Take Heart 11, by dutchbuffy2305
Rating: NC-17
Thumbnail: Buffy’s friends are alive and back in her life; Spike’s chip is dead and gone. Yet those two crazy kids still can’t seem to keep their hands off each other. The sluts. All is not rainbows and puppies, however. Buffy needs time to think, while Spike gets Restless.
Timeline: After a different Primeval, BtVS 4.21;
Author's note: Big hug to the glorious Spikejones for beating ;
Author's website: http://home.planet.nl/~dutchbuffy2305;
Feedback: Yes, please, loads of it, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk
Spike lounges with studied nonchalance on a tomb and smokes a fag. He shifts a bit on his latest decorating acquisition, a gorgeous pale blue silk carpet, only slightly scorched and holey. He’s airing it out in the fresh wholesome cemetery air.
In the distance, he hears the sounds of fighting and breathless quipping, signaling the advent of the Slayer. She’s been avoiding him for more than a week, and in a city as small as Sunnydale, that takes a lot of hard work. When they were still best enemies, he’d bump into her all the bloody time, generally when trying hardest to elude her. The lay of the land dictates that the demons will flee in his general direction. From the sheer volume of sound, there are a lot of them and so he can be fairly sure that there will be some left when the Slayer and the slayees arrive here. It’s imperative that he’s the immovable object and that the Slayer accidentally encounters him. He's got his pride. Not going to stalk the Slayer. He suspects that she’s thinking the exact same thing, and that’s why they haven’t run into each other.
What he can’t understand is how he’s come to this. It seems like only moments ago that he was swatting the Slayer’s unwanted attentions off, and now he’s pining for her like a lovesick brat. No amount of decorating his crypt with candles and lush carpets has made his heart comfortable. He needs her and why can’t he have her? All seemed well. He knows there’s something he's missing, some essential concept he hasn’t grasped, or he’d know quite well why she was angry. He just needs another chance to explain himself, to convince her he’s the man for her, whatever he did wrong the other night.
A resounding crash sounds just behind the crypt he’s resting in front of. Not long now. The air pressure on the back of his neck increases and he ducks just in time to avoid the six-hundred pound Chirago demon hurtling down a mere two feet from his tomb, smashing a deep hole in the soft turf. He’s ready to bash it to hell, but alas, it’s already dead.
The spotlight of the Slayers’ gaze lights on his cheek and he turns languidly. She’s holding off three of the smelly giants, but it seems like double that amount because they have four arms and they can use their tails like clubs.
“Need a hand, Slayer?” he drawls and puts out his fag on the O of Beloved Husband.
“Nah, I’m fine,” she Slayer pants. “It’s like a physics lesson, all action and reaction-y. You look like you could use a good workout, though. Have you been putting on weight?”
“What?” Spike squeaks before he realizes she’s baiting him. Well, no wonder it took him a moment to get it. She’s never ever kidded him like this before. Makes a nice change from kicking out and sudden distrust.
He bends backwards to avoid a weighted tail and in the meantime picks up the sword that he’s thoughtfully brought along. He leans on it, watching Buffy fend off the twelve arms and three tails, waiting for a good moment to chip in. One fraction of a second before a fat tail clubs Buffy in the head he hacks it off and dances away to avoid the spurting chartreuse gore.
Realizing that she almost got killed heats up his blood and he can’t stay out of the fight any longer. He hurtles himself bodily between Buffy and the biggest lizard and proceeds to kick its scaly arse.
“May I cut in?” he pants politely.
“Newsflash: you already did. What is with you guys that you always go for the biggest? Out of the way, this one’s mine. Go have fun with the small one on the left.”
The small one on the left, a tiny creature of no more than 500 pounds sopping wet, roars in indignation at his belittlement and tries to crush Spike between its not-so delicate paws. Spike’s head is ringing and his vision cloudy, but he chops off one of the thick stumpy legs, then the next, so he can reach the head and the neck. He’s now crowded in too close to use the sword so he goes in with bare fists. The power of his blow sinks his arm into the yellow eyeball up to the elbow. The beast bellows against his midriff and gnaws on his duster. Spike shouts out his battle roar and bites off its nose while he tries to free his hand. He plunges in the other arm and roots around hard, hoping he’s pulverizing the demon’s little gray cells.
Spike feels the slackening of the massive muscles crushing him and descends slowly to the ground, still encircled in the demon’s embrace.
“Spike, this is no time to be macking on strange demons!” Buffy yells at him.
The glee in her voice spurs him onto action. Taunting him, eh? He’ll show her macking! He spits out the demon’s nose, which has left a very nasty taste in his mouth, a bit like fresh Christmas pudding. It takes a lot of effort to wrench his arms from the eye sockets and Buffy comes over to help him.
She braces her stylish little snakeskin boot on the slippery scaly thigh and heaves him off. Spike falls backwards on top of her and hears her breath go out of her with a woof.
“Right attitude, Slayer. Wrong position.”
Buffy tweaks his ass and Spike shoots three feet in the air from sheer surprise. She stands grinning at him, hands on her hips, filthy from top to toe with the greenish demon blood and some of her own, and possible a dash or two of mud.
“God, you’re a mess, Slayer,” he says and removes a dab of mud from her nose.
“You smell, Spike. Who knew demon brains were that stinky? And you’re hair’s a really revolting green.”
She’s standing extremely close while she’s pointing out all that is loathsome about him and he can feel the heat coming off her in waves. Her exertion has given her cheeks color and a slight sheen of ladylike sweat. Spike’s struck with helpless love for this wonderful being who just killed dinosaur descendants with her bare hands.
“Crowing victory over some of my neighbors, Slayer? Not very nice.”
“Nice, huh ? I can do nice,” she says and yanks him closer by his belt.
Their respective garnishings of gore meet with squishy sounds and renewed smell-attacks and Spike’s nose is hard pushed to find Buffy’s own scent beneath the mingled stenches.
“Disgusting,” he murmurs.
“The stink is enough to make a girl faint,” she mumbles back against his mouth and he can only hope she doesn’t get the aftertaste of demon nose.
They aren’t really kissing; it’s more like a meeting of two grins. Spike knows she’s feeling exactly as he does, flushed and exhilarated by the fight and the danger. He molds his hands around her tightly jeaned arse and pulls her closer.
“Gonna roll around in the filth with you,” he growls theatrically and her giggle fills him with triumph. That’s better. He can make her happy; this is just what she needs. It’s just what he needs, they’re so perfectly matched.
He tugs at her blouse impatiently and a tiny button jumps off into the night.
“No, Spike, my top, don’t,” Buffy squeals but Spike knows she doesn’t mean it, not really.
Something hard whacks him on the back of his head, not hard enough to stun him but bloody painful.
“Xander! It’s not what you think, don’t hurt him,” the Slayer says quickly.
Spike turns and catches Harris’ arm just as he prepares for another lame thwap with his two-by-four.
“What the hell are you doing that for?” Spike demands. “Are you blind? I was kissing Buffy, not killing her.”
His fingers come away bloody from the tender place on the back of his head. He licks it off, frowning at Harris.
“You made me bleed, you wanker. I paid good money for that blood, I’ll have you know.”
Buffy looks faintly sickened - at Harris’s presumption, Spike hopes. When she withdraws a little from him his hopes sink. If Buffy does have a failing, it’s caring so much about what her stupid mates think. She lets go of him and walks up to Xander. Damn the bloody woman for leaving him in the middle of a passionate embrace that was really going places. She’s the one who started all this, why is she going all skittish on him?
“Xander, are you okay? It looked like they hurt you pretty hard.”
Xander doesn’t look particularly mollified by her sweetly concerned words. “You didn’t come back for me,” he says. “You were smooching Dead Boy. Is this turning into a thing, Buff? A repeat of the Angel thing?”
“No, there’s no thing. No repeats of anything,” Buffy says quickly, and although it’s too dark to see colors well, her complexion deepens in a shamed blush.
Spike crosses his arms, trying to contain his sudden spasm of hurt. He should be feeling glorious, returning to his Big Bad status, drinking blood and fighting anyone he chooses and instead here she is making him feel low and worthless.
“There’s no thing?” he says, sarcastically making air quotes. “So when you kiss a guy that means nothing? And when you fuck a guy that also means zilch? And when you tell him you love him that means nada? And….”
“I get the point, Spike. We’ll talk later, okay? I have to get Xander home.”
“Maybe I was a better warrior before,” Xander says when he and Buffy move away from the fuming Spike. “I think I was.”
Buffy throws a loaded look over her shoulder to Spike, but he can’t decipher her meaning. He’s sure that she’d have preferred to stay with him, so why does she go with Harris? Is it one of those human things he can’t fathom? Damn her. He kicks the headstone hard and the satisfaction of seeing it crack exactly between Beloved and Husband is great, although he’s probably broken several toes.
Why can’t it just be simple? He knows in his bones that she really really likes him, loves him probably, but things keep going pear-shaped. It’s not fair. Anyway, he’s answered part of his own question about what he really does want with Buffy. It’s this. Fighting together. They make such a brilliant team, it’s more than fun, there’s scorchingly hot shagging afterwards, and it’s probably useful to Buffy as well.
*
The Bronze is easy to get into, for once. It must be Tuesdays. Spike scents the Slayer the moment he steps into the murky main room, but a quick visual survey doesn’t show her location. Never mind. It’s best he pretends he doesn’t know she’s there anyway. She’d go all torn two ways by duty and stuff, and it’s not as if he has an answer. She knows he's here, she can come to him if she wants, end of story.
He hunches over the bar as he orders a double Scotch, determinedly looking away into a dark corner where Buffy’s not. His target is approaching from the South-southwesterly direction. Rain tomorrow. Beneath the sultry perfume she’s wearing there’s vintage Buffy, upbeat and determined, no trace of depression or the briny tang of tears.
“Hey, Spike,” she says, and he tells himself he detects a tiny tremor.
“Slayer,” he says with a curt nod in her general direction, never taking his eyes off his drink.
She bites her lip but hoists her tiny person on the barstool next to him.
“Have you been okay?” she asks.
Spike turns his face full to hers and immediately realizes his mistake. In this light, her eyes are the same color as the amber liquid in his glass and he falls in head first in the deep dark wells of her pupils. All his cool and determination to out-tough her leave the building via the nearest exit. He can feel her proximity in his bones, in his blood, all rushing yearningly towards her.
“Guh,” he says and his hand knocks over his Scotch, splattering her pink silk lap with a great wet patch.
Buffy doesn’t move an inch and looks at him unflinchingly. She puts his hand over his chittering one and the warmth flooding out from it silences him further.
There would be no point in saying something snarky right now, would there? He could maybe mention her stupid shampoo-advert hair?
“Dance?“ she says and lays her other hand flat on his heart.
Fear petrifies Spike for a dizzying moment as her gesture reminds him of the scary dreams he’s been having all week, but he doesn’t go up in flame and so he follows her to the dance floor. He can no more deny her then he could in the dream.
She lays the length of her body against his and sways in tune to the music that he hasn’t even noticed until now. A swoony ballad about love. Buffy sighs and he tightens his arms. Spike closes his eyes in surrender, but snaps them open in a panic that there will be some of his erstwhile cronies working the herd. How lowering to be discovered snogging the Slayer. But no, he could always pretend to be prepping her for the kill, marinating her as it were.
Suddenly he knows another part of the answer of the question that’s been plaguing him all week. What does he want? Well, he wants this. Squiring Buffy on the dance-floor, being seen as her boyfriend. Go out and have fun together, relax her. Openly. She not afraid of her human pals, he not ashamed for his demon mates.
He can’t maintain this fake vigilance, not when Buffy’s lulling him into happiness with her warm body pressed close to him, the scent of her hair rising to his nose and her little hands in his back pockets. Heaven.
When the next song begins, Spike dares trust his voice again.
“So how you been, Slayer?”
The sigh that she utters gives him plenty of information.
“I don’t know, Spike. It’s all kind of hard. Now that everything’s normal again I miss Mom more than ever.”
“Yeah.”
“And I’m worried about Will and Xander. They seem…off. Let’s go up to them in a minute, okay? You can see for yourself. But not yet.”
Spike doesn’t know how to react. She’s blithely telling him her problems and her worries as if all is well between them. As if they are friends.
“So you’re not mad at me anymore? About last week?” he asks. He has to hear her say it.
“Noo,” she says and threads her arms around his neck. It feels as if she’s even closer to him than a minute ago. “You’re just…you can’t help it. You’re like morally challenged.”
This is not what Spike wants to hear. Putting it like that diminishes him, like he’s some kind of subhuman creature who’ll never know any better.
“If you’d explain things to me,” he says evenly, but inside he’s churning, “instead of expecting me to know everything, we wouldn’t have misunderstandings like that.”
“Spike, those are the basics. If you don’t even get…” She breaks off and lays a finger on his lips. ”Let's not do this now, okay?”
His desire to do anything to please her terrifies him. He’s nodded before he can even think it through, and they dance on. He takes her finger between his teeth and worries it lightly.
She smiles up at him, eyes dancing and he can’t stop himself, he has to kiss her. They drift over to the stairwell, where there’s relative darkness and other quietly macking couples and they kiss and kiss, tumbling headlong down the precipice until Buffy breaks loose, gasping.
Spike tries to calm down. This is nice, but what does it mean? He’ll be damned if he’ll let himself be used for kissing and dancing and fucking and not have it mean enough. Buffy needs to get her lines untangled, and if she won’t do that, he’ll just have to cut through the knot.
“Buffy, we need to talk. What does this mean? Am I your boyfriend or not?”
Buffy’s face shutters. “Do we really have to give it a name?”
“Yes. We do,” Spike says and holds on firmly when she tries to squirm out of his grasp.
For a moment, she looks back stormily, but then she relents and settles back onto his shoulder.
“We are something, Spike. We really are, I just don’t know exactly what. And last week didn't help, with Willow collecting DNA samples from everyone, you know, like hair and blood and saliva. And Xander staring at these old photo-albums, trying to prove to himself that he remembered them all. They’re still so wigged by the whole resurrection thing. It’s like they believe they’ve come back wrong.”
She shudders theatrically.
“Maybe they did, love,” Spike says. “Have you seen old Rupes lately?”
“Yeah. Or well, no. He phoned up saying he was gonna come over and ‘sort’ my finances, which would be way cool, because Buffy and money that’s not about to spent in the mall? Unmixy things. But he never showed up. Spike, do you think there really is something wrong with them?”
A feeling of dread settles in his stomach. Not the spell again. But he holds her eyes and nods. He’ll help her in this, of course he will, in spite of his serious misgivings. Fingers crossed that this is just something psychological, for what could they possibly do if there really was something wrong with the damn Scoobies?
Buffy yawns and snuggles deeper into him. “I hope it’s not tied into the dreams I’ve been having. Scary, scary dreams. I’m this naked primitive woman, painted all over in white, and I keep killing you. Staking you, ripping your head off, burning you.”
“Burning me?” Spike says with a sinking feeling. Oh no. This must be the spell.
“Yeah, I rip your heart out with both of my hands, and then with my other hands…hands plural, that is. I set you on fire. Big with the ew, huh?”
“I’ll say,” Spike says with feeling. “Been having the same kind of dream, Buff. We’ve done something, disturbed something or other.”
“Ya think?”
Their eyes meet and he knows what she’s thinking. Trouble. Danger. He feels a kind of joy at the edge of his brain, something that exults in their working together again but something else is nagging at him. Buffy wants to pull him over to her friends but he holds her back.
“What have your mates been telling you about me, love?”
Buffy bites her lip.
“Been warning you off, haven’t they? Didn’t want to see me all week, but now you’re troubled about them, so you call in the evil undead to help you out. Is that it?”
She says nothing but has the grace to look faintly ashamed. Spike tries to swallow away his disappointment, turning the sweetness of the past moments into gall.
“You come to me when you need me, and then you discard me like a used condom. Very nice, Slayer. Not what your mum taught you. She was a real lady,” he says and his voice comes out rough and hurt. Bugger. Why can’t he ever hide his feelings?
He turns away and shoulders his way outside, through the throng of blithely drunk, sweet smelling children swaying to the music. Outside, he first lights a fag, his hands trembling, before he can go on. He leans against the wall in a dark spot, still close to the entrance and fights with himself about what to do. Go back in, do what she wants? It’s embarrassing to be dancing to a woman’s tunes once again, but what would be the point of running away? The troubles with the Scoobies won’t go away on their own and he can’t let Buffy muddle on all by herself.
He’s just grinding the butt out with his boot, shrugging the duster in place and preparing to go back in, when Buffy comes barreling into him.
“Don’t run away like that,” she says angrily into his duster, squeezing his ribs until they creak.
Spike’s hands hover in the air for a few moments, undecided, and then land on her hair.
“I’m sorry,” Buffy says. “You know I---I feel for you, don’t you?”
“I love you,” he says back. It’s not quite the same, of course, but she won’t allow herself to express it, he just knows that.
“I’m just so tired, and there’s something wrong with my friends and I have to make all these decisions...”
“Why is it so hard, Buff? I could help you, share your work, but if you shut me out...”
She lifts her head and stares at him with burning, somber eyes. “Spike, there’s more to loving someone than having sex with them and enjoying a good fight together.”
There’s this big creature in his throat preventing the words coming out naturally. “Yeah, sure there is. There’s waking up together, going out, having fun.”
“It’s not enough. You have to, like, see the world the same way.”
That throws him for a second, but just a second. “Don’t know if I can see the world the same way, Buffy. But I can live in it like you do. S’almost the same.” He ticks the points off one by one, using his fingers. ”I don’t kill people, I don’t slag off your friends, and I'll fight whoever you tell me to fight, even if I have nothing against them. That’s right, innit?”
Buffy sighs against his cheek. “It’s a start, Spike.”
She sounds tired, though. He doesn’t like the feeling of having failed her again. Can't she be more specific about what she wants him to do?
She kisses him briefly on the lips and tugs at his hand. “Come. I need your help. You tell me what you think of Willow and Xander.”
Spike gathers his flagging wits and trudges after her. Willow and Xander have barricaded themselves behind one of the round tables the Bronze is dotted with and stare silently at the dancing crowd.
“Hey, guys,” Buffy says with false brightness.
Spike perks up infinitesimally. Her voice sounded more sincere than that when she greeted him.
“Spike,” Xander says guardedly, with a sidelong look at Buffy.
Even better. Xander is checking his responses, most likely because Buffy has told Xander to treat Spike well. Spike leans on the table and nods back to the boy and Willow. They’re both looking haggard, their faces pasty with black circles under the eyes. Willow is picking at her cuticles with single minded attention, hardly bothering to look up and greet him, but that’s s not necessarily a sign of madness.
Buffy’s voice is gentle but firm. “Xander, tell Spike why you think there’s something wrong with you?”
Xander fidgets with the hem of his check shirt like a shy toddler. The shirt is filthy and his hair is unkempt, more so than normal Xander dishevelment.
“Why does he have to know, Buffy? Don’t you think it’s humiliating enough that I’ve been in his head, Now you want me to admit that I can still feel Spike cooties floating around?”
Spike stares at him without speaking. Yeah, right, like bits of Spike in someone’s head make them bite their nails and forget about personal hygiene, an issue that is becoming more prevalent the longer he stands close to the boy. No way.
“Buffy, he’s looking at me.”
“Xander…” Buffy sighs. “I asked him to check you out, and I mean that in a completely non-boy-checks-out- boy way. Don’t make this harder.”
Xander hitches up his pants.
“I know that little Spike-azoids are running around in my head, multiplying and sending out slimy tentacles like poisonous toadstools….” He takes in Willow’s and Buffy’s horrified faces and resumes more quietly, “I’ve been losing weight. I have no appetite, and I’ve tried all my favorite foods. I can’t remember the name of the episode where Spock goes atavistic and falls in love…”
“'Ey, that one’s easy,” Spike says, “even I know that. It’s…”
Someone kicks him sharply under the table. He stops speaking, annoyed by the interruption.
“It’s called…”
Another sharp kick.
“Buffy, Xander’s kicking me. Can I hit him back?” he complains.
Buffy bangs her head on the table. ”Spike, shut up and listen to Xander,” she says with her head in her hands.
Oh. Buffy kicked him. Right, it’s her secret way of communicating with him while they interrogate Xander. Still, not knowing the name of a Star Trek episode doesn’t mean that there’s Spike flotsam in Xander’s head, taking him over as ninja warriors would take a Japanese fortress in the dark. He imagines the blood gushing out of arteries and licks his lips absentmindedly. And hey, if it’s true, there could be miniature Buffies nestling in his head, and bits of him in hers. He wouldn’t mind that. It’s even sexy in an almost Alien-like, disturbingly erotic way. He imagines a little Buffy jumping fully grown from his breastbone. He’d own that one. Could make it do anything he wanted, when and where he wanted it.
Again a kick against his now tender shins.
“Spike?”
Spike comes back to earth guiltily and reevaluates his thought with Buffy’s impatient, penetrating looks on his face. He likes the real one better. More of a surprise that way.
“Yes, love?”
Buffy gives him a suspicious look at this meek rejoinder but lets it go. “What do you think? After-effects of the spell?”
Spike tries to read from her face what his answer should be, because in reality he doesn’t have a clue. He chooses prevarication.
“Can’t tell yet,” he says, proud to be partially truthful. At least he thinks telling the truth is important to Buffy. He's not quite sure what the right thing would be under these circumstances. Maybe Buffy wants him to lie to spare Xander’s feelings? “Let’s hear Red tell her story, first.”
Buffy gives a tiny nod, so he must have done something right. Spike rubs his temples. This guessing game is so much like hard work it’s giving him a headache. He won't be able to keep this up for long.
Willow rolls a lock of hair tightly around one finger and then unrolls it again, keeping her head tilted while she does it. It makes her look faintly demented.
“I’ve been having dreams.”
Buffy’s eyes meet Spike and he feels a tiny jolt travel through him. Please, no. But he can’t help noticing that Xander sits up straighter and gives Willow his complete attention. Ah. Xander has not been telling all. He opens up his mouth to disclose this certainty to Buffy but he can see on her face he’s going to get another kick.
“I’m on it, Buffy, No more kicking, or I’ll be kicking back, and may I remind you of the steel caps Doc Marten puts in his boots?”
“Spike!” she says reproachfully, but he’s had it with pretending to be all sensitive and caring. Tires a man out more quickly than ten rounds of sex.
“Sec!” he says to Willow and orders himself a drink at the bar. A double Scotch later he fees better equipped to listen to more whining. The cadences of human voices, with the counter-beat of their hearts below always make him both hungry and cranky. He’ll get used to it, no doubt, which is pretty damn sad all by itself.
“Go on, Rosenberg. Tell us your tale of woe.”
Buffy frowns at him, but she’ll have to get used to not having a saint for a boyfriend.
“I dreamed I was standing in front of the blackboard in my old clothes,” Willow says in a dramatic whisper.
Her old clothes were worse than these? Spike takes in the violently patterned shirt, bearing the picture of an overly cute cartoon character and clashing with the long droopy skirt. There’s no accounting for tastes. If only all these things were a couple of sizes smaller, she’d look better. And if the colors matched. And if there wasn’t so much color.
He shakes his head and forces himself to listen.
“I was on the stage, trying to find someone, Buffy, I think you, but then you were someone else, and Spike was carrying you away on his back, in black and white. And then there were blank bits, like a part of the movie had been erased. I was writing something on white paper but it wasn’t right. It was all very, very scary. And I think in the end I died.”
“I can hear your heartbeat loud and clear, Red,” Spike says to reassure her. He’s thinking rapidly, though. There are distinct familiarities to his own dreams as well as Buffy’s.
“Spike, what do you think?”
“The fact that we’ve all been dreaming the same things has to mean something,” Spike says reluctantly. Xander throws him a startled and guilty look.
“We need to know more. D’you have some kind of mojo in mind, Will?” Buffy says.
“More magic, Buffy or Xander? Whoever said the previous line?” Willow says doubtfully. “We’re already in over our heads. I mean. Look at us. Do you want to be all glowy eyed and scary again, maybe make things even worse?”
“I think we need to look into it, Will,” Buffy says. “We’ll go to Giles and together we’ll do the research and we’ll discover what’s wrong with us. We’re not scared, are we Spike?’
“Only sensible to be wary of magic,” Spike says thoughtlessly and only discovers this was the wrong thing to say when Buffy flays him with a look.
She always says ‘we’ when she wants to talk him into something he probably won't like, Spike registers. And absolutely, he is reluctant to give himself over to more magicks, especially to people who really don’t know the extent of the powers they’re dealing with. The only reason he helped Buffy in the beginning was because she threatened his life.
Buffy face changes into beseeching and he caves instantly. Of course. The dreams could be important. He nods. Sealing his doom, most likely, but he’s rewarded with her closeness and their shared purpose.
“I don’t know, Buffy,” Xander says. “I didn’t order any vampires, and I don’t trust them, even if they keep showing me cheese.”
“Thought you didn’t dream, Harris?” Spike says. He knew it.
“It wasn’t about you, Spike,” Xander says. “It never is. You were just a symbol for, I don’t know, issues. Right, Willow? Dreams are just nature’s way of saying ‘who needs a psychiatrist when you can sleep your symbolic vampires away.’”
“The jury’s still out on that one, Xander,” Willow says, her eyes distant. “There was cheese in my dream. Sliced cheese.”
Spike feels a tremor run through Buffy’s thigh.
“You had cheese as well, love?”
“I was toasting the cheese, and it fell into the fire and got all burned.”
A shiver of premonition chills Spike’s neck. Just a meaningless symbol, he tells himself. Cheese. Now if it were horses running, or fountains, he’d know what to make of those symbols…
*
Outside the Bronze, Spike nods at the Slayer. “Night, love.”
“Spike, wait.”
He waits.
Buffy tucks her hand into the crook of his arm and tilts her head. Cute. “Walk me home?”
Spike feels a repeat of the last time coming on.
“What are we gonna do, make with the happies, I get kicked in the head and have to remain housebound all day? Why don’t you walk me home?” he suggests.
“Last time you kicked me out,” Buffy rejoins.
“No, last time you told me never to come back,” Spike says.
They stare at one another. Mexican stand off.
“I’ve been redecorating?” Spike says. “It’s quite posh now.”
Buffy relents.
At first she just walks silently beside him, but soon enough her hand snakes into Spike’s back pocket. He slings his arm around her shoulders, like a proud teen, showing all the world she’s his. He's damn lucky she's doing this, he reckons; he'd have thought she'd want to take her shell-shocked mates home. He's not going to suggest this, though. There's limits to his goodness.
It's at times like these, when they're in motion, that they're most in harmony. Walking, dancing, fighting and fucking, that's the natural habitat of their relationship. Stand still, talk, and it goes straight to hell. Spike wishes that there was a way around this, because he longs for moments of peace with her, and not just while she's asleep.
He lets go of her arm to open the door of the crypt for her.
"Welcome to my home, Buffy."
Buffy raises her eyebrows at his gallantry, but for her that's like graciously accepting. She'll get there. She halts abruptly when she's inside the door, making him bump into her. Not that he minds.
"Wow, Spike, you've got furniture. How did you?"
She walks up to his ugly comfy chair and trails her hand over it, then touches the TV and the refrigerator.
"Do they work? How did you get electricity in here?"
"Contacts," Spike says proudly. "There's this demon can get you juice anywhere, 's long as you pay."
"So you had the money for it?" Buffy says, and for one heart-stoppingly frozen moment Spike fears that his whole cocaine-dealing, money-stealing career is going to come to light, but she's spotted his biggest clump of candles and is walking up to them.
"Love the candles. But you could have had lamps, right, if you have the fridge?"
"Prefer candles or gas, myself," Spike says, and lights them for her.
She smiles, and she's so beautiful and sweet in the forgiving candlelight that Spike would have given up all his money and guns just to have that look now and then. But he restrains himself just in time, because if she knew, she wouldn't smile but frown.
"Go look at the downstairs, Buffy. I like that best!" he says, and shows her the trapdoor hidden behind the sarcophagus.
"I know where it is, Spike. I was in here before, remember? I was a little the worse for wear, I guess, but I do remember I was in here."
Spike goes first, just for the pleasure of seeing her curvy bum descend right in front of his nose.
Buffy steps down and looks round. Spike hastens to light some of his dozens of candles here too.
"It's great, Spike. It really is. The carpets, and the candles…It's like Aladdin's cave or something."
She doesn’t mention his new, better bed and the bedding of rich creamy cotton sateen, and studiously avoids looking at it. Spike reckons he'd better not count on getting any tonight.
He walks up to her and draws her close.
“It's for you, Buffy. Didn't think you'd come and visit in a bare, damp cave. This is homey, innit?"
"You actually have a talent for this, Spike. Maybe you could become a demon decorator?"
"Yeah, right, and maybe I could start wearing shirts like Lawrence Lewellyn-Bowen, too. Fat chance, love."
Spike gently bumps her mouth with his lips. He wants to be tender and calm, to be enjoying gentle kisses, but Buffy's body careens into overdrive the moment his tongue touches hers. It’s hard to keep his head in the maelstrom of her rushing blood and galloping heartbeat. The undertow tugs at him with ferocious hands, threatening to devour and drown them both.
Spike's hands tremble on her hips but he keeps them there, not roving up under her clothes as he wants to. Buffy's hands alight desperately on his back, his hips, his neck, nowhere finding a satisfactory landing place. How can he keep things slow when she moves him like this?
Just when he decides to go for it she breaks away from him and starts wandering around the bedroom again, touching and admiring everything but the bed. Her heart and temperature show no signs of cooling down. Spike doesn’t know what to do, and he’s getting to hate that feeling. He’s stuck in between his instincts and his reasoning and he can trust neither of them. His gut is telling him to tackle her, throw her on the bed and pound away at her until she screams, reason tells him she wants space to think. Which one’s right? Maybe her mind and heart are doing the same king of split, which in both cases will have unpleasant consequences somewhere in the middle regions of their bodies.
Finally, Buffy stands near the bed and strokes her hand hesitantly over the smooth satin weave of the cotton. Spike’s got better taste than she does, if he says so himself she’s heavily into not quite right florals. Could be Joyce, though.
Buffy takes a deep breath and Spike’s heart leaps in his throat. She’s decided, he thinks dizzily, but then she puts her hands on his forearms.
“I better get going, Spike. I’ll see you tomorrow at Giles’, okay?”
She kisses him briefly.
Again she’s walking away from him, and again Spike is sure she’d rather stay. Last time he didn’t act, now he will. There’s no way of knowing which one’s the right decision.
“Buffy. Stay,” he says hoarsely and hauls her into his embrace.
She rubs his neck with her warm hand and he rests his forehead against hers, almost faint with longing and love. She smells so sweetly of herself, her body rushing with blood like a little brook dancing over stones.
“Soon,” Buffy promises. “I don’t know….I have to think, Spike. I have to be sure.”
She breaks loose and climbs up the ladder quickly, hastening away from the temptation he presents. Why doesn’t she give in? He knows he can make her happy. Why would she choose a lonely night over him? Baffling.
TBC
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