Chapter 10
He was hovering right on the edge of wakefulness, soaked in warmth as he watched the waves splash against the jagged rocks, rushing forth to the beach and retreating before rushing in again. He curled his toes into the sand as warm lips brushed over the nape of his neck.
“I’ve never swam in here before. The water looks too deep.”
“Isn’t that half the fun?” he replied, his stomach quivering under the gentle touch of her hand. “Taking a risk? Saying bugger that to the rules?”
“You would say that, wouldn’t you? Do you even know how to not be reckless?” She nuzzled into his back, shielding him, molding into him as if she was made of liquid.
“’Course I do. Just prefer not to. Learned a long time ago that it only makes you get stuck in one place.” The starlight reflected on the swaying waves like scattered diamonds, as he lazily traced the valleys of her knuckles, worried she’d vanish if he moved too fast.
“And sometimes it can make you drown.”
“I wouldn’t let you.” He caught her wrist, pressed his thumb to her pulse point to assure himself she was still there.
“I thought you didn’t care.” The waves were rolling in closer and closer now, almost reaching his toes, dragging the sand under.
“I-” She stole the words off his tongue with a kiss to the curve of his neck, fingertips of her free hand resting over the Sire mark on the other side, digging in the tiniest bit. “I can’t think when you’re touching me.”
“Why?”
Good question that. Now only if he could remember why it was wrong that her heart was beating against his back, why the warmth heating him up like the sunrise he hadn’t seen in over a century shouldn’t feel so right.
“I don’t know. It feels as if I could belong.” To someone. To you.
“But I’m all wrong. Why don’t you stop me from touching you?” The sun was rising up at the horizon but it didn’t burn. Its light was spilling over the water, turning it blood red.
“Maybe I like it too much. Maybe I want you to.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Sod that. I do what I want,” he breathed out, added I want you silently, as she trailed their joined hands to the waistband of his jeans.
The water washed over his feet, leaving crimson stains in its wake. His fangs were pricking his bottom lip and a part of him wanted to sink to his knees and lap at it like a thirsty dog, but the other part of him was hungrier for her dizzying touch. Later. He’d do it later. When he no longer felt warm.
“You want me,” she said slipping in front of him, looking up with eyes that were too big and too green. “The outside of me.”
There were streaks of colour splashed over her naked skin as if she was a living painting.
“No. Not just the outside.” He stroked his thumb over the silvers and yellows twisting above her closed eyes and down her temples, tracing every contour of smooth, smooth skin and down to the black line smudged over her vulnerable throat. He leaned in and kissed the hollow of it, tasted the skin stretched over her golden collarbones, his palm resting over the blue spot spilled over her heart. It fluttered wildly beneath his touch like a bird trapped inside a cage, beating its wings to get closer.
She laid her purple-stained hands over his and dragged it down, his fingers spanning over her breast and bumping over her nipple on the way to her ribs. He fitted his fingers in the spaces between, mouth moving up her throat to lick the black off even though he knew he couldn’t. Not like this.
Her heart was thundering now as he kissed a line down her chest and hovered over her red-stained belly. It was as if he couldn’t get enough, and he just wanted to map out her entire body with his lips and see if he could make the colours change.
“Do you want all of me?”
He heard the rush of it before it came crashing in, a wave a hundred feet high slamming into his body so hard he startled awake, haunted by the phantom feeling of being suffocated as though he still needed to breathe.
Spike rolled onto his side, colours flashing behind his eyelids, fading just as quickly. He could almost feel the shivering point of skin meeting skin as he opened his eyes to see Buffy curled up into a ball next to him.
Sleeping on the floor, eh? At least I’m not the only who can’t keep his own promises.
He’d tried so hard not to dwell on what Dru had told him back in Mexico, managed to pretend it had never happened. Only now he couldn’t even escape it in his own dreams. Him and the Slayer? Nothing good could ever come of it. Oh, the shagging would be spectacular, he knew. But neither of them was wired to do one night stands. It was the book and the circumstances and his own depraved subconscious that wouldn’t let him escape it, that whispered twisted suggestions of you could fit together. But they couldn’t. She wasn’t the love of his ‘life’ and he wasn’t hers.
He knew she was awake when her breath turned shallow, her muscles tense. He could pretend to be asleep and give her an out, but he fancied the idea of condescending mockery a lot more.
“Couldn’t stay away, could you?”
She muttered something into the pillow before clambering off the bed. The second she was on her feet, she swayed unsteadily, hands catching onto the closed wardrobe doors. He didn’t think. He was up and at her side in a second, lifting her up into his arms and ignoring the way she weakly punched his chest with a demand to let her go.
“It’s just a… head rush. Let go.”
“Can you stop being bloody stubborn for one second? I’m trying to help you,” he said, putting her down on the bed. He caught it then, the smell of blood that had a growl rumbling through his chest.
“No, Spike. I just need to—”
“Are you hurt? What’s—” She was so pale the pink blotches on her cheeks seemed almost red.
“I’m fine. Just, stop looking at me.” She rested her head on her knees, drawing in ragged breaths.
“You’re not fine.” And perhaps his voice got a bit shrill there, but he wasn’t bloody concerned, all right? It was just… hunger. “You’re bleeding!”
“Can you put some clothes on?”
“No. Stop changing the subjec—” It hit him all of a sudden. “Oh. You’re… with the… Right.” She wasn’t about to keel over and die, at least. “Thank God it’s not anything worse, eh?”
She finally met his gaze, and the expression on her face told him she was about ready to rip his spine out right through his arse.
“Thank God?” Her voice rose in volume. “I feel like someone is stabbing me with a dull knife and scrambling my insides all around like a soup and you say thank God?”
She lost whatever colour was left in her face from the angry outburst when she stood up, refusing to look at him again. The smell was… well, it was all he could do to not push her down on the mattress, spread her open and lick her clean.
Fuck, he needed to get as far away from her as possible. “Want me to—”
“D-don’t touch me.”
She disappeared down the ladder and he realised that not only he was stuck in a cabin with the Slayer, now she would be bleeding all over the place while he hadn’t fed in what felt like forever. This would be a joyous ride.
*******
“No, no, no…” This was bad. Apocalypse-bad.
She frantically searched through the cabinet above the sink, ransacking every nook and cranny of the entire bathroom twice, only to come up empty-handed.
No pads. No tampons. No dignity for Buffy.
Her entire midsection throbbed in pain as if someone had set it on fire, and not in a fun, let’s-have-sexy-times way. More like, my-internal-organs-are-being-beaten-into-a-pulp-and-I-might-throw-up kind of way. She ditched her clothes on the tiled floor and crawled into the bathtub. The cold porcelain was a momentary relief to her clammy, feverish skin.
She tried to breathe through it, convinced now that the universe had been conspiring against her since she was born. Of course she’d get a really bad one at the most inconvenient time and not even have any supplies. Of course the only person who could help her was the one person she couldn’t ask for help.
You’ll have to. Unless you want to spend the next few days in the bathtub.
Beg Spike for help or become a bathtub hermit? Tough choice.
The knock on the door almost gave her a coronary.
“Uhh… you all right in there, Buffy?”
And why was it that every time he called her Buffy instead of Slayer, something inside her jolted to attention? It wasn’t right. But none of this was, and no matter how hard she’d like to pretend otherwise, Spike had proven she could rely on him. Rely. On Spike. Her world had been officially flipped upside down.
“No. No, I’m not.”
“Want me to come in?”
“No!” She leaned over to pick her T-shirt off the floor and held it to her chest just in case.
“What do you want me to do then?” He sounded slightly exasperated, not that she could blame him. Not really.
“Could you… could you look? For… you know… feminine supplies? Maybe there are some up in the bedroom?”
“Aren’t there any in the bathroom?”
“Would I ask you if there were?”
He paused. “Good point. Sorry. I’m… yeah.”
“And painkillers,” she called before he could disappear.
“Anything else?”
“No. Thank you,” she added and the gratitude came easier than it had before.
“I’m on it.”
As it turned out, there were none, and that was the point Buffy started to sniff, fighting the urge to cry. Everything just sucked, and she knew she’d hit a new low when she’d accept a hug even from Spike.
“Are you… are you crying?” sounded Spike’s voice through the door.
“N-no.” Not yet. Stupid vampire.
“Don’t.”
“You’re n-not the boss of me.”
“Buffy…”
That was it. The way he said, as if he cared. She started to cry then, not even knowing why, really. Stupid hormones.
The door opened and she wished the floor would open up and swallow her whole when Spike strode in and knelt down next to the bathtub.
“I’m n-naked.”
“Can’t see anything,” he said, his hand jerking as if he was about to touch her but changed his mind. “Besides, not like you haven’t seen my goodies, eh?”
She just shrugged because her throat was too tight to utter any words that would make much sense.
“Come on, now. Can’t stand it when you’re crying.”
She glared. As if it was her choice.
“Not that you can’t!” He shifted, gaze dropping to the floor. “Just… don’t like it. You’d think I would, wouldn’t you? I mean, I should.”
Her eyes were puffy and her nosy was runny and she must have looked like something that crawled out of its hole after midnight to scare little kids, but at least Spike wasn’t pointing and laughing. That was something.
“We’re a team though. We’re in this together. Although, don’t know why I bother when you can’t even make a decent cup of hot chocolate.”
“Hey!” The touch of his thumb wiping the tears off her cheeks stunned her speechless.
His face turned oddly soft for a moment but then she blinked and it was gone, just like his hand. Maybe it hadn’t even been there in the first place.
“I’ll go buy the stuff. Pick the blood up as well.”
“It’s daylight,” she said, her voice hoarse.
“It started snowing. ‘S cloudy enough and doesn’t seem to be stopping any time soon.”
She wiped her nose on the corner of the T-shirt, wondering if she’d ever shake this feeling of gratefulness. “This isn’t Sunnydale though. No manholes. You’ll end up all dusty if the sun comes out.”
“Nah. Won’t get rid of me that easily.”
“Spike—”
“Do you want to stay in this bathtub for hours?” He quirked his eyebrow.
“No.”
“There you go then.”
They heard the creak of the door out in the hallway at the same time, her pleading eyes colliding with his. She didn’t know when she’d started relying on him to take care of things, when she’d started to expect he’d actually come through.
But he did. Again. Striding out of the door and shutting it behind him, saving her from further humiliation.
*******
“Where’s mom?”
“Taking a bath.” He picked Emma up, tried not to like it when she wrapped her arms around him and rested her head against his shoulder. “And you, Pidge, are coming with me to the shops.”
“We’re going shopping?” She bounced, almost wriggling out of his grasp.
“Yup. Get some food in you first and then we’ll get you dressed.”
*******
“Daddy, I can’t move.” A pair of eyes stared at him accusingly from beneath a woolen hat and a giant scarf draped around her throat and half of her face. Maybe he should add a second one. Just to be sure.
“We’re going out. Need to make you all snug, don’t I?”
She waddled over to him, dressed in an undershirt, T-shirt, over-shirt, two thick jumpers and a coat, two pairs of gloves, and as many pairs of stockings and socks as he could fit beneath her trousers and into her boots. He hoped it would be enough.
“Are we going to the North Pole?”
“Are you sassing me, young lady?”
She giggled.
“Okay, that’s it, you little scoundrel. Prepare to be tickled to death once we get back.”
She pulled at his sleeve then, brows furrowed. “You need to get your winter coat too. You’ll get cold.”
No, he wouldn’t, but there wasn’t any way to explain, so he put on his counterpart’s black winter coat, glad the other him wasn’t keen on pastels and Hawaiian prints.
Once they stepped out and Emma toppled over into the snow, he wondered if he’d gone a bit overboard with making her warm. He couldn’t be bothered to go back though, so he just picked her up and carried her up the hill where she haughtily informed him he was going in the wrong direction and the bus stop was that way.
Bus stop. He better not tell the Slayer about this or she’d curse up a blue streak.
Emma dozed off in his arms and didn’t wake until he jostled her by stepping off the bus. Luck seemed to be on his side as the snow storm still raged on and the butcher’s had blood for him. Emma watched him with a smile of someone who had no idea they were snuggled up to a vampire. The only thing she said was, “It’s just like the adventure!”
She was well-behaved, unless he counted that incident where she’d pelted him with snowballs once he’d let her down and somehow managed to hit him right in the face. She definitely had the Slayer’s aim, even if her mother wasn’t one.
“Why are we just standing here?” Emma asked once they were inside a grocery shop. There was a chance he’d been standing in a same spot just next to the ‘feminine’ aisle for over three minutes now, fondling a teddy bear with a missing eye that Emma had decided to rescue because nobody will buy him. He was weak in the face of her begging, all right? It was just a bloody teddy bear anyway.
“I’m waiting for my balls to stop shriveling into my body.”
Her eyes widened. “Your boy bits can do that?”
“When faced with buying tampons? You’d be surprised, Pidge.”
She tilted her head to the side in an eerie imitation of… well, him. “What are tampons?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know.” He took a breath he didn’t need and braced himself. He could take on a crazed mob and withstand Angelus’ ‘art’ sessions at his worst. This was nothing. “I’m going in.”
She trailed after him like a miniature human penguin, huffing through her scarf.
Fuck, nobody told him there would be so many options! What was he supposed to do now? And just how many should he buy? He clearly hadn’t thought this through. “Bugger.”
Emma giggled.
There were ones for night and day and heavy flow and light flow and they came in all kinds of shapes and sizes and brightly coloured boxes. For a second he’d wished he hadn’t even offered. Why had he? Oh yeah, the sodding Slayer and her crocodile tears.
“Why do they need to sell so many? They did just fine without any of this rubbish in my time.”
Emma tugged at his pant leg and pointed up. “Take that bugger!”
A lady standing a few feet away looked at him with her lips pursed in disapproval.
“She’s smart, isn’t she?” he said with a smirk, to which the woman shook her head and went as far away from him as possible.
In the end, he ended up buying one of each kind. It had better be enough because there was no way in hell he was coming back here again.
And as soon as he got back he was draining half of the blood bags, before he asked the Slayer to give him a taste and got himself punched in the nose.
TBC
[Reviews - 127]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | 
Chapter or Story
Has been viewed 1754 times
- Text Size +
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | Chapter or Story - Text Size +
Author's Chapter Notes:
Previously: Buffy kicked Spike off the bed and then ended up (not) sleeping on the floor. We also got a glimpse of the other Spike&Buffy popping up in Sunnydale.
Beta: the awesome All4Spike
Beta: the awesome All4Spike
Chapter End Notes:
I'll admit I was unsure about this chapter, so I really hope you liked it at least a little bit. Oh, and the colours Buffy was covered in in Spike's dream wasn't just my quirkiness showing. They were there for a reason. I researched (ehm, Googled) the psychology of colours to kind of show the way Spike subconsciously perceives her. Just in case you’re as nerdy as I am, here it is in more detail:
Yellow = mind and intellect, cheerfulness, but also impatience and cowardice
Silver = femininity, mystery
Black = keeping things hidden inside, secrecy (for the way Buffy doesn’t speak out when she should, but keeps it all inside)
Golden = value, success, triumph (because she holds the weight of the world on her shoulders and does it better than she thinks she does)
Blue = in this case in relation to sadness, a broken heart
Purple = creativity (because Buffy can improvise in a fight better than anyone)
Red = passion
Yellow = mind and intellect, cheerfulness, but also impatience and cowardice
Silver = femininity, mystery
Black = keeping things hidden inside, secrecy (for the way Buffy doesn’t speak out when she should, but keeps it all inside)
Golden = value, success, triumph (because she holds the weight of the world on her shoulders and does it better than she thinks she does)
Blue = in this case in relation to sadness, a broken heart
Purple = creativity (because Buffy can improvise in a fight better than anyone)
Red = passion