Chapter 24—See My Shadow Fly

There was a surprising lack of activity in the cemeteries that evening.

Buffy held hands with Spike, relishing the feeling. Her entire focus narrowed to the feeling of calluses against her palm, his fingers twined with hers. Her pulse pounded in her fingertips, and she wondered if he could feel it too.

She stole a glance at him, and she knew that he felt it. His jaw muscles clenched and unclenched beneath the glow of his skin in the moonlight, and his brows drew together in concentration. A quick look down the length of his body told her his attempts at control were unsuccessful, and she grinned, inexplicably pleased by that.

She took a deep breath, and said brightly, “Not much to kill tonight, is there?”

“Nope.”

“That’s what I like. A nice, quiet Hellmouth.”

“Right.”

She frowned at his lack of response. “Wanna spar?”

His eyes snapped to her with surprise. “I can’t hit you.”

A thought crossed her mind, and she voiced it aloud. “If you aren’t trying to hurt me, it won’t hurt you, will it?”

“Don’t care to find out if it will or not, Slayer. Had enough shocking experiences for this unlife.”

She pouted. “Then what are we going to do for fun? Nothing to kill, you won’t spar with me, so what is there to do?”

His gaze closed on her mouth, and he was trapped, good and proper. She licked her lips with the tip of her tongue, and his eyes followed it from one corner to the other.

“See something you like, Spike?”

Her teasing voice pierced his lack of concentration on the situation at hand. “Eh, Slayer?”

She put her hands on her hips and cocked them in a parody of his favorite stance. “I said, see something you like, Spike?”

He reached for her, and she danced back on her heels. With a mischievous grin, she taunted, “If you want what you see, you’ll have to catch me!” She turned, at took off at a full run.

He was gobsmacked for only a moment, and then took off after her, his duster flapping behind him.

Either she forgot that he could track her by smell, or didn’t care. His demon slid to the fore, guiding him literally by the nose as she flitted pell-mell through Sunnydale. She was a crafty one, he thought as he doubled back to the mouth of one alley. She had run down the dead end, jumped high enough to catch the edge of the roof, and masked her scent, but the perfume of Slayer sweat and arousal left its essence on the wind, an invisible track to mark her path.

He stopped and raised his head to sniff the wind. It pulled him left, and he loped off in that direction until he caught the drift of ashes and sense of satisfaction. Yes, she’d been here, moments before. He narrowed his eyes to peer into shadows lining the buildings and rooftops, and inhaled against, seeking her signature.

Ahead, above, he found what he sought, and ran across the street to leap cat-like onto the roof of a car, and from there, to a windowsill, then grappling his way to the roof.

No Slayer, but her bra, draped artfully over an unused television antenna, leftover from earlier days. Clever minx, he thought, stuffing the lingerie into his pocket, having no intentions of returning it. Grinning, he crossed the roof of the building and jumped to the next, secretly liking this game.

Baby wants to play, he thought, so let’s add some fun to the game.

He raised his voice slightly, aware of her own enhanced hearing. “Slayer, come out to play.”

Listening closely, he caught the whisper of her girlish giggle, and leaped to the ground. Her path suddenly diverted out of the business district, and into the warehouses that surrounded the western edge. Familiar places dotted the area—to the left was the quickest way to his old lair in the factory, and to the right….

To the right was a sight he never wanted to see again. The tower. That tower, the one that filled his nightmares with painful agony and his days with ego-searing uncertainty. If only’s crowded his senses, and he shoved them under with a growl, pushing reality back. She was alive and that’s all that mattered.

He growled again when her path diverted, and came to a halt inside the dilapidated aluminum fence that surrounded the rickety frame.

She stood at the base, looking up. He watched her silently as she stood unmoving, her eyes trained on the piece of air that had swallowed her convulsing form whole and spit her out onto the pile of bricks still stacked precariously at her feet.

“This is where it all changed,” she said, her quiet voice carrying on the still night air.

She glanced over her shoulder, and looked back at him briefly before turning her eyes back to the sky above. “I…saw—all of them, standing there staring. You were the only one on the ground that cried. Dawn cried. You cried. Willow looked like I’d killed her fish. Xander looked shocked, like I had another choice left at that point. Anya—well, you know Anya. Matter-of-fact Anya. I never got to know her very well, before…that day. Tara was sad. And Giles…I hope he isn’t there the next time. I don’t ever want to see that look again.”

She turned to face him, and he saw salty tears spilling fearlessly down her cheeks. “Even then, I kept watching you. You were hurt. Crawling. Trying to reach me. And they were cruel to you even then.”

He stepped toward her, the memories of fresh grief grabbing at his gut. “Buffy, don’t. Please, love, I don’t think that I can take this.”

Her smile was sad as she shook her head. “I have to, Spike. I have to be fearless about this, or I can’t go on. This is where I died. This spot is where I landed, and I watched it all from the portal like I was on the wrong side of a mirror. And I watched you cry and howl, watched you crawl, and watched you be kicked away again, and I knew how wrong I’d been. My soul wept for you, William, and there was nothing I could do but come back to you to right the wrongs.”

She turned back to the pile of bricks and laughed bitterly. “You know, my grandmother was pretty religious. Well, kinda religious. When mom and dad were splitting up, she kept telling my mom that ‘everything happens for a reason’. I’ve thought about that a lot, recently. Somehow, I’m beginning to believe that it’s true.”

He reached her, and gripped her shoulders, pulling her back to rest against him and wrapping his arms around her. “It probably is, Buffy. Sod fate, it’s the bloody Powers that made us go through all that. Mix things up and see what happens and all.”

She turned in his arms. “No, that’s not it. Not all of it. I needed the break. I needed the change in perspective to see you properly, and not through the eyes of the Slayer. I needed to grow up and learn to be on my own so I could be with you, Spike, because it was what you deserve.”

He frowned. “What do you mean, pet?”

“You deserved a woman who was strong enough to stand up against anyone for you. You deserved to be number one in somebody’s heart. I couldn’t be that person before I died. I still believed that I needed everyone to approve of what I wanted to do. I had to die before I figured out that I had no say in their choices, but I was giving them full control of my life.”

She looked behind her to the tower, and looked up to the creaking platform swaying crazily in the breeze. “When I decided to jump, it took all that control out of their hands, and they couldn’t handle it. Willow broke, Xander broke, Giles broke bad, and you and Dawn were the only ones who seemed to keep it together.”

“Didn’t keep it together, love. Just hid it better than the others,” he whispered hoarsely against her hair, his voice thick with emotion. “Didn’t want to live. Wanted to fall asleep in the sun, but couldn’t do it. Made you a promise.”

She turned back to him, her eyes faraway, and said, “That’s exactly it, though. You never gave in to your grief or impulses. You drank animal blood and cooked for Dawn and kept her going, and the others…well, they had lives afterward, but you didn’t. How many nights did you sit beside my grave, crying? How many times did you visit an empty room? How many nights did you fall asleep with an old stuffed pig?”

He jerked, surprised at her uncanny flashes of insight and slightly embarrassed. “Er…too many.”

“Way too many.” She pulled him close, and buried her face against the firm column of his throat. “Let’s forget all of this, and close this book. I have a future again; the phone call came in from the governor. I got my reprieve. I just had to do this before I put this to rest, both inside myself and between us.”

She raised her face for his kiss, then released him and grabbed his hand, leading him away from the doomed monument to her demise. “Anyway, you came back here enough. Hair shirt, or what?”

“You have no idea what a hair shirt is, Slayer, do you?” he asked with a smirk.

She swung their linked hands between them. “Uh—a shirt with hair? Made of hair? Is it important?”

He kissed her knuckles as they turned their path toward home. “Not at all, love. Not at all.”

He watched her as they walked, and was curious about her mercurial moods lately. One moment she was angst and drama personified, the next serious, and then full of laughter the following. There were times they flashed through her interactions so swiftly he could barely keep up.

Impulsively, he stopped. “Buffy, are you all right?”

She was deep in thought, and his question yanked her back to herself. “Yeah. Contemplating, you know? Why this, what that, the usual post-death thoughts. Who else did I hurt that I needed to make amends to, what else do I need to undo…that sort of thing, so I can go back there when it’s time.”

“What else did you leave unfinished. I get that.”

She shrugged. “Knew that you would. You would be the only one who would.”

She sighed. “I feel so different from them now. I’ve always felt alone, because, hey, Chosen One. Can’t get more alone than that. Even after Faith got here…I had to be all good moral girl, White Hat Buffy, to show the newbie the way.” She tipped her chin to look at him, and said, “I have never felt comfortable being who I am before. It didn’t fit. Now it does, and the rest of it doesn’t matter. Not like I thought it did.”

He nodded, and she continued. “I saw…what could be, if I would only let it…I wouldn’t have to be alone. Wouldn’t have to be all self-sacrificy and lonely. Wouldn’t have to patrol on Friday nights because there would be someone there to take me out if I wanted to go. Wouldn’t have to sit alone at the Bronze while my friends danced and had fun. Been there, done that, and I’m done with it.” She dropped his hand and whirled around madly. “I’m in love with the most wonderful man, and he loves me too, and I’m happy! For once, I’m really, truly happy.”

Spike watched her, fearing her sanity and grinning at her loud proclamations. “Dizzy is what you are, pet, with all that spinning.”

She grabbed the lapels of his coat, and planted a firm kiss on his soft lips. “Dizzy? Yeah, I probably am. Dizzy with love, a second chance, and possibilities. You make me dizzy, with your touch and your taste and all the nasty things that I want to do to you and with you and for you.”

She moved closer to him, and could feel his hardness pressing against her belly. She pressed their foreheads together, and she started whispering to him, her voice low and seductive. “I want to suck your cock. Nobody has ever come in my mouth, do you know that? I want to taste your come, Spike. Spike spunk.” She giggled, her head spinning with sensation. “I want you to fuck me in every position in the Kama Sutra, and when we’re through that, we’ll invent our own positions. I want to have you inside me, in every orifice. I want your fangs in my neck and my nipple and my clit, and I want to know what I taste like to you.”

He was panting unnecessarily, he knew, but the pictures she was bringing to mind made him do it. Where was she coming up with some of this, he wondered, then she grabbed his cock through his jeans and he lost track of what he was thinking.

Her mouth worked against the column of his throat, and he could barely hear her whisper over the loud throbbing of her heart. “I want it all, baby, and I want it with you. Tonight, tomorrow, and for the rest of our lives. Let’s go home.”

Stricken dumb, he nodded, and followed her down the road to her—no, their home.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They barely made it up the stairs with their clothes on.

Buffy slammed her bedroom door, leaning hard against it as she watched the vampire pacing the room in front of her. “Silencio,” she whispered, proud that she remembered the word, much less remembered to say it.

Spike paused by the bed, wondering what his Slayer was up to when she gave him a shove and he fell back to rest on the mattress with a bounce. He watched her fumble with something across the room, then music started, and he jerked with surprise. It was the first song off a mix tape that he had made for the Slayer long ago, his poncy side loosed by alcohol. Funny, he hadn’t seen that tape since….

His eyes narrowed when he realized exactly where the tape was and when he’d last seen it. She turned, and saw his look, grinning evilly before she replied, “You know, if you didn’t want me to have it, you shouldn’t have put ‘To Buffy From Spike’ on it. It was to me, so I thought…what the hell.” As the Ramones sang about being her boyfriend, she bopped around the room.

“I listened to this a lot after—well, you know. It surprised me. Especially the poem at the end of it.”

Spike looked confused and slightly panicked. “Poem? What poem?”

She looked back at him, her hands on her hips. “You don’t remember the poem?”

He shrugged, and had the grace to look ashamed. “I barely remember making the tape. I was pretty deep in my cups when I started. What does it say?”

She flipped the tape over and rewound it a bit, then paused. “You were drunk? Like, drinking drunk when you did this then?”

“Doesn’t mean that I didn’t mean it, pet. Just means that…well, see, I loved you so much, and you wouldn’t even look my way….” His voice trailed off, and he heard her giggle.

“I see. William couldn’t come out to play unless Spike was sleeping, huh?”

He looked offended. “I highly resent that inference, Slayer.”

“Right. Well, resent it all you want—I know that William made this tape, and you will too, here in a minute.”

She hit play, and leaned against the dresser.

His rich baritone came out of the speakers, and he cringed at the words. “I know that you’ll prolly never hear this, Slayer, since you hate my guts, but this is something special that I wrote just for you.”

“A Sonnet For The Slayer
My Slayer, my Buffy, my goddess of light
How can I dream of making you mine?
Feasting unfit eyes on the beautiful sight
Of you in your glory, you shine
With power and love and strength so true
Devotion I lay at your feet
Despite the agony that you imbue
When kicking my heart down the street
Although I cannot imagine such bliss
As your lips freely pressing against mine
I would gladly offer my life for one kiss
And end my life for you, sublime
Impale my unbeating heart on your stave
After such happiness, what more can I crave?”

He listened, horrified, as his bloody awful poetry spouted out of the speakers, then buried his face in his hands. “God, Slayer, how can you listen to that drivel?”

“It’s not drivel!” She was across the room and straddling his lap before he could reply, pulling his hands away from his face. “I thought it was beautiful. Still do. It’s the only thing that kept me from staking you after the little robotics experiment you pulled.”

“That? That kept you from staking me? Why?” He flipped his hand at the stereo, now silent, and shook his head. “That was terrible, Buffy.”

She tangled her fingers in his curls that he left loose for her. “I knew that the robot wasn’t just because you wanted to have sex with me. I knew that you really did love me. I just didn’t want to face up to it.”

Tugging on his hair, she tipped his face up and saw the adoration plain in his eyes. “I always knew, deep inside. I just didn’t want you to know that I knew. Now, less talky, more sexy.”

He had no arguments to that idea, and proceeded to let her know that when he crushed her to him and their mouths crashed together.

Clothing flew as they stripped one another, and soon their naked bodies pressed together, skin to skin. She pushed him backward until he lay flat on the bed, then threw her hair over her shoulder, lightly brushing it across his skin.

“Goldielocks. Isn’t that what you called me that one time?”

“Yes.” It came out in a hiss as she trailed silken tresses across the tip of his erection where it reached upward, angled sharply and almost parallel with his taut stomach. She shook her head, and individual strands teased and tickled his entire groin, balls to base to top, and he started to reach his hand out.

Her head snapped up, eyes blazing. “Keep your hands to yourself, mister,” she snarked, then grinned quickly before frowning up at him again. He chanced a grin in return, and saw the gleaming sparkle in her eye before she bent her head back to what she’d been doing. Oh, yes, driving him completely buggering mad.

She wrapped his cock in her long locks, her hand gripping it all and holding her hair in place. It was amazingly soft, silky against his skin, and he couldn’t hold back a groan of surprise when she started to move her hand slowly, the hairs shifting and sliding against one another and his cool skin. The sensation teased him for want of her as the scent of her diffused over him and through him. He could smell the sweet musk of the Slayer's demon, lurking just under the surface of her everyday self; the sweet honeysuckle perfume of her shower gel; the fresh, salty tang of her arousal; and the rich metallic taste of her blood. The aromas mingled and aroused him fully, man and demon, and his bones slipped unnoticed into his full game face.

He could almost see the heat radiate from her as she took him fully in her mouth for the first time. She swallowed him down slowly, relaxing her throat and opening it up to take his complete length. He watched her, brow furrowing with concentration, as she licked up his shaft, then back down, then her throat engulfed him again, and he roared, throwing his head back.

Another look at her changed his plan to grab her and plunder her as she said with her eyes what her mouth couldn’t. Don’t you dare—it’s my turn, they said, and he stilled himself. He folded his hands under his ass, gripping the bedclothes to still himself. The comforter twisted quickly into ridges and wrinkles as she suckled him, teasing him mercilessly with her tongue in his slit, around the crown, and down to the small patch of flesh behind his scrotum.

It was there that she nibbled, then bit down gently, and his ass flew up off the bed in surprise. Her hand tightened almost painfully on his cock, then slackened when she realized he wasn’t trying to get away. She nipped a path from one cheek to the other, always ending at that small piece of flesh, worrying it between her teeth as her hand slowly measured him from base to tip and back again. He shouted when her tongue teased the tight ring of muscle lower down, and he raised his head off the bed.

“Pet, please…” he started, but was unable to finish as she flipped him over, his knees on the floor and his curvaceous ass in the air. She pinned his hands to his back with one hand, his thumbs in one deceptively strong fist, and she nibbled on his buttock gently before speaking.

“Please what, Spike?” She scraped her nails over the soft skin, red welts raising instantly as he shivered beneath her. She reached beneath him, and cupped his balls in her hands, tugging lightly as she bent her head to nip at where they joined his body. He tightened beneath her; every muscle knotted in ropy pleasure as her fingers grazed his hard length, now pressed against the side of the bed. Her tongue left moist trails down the split between the cheeks as she brushed her nipples down the back of his thighs.

She released his thumbs and he readied himself for another abrupt position change, when he felt one of her digits wriggle into his tight rectum. His mouth o’ed in surprise and eyes flew open wide as she stroked him with one hand and fucked his ass with the other, pressing on his ‘sweet spot’ without mercy, much as he had hers. He growled when she removed her finger, then moaned loudly as she moved him back onto his back like a rag doll. Her finger slipped inside him easier this time, as did the second, and she wrapped her lips around his cock once again.

She was maddening with her rhythm. In she would plunge on the downstroke, her fingers crooked and raking his prostate with every stroke. Out on the upstroke, slow and possessive, her eyes full of hidden knowledge as she watched him writhe under her ministrations. She moved slower, swallowing around his length as she circled her fingers slowly inside him. She moved quickly, slamming the palm of her hand against his ass as she deepthroated him so rapidly he was afraid she would choke. She changed her rhythmic strokes repeatedly until he felt the pressure building to a fever pitch and his balls drew themselves up tight against the base of his cock.

She must have sensed it, heard the change in breathing pattern or felt the tension in his groin, because now she kept it steady, with long strokes and deep pleasure that burned him with his intense need. His fingers found their way into the silken strands of hair that started it all, and he shouted as he began to come, his warmed spunk jetting into the back of her throat as she swallowed around his entire length. He could feel a third small finger invading his body and welcomed it fully as it brought him to climax again.

His knees began to shake and his thighs to tremble as she continued the pressure of her fingers inside him until she had wrung a third powerful climax from him. She let his now-spent cock slip from her mouth as she slid her fingers out of him, and crawled up his body to rest her head on his chest, pointed chin digging without mercy into his sternum.

When he could move again, he raised confused yet sated eyes to look at her. She grinned back at him, and he let his head fall back onto the mattress. “What was that?”

He felt her shrug. “A Slayer blowjob?”

She felt his stomach moving, and then his silent laughter became audible as he roared with his mirth. “All right, a Slayer blowjob! Oh, I’m liking this, Buffy. I’m liking this a lot.”

She poked him in the side. “You better like it, mister. I like to call it the Slayer special.” She pillowed her head on his shoulder and stared at the ceiling, so achingly familiar she had each crack and wrinkle memorized. “There’s so much I want to do. With you, but not just sex. Going places. Seeing things. Taking Dawn with us and showing her the world.

He tipped her head up to meet her eyes. He expected tears, not the gleam of anticipation that seemed to shimmer from them. “We have all our unlives, sweetpea. To go and do and see as much as we can. I don’t know what kind of tour guide I’ll be, but I’ll show you the world. You and the Bit.”


A/N: Ah, I need a ciggie now...Next few chappies will be longer...lots more to happen yet! And thank you for all your sweet reviews!