Chapter Thirty
It seemed impossible to imagine he’d ever had a good night’s sleep without Buffy at his side—without her warming his skin, her soft breaths fanning his lips, the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest brushing against him. He’d only had her with him for three days, yet already he didn’t know how he’d ever lived without knowing how soft her bare flesh felt beneath his hands, or how perfectly her body curved into his. But he had her now.
For the moment.
She was so far removed from the woman she’d once been, and how she would reconcile her growth with a world that hadn’t aged left him concerned. One way or another, he would find a way out—if he’d buggered everything up by making a promise, he’d at least have the stones to keep his word. And when he did, when they emerged from this realm into the one where her friends waited, he didn’t know what to expect. The Buffy who had jumped and the Buffy who slept in his arms were different women. Buffy had aged emotionally, wizened beyond even his understanding, and the world she fought to see again had not.
Spike understood a person’s capacity for change; he’d experienced it, tasted it, and felt it stretch him into someone else under Buffy’s guiding light. And yet for all his talk, matching knowledge to what he saw remained elusive. The Buffy he’d fallen in love with hadn’t been so rational and understanding, and while he cherished what she’d become, a large part of him remained blockaded by fears he couldn’t explain. She’d told him things very rarely reverted back to the way they’d once been, and she stood correct. Yet he feared it all the same.
He wasn’t naïve; when they returned, tension between himself and the Scoobies would likely remain exactly as it always had. He could have whisked her back in seconds and it wouldn’t matter a lick, because he was a vampire and that was just the way it was. And that was fine. Spike didn’t need their approval anymore than he needed a suntan; the new Buffy, however, needed her friends, and her friends had a knack for rejecting any sort of change.
Buffy was not the woman she’d once been. She hadn’t left that girl behind, but she had grown in ways only the aged could identify. She’d been bright before, but now she shone, and his love for her grew exponentially with every breath he stole. Granted, he’d thought her perfect before, but he’d been wrong. Perfect was too limiting; perfect didn’t allow room for growth, and this was a woman who needed growth, a woman whose experience compiled upon itself and transformed into a thing of unimaginable beauty.
A woman who slept at his side, naked in his arms. He had her skin pressed to his, one of her legs hooked around his. She slept, and he was the one who got to hold her.
She wanted to say she loved him, but she hadn’t. That was all right. He hoped she wouldn’t. In Hell, everything felt falsified.
He supposed he would only believe her when they stood on the surface, when the battle was behind them and she didn’t need him for companionship any longer. He’d want the words then.
Not a moment sooner.
*~*~*
Once upon a time, it would have taken a good walloping or a loud shriek to stir him from sleep. Dru could whisper all she liked, but nothing worked quite as well as the feel of her nails burrowing into his skin or her piercing wail shaking the walls. Strange the things he remembered when sucked into the gray area between sleep and reality. Dru was far behind him, a memory cast aside, a stepping stone in the journey which had led him to the place where he now slept. Yet it was where his mind led him when the sound broke through the quiet still of night, only to be shoved aside the second his eyes flew open.
“Buffy?”
She was curled onto her side, shaking hard and practically clawing her way through the floor. “No…”
Spike bolted upright, curling a hand around her shoulder. “Buffy! Buffy, it’s—”
“No.” She swatted at him. “No! No, please…”
“God…Buffy, wake up. Wake up, sweetheart.”
“Don’t leave! You can’t leave!”
“You need to wake up. You’re dreaming, love. You’re—”
Her eyes soared open, fought through the darkness before finally latching onto his, and before he knew what was happening she’d launched her naked body into his arms, pulling him into the fiercest embrace he’d ever known. “Oh God,” she gasped. “Oh God, you’re here. You’re really here.”
“Of course I am, love.”
“But you were gone.”
Spike exhaled deeply, pulling her into his lap completely. This was familiar—this he could handle. Caring for the women in his life had always been second nature to him…he just wasn’t used to the woman needing care coming in a Buffy package, even now. Even after everything they’d been through, everything he’d seen and done, every step they’d taken together to get where they were. She was the epitome of strength and resilience; he’d never known anything to best her. It was one of the reasons he loved her so much.
“Not gone,” he murmured, thumb rubbing away a tear. “Right here. It was a nightmare, love, that’s all.”
She shook her head hard. “It felt so real.”
“It wasn’t.”
“But it could be.” She sniffed and pulled away, wiping her eyes. “It could be. Don’t you…I could wake up any day and you’d be gone.”
“I’ve told you, that’ll never happen.”
“You can’t know that. This world isn’t ours. It’s—”
“I got here. Not going anywhere.” He palmed her cheek and kissed her tearstained lips. “We’ve been over this, yeah? Rip me away, I come back. Bad bloody penny, love. You’ll never get rid of me. Thought you’d’ve learned that by now.”
Buffy met his eyes and conceded a small grin, though there was little feeling behind it. “It just seemed so real,” she whispered.
“Could be because this place is a bloody nightmare already. Yours, point of fact.”
“That might have something to do with it.” She licked her lips, her gaze breaking away, a long shudder ripping through her body. “I felt so lost.”
“You’re not.”
“Yes, I am. We both are, and we don’t know if we’ll get out.”
Spike grabbed her chin, forcing her eyes to his. “I know,” he said firmly. “Eternity’s a long bloody time, and where there’s an in there’s an out. We’ll find it.”
“And if they take you away before then?”
“We’ll find it.”
“What happens if we don’t?”
“Not an issue.”
Her eyes narrowed in the patented Summers look he knew so well. “Spike, get serious. We might never get out of here…and if we do, it won’t be tomorrow. We could be here for…well, I would say years but it’s already been that and—”
“Buffy.”
“I ramble when I’m nervous, and right now, I’m well past nervous. I’m terrified. The nightmare—”
“Was a nightmare. Nothing else.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. I’m not going anywhere.”
“And if we’re here forever?”
“We won’t be. Can’t keep me down, love.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Even so, I’d figure it doesn’t matter too much. I just know I’m not going quietly into that good night without throwin’ down for a brawl.”
The shadows playing across her face began to draw away, though not as quickly as he would have liked. “And what happens until then?” she asked softly.
“Well,” Spike replied slowly, shoving a hand through his hair. “Way I see it, we start combing the town for exits during the day.”
“And at night?”
“Pork recipes, of course.”
Buffy’s nose wrinkled. “Pork recipes?”
“Well, we might be here for a while. Figure it can’t hurt to experiment a bit with what we got.” He offered a small smile but it died just as easily. “I mean it, sweetheart. Every bit. Larry and company decide to toss me out and I’ll find another way in. Doesn’t matter if it takes one year or a thousand.”
She smiled humorlessly. “Maybe not to you…I’ve already had my fill.”
“Yeah, well, that’s why I intend to have you sleeping in your very own beddy-by before they think to check up on us.” His eyes dropped to her lips, his fingers wandering across her cheek. “At least that’s the plan.”
“The plan, huh?”
He nodded, eyes still fastened on her mouth. “Until then, I’m happy just to sleep beside you.”
“Sleep…”
“And…other things…”
He’d always told himself if he was lucky enough to get close enough to touch her like this, experience her like this, he would savor every minute, every second, every flash of whatever sparked between them. And in his own way, he could visualize every move, but he wasn’t used to her lips nearing his or the gentle wonderment that embodied her kisses. How warm she was, how tender, how alive…
How perfect her tongue felt when it caressed his. How her precious little whimpers lit his insides with fire that burned too sweetly to quench. How he’d traveled miles and sat through years of emptiness to touch something so perfect. Now he was here—here with her soft kisses and her warm eyes, her words that were entirely her own but somehow still fit the mold of the dreams he’d so often entertained. It was almost a dream but somehow maintained reality, and it was his.
All his.
“All mine,” Spike murmured, his hands settling on her arms and pulling her closer to him. Her lips whispered against his, squeezing his still heart. “Mine…Buffy…”
“Yes…”
The world shifted so effortlessly when she touched him. Time and space became meaningless; how it was he could be sitting with her, stroking her cheeks as she made love to his mouth with hers to shifting effortlessly so he lay between her legs. The heat emanating from her center nearly ripped his skin off the bone, but the burn felt so good he didn’t think to protest. She enveloped him, embraced him, made him more than what he was with every touch.
“Spike…”
God, he loved the way she said his name. How she took such a violent syllable and made it sound like poetry.
“You’re slick,” he replied, hips jerking forward, his cock sliding rhythmically between her wet pussy lips. “Already, precious?”
Her teeth found his earlobe and tugged. “Who needs foreplay?” she asked softly, her hands traveling down his torso until she had his ass cradled in her palms. “Mmm…”
“What’s that, sweetheart?” He kissed the corner of her mouth. “Want your Spike?”
“Yes, please.”
A long sigh rolled through his lips. It was the please that did it. Buffy, his warrior, uttering such a supplicant’s phrase. Asking him of anything, knowing full well it was already hers. Her voice tickled his ears, sent ripples of excitement through his skin, and made his insides spark with life he’d forgotten. His cock nudged her slippery flesh, parting her folds before beginning a slow, wondrous slide inside her tight haven. He could live a day or until the world spun toward its end, but this was something he’d have forever. The memory of Buffy. The feel of Buffy. Buffy making his skin sizzle. Buffy’s tight pussy clamping around him, drawing him deeper, sending him spiraling down a twisted path of wonder until he found himself on the receiving end of something he thought he’d never touch.
A soft gasp rang in his ear. “Oh…”
“Bloody hell,” he murmured, nuzzling her throat. “Grip me like a glove, you do.”
“Say you’re…say…”
His lips peppered kisses across her skin until they hovered above hers. “I’m here,” he promised, rolling his hips and dragging his cock out of her just slightly before he sliding back home. “Not going anywhere, love.”
“Tell me you love me.”
Spike kissed her, his body finding a steady rhythm. He couldn’t wait. Not with her muscles strangling him to new life, not with her hot breaths teasing his lips or her wide eyes searching his. There were no secrets here. Nothing kept in the shadows, no epilogues or post-scripts. He gave what he had and kept nothing at bay.
“I love you,” he whispered, his left hand slipping down her body until he had her soft, round hip cradled in his palm, leveraging her into his thrusts. “God, Buffy, you have to know that.”
“I know.” She smiled against his lips. “I just like hearing it.”
Spike met her eyes and returned her grin. God, it felt so fleeting—all of it. Things he’d dreamt, things he’d only imagined, things locked behind a door he’d never thought he’d get to open. Feeling her surpassed anything he could have imagined—feeling her changed everything. No going back…not from this. Not from the awe of knowing how she felt, how she writhed, how she clawed and grasped and held him captive in that soul-sucking gaze of hers. The one that had kept him company for so many empty years—the voice he’d entertained in his head when the world around him fell silent.
It was enough to make hardened demons fall to their knees and pray.
“Want this,” Spike murmured, biting at her lips, body rocking hard against hers. She felt divine. Holding him, pulling at him, dragging him back inside her warmth every time he dared slip away. She squeezed him like she wanted to make him a part of her—like the only way to keep him was to lock him inside her skin.
“Me, too.”
“Always, Buffy. Can’t take it for just a test run.”
“Oh…”
“So long…wanted you so long…”
“I’m here,” she whispered, pressing her hand to his cheek. It seemed so strange she felt the need to reassure him when she was the one who had been lost so long, but that was Buffy all over. The protector. Wrapped in strength and thinking of those lucky enough to warm her heart before she gave herself a second thought.
The wealth of words upon which he thrived seemed so trivial now, with her pussy wrapped tightly around his prick, her sweet juices bathing him in heat possessing more fire than a thousand suns. Every plunge chipped away at him, tore him apart and pieced him together again. And through each second, she remained with him. Buffy’s eyes absorbing, Buffy’s nostrils flaring, Buffy’s lips rounding, Buffy’s chest heaving, Buffy’s hands clenching, Buffy’s tongue caressing. Buffy all around him, touching him, drawing him in deeper, sucking him in and squeezing him so tight the world around him began to blink out.
The thought he might not have this one day…
“Mine,” he murmured, thrusting hard. In and out, in and out, her vaginal walls wringing him, grasping him, and driving him out of his mind. “Always.”
Buffy nodded. “Yes,” she whispered. “This is ours.”
“Ours…God, you feel…”
“Chase the bad away.”
“Mine.”
He stole a kiss before dancing over her chin, dipping down her throat until the hum of her pulse vibrated against his lips. The monster roared and his heart clenched. “Buffy,” he whispered, the bones in his face shifting before he could help it. His fangs skimmed her soft flesh. “Buffy…I need…”
Her eyes met his, and if she was surprised to see a demon looking back, she didn’t show it. Instead, her hand found his cheek. “It’s okay,” she gasped.
“Your blood…”
“Take it.”
The words couldn’t be real. A fabrication of desire melting the barrier in his mind so he couldn’t tell the difference between fiction and reality anymore. But with her pussy around him, her eyes shining up at him, and her blood whispering so close to his mouth, he couldn’t be bothered to care. Not now. He’d traveled so far, lost so much, and he wanted to taste her so badly. Taste her…Buffy…his slayer.
“It’s yours, Spike,” she whispered softly. “Take it.”
He buried his face into the crook of her neck and licked a soft stretch of flesh. And that was all he could manage before he sliced his fangs into her beautiful throat and drank.
And Spike exploded—he was sure of it. There was no way he could keep his pieces together for as violently as they shuddered and cracked. He felt it, felt his cells pulling apart, felt his body breaking and crumbling against her, warm ambrosia stinging his insides and gluing together everything in him that had ever been broken. He felt her tremble and gasp, felt her tighten and drench him with her release, welcoming his own into her warmth. And yet he couldn’t tear himself away from her throat—he knew he should, he knew he couldn’t take much, he knew she needed it more than he, but in that one second he allowed himself to be selfish. Allowed himself to take what he wanted, needed. Allowed him to take Buffy…because at that moment, for that wonderful instant, nothing else mattered. Not the impossible task of finding a way out or the journey home afterward. Not the fear of what would happen when they stood again on solid ground or what he would lose when the world around them was theirs again.
Nothing mattered, because right now, this was his.
“Mine,” he whispered, pulling back at last and licking the wound. His every inch tingled. “This is mine.”
A beat. She didn’t respond.
Another beat, this one panicked. Spike raised his head, shaking the demon away. “Buffy?”
She met his gaze without hesitation, but he didn’t let himself relax until he noted the strength in her eyes. The strength and…tears? Oh bugger, he hadn’t meant to…
“Buffy…sweetheart, I didn’t…I shouldn’t—”
“Oh God,” she whispered, and every inch of him stilled. There was something he’d never heard in her voice. From anyone. “Oh…God…”
“Buffy?”
“Oh God.”
Whatever was in her voice had stretched to her eyes now, and its power rendered him weak.
But there was no time to examine it. The next second, something crashed hard above them, and the ground began to shake. For a second Spike thought his head had spun into a post-coital slumber, high off Slayer juice and ready for a good week’s rest. But that wasn’t it—no, this was something else. Whatever had harvested her voice and moved to her eyes lived now in the floor, moving…moving…and sending hard tremors into the world around them.
“Oh God,” Buffy said again. This time, however, her eyes were on the ceiling. “What is that?”
Spike didn’t answer, though something inside him knew, even if he couldn’t believe it.
“Spike?”
The ground whined beneath them, and in the distance, he heard something rip apart.
Whatever doubt was left died. He knew without question. He knew. He didn’t know how, he couldn’t fathom how, but he knew.
Something had happened. Something had changed.
The world was about to end.
Chapter Thirty-one
He’d never attended an apocalypse of any sort. Sure, he’d had front row seats to a few contenders, but fate, usually accompanied by the Slayer, had a way of intervening and making sure all remained as it was. Acathla hadn’t opened, the Hellmouth remained dormant, and Glory, despite her best efforts, never fully realized the truth behind ‘there’s no place like home.’ Therefore, Spike wasn’t entirely sure what the end of the world sounded like. He remembered the screams of the inter-dimensional rip—remembered the painted sky and the tremors rocking through the ground. He hadn’t been awake through the full of it, but he’d seen enough.
And it felt like this.
“What’s happening?” Buffy demanded, her hands pushing his shoulders to coax him up, but he was already gone.
Spike cast a wary glance to the warehouse entrance. The yellow sky had turned purple, angry storm clouds rolling toward them with menacing fury. “It’s happening.”
“What?”
“Our cue,” he explained, snatching his jeans off the floor. “Find something to put on.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We don’t have much time.”
“Much time for what? Enough with the vague. Sentences are your friend.”
Spike found her eyes, a wealth of emotion pressing against his chest. There were no explanations; he had none. All he knew was Hell was folding in on itself, and though there was no reason why, he wasn’t about to sit around and chat. “If we’re leaving, it has to be now.”
Buffy inhaled sharply. It was all the prompting she required, even if the confusion lines marring her face refused to recede. The tremors below them grew stronger, and perhaps she understood, then, that there was no understanding. In less than a minute, she had donned his t-shirt and a pair of sweats, and then they were running—running out the doors of the warehouse and under the angry sky.
There were times when words themselves superseded their value—when communicating thoughts or actions became thoroughly useless, as though the script had already been penned and all that was left was for the actors to play their parts. It felt like a dream, a staged dream plotted so perfectly that was rendered futile. The second his feet hit the ground, he knew where to go. The only place to go—the only way out.
“The river,” Buffy said, but she didn’t need to say it. And when she looked at him, he knew she understood.
*~*~*
The ground splintered, spawning thousands of webbed cracks. In the distance, behind the skyline of the fallen city, a black wave of nothing lumbered over the horizon, conquering whatever it touched by swallowing it whole. It left nothing behind, because it wasn’t moving; no, it was growing. Growing upon itself as the sky hardened and chipped; as pieces of debris came barreling toward the shaken ground. The black cloud consumed, devoured, and engulfed landmarks Spike’s eyes had come to know with frightening intimacy over the past few days, as though the world had always been his, as well. He wanted to stand and look but his senses got the better of him.
The river. They needed to get to the river.
The river was the way out.
“It won’t be there!” Buffy screamed. She was ahead of him—of course she was. His warrior, his slayer. “It won’t be there!”
Spike didn’t answer. He knew it had to be.
One way in.
“It won’t be there!” she insisted again, the hopelessness in her voice making his stomach twist. He knew what she meant, of course; she’d told him about the river, about her numerous attempts to cross it, and how the world always cruelly placed her back at the start. He knew, yet the rules had changed. One way in, one way out. Right now—this time—it had to be there. It had to be there.
Wind ripped across his face, pulling against his skin as the black cloud drew nearer.
The end of the world. He never thought he’d see it.
He hadn’t thought it’d be like this.
“Spike?”
The panic in her voice would have brought him to his knees any other time. The scared girl he’d rescued from the nightmare was back, and she wouldn’t do either of them any good. He needed her strong. He needed her to be the Slayer now.
“Right behind you, love!”
“What’s happening?”
“Don’t turn around, whatever you do. Just keep runnin’!”
A waft of blood smacked his senses, and then the river stood in view, just as he knew it would.
And just as he knew it would, the ledge from where he’d crawled to freedom jutted proudly over the waves of red, at least twenty feet off the ground. He remembered the fall being greater, but that didn’t matter now. All that mattered was getting there—inside the cavern, back into the cave where he’d spent three centuries waiting to get into a world now falling in upon itself.
“Oh God,” Buffy panted, coming to a fierce halt at the riverside. “What the hell is that?”
“That’s our ticket out,” Spike retorted. He paused just long enough to place a hand on her shoulder, and though it didn’t last, he felt a ripple of calm ease through her. As though she needed physical reassurance he stood beside her. “No time to get dainty, love. Ladies first.”
Apparently, she didn’t need encouragement. Buffy slammed into the river, disappearing under a wave of blood. She moved effortlessly, seemingly mindless of the weight against her, the way the tide pulled at her skin and attempted to drag her downstream. Spike watched her just long enough to know he needn’t worry before diving in after her.
He’d never before truly appreciated how thick blood ran. He remembered falling into the river, sure—remembered his insides rotting inside out, starvation itself manifesting into an entity that nested in his bones, gnawing its way through the soft tissue of his exterior until it managed to turn his mind against itself. Oh yes, he remembered that. Only days had passed since then, even if he felt it could squeeze in a lifetime or two between first seeing Buffy and Buffy coming back to herself.
Just a few days ago he couldn’t have plunged into a blood river without attempting to devour every drop. Now, his arms fought the flow, his eyes fixed on his slayer ahead of him. He didn’t relax until he saw her pull herself safely from the tide’s grip and onto the crimson shore. He likewise didn’t realize he’d hit solid ground until his legs shook.
“I made it,” Buffy said. She looked like a doomed heroine from a horror flick, her skin smeared with blood, her hair soaked. Her eyes fell over the river, toward the looming cloud of black rolling toward them with alarming velocity. “I made it.”
He nodded jerkily and made a play for her arm. This wasn’t the time to reflect. “Slayer…”
“I tried…God, I tried so many times…”
Spike nodded again. “I know, love. We got to keep moving.”
“I just…so many times…”
“Buffy!”
She snapped back to him then, blinking. And without another beat, the fog behind her gaze lifted, and she was with him again. “Where?” she demanded, turning as she spoke. The question did not demand an answer; she knew where to look.
“Move,” she said.
No need to tell him twice. Spike sped to the stretch of rock wall, and side by side, they began to climb. His body had once been accustomed to exertion—a romp in the cemetery, a brawl in a demon bar, an apocalypse to avert, he’d never been short on action. The last few days had slowly reintegrated him into the lifestyle he’d left without knowing, but sparring Buffy and hunting wild pig just didn’t have the same ring as run for one’s life. It all felt very familiar, finding foot holes, hands grappling for a nook to fortify, all the while keeping his eye on Buffy even if he knew she handled herself better than anyone ever gave credit.
Still, with his veins red hot from the dose of slayer blood, Spike couldn’t deny the rush; the tingling in his belly, the contented purr of a demon that thrived on the buzz of the too-close-to-call moments, the sensation of death nipping at his heels. He’d forgotten what this felt like.
Buffy reached the cavern mouth first, and he wasn’t surprised. Even juiced, he couldn’t hold a candle to her.
“Spike!”
“Almost…”
Her eyes rose to the distance, widening. “Oh, God. Spike, hurry.”
He didn’t realize how close they’d cut it, really, but it made sense. These things always ticked to the very last second. When he was just within reach of the mouth, a breeze of cold swept through his body—cold unlike anything he’d ever felt. Cold that shook the bone before slicing it in two, cold that mashed shattered pieces into powder, cold that pulled and tugged. Cold that wanted him, wanted to consume, wanted to waste everything in its path. A vacuum of nothing, dragging the world down with it. The black cloud, he recognized, was the nothing, and it was upon them. It had swallowed the world whole and it wanted them, too. And for a second—a fractured second—the adrenalin switched off and everything became still.
There was peace in the cold. After all, nothingness allowed no screams.
A warm hand found his wrist, jarring him back to himself and spearing his insides with heat. Buffy. His eyes found hers and used them as anchors, dragging him the remaining distance out of the world the Slayer had created.
She led him where the cold could not reach.
“I’ve got you,” Buffy whispered. And she did.
“I know,” Spike replied. And he did.
*~*~*
He remembered this.
The enclosed rock walls, the narrow pathway, the feel of dirt beneath his feet. It had only been days since he last inhabited this space. Battered and broken, starved and raw after three centuries of barely existing at all, he’d crawled to freedom. He’d crawled toward a light now extinguished, toward the promise of a lady he’d braved the underworld to find.
The darkened spots on the ground…that was his blood. It had only been days. Only days.
Spike had never considered himself claustrophobic. Not until that minute. Now, standing in the familiar mouth of the cave, his chest tightened and he warned his overly ambitious lungs they needn’t bother gulping down air.
The space. The cave. Years he’d spent here. He’d lived more of his life within these walls than anywhere else.
No, that’s not right.
Spike inhaled sharply and met Buffy’s wide, confused eyes, and the screaming in his head quieted. Time didn’t matter rot—all that mattered was her. And here they stood, on the opposite side of eternity in the only escape hatch he knew existed. What had happened remained beyond him, but for that second, that one precious second, he allowed himself to shove aside the whys and the hows for the miracle of certainty.
The way out. Somehow, they’d unlocked the way out.
What the bugger had happened?
“Where are we?” Buffy asked, her voice hoarse. She sat huddled on the ground, arms wrapped around her knees, her eyes bouncing from one corner of the cavern to the next.
His heart went out to her. Everything had happened so fast—so fast. One second nestled in each other’s arms and the next running from a force greater than he could comprehend. In a blink, everything she’d known for a thousand years had disappeared. The fact the world was a nightmare, in that sense, didn’t matter. On some level it was even expected. And even though the light in her eyes betrayed her timid joy, the shadow remained larger. The shadow betraying the crushing knowledge that nothing was ever as simple as it looked.
“The cave,” he said softly.
“The cave?”
“My home sweet home, love. For three centuries, anyway.”
She frowned at him for a second before comprehension dawned. “Oh,” she said, giving the space around them another cursory glance. “Oh…God.”
“Slayer—”
“This…” Buffy inhaled sharply and climbed to her feet. “I don’t understand.”
“Understand what, ducks?”
“What happened. How we…any of it. How this was…here…what the hell just happened, Spike?”
He cast a tired glance to the doorway to her hell. It hadn’t sealed off as he expected, rather the emptiness that had consumed the world now kissed the rocky mouth, a Venus fly trap waiting for prey. A road to nothing deceptively costumed as a black wall. “Something changed,” he said simply.
“We were just talking—”
“I know.”
“I don’t understand. How…I tried so many times. I tried…and…God.” She broke away, pressing the back of her hand to her eyes. “What changed?”
Spike swallowed hard. The answer wasn’t buried under mystery, and he reckoned she knew it just as well as he did. It just didn’t seem possible—it didn’t seem real. None of this did. Not the walls around them or the bloodstains on the ground, or any sense fed to his eyes and nose telling him they had made it out. It couldn’t be real. He’d broken too many rules for the walls to fall that simply. There had to be a catch or a punch line waiting nearby. It couldn’t be as simple as biting her. It couldn’t.
Yet here they stood.
“Spike?”
Her voice had lost its edge. When he met her eyes again, they appeared as saucers, wide, trembling, and filled with so much pained hope it nearly crushed him.
“This is real, isn’t it? I’m not…this isn’t a dream?”
“No,” he replied. “I woke you up, remember?”
Buffy licked her lips and nodded. “I dreamt you were gone.”
“That’s right.”
“It was…” She broke away again with a shudder. “I remember waking up. And then you were there and it was okay.”
He nodded.
“Then we…” The frown deepened with concentration. “But…that wasn’t new.”
“The sex?” Spike’s lips twitched. “I’d bloody well hope shagging me isn’t so forgettable you’d need me to remind you—”
“Spike…”
“Just saying, fragile ego here.”
She rolled her eyes. “Somehow I doubt it.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I was just trying to figure out what changed. What we did different. That we hadn’t…” Her gaze brightened again; he practically saw the pieces fall into place—saw comprehension shine through uncertainty, and those last few seconds before the world unmade themselves weave together again. Her hand stirred from her side and found the fresh bite mark on her throat. It was an easy detail to forget, he supposed, even if he knew it hadn’t been far from her mind. With the intensity of what had just inspired, just about anyone could overlook details while seeking out answers.
Anyone but a vampire.
“Oh,” Buffy said simply.
Spike kicked at the ground but didn’t say anything.
“You bit me.”
He nodded.
“It…oh, God…”
“Buffy…”
She didn’t say anything, and he found his stomach tightening with a familiar sensation—a desperation for her to understand something about himself, something flawed and rudimentary, something he couldn’t change. Vampires craved blood. Always had, always would. But blood shared between lovers transcended description in its significance, and the fact that she’d opened herself up to him, even in the heat of the moment, meant the world.
He didn’t want to hear now that she regretted it. A foolish fear, perhaps, as he was damn near convinced her blood had opened the door between worlds and she would have done anything to escape, but a real fear nonetheless.
“I remember,” Buffy murmured, looking up again. “Oh, God…”
“Look, I didn’t mean for it…I didn’t mean for it to…if I’d been thinkin’, it wouldn’t have happened, yeah? It was just at that moment…with you…hard to resist.” Spike offered a half smile and shrugged a shoulder, slightly subdued at the confused look on her face. “But I think the blood’s what did it.”
She nodded distractedly. “Got us out.”
“Right.”
A quiet beat settled between them as she considered his theory before breaking with a shake of the head. “No.”
Spike frowned. “It’s always the blood, love.”
“I’ve bled too many times to count for it to be that simple, and that’s not even the point.” She drew in a deep breath, fingers still absently stroking the freshly pricked skin at her throat. “No…it was something…it was something else. Something went through me. I felt…God, I’d never felt anything like that.”
Every muscle in his body tensed, his mind pulling him back to the look in her eyes. The pure, awed shimmer that echoed in her voice. The way she’d gasped and clung to him, the way she’d seemed on the verge of tears and laughter, and not in the manner with which he was familiar. It had been so brief and his nerves had been strung between ecstasy and fear, but he remembered the look on her face and the reverence in her words. He hadn’t known what it was—he still didn’t—but it had moved him like he’d never before been moved.
Was it possible she’d felt something tangible through his bite? That whatever she felt had torn the world apart?
“What was it?” he asked softly.
She didn’t respond. Instead, she said, “You did this.”
“How’s that?”
“You. It was you. You…I felt it, and it was because of you. That…whatever that was, it’s what made this happen.” Buffy gestured at the cavern mouth, and even though he understood the words she spoke, he couldn’t connect them with reality. “It was you,” she said again.
“No…”
“I felt it. I felt it because of you.”
“Felt what?”
A tremor rumbled through the ground before the Slayer had a chance to answer. Spike whirled around…and immediately wished he hadn’t. The eyes that clashed with his made his skin ache.
“Hope,” Larry responded. “That’s what we call hope.”
“Oh my God,” Buffy gasped, her voice painted with revulsion. Spike didn’t blame her; it had only been a few days, but he’d somehow managed to forget what a disgustingly ugly beast Larry was.
Still, he found the strength to swallow his loathing. There were greater issues at hand.
“Hope?” he asked.
“Son of a gun, you found the one thing that can’t survive in Hell.” The guardian smiled nastily and took another thunderous step forward. “And, gotta say, man…I really didn’t think you had it in you.”
“To give the girl hope?”
“Who the hell is this?” Buffy demanded.
Spike tilted his chin. “The bloody prison ward, ducks.”
“That’s right,” the demon agreed.
“Don’t suppose you’re gonna just let us by?”
“You know, you really think I would. With all the pain and suffering you two lovebirds have endured and…well, wait. That’s right; I live for pain and suffering.” Larry closed another step between them. “Rules schmools, that’s what I always say.”
“I got her out,” Spike snarled. “Gig’s up, mate.”
“Not all the way out.” The demon’s eyes turned black. “And I’m here to see that you won’t.”
Chapter Thirty-two
He was so tired. His bones ached, his muscles whined, and his skin hurt. The past few days had been generations in the making, and though he’d slept soundly at Buffy’s side, Spike was exhausted. He stood on shaky legs, eyeing the creature positioned between him and the tunnel out, and while he felt his demon answer the fight, the rest of him felt worn beyond repair.
He’d known what he was getting into the second he signed up for the crusade, and he would trade none of it for a moment’s rest. Not the centuries of pain or the heartache of finding Buffy as he had, or any set of experiences spanning the second his feet hit the cavern floor and right now. But it was always something—always another fight, another obstacle, another thing to defeat. And now this. Spike hadn’t reckoned Larry would let them go with little more than a smile and a nod, but Christ he’d wished it. He’d been through enough, and Buffy had been through even more, and neither one of them deserved another beating.
And yet, he distinctly remembered Larry’s warning: the promise he wouldn’t let them go without a fight. Hell stood too much to lose by letting them walk to freedom.
“Gotta say, man,” the demon continued, his eyes shining. “No one saw you coming.”
“Heard that before.” And he had…as he’d crawled to freedom, Larry had told him as much. Apparently Hell was graded at a learning curve. It didn’t seem they’d acquired anything in that particular lesson. “Warned you enough, didn’t I?”
“Yeah. After eons of empty bluffs, we wound up with egg on our face.” Larry shrugged. “Guess it had to happen sometime, didn’t it?”
Spike’s brows perked. “So that’s it, then? Your lot doesn’t take a shine at being proven wrong so you’re here to—”
“Shove you out the back door.”
The vampire smiled tightly. Yeah, he’d figured as much.
“What did you mean?” Buffy demanded, shuffling forward a step. The blood on her skin had almost dried; the red dying into a cold, flaky rust-colored pigment Spike knew all too well. “What you said about hope.”
Strange. That wasn’t the first question on his lips. The need to know gnawing at his insides staved off the instant the guardian stepped into the light, and no matter how starved he was for answers, at the moment, Spike didn’t figure it mattered a lick how they managed out. Not with Larry blocking the exit. They could suss out the particulars later as far as he was concerned.
But this wasn’t his game. It never had been. If the Slayer wanted answers, she’d more than earned them.
“Just that,” Larry responded, setting his eyes on Buffy in a way that made Spike’s stomach tighten. “Hope means game’s over as far as we’re concerned. Something that pure…man, gotta admire it.”
Spike expelled a deep breath. Buffy did, too.
“I still don’t understand,” she said, and he didn’t blame her. “I’ve felt…I’m sure I’ve felt hope before.”
Her words lacked conviction. Hard to remember, Spike supposed, after a thousand years without it. Still, he had to agree with her. With as much as she’d said otherwise, for as often as she’d voiced a desire to be something other than Chosen, Buffy’s life had not been short on joy. No, she’d celebrated her victories and taken her defeats. Her life hadn’t lacked hope, even at its coldest.
For his part, Larry shrugged his agreement, nodding his monstrous head. “Oh, I’m sure you have,” he said. “In its most diluted form. Humanity swims in the watered-down stuff, chugs it for breakfast, lunch, and even the occasional midnight snack. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I mean is real hope. Real, stinkin’ hope. The moment of I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter absolution. Real hope is the purest commodity you could ever come across. Remember your ex’s little moment of pure happiness?”
Spike’s shoulders tensed and he tossed Buffy a speculative glance. She thought for a minute before nodding.
“Yeah,” Larry drawled. “The pure concentrate of any emotion is probably the most powerful intangible out there. Rage, sorrow, heartbreak, love, happiness…you name it, and it moves mountains in a big ole way. Down here, hope is a killer. That’s why we have the sign.”
“Not the version I heard, mate.”
The guardian snickered. “Yeah, well, you heard the version I was telling that day.”
“The sign?” Buffy asked, eyes bouncing between them. “What sign?”
“The one at the front,” Spike answered. Strange how fresh it stood in his mind. For all the time that had passed, every second since he descended into the Hellmouth remained fresh, untarnished. He possessed a handful of memories and all were at his disposal. Every one. He still remembered how the air had smelled, how it seemed different from Earth, even if he couldn’t remember why. He felt stone cut at his back and holy water blister his skin. And he remembered the sign.
The first thing he’d seen.
“‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’,” Larry supplied. “Kinda hard to miss.”
“Yeah,” Buffy replied. “It’s also kinda hard to stop and sightsee when you nosedive into a thousand dimensions.”
“Well,” Larry remarked, smirking, “that’s a shame.”
A dangerous growl rumbled through Spike’s throat, his feet carrying him forward before thoughts could connect with action, or the concern of possible repercussions. “You bloody bastard—”
“No, Spike!” The warm hand that seized his wrist was probably the only thing that could have stopped him from doing something stupid—something like getting a vampire-shaped hole pounded into the side of the cavern wall courtesy of the guardian’s stone-like fist.
“Isn’t he on a short leash?” came the condescending purr.
“Yeah, and I’m the one holding him back,” Buffy snapped. “The only reason you’re not fish food is you have answers and I have questions, and so long as it that stays that way you can keep breathing. Or not breathing. Or…whatever. Now answer me.”
Larry smiled and spread his claws. “What were we talking about?”
“Hope.”
“Ah, right.” He paused and tossed Spike another amused glance. “It’s your boy, there. He had it figured out from the start, didn’t you? What it was? What set her off?”
Spike’s jaw clenched. He didn’t say a word. He wouldn’t concede anything now, even if his mind dragged him back to just minutes before—before the guardian had stepped out of the shadows. Buffy’s fingers brushing over the bite mark, her eyes far-away and confused. Yes, he’d known it then.
So had Buffy. She just didn’t realize she knew it.
“What?” she asked, squeezing Spike’s wrist. “I don’t…”
“The bite, love.”
He didn’t realize he’d spoken until the echo of his voice died down the corridor. Even then, all seemed too quiet. As though the words themselves lived only in his head and never quite made it to the surface.
Buffy’s frown deepened and the hole in Spike’s stomach expanded. “I don’t get it,” she murmured, reaching for her angered, fang-marked skin with her free hand. “I already told you—I’ve bled more—”
“That’s not what I mean,” Larry replied. “Not what he means, either.”
“How?”
“Vampire bites are different than just scraping your knee,” Spike muttered. “Not like pain, see. Not if we don’t want it that way.”
“No,” Larry interjected. “That’s not it, either.”
He glanced up sharply, his brow furrowing. “The fuck you mean, that’s not it?”
“It has nothing to do with being…oh boy.” Larry whistled and ran a claw over his scaly head. “It’s really not that difficult, kids. When he bit you, a bond formed. Through that bond, you felt…well, why do you think we’re standing here?”
Spike shook his head. That didn’t seem right. “Rot.”
“No, I felt something,” Buffy agreed. “When you bit me—”
“That load is for Anne Rice fans and vampire wannabes,” Spike replied heatedly, turning his eyes back to Larry. “Blood doesn’t have magic powers, mate.”
“Is that so?”
“You bloody know it’s so.” Spike sighed, glancing back to the Slayer. “It’s rubbish, you hear? I didn’t do anything—”
“And yet you’re the one always insisting it has to be about the blood,” Larry offered. “Backtracking so soon?”
“That’s not what I mean. Blood opens doors and what all, but it doesn’t form bonds. Not like that, at least. Not with a bite. You need a ritual for that. You need—”
“And what makes you think Hell’s rules are the same as yours?” The guardian crossed his arms. “I’d think you, out of anyone, would know that’s not the case.”
“So you’re saying what, exactly?”
“You said she was yours. You took her as a possession. That’s a different ballgame as far as we’re concerned.”
Another angered snarl escaped the vampire’s throat. “A possession?” he demanded. “That’s not what it meant to me, and you bloody well know it.”
“Not my problem. I was just answering the lady’s question.”
Buffy wet her lips and released a cool, trembling breath. Spike felt her racing heart as if it were in his own chest. Every rush she experienced, every ripple of fear and wonder, of anger and confusion, was his to share. “So…” she said slowly, “what happened back there was a…spell…or something.”
The demon nodded. “Or something.”
“It let me feel everything he feels?”
“At that moment, yes.”
“And I felt hope.”
“And the rest, as they say, is history.” Larry spread his arms, his eyes settling on Spike’s and flickering dangerously. “Therefore, without further ado, welcome to Spike’s…how did you say it? Home sweet home? Boy, I tell you…if these walls could talk.”
Spike’s insides turned cold, his mind opening a track to where the conversation was heading. Nothing concrete existed in the words, but from the look in the guardian’s eyes, he saw it clearly. The trials. The rules. The things he’d labored to keep Buffy from discovering, if only to sidestep her empathy and gratitude. He wanted none of it, and Larry knew it.
No. If the guardian went down that path, all bets were off. Bloody off.
“The things this boy’ll do for love,” the demon cooed. The spark in his eyes betrayed that he knew exactly what he was doing. “But then, word on the wire is that he’s too noble to tell the tale. What’s the matter, Spike? Afraid the girl will—”
“Stop it.”
“I don’t see the harm.” Larry grinned nastily, turning his eyes back to Buffy. “How many times do you think that pretty skin of his has grown back? I lost track of how often it melted off during the first trial.”
Rage bubbled under the skin in question, every muscle in his body winding tight and ready for the punch. “Shut your bloody gob,” he snarled, willing his feet to move forward but they seemed glued to the ground. It was a sensation he hadn’t experienced since finding Dru macking on a fungus demon—one where rage and terror melded into one, rigidly locking his legs in place before he shot off like a rocket. He likened it to being trapped between worlds, one where his heart disagreed with his head, and his body refused to draw allegiance.
His heart wanted to protect Buffy, to shield her from the horrors of his experience and keep her in a place where her feelings for him were dictated from something other than relief or thankfulness or anything other than genuine affection. It was the first time he didn’t want her to look at him like a hero. And yet for all his talk, all the lengths to which he’d gone to keep her from knowing the truth of what he’d endured to break through the wall to her prison, a small part of his defiant psyche wanted the truth revealed. He hadn’t even realized it existed until that second, and his chest tightened with disgust. It was the same part that had once craved praise for not feeding off disaster victims or demanded recognition for opting to be less evil than his nature suggested. He hadn’t wanted to admit it existed at all, and while he trusted his heart to overpower the greedy demon inside as it had so faithfully these last few days, he still couldn’t get his feet to budge a bloody inch.
“About which trial, precisely?” Larry prodded.
Buffy exhaled a small, sad sigh. “Oh Spike…”
“Oh, so she doesn’t know?” The guardian stepped forward eagerly. “Can’t imagine why you’d want to keep all that to yourself. You were her champion, weren’t you? Why shouldn’t your fair maiden know the lengths to which you went to rescue her from her prison?”
“Shut the bloody hell up!”
“The first one was holy water,” Larry said. “A great big pool of it, and a stone wall blocking Point A and Point B. I forget how many times he dove in to find his way across before he figured out the only way was a small sliver at the bottom.” He shook his head and grinned. “Not a pretty picture every time he climbed out. Skin falling off his bones, his muscles sizzling, the air crackling with the smell of meat cooking. Almost enough to make a guy hungry.”
Buffy’s horror-filled eyes darted to Spike’s, color fading from her cheeks. “Oh, my God.”
The demon’s eyes sparkled. “The second?” he hissed.
“I’m gonna rip your scales off!” Spike screamed. He managed to inch forward, but only slightly. His body remained enraptured with the guardian’s tale, and the selfish demon in his chest, encouraged by Buffy’s disgust, grew in strength.
“The second…well, that one was a gem. I gave him you, of course. A Buffy of his very own, though with slightly fewer…reservations. He saw through that one, though. Knew it wasn’t you within…what? A minute or so. Was that right?”
Spike roared in fury while the inner demon cackled with delight.
“She offered him things you’d shudder to imagine,” the guardian continued. “A wolf in sheep’s clothing, so to speak…or rather, your clothing. Your eyes. Your hair. Your voice. Your tits. You name it, she was it. And Spike could’ve had his Buffy just as he always wanted her. Footloose and conscience-free, and ready to paint any town red, red, red. We would have worked with the chip, of course. A little cranial surgery and the whole damn planet would’ve been yours for the taking. Well, yours and Miss Slayer 2001. Alas, our dear William wasn’t even tempted. Not even a crumb…were you, Spike?”
“Not for a second,” he growled, and he felt a rush of warmth from his side. Buffy had tears in her eyes.
Larry hummed. “You’re really the belle of the ball, aren’t you, Buffy? Poor Spikey-wikey wouldn’t be swayed. Not even by you, all dolled up and no soul to keep you harnessed. Every vampire’s wet-dream. Every vampire’s…” He turned back to Spike. ”Except yours.”
Spike raised his chin with pride. “That’s right.”
“And even that…even tempting him with Little Miss Priss wasn’t the worst of it, was it?” The demon took a heavy step forward. “The worst happened about ten feet behind me.”
Unwittingly, Spike’s eyes traveled the indicated distance to a nauseatingly familiar curve of rock, and the bottom of his stomach dropped without warning. Truth be told, he could have easily forgotten the first two trials for the horror of the third. The endless days that melted into months until years peeled away without thought. Hunger gnawing away at his insides, his body eating itself for survival until nothing but the binds of his mystical contract kept him alive. In the quiet, of course, Buffy’s phantom had kept him company. Buffy’s phantom giving him the hope of what he would find when his time had ended. When the trial was at last behind him…if the wait didn’t kill him first.
A soft breath reverberated through the woman at his side, jarring him back to the present. “What did you do to him?” she asked, and the tremor in her voice made his heart ache.
“No,” Spike snarled. His feet still refused to move. “That’s enough. That’s—”
Larry’s eyes twinkled. “More than you wanted her to know, right? Never knew you to be so noble.”
“Sodding stuff it.”
“See,” the demon continued with a careless grin. “We kinda caught him in a…spider web? Was that what it was? I guess the particulars don’t matter. The deal was if he could withstand waiting for three days, we’d let him crawl the rest of the way into your world.” He paused and turned to the vampire. “How long did those days last, Spike?”
“I forget,” he ground out. “Now let it alone. We know how this story ends, don’t we?”
However, Buffy wouldn’t let it go, and he understood she couldn’t be detoured until she knew the truth. He’d made the mistake of telling her how long it took to wade through the trials to her world, and he knew she had to have been searching for an indicator of where the time ate itself up. This was it. Suddenly he couldn’t hide anymore. Suddenly, it was all out in the open, and he could do no more than stand by and let it happen.
“It was a hundred years, wasn’t it?” she whispered. “A hundred years a day.”
“Very good,” Larry agreed. “So you knew that much.”
“He told me.”
“Yeah, but not in detail, I’ll bet. Not about the starvation or the loneliness. His hair falling off, his eyes sealing shut, his skin rotting away with time. Days, weeks, years…” He sighed, then frowned. “Doesn’t sound so bad when you say it like that, does it?”
Buffy blinked hard and looked down, her every inch trembling. Spike felt his insides recoil.
Very good, mate. Was it worth it?
“You’ve had your fun,” he said softly, unable to look Larry in the eye. He couldn’t bear the git’s triumphant grin anymore than he could Buffy’s pity. Even the inner demon balked in revulsion, the empty satisfaction it longed for far from the mind’s eye. His body could move again, but the damage had already been done. There were no virtues to preserve or egos to protect. He’d failed in something completely rudimentary, and he had no one to blame but himself.
“Not nearly,” Larry replied nastily. “I told you. We have a reputation to protect. Kudos on the journey, and I really mean it, man. But we can’t have it getting out that one pesky vamp ruined our set-up.”
“Not the first,” Spike replied. “Seem to remember a chap who first dodged all your bloody bullets.”
“Brychantus? Yeah, but here’s the thing…he never pulled a living slayer out of her own personal hell. Do you have any idea how long we’ve waited to snag one of these? Gosh, we even came close with Buffy herself a few years—oh, I’m sorry—centuries back. But she had to go start a mutiny and—”
“Ken,” Buffy said suddenly.
Larry blinked. “I beg your pardon.”
“His name was Ken.” Her voice was so soft it was barely audible. “I remember that. I don’t know how, but I do.”
Spike tossed her a surprised glance but didn’t interrupt.
“Oh, yeah,” Larry purred. “Kenny boy. Poor old guy.”
“Yeah.” Buffy’s eyes slowly rose off the floor, and the cave could have darkened under the power of her glare. “Poor Kenny.”
It was her voice that did it. Her voice that made him understand the motive behind her body’s tremors, the reason she could barely stand to look up. He’d been a fool to think it was sadness or shock. Those emotions were on reserve for later; like him, Buffy wouldn’t feel it until enough time had passed to ease the wound. Her first instinct had always been anger, and now it poured from her every cell. Her hands had balled into fists, her face, still blood-caked from the swim across the river, set firmly with fury he had never witnessed, centering on the smiling demon whose calm demeanor failed to waver.
“You,” she said, taking a step forward. “You put me there.”
“Technically, I just stood watch.”
“Do you have any idea—”
“Pumpkin, look at me. I was made for these sorts of ideas.” Larry’s eyes shifted briefly back to Spike. “Hot little temper, your slayer has.”
“Hot temper.” Buffy licked her lips. “You know what I did to Ken, don’t you, Larry? It was a long, long time ago, granted, but I seem to remember bashing his head in with a very big club.” She paused thoughtfully. “Or was it an axe? I can’t remember, really, but there’s no surprise there. I mean, a thousand years have passed since then and my memory’s pretty much shot to hell, and hey! Check it out. There’s a pun and I wasn’t even looking.”
She took another step forward and Spike followed her without realizing it.
“In the end, I guess the details don’t matter, do they? But the point is…I was pissed. I was beyond pissed. And I let him off easy.” Buffy plastered on a dangerously sweet smile, covered another space separating her from the beast, and said, “You? I don’t want easy.”
It was over before it began. Larry realized it a second too late—a second later than Spike, who had the good sense to get out of the way. At once he could have been anywhere; Restfield cemetery, the alley behind the Bronze, inside a speeding Winnebago, or any one of a thousand different places watching the same scene unfold as though choreographed. He’d witnessed her take out too many beasts to tally, and in the end, he supposed, that was all Larry was. An oversized rock of a beast, and while Spike hadn’t been successful in doing much more than bruising the sod with his face, a pissed off Slayer was worth an army of vampires, and a pissed off Buffy much more than that.
She kicked him back to the opening of the cave, back to the hungry black mass that pulsated against the place where Hell had once been. There was nothing behind that—a great empty nothing, bleak and hollow, and for the flash of surprised fear in Larry’s eyes, Spike knew it was the sort of nothing from which no one emerged.
“Wait, wait!” Larry gasped, his claws coming up. “I was just the messenger, honest!”
“Yeah?” Buffy replied. “Well, you can deliver this message for me.”
Her leg slammed into the demon’s gut, sending him tumbling into a sea of black. He was survived by a scream so piercing the cavern walls began to shake, but it lasted only seconds, and then all was still again.
Chapter Thirty-three
“It was here?”
Spike swallowed hard and nodded without thinking. He hadn’t blinked once since Larry disappeared behind the black cloud; he couldn’t tear his eyes from her face. There were times when she wore her heart on her sleeve and others when her thoughts remained annoyingly hard to read. This particular time fell in the latter category. She hadn’t done anything since she tore herself away from the mouth of the cave but stare at the curve of rock where he’d spent three centuries as if the longer she looked, the less a reality his trials would become.
“That’s right,” he said softly. “Right there.”
“You were…hanging?”
“Yeah. Like the git said, it was a spider web. Caught me as I was running for it.” Spike inhaled deeply and took a step forward. “Buffy—”
“You did this for three hundred years.”
“Wasn’t so bad. I like the quiet.”
Buffy looked up at last, arching a brow. It was such a familiar look his shoulders nearly sagged with relief. Skepticism was one thing, but the haunted look he’d seen just moments ago was more than he could handle. And while her typical spark had yet to light her eyes, she wasn’t crying or shaking or anything of the sort.
“The quiet?” she replied. “Since when?”
“What can I say, love? It grows on you.”
“I can’t believe you did this…for me.” Buffy shook her head and looked down again, her eyes roaming the pattern of dirt where he’d fallen upon completion of the third trial. “You told me it was bad. Or…I guess I knew it was bad. It had to be because you wouldn’t tell me what happened. But never…God, I’d never think it was…this.”
“Was nothing.”
“That’s crap.”
“Buffy—”
“I was told I was full of love once.” She frowned, her fingers brushing her blood-soaked brow. “By a spirit guide. I’m still…it comes in spurts, what I remember. That stuff about Ken…I don’t know how I pulled that out of my head, but I did.”
“Who was Ken?” he asked. It was a distraction, if nothing else.
“A demented demon that trapped people in a hell-dimension and then spat them back out after a day. A day being, as you know, a hundred years in this world.” Buffy sighed harshly. “I think that was something I remembered when I first fell. How long the days were and whatnot. I helped a girl find out what happened to her boyfriend and then she took my…I guess that was when I was in LA, right after Angel died.” She looked up once more. “I was told I was full of love.”
“In LA?”
“No, right before I jumped. That trip thing that Giles took me on before Glory…she told me I was full of love, and that love would lead me to my gift.” She snorted appreciatively. “But I don’t think I could have done this. Love or no love, three hundred years—”
“Don’t make me out to be a bloody hero.”
A fond smile flirted with her lips. “You wouldn’t have minded once.”
His nostrils flared. “We’ve been over this a time or two, love. Things change.”
“I know. Believe me, I know. It’s just…you were alone.”
“Not as alone as you were. I had friends to keep me company, didn’t I? Larry marched a whole bloody parade of them by. Angelus, Darla, Dru, even Harmony at one point, I’d imagine.” Spike took a step toward her. “I wasn’t alone. Not like you. You had no one.”
“But you—”
“And what’s more, I chose this. I knew what I was getting into.”
“You couldn’t know this.”
“Maybe not, but even if I had, it wouldn’t matter a bit. I could’ve cried uncle any time I liked, but I didn’t.” He let out a deep breath. “I couldn’t.”
Buffy blinked hard and looked away. “Yeah,” she whispered. “That scares me.”
“What?”
“You, sacrificing so much. Waiting so long. Just…what he said was true, wasn’t it?” She waved at the arched rock. “Your body, your hair, your eyes…you really just starved for three hundred years, didn’t you? Waiting for—”
“I wouldn’t let them get the bloody best of me.”
“Three hundred years, Spike!”
His chest puffed out and his nostrils flared. “And I would’ve waited more if they’d asked!” he barked. “It was nothing to me. You kept me company, love.”
“It wasn’t nothing.”
“To get to you?”
Buffy gestured emphatically, whirling around again, her eyes shining brightly. “Yes! Do you have any idea what this means? For you, for me…God, for everything? What you did for me…I knew it was going to be you. I remember thinking so, even telling you so…but this is…it’s too much. What you went through to get to me…”
“I love you,” he said, deflated. It was so simple to him; he didn’t know how to make it simpler for her. It was just the way he understood things. Love was worth anything and the woman he loved deserved whatever he had to give, no matter how long it took him to give it, or how he suffered to deliver it.
“This is different from love,” Buffy reasoned. “People don’t love like this.”
He spread his arms. “I’m not people, pet.”
“But—”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Spike retorted. “I don’t know what you want to hear, or what I can say that you haven’t heard already. You were gone, and I knew that I had to get you back. Living in a world without you was a nightmare. A real bloody nightmare, and no matter what I did I couldn’t wake up. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I just waited for your mates to find out where you were so I could get you out. This,” he waved at the archway, “was just three hundred years of what I would have had up there, but this time you were at the end of the tunnel.”
She blinked hard. “Spike…”
“I just did what I could.”
“I don’t know if I could have…” Buffy drew in a sharp breath. “If it was Dawn or…you…I don’t think I could have done this. I don’t think I could have survived what you survived.”
Spike just stared at her. “That’s what’s bothering you?”
“Well…”
“I just did what I had to do to get to you. That was all that bloody mattered to me.”
She pursed her lips and crossed her arms, fidgeting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “It’s just not…”
“Normal?”
“There’s love and then there’s love.”
He shrugged, feeling lost and ineloquent. There were only so many ways to tell her and a limited number of words he could weave. How could he hope to make her understand when he couldn’t explain the obvious? “Sorry, sweet, I don’t know what I can…what you want to hear. Maybe not having a soul makes it easier for me. Not much white noise gets in the way. All I cared about was you.”
Buffy held his gaze for a few seconds before breaking eye contact, her shoulders dropping. “I was never fair to you.”
“We’ve already—”
“I know we’ve talked about this, but it just…I’m sorry.”
“Nothin’ to be sorry for.”
“Can’t stop me.” She shrugged, aiming a grin his way. “Just the way I am.”
“And getting to you is the way I am.”
“I’ll never understand this.”
Spike smiled and reached for her hand. “You will,” he promised softly. “We got a lot of time together.”
The spark finally returned to her eyes, which didn’t fail to warm his insides. More of that and he would burn with enough hope to level the tunnels of Hell. He wouldn’t allow himself to ingest fool’s gold, but the way she looked at him couldn’t be insincere. If it wasn’t love it was a close relative, and he was a patient guy.
He could wait.
*~*~*
The cavern was longer than he remembered. It was easy to forget the twisted tunnels that stretched between the stages on which his trials took place, and even though his legs ached and his muscles strained and he had no idea what to expect when they reached the land above, the promise of home was almost more than he could stand. Larry had been defeated, and while Spike wasn’t naïve enough to believe the guardian was the only obstacle Hell would throw their way, the healthy helping of optimism Buffy fed him guided his feet and silenced the voices of doubt.
They were so close…
“I’ll never know how you found it,” Buffy gasped after rolling under the stone wedge situated in the middle of the holy water pool. The water itself had been drained, however, and Spike wasn’t about to ask why. Perhaps the time for trials had passed; the web hadn’t been there, either.
“Found what, sweets?” Spike asked, dipping to his knees to follow her under.
“The door,” she said after she was on her feet. “The way to get to where I was.”
“Your world.”
Buffy nodded. “Yeah. Hellsville.”
He slowly rose to his feet with a heavy breath, cracking a grin when her words sank in. “That its proper name, then?”
“Seems appropriate to me.” Her eyes took a furtive glance at their surroundings, though for all the ground they’d covered in the last few hours, the setting hadn’t changed. “I don’t know how you found it.”
“Don’t know, either. Just bloody fortunate that I did.” Spike nodded toward the tunnel through which he’d walked lifetimes before, when the space in which he stood had been designed to make him wave a white flag, when the task at hand had seemed impossible. There was a slight lift of rock leading back to the path, and while it sat a good few feet off the ground, he was surprised at how shallow the pool seemed when not filled with water. Those few times he’d dived in had just about killed him…would have, had it not been for the contract he entered upon accepting the trials. “Can’t be that much further,” he said.
“You said that an hour ago.”
“Didn’t mean it then.”
“But now you do?”
“That’s right.” He watched her heave herself onto higher ground before following suit. “This wasn’t too far,” he grunted, arms shaking with exhaustion, “from where I came in.”
Her nose wrinkled the way it so often did when she thought he was full of crap. “You said that an hour ago, too.”
Spike winked, shrugging a shoulder. “Let’s see what I’ll be saying in a few minutes, yeah?”
Buffy arched a brow and failingly tried to smother a grin. It was enough to supply his tired body with an extra dosage of energy. For her, he’d keep walking.
They couldn’t have much further to journey. Every end, after all, had its beginning.
*~*~*
The sign was still there.
Spike wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t anything. He stood just a few feet from the length of rope Willow and Giles had lowered into Hell’s mouth, occupying the space where his eyes had first absorbed the place that would be his home for centuries. He couldn’t feel anything, really. Not at this moment. It was numbing—a moment that wasn’t a moment. As though the eyes through which he saw were not his eyes, and the body in which he stood was not his body. His brain was too tired and his thoughts were too foggy, and he couldn’t quite grasp that the moment was real. It seemed too distant to be real.
Yet there it was. The sign.
Abandon hope all ye who enter here.
“Spike?”
He turned to Buffy and forced a smile. “Nowhere to go but up.”
Her eyes followed the rope as far as they could before it dissolved into shadows. “Up?” she whispered.
“Gotta climb.”
“Our world…home…it’s…up there?”
“Few hundred feet above your pretty head.”
She swallowed, and for the first time it registered how hard her heart pounded. He should have heard it straight off, but somehow it hadn’t clicked until now. Perhaps he just hadn’t been listening.
“What if I forgot?”
“What’s that, love?”
Buffy expelled a deep breath and looked down again. “How to live up there. What if I forgot?”
“You haven’t.”
“A thousand years, Spike. I’ve been by myself for a long time.”
“You’ve had me these last few days.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah, and if memory serves, throwing a spear through your shoulder was my way of saying hello.”
He waved dismissively. “Just rusty, is all.”
“What if I’m unfit to be around people? What if I freak? What if I hurt someone…Dawn, Giles…what if I—”
Spike sealed the space between them, his hands finding her shoulders. “You won’t,” he said firmly. “Not the Buffy I know. You were born for that world, bloody well made for it. It’s yours, you hear? The whole lot of it. You were never meant to be alone, and Christ, if you need proof, just look—”
“But I am. The Slayer…I remember that.” She blinked hard. “Just me. No one else. No one else. What if the reason I fell into Hellsville was that?” Her eyes brightened with a breath of epiphany, and before he could blink, she’d torn down an argument he hadn’t anticipated. “God, why didn’t I see it? I can’t just go waltzing back to my life as though I remember how to…I don’t remember how to live, Spike!”
“Then we’ll remember together.”
“It’s not that easy!”
He kissed her on impulse, swallowing her protests without thought. In easy seconds, they were warring with each other, lips clashing, tongues searching, delving into a rhythm that had provided solace when the world knew none. How long they stood, he didn’t know, only that her eyes were starry when he pulled away, and not just with the shine of tears.
She wouldn’t cry, he knew. She’d just give him a glimpse before reining it in.
“We’ll make it easy,” he promised her softly. “No one will expect more than you can give.”
Buffy snorted, but couldn’t hide her grin, no matter how small. “God, I love them, but we are remembering the same group of people, right?”
“Well, if any of them give you grief, you can just remind them that my chip fell out sometime around the third century.”
The grin she’d tried to smother came out of hiding, and while the panic in her eyes had yet to fully alleviate, he trusted the weight wouldn’t be unbearable any longer. He’d shoulder anything she couldn’t, and fight her for the right.
Things would be different. They had to be.
“What if I can’t handle it?” she whispered. “What if I hurt someone?”
“Just aim for Harris and all will end well.”
“Spike, get serious.”
His brows hit his hairline. “Serious as a bloody heart-attack. I’ll even help you dump the body.”
That earned an outright laugh. A very good sign.
From here, all they had to do was climb.
Chapter Thirty-four
About ten minutes into the climb, Spike remembered how difficult the descent had been. He remembered rope digging into his palms, his muscles aching, cramping, and sending sharp pangs through his forearms and back. He remembered blinking dust out of his eyes and the cold, unforgiving blackness of what waited beneath. He remembered all of it, yet nothing could compare to the physical agony of dragging his body against the force of gravity.
It could have gone on forever: the gnawing abyss of black shadows tugging from the pit below. At least this time he wasn’t alone. The short, feminine grunts from the woman above saved him from the threat of collapse. His need for rest couldn’t outshine the knowledge of what awaited at the surface.
“Oh!”
Spike’s heart jerked upward. “What’s that?” he gasped, heaving himself up another pace. “Buffy?”
“Air!” she cried, panting. “Oh God, I think…I think that’s air. Real air.”
The concept seemed too foreign to consider. He’d forgotten there was a difference at all until that moment. Suddenly, the space around him seemed clearer and crisper. Perhaps it was in his imagination, but he didn’t think so. “Real…?”
“It smells…different. It’s…damn, my arms are going to fall off.”
“Just a bit further, love…”
“Don’t tease me.”
Spike shook his head, inhaling another lungful of what had to be fresh air. And were his eyes playing tricks on him, or did he spy a bit of light just a few precious feet above Buffy’s crown? “No. No, just a bit further.”
Buffy rumbled an inaudible reply, heaving herself up another arm-length. They continued like that in strained silence—and then at last, no, his eyes hadn’t lied to him. A definitive break of light cracked through what looked like bits of fallen rubble. It wasn’t strong, but it was strong enough to stand against the black, taking shape and form. His mouth fell open, but no sound came out.
The end. This had to be it.
“Oh God,” he croaked.
Buffy gasped and swore, her feet kicking hard now. His eyes caught the outline of her small but defined arms grappling slabs of stone. Then she was gone, pulling herself through the thin opening, and leaving him alone in the cave.
“Spike…”
A burst of adrenalin surged through his worn body. “Coming!” he promised, squinting upward. Though he couldn’t see her, he knew she was out. He wanted to sag with relief, but a remaining strain of logic pushed him forward. She was out—Buffy was freed into the world. Her world. The world from which she’d been torn. He’d fulfilled his promise, he’d done what he swore he would do. He’d gotten her out.
Now all he had to do was finish the climb.
“Be there in a pinch,” he murmured.
From above, what sounded like a strangled gasp pierced the air. The hairs on his neck stood at attention.
“Buffy?”
“Oh God.”
The space that had seemed so unattainable soon fell behind him. It wasn’t rare to hear her voice colored in panic, but it certainly wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. In less than a flash, Spike jerked himself from the twisted rock, ignoring the way roughened edges sliced into his skin or the unpleasant twist an unruly ledge gave his ankle. Dust clouded his eyes, but he managed to find her through the patchy shadows of a world he’d forgotten.
She was on her knees, her eyes bounding from one corner to the next in horror.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, no, no. This isn’t right.”
Spike blinked. Aside from her, he couldn’t see much. The light he’d thought he’d seen existed, but it was minimal. A lighter shade of black, if anything at all, and his usually heightened senses had yet to kick in.
“What’s not right?”
“They sent us back.” Buffy was on her feet in an instant. “This isn’t—this can’t be right.”
It took a few seconds for his vision to return completely, but when it did he immediately understood. The air they’d breathed was indeed fresher, but the tunnel had led them back into ruins. Rock littered the ground, scattered everywhere between slanted walls and crooked doorways. The ceiling above looked as though it were seconds from caving in; canopied curtains strewn lazily across closed windows. It was an instant pull back into the world they had just escaped, and had his senses not decided to kick in at that second, his reaction might have been something a bit more severe than panic. The rage he’d felt at the blood river bubbled in his tired chest, dying quickly but surfacing all the same.
Willow and Giles. Their scent was unmistakable. They had been here, and recently, and that was something he definitely couldn’t say about the place from which they’d escaped. It took remembering that to remembering where the Hellmouth opened, and within seconds everything locked in place.
“I can’t go back!” Buffy screamed, and the force behind her cry was so devastating it promptly uprooted him from his realization. Hollow and aching, desperate and savage, all within the lifespan of a second. “I can’t go back to that!”
“Buffy, Buffy! It’s all right.” Spike winced and yanked his ankle free from the confining wedge of rock. “It’s all right, pet. We’re home.”
She blinked rapidly. “I don’t understand.”
“The high school, love. You blew it to the moon, remember? This is where I came in.” He gestured to the vacant space and empty walls. “The library, I’d wager. Wasn’t that where the door opened?”
Buffy’s eyes hit the floor, numbness chasing away desolation. She nodded after a few long seconds. “Yeah,” she said. “I remember.” Her tongue poked out and took a swipe of her lips before her gaze found his again. “Sorry…I just…it looks just like—”
He staggered a step forward. “I know. Let’s take a peek outside, yeah? Feels like nighttime to me, so I doubt I’ll burn off anything valuable.”
She looked at him askance.
“Sunlight,” he said. “Permanent sort of allergy, if memory serves.”
“Oh, right.” Buffy frowned. “That’s going to be hard to get used to.”
“For you, I suppose,” he agreed with a grin.
The pain in his ankle faded quickly, though his arms felt like deadweights and every muscle in his body protested movement. Still, physical exhaustion had nothing on the wave of euphoria that timidly began creeping through his veins, tickling his insides until he was half-crazed with fear that the ground on which he stood would vanish. It was as though he had stepped into a dream or a painting he’d long admired. As though one of the thousand wishes he’d cast into the void had decided to take form, and at any second he would find himself in the cave again, still years away from breaking into Buffy’s Hell. But as the seconds ticked by and the world refused to fade, he felt it was safe to embrace the strange burn of what he assumed was respite in its purest form. And he knew then that Larry had been right—the concentrate of any emotion was enough to unmake realities.
The painting into which he’d stepped, this crazy place called home, didn’t fade into shadows or blink out of existence. For every step he took, the sounder his surroundings became. He smelled chalk and burnt books. Further away he detected movement: cars, horns, stereos, people walking up and down sidewalks, fast food restaurants catering to the local teens, and demons roaring through cemeteries as vampires picked off the slow and stupid from Sunnydale’s pitiful nightlife. These sensations couldn’t be created or replicated. They were real.
Real.
When he met Buffy’s eyes again, he knew she thought the same. While she didn’t cry, she looked torn between a place where tears were needed and one where tears would simply interfere with sensation.
Buffy stood again in the world from which she’d been ripped. The place he swore he’d never call home again if she wasn’t at his side. She was real, too. Everything was real. Her bloodied skin, her shoeless feet, her dark hair, and the age she betrayed when her eyes locked with his. The age she couldn’t convey through her youthful face. The one the recesses of the below had given her.
He’d do it all again. In a heartbeat, in a sodding blink, he’d dive back into the hole and get her out. If she was a mirage, she was the most perfect mirage he’d ever seen. But she wasn’t a figment or a dream. He’d touched her, held her, washed her skin and cut her hair. He’d shaved her legs and kissed her mouth, and he’d known her in ways he’d never imagined. That was real, too.
The world collided with experience. The vampire who had climbed into Hell was not the same one that emerged, and the woman he’d brought with him had changed beyond reproach. Changed while somehow remaining the same—it was one of those tricks played by time. One he couldn’t begin to fathom yet somehow already understood.
And when he reached for her hand, she immediately granted it.
He’d brought this with him, too. And he wouldn’t give it up without a fight.
*~*~*
It sounded bloody stupid in his head, but Spike had forgotten there were stars. He’d also forgotten streetlights and stop signs, and that headstones had carvings denoting who lay beneath the ground. For all intents and purposes, he considered his memory fairly intact. It had suffered greatly during the third trial, of course, but with the end of the trials came the return of oneself, and he’d carried that with him through every step of his journey. Yet still, as they dodged headlights and ignored the creative gestures of angry drivers, he took in deep, unneeded breaths and remembered things he’d forgotten to keep with him.
There were absolutes, however, that time could not eradicate. The path to Revello Drive was one of them, and how often he’d walked it, from every feasible corner of town. It was the direction his feet instinctively pointed, the only place he knew to go. In the end, he didn’t know if Buffy likewise remembered or if she was merely following him, and it seemed thoughtless to ask.
It was an unusually quiet night in Sunnydale, which once upon a time would have driven him mad. Tonight, Spike thanked the silence. Though he doubted a concerned motorist would stop to help, he didn’t want too many gawkers taking in their haggard states. Buffy was still drenched in blood, dressed in what she’d managed to throw on before the world caved in on itself. He stood only in jeans, himself, his chest splattered with dark, crusted blood. His skin was chilled but he didn’t feel the cold. With Buffy at his side, her hand in his, he could do nothing but hum with warmth.
“It’s real.”
Spike blinked and shot her a speculative glance which she didn’t return. Her eyes were fixed on the front door. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Home sweet bloody home.”
“It’s like something I imagined, you know? Something I wished for.” Buffy expelled a ragged sigh. “I saw it so often when I dreamt I didn’t really think it could be real. Not even when you helped me remember. But it’s here. It’s real.”
He didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t know where to begin.
As it was, she didn’t allow him much time to come up with anything profound. “Do you think they’ll remember me?” she asked.
That he hadn’t expected. “What?”
“It’s been so long…”
“Not here, it hasn’t.”
She nodded without feeling. “Yeah, but…I know that, but I’ve never understood it. I remember what happened with that Ken guy, and I remember Giles telling me Angel could have suffered centuries after I sent him to Hell, and I never really got it. How can time be so relative?”
“Asking the wrong bloke, pet. I just roll with the punches.” He squeezed her hand. “But even if a sodding millennia had passed for them too, they wouldn’t forget you. You’re the sort of girl no one forgets.”
Buffy expelled a shivering breath and looked at him. “You think so?”
Spike’s lips tugged into a smile. “Think so? I’m living proof. Now come on…won’t get easier by waiting.”
She nodded again and then they were moving. Taking strides up the familiar walkway and stepping up onto a porch that creaked under their weight as though to say, “Welcome home,” in a language only it understood. Spike thought about ringing the bell but it seemed asinine. Even so, it didn’t matter the next second; a well-known awareness washed over him before he could give the matter much thought. No heartbeat echoed within the home’s walls, no voices tickled his sensitive ears, no throb of a pulse tempted his hungry fangs. Buffy’s homecoming felt anticlimactic. No one was home.
He would have been annoyed had he not been so relieved. Just like that, he’d been granted a few more minutes alone with her. At once an endless supply, Spike had grown steadily aware how much of his time with Buffy now lived with a deadline. He didn’t think she’d take back the promises she’d made, but he couldn’t speak for how her chums would react once the excitement wore off and his newfound closeness with their Slayer came out into the open. It was an old fear—one he doubted he would ever completely banish.
Spike tried the doorknob, which was predictably locked. “Well, bugger.”
“What?”
“No one’s home.”
Buffy frowned. “How do you know?”
“It’s a vamp thing. I know. Reckon they put the key under the mat?”
“Where are they?”
“Magic Box or Rupert’s, I’d wager. So under the mat, love?”
“They’re not home.” She trembled and shook her head, and immediately any sense of keeping her to himself died. It had been a selfish wish, after all, and one that felt nearly as familiar as the porch beneath their feet. Buffy would want to find her friends immediately. She wouldn’t be contented to wait until they turned up.
The words never came, though. Not those words. Instead, she patted her cheeks, felt her hair, then nodded to the potted plant sitting next to the door. “There,” she said. “I think…I don’t know, but I think Dawn and I would hide the key there. I remember digging around for it in the dirt.”
“Not under?”
“No, we buried it.” Buffy inhaled sharply. “We’re always burying things.”
An excited thrill raced down his spine. “So we’re going inside, then?”
“I can’t face them like this,” she said with a nod. “I can’t just go over there looking like I just…”
Spike arched a brow, kneeling to the potted plant in question and dipping his fingers into the soil. Finding the key wasn’t difficult. Another nod to her memory. “Crawled out of Hell?” he ventured.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Hot shower oughta do it, yeah?” He slid the key into the lock and turned, and just like that another gateway opened. A portal into a place he’d nearly forgotten. The layout of a home he knew so well—the place he’d yearned to be welcomed. Spike drew in a breath and braved the threshold.
Buffy followed and then, at last, burst into tears.
*~*~*
He didn’t know how long he held her. Months could have passed and he wouldn’t have cared. He’d held her like this before—he’d felt her tremble against his chest as hot tears scalded his skin in the wake of memories returning to a shattered mind. She hadn’t cried much since then, though fuck knew she deserved her tears. Hell, he didn’t know how she’d kept it in this long—standing in the middle of the foyer she’d never thought she’d call home again, in the center of a town she’d last seen while diving into a spiraling sea of hell dimensions. Buffy had been strong longer than anyone could attest, and she’d earned the quiet.
She’d earned this.
The waves of tears finally subsided, replaced by a cold, embracing calm. Buffy’s hands tightened around his shoulders before breaking away. She wiped at her eyes and took in a shuddering breath, staggering toward the living room as though in a daze.
“Err…” Spike moved forward with intent, his feet guiding him to the kitchen. “If memory serves, Big Red kept some vamp-juice in the fridge. Fancy seeing if there’s something nice to nibble on? Something not made from pig?”
Buffy nodded distantly, running her fingers over a lampshade. He stared at her for a second before disappearing into the kitchen. There he found a note on the island, reading a simple: Willow – Staying at Janice’s. It’s too quiet here. – D. It was so normal, so ordinary, he nearly thought it would vanish if he looked at it a beat too long, as though no time at all had passed.
But then, as the date on the newspaper on the counter proclaimed, no time had. Barely three days had gone by. Three days.
It was hard to imagine, like Buffy said. Hard to grasp that time could move differently. Hard to imagine that so much suffering could be compiled into such a sparing collection of hours.
Spike tossed open the door to the fridge and seized a bag of blood. There were three left, as well as half a carton of milk and a box of pizza. Not much time to shop, he figured. The Scoobies’ priorities were in a different place.
“Buffy?”
She appeared in the doorway, a shade of herself. “The kitchen,” she said. “Anything to eat?”
“Leftover pizza.”
“What’s pizza?”
“An old favorite,” he assured her, snatching the box and tossing it onto the island. “You’ll remember it soon enough. Smells good. Safe to eat, that is.”
She nodded and picked at the lid. “Gonna have some?”
Spike held up the bag in his hand. “Got my nosh right here. Eat as much as you want, pet. Then we can pipe upstairs and wash up.”
Buffy’s eyes fell on Dawn’s note. “Do you think they’ll be back tonight?”
“Don’t know. This place was bloody buzzing before I left, but I can’t guess what they’ve done since I…came to get you. The witches might be cozy at their love nest and Harris has that pad for him and his demon.” Spike shrugged a shoulder. “If Dawn’s staying with a chum, they might not come back here at all tonight.”
She nodded. “Okay. Good.”
“Good?”
“I think I need the night. I think I need to wake up here before I put too much into it. Before I believe it’s not a dream.” Buffy blinked rapidly, gingerly taking a slice of cold pizza into her small hands. “You sure you don’t want some?”
Spike shook his head. “Think I’ll wait, too.”
“Before eating?”
“Just to see what happens.”
She smiled and took a bite. He raised the bag to his waiting fangs.
They stood soaked in dried blood in a kitchen that had forgotten them, eating and watching each other.
Out of everything he’d experienced, this moment was definitely the most surreal.
*~*~*
He sat on her bed in the dark, listening to the shower running in the next room. It felt wrong sitting on her clean comforter in his filthy, bloodied state, but she’d asked him to wait here, and here he’d wait. Cold pig’s blood churned in his stomach and while his demon demanded a second helping, he didn’t want Buffy walking into an empty room. She likely wouldn’t be much longer.
There were small details he’d forgotten. The pictures of Buffy with friends wedged in the mirror of her vanity, the scattered assortment of girly things across her dresser beside the stuffed pig. A heap of dirty laundry sat next to her closet door, where her purse still hung. Buffy still lived in this room. It was almost as though she’d never left.
Spike’s head jerked up as the shower shut off. A few minutes elapsed before the bathroom door squeaked open, and a sweet-smelling, towel-dressed slayer wandered over the threshold.
“Well, well,” he said with a gentle smile. “You look good enough to eat.”
“I hope you mean that literally.”
His eyes narrowed pointedly.
“That didn’t come out right. I mean…” Buffy wiggled as a cute blush warmed her cheeks. “Well, you know what I mean.”
“I bloody hope so,” Spike replied, waggling his brows, his eyes taking a nice long detour down her scrumptious body. Fuck, but she knew how to set a mood in seconds.
Buffy laughed. It was miraculous. He didn’t think he’d hear her laugh again for a long while. “Hold that thought,” she said, waving at him. “At least until you de-Hellify.”
Spike smirked, rising to his feet. “Noted.”
He edged past her and stepped into the bathroom, wincing under the staggeringly bright overhead light. Like everything else in the house, the shower and the loo looked like something out of a dream—something imagined from a faraway land. He cast a quick glance to the mirror and was nearly startled when it reflected empty space. Strange how quick some habits could break. He supposed he would miss that; seeing himself in something other than Polaroids had been perhaps the one and only perk of living in the underworld.
He turned the faucet and water poured. The shower had a lived-in smell; it was another difference he'd neglected to catalogue. Spike scrubbed himself dutifully, a mixture of blood and dirt circling the drain. He didn't know how long the water ran; every time soap slid off his body he felt tainted again. As though Hell had chased him back to Revello Drive, as though it clung to his skin. He lathered his scalp and allowed his hair, longer than he typically wore it, to wrap around his fingers. First things first once things settled down around here, he’d chop off the curls and seize the first bottle of bleach he could get his hands on.
By the time he stepped out of the shower the mirrors had fogged and his flesh was pink. He reckoned his body would never again have this sort of color: his color was already darker than any vampire’s should be given the burn of the non-sun from Buffy’s dimension. Spike drew in another needless breath and toweled off, forgetting until he was nearly dry that in this world it did matter whether or not water splattered across the floor. He wiped up his mess and tossed the towel over the tub, then glanced at the dirty jeans he’d dumped beside the sink. There was no earthly reason to keep them beyond the laughable notion of sentimental attachment and he wasn’t about to slip them back on before bed.
Bed.
Spike’s heart twisted. He hadn’t thought ahead this far. While he was certain Buffy wouldn’t want him to leave, especially given the obvious invitation she’d made before he stepped into the shower, things felt different here. He’d slept at her side for days now, but that was in a world with only two people. This was a world with many people, particularly those of the persuasion that he wasn’t worth the dirt he’d just washed off his skin. And while he knew Buffy had aged in ways no one could really understand, slipping in beside her in her own bed seemed too perfect to be reality.
He cleared his throat and stepped into the hallway, naked and incredibly aware of it. He hadn’t been so aware since the moments when a doe-eyed, innocent slayer of pure Id had discovered her own sexuality. He’d like nothing more than to stroll into her bedroom and flex like a cocky bastard, but he wouldn’t just assume things this time around. He’d assumed enough when he’d had nothing to lose. Things had changed; when one had everything to lose, the rules seemed a little more unbreakable than they once had.
Ultimately, he wasn’t doing anyone any favors by standing in the hallway. Spike stepped up to her doorway and stopped short of entering.
“Buffy?”
No response. He peered closer.
“Quick question about the sleeping arrangement, love…you do want me in there, don’t you?”
A beat. Still nothing. He inhaled sharply and stepped inside, his eyes immediately landing on her small, sleeping form. Spike’s shoulders dropped.
Of course she was asleep.
“Of course,” he murmured, nearing her bed. “Must be bloody knackered.”
Evidently, it wasn’t a very deep sleep. The sound of his voice was enough to make her stir. Buffy moaned and rolled over, her eyes blinking open. “Spike?”
“Here, sweetheart.”
He watched as she fought to retrieve memory and knew the second she remembered where she was. She sat up quickly but settled the second her gaze landed on the stuffed pig. It seemed enough to determine that she hadn’t dreamt the whole affair, for she settled back almost immediately.
“Spike?” she called again.
“Right here.”
“You’re naked.”
Spike grinned sheepishly. “Yeah.”
“Sorry.”
“Why’s that?”
“Too tired. Come to bed.”
That was more than enough to relieve his concerns. In easy seconds he had crawled into bed behind her, folding her into his arms. Her sweet, unclothed body seemed to hum when he reeled her into him. Her hair fell across his skin and her warmth was enough to heat the bloody town, and it was so perfect he was almost afraid to let sleep take him.
Almost.
If there was any chance the world would still be there in the morning, he’d have to take it. Not three minutes passed before exhaustion weighed down his eyes and settled across his tired muscles, and just like that he fell into a deep, black slumber.
Chapter Thirty-five
For the first time in a long, long while, the things he felt and the wonders he saw were not born of blood or sorrow. He felt no pain in the blanket of night. The past few days he’d grown accustomed to holding her, feeling her soft breaths tickle the hair on his arms as her chest rose and fell, but this was different. No creeping fear bordered the skirts of his dreams. Instead, he felt calm. At peace. He slept harder and deeper than he had in generations, and fell far into the recesses of his mind without worry of never making it out.
He burned with her. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt her honeyed warmth tempt him as slumber receded, and it definitely wasn’t the first time he felt no inclination to contest, but something felt different all the same. Spike hadn’t had much practice in refusing the soft, slick heat of the woman he loved, but he’d imposed an almost unnatural resistance during Buffy’s recovery. While it’d fallen as soon as she allowed him into her body, a shade had remained. A part of him that had accepted he might not always be welcome between her thighs—that despite words or reassurance and a thousand other silent indicators that things between them had truly changed—it might be ripped away without thought or warning.
It wasn’t a rational fear, but a real one nonetheless. Spike had learned over the course of the journey not to accept anything at face value…especially when what was offered was something for which he’d yearned above all else. Still, nothing could chase away the perfection of the moment. His dreams were safe again, and here he could have whatever he desired.
He dreamt of her, of course—of his hot little Buffy. Her skin so warm, her pussy soft, wet, and beckoning his exploration. She sighed when his lips found her neck and rumbled a sweet little moan that teased his cock and made his demon purr. It was okay, though, because this was a dream. He knew it was a dream. Why else would the smell of decay and ruin be replaced with the tantalizing hint of shampoo that he hadn’t sniffed in centuries? He was buried under a thousand scents and sensations he had kept as a memory, never truly thinking, when he was honest with himself, that he would have it again. It was a dream. A wonderful, wishful dream.
His hand found her breast as his teeth skimmed the perfect column of her throat. She sighed again and thrust her hips back against him, her thighs parting in open invitation. Spike growled happily, tongue worshiping her soft flesh as his fingers lazily strummed her nipple. The head of his cock found her wet opening and rubbed itself along her slit until he heard her plead with him, and then he sank home.
Spike’s eyes flew open, a strangled gasp clawing through his throat. No dream. Not a dream. This was real. Everything was real. The bed, the walls, the dresser, and the wholeness of this place that was as real as the girl in his arms.
“Oh fuck.” He released her breast, his fingers digging into her hip as he withdrew from her liquid heat.
“Something like that,” Buffy said breathily, her hand reaching for his. “Don’t stop.”
“Don’t stop?”
She nodded and wiggled, thrusting back to drive him deep inside her again. And Christ, she burned him so good he nearly wept. “Please.”
Spike wasn’t stupid; he knew almost immediately what was at play. She needed this as much as he did—she needed to hold onto the illusion of a dream in case the world in which they awoke wasn’t as kind as the one they’d trusted in their sleep. When she declined to seek out her friends the night before, he’d understood at once that beyond her eagerness existed a fear he doubted even he could comprehend.
She might have lived in Hell for a thousand years, but it was all she knew. The life she’d had before was something foreign, almost imaginary, something she was still attempting to piece together. Something she likely wouldn’t reconcile until years had rolled them forward and she realized she’d never again find herself in the shadows of the place she’d escaped. Only twenty years had been spent on the earth for which she’d fought—a sliver of the lifetime she’d paved in her wake.
And knowing this, Spike likewise knew he shouldn’t give in. He should pull away, put on a brave face, summon the inner William and tell her everything would be all right. But Christ, he couldn’t. His prick was wrapped in wet, hot velvet, her body shuddered and her hips rolled back against him—no, he couldn’t say no.
“Like this, pet?” Spike murmured, thrusting shallowly into her tight pussy. His hand found her breast again, squeezing her warm flesh as his teeth nipped at her ear. “This what you need?”
Buffy nodded hurriedly. “More, more.”
“Feel so good. So hot. So tight.” He buried his face in her shoulder, maintaining a sound pace that felt somewhere between soft and desperate, somewhere between the tender adoration of the poet and the burning need of the demon. Since his body had rediscovered carnal delights, he hadn’t appeased the monster within with the hard, brutal fucking it typically received. Not once had he given into his nature’s darker urges, and while he in truth, would not have wanted it any other way with Buffy, a very large and very real part of him needed it rough.
The women in his past hadn’t allowed him to make love. Now he had, and with the woman with whom it was meant to be shared, yet he couldn’t change himself. He couldn’t change the side of him that needed pain with his pleasure.
This likely wasn’t the time for it. He just hoped Buffy would let him share that with her some day.
“My hot, tight slayer.”
“Oh, God…”
“So good. So sweet.” Spike pulled her tight against his chest, cock pumping steadily in and out of her body. The slippery feel of her flesh was enough to make any man question his religion, no matter his circumstance. For the first time in centuries, he felt the strain of his mortality. He felt every inch of his body as though waking up all over again—as though like his memory, sensory itself had merely hibernated until he returned.
“Spike…Spike…”
“Love your skin,” he whispered, running his hand down her arm. “So soft. You’re so soft all over. Oh, squeeze me like that, kitten. Put those muscles to good use.”
“Spike?”
It took half a lust-addled second for the question in her voice to slice through the fog. “Sweetheart?”
“Is this real?”
His heart twisted. “Oh, Buffy…”
“It looks strange. Everything…ohhh…everything looks so…”
“That’s daylight, love,” he murmured, unable to stop thrusting. Not when she felt so sweet. Not with her tantalizing scent tickling his nostrils. Not with his fangs hungry and his body wound up with need. “Bleeding in through the blinds.”
“Daylight?”
“Yeah. Bloody fortunate you had the blinds closed. Real sun, that is. Not what you’re used to. And this?” He pressed her harder into the sheets. “This is what we call a real bed.”
Buffy trembled hard. “This is real?”
“I promise.”
“Let me see you.”
He had her flipped under him in a flash, cock plunging back into her before she had the chance to miss him. “See?” he rasped. He locked eyes with her, watching her watch him as their bodies rocked together. As the springs of the mattress whined under their movement, as the headboard clamored noisily against the wall. Every time he’d been with her, he swore he’d nearly burned alive, but it had never been a purer sentiment than right now.
“This is real,” he promised again. “See me? Feel me, love? This is real.”
Buffy whimpered softly, her hips crashing upward to meet him every time he pulled away from her pussy. “It doesn’t feel…”
“Real?”
“I need it harder.”
The demon purred in delight and his body was all too eager to oblige. “Oh yeah,” Spike growled, his tongue unable to resist licking her lips. He drove deeper, faster, filling the air with the smack of battling flesh. Her eyes widened and her breaths came hard and quick, her nails digging into his shoulders.
“Fuck,” he hissed. “Bloody dream come bloody true.”
“What?”
“You. This. Your bed. Your…room…oh Buffy…” Spike stole a kiss from her lips. “Wanted this. Just this. Just like this. So much.”
“Like…this?”
“Just this.”
“W-why?”
Spike grinned and kissed her again, a moan scratching at his throat. Christ, she felt so good. So fucking sweet. A self-made heaven right here in Sunnydale, right between the sheets of Buffy’s very own bed. Every time his cock dipped inside her perfect body, her vaginal muscles gripped and pulled, turning the dance into a needy tug-of-war. “Because,” he murmured, “I love you.”
“Why?”
“Why?” He bit at her lips and thrust harder. “Million. Fucking. Reasons. God, not gonna…” His every muscle had pulled taut like a drum, his balls tightening and a sweet burning bliss started tingling through his body. But he wasn’t ready—he didn’t want to let this moment go, didn’t want to tumble from this high only to find himself in a place he’d once effortlessly navigated without the first idea how to proceed. He had to make this last.
This moment was the last one he’d have before everything came crashing down.
Without warning, he drew his thrusts to a halt. “Need…”
Buffy’s eyes bugged comically. “What?”
Spike slipped out of her and quickly slid down her body. “Just want a taste,” he whispered. “Just a taste.”
“Spike, please, I need—”
“I know what you need.” His arms hooked under her hips, lifting her pussy to his hungry mouth. “You smell amazing,” he told her, nuzzling her soft curls and inhaling her spicy, musky scent. “Just like I thought…”
She arched her hips upward. “What? You’ve tasted…before…”
“Not like this. Not in your room.” He grinned and dipped his tongue inside her, tentatively at first, but one taste was enough to make him feel parched. He explored her forever, and every lick pulled him away from himself and into a place where only she existed—a place where he had no purpose other than to devour her. He probed her hungrily, delving deeper, ravenous and needy. Her thighs closed around his ears and her cries became muffled, but he didn’t slow down. He drank her, nipped at her, massaged her with his tongue, slurped up her honey and demanded more, losing himself so completely he couldn’t care if he was found. Still, he somehow managed to hold onto his thought and keep it near the surface so he could tell her, “Not with you smelling like you do,” by the time she’d likely forgotten the question.
“I…uhhh…what?”
Spike chuckled, tongue abandoning her opening to lap at her swollen clit. The sharp gasp that wrangled through her throat was music to his ears. “Your smell,” he said. “Like Buffy.”
“I am…Buffy.”
“I know,” he said, drawing a long line up her slit before settling on her tender pearl again. “And we’re here.”
“Spike…”
“Mmm.” He sucked her clit between his lips and tugged, then resumed drawing lazy circles around her sensitive flesh with his tongue. It didn’t take long for her body to grow taut, and in easy seconds she panted and gasped, her legs stretching down the course of his back and hitching in his skin. As she began to tremble in release, he lifted her onto his lap, positioned his cock at her opening, and coaxed her down until he was sheathed in warmth once more.
“Oooh.”
“Love the way you feel when you come.”
Buffy stretched her arms around his neck and drew his mouth to hers for a fiery kiss. “Oh, God…”
“Wanna come again?”
She shook her head hard. “Ohhh…ohhh, I can’t.”
“Let’s see about that.”
His hands fell to her ass, guiding her in long, slick strokes. His skin was painted in her sweat, his mouth peppering kisses across her shoulder and along her neck. So close, now. The urgency in his blood returned, raw need stringing through him like an old friend. Take the world away or give it back, this was something that wouldn’t change. He would always have the dance. Spike’s teeth skimmed her chin as he guided a hand between their warring bodies, settling so her clit would strike his thumb with every bounce.
“Feel it burning? Don’t let it die, kitten. It wants one…more…”
“Spike…”
“Just a bit more.”
“Bite me.”
Spike’s head reeled. He was sure he’d heard wrong. “What?”
“Like…before. The hope. Give it to me.” Buffy tilted her head and gave him an eyeful of her racing pulse. “It felt so good. Please…”
There was no vampire on this plane or any other that would be able to resist. His fangs burst into his mouth, and he caught her eyes just before he lunged. The yearning, the anticipation that he glimpsed had him as high as a paper kite.
And the second her blood touched his lips, he spiraled into a chasm of pure bliss.
*~*~*
It took three attempts at a joint shower before Spike decided they would likely see better results if they went in one at a time. There was something about a wet, blushing Buffy sporting a fresh bite mark that forced him to shove her against the wall and sully her up all over again. After scrubbing himself clean and stealing a final grope of her breasts, he dried off, stepped into the hall, and waited for her to join him.
The honeymoon was about to end. Their intimate interlude had been a nice distraction, but the fact that the world around them hadn’t blinked away in the light of morning confirmed they definitely weren’t the only people in it, and Buffy needed to come to terms with it soon. He couldn’t keep her to himself forever. And while he trusted what she’d told him regarding their future together, the nagging feeling wouldn’t shut its mouth until proven wrong.
A thousand years could pass, but Spike doubted Buffy knew the sort of hold her friends had over her. The pattern might be old, but…
“Spike?”
He smiled and turned. Freshly bathed, sweet-smelling, towel-wrapped, and completely flushed. She was so beautiful.
“Can you help me pick what to wear?”
Spike stifled a laugh. “What’s that?”
“I…ummm…haven’t been around…clothes in a long time. I mean, rags and…whatever you dressed me in when we were…” Buffy sighed and turned away. He understood her reluctance to say it, especially now. The word likely seemed taboo. “Well…I don’t…I just don’t know what to wear.”
He nodded, casting a glance to his own state of undress. In the attempt to keep from shagging her into oblivion every time he saw her, he’d similarly adorned a towel that rode very low on his narrow hips. Anything that might resemble something he’d typically wear was at least half a mile away in his Restfield crypt. He rather doubted there were clothes on the premises that would suit him.
“Makes two of us, love.”
Buffy frowned. “You don’t have anything here?”
“What?”
“I don’t understand. I…” She stopped short and broke away with a laugh. “Wow, I can’t believe…well, I guess you wouldn’t have any stuff here. Because you and I didn’t…I mean, we weren’t…”
His brows perked. “Together?”
“There’s the awkward word.”
“Nothing awkward about it, ducks. We just weren’t together.”
“Well, that’s dumb.”
Spike’s lips twitched. “Buffy…”
She shook her head and moved past him, her eyes falling on the doorway to her mother’s bedroom. He thought about giving her a quick hint just in case her memory proved fuzzy, but ultimately decided to keep his mouth shut. She would find her way around…and he would always answer her if she needed to ask.
“This,” she said slowly. “My…mother’s?”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“And she’s gone.” She shivered and crossed her arms. “I remember that.”
The air in the hallway suddenly felt thick and he didn’t know whether or not he should stand still or reach out and touch her. He couldn’t know what emotional strain existed between moms and daughters, but he knew crawling out of Hell would likely send anyone straight into their mother’s arms.
“I took a peek inside my closet,” Buffy said at last. “Not much room.”
“I think you were what they call a clothes horse.”
“There’ll be room enough for all our stuff in her closet, don’t you think?”
Spike blinked at her for a few long seconds before he first processed the words, and then again once he realized her meaning. And then it was all he could do to keep from falling over in shock. “You…you want me…”
“What?”
“Buffy, did you just ask me to…” He blinked a few more times, eyes bouncing from her to the doorway. “Your mum’s—”
“I know I can’t sleep without you, and I don’t want to try. I hope…this is okay, right? I mean, you don’t want—”
He didn’t know if he’d ever moved so fast. In a flash, he had her in his arms, his mouth closing over hers. She melted against him like hot wax, her lips parting, her tongue curling, her hands grasping his shoulders as though he were the anchor holding her to the world.
“Here,” he whispered, fingers moving over her towel, “is the only place I’ve ever wanted to be.”
She smiled gratefully, closing a hand over his to bring it to a stop. “We better not,” she said. “Again, I mean.”
Spike broke away almost immediately. “I know. Can’t keep you all to myself, can I?”
“Point of being in a world full of people is occasionally seeing those people.” Buffy expelled a deep breath. “Even if I’m terrified.”
“No reason to be scared, love.”
“We went over this…I don’t know if I can be with people. I don’t know if I can handle it.”
“And I remember telling you it’ll be all right.”
Buffy licked her lips and glanced to the floor.
“It’s all right,” he said again. “You needed time.”
“I had a thousand years. You’d think that’d be time enough.”
“Sweetheart—”
“I’ve been hiding. Postponing. I’ve been playing make believe and thinking…” Buffy heaved a sigh and met his eyes again. “The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m here because of you…and you’re the only person I know I won’t lose myself around. I just…”
“You don’t wanna hide but you don’t wanna be seen?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“It’ll be all right.”
Buffy forced a smile. “Easy for you to say.”
Yeah, he supposed it was. He just wished it was sentiment he shared.
“So, clothes?” she asked, wiggling a bit. “I have a whole closet full of them and no idea where to begin. Will you…”
“Stare blankly and nod appropriately?”
“Spike…”
His hands came up. “Kidding. Didn’t spend half a century dressing Dru without picking up a thing or two.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Like riding a bicycle, love. It all comes back.”
She offered him a quick grin before turning to pad back toward her room, and Spike followed. Back into the place that had once been forbidden territory—a place he’d never thought he’d be welcome. A place she’d just asked him to call home.
Buffy’s clothes were much the way he remembered. The ones he pegged as the oldest consisted of ridiculously short skirts and tops that left her more naked than covered. He found a few he could recall directly—the green skirt she’d worn during their first fight, the blouse she’d had on the night he chained her up, and several other choice pieces—and others he doubted he’d ever seen. In the end, it seemed futile to go to so much effort. No one had ever marketed the Escaped from Hell look as a fall line, and while he knew her concern over what to wear was something that came with being female, he likewise understood her friends wouldn’t care if she came back wearing a kilt and a coconut bra, just as long as she came back.
“These,” he said, pulling out a pair of faded jeans. “Seems right.”
She held them up for inspection. “Seem big.”
It was true. Just looking at the denim waist was enough to determine they’d fall right off her…though the same was true for anything in her wardrobe. “You’ll grow back into them,” Spike offered with a shrug. “They’ll ride low, but there’s nothing we can do about that now. You’ve filled out a bit since we…”
“Reconnected?” she volunteered.
That seemed as good a word as any. “Right,” he said. “But it’ll take time to get you looking the way you did.”
“That’s what happens when you eat just once a week,” she reasoned. “And no, you’re not off the hook for calling me fat.” Shock rattled through his body, but before he could cry foul, she held up a hand and raised her twinkling eyes to his. “Kidding. I’m not that sensitive.”
“I’d bloody hope not.”
“So jeans. Any suggestion what to wear with them?”
Spike grumbled and seized a long-sleeved black tee from her closet. It would be baggy, but he doubted she wanted to show off any skin. “So your mates don’t stake me for your malnourishment.”
“They won’t stake you for anything.”
“You figure?”
“You got me out of Hell, Spike. What could they possibly stake you for?”
“Shagging you while I was there?”
Buffy rolled her eyes, and while her flippancy amused him, he couldn’t help but feel slightly concerned.
“Come on,” she said, throwing her clothes over an arm. “There’s a good chance my mom had some stuff that was my dad’s.”
It seemed like a long shot, but he was willing to play along.
This was likely as domestic as he’d ever get.
*~*~*
Buffy’s hunt for male-targeted clothes ultimately led them to the basement, where she unearthed a large cardboard box with the name HANK scrawled across the side. While the man’s wardrobe left a lot to be desired, Spike found a few random pieces that comprised something he thought looked like him, though the jeans were vastly over-sized and the shirts he’d selected—a wife-beater tank and a pale blue dress shirt—draped over him like sheets. True, they could always make a stop at his crypt on the way to the Magic Box, but that would only put another unnecessary step between them and the Scoobs. He’d love to pave as many as she liked; the part of him that had wizened up over the past three centuries knew better.
“Do we even know they’ll be there?” Buffy asked as he neared the familiar sewer entrance he’d so often utilized before Glory’s Tower. He found a pair of large boots nearby, which would work, if nothing else. He didn’t particularly fancy walking through sludge with bare feet.
“Where’s that, kitten?”
“At the shop.”
“They’re not here, so they’re there.”
“And if they’re not?”
“We try the Watcher’s.”
Buffy released a shaky breath and nodded, her eyes on the ground. “I have to do this.”
He swallowed hard. “Right.”
“You’re making me.”
“You want to.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
She glanced up and reached for his hand. “But you’ll be with me.”
“Every step of the way.”
A small silence fell between them, and it felt different. It felt like an acknowledgement that everything was about to change again. The things they had shared would remain theirs, but the world waited outside. Everything was about to change in a way he couldn’t comprehend. He hadn’t been prepared to come back. He hadn’t realized what it would entail, or how hard it would be.
Neither had she. But here they were.
“All right,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Buffy squeezed his hand and nodded, and though fear refused to fade, he saw a flicker of old courage cross her face. He loved her so much then he could barely stand it. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirty-sixHe felt her anxiety as though it were his own—felt the desperate, restless rush of her pulse as her heart began thundering at a speed that seemed damn near unhealthy for a girl of her size. It was one of those uncomfortable scenarios in which he didn’t know whether or not breaking the silence with conversation would relieve or worsen the tension, and he didn’t particularly feel like running the risk.
It didn’t matter the next second, for Buffy snatched the decision from him and made it her own. “I remember a blanket.”
“What?”
“You. And a blanket. And fire. Sometimes—well, most of the time—with yelling.”
Spike smothered a grin. “Yeah,” he said. “All about making an entrance, see.”
“A charbroiled entrance?”
“Took you by surprise, didn’t it?”
Buffy nodded and reached for his hand, which he granted with giddy eagerness that made him feel nervous and love-struck. Every step they took toward the Magic Box felt like a ticking clock, signaling the tightening of a familiar noose. A little distraction right now might go a long way.
“I’m sure it took me by surprise the first time, and maybe the second if you were lucky.”
“Watch the pride, love. Like I said, all about making an entrance.”
“So that’s the reason you chose the blanket and fire route. Because if you also have the whole town’s sewer line mapped out, it seems like an unnecessary risk.”
Spike shrugged a shoulder. “Look who you’re asking, pet. Life’s too short to play it safe.”
“Not for you.”
He tossed her a quick glance. “No, suppose not.”
“And not for me, either.”
His throat tightened. “Well, to be fair, we didn’t know that till recently.”
“Maybe not you. I’ve had it pegged for a while.” Buffy blew out a deep breath and squeezed his hand hard enough to hurt, but he didn’t flinch. He squeezed back and waited. A few seconds slid by before she spoke again. “It’s kind of something you notice after forty years. I can remember now standing in front of a mirror…maybe the one at that one building…with the shower?”
Spike nodded and released a shaky sigh.
“Though it was probably another. I went into every building there about a thousand times, I think. Just looking…and hoping. But I’d stand in front of a mirror and look at myself, and while I knew I looked different, I also knew I wasn’t getting any older on the outside.” Buffy grinned, but there was noticeably no feeling behind it. “It was probably around my hundredth birthday when I realized I wasn’t going to die.”
“Good news for me, though,” he offered, his voice choked. “Get you all to myself for a long bloody time, don’t I?”
Buffy leaned her head against his shoulder and stroked his arm with her free hand. The move was so tender and familiar it nearly surprised him, but then there was so much of that between them now. And he truly doubted she would ever stop surprising him.
“Here it is, pet,” Spike said, pulling her to a halt under the familiar sewer cover that led to the Magic Box basement. “Stop number one.”
“Here?” she asked, her voice going up an octave. “You’re sure? There are loads of other—”
“Buffy.”
Her shoulders fell. “Well, on the plus side, they might not be here.”
“Way to think positively.” Spike smiled and stole a soft kiss off her lips. Focusing on calming her down was a nice little distraction from his own apprehension. “I’m right with you. You know that.”
“I do. And…” She bit her lower lip. “I’m with you, too.”
“I know.”
“I hope so.”
He kissed her brow, then her lips again. “I love you.”
“I know.”
“I know you know.” Spike raised his eyes to the sewer cap and smiled. “Right then. Ladies first.”
*~*~*He knew it was the right place even before he heard their voices, and Christ, that was a bloody strange sensation. Beyond walking through the streets of a place he’d all but forgotten, beyond showering in Buffy’s home, even beyond waking up in her bed, hearing people he hadn’t heard in three centuries took the cake. He hadn’t spoken with anyone who wasn’t a demented guardian, the girl at his side, or a figment of his imagination since first seizing the rope that would lead him into Hell. Now he stood just a few feet from people—real people—and for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out how to proceed.
And then a scent he hadn’t anticipated tickled his nostrils and he nearly stumbled in shock.
“Bloody fucking hell.”
“What?” Buffy mouthed.
Spike’s jaw tightened but he ignored her. Instead, he peeked around the corner and spied the lot of them sitting around the tables grouped in the back. They popped out like creatures in a picture book, crisp and clear and more real than even he had anticipated. Willow was standing beside a chalkboard, a pointer stick in her hand. Giles, Xander, Anya, and Tara around one table, and Angel and a dark-haired woman at another. On the board in inelegant writing were the words, “Rule of Three.”
“All right,” Willow was saying. “So…well, we’ve effectively proven that you really can’t write the rules down. Not in this dimension, anyway.”
“Something I’ve only been saying for the past week,” Anya mused, her tone bored. “No one here ever listens to me. Why is that?”
“But we’ve also managed to do a bit more research on one of the rules.” The redhead turned to Angel. “That one about promises. I’ve looked in every book I could get my hands on since we sent Spike into Hell, and the only thing I’ve been able to find is that promises made to a creature of the underworld are—”
“Binding contracts,” Angel said. “Yeah. Two years dealing with Wolfram and Hart have pretty much drilled that one in.”
Giles cleared his throat. “We were concerned for the first day or so that Spike might…make promises to Buffy should he find her.”
Angel’s expression darkened and his mouth formed a tight line. “I doubt that’s something anyone could resist, given the circumstances.” His eyes darted between Willow and Giles. “So promises are all right, so long as they’re not made to something evil.”
The redhead shrugged. “Well, I’m not saying go promise-crazy or anything, but I’d focus less on that and more on the not accepting of things that are offered and not forgetting your name.”
Buffy squeezed his hand, drawing Spike’s attention from the meeting and back to her. She looked less anxious now and more confused, though there were sparks of ire within those green eyes, as well. He hadn’t realized until that second just how annoyed he was until she coaxed a grin out of him.
“Now or never?” she mouthed.
“Want to run for it?” he mouthed back.
She pretended to think before nodding. Then, firing him a brave grin, cleared her throat and rounded the corner.
“What’s this?” she said conversationally. “Giving up on the first search team already?”
It was likely the strangest thing he’d ever witnessed, and in his time, that was definitely saying something. Several seconds elapsed between the words livening up the air and making their target, as though Buffy were invisible or trying to communicate through a sheet of plate glass. Willow nearly jumped out of her skin, frowned, blinked, and took a step forward as though sure her eyes would reveal themselves to be frauds. Angel turned toward them with calm precision that betrayed just how surprised he was, and the rest of the Scoobies were on their feet in half a second, tearing up the floor between them with the energy of a small army.
“Oh, my God, Buffy!”
“What happened?”
“How did you…how are you here?”
“You look so—”
Buffy’s hands came up and Spike felt her heart jump from racing to downright thunderous. “Hey, guys, can you please—”
They paraded right over her. It would have been funny were it not so predictable.
“Buffy, your hair…”
“You’re so skinny.”
“I don’t get it. How are you—”
“Spike?” Buffy called, her voice nervous again. She wanted him, and he was there in a heartbeat.
He truly had no concept of how often he’d played this scenario over in his head until he stepped into the open. And there they were—the people whose faces had once blurred into a collage of mismatched colors and shapes. The Scoobies stared at him and he stared back. There were visible signs of surprise, but not the sort he would expect. They blinked dumbly as though trying to place him, then once remembering, seemed surprised he’d been gone at all. It took a few long seconds before true and solid comprehension set in—before the appearance of Buffy connected with his own return. Eyes traveled to his hair before making their way to his selection of clothing featuring Hank Summers’s greatest hits. Spike let them stare; only a few days had passed for them, and he understood they wouldn’t be on his page immediately. They wouldn’t get it—they couldn’t, and he granted that.
Spike met Buffy’s eyes, though, and shrugged off her friends’ scrutiny with careless ease. “Give the girl some breathing room, why don’t you?”
“Spike?” Willow asked at last.
“Yeah, that’s the name, Red. You know the rest.” His gaze wandered reluctantly to Angel. “Why’s he here? Need a consultant on the welcoming party?”
At that, the Scoobies exchanged semi-guilty but mostly flustered looks, which both satisfied his need to rub their faces in their doubts and infuriate the part of him that had always known the doubts existed in the first place. Determining the reason behind Angel’s presence wasn’t difficult, even without having overheard the meeting they’d interrupted. Still, Spike needed to hear it. He needed to hear, standing where he stood and after going to the end of the world and back, that they hadn’t thought he had the stones to live up to his word. That they thought his feelings for Buffy—while real for
him—didn’t have the staying power of his soul-stuffed grandsire. He needed to hear it, knowing it’d do little more than piss him off.
“We, um, had a meeting last night,” Tara said, her eyes glued to the floor. “A-and we decided…”
“Well, you see, Angel had already done the whole Hell thing once,” Willow reasoned.
“We were concerned with the amount of time it was taking,” Giles said calmly, though his cheeks were a bit pink. “We hadn’t heard from you—”
Spike snorted. “Funny thing about Hell. They don’t have a payphone.”
“Oh,” Buffy mused, her eyes drifting back to Angel. “Okay. So you’re here…because of me.” She turned to Spike, shaking her head. “I thought I was losing it again. I could’ve sworn he’d moved away.”
He smiled in spite of himself. “He did, love. Seems they called in dear ole daddy because yours truly wasn’t getting the job done.”
“What?” At that, her gaze grew wide and damn near accusatory. She whipped her head back to her friends. “How long has it been?”
They exchanged another series of uncomfortable glances. “Since you jumped?” Xander asked.
“No, since Spike—”
“Three days,” the unfamiliar brunette offered, nodding at the witches. There was something familiar about her voice, but Spike couldn’t quite peg it. “That’s what they told us when they showed up.”
“This is day four, to be fair,” Willow muttered, thoroughly flushed.
Buffy blinked and stumbled back against Spike’s chest. “Three days?”
“They were three very long days,” Xander said. “It was just us waiting on word, and—”
Spike honestly didn’t know how he lasted as long as he did. One second he was holding on to some semblance of control, and the next he’d completely cracked. A burst of laughter bubbled off his lips, manic and shrill, and before he knew it he was bracing his knees and cackling so hard his chest ached and his ears rang. He laughed until his throat hurt, until tears stung his eyes and his sides whined for relief. He wasn’t the only one laughing; Buffy had collapsed against him, giggling with the same sort of insane despair he used to hear from Dru, only there was no humor in her. It was laughter for the sake of laughter, for if they didn’t find the situation hilarious, they’d likely scream and throw things.
Perhaps he couldn’t stop laughing because he knew it wasn’t funny, or because he knew the Scoobies didn’t get it. Every time he tried to seize control of himself, he’d glance up to their dumbfounded faces and cave in again. It was a battle he couldn’t win.
“I think Buffy might need help,” the brunette muttered to Angel.
“Three whole days?” Buffy demanded at last, standing up straight and wiping tears from her eyes. “Yeah, that…umm…that’s rough. That’s just…wow, waiting. For three days.”
Willow looked wounded, as did Xander and Giles. “We were worried!” the redhead exclaimed.
“You don’t know what it was like here!” Xander argued.
“I told them you had it under control,” Anya said irritably.
Buffy ignored her, focusing instead on Harris. She had on one of her ‘if looks could vaporize’ expressions—one of which Spike had so often been on the receiving end. “We don’t know what it was like?”
Angel took a diplomatic step forward. “Buffy—”
“It took three hundred years for Spike to make it to my world,” she said. “Three
hundred years! And then we were there for…how long?”
Several seconds passed before Spike realized the question was aimed at him. “A few days, maybe,” he said. His thoughts tugged him back to the alley where he’d first cornered her, at the image of a terrified Buffy clawing at the wall and trembling at the sight of someone else in her abandoned city. His chest tightened and he swallowed. “Seemed longer.”
Buffy nodded solemnly and reached for his hand. “A lot longer,” she said.
“Three hundred years?” Giles asked, his voice shaken. “You were…alone…for three hundred years?”
Spike watched as his lady’s expression softened and her defenses began to fall. The hand holding his, however, refused to let go. “It was…ahhh…” Buffy licked her lips, at once seemingly very aware of herself. “I…”
“Longer,” Angel supplied softly. “It was longer for you, wasn’t it?”
She nodded and pressed herself more firmly against Spike’s chest. “Yeah,” she said. “It was.”
“I’m sorry, Buff,” Xander said. “We didn’t mean to…”
“We just wanted to get you back,” Willow agreed. “It must’ve been…I can’t imagine.”
“You don’t want to,” Spike volunteered, eyeing the brunette again. “Saw your special meeting, by the way. Buffy’s guardian decided to give me a peek on the last day. Knew the cavalry’d be coming soon. Or figured it. So you phoned up Angel and—”
“We drove,” Tara said. “Willow and I. Last night.”
“It wasn’t the sort of thing you ask over the phone,” Willow explained. “They were settling in this new girl they pulled from another dimension and then Cordy got a vision—”
Comprehension dawned and several puzzle pieces made their lazy way to the surface.
Apparently, Buffy experienced her own eureka minute. Her widened eyes landed on the girl next to Angel, and she’d exclaimed, “Cordelia!” before she could stop herself.
The brunette blinked. “Yeah?”
“Sorry,” Buffy offered self-consciously. “I was having trouble…my memories are a bit on the shaky side.”
Spike shrugged. “I knew she looked familiar.”
“Gee, thanks,” Cordelia noted with a frown.
Willow smiled awkwardly. “She gets visions now,” she said. “And she had a vision about a big nasty demon guy and…well, Buffy. And this cave-like—”
“Larry,” Spike murmured. “Guess she saw the boy chuffing it.”
The redhead looked confused but nodded all the same. “We thought since she had a vision of, well…that demon thing, she might have better insight into what Buffy was going through.”
“Sounds like she caught the end of the show and missed the good bits.”
Xander cleared his throat. “Who’s Larry?”
“Guardian type. The one who set up the hoops I had to jump through to make it to her dimension.”
There was nothing for a long, uncomfortable minute. It seemed no one knew what to say.
Then Giles stepped forward, his eyes heavy with a sort of paternal emotion Spike had never once experienced. Still, the look was unmistakable—for all that was said and remained yet to be said, nothing could eradicate the soundness of the moment. He supposed it was shattering for them, too. For the whole bloody gang—the reality of what came with the thing they’d wanted so much. Buffy stood at arm’s distance, but she wasn’t the same girl they’d known. There really had never been a chance of getting that girl back. No one could experience Hell and emerge unchanged.
It would take understanding, patience, and time.
“Buffy,” Giles said softly. “Are you…is it really…”
Perhaps he didn’t want to know the answer, or perhaps he couldn’t bear the need to ask; either way, his voice broke off just in time for Buffy to inhale sharply and launch herself into her surrogate father’s arms. And just like that, everything came crashing down. Defenses fell and tears began to pour. The watcher held his slayer for a long time before turning her to Willow, then Xander, Tara, even Anya briefly, Cordelia, and finally Angel. They hugged it out, crying and sputtering words that felt cliché but right somehow—like the sopping end of some family sitcom where the big misunderstanding resulted in a life lesson learned well.
Buffy hugged her friends and wept, and he watched. He watched her smile and cry, watched as the people who loved her almost as much as he did surrounded her, took her into their arms and sobbed into her hair.
His girl was home. He’d brought her home. He’d brought her back where she belonged.
When Buffy looked at him, he read a thousand things in her eyes—things she wanted to tell him. Things she wanted to express. Yet there weren’t words enough for this, and he knew that. So he stood and watched, and warmed with the knowledge he’d given her back to herself.
*~*~*They didn’t want to leave her, not even to collect Dawn. It seemed they thought she would vanish if they took their eyes off her. However, the concerned parent in Giles eventually prevailed over selfish worry, and he broke himself away from the group long enough to give Janice’s house a ring to let them know he was on his way to pick up the overnight guest. And though he didn’t tell the girl why it was necessary to call her sleepover to an end, the giddiness in his voice likely did the trick.
Spike had taken a seat on the stairs that led to the restricted, personal-use books Giles kept on hand. Buffy sat just a few feet away at a table with Willow, Tara, Xander, and Anya. Angel hadn’t said much since the group hug, though the look in the elder vampire’s eyes forewarned he wanted to give Spike a talking-to before he and the cheerleader took off for Los Angeles.
Once the watcher was gone, Willow broke away from the group and made her way toward him, her eyes filled with a mixture of happiness and contrition. “Hey,” she said.
“’Lo yourself.”
“I just wanted to…ummm…”
His brows perked. “Thank me?”
“I guess those are the words I’m looking for, yes.” She reddened, then held up a finger. “Just a sec, I need to go get something.”
Spike had honestly forgotten how quick people moved here. He’d gotten used to walking lonely streets with Buffy, running after her, hunting boars, and chasing down whispers that had no voice or form. Real people, however…people without a predisposition to superpowers and the like, he’d completely forgotten how fast they were. How fast the world moved when he lived in it. He’d grown accustomed to time dragging out every second. Speed was something foreign—something he’d have to get to know all over again.
Just as quickly as she disappeared, Willow turned up again, a worn leather coat in her arms. “We had this in the training room,” she said. “Just in case, you know. We weren’t going to give it to Dawn unless we knew for sure you weren’t coming back.”
He blinked stupidly. “What…”
“Your duster. You took it off before you left? You said Dawn could…” Willow frowned. “You don’t remember your duster?”
Spike inhaled sharply and shook his head. “’Course I remember my duster. Just been a while since I had it on, is all.” He reached for it and she dropped it lovingly into his arms. Soft leather smelling of booze and smoke kissed his skin. He’d truly thought he’d never see it again.
“I don’t know what happened,” Willow said, jarring his attention back to her. “But I know it was bad.”
Spike’s mouth tugged into a grin, his mind flashing him back. “Heard that before.”
“And I don’t know if Buffy’s gonna want to tell us anytime soon, but thank you. For the record, I always knew you could do it.”
His eyes narrowed at her. Willow wiggled appropriately.
“I did,” she insisted. “Getting Angel was
so not my idea. Xander was just with the extra wiggins and worried about Buffy.”
Spike nodded. “I get that,” he said. And he meant it.
Even if he resented the shit out of it.
Whatever the redhead wanted to say next was stolen off her lips by the timely chirp of the shop’s bell. All chatter fell silent. Dawn stood in the doorway.
Her eyes found Buffy. Buffy rose from her seat.
“Oh, God,” she murmured.
It was impossible to tell who moved first. In seconds, they were in each other’s arms, crying and hugging and babbling a million things between sobs that no human being could possibly decipher, but they seemed to understand each other. And though he’d granted this honor to a million things of lesser significance since climbing to freedom, watching Buffy break down in her sister’s embrace was worth any trial he had to suffer. These were girls who shouldn’t be apart, girls who bickered and fought hard, but cried and loved harder.
“Don’t do that again,” Dawn blubbered. “Never do that again.”
Spike slipped on his duster. It felt bigger than he remembered.
When Dawn spied him over Buffy’s shoulder, she blinked in surprise but quickly motioned for him to join them. The part of his heart that belonged to the Summers’ women twisted.
“You brought her back,” Dawn said, sobbing, and launched him into a bear hug the second he was within range. “Thank you, thank you for bringing her back.”
Buffy smiled a watery smile and met his eyes.
She looked more like herself right now than she ever had.
*~*~*The second the sun dipped below the horizon, Spike stepped onto the curb in front of the shop, shoved his hands into his duster pockets and sighed.
Long bloody day. Fucking surreal day. He kept expecting to blink and find himself somewhere else, but the reality remained the world wasn’t going to change. He’d been back on solid ground for nearly twenty-four hours now, though it seemed years had passed since waking up in Buffy’s bed that morning. He hadn’t had a chance to take her aside or ask how she felt—ask any of the burning questions lodged in his throat. It wasn’t fair, he knew, but he needed to know where he was sleeping tonight. He needed to know she was all right—that the fear she’d expressed before had truly abated, for he didn’t want to step too far away in case she needed him.
However, judging by the hugs and tears, she was handling it just fine. Finer than fine.
Spike’s hands curled around a familiar carton in his pocket. “Well, hello,” he said, drawing out the half pack of fags he must have had on him before shedding the coat at the Hellmouth. His other pocket revealed a pack of motel room matches. Seemed about right. He remembered having a lighter on him at one point over his journey, but figured it was rusted and useless. Three hundred years did a lot on a cheap piece of plastic.
He wedged a cigarette between his lips and lit up. It tasted funny. Familiar, yes, but not in the way he remembered. Perhaps he’d left his affinity for smokes in the underworld with his lighter.
Then again, an eternity was a long time to rediscover an old habit.
Spike finished off his cigarette and chucked the butt to the ground. Yeah, this felt familiar too. The next twenty years would likely be spent dissecting a series of moments lost in déjà vu. Every little thing would remind him of something he’d experienced in the underworld. And this—the silence, the solitude—would remain, as well.
The door behind him flew open and shut again.
“Couldn’t wait, could you?” Spike asked.
“I guess not,” Angel replied, stopping at Spike’s side. They didn’t look at each other.
“This where you threaten to send me back to Hell if I sully her virtue?”
“No.”
“’Cause, mate, gotta tell you—”
“I saw the bite mark, Spike.”
“Mmm hmm.” He kicked idly at the curb. “So that’s it, then? You’re just gonna—”
“I forgot how quick you were to jump to conclusions.”
“And I forgot how much of a wanker you are. Or no…I guess I just wish I had.”
Angel huffed a laugh and slid his hands into his pockets. “She told us,” he said. “Well, as much as I think she could. She told us about you. About what happened.”
Spike tossed him a glance, but it was brief. “Just now?”
“Yeah. I think she was waiting for you to make yourself scarce. Something about not wanting you to feel self-conscious.” He paused. “And here the Spike I remember seemed to love the attention.”
“Things change. You oughta know.”
“I do know. I just never thought I’d hear you say those words and mean them.”
“Neither did I, I guess. Not until her.”
Angel nodded. “Xander told me it was last year. You started following her…chained her up and offered to kill Dru to prove you loved her.”
“Doesn’t sound nearly as romantic when you say it like that.” Spike smiled a thin smile. “It wasn’t until after, I don’t think. Christ knows it’s all jumbled. I remember most everything, except a few blurry details here and there. I know it started as infatuation or what all…but it became…”
“I know what it became.”
He snorted. “Do you, now?”
“You don’t let yourself starve for three centuries out of infatuation.” Angel sighed and turned to face him at last. “Look, I didn’t come out here to pick a fight, whatever you might think. And for what it’s worth, I told Willow that if you’d gone after her, you wouldn’t stop unless you were dead.”
Spike felt a pang of shock but didn’t let it show. “Yeah?”
“You’re annoying like that. Persistent.”
“Thanks ever so.”
“I also know how obnoxious you are when you’re in love.”
“Stop it, Pops, I’m blushing.”
“And I know she loves you.”
Spike froze and swallowed hard. “Well,” he said slowly. “Try not to look too glum. She hasn’t confirmed it one way or another. Little promise we had. There’s a good chance it could be gratitude.”
“No, there’s not. I know gratitude, Spike. I also know the way Buffy gets when she’s in love. All day today she kept shooting little glances your way—the same ones she used to give me…only they were different.” Angel glanced away as though the words in his throat were choking him. “They weren’t a teenager’s. It was…it was real.”
At that moment, it seemed just as likely that instead of making it back to the world in which they belonged, Spike had instead led Buffy into a parallel universe filled with people who looked and sounded like the friends she’d had and the people she’d cared about. Not once in his three hundred years of waiting, in the many apparitions that visited his prison had Spike played out a scenario in which he succeeded in stealing Buffy’s heart and wasn’t staked for the crime.
“Not saying I approve,” Angel said quickly. “Just for clarity’s sake.”
Spike nodded. “Of course.”
“Good.”
Things fell silent between them, but oddly, it wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable. It was just quiet.
Then the shop door opened again. Giles and Xander piled onto the sidewalk, each looking a bit flustered.
Spike tossed them a bemused glance. “Moving the party out here, then?”
“We thought you’d left,” Xander said quickly.
“Not so lucky, gents,” he replied. “Not leaving without my lady.”
Giles nodded. “Yes, Buffy indicated as much. She said you’d stepped outside.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Spike…as much as it pains me to say this…”
“Your hair looks really weird.”
Spike shot Xander a narrowed look, one mirrored by Angel.
“Sorry,” the boy said. “Off topic.”
Giles made a small noise in the back of his throat. “Yes, well,” he continued. “I just…I was wrong. About a lot of things, and…well…thank you.”
Spike blinked. “What?”
“You brought her back, and you went to astounding lengths to do so. Thank you.”
Xander nodded and punched his arm. “Thanks. Oh, and it’s gonna take a while to get used to, so…if I call you Dead Boy and stuff, just…call it habit. You had three centuries to…well. Yeah.”
“Very articulate, Xander,” Giles noted.
“What can I say? I’m a wordsmith.” Harris nodded and grinned like a loon, eyeing Spike one last time. “It’s gonna take some getting used to.”
“What is?” he asked.
Angel frowned. “I thought Dead Boy was my nickname.”
“He lost the bleach. Can’t call him Captain Peroxide anymore.”
Spike took a step forward. “What’s going to take some getting used to?”
The door opened again, and this time Buffy stepped out. She looked better than she had in days, though Spike knew he was the only one who could see it. Her cheeks were still thin, but they had color in them now. And her eyes, while they’d shone brightly for him, sparkled with new life neither one of them had anticipated. She looked so beautiful then—so perfect.
And her eyes were on him.
“Guys,” she said. “Can you…give us a minute?”
He expected a fight, but there was none to be had. The others shuffled back into the Magic Box without a word. Then it was just them—Spike and his slayer. Her long black tee hung off her wiry build, her dark brown hair brushed over one shoulder. The steps she took toward him were meaningful and deliberate.
“I told them,” she said. “Not everything, but mostly everything. About you, what you went through. What happened once you got to me.”
Spike nodded, swallowing hard. “Yeah?”
“I just couldn’t stop, you know? I started talking and I couldn’t stop. It all just came out.” She sighed and crossed her arms. “I didn’t think I’d be able to talk about it for a while.”
“It helps in getting over it, I think.”
Buffy pursed her lips and took another step forward. “Maybe. Yeah, that sounds right.” Things fell silent for a few seconds. Her eyes wandered down his leather clad body, a smile tickling her lips. “Your duster.”
“Will had it. I’d given it to her…to give to Dawn. Just in case.”
“You look like you again. Or more like you.”
“So do you.” He nodded at the store. “Being with them is who you are, love. No reason to fear it after all, I guess.”
“I guess.” Buffy sighed and took another step forward. “Spike, I told them about us. About…I told them about hope and Larry, and about you moving in. I told them that’s the way it was going to be, and there’s not going to be an argument.”
He snorted. “Sure that went over well.”
“It did, actually. I pulled the ‘I’m a thousand years old so don’t argue with me,’ card.” Her eyes actually twinkled when she shrugged. “Dawn’s ecstatic, of course…though I don’t know if she gets the whole immortality thing. And the others…they don’t understand completely, but I think they get it enough not to complain about it. I guess it would be strange to turn around and see us in a relationship…they didn’t have the time we had.”
She stepped forward again. Any closer and she’d be in his arms.
“I told them something else,” she said.
“Did you?”
“Yeah.” Buffy’s eyes fluttered to his lips before meeting his again. “I told them I love you.”
How often had he fantasized about hearing the words? How often had he played it out? A thousand different ways, a thousand different scenarios, but nothing matched the moment’s perfection. Standing under the stars with Buffy staring into his eyes, her heart open to him. He’d never thought he’d reach anything comparable to unadulterated bliss beyond the sins of the flesh, but at once he knew exactly what she’d felt when he bit her. He knew exactly what she’d experienced before the world came crashing down, and it was a wave so potent, so powerful, he would have washed up in the tide were he not careful.
Spike blinked hard. She’d told him not too long ago she wanted to tell him, she’d given him a crumb of hope back in the warehouse, yet he’d never really believed it. He’d promised himself he’d fight to keep what he’d been given, but a part of him had doubted. Even that morning, he’d waited for the other shoe to drop. He’d made love to her, tasted her blood, and admitted the possibility that her home would be his, but he’d held out. He’d waited.
And now there was this.
“You…”
“I love you, Spike. So much it’s kinda scary. But, you know, in a good way.”
“You love me.”
“You knew it.”
“I worried—”
“I know.” Buffy smiled and leaned into his kiss. She tasted warm and delicious. She tasted like home. “I told you,” she said after breaking apart. “I told you I wanted to tell you.”
“But we couldn’t let it be gratitude.”
“It wasn’t. I knew it then, but I needed this. I love you.”
“God, I love you, too.”
“Then come back inside with me.” Her hand found his and tugged gently, and he followed without hesitation. He’d follow her anywhere. “Come talk with them. They have so much they want to ask you.”
“They do?”
She nodded. “And then we’ll go home.”
“Home.”
“Yes.”
“Our home.”
Her smile grew and she kissed him again. “That’s the one.”
Their fingers intertwined and their palms touched. And together, they walked back inside.
The End 