Whispers by Abelina ~ Chapter 3b/4
Please Read Part A before reading this post.
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, Adult Language
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 two distinct chapters, I’m posting it in two pieces. Chapter 3, Part B. Banner: xtanitx
Previous Chapters
Chapter Three ~ You Say You Want a Revelation - Part B
*~*
“All right, Buffy.”
A bright smile stole over her face. “Really?”
Spike grinned in response. “Yes, you ninny.”
Apprehension descended upon her instantly with the knowledge that they were actually going to do this. She wasn’t going to rescind her offer; what this would mean to Spike, and to them, was more important than a bit of discomfort. However, her past experiences with biting had been terribly painful, almost fatal, and so naturally the thought of giving an all-access pass to another vampire made her gut squirm and her common sense cry out in alarm. She’d have been more concerned if she didn’t feel that way. Strangely, this also seemed to alleviate some of Spike’s reluctance, and he smiled softly.
“I do get it, Buffy,” he told her, and she could see that he did. “Thank you.”
He was tracing the contours of her face with his fingers, and Buffy let her eyes fall shut. “How . . . how do we do this?”
“Gently,” he assured her, kissing her forehead. “Get up for a sec.”
Buffy slid off his lap and stood while Spike repositioned himself, moving stiffly, against the back of the couch. He leaned back into it and held out his arms. Buffy moved toward him, and his hands found her waist. His thumbs tucked under the hem of her shirt, brushing feather-light circles on the skin of her belly as he drew her into his lap. The caress renewed the fluttering heat in her stomach, and settling against his erection again brought forth a surge of wetness between her legs.
“I think,” Spike whispered, as he moved her hair over her right shoulder, “you’re going to be surprised.”
“I’ve been bitten before,” Buffy replied, sighing softly when Spike began peppering kisses over her neck.
His answering chuckle sounded far too knowing. “Not like this, love.”
“Like . . . ooh . . .”
The point of Spike’s tongue traced over the scars from her three previous bites, shooting unexpected but delightful tingles through her body. Buffy gasped as the sensation washed over her, and dropped her forehead onto Spike’s shoulder.
“What . . . what are you doing?” she breathed, clutching at his arms as he continued following the contours of her scars, setting fire to her nerves as each pass of his tongue rippled heated waves over her skin.
The warmth in Spike’s rumbling laugh only added to the effect of his tongue. “Just gettin’ you ready.”
“Yeah, but . . . oh God . . .” Buffy moaned softly as the latest flick of Spike’s tongue sent a burst of tingling heat straight to her clit. The sensation intensified with the next pass, and Buffy released a shuddering breath. “Ready . . . for what?”
Spike’s fingers had taken over for his tongue, and while former lacked the intensity of the latter, the attention was more than enough to keep her nerve endings sensitized.
“Nothing we haven’t already agreed upon,” he answered, voice tickling her inner ear and only adding to the incredible sensations. “Much as I’ll regret that after you go.”
“Who says I’m leaving?”
Her words stalled his motions, fingers falling still against her neck. “Buffy?”
The meaning he’d inferred behind her statement occurred to her immediately. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t considered the possibility; she was both human and female and certainly well aware of what was happening between them. As much as the idea of sex with Spike tempted her - how quickly things changed, indeed - tonight wasn’t going to be about that. When that happened - resurrecting if at this point smacked of absurdity - it would be at a time when the words sacrifice or payment didn’t hover nearby waiting to destroy all meaning in it. She wouldn’t have him wondering, when morning came, if she’d only slept with him out of gratitude.
“No,” she replied. “Very much no. I just thought . . . that I don’t want to go.”
Spike nuzzled his face into her neck, his hand sliding around to cradle the back of her head. “Stay as long as you like.”
His tongue found her scars again and resumed its sensual caress. Buffy sighed contentedly as the tingling ripples of sensation returned, building smoothly from where they left off and soon rendering her gasping for breath. “God, Spike . . .” she groaned, fingers digging into his skin as she fought for control. If she’d been standing, her knees would have given out, buckling beneath her and sending her crashing to the ground. As it was, her entire body was trembling in not-quite-orgasmic bliss, and all he was doing was essentially kissing her neck.
“I take it nobody’s done this to you before,” he remarked casually, though she heard clearly the desire thickening his voice.
Nobody had. Angel hadn’t stayed around after he’d bitten her, and now that she thought about it, the only time his mouth had strayed near the marks left on her by the Master was the night she’d given him her neck to save his life. Parker, Mr. Just-Say-No-to-Extra-Curricular-Activities, beyond his initial query about the scars she bore during their night-to-forget, hadn’t bothered much with her neck at all. Riley had devoutly avoided the scars, as though touching them meant subjecting himself to something tainted. Buffy hadn’t known then, of course, the apparent power of vampire bite scars, but Riley’s pointed disdain and lack of understanding about something that was a part of her - even if she didn’t exactly harbour warm fuzzies for the Master or Dracula - had always been a sore point between them. They never discussed it; it ended up just another issue left simmering in the background, one of many that had finally driven them apart. That he had then gone and willingly got bitten, more than once, when her own history had so appalled him . . . it still bothered her more than she liked to consider.
“No,” Buffy answered belatedly, tilting her head further as Spike’s lips closed over the scars again. “What . . . why . . .?”
“Funny thing about vamp bites, love,” Spike murmured. “They don’t like to be forgotten.”
Buffy lifted her head from his shoulder to face him, hit immediately by the frank desire sparkling in his eye and the delighted little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “So if I . . .”
Instead of finishing her thought, Buffy swept her tongue over the faded marks of Drusilla’s bite. Spike shivered beneath her, his soft moan hovering in the air around them. Buffy smiled against his neck, and tried a few more experimental licks that resulted in a wonderful rumbling from deep in his chest. As Buffy continued her attention to his neck, Spike’s fingers drifted beneath the edge of her shirt, moving over the muscles of her abdomen, their exploratory touches stopping just shy of her breasts. The eternal flame burning in her belly flared at the contact, making her doubt her earlier insistence about not allowing this to go further. When she sucked at the scar, Spike’s thumb slipped purposefully upward, brushing over her hardened nipple through the lace of her bra. Emboldened by his vigour and her own blazing arousal, Buffy bit down on the scar hard enough to leave the impression of her teeth in his flesh. She had expected a reaction from him, but not the barely contained growl nor the urgent thrusting of his hips as he ground himself against her.
Both thumbs circled her breasts in widening spirals and his teeth fastened over her scars, jolting the sensation through her like lightening. With his continued nibbling and bold caresses, and the throbbing heat between her legs steadily building into a rapturous crescendo, Buffy felt her resolve slipping away like proverbial dust in the wind.
Blunt teeth raked over the scars as the vampire pressed forward again to grind against her, the rigidness of his erection and the roughness of the denim finding her aching clit through her own thin pants. “How sure are you . . . about that no?”
She wasn’t, not entirely, and he certainly wasn’t making it easy to refuse him a second time. Of their own volition, her fingers found his flat nipples, alternately circling and scratching over them with her fingernails. The reasons behind her declination, despite her body’s attempts to subdue them, niggled at her brain, urging her to slow down before they started shedding clothing.
Reluctantly, she pulled away from Spike’s talented mouth, though not far enough to stop his fingers slipping beneath her bra to pinch her nipples. “It’s not . . . the right time . . . Spike . . .”
He couldn’t hide the disappointment that clouded his eye, nor the hint of frustration that tugged his brows into a furrow. Buffy reached up to cup his cheek, and he turned his face into her touch, breathing raggedly, searching her face intently. “But you want this?”
Buffy sighed and nodded rapidly, looking at him through heavy-lidded eyes. “God yes.”
“Still no?”
“Still,” she answered, though it hurt to do so with her body thrumming with arousal and crying out for release. “You get why . . . right?”
Spike grumbled an affirmative while he slipped his hands from beneath her shirt, setting them on her thighs, fingers twitching subtly as though he were forcing himself to keep them still. “Don’t wanna regret it in the morning?” he guessed, sounding both resigned and crushed all at once.
“No,” Buffy insisted, shaking her head and inching back a bit to better see his face. She laced their fingers together and squeezed his hands. “When it happens, I want it to mean something.”
The change in Spike was instantaneous. The passion faded from his eye, replaced in a flash with first hurt, and then the arrogance she knew he used to hide his true feelings. He ripped his hands free from her grasp and started to push her out of his lap, when understanding flooded Buffy’s momentarily startled mind. She gripped the back of the couch to prevent her disposal onto the floor.
“I didn’t mean that,” she said, and it was enough to stop his act of shoving her away, though he continued to glare at her with barely concealed hurt.
“Funny,” he grunted. “Sounded like you did.”
Buffy willed away her exasperation, knowing that it was entirely her fault. She hadn’t meant to insinuate that sleeping with Spike wouldn’t mean anything to her; she had simply voiced aloud a portion of her inner monologue on the topic, forgetting that Spike wasn’t privy to the rest of it.
“I meant what I said,” she countered, “but what I said didn’t mean what you heard.”
“And what the bloody fuck is that supposed to mean?” he growled, grabbing her hips and tugging her hard against him. “’Cause it sure sounded like tonight means nothing to you.”
“Spike, stop,” Buffy said, not trying to hide the slightly desperate tone in her voice. “Just shut up for a minute and let me try and fix this. You know I’m horrible with words.”
That reached him, and he released his just-shy-of-painful grip on her and tilted his head to indicate that she should continue.
“Everything I said earlier is true. I don’t just say things like that, you know that . . . and tonight means so much more to me than I could even hope to find words for,” she began, making sure to look him in the eye as directly as she could while she spoke. “I know you know how much I want you right now, but if you’re right, and this ends tonight, I don’t want you to think I had sex with you out of thanks or some sort of obligation. I’m not that girl and I don’t wanna be. When we do, there’s gonna be no doubt about what it means.”
Apparently, she’d said something right, because the anger melted away as quickly as it had appeared, and his arms tightened around her with gentle possessiveness. “When, huh?” he queried, and off her answering nod, a hint of a smile brightened his face.
“When,” she confirmed, brushing her thumb over his lips. “And I still want you to bite me.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Slayer,” Spike replied, kissing her thumb before leaning forward to brush her nose with his.
Buffy chuckled softly, glancing downward briefly before flashing him a smirk. “You’re the one who’s hard.”
Spike’s amused huff tickled her neck as his teeth nipped their way back toward her scars, and he pressed the aforementioned hardness into her. “Noticed that, did you?” he teased.
Buffy’s responding laughter melted into a breathy moan with Spike’s first sharp bite to her scars. “It’s kinda . . . hard not to.”
“Bloody wonderful, you are,” Spike murmured into her neck, more for his own benefit, Buffy sensed, than hers. “Ready then, love?”
“Ready.”
Spike pulled is face away from her neck and directed her, with a finger on her chin, to look at him. His demonic visage slipped smoothly into place. The single yellow eye studying her should have held nothing but rage and bloodlust, but instead, respect and admiration shone through, mingled with countless other complex emotions that left no doubts in Buffy’s mind that the demon loved her just as much as the man. Slowly, she brought her hand to his face, carefully feeling the contours of his rippled brow while his one open eye fell shut. Buffy’s finger traveled down the outside of his eye, over his knife-sharp cheekbone to his mouth. She dragged her index finger along the line of his bottom lip, then deliberately nicked it on a razor-sharp fang. The resulting growl was more desirous than bloodthirsty, and Buffy’s heart thundered madly as Spike’s lips closed around her finger and sucked gently at the tiny wound.
Spike dropped his face into the right side of her neck, and Buffy held her breath, waiting. When the only part of him to touch her was his tongue darting out to lick at the scars again, she let out the breath, wondering if he was trying to relax her so that when he did bite, she wasn’t tense. When his fangs scraped over the old bite marks, she realized that relaxation was the last thing on his mind. He might as well have raked his fangs over her clit for the incredible pleasure the action caused. She clutched frantically at his arms and pressed into him as each tiny, stinging scratch ripped through her with ever-growing intensity.
“Spike . . .” she moaned, gasping as the unbelievable sensations left her trembling in his arms. “God, what are you doing to me?”
“With any luck,” he purred, “makin’ you feel very good.”
Buffy laughed, the chuckle punctuated by frequent, sharp intakes of breath and concluded with a pleasured groan that left little doubts as to how good she felt. She may have declined to have sex with Spike, but obviously this was going to become quite intimate anyway, and she couldn’t say that she minded.
Spike scratched a stinging, tingling path of fire up the column of her neck, leaving behind her scars but not the sensations. When he reached her ear, the fangs left her flesh and he blew a light stream of cool air into it. “This side,” he whispered, tongue tracing the inner contour of her ear, “is theirs.”
He kissed his way across her throat, marking his path with miniscule scratches that barely broke the skin. Buffy held her breath against the flood of sensation and the rush of anticipation, and Spike treated her left ear to the same caress before adding, “And this side’s mine.”
The hint of possessiveness in his tone touched the same hidden inner part of Buffy that had shattered her denial those hours ago and led her to return to Spike’s crypt. Now not so hidden, this part of her thrummed with pleasure, thoroughly thrilled at the notion. It had nothing at all to do with control, or being controlled; it was about belonging, and undoubtedly she belonged to Spike as much as he belonged to her. This came to her as yet another fact she felt she somehow should have always known, neither shameful nor wrong, but rather so very, very right and positively glowing with potential.
“Yours,” she agreed, leaning her head to the side and exposing her neck.
Gentle fingers brushed away her hair, and soft lips kissed a path downward from her ear. When he reached his chosen spot, Spike sucked lightly at the skin and Buffy held her breath, feeling at once terrified and excited, heart pounding madly in her chest as she awaited his bite.
Buffy gasped with the initial sharp sting as his fangs pierced her flesh and clutched harder at his arms, but as the sting faded into a pleasant burn, she relaxed her grip and dropped her head onto his shoulder. Only his fangs had punctured her neck, and instead of the frenzied grip with his lower jaw, Spike’s lips alone fastened around the site. The first, slow, sucking draw of blood coincided precisely with the first involuntary clenching of her inner muscles around a potent surge of sensation.
“Oh my God . . .” she groaned, completely baffled as to how his actions at her neck could have such a powerful effect down below, but absolutely appreciative of it nonetheless. Beneath her, Spike’s erection had grown impossibly hard, evidence of his own appreciation.
Buffy remembered Spike telling her that slayer blood was an aphrodisiac, but he’d said nothing about this. This was unlike anything she had ever felt before, and only his fangs in her neck stopped her from throwing her head back and moaning in bliss. The moaning happened anyway, and Spike rumbled in approval, fangs keeping the wounds open while he slowly drank. It was painful in the same way as rough sex, Buffy thought. It hurt some but the pleasure was greater, deepened by the hint of pain rather than dampened, and she didn’t need to touch herself to know she was dripping wet. The ache between her legs was becoming almost too much to bear, each pull of blood surging like electricity straight to her clit. Tentatively at first, Buffy began moving against him, her motions growing bolder as she sought the much-needed friction.
Obviously well aware of the effect of his bite, Spike’s hands found her hips and guided her motions so the bulge of his cock beneath his strained jeans struck precisely against her throbbing clit with each pass. The pressure was building fast and powerfully, perpetuated by both the physical contact and the amazing sensation of his taking her blood. The noises falling from her lips amidst gasping breaths mingled with Spike’s muffled groans into her neck, and their movements against each other grew more and more desperate.
The pleasure was exquisite, and Buffy’s whole body felt alive with sensation. The points of contact between them not hampered by clothing - his fingers at her hips, her forehead on his shoulder and hands on his arms - burned with a buzzing, pulsating heat, more warmth than her body alone could produce. Everything throbbed in time with her thundering heart and she suddenly couldn’t breathe fast enough. She was lightheaded, bathed all over with invisible flames, trembling with need, and any moment she was going to . . .
“Oh God,” she panted, arching her hips against him. “I’m gonna . . .”
Spike roared into her neck and slammed against her, strong fingers gripping her hips as he simultaneously pulled her hard toward him. Buffy cried out in a strangled scream as the final, forceful thrust sent her over the edge, and the first crashing wave of her orgasm ripped through her. Lightheadedness exploded into weightless euphoria as her body shook - sang - with blissful release. Only Spike’s hold on her kept her in place. She felt as though she could easily float away.
Spike’s tongue licked lovingly at the wounds on her neck as she slowly drifted back into herself, body still buzzing from the incredible intensity, twitching with tingling after-shocks spurred on by his gentle lavations. Buffy’s chest heaved with deep, eager breaths and beneath her, Spike was breathing just as heavily. She became aware, then, of the trembling in his hands, one slipped around behind her, the other cradling the back of her head. Between them, wetness not entirely of her own making, and something about that knowledge left her deliriously giddy.
She smiled into his shoulder, and Spike placed a kiss over the marks he had made before resting his head against hers. Buffy brought her left hand up and buried her fingers in his hair, and his chest rumbled with a beautifully contented sound she wanted to call purring.
“Wow,” she whispered, unable, at that moment, to find any word better suited to summing up what had happened between them.
“Bloody fantastic,” Spike replied.
They held each other for several quiet minutes, in which only the sounds of their breathing, slowly brought under control, and the soft crackling of the torches, pierced the silence of the subterranean chamber. When Spike leaned his head back into the couch, Buffy lifted hers from his shoulder. Back in human face, he looked about as bonelessly serene as she felt, lips turned up in a lazy, silly smile and his one open eye heavy and sparkling drunkenly with satisfaction.
He moved his hands to cup her cheeks and kissed her softly, reverently, before breaking away to whisper, “You are so beautiful, and you don’t even know it, do you?”
She was saved from responding by another kiss, though his comment started her heart pounding all over again. The kiss continued, moving quickly beyond the original gentle reverence, but lacking the desperation of their earlier kisses in favour of a more leisurely but equally passionate endeavour. When they parted, Spike again smiled at her in that marginally goofy grin, though his right upper lip curled slightly in a more amused manner. He shifted his hips, drawing Buffy’s attention to the quite literally sticky situation, and her own lip quirked as she caught onto the direction of his thoughts.
“Got a bit of a mess, haven’t we?” he said, and she could see how hard he was trying not to plaster his face with his patented smirk.
Buffy chuckled, risking a glance downward. “I, uh, assume you actually do own more than one pair of pants?”
He arched an eyebrow at that, but then tipped his head in the direction of the doorway. “Assuming your legs are working,” he teased, smirking in response to her suddenly very flushed cheeks, “you’ll find ‘em in the dresser there. And you might find us a blanket, too.”
Buffy eased herself out of his lap, discovering as she stood that, while her legs certainly worked, they felt wonderfully tremulous as she moved slowly and shakily across the room. She quickly found the requested items and returned to sink gratefully back into the stationary softness of the couch, risking only the briefest of glances in Spike’s direction as he changed his jeans. The highly amused vampire showed no such signs of bashfulness as Buffy tossed aside her shoes and peeled out of her own dampened pants - thank goodness she’d worn simple cotton panties - before quickly joining him beneath the blanket.
Spike shifted to lie on his right side as Buffy’s back met his chest, and he wrapped his left arm around her, tucking his hand beneath her and pulling her close. His right arm settled beneath her neck, allowing her to pillow her head against his shoulder, then bending at the elbow to complete the embrace. Buffy snuggled into him, drawing the blanket tightly around them both. Suddenly completely exhausted, Buffy closed her eyes and found herself almost immediately fighting not to drift off to sleep. An overwhelming sense of peacefulness covered her in warmth more tangible than the meagre blanket could provide. Laughable, she would have said not three hours ago, that she could lie in the arms of her former enemy and feel safer than she ever remembered feeling before. Part of it she could attribute to the usual, drowsy afterglow of an admittedly fabulous orgasm, but not entirely.
She understood very little about this aspect of vampirism, hadn’t realized, in fact, that there could be more to biting than killing and feeding, though Riley’s actions now carried infinitely more significance in light of this new knowledge. This wasn’t something council teachings had highlighted, biting for intimacy, for connection or pleasure. She knew one thing for certain; she and Spike had shared something special, more intimate even than the mutual gratification and the actual drinking of blood, beyond definition, far greater than her expectations. Spike had physically taken from her, but it felt to Buffy as though he had given her even more. She had no words for it, bearing no tangible entity with which to compare, but whatever it was had deepened the growing bond between them. Buffy’s hopes flared anew that with the light of morning, her experiences tonight would far outweigh the inevitable denial, allowing her the chance to see clearly beyond it to the truths she knew in her heart.
Buffy sighed contentedly and burrowed herself deeper into Spike’s hold. His own contentment reached her through the soft rumbling in his chest with each habitual breath he took. Though she couldn’t be sure, without asking questions she didn’t know how to voice, how Spike felt about what had happened, his quiet peacefulness hinted that his feelings mirrored her own.
Spike nuzzled her neck and made a few quick, teasing passes with his tongue over the extremely sensitive bite, causing Buffy to shiver and Spike to tighten his arms around her. “Goodnight, Buffy,” he whispered, kissing her temple before settling in behind her.
Buffy smiled tiredly, submitting finally to the weightlessness of pre-sleep. She yawned and lay her hand atop his where it rested over her heart. “Night, Spike.”
*~*
At some point during the night, Buffy had shifted her position to lie face-to-face with Spike. She knew this immediately as she awoke, with his erection pressing into her thigh and his lips peppering kisses all over her face. Spike knew the moment she reached wakefulness, for his lips quickly captured hers in a kiss both eager and heartbreaking.
Morning, Buffy realized, as she parted her lips, deepening the kiss that felt far too much like goodbye.
When they parted, Spike smiled weakly at her before moving slowly to sit up. Buffy reluctantly pulled out of his embrace, her rested muscles screaming at her to stop!, lie back down and stay . . . just stay. But she couldn’t, and they both knew it.
Buffy felt his eyes on her as she donned her soiled pants and fastened her boots, each second deepening the distance between them, though physically they were only inches apart. He rose with her as she stood, and their eyes met, and Buffy’s knees threatened to buckle from the potency of his stare and the renewed spark of power, tapping in to the undeniable energy passing between them. When he stepped forward, quickly despite the stiffness of his limbs, Buffy moved to meet him, her hands flattened against his chest as he gripped her arms and crashed his mouth to hers.
Fire, was Buffy’s only coherent thought, as Spike’s tongue drove past her lips with desperate fervency. She was barely aware that they were moving, him guiding her slowly, haltingly backward, each shuffling step bringing her closer and closer to the ladder, and farther away from him. They parted when her back met the cool concrete of the block, another blazing look passing between them as she turned to ascend into the upper level of the crypt.
Buffy extended him a hand as he came through the opening behind her. The moment his feet found purchase, Spike used the connection to pull her to him again. Buffy came willingly, a lump forming in her throat and her eyes misting with unshed tears as the finality of the kiss pierced through the dreamlike passion. Morning had arrived, complete with the sunlight and shadows and all her real-world responsibilities. Buffy felt torn between the reality of her duties and her overwhelming desire for the man in front of her, and pangs of potent, heart-wrenching grief attacked her soul. Because she knew she had to go, out into the daylight and back to her life, where she was the Slayer and he was the demon, and Spike knew it, too. Her tears fell with each step they took toward the door, wetting her cheeks and leaving behind their salty tang as a reminder of everything she was about to lose.
When her back hit the door, Buffy moaned a mournful sob, and tore her mouth from his to look directly into his own tearful gaze.
“Please,” she pleaded, fingers clutching at the skin of his chest, still warm from holding her through the night. “No matter what happens, remember this . . . remember it, because I meant everything.”
“Buffy . . .” he sighed, dropping his forehead to meet hers.
“And don’t let me forget this,” Buffy added, fingers drifting to dry the tears on his face, trace the line of his lips. “Please don’t let me forget.”
The desperation she felt when he kissed her again was nearly her undoing, but she held onto this final, parting caress, trying to tell him with her mouth everything she couldn’t say in words. Spike opened the door, lips and tongue doing their best to burn the memory of this into her soul as he guided her slowly outside. The light of morning touched their faces, but Spike held on, enduring a moment of hissing smoke before breaking away and drawing back into the safety of the doorway.
They stood, facing each other, just the two of them, divided by the line between light and shadow. The line that once meant everything to Buffy. The same line that suddenly ceased to matter. Spike couldn’t cross it, but she knew now it was never his barrier. It was always hers.
After a long moment, at once endless and yet over far too soon, Buffy and Spike shared a single, solemn nod. Her vision blurred as she turned away and willed herself to start walking. Buffy listened as she moved, but she didn’t hear the familiar sound of the crypt door creaking shut, and she knew that Spike remained in the darkened doorway, watching her walk away from him. Away from them. The urge to turn back was powerful, but she resisted, though each step in the direction of home twisted the stake imbedded in her heart. If she turned back now, she wasn’t certain that she could leave again.
She had left part of herself, her heart and her soul, behind with him, and the holes inside her that represented this splitting ached with loss, with grief. Buffy only hoped it would be enough to sustain Spike until she could find her way back to him. Until she could find the strength within herself to accept Spike into her existence as fully and completely as any of the others. That time would come, maybe sooner than she realized. Hopefully sooner than that. But not now, and the knowledge threatened to break her in two.
As she walked away from Spike, memories flashed like a slideshow through her mind, of their night together, and the immensity of the raw, passionate love shining in his eyes as he looked at her. Everything she thought she knew about the vampire had crumbled to dust, and she vowed, in that instant, not to forget.
The warmth of the sun touched her skin as she moved through the cemetery’s dewed grass, amongst headstones and statues that looked unfamiliar in the light of day. Goosebumps pebbled the skin of her arms in the early morning breeze that filled the air with whispering promises of the certainty of more. Despite her sorrow, despite the tears that streamed unchecked down her cheeks, Buffy’s lips curled up in a hint of a smile. Because this wasn’t the end, not really.
This was just the beginning.
*~*
(To be concluded in Chapter Four)
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, Adult Language
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 two distinct chapters, I’m posting it in two pieces. Chapter 3, Part B. Banner: xtanitx
Previous Chapters
Chapter Three ~ You Say You Want a Revelation - Part B
*~*
“All right, Buffy.”
A bright smile stole over her face. “Really?”
Spike grinned in response. “Yes, you ninny.”
Apprehension descended upon her instantly with the knowledge that they were actually going to do this. She wasn’t going to rescind her offer; what this would mean to Spike, and to them, was more important than a bit of discomfort. However, her past experiences with biting had been terribly painful, almost fatal, and so naturally the thought of giving an all-access pass to another vampire made her gut squirm and her common sense cry out in alarm. She’d have been more concerned if she didn’t feel that way. Strangely, this also seemed to alleviate some of Spike’s reluctance, and he smiled softly.
“I do get it, Buffy,” he told her, and she could see that he did. “Thank you.”
He was tracing the contours of her face with his fingers, and Buffy let her eyes fall shut. “How . . . how do we do this?”
“Gently,” he assured her, kissing her forehead. “Get up for a sec.”
Buffy slid off his lap and stood while Spike repositioned himself, moving stiffly, against the back of the couch. He leaned back into it and held out his arms. Buffy moved toward him, and his hands found her waist. His thumbs tucked under the hem of her shirt, brushing feather-light circles on the skin of her belly as he drew her into his lap. The caress renewed the fluttering heat in her stomach, and settling against his erection again brought forth a surge of wetness between her legs.
“I think,” Spike whispered, as he moved her hair over her right shoulder, “you’re going to be surprised.”
“I’ve been bitten before,” Buffy replied, sighing softly when Spike began peppering kisses over her neck.
His answering chuckle sounded far too knowing. “Not like this, love.”
“Like . . . ooh . . .”
The point of Spike’s tongue traced over the scars from her three previous bites, shooting unexpected but delightful tingles through her body. Buffy gasped as the sensation washed over her, and dropped her forehead onto Spike’s shoulder.
“What . . . what are you doing?” she breathed, clutching at his arms as he continued following the contours of her scars, setting fire to her nerves as each pass of his tongue rippled heated waves over her skin.
The warmth in Spike’s rumbling laugh only added to the effect of his tongue. “Just gettin’ you ready.”
“Yeah, but . . . oh God . . .” Buffy moaned softly as the latest flick of Spike’s tongue sent a burst of tingling heat straight to her clit. The sensation intensified with the next pass, and Buffy released a shuddering breath. “Ready . . . for what?”
Spike’s fingers had taken over for his tongue, and while former lacked the intensity of the latter, the attention was more than enough to keep her nerve endings sensitized.
“Nothing we haven’t already agreed upon,” he answered, voice tickling her inner ear and only adding to the incredible sensations. “Much as I’ll regret that after you go.”
“Who says I’m leaving?”
Her words stalled his motions, fingers falling still against her neck. “Buffy?”
The meaning he’d inferred behind her statement occurred to her immediately. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t considered the possibility; she was both human and female and certainly well aware of what was happening between them. As much as the idea of sex with Spike tempted her - how quickly things changed, indeed - tonight wasn’t going to be about that. When that happened - resurrecting if at this point smacked of absurdity - it would be at a time when the words sacrifice or payment didn’t hover nearby waiting to destroy all meaning in it. She wouldn’t have him wondering, when morning came, if she’d only slept with him out of gratitude.
“No,” she replied. “Very much no. I just thought . . . that I don’t want to go.”
Spike nuzzled his face into her neck, his hand sliding around to cradle the back of her head. “Stay as long as you like.”
His tongue found her scars again and resumed its sensual caress. Buffy sighed contentedly as the tingling ripples of sensation returned, building smoothly from where they left off and soon rendering her gasping for breath. “God, Spike . . .” she groaned, fingers digging into his skin as she fought for control. If she’d been standing, her knees would have given out, buckling beneath her and sending her crashing to the ground. As it was, her entire body was trembling in not-quite-orgasmic bliss, and all he was doing was essentially kissing her neck.
“I take it nobody’s done this to you before,” he remarked casually, though she heard clearly the desire thickening his voice.
Nobody had. Angel hadn’t stayed around after he’d bitten her, and now that she thought about it, the only time his mouth had strayed near the marks left on her by the Master was the night she’d given him her neck to save his life. Parker, Mr. Just-Say-No-to-Extra-Curricular-Activities, beyond his initial query about the scars she bore during their night-to-forget, hadn’t bothered much with her neck at all. Riley had devoutly avoided the scars, as though touching them meant subjecting himself to something tainted. Buffy hadn’t known then, of course, the apparent power of vampire bite scars, but Riley’s pointed disdain and lack of understanding about something that was a part of her - even if she didn’t exactly harbour warm fuzzies for the Master or Dracula - had always been a sore point between them. They never discussed it; it ended up just another issue left simmering in the background, one of many that had finally driven them apart. That he had then gone and willingly got bitten, more than once, when her own history had so appalled him . . . it still bothered her more than she liked to consider.
“No,” Buffy answered belatedly, tilting her head further as Spike’s lips closed over the scars again. “What . . . why . . .?”
“Funny thing about vamp bites, love,” Spike murmured. “They don’t like to be forgotten.”
Buffy lifted her head from his shoulder to face him, hit immediately by the frank desire sparkling in his eye and the delighted little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “So if I . . .”
Instead of finishing her thought, Buffy swept her tongue over the faded marks of Drusilla’s bite. Spike shivered beneath her, his soft moan hovering in the air around them. Buffy smiled against his neck, and tried a few more experimental licks that resulted in a wonderful rumbling from deep in his chest. As Buffy continued her attention to his neck, Spike’s fingers drifted beneath the edge of her shirt, moving over the muscles of her abdomen, their exploratory touches stopping just shy of her breasts. The eternal flame burning in her belly flared at the contact, making her doubt her earlier insistence about not allowing this to go further. When she sucked at the scar, Spike’s thumb slipped purposefully upward, brushing over her hardened nipple through the lace of her bra. Emboldened by his vigour and her own blazing arousal, Buffy bit down on the scar hard enough to leave the impression of her teeth in his flesh. She had expected a reaction from him, but not the barely contained growl nor the urgent thrusting of his hips as he ground himself against her.
Both thumbs circled her breasts in widening spirals and his teeth fastened over her scars, jolting the sensation through her like lightening. With his continued nibbling and bold caresses, and the throbbing heat between her legs steadily building into a rapturous crescendo, Buffy felt her resolve slipping away like proverbial dust in the wind.
Blunt teeth raked over the scars as the vampire pressed forward again to grind against her, the rigidness of his erection and the roughness of the denim finding her aching clit through her own thin pants. “How sure are you . . . about that no?”
She wasn’t, not entirely, and he certainly wasn’t making it easy to refuse him a second time. Of their own volition, her fingers found his flat nipples, alternately circling and scratching over them with her fingernails. The reasons behind her declination, despite her body’s attempts to subdue them, niggled at her brain, urging her to slow down before they started shedding clothing.
Reluctantly, she pulled away from Spike’s talented mouth, though not far enough to stop his fingers slipping beneath her bra to pinch her nipples. “It’s not . . . the right time . . . Spike . . .”
He couldn’t hide the disappointment that clouded his eye, nor the hint of frustration that tugged his brows into a furrow. Buffy reached up to cup his cheek, and he turned his face into her touch, breathing raggedly, searching her face intently. “But you want this?”
Buffy sighed and nodded rapidly, looking at him through heavy-lidded eyes. “God yes.”
“Still no?”
“Still,” she answered, though it hurt to do so with her body thrumming with arousal and crying out for release. “You get why . . . right?”
Spike grumbled an affirmative while he slipped his hands from beneath her shirt, setting them on her thighs, fingers twitching subtly as though he were forcing himself to keep them still. “Don’t wanna regret it in the morning?” he guessed, sounding both resigned and crushed all at once.
“No,” Buffy insisted, shaking her head and inching back a bit to better see his face. She laced their fingers together and squeezed his hands. “When it happens, I want it to mean something.”
The change in Spike was instantaneous. The passion faded from his eye, replaced in a flash with first hurt, and then the arrogance she knew he used to hide his true feelings. He ripped his hands free from her grasp and started to push her out of his lap, when understanding flooded Buffy’s momentarily startled mind. She gripped the back of the couch to prevent her disposal onto the floor.
“I didn’t mean that,” she said, and it was enough to stop his act of shoving her away, though he continued to glare at her with barely concealed hurt.
“Funny,” he grunted. “Sounded like you did.”
Buffy willed away her exasperation, knowing that it was entirely her fault. She hadn’t meant to insinuate that sleeping with Spike wouldn’t mean anything to her; she had simply voiced aloud a portion of her inner monologue on the topic, forgetting that Spike wasn’t privy to the rest of it.
“I meant what I said,” she countered, “but what I said didn’t mean what you heard.”
“And what the bloody fuck is that supposed to mean?” he growled, grabbing her hips and tugging her hard against him. “’Cause it sure sounded like tonight means nothing to you.”
“Spike, stop,” Buffy said, not trying to hide the slightly desperate tone in her voice. “Just shut up for a minute and let me try and fix this. You know I’m horrible with words.”
That reached him, and he released his just-shy-of-painful grip on her and tilted his head to indicate that she should continue.
“Everything I said earlier is true. I don’t just say things like that, you know that . . . and tonight means so much more to me than I could even hope to find words for,” she began, making sure to look him in the eye as directly as she could while she spoke. “I know you know how much I want you right now, but if you’re right, and this ends tonight, I don’t want you to think I had sex with you out of thanks or some sort of obligation. I’m not that girl and I don’t wanna be. When we do, there’s gonna be no doubt about what it means.”
Apparently, she’d said something right, because the anger melted away as quickly as it had appeared, and his arms tightened around her with gentle possessiveness. “When, huh?” he queried, and off her answering nod, a hint of a smile brightened his face.
“When,” she confirmed, brushing her thumb over his lips. “And I still want you to bite me.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Slayer,” Spike replied, kissing her thumb before leaning forward to brush her nose with his.
Buffy chuckled softly, glancing downward briefly before flashing him a smirk. “You’re the one who’s hard.”
Spike’s amused huff tickled her neck as his teeth nipped their way back toward her scars, and he pressed the aforementioned hardness into her. “Noticed that, did you?” he teased.
Buffy’s responding laughter melted into a breathy moan with Spike’s first sharp bite to her scars. “It’s kinda . . . hard not to.”
“Bloody wonderful, you are,” Spike murmured into her neck, more for his own benefit, Buffy sensed, than hers. “Ready then, love?”
“Ready.”
Spike pulled is face away from her neck and directed her, with a finger on her chin, to look at him. His demonic visage slipped smoothly into place. The single yellow eye studying her should have held nothing but rage and bloodlust, but instead, respect and admiration shone through, mingled with countless other complex emotions that left no doubts in Buffy’s mind that the demon loved her just as much as the man. Slowly, she brought her hand to his face, carefully feeling the contours of his rippled brow while his one open eye fell shut. Buffy’s finger traveled down the outside of his eye, over his knife-sharp cheekbone to his mouth. She dragged her index finger along the line of his bottom lip, then deliberately nicked it on a razor-sharp fang. The resulting growl was more desirous than bloodthirsty, and Buffy’s heart thundered madly as Spike’s lips closed around her finger and sucked gently at the tiny wound.
Spike dropped his face into the right side of her neck, and Buffy held her breath, waiting. When the only part of him to touch her was his tongue darting out to lick at the scars again, she let out the breath, wondering if he was trying to relax her so that when he did bite, she wasn’t tense. When his fangs scraped over the old bite marks, she realized that relaxation was the last thing on his mind. He might as well have raked his fangs over her clit for the incredible pleasure the action caused. She clutched frantically at his arms and pressed into him as each tiny, stinging scratch ripped through her with ever-growing intensity.
“Spike . . .” she moaned, gasping as the unbelievable sensations left her trembling in his arms. “God, what are you doing to me?”
“With any luck,” he purred, “makin’ you feel very good.”
Buffy laughed, the chuckle punctuated by frequent, sharp intakes of breath and concluded with a pleasured groan that left little doubts as to how good she felt. She may have declined to have sex with Spike, but obviously this was going to become quite intimate anyway, and she couldn’t say that she minded.
Spike scratched a stinging, tingling path of fire up the column of her neck, leaving behind her scars but not the sensations. When he reached her ear, the fangs left her flesh and he blew a light stream of cool air into it. “This side,” he whispered, tongue tracing the inner contour of her ear, “is theirs.”
He kissed his way across her throat, marking his path with miniscule scratches that barely broke the skin. Buffy held her breath against the flood of sensation and the rush of anticipation, and Spike treated her left ear to the same caress before adding, “And this side’s mine.”
The hint of possessiveness in his tone touched the same hidden inner part of Buffy that had shattered her denial those hours ago and led her to return to Spike’s crypt. Now not so hidden, this part of her thrummed with pleasure, thoroughly thrilled at the notion. It had nothing at all to do with control, or being controlled; it was about belonging, and undoubtedly she belonged to Spike as much as he belonged to her. This came to her as yet another fact she felt she somehow should have always known, neither shameful nor wrong, but rather so very, very right and positively glowing with potential.
“Yours,” she agreed, leaning her head to the side and exposing her neck.
Gentle fingers brushed away her hair, and soft lips kissed a path downward from her ear. When he reached his chosen spot, Spike sucked lightly at the skin and Buffy held her breath, feeling at once terrified and excited, heart pounding madly in her chest as she awaited his bite.
Buffy gasped with the initial sharp sting as his fangs pierced her flesh and clutched harder at his arms, but as the sting faded into a pleasant burn, she relaxed her grip and dropped her head onto his shoulder. Only his fangs had punctured her neck, and instead of the frenzied grip with his lower jaw, Spike’s lips alone fastened around the site. The first, slow, sucking draw of blood coincided precisely with the first involuntary clenching of her inner muscles around a potent surge of sensation.
“Oh my God . . .” she groaned, completely baffled as to how his actions at her neck could have such a powerful effect down below, but absolutely appreciative of it nonetheless. Beneath her, Spike’s erection had grown impossibly hard, evidence of his own appreciation.
Buffy remembered Spike telling her that slayer blood was an aphrodisiac, but he’d said nothing about this. This was unlike anything she had ever felt before, and only his fangs in her neck stopped her from throwing her head back and moaning in bliss. The moaning happened anyway, and Spike rumbled in approval, fangs keeping the wounds open while he slowly drank. It was painful in the same way as rough sex, Buffy thought. It hurt some but the pleasure was greater, deepened by the hint of pain rather than dampened, and she didn’t need to touch herself to know she was dripping wet. The ache between her legs was becoming almost too much to bear, each pull of blood surging like electricity straight to her clit. Tentatively at first, Buffy began moving against him, her motions growing bolder as she sought the much-needed friction.
Obviously well aware of the effect of his bite, Spike’s hands found her hips and guided her motions so the bulge of his cock beneath his strained jeans struck precisely against her throbbing clit with each pass. The pressure was building fast and powerfully, perpetuated by both the physical contact and the amazing sensation of his taking her blood. The noises falling from her lips amidst gasping breaths mingled with Spike’s muffled groans into her neck, and their movements against each other grew more and more desperate.
The pleasure was exquisite, and Buffy’s whole body felt alive with sensation. The points of contact between them not hampered by clothing - his fingers at her hips, her forehead on his shoulder and hands on his arms - burned with a buzzing, pulsating heat, more warmth than her body alone could produce. Everything throbbed in time with her thundering heart and she suddenly couldn’t breathe fast enough. She was lightheaded, bathed all over with invisible flames, trembling with need, and any moment she was going to . . .
“Oh God,” she panted, arching her hips against him. “I’m gonna . . .”
Spike roared into her neck and slammed against her, strong fingers gripping her hips as he simultaneously pulled her hard toward him. Buffy cried out in a strangled scream as the final, forceful thrust sent her over the edge, and the first crashing wave of her orgasm ripped through her. Lightheadedness exploded into weightless euphoria as her body shook - sang - with blissful release. Only Spike’s hold on her kept her in place. She felt as though she could easily float away.
Spike’s tongue licked lovingly at the wounds on her neck as she slowly drifted back into herself, body still buzzing from the incredible intensity, twitching with tingling after-shocks spurred on by his gentle lavations. Buffy’s chest heaved with deep, eager breaths and beneath her, Spike was breathing just as heavily. She became aware, then, of the trembling in his hands, one slipped around behind her, the other cradling the back of her head. Between them, wetness not entirely of her own making, and something about that knowledge left her deliriously giddy.
She smiled into his shoulder, and Spike placed a kiss over the marks he had made before resting his head against hers. Buffy brought her left hand up and buried her fingers in his hair, and his chest rumbled with a beautifully contented sound she wanted to call purring.
“Wow,” she whispered, unable, at that moment, to find any word better suited to summing up what had happened between them.
“Bloody fantastic,” Spike replied.
They held each other for several quiet minutes, in which only the sounds of their breathing, slowly brought under control, and the soft crackling of the torches, pierced the silence of the subterranean chamber. When Spike leaned his head back into the couch, Buffy lifted hers from his shoulder. Back in human face, he looked about as bonelessly serene as she felt, lips turned up in a lazy, silly smile and his one open eye heavy and sparkling drunkenly with satisfaction.
He moved his hands to cup her cheeks and kissed her softly, reverently, before breaking away to whisper, “You are so beautiful, and you don’t even know it, do you?”
She was saved from responding by another kiss, though his comment started her heart pounding all over again. The kiss continued, moving quickly beyond the original gentle reverence, but lacking the desperation of their earlier kisses in favour of a more leisurely but equally passionate endeavour. When they parted, Spike again smiled at her in that marginally goofy grin, though his right upper lip curled slightly in a more amused manner. He shifted his hips, drawing Buffy’s attention to the quite literally sticky situation, and her own lip quirked as she caught onto the direction of his thoughts.
“Got a bit of a mess, haven’t we?” he said, and she could see how hard he was trying not to plaster his face with his patented smirk.
Buffy chuckled, risking a glance downward. “I, uh, assume you actually do own more than one pair of pants?”
He arched an eyebrow at that, but then tipped his head in the direction of the doorway. “Assuming your legs are working,” he teased, smirking in response to her suddenly very flushed cheeks, “you’ll find ‘em in the dresser there. And you might find us a blanket, too.”
Buffy eased herself out of his lap, discovering as she stood that, while her legs certainly worked, they felt wonderfully tremulous as she moved slowly and shakily across the room. She quickly found the requested items and returned to sink gratefully back into the stationary softness of the couch, risking only the briefest of glances in Spike’s direction as he changed his jeans. The highly amused vampire showed no such signs of bashfulness as Buffy tossed aside her shoes and peeled out of her own dampened pants - thank goodness she’d worn simple cotton panties - before quickly joining him beneath the blanket.
Spike shifted to lie on his right side as Buffy’s back met his chest, and he wrapped his left arm around her, tucking his hand beneath her and pulling her close. His right arm settled beneath her neck, allowing her to pillow her head against his shoulder, then bending at the elbow to complete the embrace. Buffy snuggled into him, drawing the blanket tightly around them both. Suddenly completely exhausted, Buffy closed her eyes and found herself almost immediately fighting not to drift off to sleep. An overwhelming sense of peacefulness covered her in warmth more tangible than the meagre blanket could provide. Laughable, she would have said not three hours ago, that she could lie in the arms of her former enemy and feel safer than she ever remembered feeling before. Part of it she could attribute to the usual, drowsy afterglow of an admittedly fabulous orgasm, but not entirely.
She understood very little about this aspect of vampirism, hadn’t realized, in fact, that there could be more to biting than killing and feeding, though Riley’s actions now carried infinitely more significance in light of this new knowledge. This wasn’t something council teachings had highlighted, biting for intimacy, for connection or pleasure. She knew one thing for certain; she and Spike had shared something special, more intimate even than the mutual gratification and the actual drinking of blood, beyond definition, far greater than her expectations. Spike had physically taken from her, but it felt to Buffy as though he had given her even more. She had no words for it, bearing no tangible entity with which to compare, but whatever it was had deepened the growing bond between them. Buffy’s hopes flared anew that with the light of morning, her experiences tonight would far outweigh the inevitable denial, allowing her the chance to see clearly beyond it to the truths she knew in her heart.
Buffy sighed contentedly and burrowed herself deeper into Spike’s hold. His own contentment reached her through the soft rumbling in his chest with each habitual breath he took. Though she couldn’t be sure, without asking questions she didn’t know how to voice, how Spike felt about what had happened, his quiet peacefulness hinted that his feelings mirrored her own.
Spike nuzzled her neck and made a few quick, teasing passes with his tongue over the extremely sensitive bite, causing Buffy to shiver and Spike to tighten his arms around her. “Goodnight, Buffy,” he whispered, kissing her temple before settling in behind her.
Buffy smiled tiredly, submitting finally to the weightlessness of pre-sleep. She yawned and lay her hand atop his where it rested over her heart. “Night, Spike.”
*~*
At some point during the night, Buffy had shifted her position to lie face-to-face with Spike. She knew this immediately as she awoke, with his erection pressing into her thigh and his lips peppering kisses all over her face. Spike knew the moment she reached wakefulness, for his lips quickly captured hers in a kiss both eager and heartbreaking.
Morning, Buffy realized, as she parted her lips, deepening the kiss that felt far too much like goodbye.
When they parted, Spike smiled weakly at her before moving slowly to sit up. Buffy reluctantly pulled out of his embrace, her rested muscles screaming at her to stop!, lie back down and stay . . . just stay. But she couldn’t, and they both knew it.
Buffy felt his eyes on her as she donned her soiled pants and fastened her boots, each second deepening the distance between them, though physically they were only inches apart. He rose with her as she stood, and their eyes met, and Buffy’s knees threatened to buckle from the potency of his stare and the renewed spark of power, tapping in to the undeniable energy passing between them. When he stepped forward, quickly despite the stiffness of his limbs, Buffy moved to meet him, her hands flattened against his chest as he gripped her arms and crashed his mouth to hers.
Fire, was Buffy’s only coherent thought, as Spike’s tongue drove past her lips with desperate fervency. She was barely aware that they were moving, him guiding her slowly, haltingly backward, each shuffling step bringing her closer and closer to the ladder, and farther away from him. They parted when her back met the cool concrete of the block, another blazing look passing between them as she turned to ascend into the upper level of the crypt.
Buffy extended him a hand as he came through the opening behind her. The moment his feet found purchase, Spike used the connection to pull her to him again. Buffy came willingly, a lump forming in her throat and her eyes misting with unshed tears as the finality of the kiss pierced through the dreamlike passion. Morning had arrived, complete with the sunlight and shadows and all her real-world responsibilities. Buffy felt torn between the reality of her duties and her overwhelming desire for the man in front of her, and pangs of potent, heart-wrenching grief attacked her soul. Because she knew she had to go, out into the daylight and back to her life, where she was the Slayer and he was the demon, and Spike knew it, too. Her tears fell with each step they took toward the door, wetting her cheeks and leaving behind their salty tang as a reminder of everything she was about to lose.
When her back hit the door, Buffy moaned a mournful sob, and tore her mouth from his to look directly into his own tearful gaze.
“Please,” she pleaded, fingers clutching at the skin of his chest, still warm from holding her through the night. “No matter what happens, remember this . . . remember it, because I meant everything.”
“Buffy . . .” he sighed, dropping his forehead to meet hers.
“And don’t let me forget this,” Buffy added, fingers drifting to dry the tears on his face, trace the line of his lips. “Please don’t let me forget.”
The desperation she felt when he kissed her again was nearly her undoing, but she held onto this final, parting caress, trying to tell him with her mouth everything she couldn’t say in words. Spike opened the door, lips and tongue doing their best to burn the memory of this into her soul as he guided her slowly outside. The light of morning touched their faces, but Spike held on, enduring a moment of hissing smoke before breaking away and drawing back into the safety of the doorway.
They stood, facing each other, just the two of them, divided by the line between light and shadow. The line that once meant everything to Buffy. The same line that suddenly ceased to matter. Spike couldn’t cross it, but she knew now it was never his barrier. It was always hers.
After a long moment, at once endless and yet over far too soon, Buffy and Spike shared a single, solemn nod. Her vision blurred as she turned away and willed herself to start walking. Buffy listened as she moved, but she didn’t hear the familiar sound of the crypt door creaking shut, and she knew that Spike remained in the darkened doorway, watching her walk away from him. Away from them. The urge to turn back was powerful, but she resisted, though each step in the direction of home twisted the stake imbedded in her heart. If she turned back now, she wasn’t certain that she could leave again.
She had left part of herself, her heart and her soul, behind with him, and the holes inside her that represented this splitting ached with loss, with grief. Buffy only hoped it would be enough to sustain Spike until she could find her way back to him. Until she could find the strength within herself to accept Spike into her existence as fully and completely as any of the others. That time would come, maybe sooner than she realized. Hopefully sooner than that. But not now, and the knowledge threatened to break her in two.
As she walked away from Spike, memories flashed like a slideshow through her mind, of their night together, and the immensity of the raw, passionate love shining in his eyes as he looked at her. Everything she thought she knew about the vampire had crumbled to dust, and she vowed, in that instant, not to forget.
The warmth of the sun touched her skin as she moved through the cemetery’s dewed grass, amongst headstones and statues that looked unfamiliar in the light of day. Goosebumps pebbled the skin of her arms in the early morning breeze that filled the air with whispering promises of the certainty of more. Despite her sorrow, despite the tears that streamed unchecked down her cheeks, Buffy’s lips curled up in a hint of a smile. Because this wasn’t the end, not really.
This was just the beginning.
*~*
(To be concluded in Chapter Four)