The Mired Path 16/19
Title: The Mired Path
Author: Pricelessspike (Priceless)
Setting: Post Season 12 (Comic compliant)
Rating: PG
Warning: Spike/Other
Word Count: 1800
Summary: In Season 12 Buffy and Spike break up. Spike eventually leaves and this is their first meeting in three years. Plus, Angel needs rescuing.
A/N: Massive thanks to my wonderful betas Stoney and TriBel, if you like anything in this fic, it's because of them. All mistakes are mine, because I can't stop re-writing.
Chapter 16
Buffy felt him heavy against her back, his head in the crook of her shoulder, his body pressed against hers. She couldn’t make out his contours through the sleeping bags, but he felt as he always had, he felt right. She closed her eyes and moulded herself into his body. When she woke again, he’d gone.
That morning she was on edge, watching Angel, waiting for him to change. Perhaps he sensed her wariness because he left the cottage early and didn’t reappear till the evening. Fred had sent him to find fruit or vegetables. She said he went foraging regularly, it’s how they got most of their food.
Buffy asked Fred if was okay by himself. “He sees things. At first, he used to run back to me, completely convinced he’d killed someone. He handles it better now,” Fred explained.
She had tasked Spike to scrubbing pans and he was sat just outside the doorway trying to avoid the drizzle, a bowl of water between his feet. He was scrubbing one pan at a time, happily sloshing water over the sides of the bowl. Buffy lent against the door and watched him for a while, laughing when he flicked water at her.
It was then she saw it. The rain fell and through it the land seemed to undulate, and from it grew a shadow. It was moving towards her, deliberate in its step. She couldn’t look away, it was mesmerising in its savagery. She could feel its need for her. It wanted to rip her apart, make her its own, make her a thing. She couldn’t move, it was filling her head with vile tortuous images, each worse that the last and she couldn’t make it stop. She must have cried out because Spike was holding her, pulling her into the house. He and Fred were talking, asking questions that she couldn’t answer. Fred poured her some foul-smelling tea and Spike kept his arms around her as she tried to drink it.
“I don’t know what it was,” she told them through terrified sobs. “It was a shape, a feeling. I knew it wanted to hurt me. I couldn’t fight it.”
“It’s alright Buffy, it’s alright.” He sounded more panicked then she’d ever heard him, his arm still around her, his hand stroking her arm, soothing her.
They spent the rest of the day in the house, Buffy felt too shaken to venture outside. Fred told her that she hadn’t gone farther than the well in two years, too scared the Pyleans would return and kidnap her. “I used to go further afield,” she said, her voice eerie and unnatural, “but they’d find me and torture me.” Goosebumps rose on Buffy’s arms and she felt suddenly hopeless. If they were trapped here, her life would be spent in a place like this, too terrified to go further than the well every day.
The day passed in short bursts of activity and long hours of nothingness. To relieve his boredom, Spike checked the watch constantly. He’d feed it through his fingers, turn it over, flip the lid open, check the time and then shut it again. It was a dance he did with the damn thing and it drove Buffy crazy. “You keep it then,” he snapped, slamming it down on the table. “Don’t break it,” she’d shouted angrily.
Fred and Spike talked about Wolfram and Hart, Buffy feeling excluded. She began to wonder how close Spike and Fred had been. Did Spike have feelings for the woman? She began to feel jealous and angry and was pleased when Angel returned, knowing Spike would be more reticent in his presence.
They ate a scant meal of vegetables, Spike and Angel shared a bowl full of blood. They were mostly silent, having little of interest to say to each other and no enthusiasm for conversation. Eventually the day ended and Buffy and Spike were alone in their sleeping bags.
“No more shadows?” Spike asked. He was lying beside her, comfortably close.
She shook her head, looking into his worried face. She reached out and stroked the scar above his eye. She thought he might pull away, but he didn’t, he allowed her fingers to stroke his cheekbones, his nose, his chin. She needed to touch him, feel something real and solid and good, to drive the shadowman from her mind. She rose onto her elbow, closed her eyes and put her lips softly to his.
He moved his head then and she whispered, “Only for now.” Neither of them spoke again. They kissed opened mouthed, wrapped in each other’s arms Buffy felt safe. She was dizzy with him and felt clumsy under his graceful fingers and searching mouth. She pulled him to her, needing to feel his weight pressing her down, holding her still, until it became unbearable. She twisted in his grasp and he opened her wide to taste her sweetness. They moved together, surged and stilled, teased and quickened. She lapped at his body, tasted his velvet skin, sucked and bit those places that had been lost to her. She gathered him and made him gasp. He lifted her hips and wrapped her around him. Afterwards she pushed him away, not able to breathe, the pleasure overwhelming. Then she felt the distance was too great and she pulled him close again. She stroked his blissful face and kissed each eyelid and he ran his knuckles over her breasts and belly. Over and over they met in helpless wanting until there was no more grief, no more loss and no more distance between them.
Slowly he rolled away from her and lay on his back, staring at the timbered roof. She pulled the sleeping bag around herself, and stretched out her exhausted limbs. She refused to feel ashamed by what they’d done, it had been too perfect for that. She’d needed him to help fight the monster in her head, but more than that she simply wanted him. She’d wanted him since the moment he’d left her. She’d spent endless nights dreaming of this, the taste of his skin, his fingers caressing her, his mouth on her body…
“I love you,” he said, as though the words had been unwillingly torn from him. So painful to say, he couldn’t look at her. “I don’t know what to do.”
“This doesn’t have to mean anything,” she whispered, though it meant everything to her. “We’re in hell, we turned to each other for comfort, anyone would understand that.”
He moved quickly, pushing her away so he could see her face when he asked, “Do you love me? Did you ever?”
“More than anything,” she answered truthfully, her blazing eyes never leaving his. “That’s why I didn’t want you to leave, I still wanted you. I always will.”
“You did, did you?” he said scornfully, pushing her away. “Should have let me into the secret.” He lay down on his sleeping bag and flung his arm over his face.
Buffy stared at the same timbered roof Spike had stared at, but it gave her no clues. She wanted him so much, but all she did was hurt him. She put her own selfish needs first, knowing he had someone else. He should hate her, but he still loved her. Round and round and round they went. Why did it have to be so damn complicated?
She must have slept, because she woke up. Something was buzzing, it sounded like distant fireworks going off … The watch! The fire had gone out and there was little light in the room, but finally she found her jeans, rummaged in the pockets and found it. She flicked the lid open and could only stare in wonder at what she saw. Two faces dancing around each other, one cornflower blue telling her it was 04:11am, the other a golden yellow telling her the portal would be closed at 09:15.
She kicked out her leg, trying to wake a sleeping Spike. He grunted at her angrily, but once he saw the watch, he seemed to forget the previous night’s conversations and they just grinned at each other like fools.
“That’s only five hours, not long.” The two of them quickly scrambled into their clothes. Spike banged on Angel and Fred’s bedroom door, “Rise and shine kiddies. The beacon’s afire. C’mon.”
“It’s so dark, do you think it’ll be safe?” She thought of the shadowman waiting for her, and shivered.
“Probably not,” he said, staring out of the window into the blackness, “but we have to try.” Buffy dampened down her fear, knowing Spike was right. Whatever was out there, they had to face it or they’d never escape.
Fred stood at the bedroom door looking at the two of them, shouldering their backpacks, ready to go. “I can’t,” she said quietly, “I daren’t.” She sat by the hearth and began to make a fire. Buffy was too stunned to speak. She turned to Spike, who shook his head, and nodded towards the door, wanting to leave Angel to try and reason with her.
“Fred, we can’t stay here,” Angel said, joining her by the fire. “This is our only chance. We have to take it.” He was crouched besides her, stroking her hair, whispering gently to her.
Spike had opened the door and Buffy came to stand next to him. It was pitch black, there were no stars and clouds covered the moon. “See anything?”
“Nothing,” Spike had vamped out and was scenting the air, “don’t smell anything either.” She was scared of seeing the shadowman again and with Fred dragging her heels, it all added to her sense of unease. She looked back to the couple at the fireside, still deep in conversation, then to the vampire stood beside her, jonesing for a cigarette he didn’t have. She thought this might be her last chance to speak privately to him, so she took his arm and manoeuvred him away from the doorway. He followed her easily.
“We could be home in a few hours,” she said, wondering if he could hear how fast her heart was beating. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am that I’ve complicated your life. My life is hard, you know cos you’ve lived it and sometimes I don’t deal with things very well, but I love you so much Spike, more than I can say and I know you love me, so we have to work this out. If you can’t forgive me, it’ll hurt, but I’ll learn to accept it. Just know that no matter how sappy it sounds; I’ll always be here for you.”
It was too dark to read his expression and he said nothing. Her heart sank at his silence and she berated herself for expecting too much. There was nothing he could possibly say that would make this right, because someone was going to be hurt, and maybe she deserved it to be her.