingers. “Want to—”
She was kissing his neck, nibbling his jawline. Her hands made a burning trail down her back and onto the front of his pants, she closed them around his member, one hand stroking the other brushed his balls.
Spike roared.
Buffy felt her world flip around and suddenly she was on top of him, pants shredded and his cock was buried firmly inside her. He was holding onto her hips and steady her as he pistoned in and out of her.
She threw her head back and moaned at the feel of him. Her hands raked down his front and she used her slayer strength to ride him, pushing down with every his every up-thrust and encouraging him with a litany of desperate encouragement.
Her first orgasm snuck up on her and hit her with the force of a freight train. She collapsed onto his chest and he flipped them over, his pace slowed letting her ride out the waves. She pressed her face into his neck pressing kisses to every spot she reached.
Despite the slower pace, she felt the next climax start to build. She pushed herself up to meet each thrust urging him to go faster.
“Patience, pet, let it happen.”
She couldn’t find the words but she tried to tell him with the bucking of her hips, she wanted more, so much more. Her body was still on the throes of too many sensations. Spike was nibbling on her ear and Buffy had had no idea that place was so sensitive but she could feel his breath and his tongue like it was everywhere at once. She felt, more than heard Spike soft purrs of contentment and the rumble went deliciously through her, her eyes fell closed and she was lost again.
The pace he set was languid, supporting himself on his elbows and pulling almost all the way out before pushing back in. She felt his hand, cool against her overheated skin, reach down to where they were joined and gently flit across her clit and she was shattering into a million pieces again, unable to control herself as she plummeted into orgasm. He managed to hold that pace through another of Buffy’s climaxes before he could no longer hold back and soon they were both moving against each other with straining thrusts, Buffy meeting each stroke of his and babbling nonsense into his ear about how much and how good she felt.
Suddenly Spike added a small twist of his hips at the end of each thrust which rubbed against the magical spot, while simultaneously flicking her clit and Buffy came so hard she didn’t remember screaming or Spike’s final painfully deep thrust before he spilled himself inside her. All she could do was hold on top him as she exploded into a million peices.
They both collapsed drenched in her sweat and gasping for breath.
Buffy felt herself melt into the bed. All the noise in her head had faded to the background. She felt him maneuver her so that she was on top of him, sprawled against his chest.
“We didn’t break the bed.” Was the only thing she could think to say.
“S’good English craftsmanship, this is.” He said lazily.
She didn’t remind him that the room downstairs was also good English craftsmanship. She just lay on his chest letting herself feel the rumbling. he was playing with the ends of her hair and it was heavenly. She had had afterglow in the past, but this was another level, neither even bothered to pull the covers up around themselves. It was a sated lull, she didnt care what her hair looked like or what time it was or how much time had passed. She couldn't bring herself to.
“I didn’t know you purred.” She said after a spell.
“S’a lot you don’t know about me, pet.”
It seemed like a quick, off-hand quip but Buffy pushed herself up, finding herself intrigued by his response. She felt oddly superiour now that she could arch an eyebrow and shoot it down.
“That so?”
Spike looked confused for a moment but seemed to remember the events of last night before all the distractions. He shut his eyes as if he was trying to shut that out.
“Suppose its not the case anymore.” He said.
God, that was satisfying. For years, Spike had always been the one who could see thru her. It was nice to finally be able to say that she knew something about him. She surveyed the room, even in the dark she could tell it was probably the nicest room she had ever been in, not nice. Grand was the word, old fashioned and opulent, like the four poster bed they lay in that could have housed several people.
“Was this your room?”
Spike chuckled.
“This is the room of the master of the house.” He said. He didn’t say more than that.
She couldn’t think of anything to say to that either. “Right.”
She lay back down on top of him.
She thought it was mere seconds before she replied, but it could have been longer, her inner-clock has gone all wonky from the post sexy-time daze.
“You brought us here to keep us safe. That--that must not have been an easy decision."
His hands had migrated from her hair to her back where he was Buffy felt herself start to drift off.
“Easiest in the world.” he murmured back.
"Thank you."
There was no telling how much time had passed, when Buffy woke again it was still dark. She figured it was the early hours of the morning. A quick glance at the cellphone Raj had given her confirmed this. She slid out of his arms and gathered her clothing.
Spike propped himself up on his elbows watching her. His eyebrows arched in a silent question.
“D’you think Lex managed to rustle up some grub?” She asked.
Spike rolled his shoulders and clambered off the bed, pulling on his now absolutely unsalvageable pants.
“Something tells me nothing gets between that girl and her food.”
He pulled the jeans up around his hips but the zipper was ripped and his ben was in several peices and the button was a fond memory. He looked from his pants up to her smirking face. Spike didn't wear underwear so Spike jr. was on display for anyone to see.
She giggled. “Want some rope? Or something?”
“You’re right cheeky for the person who ruined these pants.” He said. “you’re getting me some new ones, luv, or I’m scarrin’ Oxford for life.”
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What did you think? Sorry they snuck on me with all their shenanigans and writing the aftermath, getting that tone right was harder than I thought it was going to be.....but Merry Christmas! more soon!
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Hi! I'm so sorry that this took so long but this was important and I wanted to get something good. So Merry Christmas everyone! and I'm almost done with the next stuff so don't you worry--more will actually beup soon.
Chapter End Notes:
What did you think? Sorry they snuck on mewith all their shenanigans and writing the aftermath, getting that tone right was harder than I thought it was going to be.....but Merry Christmas! more soon!