Whispers by Abelina ~ Chapter 3a/4
Author’s Name: Abelina (aka Abby)
Title: Whispers
Summary: After Spike endures torture at the hands of Glory to protect the identity of the key, Buffy is forced to reconsider everything she ever thought she knew about the vampire, leading to some startling revelations.
Warning: Blood play, Sexual Situations
Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘em. I’m just borrowing them for a while.
Spoilers: Season 5, up to Intervention
Pairings: Buffy/Spike
Rating: NC-17 (mildly) Author’s Note: Because of limits on chapter names that comply with my theme, instead of splitting this into to distinct chapters, I’m posting it in two pieces. Chapter 3, Part A. Banner: xtanitx
Previous Chapters
Chapter Three ~ You Say You Want a Revelation - Part A
*~*
The air in the crypt sparked with electricity, and the space between them crackled with palpable energy. Buffy’s every nerve ending tingled and her fingers, still tangled with Spike’s, burned with invisible flames. Spike’s one open eye bored into hers, impossibly blue and wholly astonished. For the second time that evening, the Earth screeched to a sudden, gut-wrenching stop, stalling in its orbit and rendering time and space and everything else meaningless. Nothing existed in that moment outside of Buffy and Spike.
“What . . . did . . . did you just say what I think you said?” Spike’s voice, a wavering, halting, audible representation of the bewilderment on his face, jolted the world back into motion.
Buffy blinked and broke eye contact while she struggled to make her mouth work. This time Spike waited, wide-eyed and holding his superfluous breath, for her response. “I . . . did,” she managed, and when their eyes met again, a surge of energy coursed through her.
The way Spike gasped as she did told her he’d felt it too.
“But you didn’t intend to say it,” he added after a long moment of weighty silence.
“No, I . . . I didn’t even intend to think it,” she admitted, unable to tear her eyes from his. “But . . . I meant it.”
Silence befell them, heavily laden with everything that lay unspoken between them. Whispers of possibility, of anticipation, of desire hung in the air, and every deep, shaky breath she drew into her lungs spread the sensations like fire through her veins. The crypt was cool but Buffy only felt heat, the warmth of Spike’s intent gaze and the incredible heat blooming in her chest. Desire was only part of it; it was there, no doubt, but this heat was different, both strangely soothing and wildly exhilarating, and it took up residence inside her with a sense of belonging, of inevitability. Her eyes widened with comprehension, even as Spike continued to stare at her with mingled expectation, trepidation, and longing.
And with undeniable, profound certainty, Buffy understood that this was the moment, the place in time where the last of her walls crumbled to ash beneath the inferno raging between them. She had not said if. Her unintentional confession dealt in absolutes, and no part of her offered any hint of denial that she had taken that giant, final step over the edge of the precipice. That inevitability of one day had become this day. Buffy was falling hard and fast and headlong, but the prospect of winding up so far gone she’d never get out failed to frighten her. Instead, it filled her with blissful serenity so immense she wanted to cry from the sheer rightness of it.
She had done epic and messy. She’d been tricked into the one-night-stand and had settled for the so-called normal relationship. Buffy knew heartache, and thought she’d understood love, but she hadn’t, not fully. It wasn’t drama and misery; neither was it pretty, empty words nor safe, reliable tedium. Love was real, raw and visceral; it was unpredictable, undeniable, full of pitfalls and shining highs. It was acceptance, pride, and passion, earth-shattering, mind-blowing, and breath-taking. Love was fire and ice, hate and lust and blood, and no matter what, it was home. It was belonging. No wonder Angel and Riley left; she had never truly belonged to either one of them. Looking now into Spike’s broken face felt like a long awaited homecoming.
Some of this must have shown in her expression, because the furrow of Spike’s bruised brow lessened, and all that shone from his face now was renewed astonishment and overwhelming love. He continued to regard her with this blatant awe for countless minutes, before his expression sobered.
He leaned toward her to trail the tips of his fingers down her cheek. “When the sun comes up, this ends, doesn’t it?”
Buffy leaned into his caress, and Spike’s hand cupped her face, his thumb moving over her cheek in a feather-light circle. “No. . .” she breathed, eyes drifting shut as she submitted to his touch.
His other hand rose, brushing through her hair and skimming over her shoulder. He tangled his fingers into the golden strands, and the fluttering dance of Buffy’s heart, echoed by that of the fireflies in her belly, quickened as Spike leaned toward her. Buffy held her breath, waiting, but the anticipated kiss never came. Spike’s lips instead brushed lightly along the line of her jaw and his cheek came to rest against hers.
His breath as he spoke tickled her ear and sent tingling shivers through her brainstem and down her spine. “You sure about that?”
She wanted to be, more than anything. She wanted to assure him that his fears lacked validity, but she could not, and a sudden heaviness settled in her heart with that realization. Best intentions easily fade into nothingness, and he deserved more than a promise she was unsure if she could keep.
Spike moved to rest his forehead against hers, one hand still playing in her hair, the other resting again on her thigh. “The truth, Buffy,” he whispered.
Buffy inhaled a shaking breath. Spike’s attentiveness had her feeling lightheaded, making coherency difficult, but she forced her mouth to work. “I . . . can’t ignore what you did . . . but it . . . things won’t be this easy, when tonight’s over,” she admitted, and felt Spike’s emotional exhalation breeze over her face.
When he pulled back to look at her, Buffy offered what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “But I’ll try,” she added, and Spike waited with rapt attention for her to continue. “Try like you’re trying . . . Spike, this is, what I’m . . . God, you’d think I didn’t grow up speaking this language.”
The warmth in his answering chuckle lifted some of the heaviness from her heart. “Butchering it’s more like it,” he teased. His fingers tickled her leg and he cocked his head to the side and tipped it up in a brief nod. “You’re doin’ fine, sweetheart.”
The endearment brought a grin to her face. Before tonight, if anyone told her that Spike calling her sweetheart had the power to turn her insides into mush, Buffy would have either laughed them to death or knocked them unconscious. The obvious internal squishiness, suffused in tingling warmth, effectively ripped apart that theory and gave her much-needed encouragement to keep speaking in spite of her inherent difficulty with expressing herself verbally.
“Today . . . tonight . . . a lot of things started changing for me,” she began, trying to maintain eye contact but finding the directness intimidating. “What I thought I knew is gone, and things I never wanted to consider are staring me in the face. I’m confused and I’m terrified and I . . . I want to know what can come from all this.”
Buffy met Spike’s eye again, and set her hand atop his where it rested on her leg. “But this, it’s . . . monumental. Not a leap I can take overnight. There are factors . . . endless things standing in my way. I want to give you something more, I really do, but I can only try.”
Spike was nodding slowly, taking everything in with barely contained hope. Already, she knew, she had given him more than he ever thought he’d receive, but it still didn’t feel like enough - not after tonight, after everything.
Buffy reached out a trembling hand to cup his cheek, mirroring his earlier gesture. “I think . . . no, I know. I just stepped over that ledge, Spike, and I’m falling. I think I’m falling hard. I just don’t know when . . . I’ll land.”
It was as close as she could get, but Spike understood immediately the meaning behind her confession. His gaze softened and turned inward, a love-struck parody of his hunger-trance. When it cleared, he pressed a kiss into her palm, then took her hand in his.
Spike leaned toward her again, and this time when his lips touched her jaw, he trailed along it a line of kisses toward her ear. Blunt teeth nibbled on the fleshy lobe while the hand on her leg migrated to her hip. His fingers pressed into her flesh, insistent but gentle as they tugged her toward him. Buffy’s head swam and the fire in her belly roared tenfold as her body met the cool expanse of his chest. The position was awkward; too many legs and not enough space to accommodate them, and she was wary of leaning too heavily against his wounds. Of their own volition, however, her fingers curled into the firm muscles beneath them, and Spike’s hand, moving from her hip to rest low on her back, seemed intent on keeping her there.
The unbelievably soft lips now focused on her neck, vibrating deliciously from the rumbling in Spike’s chest. “When you do, whenever that is,” he murmured into her flesh, “I’ll be waiting there to catch you.”
Buffy let her head fall to the side, one arm snaking around Spike’s neck, and breathed a soft sigh. “I never thought for a minute that you wouldn’t be.”
“Well, that’s something,” he answered, between moist kisses. “That’s more than something.”
Buffy stroked the back of his neck with her fingers, surprised at the softness of his hair beyond the reaches of the ubiquitous lacquer. “It’s not as much as you deserve,” she whispered, “but it’s all I’ve got.”
The next instant saw her bereft of Spike’s attentive lips as he pulled his head up, guiding hers with gentle fingers on her chin to meet his eye. “Buffy, you’ve just given me more than I ever dared hope for,” he told her, then smirked. “Well, can’t say I never hoped, but I certainly never thought . . .”
“That makes two of us,” she finished.
A shared smile flitted between them. With gentle hands on her shoulders, Spike eased Buffy back, and stretched his leg out beside her along the back of the couch. His other dangled over the edge, leaving an open space in the middle waiting in clear invitation. Without hesitating, Buffy untucked her legs from beneath her and sat down on her backside, slowly shuffling forward as she draped her legs overtop his.
“C’mere,” Spike said softly, slipping his hands around behind her to pull her into his lap, scooting toward the middle of the couch to make room for her legs behind him. “That’s better.”
Buffy’s breath quickened as she settled onto him, acutely aware of the hard bulge of his erection nestled between her legs. Ever so slightly, Spike tilted his hips forward as if to say, see what you do to me? Beyond that, he made no further moves, did nothing to indicate that he expected anything of her, despite undoubtedly realizing the extent of her own arousal. Though the evidence of his desire continued to press into her through the thin fabric of her pants, Buffy felt incredibly un-pressured. There was no smugness, no demands or expectations, only the tenderness of a man who loved her unconditionally.
Buffy draped her arms over his shoulders and let her head fall forward until her forehead came to rest against his. Spike combed his fingers through her hair, one hand wrapping around the nape of her neck, the other drifting back down to hold her in place.
“Of course we’ll be great together, Buffy,” he whispered, his lips lightly brushing over hers as his words ripped through her with lightening intensity. “We’re already bloody fantastic.”
She barely had the time to take in a shuddering breath before Spike’s lips descended upon hers with feverish speed. Buffy threw herself into the kiss immediately, one arm tightening around his shoulders while her other hand moved to cup his cheek. As if encouraged by her enthusiastic response, Spike tugged her even more tightly against him, ignoring his own physical discomfort as he plundered her mouth fervently. A rumbling growl rose in his chest as Buffy swept her tongue over his bottom lip. Accepting her invitation, Spike’s lips parted, his tongue joining hers in its eager, intimate exploration.
Buffy hadn’t known it was possible to drown while simultaneously forgetting the need to breathe. There had been sparkage when she kissed Angel. With Riley, something like fluttery butterflies that stopped dancing somewhere along the way. Kissing Spike, there were flames - bright, blazing, and eternal. The inferno consumed her, cocooned her in warmth so fulfilling, so sensational, that the mere thought of her lips ever leaving his shot pangs of loss straight through her thundering heart. How could a being who generated no body heat feel so breathtakingly warm? It didn’t matter. Breathing didn’t matter. This was it.
Though she had sworn off oxygen, when Spike broke the connection, Buffy sucked in great, needy breaths, dizzy from the lack of air and the intensity of the kiss, unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. She did not know what it was about kissing Spike that made her feel as though all her previous kisses amounted to nothing more than practice. Was she simply caught up in the moment, the excitement of her changing feelings and the thrill of the forbidden? Or did the energy she felt surging between them originate from something more, something deeper they were only starting to discover? Again, that sense of anticipation, of standing on the cusp of something incredible, tingled in the back of her brain and broke her out all over in goosebumps.
Spike pressed his brow to hers, chest rising and falling in the same frantic pattern as Buffy’s, and a powerful shiver tore through her. “Buffy . . .” he breathed. The fingers of the hand holding her in place tucked beneath the hem of her shirt, drifting over her pebbled flesh of her back in light circles, and his other hand moved from her neck to trail up and down her arm. “Cold?”
“Warm,” she corrected, stoking the back of his neck and shivering again beneath the tenderness of his caresses.
“You feel it too, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she replied breathlessly. “I-”
“Shhh,” Spike interrupted, the flicker of air tickling her face. “Told you, love . . . fantastic.”
The second kiss was every bit as spectacular as the first, but slower, gentler, as though each movement of his lips, glide of his tongue, served to commit her, kissing her, to memory. Through the blissfulness of the kiss, another twinge of regret hit her when she realized he was preparing himself for tomorrow, when all of this ended. He possessed the quiet desperation of a man certain of the imminence of his loss. Spike knew this was the last time he’d ever hold her in his arms, and neither her presence now, nor her confession that she was falling in love with him, could convince him otherwise. At the same time, he kissed her with the barely restrained passion of a man fighting to ensure he wasn’t forgotten either, even if she never touched him as intimately again. He wanted this to stay with her, wanted her to remember, as she lay alone and awake in her bed at night, how much she had wanted him, how bloody fantastic the two of them could be, if she only gave them a chance.
Problem was, Buffy knew that his feelings weren’t unreasonable. Right now in his arms, she could do it, could throw away everything she was supposed to believe and embrace this new, terrifying, exhilarating future. What she felt for Spike wasn’t new, even if her recognition of it was, and she was not confusing desire for true feelings. She understood the difference. Her chance prediction and his assurances of the extraordinariness of the two of them rang truer than ever, and no part of her doubted it. Spike and Buffy, together, could change the world.
She also understood, with heart-wrenching certainty, that daylight changed the look of things. Tonight happened so fast, denying Buffy the time to talk herself out of it. Only that afternoon, she had wanted him dusted, ready to convict him for crimes not committed, on the fact of what he was, without ever finding out who. Only hours later did she understand Spike had changed, and grudgingly admitted that he loved her. Now, nothing about that knowledge felt grudging. Buffy’s heart pounded at the thought that this man loved her more than anyone ever had, or ever would, and that she was in the act of falling for him just as deeply. Everything had a surreal aspect to it, almost as though she were outside of herself, seeing everything through new, or perhaps unclouded, eyes. Strangely, it also felt more real than anything else in her admittedly bizarre world.
Would the shadows of doubt, the clouded vision, creep up again come morning? Buffy wanted to lie to herself and say, with conviction, that it would not, but she understood her own intimate relationship with denial more than she cared to admit. She dreaded the end of the night and the dawn of morning, with its brightly lit spaces and conveniently cast shadows in which to hide the pieces of herself she thought she needed to conceal. Spike might not be able to stand out in the light, but he didn’t deserve to be tossed into the shadows, either. Could Spike survive the return of her usual jaded self? Buffy didn’t know if she could.
A long moment later, Buffy realized the wetness on her face was tears, and that they were her own. She released a whimpering sigh, and Spike pulled away to look at her with concern.
“Buffy . . .?”
Buffy dropped her forehead onto his shoulder and sighed again. “I just . . . I don’t want this to end.”
Spike cradled the back of her head with his hand and placed a kiss into her hair. “Neither do I, sweetheart,” he answered, “but you know it will.”
Buffy turned her face so her lips brushed against his neck and tightened her arms around his shoulders. “God, I’m going to break your heart.”
“Look at me,” Spike whispered, waiting quietly until she complied, then wiping away her tears with his thumb. “You wouldn’t still be here if you didn’t want this,” he continued, pausing to kiss her lips gently. “But it’s easy down here, love. Just two people exploring something incredible. It’s easy to see what’s in front of you, feel what you feel, down here.”
Buffy nodded solemnly as another tear slid swiftly down her cheek. She could see moisture glinting in Spike’s eye as well, and hoped he wouldn’t start crying in earnest. If he did, she had no chance of stopping.
Gentle fingers traced the path of the tear and continued to draw random patterns into her flushed cheek, leaving her skin tingling. “But you go up there,” Spike said, tilting his head in the direction of the ceiling, “and you’re Buffy the Vampire Slayer, surrounded by her righteous, demon-hunting mates, and there’s me, down here, a demon in the dark.”
She knew she had it wrong, then. Spike’s heart wasn’t the only one breaking. “Spike . . .” she whispered, but he quieted her with a soft kiss.
“I know what you want, Buffy,” he assured her, voice barely above a whisper. “I know what I want. But life - your life - doesn’t want it.”
She closed her eyes tightly against the oncoming flood of tears. “I wanna try.”
“I know,” he answered, kissing each of her eyelids with trembling lips. “An’ I think you will, but it’s not gonna be easy.”
“I just . . . need time.”
“And you’ll have it.”
Relief swelled in her heart with the knowledge that he understood, that he recognized she wasn’t here just playing with him, leading him on only to throw it back in his face come morning. No, Spike realized the inherent difficulties in following the path ahead of them, and while certain they would take a giant leap backward tomorrow, he was willing to give her the chance to find her way back. Buffy’s heart told her to hit the road running, but her head reminded her of all the obstacles littering the passage and urged her to proceed with caution. She knew that once she started on the journey, there was no going back. When she did it was all out, no holds barred, and she couldn’t do it until she could give him all of herself. Spike was there - everything that he was, he gave willingly to her. Until she could give that back to him, she had to move slowly. After tonight, this intimacy would fade into the shadows of memory, this they both understood, but she would find her way back, and he would wait for her. Not forever, but she didn’t need forever.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
In response, Spike touched his lips to hers again, drawing her into a slow, tender kiss. When they parted, he cradled her head and she buried her face into his neck, willing her tears to subside.
“Don’t think about tomorrow,” Spike requested, combing his fingers through her hair. “Just be here with me tonight.”
“Okay.”
Spike touched his cheek to the side of her head, his mouth close to her ear. Buffy noticed that he continued to breathe in perfect timing with her own respirations, and wondered, amidst the shivers caused by the tickle of air into her ear, if he knew he was doing it that way.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” he murmured, voice vibrating in her ear more potently than his breath. “An’ I’m not giving up.”
“Don’t,” Buffy agreed. “You can’t let me forget.”
“Trust me, love,” he replied, tongue darting out to lick the lobe. “You’ll have to stake me to get rid of me.”
“No staking,” Buffy corrected, lifting her head and inhaling sharply as he began nibbling. “But . . . mmmm, more of that.”
Spike chuckled around the flesh in his mouth. “My slayer likes being bitten,” he teased, now biting softly along the line of her jaw.
“Only by her vampire,” Buffy answered, feeling once again both breathless and lightheaded, with a healthy dose of tachycardia thrown in on the side. Spike hesitated a moment and Buffy chuckled. “That’s you, Spike.”
Spike nipped playfully at her chin, and then the tip of her nose. “A fella could get used to hearin’ that,” he decided, grinning at her, and immediately wincing as the expression tugged at the cuts on his face.
Buffy furrowed her brow with concern, touching a finger tentatively to the wound below his mouth. Spike had put aside the discomfort to kiss her, but the enthusiasm of those same kisses had clearly aggravated the abrasions. None of them were terribly serious, and they had started to heal already. However, what they lacked in severity, they accounted for in quantity, slowing the healing process with numerous injuries to tend and leaving even Spike hard pressed to ignore the pain. Pig’s blood, though it sustained him in unlife, hardly matched human blood for fuelling his vampiric healing.
The idea had occurred to Buffy earlier, at first on her way to the butcher shop, but she’d rejected it before her brain could fully form the thoughts. It had returned to her mind, albeit still negatively, when Spike devoured the first bag of blood. She’d thought of it again when his lips first touched her neck, but his actions at the time quickly overshadowed the budding inspiration. Now, looking into his torn face, the proposition returned to her with a more plausible feeling to it.
A mental warning bell sounded, bringing to the forefront of her consciousness memories of the aftermath of the last time she’d offered what she was considering now. That situation, she reminded herself, was very different to the present. She had given Angel her neck out of desperation to save him, and he’d been so far under the effects of the poison that he hadn’t been able to control himself.
Spike wasn’t poisoned, wasn’t delirious, and he wasn’t starving. He was, however, injured because of something he had done for her. Tonight wasn’t about life and death; it was about connecting. It was about trust. It was about showing him that she understood the depth of what he had done for her, and that she was willing to do the same for him. It could only be blood. Nothing else she could offer him would hold the same meaning.
Spike cocked his head to the side and regarded her searchingly, and Buffy realized she had spent more time than she intended staring at him in contemplation.
“You’ll heal faster with human blood, right?” she asked, before she could talk herself out of it.
If Spike could have narrowed his eyes at her, Buffy was certain he would have. The swelling rendered the expression into more of a near-sighted, one-eyed squint that would have been funny had her thoughts not dwelled on a serious topic. “Now, don’t go raidin’ the blood bank on my account,” he replied, seemingly in jest but with a hint of caution.
“No,” Buffy corrected, playing along for the moment. “I meant fresh blood, as in, mine.”
Spike sighed, shifting her back slightly so he could see her face better. “Buffy-”
“Not like you’d need a lot, after all the pig you ate,” she continued, ignoring his discomfiture in the hopes that he might miss her own nervousness at what she was offering.
He eased her back even more. “Buffy-”
She trundled on obstinately, joining her hands behind his neck to prevent him shifting her completely out of his lap. “And slayer blood’s gotta be better than plain old human, right?”
His sigh this time ended with a low growl. “You don’t-”
“Really do,” she interrupted, as emphatic in her insistence as she could manage.
Spike scowled. “Chip.”
Buffy leaned forward to plant a quick peck on his lips. “Someone who kisses like you do can surely figure out how to bite without pain and yes I really did just suggest that.”
She felt her cheeks start to burn as Spike’s lip curled up very slightly at the comment. When he replied, however, his tone remained businesslike. “Touched. But I-”
“If I let you, I bet it won’t even fire.”
Spike’s expression grew slightly irritated. “All well and good,” he responded, tapping at his temple with two fingers, “when it’s not your noggin on the line.”
“If I let you bite me, then you’re not intending to hurt me,” Buffy elaborated, affecting her best cheery voice. “It’s like, chip psych 101.”
Another scowl twisted his features and he made the squinting face at her again. “Fine,” he grumbled. “Use logic, or psychology, or whatever the hell that was.”
Now Buffy felt herself scowling at him, frustration flaring over his continued stubbornness. “How is it that I’m actually having to convince you?”
This curled his lip into a hint of a smirk. “Partly I just like arguing with you,” Spike admitted, joining his hands again at the small of her back. “An’ just makin’ sure that you’re sure.”
Buffy looked into his eye directly. “I’m sure, Spike.”
Spike returned her look expectantly. “Are you gonna be as sure in the morning?”
Her bottom lip poked out rebelliously and her scowl upgraded into a glower. “God, it’s not like I’m under the influence or anything.”
“Runnin’ pretty high on endorphins, love,” Spike corrected, leaning in to nip at her pouting lip.
That he should bite her, while trying to talk her out of letting him bite her, did nothing to reduce Buffy’s growing aggravation, though the action itself resulted in a rush of those aforementioned chemicals. “If that means what I think it means . . . okay, yeah, but it doesn’t make me any less sure.”
Spike trailed his fingers up and down the column of her neck. “They’re gonna see it.”
“Who said neck?” Buffy countered, though she hadn’t considered anything else.
“It’s neck or nothing.”
“Hair,” she answered, a hint of a smile on her lips as she demonstrated. “Slayer healing.”
“Might hurt.”
“I’ll deal.”
Spike pushed her hair back again. “They’re still gonna see it.”
“I don’t care,” Buffy replied, defiantly.
For a long moment, the two of them stared quietly at each other. Spike seemed to be searching her face for something, and Buffy willed him to understand her intentions. If she had to, she could maybe try to explain it, but it would simply be better if he got it without her words getting in the way. He spent so much time in silent appraisal that she began to fear he would misunderstand and reject her offer. Then, slowly, he nodded.
(To be continued in Part B)
Title: Whispers
Summary: After Spike endures torture at the hands of Glory to protect the identity of the key, Buffy is forced to reconsider everything she ever thought she knew about the vampire, leading to some startling revelations.
Warning: Blood play, Sexual Situations
Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘em. I’m just borrowing them for a while.
Spoilers: Season 5, up to Intervention
Pairings: Buffy/Spike
Rating: NC-17 (mildly) Author’s Note: Because of limits on chapter names that comply with my theme, instead of splitting this into to distinct chapters, I’m posting it in two pieces. Chapter 3, Part A. Banner: xtanitx
Previous Chapters
Chapter Three ~ You Say You Want a Revelation - Part A
*~*
The air in the crypt sparked with electricity, and the space between them crackled with palpable energy. Buffy’s every nerve ending tingled and her fingers, still tangled with Spike’s, burned with invisible flames. Spike’s one open eye bored into hers, impossibly blue and wholly astonished. For the second time that evening, the Earth screeched to a sudden, gut-wrenching stop, stalling in its orbit and rendering time and space and everything else meaningless. Nothing existed in that moment outside of Buffy and Spike.
“What . . . did . . . did you just say what I think you said?” Spike’s voice, a wavering, halting, audible representation of the bewilderment on his face, jolted the world back into motion.
Buffy blinked and broke eye contact while she struggled to make her mouth work. This time Spike waited, wide-eyed and holding his superfluous breath, for her response. “I . . . did,” she managed, and when their eyes met again, a surge of energy coursed through her.
The way Spike gasped as she did told her he’d felt it too.
“But you didn’t intend to say it,” he added after a long moment of weighty silence.
“No, I . . . I didn’t even intend to think it,” she admitted, unable to tear her eyes from his. “But . . . I meant it.”
Silence befell them, heavily laden with everything that lay unspoken between them. Whispers of possibility, of anticipation, of desire hung in the air, and every deep, shaky breath she drew into her lungs spread the sensations like fire through her veins. The crypt was cool but Buffy only felt heat, the warmth of Spike’s intent gaze and the incredible heat blooming in her chest. Desire was only part of it; it was there, no doubt, but this heat was different, both strangely soothing and wildly exhilarating, and it took up residence inside her with a sense of belonging, of inevitability. Her eyes widened with comprehension, even as Spike continued to stare at her with mingled expectation, trepidation, and longing.
And with undeniable, profound certainty, Buffy understood that this was the moment, the place in time where the last of her walls crumbled to ash beneath the inferno raging between them. She had not said if. Her unintentional confession dealt in absolutes, and no part of her offered any hint of denial that she had taken that giant, final step over the edge of the precipice. That inevitability of one day had become this day. Buffy was falling hard and fast and headlong, but the prospect of winding up so far gone she’d never get out failed to frighten her. Instead, it filled her with blissful serenity so immense she wanted to cry from the sheer rightness of it.
She had done epic and messy. She’d been tricked into the one-night-stand and had settled for the so-called normal relationship. Buffy knew heartache, and thought she’d understood love, but she hadn’t, not fully. It wasn’t drama and misery; neither was it pretty, empty words nor safe, reliable tedium. Love was real, raw and visceral; it was unpredictable, undeniable, full of pitfalls and shining highs. It was acceptance, pride, and passion, earth-shattering, mind-blowing, and breath-taking. Love was fire and ice, hate and lust and blood, and no matter what, it was home. It was belonging. No wonder Angel and Riley left; she had never truly belonged to either one of them. Looking now into Spike’s broken face felt like a long awaited homecoming.
Some of this must have shown in her expression, because the furrow of Spike’s bruised brow lessened, and all that shone from his face now was renewed astonishment and overwhelming love. He continued to regard her with this blatant awe for countless minutes, before his expression sobered.
He leaned toward her to trail the tips of his fingers down her cheek. “When the sun comes up, this ends, doesn’t it?”
Buffy leaned into his caress, and Spike’s hand cupped her face, his thumb moving over her cheek in a feather-light circle. “No. . .” she breathed, eyes drifting shut as she submitted to his touch.
His other hand rose, brushing through her hair and skimming over her shoulder. He tangled his fingers into the golden strands, and the fluttering dance of Buffy’s heart, echoed by that of the fireflies in her belly, quickened as Spike leaned toward her. Buffy held her breath, waiting, but the anticipated kiss never came. Spike’s lips instead brushed lightly along the line of her jaw and his cheek came to rest against hers.
His breath as he spoke tickled her ear and sent tingling shivers through her brainstem and down her spine. “You sure about that?”
She wanted to be, more than anything. She wanted to assure him that his fears lacked validity, but she could not, and a sudden heaviness settled in her heart with that realization. Best intentions easily fade into nothingness, and he deserved more than a promise she was unsure if she could keep.
Spike moved to rest his forehead against hers, one hand still playing in her hair, the other resting again on her thigh. “The truth, Buffy,” he whispered.
Buffy inhaled a shaking breath. Spike’s attentiveness had her feeling lightheaded, making coherency difficult, but she forced her mouth to work. “I . . . can’t ignore what you did . . . but it . . . things won’t be this easy, when tonight’s over,” she admitted, and felt Spike’s emotional exhalation breeze over her face.
When he pulled back to look at her, Buffy offered what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “But I’ll try,” she added, and Spike waited with rapt attention for her to continue. “Try like you’re trying . . . Spike, this is, what I’m . . . God, you’d think I didn’t grow up speaking this language.”
The warmth in his answering chuckle lifted some of the heaviness from her heart. “Butchering it’s more like it,” he teased. His fingers tickled her leg and he cocked his head to the side and tipped it up in a brief nod. “You’re doin’ fine, sweetheart.”
The endearment brought a grin to her face. Before tonight, if anyone told her that Spike calling her sweetheart had the power to turn her insides into mush, Buffy would have either laughed them to death or knocked them unconscious. The obvious internal squishiness, suffused in tingling warmth, effectively ripped apart that theory and gave her much-needed encouragement to keep speaking in spite of her inherent difficulty with expressing herself verbally.
“Today . . . tonight . . . a lot of things started changing for me,” she began, trying to maintain eye contact but finding the directness intimidating. “What I thought I knew is gone, and things I never wanted to consider are staring me in the face. I’m confused and I’m terrified and I . . . I want to know what can come from all this.”
Buffy met Spike’s eye again, and set her hand atop his where it rested on her leg. “But this, it’s . . . monumental. Not a leap I can take overnight. There are factors . . . endless things standing in my way. I want to give you something more, I really do, but I can only try.”
Spike was nodding slowly, taking everything in with barely contained hope. Already, she knew, she had given him more than he ever thought he’d receive, but it still didn’t feel like enough - not after tonight, after everything.
Buffy reached out a trembling hand to cup his cheek, mirroring his earlier gesture. “I think . . . no, I know. I just stepped over that ledge, Spike, and I’m falling. I think I’m falling hard. I just don’t know when . . . I’ll land.”
It was as close as she could get, but Spike understood immediately the meaning behind her confession. His gaze softened and turned inward, a love-struck parody of his hunger-trance. When it cleared, he pressed a kiss into her palm, then took her hand in his.
Spike leaned toward her again, and this time when his lips touched her jaw, he trailed along it a line of kisses toward her ear. Blunt teeth nibbled on the fleshy lobe while the hand on her leg migrated to her hip. His fingers pressed into her flesh, insistent but gentle as they tugged her toward him. Buffy’s head swam and the fire in her belly roared tenfold as her body met the cool expanse of his chest. The position was awkward; too many legs and not enough space to accommodate them, and she was wary of leaning too heavily against his wounds. Of their own volition, however, her fingers curled into the firm muscles beneath them, and Spike’s hand, moving from her hip to rest low on her back, seemed intent on keeping her there.
The unbelievably soft lips now focused on her neck, vibrating deliciously from the rumbling in Spike’s chest. “When you do, whenever that is,” he murmured into her flesh, “I’ll be waiting there to catch you.”
Buffy let her head fall to the side, one arm snaking around Spike’s neck, and breathed a soft sigh. “I never thought for a minute that you wouldn’t be.”
“Well, that’s something,” he answered, between moist kisses. “That’s more than something.”
Buffy stroked the back of his neck with her fingers, surprised at the softness of his hair beyond the reaches of the ubiquitous lacquer. “It’s not as much as you deserve,” she whispered, “but it’s all I’ve got.”
The next instant saw her bereft of Spike’s attentive lips as he pulled his head up, guiding hers with gentle fingers on her chin to meet his eye. “Buffy, you’ve just given me more than I ever dared hope for,” he told her, then smirked. “Well, can’t say I never hoped, but I certainly never thought . . .”
“That makes two of us,” she finished.
A shared smile flitted between them. With gentle hands on her shoulders, Spike eased Buffy back, and stretched his leg out beside her along the back of the couch. His other dangled over the edge, leaving an open space in the middle waiting in clear invitation. Without hesitating, Buffy untucked her legs from beneath her and sat down on her backside, slowly shuffling forward as she draped her legs overtop his.
“C’mere,” Spike said softly, slipping his hands around behind her to pull her into his lap, scooting toward the middle of the couch to make room for her legs behind him. “That’s better.”
Buffy’s breath quickened as she settled onto him, acutely aware of the hard bulge of his erection nestled between her legs. Ever so slightly, Spike tilted his hips forward as if to say, see what you do to me? Beyond that, he made no further moves, did nothing to indicate that he expected anything of her, despite undoubtedly realizing the extent of her own arousal. Though the evidence of his desire continued to press into her through the thin fabric of her pants, Buffy felt incredibly un-pressured. There was no smugness, no demands or expectations, only the tenderness of a man who loved her unconditionally.
Buffy draped her arms over his shoulders and let her head fall forward until her forehead came to rest against his. Spike combed his fingers through her hair, one hand wrapping around the nape of her neck, the other drifting back down to hold her in place.
“Of course we’ll be great together, Buffy,” he whispered, his lips lightly brushing over hers as his words ripped through her with lightening intensity. “We’re already bloody fantastic.”
She barely had the time to take in a shuddering breath before Spike’s lips descended upon hers with feverish speed. Buffy threw herself into the kiss immediately, one arm tightening around his shoulders while her other hand moved to cup his cheek. As if encouraged by her enthusiastic response, Spike tugged her even more tightly against him, ignoring his own physical discomfort as he plundered her mouth fervently. A rumbling growl rose in his chest as Buffy swept her tongue over his bottom lip. Accepting her invitation, Spike’s lips parted, his tongue joining hers in its eager, intimate exploration.
Buffy hadn’t known it was possible to drown while simultaneously forgetting the need to breathe. There had been sparkage when she kissed Angel. With Riley, something like fluttery butterflies that stopped dancing somewhere along the way. Kissing Spike, there were flames - bright, blazing, and eternal. The inferno consumed her, cocooned her in warmth so fulfilling, so sensational, that the mere thought of her lips ever leaving his shot pangs of loss straight through her thundering heart. How could a being who generated no body heat feel so breathtakingly warm? It didn’t matter. Breathing didn’t matter. This was it.
Though she had sworn off oxygen, when Spike broke the connection, Buffy sucked in great, needy breaths, dizzy from the lack of air and the intensity of the kiss, unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. She did not know what it was about kissing Spike that made her feel as though all her previous kisses amounted to nothing more than practice. Was she simply caught up in the moment, the excitement of her changing feelings and the thrill of the forbidden? Or did the energy she felt surging between them originate from something more, something deeper they were only starting to discover? Again, that sense of anticipation, of standing on the cusp of something incredible, tingled in the back of her brain and broke her out all over in goosebumps.
Spike pressed his brow to hers, chest rising and falling in the same frantic pattern as Buffy’s, and a powerful shiver tore through her. “Buffy . . .” he breathed. The fingers of the hand holding her in place tucked beneath the hem of her shirt, drifting over her pebbled flesh of her back in light circles, and his other hand moved from her neck to trail up and down her arm. “Cold?”
“Warm,” she corrected, stoking the back of his neck and shivering again beneath the tenderness of his caresses.
“You feel it too, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she replied breathlessly. “I-”
“Shhh,” Spike interrupted, the flicker of air tickling her face. “Told you, love . . . fantastic.”
The second kiss was every bit as spectacular as the first, but slower, gentler, as though each movement of his lips, glide of his tongue, served to commit her, kissing her, to memory. Through the blissfulness of the kiss, another twinge of regret hit her when she realized he was preparing himself for tomorrow, when all of this ended. He possessed the quiet desperation of a man certain of the imminence of his loss. Spike knew this was the last time he’d ever hold her in his arms, and neither her presence now, nor her confession that she was falling in love with him, could convince him otherwise. At the same time, he kissed her with the barely restrained passion of a man fighting to ensure he wasn’t forgotten either, even if she never touched him as intimately again. He wanted this to stay with her, wanted her to remember, as she lay alone and awake in her bed at night, how much she had wanted him, how bloody fantastic the two of them could be, if she only gave them a chance.
Problem was, Buffy knew that his feelings weren’t unreasonable. Right now in his arms, she could do it, could throw away everything she was supposed to believe and embrace this new, terrifying, exhilarating future. What she felt for Spike wasn’t new, even if her recognition of it was, and she was not confusing desire for true feelings. She understood the difference. Her chance prediction and his assurances of the extraordinariness of the two of them rang truer than ever, and no part of her doubted it. Spike and Buffy, together, could change the world.
She also understood, with heart-wrenching certainty, that daylight changed the look of things. Tonight happened so fast, denying Buffy the time to talk herself out of it. Only that afternoon, she had wanted him dusted, ready to convict him for crimes not committed, on the fact of what he was, without ever finding out who. Only hours later did she understand Spike had changed, and grudgingly admitted that he loved her. Now, nothing about that knowledge felt grudging. Buffy’s heart pounded at the thought that this man loved her more than anyone ever had, or ever would, and that she was in the act of falling for him just as deeply. Everything had a surreal aspect to it, almost as though she were outside of herself, seeing everything through new, or perhaps unclouded, eyes. Strangely, it also felt more real than anything else in her admittedly bizarre world.
Would the shadows of doubt, the clouded vision, creep up again come morning? Buffy wanted to lie to herself and say, with conviction, that it would not, but she understood her own intimate relationship with denial more than she cared to admit. She dreaded the end of the night and the dawn of morning, with its brightly lit spaces and conveniently cast shadows in which to hide the pieces of herself she thought she needed to conceal. Spike might not be able to stand out in the light, but he didn’t deserve to be tossed into the shadows, either. Could Spike survive the return of her usual jaded self? Buffy didn’t know if she could.
A long moment later, Buffy realized the wetness on her face was tears, and that they were her own. She released a whimpering sigh, and Spike pulled away to look at her with concern.
“Buffy . . .?”
Buffy dropped her forehead onto his shoulder and sighed again. “I just . . . I don’t want this to end.”
Spike cradled the back of her head with his hand and placed a kiss into her hair. “Neither do I, sweetheart,” he answered, “but you know it will.”
Buffy turned her face so her lips brushed against his neck and tightened her arms around his shoulders. “God, I’m going to break your heart.”
“Look at me,” Spike whispered, waiting quietly until she complied, then wiping away her tears with his thumb. “You wouldn’t still be here if you didn’t want this,” he continued, pausing to kiss her lips gently. “But it’s easy down here, love. Just two people exploring something incredible. It’s easy to see what’s in front of you, feel what you feel, down here.”
Buffy nodded solemnly as another tear slid swiftly down her cheek. She could see moisture glinting in Spike’s eye as well, and hoped he wouldn’t start crying in earnest. If he did, she had no chance of stopping.
Gentle fingers traced the path of the tear and continued to draw random patterns into her flushed cheek, leaving her skin tingling. “But you go up there,” Spike said, tilting his head in the direction of the ceiling, “and you’re Buffy the Vampire Slayer, surrounded by her righteous, demon-hunting mates, and there’s me, down here, a demon in the dark.”
She knew she had it wrong, then. Spike’s heart wasn’t the only one breaking. “Spike . . .” she whispered, but he quieted her with a soft kiss.
“I know what you want, Buffy,” he assured her, voice barely above a whisper. “I know what I want. But life - your life - doesn’t want it.”
She closed her eyes tightly against the oncoming flood of tears. “I wanna try.”
“I know,” he answered, kissing each of her eyelids with trembling lips. “An’ I think you will, but it’s not gonna be easy.”
“I just . . . need time.”
“And you’ll have it.”
Relief swelled in her heart with the knowledge that he understood, that he recognized she wasn’t here just playing with him, leading him on only to throw it back in his face come morning. No, Spike realized the inherent difficulties in following the path ahead of them, and while certain they would take a giant leap backward tomorrow, he was willing to give her the chance to find her way back. Buffy’s heart told her to hit the road running, but her head reminded her of all the obstacles littering the passage and urged her to proceed with caution. She knew that once she started on the journey, there was no going back. When she did it was all out, no holds barred, and she couldn’t do it until she could give him all of herself. Spike was there - everything that he was, he gave willingly to her. Until she could give that back to him, she had to move slowly. After tonight, this intimacy would fade into the shadows of memory, this they both understood, but she would find her way back, and he would wait for her. Not forever, but she didn’t need forever.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
In response, Spike touched his lips to hers again, drawing her into a slow, tender kiss. When they parted, he cradled her head and she buried her face into his neck, willing her tears to subside.
“Don’t think about tomorrow,” Spike requested, combing his fingers through her hair. “Just be here with me tonight.”
“Okay.”
Spike touched his cheek to the side of her head, his mouth close to her ear. Buffy noticed that he continued to breathe in perfect timing with her own respirations, and wondered, amidst the shivers caused by the tickle of air into her ear, if he knew he was doing it that way.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” he murmured, voice vibrating in her ear more potently than his breath. “An’ I’m not giving up.”
“Don’t,” Buffy agreed. “You can’t let me forget.”
“Trust me, love,” he replied, tongue darting out to lick the lobe. “You’ll have to stake me to get rid of me.”
“No staking,” Buffy corrected, lifting her head and inhaling sharply as he began nibbling. “But . . . mmmm, more of that.”
Spike chuckled around the flesh in his mouth. “My slayer likes being bitten,” he teased, now biting softly along the line of her jaw.
“Only by her vampire,” Buffy answered, feeling once again both breathless and lightheaded, with a healthy dose of tachycardia thrown in on the side. Spike hesitated a moment and Buffy chuckled. “That’s you, Spike.”
Spike nipped playfully at her chin, and then the tip of her nose. “A fella could get used to hearin’ that,” he decided, grinning at her, and immediately wincing as the expression tugged at the cuts on his face.
Buffy furrowed her brow with concern, touching a finger tentatively to the wound below his mouth. Spike had put aside the discomfort to kiss her, but the enthusiasm of those same kisses had clearly aggravated the abrasions. None of them were terribly serious, and they had started to heal already. However, what they lacked in severity, they accounted for in quantity, slowing the healing process with numerous injuries to tend and leaving even Spike hard pressed to ignore the pain. Pig’s blood, though it sustained him in unlife, hardly matched human blood for fuelling his vampiric healing.
The idea had occurred to Buffy earlier, at first on her way to the butcher shop, but she’d rejected it before her brain could fully form the thoughts. It had returned to her mind, albeit still negatively, when Spike devoured the first bag of blood. She’d thought of it again when his lips first touched her neck, but his actions at the time quickly overshadowed the budding inspiration. Now, looking into his torn face, the proposition returned to her with a more plausible feeling to it.
A mental warning bell sounded, bringing to the forefront of her consciousness memories of the aftermath of the last time she’d offered what she was considering now. That situation, she reminded herself, was very different to the present. She had given Angel her neck out of desperation to save him, and he’d been so far under the effects of the poison that he hadn’t been able to control himself.
Spike wasn’t poisoned, wasn’t delirious, and he wasn’t starving. He was, however, injured because of something he had done for her. Tonight wasn’t about life and death; it was about connecting. It was about trust. It was about showing him that she understood the depth of what he had done for her, and that she was willing to do the same for him. It could only be blood. Nothing else she could offer him would hold the same meaning.
Spike cocked his head to the side and regarded her searchingly, and Buffy realized she had spent more time than she intended staring at him in contemplation.
“You’ll heal faster with human blood, right?” she asked, before she could talk herself out of it.
If Spike could have narrowed his eyes at her, Buffy was certain he would have. The swelling rendered the expression into more of a near-sighted, one-eyed squint that would have been funny had her thoughts not dwelled on a serious topic. “Now, don’t go raidin’ the blood bank on my account,” he replied, seemingly in jest but with a hint of caution.
“No,” Buffy corrected, playing along for the moment. “I meant fresh blood, as in, mine.”
Spike sighed, shifting her back slightly so he could see her face better. “Buffy-”
“Not like you’d need a lot, after all the pig you ate,” she continued, ignoring his discomfiture in the hopes that he might miss her own nervousness at what she was offering.
He eased her back even more. “Buffy-”
She trundled on obstinately, joining her hands behind his neck to prevent him shifting her completely out of his lap. “And slayer blood’s gotta be better than plain old human, right?”
His sigh this time ended with a low growl. “You don’t-”
“Really do,” she interrupted, as emphatic in her insistence as she could manage.
Spike scowled. “Chip.”
Buffy leaned forward to plant a quick peck on his lips. “Someone who kisses like you do can surely figure out how to bite without pain and yes I really did just suggest that.”
She felt her cheeks start to burn as Spike’s lip curled up very slightly at the comment. When he replied, however, his tone remained businesslike. “Touched. But I-”
“If I let you, I bet it won’t even fire.”
Spike’s expression grew slightly irritated. “All well and good,” he responded, tapping at his temple with two fingers, “when it’s not your noggin on the line.”
“If I let you bite me, then you’re not intending to hurt me,” Buffy elaborated, affecting her best cheery voice. “It’s like, chip psych 101.”
Another scowl twisted his features and he made the squinting face at her again. “Fine,” he grumbled. “Use logic, or psychology, or whatever the hell that was.”
Now Buffy felt herself scowling at him, frustration flaring over his continued stubbornness. “How is it that I’m actually having to convince you?”
This curled his lip into a hint of a smirk. “Partly I just like arguing with you,” Spike admitted, joining his hands again at the small of her back. “An’ just makin’ sure that you’re sure.”
Buffy looked into his eye directly. “I’m sure, Spike.”
Spike returned her look expectantly. “Are you gonna be as sure in the morning?”
Her bottom lip poked out rebelliously and her scowl upgraded into a glower. “God, it’s not like I’m under the influence or anything.”
“Runnin’ pretty high on endorphins, love,” Spike corrected, leaning in to nip at her pouting lip.
That he should bite her, while trying to talk her out of letting him bite her, did nothing to reduce Buffy’s growing aggravation, though the action itself resulted in a rush of those aforementioned chemicals. “If that means what I think it means . . . okay, yeah, but it doesn’t make me any less sure.”
Spike trailed his fingers up and down the column of her neck. “They’re gonna see it.”
“Who said neck?” Buffy countered, though she hadn’t considered anything else.
“It’s neck or nothing.”
“Hair,” she answered, a hint of a smile on her lips as she demonstrated. “Slayer healing.”
“Might hurt.”
“I’ll deal.”
Spike pushed her hair back again. “They’re still gonna see it.”
“I don’t care,” Buffy replied, defiantly.
For a long moment, the two of them stared quietly at each other. Spike seemed to be searching her face for something, and Buffy willed him to understand her intentions. If she had to, she could maybe try to explain it, but it would simply be better if he got it without her words getting in the way. He spent so much time in silent appraisal that she began to fear he would misunderstand and reject her offer. Then, slowly, he nodded.
(To be continued in Part B)