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Barb
Revello Drive on a Sunday afternoon was
rife with humanity--kids on skateboards, fathers out trimming hedges and seeding
lawns with winter rye, old women with armloads of groceries gossiping on the
corner. Spike strode down the sidewalk, a wolf in sheep's clothing--or at
least, a wolf with a woolen blanket tucked underneath one arm. A few heads
turned to watch him go by, but it was curiosity, not fear, that made them
look. Odds were that half of them had seen him before, coming down the
street of an evening or lurking about the Summers' front yard. In fact, he
was certain of it, since someone had called the police on him
once.
He glanced up at the sky
overhead. Nothing compared to a good London pea-souper. He'd lived
too long in sunny California when a few clouds were as good as a
slaughter. The sky was still grey enough that he cast no shadow, but the
clouds were thinning, and here and there the grey was backlit with luminous
silver. Just as well that he was close to his destination. Diffuse
as the sunlight was, he could feel the burn across his cheeks, a raw tingle that
was just short of being actively painful, but for the moment, the only smoke he
was trailing came from the butt of his cigarette. He was going to pay for
this tonight, but how many vampires could say they'd gotten a
sunburn?
Spike ignored the speculative
looks of the neighbors and forged straight for the Summers' door, crossing the
lawn with soundless feral grace and taking the porch steps two at a time.
He turned before knocking, looking back over his shoulder. A boy on a
beat-up dirt bike had paused in the street and was staring at him.
Thirteen maybe, curly red hair and freckles. Spike smiled at him, and then
growled--short, sharp and hungry. The kid's eyes bugged out of his head
and his sneakered feet pawed the bike's pedals into a wild spin in his haste to
be away. Still got it.
And
dealing with Dawn was going to take every ounce of it--though he couldn’t quite
see himself scaring her straight, anyway. He tossed his cigarette into the
bushes and, after a moment's thought, tossed the blanket in after it. He
rapped sharply on the door.
Dawn opened
it a moment later, looking rebelliously grungy and unbrushed. She was
wearing a Power Puff Girls t-shirt and headphones from which the faint, tinny
sound of a studio-enhanced quartet of Leonardo DiCaprio look-alikes wailing
about luuuuuuve could be heard. At the sight of him she managed to look at
once pleased, disgusted, and indifferent. "Oh. It's Spike."
'The Buffy-siding-with traitor' remained unspoken but strongly implied.
She started to shut the door again, but Spike grabbed the edge and held
on.
"Ah, ah, ah, not unless you want to
be sweeping yours truly into the rose bushes." He pointed towards the
rapidly brightening sky. "Sun's coming out."
Dawn made a show of thinking about it, but finally stepped
back with a perfunctory lift of her thin shoulders, as if the work of sweeping
the porch outweighed the delightful prospect of Spike's becoming rose
food. "Come on in." Spike made a rude gesture at the sky and dodged
inside--he was all for pushing the limits till they snapped, but the actual
catching on fire bits still weren't particularly enjoyable. Dawn flopped
down on the couch, picked up the mixing bowl full of chocolate-coated sugar
bombs she was munching her way through, and eyed him briefly before returning
her attention to the Cartoon Network. "You look like a lobster with
mange."
Spike prodded his cheek
gingerly, wishing he had an Instamatic handy. He sat down beside Dawn on
the couch, imitating her spine-contorting pose. "Yeh, well, it's that
delicate English complexion. Tara about?"
"In her room." Dawn scowled at the TV screen. "You don't
think anyone would actually trust me to take care of myself for five minutes
straight, do you?" She oozed further down on her tailbone and looked, for
a moment, poised to throw a handful of cereal at the television, or possibly at
him.
"Not after last night,
no.”
Dawn’s scowl petrified into the Wall Of
Teen-Age Hostility, and she turned the volume on her Walkman up to earsplitting
levels. Spike ignored it. “Just as well the wicca girl’s
upstairs. Rather we had a bit of privacy for this.”
Dawn rolled her eyes, proof positive she was made from
Buffy. “Whatever,” she muttered. Spike appraised her for a moment,
then snatched her earphones from her head. She shrieked and grabbed for
his wrists. "Hey! Give those back!"
He held them just out of reach overhead--he wasn't going to be able to do
that in another year or so, best take advantage of superior height while he
still had it--and made a threatening crunching motion with one hand. "Chip
doesn't give a toss about electronics, Pigeon. I told your sis I'd talk to
you, so give us a listen, and then we'll both have done our duty,
right?"
"Fine." Dawn went rigid against
the sofa cushions, arms folded across her chest and teeth clenched, refusing to
look at him. "Come on, give me the lecture." Her lips pressed hard
together to still their trembling. "Tell me how stupid I've been, tell me
I'm ruining my life, tell me how lucky I am Social Services isn't beating our
door down right now, tell me how it's different when you do it, tell
me--"
He'd promised Buffy, that night
last spring, to protect Dawn until the end of the world, and he'd done his best,
feeble as that best sometimes was. Now and again, over the summer, it had
been a tossup as to who was taking care of whom. Some things were easier
to guard against than others. Spike held an arm out. "Come
here." Dawn looked at him, blinking a little too hard. He crooked a
finger at her. "Come here, you little nit, or I'll rip your ears off and
use 'em for coasters."
"L-Like you
could!" The dam broke, and Dawn fell against him sobbing, burying her head
in his shoulder and tipping the bowl of Cocoa Puffs all over the couch and his
lap. Spike held her, stroking her hair and murmuring meaningless broken
things as she wept into his chest, and silently thanked whoever was in charge of
such things that Dawn hadn't poured any milk over her cereal. He wanted,
as much as he'd he'd ever desired anything an a long and passionate existence,
to make this right for her....
It
wasn't right, this. Even less right than loving the Slayer.
He could justify that to himself if he tried hard enough--he'd always been
love's bitch and Buffy's was simply the latest hand on his choke-chain.
Whatever good he'd done for her sake didn't count in the eternal balance; his
motives were all proper selfish vampiric ones, and it never would have happened
without the chip anyway, so he was still all right, wasn't he? This
thing with Dawn, though... It had started out innocently enough, just an
attempt to get in good with her sister, but now--now an ache in Dawn's voice
stirred anxious pain within his own chest, and her laughter buoyed him up as
though his dead heart were anchored in her living one, to rise and fall and beat
in time with her joy and her anguish.
Sitting here with her warm slim body curled against his side, her jerky sobs
slowing and her breathing gradually evening out, he tried to pinpoint the moment
when normal healthy bloodlust had drained away, to be replaced by this unnatural
empathy. Sitting in the Magic Box, sharing the battered box of chocolates
he'd been idiot enough to think he could give her sister? No longer ago
than that, surely? He could have eaten her then, if the chip hadn't
prevented it, if she hadn't been Buffy's sister, if he hadn't had a fond
sneaking memory of big blue eyes staring defiantly at him through the bannisters
three years past, as he and Buffy plotted Angelus's downfall. Why
Slayer, I didn't know you were serving hors d'oeuvres!
She'd never been afraid of him, his Dawn. Took after
her mum, and ah, what he wouldn't give to have a long talk with Joyce Summers
right about now. He ran the pad of his thumb across Dawn's cheek, wiping
away the tears. "It's all right, Dawn-love." Passing strange that
she could find comfort in a dead man's cold embrace, in the whiskey-roughened
cadences of a killer's voice. But she did; he could feel it in the set of
her shoulders beneath his arm, the little hitching sigh as she scrubbed the heel
of her own hand across her eyes. He smoothed a strand of long brown hair
away from her eyes. "You bollocksed it up, I won't tell you you didn't,
but Christ, I came this close to killing a bloke last night. I've still
got you beat for villainy."
A shudder
ran through her, half-sob, half laughter. "No way. Actual robbery
beats attempted murder. I'm still badder than you."
He laughed outright. God, he loved this girl.
"You're sorry, aren't you, love?"
Dawn
snuffled, groping blindly over the arm of the couch for the box of Kleenex on
the side table. "Of course I'm sorry!"
"See, there's what a soul will do for you, pet--I'm
not." Spike brushed a layer of half-crushed cereal off his jeans and gave
her a squeeze. "At least not for that." He pulled a crumpled linen
handkerchief out of one of the duster's inside pockets and handed it to
her. "Here, you may as well get some good of it. I haven't used the
bloody thing since 1948."
Dawn took the
handkerchief and examined it as if it were some bizarre antique device--which to
her, Spike conceded, it probably was. "There's not, like, fifty-year-old
vampire snot on it, is there?"
"Blow
your damned nose."
She complied,
folding the handkerchief carefully and tucking it into her jeans pocket when she
was done. "I wish I had a chip sometimes. It's easy for you--if you
try to do something bad, it zaps you before you do it. All a soul does is
make you feel like crap afterwards." Dawn picked up the mixing bowl and
made a half-hearted attempt to scrape the scattered flecks of chocolate into it,
but gave up as it became obvious that her efforts were doing more to spread the
cereal around than to consolidate it. She set the bowl on the coffee
table, slumped back into the crook of his arm and sighed. "Have you ever
been going along doing something that seems to be a fantastic idea, and then all
of a sudden you realize it's the dumbest thing you've ever done in your
life?"
Spike rested his head against
the back of the couch, lips pursed, and contemplated the ceiling. "Let me
think. Let Dru play Lego blocks with the Judge, because all that
destroy-the-world stuff's never serious? Hire some arsewipe to torture
Angel for the Gem of Amarra and then let him run off with it? Chain your
sis to a wall to show her we were meant to be, because manacles are a girl's
best friend? Order a robot look-alike of Buffy? Nah, I've led a life
of sober restraint."
Dawn giggled
weakly. "You sure have. You know what bites? I never took any
of this stuff because I wanted it. I mean, sometimes I did. I know
we're not starving and we've got a roof over our heads and all that crap, but
there's no extra money for anything fun, ever! And every time I hint about
hitting up Dad, Buffy gets this pinchy look around her eyes and it's like I'm
stabbing her in the back or something."
He knew the look; it was the same one Buffy got every time he hinted that there
was blunt to be had in demon-killing. Ethics were a sodding pain in the
arse. Spike picked a cocoa flake off his knee and ate it. "I think
it galls her she can't keep you happy on her own, pet."
"That's not it at all!" Tears started welling up in
Dawn's eyes again. "She's not Mom, she can't be Mom, I don't want her to
be Mom! I just want her to be my sister! She hates me, doesn't she,
Spike? For helping bring her back. She just can't show it because
I'm her stupid sister. She died when it should have been me, and then
I--I--"
Spike grabbed her shoulders
hard enough to get a warning twinge from the chip and gave her a little
shake. "Stop that! Buffy loves you, Bit. She's the only person
who might love you more'n I--anyone else does. If anyone's to blame for
bringing her back, it's Will and me, and mostly me--Will was about to drop the
idea when I cozened her into going ahead. And if I hadn't fucked up
royally on the tower neither one of you'd have needed to take a header off
it. So no more of this." He held her eyes until she nodded, then let
his hands drop. "Look, pet, tell you what, if you really want something,
I'll nick it for you. Except for any girly bits you fancy--I'm not going
to perv about in the Junior Miss section pocketing unmentionables. Or boy
band CDs. Or--never mind, there's nothing you'd want I'd be caught dead
stealing."
She punched him in the
ribs. "Oh, yeah, Buffy will go for that. I meant it when I said it
wasn't the stuff. It was just... doing it. It was...
cool. And a little dangerous. It made me feel like... like I was in
charge of my life. Like I could do anything. Until I got
caught."
Spike cocked his head and
regarded her gravely. "Yeh, that's the feeling, all right. You know,
Niblet, when you do something for the thrill of it, you've got to take the rough
with the smooth. If I fancy getting my rocks off killing other vampires,
I've got to take the chance of getting the shit beat out of me every other
Tuesday, and waking up starkers in the middle of the UCS quad with five minutes
till sunrise. Laugh all you like, it’s happened. It's worth it; I'd
bloody well shrivel up and die if I couldn't kill something." Almost
did. He shivered a little, recalling the black pit of despair he'd
slogged through before discovering that the chip only worked on humans.
"Guess you've got to decide if the feeling you get from nicking stuff's worth
the dodgy patches that come with."
"No." Dawn's reply was instant, and Spike marveled slightly. He
could remember, through a glass darkly, something of what it felt like to have a
conscience, but the thing itself was gone, vanished along with his pulse.
Dawn looked a little wistful. "But it did feel
good."
Spike laced his fingers behind
his head and crossed one boot over the other, heels making little crunching
noises in the spilled cereal on the table. "Well, give us a bit,
pet. Maybe we can do summat about that." He glanced around.
"Here--do we clean this crud up or sneak off to the kitchen and pretend Tara's
walking hairball did it?"
"Blame Miss
Kitty," Dawn said decisively, getting to her feet.
Spike grinned up at her. "See, not being good's got its
points."
Buffy concentrated on
the rhythm of her feet on the pavement, step, step, step, each foot planted
safely in the middle of the concrete squares. Step on a crack, break a
vampire's back. And she had, once--dropped an organ on him, smash, and
left him and Dru for really truly dead in the burning wreckage. More than
once over the years she'd wavered between blessing or cursing the Sunnydale Fire
Department for being far more competent than their colleagues in the police
force.
Funny. She'd probably
caused him more lingering pain than he'd caused any of his victims. And
then I killed them, right quick. The story of Spike's unlife, Reader's
Digest Condensed version. Drusilla, mad broken thing, played with
her food. Angelus and Darla had raised torture to a fine art. And
Spike just... killed people. Necks snapped in a trice, throats ripped out
with one quick savage flash of fangs. Preferably after a good fight, but
he wasn't a fussy eater. Not exactly new information, Buffy. We've been
over this before. Spike was a monster. Her monster.
Her responsibility. People had attack dogs that they were... fond
of. Safe as long as they were kept under proper restraint, and put down if
they attacked out of turn, and that--that was what her relationship with Spike
had to be. No more accidental slippage of the B word except it's already out
and he's probably got it framed on his mantlepiece no admission of that
other word she wouldn't even let herself think. She was in deep enough
already without breaking out the shovels and heading for
China.
She stopped at the foot of the
walk leading up to her house, looking across the lawn through the windows.
She could see figures moving behind the drawn curtains, silhouettes painted on
the cloth by the living room lights. An electric thrill ran along her
nerves--Spike, right here. Her feet brought her closer of their own
accord, up the porch steps to peer through the gap in the curtains.
Inside, the muted roar of the vacuum cleaner drowned out any conversation; she
could see Tara shaking the wand irately at the couch, where Spike was sitting
meekly while Dawn dabbed aloe vera over his sunburnt nose.
Compared to her first vampire love, Spike had always been
third-rate evil, and nowadays he was practically channeling Mahatma
Gandhi. Sort of. If Gandhi had been really into kicking demon ass
and possessed of a not-so-secret hankering for a nice glass of O-neg after a
hard night's killing. But Angel and Angelus still occupied separate
corners of her mind, man and demon insuperably divided by Angel's possession of
a soul. Dawn pooh-poohed the gap between soul and chip, but there was one
vital difference: however much his ill-won conscience pained him, Angel wanted
to keep it, and if someone offered Spike a chance to be rid of the chip... that
didn't bear thinking of. The soul made it easy to love Angel, forgive
Angel, place all his sins on Angelus's head. Spike, damn him, defied such
compartmentalization. Man and demon were one; the Spike who traded jibes
about musical taste or lack thereof with Xander, guarded Dawn like a pit
bull, and set her own body on fire with a touch was the same Spike who tore
through Sunnydale High turning Parent-Teacher Night into a bloodbath, the same
Spike who but for the chip would have killed Ramon with equal abandon, and
regret only that he'd upset her thereby.
The same Spike who knew she was watching him. He looked
up and smiled, his eyes locked onto hers, ice blue meeting grey-green through
the veil of glass and gauze between them. The shock ran through her anew
like wintergreen and lightning. Buffy tore herself away from the window
and leaned for a moment against the door, forehead pressed to the frame, fingers
locked around the cold brass of the handle. Nothing supernatural about
it--or no more supernatural than any other vampire ability, anyway. He
could catch her scent, sense her heartbeat, something. It was a predator
thing. Nothing special about the fact that the two of them arrowed in on
one another like Lassie coming home. It didn't mean anything. She
wouldn't let it.
She opened the
door. "I'm home!" As usual when she was mired in angst, there was a
spectacular lack of noticing on the part of the populace at large. Dawn
ignored her entirely, intent on her patient. Tara gave her a little smile
and a wave of the vacuum cleaner wand. "Has Angel called yet?" Buffy asked as
she left the foyer, shouting over the roar of the Hoover.
Tara toed the off switch on the vacuum cleaner and the noise
died away. "Not yet. Unless the phone rang while I was vacuuming up
the cereal that Miss Kitty somehow managed to pour into a bowl, carry into the
living room, and spill all over the couch." She kept a perfectly straight
face, and Dawn and Spike had the grace to look sheepish.
Buffy tossed her purse onto the nearest chair. My
psych project, Dr. Walsh, is a study in guilt transference in vampires from
cereal to people. I'm borrowing Hostile 17. She looked
askance at Spike--he really did look awful, as though he'd gotten a faceful of
red spray-paint. With his accelerated healing, skin was already sloughing
off the worst of the burnt places, which didn’t improve matters any.
"So--did we finally discover whether or not you freckle?"
Spike gave her a sour look and jerked away from Dawn's
hand. "Steady on, you're getting it in my eyes!"
Exasperated, Dawn squeezed another dollop of lotion onto her
fingers. "If you'd quit twitching it wouldn't go in your eyes, and it's your own
fault for being mirror-challenged anyway, so suck it up."
Buffy sauntered over to the couch for
a ringside seat. "Will's probably going to be staying over at Giles's
place for dinner. They're still playing with those tapes." She sat
down and hugged a sofa pillow. "I think she's really hurt that we didn't
wake her up last night. I don't know what good it would have done,
but..."
Spike grunted and made another
futile effort to escape Dawn's ministrations. "She thinks you don't need
her now that she can't sling the mojo."
"But that's--what good would magic have done?" Buffy kicked off her shoes
and absently slung a foot across Spike's lap. Just as absently he began
massaging her toes. Too boyfriendy. Must move foot. Move,
foot, move! Her foot informed her that it was just fine where it was,
thanks, and invited the other foot to join it. After a bit she began
kneading Spike's thigh with her free set of toes. Well, he did it to
me. Turnabout is fair play. No, this is major badness. Ooh,
behold the wonder of Buffy-logic. Letting him screw you bowlegged is fine,
but a foot rub? Cobblestone on the road to hell!
"Let's just say," Spike began doing absolutely sinful things
to her instep with both thumbs, "That if yours truly were a charter member of
the Geek Squad who'd become a big gun in this our demonic world through
supernatural means, I'd be feeling bloody inadequate around now if those means
were kicked out from under me. Doesn't matter why we didn't wake her, fact
is we didn't."
"I should have thought of
that." Tara wheeled the vacuum back over to the utility closet and
maneuvered it in among the clutter of brooms and dustpans and half-empty tins of
shoe polish. "She's told me she was shy back in high school, but it's just
so hard for me to imagine Willow being insecure about
anything..."
"When I first met her, Wills
was the insecurity poster child. But it's been a long time," Buffy
agreed. "She's changed a lot."
"It's
never long enough," Spike muttered darkly. "Or, er, so I've heard.
Wouldn't know myself."
"Because you've
always been bad." Buffy reached over and tweaked his ear. "You know,
if you're really into this I could try you out with a cucumber facial once
Dawn's through with you."
Spike collapsed
backwards with a groan. "Bugger off, woman, and let me suffer the fruits
of my hubris in peace."
Buffy scooched
closer, lips teasingly close to his ear, voice a husky whisper. "Ooh,
words of more than one syllable. You know how hot that gets me?" She
squealed as Spike's arm snaked round her waist and pulled her onto his
lap. She wrapped her own arm around his shoulders and made herself
comfortable, eliciting one of those yummy subterranean growls. Oh,
yeah, squirming around in Spike's lap still gets a reaction, all
right.
"Reeeeally, pet?" How the
hell did he manage to look and sound that sexy with aloe vera all over his
nose? "Antidisestablishmentarianism."
She flung her head back, exposing her throat. "Take me now!"
"Just in case you're wondering, all Buffy's previous
boyfriends used to offer me cold hard cash to go away at this point," Dawn
pointed out from her end of the couch, where she was watching the proceedings
with mildly revolted interest. "Boy, if Mrs. Kroger walked in right
now..." The phone rang. Buffy jumped and Spike went tense as an
overwound guitar string. Dawn snickered. "Saved by the
bell."
"Not funny, Bit." The phone
rang a second time. Spike cocked an eyebrow at Buffy, who tried without
success to break the nervous freeze which had gripped all her voluntary motor
functions. "You really want me to get that and astonish the poof, love,
you'll have to move." He glanced at Dawn and reconsidered. "On
second thought, don't. You're covering a multitude of sins."
"Uh," Buffy croaked. An entire scenario where
Spike answered the phone flashed through her mind, complete with dramatic rising
music at the part where Angel drove down from L.A. in a rage and crashed through
the front door. Goody. Forget temp work, I have a future in
scriptwriting.
Tara shut the closet
door and picked up the phone on the third ring. "Summers residence. Yes,
she's here. Uh... yes, he is too. Um...no...I really d-don't know...
do you want to t-talk to Buffy?"
Buffy
felt that little irritated line forming between her brows--what had he said to
get Tara nervous enough to stutter? Tara picked the phone up and brought
it closer, handing Buffy the receiver over the back the couch. She took
it, panic fighting arousal in her gut. "Hello? Angel?"
"Buffy." The voice was warm, deep,
familiar. Once it had been the one she compared all other voices to.
Spike's eyes had gone gold and he was running the fingers of one hand lightly up
and down her arm, inscribing possessive hieroglyphs on her skin. "Cordelia
said you wanted to get hold of Faith?"
"Um. Want, no, need, yes." She tried swatting Spike's hand away; he
captured hers instead and began kissing her palm. Slow. Soft.
Tongue-tip tracing lazy circles. She swallowed a gasp. "It's a
Council thing. So... you've got the number?"
"Yeah. It's right here. Let me get the
Rolodex."
She listened to the muffled noises
on the other end of the line and bit her tongue against the muffled noises she
wanted to make herself. Was this all there was left between them?
Awkward silences? It had been like that at their meeting, a week after her
return. Sitting in the coffee shop, toying with their cups, staring at one
another across an expanse of wood-grain Formica. Exchanging meaningless
pleasantries: Why yes, I am alive again. So kind of you to
notice. Dawn's fine (she still can't stand you) Willow's fine (she dragged
me back to fight a war I'll never win for a world that doesn't care) no, I can't
remember much about being dead (stole that from me too) and how are
you? Two people who'd changed each other's lives, and now all they
were to one another was an uncomfortable lunch date. She'd found herself
willing the hands on the clock to move. He hadn't ordered anything.
Why hadn't he ordered anything? Was he trying to make their rendezvous go
faster too? But no, she'd forgotten--Angel didn't eat; the coffee was a
major concession.
What else could they say?
I love you? What point? There was no expressing that
love--passion was too dangerous, friendship too painful. Can I help?
But it had been clear last year, after her mother's funeral, that there were
limits and bounds to that help--"As long as you need me" could not be
forever. So they said nothing worth saying, and the minutes dragged
by. She had grown unused to fraught silences; Spike filled them up with
words. Angel dug the silences deeper.
Angel didn't eat. And she couldn't remember if he breathed in his
sleep. And she had wanted very badly to go home.
"Here it is. Got a pencil?"
She started at the sound of his voice--expecting it to
be lighter, harsher, tinged with the accents of other shores. "And paper,
even." Tara handed her a pad of yellow Post-Its and she wrote down the
number on the top sheet, underlining it twice and putting *Faith!* above
it. "I'm going to call and make an appointment to see her as soon as I
can--can you come along if I give you a few days' warning? I don't think
there's a trusting, friendly vibe there since she stole my
body."
Angel sighed.
"Buffy--"
She was shot through with a bolt
of pure hatred for that tone of voice--oh, so reasonable, oh, so adult.
He'd defend Faith. Of course. "Love, give, forgive, I know the
drill." Had it been too much to ask, after Faith had stolen her body,
stolen Riley, stolen her life, that Angel take her side for once, without
getting all noble and redeemy? She wasn't stupid. She knew that
saving Faith was all about saving himself. I wanted you to be about saving
me. She could feel herself getting tense and quivery, and the
rhythm of Spike's hand stroking her arm shifted suddenly from erotic to sexless
comfort. She took a deep breath. Maybe she should hang out with Anya
more--someone who knew the value of a spectacular act of vengeance.
Doubt and worry threaded Angel's distant voice.
"Buffy, is Spike causing problems? Because if he is, we can come up and
take care of him for you--"
"No!" Was that
squeaky silly-sounding thing her own voice? Shoot me now. "I can take
care of Spike myself! And take care of? What is that? What is
he, Old Yeller? You don't just 'take care' of someone--"
Damn. Damn, damn, damn, damn... Stupid blinding
insight. "Sorry. Sorry. This thing with the Council's got
me all nervy. Look, I'll let you know when I can get into the city to see
Faith. I'll probably be driving up with Spike, just so you know."
She didn't give him a chance to reply. "Talk to you later.
Bye." She slammed the phone down in its cradle and let her head fall back
against Spike's shoulder, feeling as if she'd just run a marathon. After a
moment the tension in his body got to her, and she slitted her eyes open.
Spike was watching her with eyes like the heart of a flame, radiating a
simmering heat suggesting that had a minor not been present, he would have been
staking his claim to her right then and there. "What's with the phone
sex?" she snapped. "Were you trying to make me--"
"You didn't tell him," he said, half growling.
Without a word, Tara grabbed Dawn's wrist, pulled her
to her feet and started for the stairs. "You still have homework, don't
you?"
Dawn curled her lip. "Don't I
always when anything interesting happens?"
As her sister's reluctant footsteps faded, Buffy aimed a tight-lipped glare at
Spike. "And why should I tell him? It's none of his business.
I didn't send him a memo when I started dating Riley, did I?"
"It's different. You know it's different."
Citrine sparks flared in his eyes as his fingers closed round her wrists.
Astonishing how very different the angry growl sounded from the happy growl or
the horny growl or... Buffy felt a buried thrum of excitement at the
thought that she'd actually have to exert some effort to break his grip.
Spike shoved her roughly to one side, flinching slightly as the chip reacted,
and flung himself off the couch and into a round of tigerish pacing.
"I told the people who matter," she shot back,
and because she knew he was right and hated it, some small mean part of
her was prompted to add, "and you were lucky to get that."
That struck deep, maybe deeper than she'd intended, and the
raw pain in his eyes made her weak-kneed. "Think I don't know that?"
His voice was bitter. "I'm properly grateful. You told the people
you couldn't hide it from. The people who can pretend I'm human when it
suits them. He knows exactly what I'm missing. He'll
never forget what I am, and never forgive--cos it's what he is, too."
He whirled round and pinned her against the couch with the sheer force of
leashed rage--and it was leashed this time, no doubt there. "And you can't
bloody well take the heat when it comes to Soul Boy's disapproval, can
you?"
She stiffened. "You don't know
anything about it."
"Oh, I know everything
about it." Spike made a savage slashing gesture with one hand. "I
know the Irish git walked out on you, out of the goodness of his bloody
soul. I know you threw yourself at that Parker bastard--to forget him,
to follow his bloody orders. Be normal." He spoke the word like
a curse, his voice gone mocking. "Didn't work very well, did
it?"
Buffy rose slowly to her feet, eyes
glittering. "My God. You're jealous. Of Angel? Of
Parker? That's pathetic, Spike."
"Shell of a loser, wasn't it? Of course I'm fucking jealous!" he
roared. "I was so jealous then I couldn't see straight! Didn't know
I loved you yet, but I knew you were mine! My Slayer, mine to
kill--or not." He was in her face now, eyes blazing as the two of them circled
one another, wolflike. "How d'you think it felt, watching you chase after
a tosser not fit to clean your boots on, trying to drown the hurt he gave
you, and knowing you'd take sodding Angel back in a sodding second if he lifted
a soulful finger in your direction? I'd rather've put you in the bloody
ground than see you crawling like that!" The muscles in his jaw
clenched. "And nothing's changed, has it? You'll cross up your
Watcher and your friends, give 'em the news that you're shagging the undead
again--but you won't tell him. You'll still jump through hoops to
be his bleeding normal girl. Well, you started this, Slayer--it was your
idea to jump the vampire's bones. You bloody well know what I am, and if
you can't handle it then what the hell are we doing here?"
Buffy hooked her fingers into the lapels of the duster,
bringing him to a halt. Things have changed. Lots of things have
changed. "Good question," she hissed. "So what are you,
Spike? Who are you? Just a vampire? You ought to know
if that were true we wouldn't be having this conversation!"
"Just a vampire? I'm William the fucking Bloody,
baby. I pound railroad spikes through the heads of gits who annoy me,
remember?"
"Do you, Spike? You know
what I am. And you know who I am. It's not like I can put you
down like a rabid dog if the chip goes bad--you know that!" Didn't
he?
Maybe not. Those beautiful
heavy-lidded eyes bored into hers, and she could see the flare of his nostrils,
feel the quick, shallow rise and fall of his muscled chest beneath her
hands--He breathes for me. His lips curved in an ironic
smile. "Can't you? Bloody hell, Slayer, what else did you tell the
rest of 'em not three days ago? I told you last year I could give up the
whole evil thing for you, and I meant it. I can change what I do. I
have, and I'll keep it up--chip or no chip. But I don't have a sodding
soul. Yea, though I walk through the Valley of Death I shall fear no evil,
because yours truly is the meanest son of a bitch in the Valley. I am a
vampire, I will always be a vampire, I will always get off on death and pain and
destruction. That's what I am, forever and sodding ever, amen. I'll
do the right thing for you, for the Bit, hell, even for Harris--I'll do it
because I'm fond of this world of ours and I don't want to see the dozy old bint
go smash. But I will never do the right thing because it's the right thing
to do. I haven't got the wiring for it."
She
was trembling violently, anger and fear and desire braided together. Three
days? Hadn't a lifetime passed since then? "You said--that
night--you said you were mine."
Blue eyes,
drilling through her soul--not fair, when he had none. "And I am,
Slayer. Yours to kill--or not."
She
could not, could not bear any more space between them. "Mine." She
pulled him down, first crushing him close, then flinging him to the couch and
following fast after. Her mouth, starved for him, wrested frantic greedy
kisses from his lips. Her hands cupped his face, feverishly tracing the
planes of his cheeks, heedless of his burnt skin. A sound half agonized,
half ecstatic, ripped from his throat and he returned her caresses with equal
passion. She sank her teeth into the muscle of his shoulder and he howled,
bucking beneath her as she ripped open his jeans and skinned out of her own--and
didn't he have a pretty cock, rising all rose and ivory from the brown
curls so startlingly dark against his pale skin. The whole lovely thick
length of him sprang up against his flat hard belly as soon as she freed him,
foreskin slipping back from the dark glistening head. He was hard for her,
so hard, and oh, that glorious right-to-the-center fullness when he entered her
was like nothing on earth or beyond it.
He
was talking, still, as she began to move--of course he was talking, you couldn't
pay Spike to shut up, ever--a steady stream of joyful profanity as her nails
raked his sides and his hands dug into her ass with bruising strength, forcing
her closer, forcing himself deeper: Oh God, oh fuck, right there, that's
heaven, right in that tight little cunt, that's my Slayer, that's my sweet hot
bitch, ride me baby, ride me hard, oh fuck, so good, make it hurt, make it hurt
just like that, come on, say it, say my name, say my name when you come, come
for me come for me oh Christ oh fuck fuck fuck fuck me Buffy fuck me Buffy FUCK
ME OH GOD BUFFY! and together they lit up the night like a Beirut Fourth of
July. Mine. Mine. My monster. No one else's, mine,
mine, mine, thou shalt have no other Slayers before me. And they were
falling, falling, raptured, transfixed, Lucifer flung from heaven and she
burning in his arms. Before they struck earth she bit him again and he was
instantly rock-hard within her non-existent vampire refractory period,
hurray! and they were rocketing out of control again, comet-bright in the
darkness, and she could swear that the delirious explosions of pleasure that
rocked her never ever really stopped...
"You realize," Dawn said to Tara, sprawled out on the bed in he mother's
old room and doodling in the margin of her geometry textbook, "That I'm scarred
for life. This means guilt presents. Lots of guilt
presents."
"Mine," she whispered,
too exhausted to stop the tears.
"Yours," he
breathed. "Forever. Don't cry, love. I'm
here."
She curled against him,
shaking. "It's not that. It's not... oh, God, Spike, I'm--you were
right. You were right."
Cool hands
cradled her face, cool lips--not so cool now, warmed with her warmth--brushed
her shoulder, tender, infinitely gentle. "Ah, sweet, be still, be still...
Dunno what you're getting at, love."
"When
you said--at Willy’s, when you said I didn't care. About--about--I'm so
fucking sick of saving the world! I was going to let the whole world die
to save Dawn. I was. Because it was wrong to kill her, but--but
mostly--because I couldn't bear to lose her. I killed myself fighting the
Master. I killed Angel. I lost Riley, I lost Mom, I--Dawn was more
important than the whole world, Spike!"
A long pause. "Sounds about right to me."
"But it's not." A broken sob. "How can I be the
Slayer when I don't care about saving the world anymore? I got
lucky. What if my blood won't work next time? When--" When the
fact that you love me, love Dawn, to the exclusion of all else is more important
to me than all you've done, all you may do?
“But you’re out there every night doing it still, love.”
“Right. Just like you. And you don’t care, do
you?”
He jerked his head up and away,
trembling, but he wasn't quite strong enough to break her grip without a
struggle. We can't escape one another that easily. Something
in him broke; she could almost hear the snap. "I don't know. I don't
know anything anymore." He looked down at her. "There are--bloody
hell, dozens!--of people I wouldn't feel good about killing. There's half
a dozen I'd feel bad about killing!" His voice was barely audible.
"It's not like I'm going all brooding and poof-like--I could kill 'em, you know,
sans bloody chip, and I don't think I'd weep for it afterwards. But... it
wouldn't be fun. I'm starting not to care how fucking wrong it is.
What if it doesn't stop there? What if some day I do start--” His voice
cut off, half choked. There were some things he couldn’t bring himself to
say yet, either.
She reached up and
smoothed the riot of sweat-soaked platinum curls away from his forehead.
"Caring? Sounds about right to me." She sighed. "We're messed
up."
He echoed the sigh. "We are
that." He stretched, drawing her closer. "Could be worse,
though. On the bright side, the shagging is bloody
brilliant."
Buffy gave in to a little
hiccuping laugh. Somehow he could always do that much for her.
"Yeah." She tucked her head into his shoulder. Springs creaked
dangerously beneath them, and something went spung. Buffy
grimaced. Damn. We really can't afford a new couch. Note to
self: have wild passionate vampire sex only on concrete surfaces until the bloom
is off the rose. Say, twenty or thirty years from now. "I guess
if you have to be messed up, you may as well be messed up with someone you
love."
It took a minute, and then he drew a
gasping breath as if she'd staked him. "Buffy..."
What the hell. She’d always liked going for
Chinese. She raised her head and looked him in the eyes. "You heard
me."
Wow, she thought as he dove
on her and the last intact spring in the sofa noisily bit the dust, I finally
managed to shut Spike up.
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