Fic: The Soul Lies Down [14/?]
Title: The Soul Lies Down (14/?)
Pairing(s): Buffy/Spike, (Anya/Xander, Willow/Tara)
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~4,900 (~64,400 total)
Timeline: AU S5, S6, S7 and post-series
Warnings: character death, violence and gore
Summary: As a child, I used to dream of a man in black and white, spinning in the desert like a dervish, sword flashing in the moonlight as he danced with death. (A sequel/companion to angearia's Fin Amour).
Notes: Many thanks as always to rahirah and bewilde for their beta-ly patience and advice <3
14
Love, Give, Forgive
Buffy was sitting on the basement steps. Maybe that was what made the transition feel easier, or maybe Dawn had simply found a way around the turbulence this time. The lights were off, but sunlight filtered in around the edges of the blacked out windows. Day, then, and there was Spike, asleep on his cot, shirtless as he always was, and on top of the covers because of not feeling the cold. She spent several minutes just looking at him, feeling all her orbiting thoughts coalesce and sink down within her to something more firm, less flighty. Nothing was solved, not really, but it just mattered less in this moment.
She didn’t move, or really even make a sound, but after a while Spike woke in that strange, quiet way he had of just opening his eyes and unerringly finding hers.
“Buffy,” he said groggily. “You’re back.”
And then his own words seemed to catch up with him, and he bolted out of bed and into the middle of the dim room, where he stopped again, cautious.
“Dawn, is she…?”
“She didn’t come with. She wasn’t feeling too well, but I think she was okay again by the time I left. How… how long was I gone?”
“Two days,” he said. “Give or take. Everything’s been fine,” he added, in response to the question she’d been about to ask. “Everyone’s fine. Our Dawn’s out with Joyce at the park.”
She nodded, throat sticky and stomach trying to dance up into her lungs. Restless, she got to her feet and descended the last couple of stairs, but then she was only a handful of feet from him with nothing in between, and the same uncertainty that had stopped him brought her to a standstill, too.
He looked tired, strained, more like his grown up, world-saving daughter than the younger version of himself she had watched making that deal with her, and it bloomed in her, then, out from her heart to her fingertips and toes, and she felt bigger for it, expansive, and more like herself than she had in months.
“You were right, we do need to talk,” she said, and watched as Spike’s eyes glimmered in relief and trepidation. “But there’s something else I really, really need to do first.”
He cocked his head at her, and was about to speak, but the space between them was abruptly gone and she collided with him, mouth and arms and body, so that he rocked back with the force of it, barely able to contain her in his grasp, and for several wonderful, thoughtless moments there was nothing but the feel of him, the taste, the sweet, wet slide of mouth against mouth and the intense rightness of being in his arms.
“Buffy,” he gasped, when she had to draw back to breathe. “What is this?”
She twined her arms around his neck, holding him flush to her, faces so close she couldn’t even focus on him.
“This is me being done freaking out,” she said raggedly.
“Over what?”
Which was fair, because there were so many options. That it’s entirely possible you only think you have a soul, she thought. That you don’t have a chip and occasionally enjoy torturing people to death. That I only want you because of some childish desire to play house. That feeling like this means there’s something wrong with me.
“Everything. I love you.”
“Buffy,” he whispered again, hands sliding up to cup her face, push her back precious inches to search her eyes. He looked almost in pain, an expression of such naked longing it twisted her heart. “What…?”
“I love you,” she repeated fiercely, and dragged him back down like she was saving his life, like she was pulling him away from some danger, except she was pulling him to, very much to, because he was hers, and she needed him. After everything, she knew that now. All the things she had suppressed or pushed down or turned away from over the last few months, they all rose up in her, every feeling, every desire, an unstoppable tide of want. So much as she’d thought about it, Buffy hadn’t intended for things to go so far, but clinging together in the space where words wouldn’t say any of it, she suddenly needed to show him what was in her, and it wasn’t violent, not like before in the training room, but it wasn’t sweet, either. It was need, and nature, and life, and she had to put it on him or what was the point? Of anything?
“God, I want you,” she told him, leaving scratches and trails on his bare back, squeezing his biceps hard enough to hurt. Spike’s response was incoherent, wild, and she sensed in him a similar unleashing, an abandoning of thought to sensation. The feeling of air on her skin as he tore her tank away was somehow completely expected. The sound of his zipper as she dragged it down was loud in the silent basement.
Spike’s forehead fell against hers as she grasped his erection, and he let out a series of long, low groans, panting erratically as she pumped him hard. God, he felt good in her hands, cock in one, back of his neck in the other. In that moment he was completely hers and the knowledge raged through her, hot satisfaction, and she pushed him roughly to the concrete floor, to his knees, and shoved her sweats and panties off, straddled his lap and thrust herself down onto him.
The sensation of taking him in was enough to slow her down, a shocked moment of pleasure so intense it felt as though it extended beyond her own body, and Spike was looking at her with eyes so wide and awed it made him seem absurdly innocent, her strange creature of such swinging contrasts, her man. Buffy brought her arms crushingly tight around his shoulders, face buried in his neck and eyes screwed shut, utterly, utterly undone.
“Buffy,” Spike murmured roughly, hands on her hips guiding the movement that had stuttered to a halt. “Hush now, love. Just feel it. I’ve got you.” He lifted her up and down his shaft as though her weight were nothing, making her move but forcing her to go slow, an excruciating, burning pleasure that rippled through her like a shockwave. She’d wanted to possess him but that fire had burned itself out and in its place was something altogether more tender, raw and needy, and she clung to him like salvation and let him take charge for a moment, and felt how wonderful, how incredible it was to fall into someone and be caught.
“Thank you,” she whispered, right into his ear, and felt the full body shudder it evoked in him, whether the breath or the words or something else entirely. He clutched her so tightly it felt like it was almost out of fear, and she could barely move again, just small, tight little rocking motions that were actually incredibly good. She was gasping so hard she felt lightheaded, and meanwhile Spike was letting loose a string of words, oh god, Buffy, I love you, baby, I’m sorry, I love you so much, so she sat back a little, groaning as the change of angle sent bolts of pleasure through her, and brought her hands to his face to caress him, because she understood that he was sorry in the same way that she was sorry for his nightmares - not for the fact itself, but because it hurt her. And she saw that he was wretched with it, even now, maybe especially now, and so she kissed him hard and deep, and told him, “Shut up, Spike,” and brought his head to her neck so he could put his mouth to better use.
God, neither of them had even touched her clit, usually she needed… but everything was so bright and deep and so very much there… when she came, it wasn’t so much a moment of pleasure as relief, the leaching of pain, the lifting of a weight, and she did feel weightless, floating above her cares and worries and simply watching Spike as he unraveled, such a beautiful sight.
Afterwards, they stayed where they were on the basement floor, still joined. Buffy felt very clearly that neither of them was ready to stop yet - god, he had just come and Spike was still hard and wonderful inside her - but her racing heart needed a moment to recover, and besides that, it was quiet and intimate and she needed that too.
“Hey,” she said, kissing him gently, and again, more like nuzzling really. He responded like he’d been starving for just that very thing, all taffy-soft and melty, and stroked her sweat-slicked skin, taking several deep breaths as though he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to say something or break down completely. Knowing him, the odds of either were fair to good, but in the end he settled for words.
“Did that just happen?” he asked, voice throaty and low. “Buffy? Is this real?”
“Seriously?” She sat back a little and raised her eyebrows, giving him a little hip shimmy that spoke a thousand ironic words - and a handful of vivid promises as well.
His eyes fell shut and he moaned, head tipping back a moment as he exposed his throat. She couldn’t resist bending to claim it with a wet, open-mouthed kiss, and Spike gasped and grit out, “Yeah, all right, I believe it. Christ, woman.”
There was no warning, barely even any sign of effort, before Spike was rising up from the floor, Buffy in his arms, still intimately linked. He carried her to his small cot, shoved away against one wall almost like an afterthought, and Buffy thought that they were going to have to do something about that because a bed that size just wasn’t going to work.
“S’not going to bite,” Spike said, grinning at her expression as he worked himself quickly out of his pants. All the jiggling and squirming was really doing very good things for her, though, so she closed her eyes instead of responding, and tightened her legs around his waist with an incoherent sound of pleasure. “I might, though,” he added, and lowered her almost reverently to the bedclothes.
“You keep the fangs out of the bedroom and I’ll leave the stakes,” Buffy told him sternly, the effect ruined by the full-body shudder that shook through her as he went back to macking on her neck with human lips and teeth. Maybe something else they could talk about later, she thought hazily.
He didn’t move for the longest time, just lay on top of her, between her legs, propped up on one elbow and alternating between kissing, stroking her everywhere he could reach, and just staring at her with that same stunned awe. Had she ever done this before? Just lay with a partner, as close as two people could get, and look at them? It was weirdly intense, in a way that she both craved more of, and was desperate to move on from. His weight on top of her felt wonderful. She hadn’t been with anyone since Riley had left, and damn, she’d missed it, but physically she needed more, so very much not done with her desire for him.
“Hey,” she said, cupping his jaw to hold his attention. “Not that this doesn’t feel wonderful, but…”
She trailed off as his questing fingertip found its way to her bottom lip, and she drew it in, sucking lightly, and then harder when his eyes blazed.
“But what?” he rumbled, tracing his wet finger down her chin and neck, leaving a trail that prickled in the air, until he found her nipple.
“You know,” she gasped, giving his cock a long squeeze - and wow, Kegels hadn’t felt like that. “Come on, Spike. Are you really gonna make me say it?”
His eyes fell closed as she started up a steady rhythm, grunting softly in approval. “Forgive me for wanting some reassurance, you wicked termagant.”
“Hey!” she protested, shoving him. He barely moved, which was all of the good, because she didn’t actually want him off of her, but, “Terma-who? Wait… is that a good thing?”
Abruptly he broke out into the dirtiest of dirty grins, so dirty it made her toes curl despite what they were already doing.
“That depends, love,” he said, voice falling to a deep, hypnotic timbre. Lowering his mouth to her ear, he began to move in slow, shallow, rolling thrusts. “S’an old word,” he told her, breath in her ear raising heat in her belly, and lower. One hand slid between them to part her lips, a fingertip teasing at her clit in a cadence with his words. “Means a woman who’s violent, turbulent, overbearing. Some even thought of it as a deity. Appropriate, really, the way you rule my skies.”
“I don’t… uh… I’m not overbearing.” She let her hands roam down his back to squeeze his ass and push him harder, make him go deeper.
“Happy to be a deity, though?” he asked. She heard the laughter in his voice, joy held back but over-spilling nonetheless, and she couldn’t help the answering surge, the thud of her heart and fizz in her pulse.
“I love you,” she said, feeling it so hard it was as though it was shining out of her eyes, her fingertips. “Don’t put me above you.”
He drew back at that and gave her a penetrating look, seeming uncertain in some way, as though he wanted to protest. But she didn’t want a supplicant, she wanted a partner, just what he had always been to her since Dawn had come along, only now with added feelings and, uh, feelings.
Finally, he dipped his head to kiss her. “All right, then. Although I do hope you mean that figuratively, kitten,” he said, bracing both hands beside her head and withdrawing almost completely before rolling hard back into her. “Because you not being above now and again would be a sad thing indeed.”
Buffy rolled her eyes, and brought one hand up to clench in his hair, and pulled him down to deep kisses and even deeper pleasure, moving firm but slow against each other, skin sliding with her sweat, hands slipping between them to find all the best bits, sensuous and tender and good, so good.
*
The world came back in pieces. Awareness of their bodies: the soft skin under her hand as she languidly caressed Spike’s flank; the clammy feel of her own sweat as it cooled; the humming warmth between her legs. Awareness of the surroundings: a cloud over the sun that made the light in the basement dim momentarily; a creak of some pipe or joist. Reluctantly, she remembered where they were.
“Crap,” she said softly. “Did Mom come back yet?”
He couldn’t answer immediately, taking a moment to listen, and it was oddly reassuring that he’d been as oblivious as she had.
“No,” he said. “Just us.”
“Wait, how long were we…”
“Occupied?” he grinned at her, a mix of lascivious and soft that was just so him that it struck her full in the chest again, how much she loved him, how strongly she felt it. How could something so big have been inside her all this time without her realizing? Spike slid his fingers through her dampened hair, teasing out a tangle. “Dunno. Couple of hours?”
“Oh… wow.” That was a long time for her mom to be out with the baby, and it occurred to her that she may have actually returned home at one point and… decided to go back out again. The thought made her want to curl up in embarrassment, though, and she felt far too good for that, all sweetly heavy and relaxed, so she pushed it aside to worry about later.
Spike was watching her with his eyebrows raised slightly, expectant.
“What?” she asked self-consciously.
“Not gonna jump up? Start throwing your clothes on?”
She frowned at him, trying to parse his expression. “I… wasn’t planning to.” Dawn was with her mom, so she was fine, and Buffy kinda felt like being selfish for a little while. But if he-
Spike let out a soft breath. “Good,” he said, drawing her close for another time-bending kiss. She would’ve happily let it go on forever - or lead into the inevitable, either was good - but with renewed awareness of the world outside Buffy was forced to remember that this wasn’t the only way she should be expressing herself, and the longer she left it, the more it weighed on her, until Spike drew back and stroked her cheek and kissed her nose, and said, “Spit it out, then, Slayer.”
“Spit what out?” she asked, in a valiant attempt at putting off the inevitable. Spike, of course, saw through her like a window.
“Whatever’s on your mind. Want you here with me, not a million miles away.”
She sighed, twining her fingers with his, looking at the contrast between her small, tan hands and his - pale and strong, broad palms. She remembered them covered in Warren’s blood, and she remembered them bathing Dawn.
“What you did, in the cavern - it was awful, and I don’t know if I’ll ever forget it.”
His hand stilled in hers. “This my sweet goodbye, then?”
“What? No!” Her eyes shot up to his, feeling a flicker of anger. “And stop that, I hate that you have such low expectations of me. Just listen, okay?”
He looked down, and raised her hand to his lips, kissed it apologetically. “Go on.”
“I don’t know if I can forget it, but… I think I can forgive it.” Hesitantly, he looked up again, eyes incredibly blue. “Listen, Giles told me something once. You don’t forgive someone because they deserve it, but because they need it. And, and something else I figured out for myself - sometimes you have to do it because you need it, too. I need to move on from this, Spike. I don’t want to regret… not.”
“God, Buffy, I-”
She put a finger to his lips. “Not done yet.” She took a deep breath. “I love you, I really, really do, and I forgive you, but I need you to understand that even after what he did, murdering that boy was unacceptable to me. Sometimes bad people get hurt while we’re defending ourselves or others, I get that. God knows my hands aren’t exactly squeaky clean, here. But vengeance is not what we do. We just… there has to be a line somewhere, otherwise we’re just the same as the bad guys, and I get that maybe it doesn’t matter to you, but I can’t live that way. Torture? Killing in cold blood? That’s where I draw the line. Do you understand?”
He swallowed, cleared his throat - strange, nervous gestures she couldn’t recall ever seeing him make before. “Loud and clear.”
“Will you promise? Please, please don’t do something like that again.”
Clenching her hand hard enough to hurt, he looked ready to cry. “Anything. Buffy, you’ve got my word, love. Never wanted to hurt you.”
She let out a long, relieved breath.
“I know.”
She did. Even this - hadn’t it come from a place of love, ultimately? Maybe that’s just how demons were. Only, he’d wanted to be better, even before Dawn came along, but especially since. The question of his soul remained ambiguous, but one thing this whole episode had taught her - his motives didn’t matter so much as the result. “I said I’d help you figure this all out. I still will. I believe in you, Spike.”
He looked speechless, completely stunned - even odder than the nerves of a moment before.
“Do you… is this real?” he asked eventually. “Thought maybe you’d let it go, with time, but I never thought…” He reached up to touch her face in wonder. “Thought you were about to toss me.”
“After all this?” she said, glancing down their naked bodies, smiling wryly. “Don’t be stupid.”
He smiled back, helplessly, tenderly. “What other way am I gonna be?”
“Good point.” Buffy kissed him, a soft press of lips, and whispered, “But enough talking for now, ‘kay?”
Gently, inexorably, she pushed him back into the mattress until she could straddle him, and took his hands and pinned them by his head. Like flipping a switch, his eyes darkened and his cock jerked beneath her, hardening as she ground down on him. Finding a rhythm with him was so easy, so natural, it almost felt like an extension of all the arguing they’d done over the years, all the fighting, bodies somehow knowing exactly how to fit together.
“Buffy,” he groaned. “Please.”
“Fairly certain I said no more talking,” she said, cocking an eyebrow, but then again, Spike restrained and begging was something worth letting the rules slide for. “Please what?” she asked magnanimously.
“Kiss me, fuck my brains out, sit on my face, tell me you love me, fucking everything.”
“In that order?” she murmured, leaning down. Her breasts brushed against his chest and a bolt of lust shot through her. They’d been pretty much numb throughout the breastfeeding, but now that was over with it was all wow, hello sensation! Sliding up a little she rubbed her nipple against his lips and arched into him when he sucked her in. She released one of his hands to cradle his head to her, and he slid it down to her hip, round to her ass, to probe at her opening. He’d done that earlier, too, while he was going down on her, and once the initial reaction to swat him away had subsided, it’d felt amazing. It felt amazing now, one blunt, curious fingertip swiping up her moisture before stroking teasingly across skin she’d never realized could be so sensitive. He bit her none too gently on the nipple and pushed the very barest fingertip into her ass, and the feeling arced through her pussy and clit like lightning, fresh sweat breaking out in a hot wave of dirty-bad-wrong-so-good.
“Like that, kitten?”
She looked down at him, gasping and rocking needily against his cock. “Do you?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Tell me why.”
“You’re so fucking hot,” he rumbled, a burnished, honeyed sound. “You sear me, burn me all up, and I can’t resist it. Moth to a bloody flame, I am. I just want you, Buffy. All of you, in every way.” Then he curled his tongue behind his teeth, and his earnest, effortless sexiness transformed into pure sin. “Also, for those pretty sounds you make when the thought of doing something really naughty makes your sweet little quim twitch.”
“You are so-aah…” her voice trailed off as her thrusting pushed his finger further into her. “Oh god.”
“Good?”
“Yeah,” she groaned, because it really was. She’d never done anything even close to this before, had screwed her nose up at the rare mention of it, in fact, but suddenly she wanted it badly, something new that was only for him. “Spike, can you… uh… do you want to… nnh… do you want to…”
“Yeah. Yes. Christ.”
She thought he might reposition her, but was glad when he didn’t, eager for the anchor of his eyes, the feel and look of him spread out beneath her. Instead he fucked her some more with his fingers until the sweat ran in rivulets between her breasts and she was so wet between her legs that he was soaking in her moisture. Then he let her go and reached between them to hold his cock up so that she could slowly, slowly work herself onto him, gasping and shaking and almost hypnotized by the raw, earthy praises he was singing.
It was a strange sensation, stretched and full, heavy with him. She could feel every tiny movement, almost too much. She still had one of his hands in hers, held against the mattress by his head, and she used her other at first for balance, and then to rub firm, gliding circles against her clit as she rode him slowly, incrementally. Spike’s eyes were closed, lower lip caught in his teeth and bitten almost bloody with concentration, a look of pained ecstasy suffusing his features.
It seemed to take forever for her orgasm to come, building and building until it was almost unbearable. At some point Spike had opened his eyes and started to move with her, carefully at first, and then with more abandon. The wet sound of their skin slapping, the tactile knowledge that it wasn’t being made in the normal way of things, had settled somewhere low, low down and occasionally spiked into breath-stealing pleasure.
“I knew,” Spike murmured, voice gritty with lust, “I knew you’d be like this.”
“Like what?” she gasped, and there, yes, finally something was coalescing from sharp, sparkling shards into the deep, aching pleasure of an impending explosion. The feel, the look of him - hair mussed and eyes glazed with old satisfaction and new desire - the sound of his voice, it was the combination that she needed, all of him, every little bit she could take into herself, and so she released his captured hand and guided it to her pussy, whining in relief when he thrust two fingers into her while she rubbed her throbbing clit.
“Untamed,” he panted, eyes raking her. “Exquisite. This is where you live, Buffy, the very heart of you. Beautiful. So bright I could dust from it.”
The words sent her over the edge, howling her release, so intense, and so completely liquefying afterwards, that she was oblivious to when or even whether he came, and just held onto him until she couldn’t take anymore. Afterwards, when everything stilled and it seemed to be over, she slumped down into a boneless, sweating heap on top of him, his soft cock sliding out of her with an echo of pleasure, and inelegantly shuffled her way up his body until she could rest her head on his shoulder, nose buried in his neck. He didn’t sweat, not from exertion, and so the moisture on his skin had to be from her - he was all covered in her, and it pleased something deep inside, something primal.
“Spike, bite me,” she said softly, more of a sigh. In that moment, it seemed perfectly natural.
“No, don’t think so,” he said, after a pause, softening his refusal with a caressing hand on her back. “Was only playing, earlier. You’re delicious, Buffy, but you’re not dinner.”
“Not to feed,” she said, too relaxed even to drum up a frown or an insult. She couldn’t explain it exactly, only that there was still one part of him she hadn’t had, and it left a niggling dissatisfaction that she just didn’t want this day to hold. “Please?”
“Well,” Spike murmured. He seemed to be thinking about it a moment, before she heard the quiet crunch of his face changing. “All right, then.”
His cool breath on her sweaty neck felt… how had he put it? Exquisite. Yeah, that. Her skin shivered into goosebumps, which he soothed with long, firm strokes down her back, across her arms. His lips fastened to her throat, the same spot he had been worrying earlier, over the pounding artery, and she felt his cool tongue swiping her skin, an erotic memory of all the other places on her body he had done that to.
“Roll over,” he told her, but all her muscles were a warm, wobbly mess. At her soft noise of complaint, he simply pushed her over, positioning her carefully on the narrow, rumpled bed before lowering himself over her so that he was half-sprawled across her limp body. His thigh at the apex of her legs was a comforting pressure, cock half hard against her hip, one hand cupping her breast possessively, and only then, arranged to his satisfaction, did he move to return to her neck.
“Wait,” she murmured, and found it in herself to raise an arm to stop him. He gave her a questioning look, strangely vulnerable, and stranger still in vamp face, but without the customary snarling and malice, she realized she found him kind of beautiful. “Come here,” she told him, and guided him down to her lips instead, kissing his fangy mouth and bumpy forehead before letting herself go lax again. He sighed, a pleased little noise, and nuzzled down her cheek to behind her ear, and from there to her neck.
The bite, when it came, was unspeakably tender, and that feeling of expansiveness came over her again, as though the magnitude of what she felt for him was too great to be confined, and swelled out to encompass him within it, and maybe the whole room, and maybe the whole world. A deep, satisfied sound filled her ears, and at first she thought it was coming from her, but it was vibrating from his chest into hers, a growling rumble of contentment she had heard only a handful of times before. There was no sucking or gulping, barely even any blood, as far as she could tell. It seemed that he hadn’t bitten through to her artery, but she hadn’t really expected him to, just a shallow bite for a different type of sustenance. He held her in his jaws, just held her, and she lay beneath him, floating on bliss, tears flowing where the blood did not, and loved him, and loved him, and loved him.
Chapter Index | Next
Pairing(s): Buffy/Spike, (Anya/Xander, Willow/Tara)
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~4,900 (~64,400 total)
Timeline: AU S5, S6, S7 and post-series
Warnings: character death, violence and gore
Summary: As a child, I used to dream of a man in black and white, spinning in the desert like a dervish, sword flashing in the moonlight as he danced with death. (A sequel/companion to angearia's Fin Amour).
Notes: Many thanks as always to rahirah and bewilde for their beta-ly patience and advice <3
14
Love, Give, Forgive
Buffy was sitting on the basement steps. Maybe that was what made the transition feel easier, or maybe Dawn had simply found a way around the turbulence this time. The lights were off, but sunlight filtered in around the edges of the blacked out windows. Day, then, and there was Spike, asleep on his cot, shirtless as he always was, and on top of the covers because of not feeling the cold. She spent several minutes just looking at him, feeling all her orbiting thoughts coalesce and sink down within her to something more firm, less flighty. Nothing was solved, not really, but it just mattered less in this moment.
She didn’t move, or really even make a sound, but after a while Spike woke in that strange, quiet way he had of just opening his eyes and unerringly finding hers.
“Buffy,” he said groggily. “You’re back.”
And then his own words seemed to catch up with him, and he bolted out of bed and into the middle of the dim room, where he stopped again, cautious.
“Dawn, is she…?”
“She didn’t come with. She wasn’t feeling too well, but I think she was okay again by the time I left. How… how long was I gone?”
“Two days,” he said. “Give or take. Everything’s been fine,” he added, in response to the question she’d been about to ask. “Everyone’s fine. Our Dawn’s out with Joyce at the park.”
She nodded, throat sticky and stomach trying to dance up into her lungs. Restless, she got to her feet and descended the last couple of stairs, but then she was only a handful of feet from him with nothing in between, and the same uncertainty that had stopped him brought her to a standstill, too.
He looked tired, strained, more like his grown up, world-saving daughter than the younger version of himself she had watched making that deal with her, and it bloomed in her, then, out from her heart to her fingertips and toes, and she felt bigger for it, expansive, and more like herself than she had in months.
“You were right, we do need to talk,” she said, and watched as Spike’s eyes glimmered in relief and trepidation. “But there’s something else I really, really need to do first.”
He cocked his head at her, and was about to speak, but the space between them was abruptly gone and she collided with him, mouth and arms and body, so that he rocked back with the force of it, barely able to contain her in his grasp, and for several wonderful, thoughtless moments there was nothing but the feel of him, the taste, the sweet, wet slide of mouth against mouth and the intense rightness of being in his arms.
“Buffy,” he gasped, when she had to draw back to breathe. “What is this?”
She twined her arms around his neck, holding him flush to her, faces so close she couldn’t even focus on him.
“This is me being done freaking out,” she said raggedly.
“Over what?”
Which was fair, because there were so many options. That it’s entirely possible you only think you have a soul, she thought. That you don’t have a chip and occasionally enjoy torturing people to death. That I only want you because of some childish desire to play house. That feeling like this means there’s something wrong with me.
“Everything. I love you.”
“Buffy,” he whispered again, hands sliding up to cup her face, push her back precious inches to search her eyes. He looked almost in pain, an expression of such naked longing it twisted her heart. “What…?”
“I love you,” she repeated fiercely, and dragged him back down like she was saving his life, like she was pulling him away from some danger, except she was pulling him to, very much to, because he was hers, and she needed him. After everything, she knew that now. All the things she had suppressed or pushed down or turned away from over the last few months, they all rose up in her, every feeling, every desire, an unstoppable tide of want. So much as she’d thought about it, Buffy hadn’t intended for things to go so far, but clinging together in the space where words wouldn’t say any of it, she suddenly needed to show him what was in her, and it wasn’t violent, not like before in the training room, but it wasn’t sweet, either. It was need, and nature, and life, and she had to put it on him or what was the point? Of anything?
“God, I want you,” she told him, leaving scratches and trails on his bare back, squeezing his biceps hard enough to hurt. Spike’s response was incoherent, wild, and she sensed in him a similar unleashing, an abandoning of thought to sensation. The feeling of air on her skin as he tore her tank away was somehow completely expected. The sound of his zipper as she dragged it down was loud in the silent basement.
Spike’s forehead fell against hers as she grasped his erection, and he let out a series of long, low groans, panting erratically as she pumped him hard. God, he felt good in her hands, cock in one, back of his neck in the other. In that moment he was completely hers and the knowledge raged through her, hot satisfaction, and she pushed him roughly to the concrete floor, to his knees, and shoved her sweats and panties off, straddled his lap and thrust herself down onto him.
The sensation of taking him in was enough to slow her down, a shocked moment of pleasure so intense it felt as though it extended beyond her own body, and Spike was looking at her with eyes so wide and awed it made him seem absurdly innocent, her strange creature of such swinging contrasts, her man. Buffy brought her arms crushingly tight around his shoulders, face buried in his neck and eyes screwed shut, utterly, utterly undone.
“Buffy,” Spike murmured roughly, hands on her hips guiding the movement that had stuttered to a halt. “Hush now, love. Just feel it. I’ve got you.” He lifted her up and down his shaft as though her weight were nothing, making her move but forcing her to go slow, an excruciating, burning pleasure that rippled through her like a shockwave. She’d wanted to possess him but that fire had burned itself out and in its place was something altogether more tender, raw and needy, and she clung to him like salvation and let him take charge for a moment, and felt how wonderful, how incredible it was to fall into someone and be caught.
“Thank you,” she whispered, right into his ear, and felt the full body shudder it evoked in him, whether the breath or the words or something else entirely. He clutched her so tightly it felt like it was almost out of fear, and she could barely move again, just small, tight little rocking motions that were actually incredibly good. She was gasping so hard she felt lightheaded, and meanwhile Spike was letting loose a string of words, oh god, Buffy, I love you, baby, I’m sorry, I love you so much, so she sat back a little, groaning as the change of angle sent bolts of pleasure through her, and brought her hands to his face to caress him, because she understood that he was sorry in the same way that she was sorry for his nightmares - not for the fact itself, but because it hurt her. And she saw that he was wretched with it, even now, maybe especially now, and so she kissed him hard and deep, and told him, “Shut up, Spike,” and brought his head to her neck so he could put his mouth to better use.
God, neither of them had even touched her clit, usually she needed… but everything was so bright and deep and so very much there… when she came, it wasn’t so much a moment of pleasure as relief, the leaching of pain, the lifting of a weight, and she did feel weightless, floating above her cares and worries and simply watching Spike as he unraveled, such a beautiful sight.
Afterwards, they stayed where they were on the basement floor, still joined. Buffy felt very clearly that neither of them was ready to stop yet - god, he had just come and Spike was still hard and wonderful inside her - but her racing heart needed a moment to recover, and besides that, it was quiet and intimate and she needed that too.
“Hey,” she said, kissing him gently, and again, more like nuzzling really. He responded like he’d been starving for just that very thing, all taffy-soft and melty, and stroked her sweat-slicked skin, taking several deep breaths as though he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to say something or break down completely. Knowing him, the odds of either were fair to good, but in the end he settled for words.
“Did that just happen?” he asked, voice throaty and low. “Buffy? Is this real?”
“Seriously?” She sat back a little and raised her eyebrows, giving him a little hip shimmy that spoke a thousand ironic words - and a handful of vivid promises as well.
His eyes fell shut and he moaned, head tipping back a moment as he exposed his throat. She couldn’t resist bending to claim it with a wet, open-mouthed kiss, and Spike gasped and grit out, “Yeah, all right, I believe it. Christ, woman.”
There was no warning, barely even any sign of effort, before Spike was rising up from the floor, Buffy in his arms, still intimately linked. He carried her to his small cot, shoved away against one wall almost like an afterthought, and Buffy thought that they were going to have to do something about that because a bed that size just wasn’t going to work.
“S’not going to bite,” Spike said, grinning at her expression as he worked himself quickly out of his pants. All the jiggling and squirming was really doing very good things for her, though, so she closed her eyes instead of responding, and tightened her legs around his waist with an incoherent sound of pleasure. “I might, though,” he added, and lowered her almost reverently to the bedclothes.
“You keep the fangs out of the bedroom and I’ll leave the stakes,” Buffy told him sternly, the effect ruined by the full-body shudder that shook through her as he went back to macking on her neck with human lips and teeth. Maybe something else they could talk about later, she thought hazily.
He didn’t move for the longest time, just lay on top of her, between her legs, propped up on one elbow and alternating between kissing, stroking her everywhere he could reach, and just staring at her with that same stunned awe. Had she ever done this before? Just lay with a partner, as close as two people could get, and look at them? It was weirdly intense, in a way that she both craved more of, and was desperate to move on from. His weight on top of her felt wonderful. She hadn’t been with anyone since Riley had left, and damn, she’d missed it, but physically she needed more, so very much not done with her desire for him.
“Hey,” she said, cupping his jaw to hold his attention. “Not that this doesn’t feel wonderful, but…”
She trailed off as his questing fingertip found its way to her bottom lip, and she drew it in, sucking lightly, and then harder when his eyes blazed.
“But what?” he rumbled, tracing his wet finger down her chin and neck, leaving a trail that prickled in the air, until he found her nipple.
“You know,” she gasped, giving his cock a long squeeze - and wow, Kegels hadn’t felt like that. “Come on, Spike. Are you really gonna make me say it?”
His eyes fell closed as she started up a steady rhythm, grunting softly in approval. “Forgive me for wanting some reassurance, you wicked termagant.”
“Hey!” she protested, shoving him. He barely moved, which was all of the good, because she didn’t actually want him off of her, but, “Terma-who? Wait… is that a good thing?”
Abruptly he broke out into the dirtiest of dirty grins, so dirty it made her toes curl despite what they were already doing.
“That depends, love,” he said, voice falling to a deep, hypnotic timbre. Lowering his mouth to her ear, he began to move in slow, shallow, rolling thrusts. “S’an old word,” he told her, breath in her ear raising heat in her belly, and lower. One hand slid between them to part her lips, a fingertip teasing at her clit in a cadence with his words. “Means a woman who’s violent, turbulent, overbearing. Some even thought of it as a deity. Appropriate, really, the way you rule my skies.”
“I don’t… uh… I’m not overbearing.” She let her hands roam down his back to squeeze his ass and push him harder, make him go deeper.
“Happy to be a deity, though?” he asked. She heard the laughter in his voice, joy held back but over-spilling nonetheless, and she couldn’t help the answering surge, the thud of her heart and fizz in her pulse.
“I love you,” she said, feeling it so hard it was as though it was shining out of her eyes, her fingertips. “Don’t put me above you.”
He drew back at that and gave her a penetrating look, seeming uncertain in some way, as though he wanted to protest. But she didn’t want a supplicant, she wanted a partner, just what he had always been to her since Dawn had come along, only now with added feelings and, uh, feelings.
Finally, he dipped his head to kiss her. “All right, then. Although I do hope you mean that figuratively, kitten,” he said, bracing both hands beside her head and withdrawing almost completely before rolling hard back into her. “Because you not being above now and again would be a sad thing indeed.”
Buffy rolled her eyes, and brought one hand up to clench in his hair, and pulled him down to deep kisses and even deeper pleasure, moving firm but slow against each other, skin sliding with her sweat, hands slipping between them to find all the best bits, sensuous and tender and good, so good.
*
The world came back in pieces. Awareness of their bodies: the soft skin under her hand as she languidly caressed Spike’s flank; the clammy feel of her own sweat as it cooled; the humming warmth between her legs. Awareness of the surroundings: a cloud over the sun that made the light in the basement dim momentarily; a creak of some pipe or joist. Reluctantly, she remembered where they were.
“Crap,” she said softly. “Did Mom come back yet?”
He couldn’t answer immediately, taking a moment to listen, and it was oddly reassuring that he’d been as oblivious as she had.
“No,” he said. “Just us.”
“Wait, how long were we…”
“Occupied?” he grinned at her, a mix of lascivious and soft that was just so him that it struck her full in the chest again, how much she loved him, how strongly she felt it. How could something so big have been inside her all this time without her realizing? Spike slid his fingers through her dampened hair, teasing out a tangle. “Dunno. Couple of hours?”
“Oh… wow.” That was a long time for her mom to be out with the baby, and it occurred to her that she may have actually returned home at one point and… decided to go back out again. The thought made her want to curl up in embarrassment, though, and she felt far too good for that, all sweetly heavy and relaxed, so she pushed it aside to worry about later.
Spike was watching her with his eyebrows raised slightly, expectant.
“What?” she asked self-consciously.
“Not gonna jump up? Start throwing your clothes on?”
She frowned at him, trying to parse his expression. “I… wasn’t planning to.” Dawn was with her mom, so she was fine, and Buffy kinda felt like being selfish for a little while. But if he-
Spike let out a soft breath. “Good,” he said, drawing her close for another time-bending kiss. She would’ve happily let it go on forever - or lead into the inevitable, either was good - but with renewed awareness of the world outside Buffy was forced to remember that this wasn’t the only way she should be expressing herself, and the longer she left it, the more it weighed on her, until Spike drew back and stroked her cheek and kissed her nose, and said, “Spit it out, then, Slayer.”
“Spit what out?” she asked, in a valiant attempt at putting off the inevitable. Spike, of course, saw through her like a window.
“Whatever’s on your mind. Want you here with me, not a million miles away.”
She sighed, twining her fingers with his, looking at the contrast between her small, tan hands and his - pale and strong, broad palms. She remembered them covered in Warren’s blood, and she remembered them bathing Dawn.
“What you did, in the cavern - it was awful, and I don’t know if I’ll ever forget it.”
His hand stilled in hers. “This my sweet goodbye, then?”
“What? No!” Her eyes shot up to his, feeling a flicker of anger. “And stop that, I hate that you have such low expectations of me. Just listen, okay?”
He looked down, and raised her hand to his lips, kissed it apologetically. “Go on.”
“I don’t know if I can forget it, but… I think I can forgive it.” Hesitantly, he looked up again, eyes incredibly blue. “Listen, Giles told me something once. You don’t forgive someone because they deserve it, but because they need it. And, and something else I figured out for myself - sometimes you have to do it because you need it, too. I need to move on from this, Spike. I don’t want to regret… not.”
“God, Buffy, I-”
She put a finger to his lips. “Not done yet.” She took a deep breath. “I love you, I really, really do, and I forgive you, but I need you to understand that even after what he did, murdering that boy was unacceptable to me. Sometimes bad people get hurt while we’re defending ourselves or others, I get that. God knows my hands aren’t exactly squeaky clean, here. But vengeance is not what we do. We just… there has to be a line somewhere, otherwise we’re just the same as the bad guys, and I get that maybe it doesn’t matter to you, but I can’t live that way. Torture? Killing in cold blood? That’s where I draw the line. Do you understand?”
He swallowed, cleared his throat - strange, nervous gestures she couldn’t recall ever seeing him make before. “Loud and clear.”
“Will you promise? Please, please don’t do something like that again.”
Clenching her hand hard enough to hurt, he looked ready to cry. “Anything. Buffy, you’ve got my word, love. Never wanted to hurt you.”
She let out a long, relieved breath.
“I know.”
She did. Even this - hadn’t it come from a place of love, ultimately? Maybe that’s just how demons were. Only, he’d wanted to be better, even before Dawn came along, but especially since. The question of his soul remained ambiguous, but one thing this whole episode had taught her - his motives didn’t matter so much as the result. “I said I’d help you figure this all out. I still will. I believe in you, Spike.”
He looked speechless, completely stunned - even odder than the nerves of a moment before.
“Do you… is this real?” he asked eventually. “Thought maybe you’d let it go, with time, but I never thought…” He reached up to touch her face in wonder. “Thought you were about to toss me.”
“After all this?” she said, glancing down their naked bodies, smiling wryly. “Don’t be stupid.”
He smiled back, helplessly, tenderly. “What other way am I gonna be?”
“Good point.” Buffy kissed him, a soft press of lips, and whispered, “But enough talking for now, ‘kay?”
Gently, inexorably, she pushed him back into the mattress until she could straddle him, and took his hands and pinned them by his head. Like flipping a switch, his eyes darkened and his cock jerked beneath her, hardening as she ground down on him. Finding a rhythm with him was so easy, so natural, it almost felt like an extension of all the arguing they’d done over the years, all the fighting, bodies somehow knowing exactly how to fit together.
“Buffy,” he groaned. “Please.”
“Fairly certain I said no more talking,” she said, cocking an eyebrow, but then again, Spike restrained and begging was something worth letting the rules slide for. “Please what?” she asked magnanimously.
“Kiss me, fuck my brains out, sit on my face, tell me you love me, fucking everything.”
“In that order?” she murmured, leaning down. Her breasts brushed against his chest and a bolt of lust shot through her. They’d been pretty much numb throughout the breastfeeding, but now that was over with it was all wow, hello sensation! Sliding up a little she rubbed her nipple against his lips and arched into him when he sucked her in. She released one of his hands to cradle his head to her, and he slid it down to her hip, round to her ass, to probe at her opening. He’d done that earlier, too, while he was going down on her, and once the initial reaction to swat him away had subsided, it’d felt amazing. It felt amazing now, one blunt, curious fingertip swiping up her moisture before stroking teasingly across skin she’d never realized could be so sensitive. He bit her none too gently on the nipple and pushed the very barest fingertip into her ass, and the feeling arced through her pussy and clit like lightning, fresh sweat breaking out in a hot wave of dirty-bad-wrong-so-good.
“Like that, kitten?”
She looked down at him, gasping and rocking needily against his cock. “Do you?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Tell me why.”
“You’re so fucking hot,” he rumbled, a burnished, honeyed sound. “You sear me, burn me all up, and I can’t resist it. Moth to a bloody flame, I am. I just want you, Buffy. All of you, in every way.” Then he curled his tongue behind his teeth, and his earnest, effortless sexiness transformed into pure sin. “Also, for those pretty sounds you make when the thought of doing something really naughty makes your sweet little quim twitch.”
“You are so-aah…” her voice trailed off as her thrusting pushed his finger further into her. “Oh god.”
“Good?”
“Yeah,” she groaned, because it really was. She’d never done anything even close to this before, had screwed her nose up at the rare mention of it, in fact, but suddenly she wanted it badly, something new that was only for him. “Spike, can you… uh… do you want to… nnh… do you want to…”
“Yeah. Yes. Christ.”
She thought he might reposition her, but was glad when he didn’t, eager for the anchor of his eyes, the feel and look of him spread out beneath her. Instead he fucked her some more with his fingers until the sweat ran in rivulets between her breasts and she was so wet between her legs that he was soaking in her moisture. Then he let her go and reached between them to hold his cock up so that she could slowly, slowly work herself onto him, gasping and shaking and almost hypnotized by the raw, earthy praises he was singing.
It was a strange sensation, stretched and full, heavy with him. She could feel every tiny movement, almost too much. She still had one of his hands in hers, held against the mattress by his head, and she used her other at first for balance, and then to rub firm, gliding circles against her clit as she rode him slowly, incrementally. Spike’s eyes were closed, lower lip caught in his teeth and bitten almost bloody with concentration, a look of pained ecstasy suffusing his features.
It seemed to take forever for her orgasm to come, building and building until it was almost unbearable. At some point Spike had opened his eyes and started to move with her, carefully at first, and then with more abandon. The wet sound of their skin slapping, the tactile knowledge that it wasn’t being made in the normal way of things, had settled somewhere low, low down and occasionally spiked into breath-stealing pleasure.
“I knew,” Spike murmured, voice gritty with lust, “I knew you’d be like this.”
“Like what?” she gasped, and there, yes, finally something was coalescing from sharp, sparkling shards into the deep, aching pleasure of an impending explosion. The feel, the look of him - hair mussed and eyes glazed with old satisfaction and new desire - the sound of his voice, it was the combination that she needed, all of him, every little bit she could take into herself, and so she released his captured hand and guided it to her pussy, whining in relief when he thrust two fingers into her while she rubbed her throbbing clit.
“Untamed,” he panted, eyes raking her. “Exquisite. This is where you live, Buffy, the very heart of you. Beautiful. So bright I could dust from it.”
The words sent her over the edge, howling her release, so intense, and so completely liquefying afterwards, that she was oblivious to when or even whether he came, and just held onto him until she couldn’t take anymore. Afterwards, when everything stilled and it seemed to be over, she slumped down into a boneless, sweating heap on top of him, his soft cock sliding out of her with an echo of pleasure, and inelegantly shuffled her way up his body until she could rest her head on his shoulder, nose buried in his neck. He didn’t sweat, not from exertion, and so the moisture on his skin had to be from her - he was all covered in her, and it pleased something deep inside, something primal.
“Spike, bite me,” she said softly, more of a sigh. In that moment, it seemed perfectly natural.
“No, don’t think so,” he said, after a pause, softening his refusal with a caressing hand on her back. “Was only playing, earlier. You’re delicious, Buffy, but you’re not dinner.”
“Not to feed,” she said, too relaxed even to drum up a frown or an insult. She couldn’t explain it exactly, only that there was still one part of him she hadn’t had, and it left a niggling dissatisfaction that she just didn’t want this day to hold. “Please?”
“Well,” Spike murmured. He seemed to be thinking about it a moment, before she heard the quiet crunch of his face changing. “All right, then.”
His cool breath on her sweaty neck felt… how had he put it? Exquisite. Yeah, that. Her skin shivered into goosebumps, which he soothed with long, firm strokes down her back, across her arms. His lips fastened to her throat, the same spot he had been worrying earlier, over the pounding artery, and she felt his cool tongue swiping her skin, an erotic memory of all the other places on her body he had done that to.
“Roll over,” he told her, but all her muscles were a warm, wobbly mess. At her soft noise of complaint, he simply pushed her over, positioning her carefully on the narrow, rumpled bed before lowering himself over her so that he was half-sprawled across her limp body. His thigh at the apex of her legs was a comforting pressure, cock half hard against her hip, one hand cupping her breast possessively, and only then, arranged to his satisfaction, did he move to return to her neck.
“Wait,” she murmured, and found it in herself to raise an arm to stop him. He gave her a questioning look, strangely vulnerable, and stranger still in vamp face, but without the customary snarling and malice, she realized she found him kind of beautiful. “Come here,” she told him, and guided him down to her lips instead, kissing his fangy mouth and bumpy forehead before letting herself go lax again. He sighed, a pleased little noise, and nuzzled down her cheek to behind her ear, and from there to her neck.
The bite, when it came, was unspeakably tender, and that feeling of expansiveness came over her again, as though the magnitude of what she felt for him was too great to be confined, and swelled out to encompass him within it, and maybe the whole room, and maybe the whole world. A deep, satisfied sound filled her ears, and at first she thought it was coming from her, but it was vibrating from his chest into hers, a growling rumble of contentment she had heard only a handful of times before. There was no sucking or gulping, barely even any blood, as far as she could tell. It seemed that he hadn’t bitten through to her artery, but she hadn’t really expected him to, just a shallow bite for a different type of sustenance. He held her in his jaws, just held her, and she lay beneath him, floating on bliss, tears flowing where the blood did not, and loved him, and loved him, and loved him.
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