Chapter Ten
Spike awoke and reached for Buffy. She was not there. He bolted upright and relaxed when he heard the shower running. He immediately grew hard. The thought of her luscious body all wet…he shuddered. She’d kill him though and she wasn’t ready for that. Yet. He’d felt her desire for him earlier and knew that she was in love with him even though she wasn’t aware of it yet.
He lay there, willing his erection to stay down when she emerged, fully dressed, her hair wet. She was smiling as she entered.
“I thought you left,” he told her.
Her smile faltered a bit. “You sleep like the dead you know,” she chuckled lightly to herself at that and he groaned at her humor. He sat up against the headboard and she ran a brush through her wet hair. He got up then and moved to sit behind her. She jumped when he took the brush from her.
“I want to do it,” he murmured and ran the brush through her hair, delighting at the scent. She smelled like him. She was covered in his scent and it delighted him to no end. He ran his fingers through her hair, fingering it.
“Spike? You’re going to tangle it after you just brushed it.”
“Uh, yeah.” He put the brush down and dropped a kiss on her shoulder. “My turn now.” He swore her cheeks grew bright red and he smiled. Good, let her be bothered as he was.
When he was dressed he joined her in the kitchen. She was standing in front of the fridge with the door open and she was slightly bent, giving him a view of her luscious bottom. He suppressed the urge to bite it with his blunt teeth and sauntered over to her.
She jumped when she realized he was close and looked at him. “I’m freaking starving.” She declared.
“Do you want to go out?”
“Spike, you can’t.” She gestured toward the shut curtains. Daylight peeked through indicating a bright sun. “It’s two in the afternoon. You can’t go out for another 3 hours at least.”
He hated this part. The part where he couldn’t take his girl out to eat because it was the middle of the day. The fact that he couldn’t enjoy the sun with her.
“Now I finally get it,” he whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“A normal boyfr—guy—could take you out. The time wouldn’t matter. A normal guy could take you out in the middle of the day with the sun beating down on him without worrying about turning to dust. I get it now. Why you’re so unsure of us.”
She looked down. She had nothing to say because that’s exactly what she had been trying to tell him. Normalcy. Normalcy dictated that her ideal boyfriend would be someone who was, well, human. Now she was mated to him. Mated to the non-human. Mated to the vampire and because of that she wouldn’t know what it meant to be out in the sun with a normal boyfriend.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I took it from you.”
“If I had a nickel for everytime you’ve apologized to me in the past few days, I’d be rich.”
“I don’t know what else to say or do.”
“There’s nothing you can say or do. I’m not destined to be normal. You’ve been trying to tell me that for a while now. You didn’t give me my super strength or give me the powers I have. You also didn’t bring demons to my city for me to kill.”
“I can see how you want it though. Because now I wish I were, normal, for you. One less burden.”
“You’re not a burden, Spike.”
“Aren’t I? I made you my mate for eternity.”
“Well, in all fairness, eternity isn’t an option. If I don’t die by a demon or vampire, I will by old age.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
She shrugged, “it’s the truth. So, maybe you should have been more careful in your rash decision to make me your mate. Should’ve chosen someone immortal like yourself.” Her tone took on a bitterness at the end of that speech and her words stung him.
“I didn’t want anyone else.”
“You never really gave yourself the chance to really figure that out, did you? Spent a century with Dru, had a few one night stands, and then bam: here I am. You’ve spent every night with me. You’ve patrolled with me, trained with me, took me out. Did you even try to be with anyone else? No. Then you up and took the choice from me. From both of us.” She paused. “You know, I think on some level, I knew. I knew eventually it would happen. That’s why I left. I wanted to play at a normal life with normal relationships for a while. I knew I couldn’t stay away forever though. Knew I eventually had to come back and face my destiny. Face being a pseudo-slayer and face you.”
He didn’t know what to say. She went to grab her jacket.
“Where are you going?” He finally found his voice.
“I’m going to get something to eat.”
“Are you coming back?”
She sighed, “I don’t know.”
“Please come back,” he pleaded.
“I’ll try,” she whispered and walked out the door.
FLASHBACK
“Spike?”
“Yeah, pet?” He asked as they walked through the cemetery. It had been quiet over the past few days, but they still kept their routine of patrolling.
“Does it hurt to be in love with someone?”
He nearly choked at her question. Why was she asking him such a question? He looked at her curious face. “What brought this on?”
“Well, Anya claims she’s in love with some guy and she says she loves him so much it hurts. I’m thinking if I’m in love with someone, it shouldn’t hurt.”
“All depends on if they return the feeling.”
“So, if it’s unrequited, it hurts. He does say he loves her, so it’s requited. Are they just nuts then?”
“Personally, I’ve always found Anya to be off her rocker.”
She laughed and hit him playfully. “Did it hurt to be in love with Dru?”
He cocked his head to the side, thoughtful. “Yes because she was unfaithful.”
“So it was unrequited.”
“Yes.”
“So that’s why it hurt.”
“Before then, before she was unfaithful it hurt then too. Nearly broke me in half to love something, someone that much. It was, at the time, the most alive I’d ever felt.”
“At the time? So you’ve felt more alive than that after that?”
He nodded. With you, he wanted to answer.
She didn’t say anything for a long while. “I don’t know if I want to be in love. I don’t want to hurt.”
“The pain comes with the pleasure. The two go hand in hand.”
“Sounds masochistic to me.” She sighed. “I hope I never fall in love.”
“Oh you will, pet. You will.”
END FLASHBACK
“I’m back,” she called out as she entered his apartment.
Wiping the tears from his eyes, Spike sat up abruptly. He had been scared she wouldn’t come back. And here she was. He stood and she entered the living room.
She pointed at him, “were you…crying?”
He pointed back at her, “you changed.”
“I stopped by Giles’. I got some stakes and supplies for tonight. Were you crying?”
He looked down.
“Why?”
“It felt like you were leaving me again.”
“I promised you I would stay,” she said softly, looking down.
“I love you so bloody much that sometimes it chokes me.”
She looked up at him, startled, and met his gaze. “I—wow.”
He chuckled, “wow?”
“Well, I don’t really know how to respond to such an intense declaration. No one has ever said that to me before. No one has ever felt like that for me before—at least to my knowledge. Has anyone for you?”
“Said or felt?”
“Both, either, or.”
“Dru, perhaps. In her soulless, demonic way.”
“Wasn’t she unfaithful?”
“Like I said, in her own soulless, demonic way.”
“Thank God you have your soul.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Why? I mean aside from the obvious reasons.”
She blushed profusely and he found it absolutely endearing. He resisted the urge to gather her up in his arms and smother her with kisses.
“I wouldn’t deal well with infidelity,” she said so softly a human wouldn’t be able to hear her. With his vampire hearing however, he heard her loud and clear.
“Does that mean—“
“I don’t know what it means right now. Just a thought that popped in my head. I don’t want to analyze it. I put it out there, laid it out on the table and that’s all I want to do with it right now. Don’t want you to pick it up and dissect it. I certainly don’t want to either. Not now. Can we just let it be for now?”
He nodded solemnly, never taking his eyes off her.
“Good. Well, sundown is in about an hour. I think we should get to work. What do you say?”
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