"Sssh, sssh. Why all this? Pet. Just relax, it can't be so bad as this."


He touched her lashes, webbed with thick tears. He was still smiling, gentle and fond, waiting for her. "It's not easy bein' Buffy Summers, is it? Thought I had my own troubles."


How could she tell him, his good-nature was disembowling her? Buffy closed her eyes. Took long ragged breaths, trying to get calm.


Calm, calm, she would be calm. She was the slayer, she was strong and in control.


When she opened her eyes, he was still right there, up on his elbow above her.


"Better?" he said.


She nodded. "But I'm not quite ready to do this yet. Can we wait?"


"Wait for what?" Then, restraining his disappointment, "'Course we can wait."


"You know I want to. Just ... sex is a big step."


"An' you've just taken the biggest. Admittin' to bein' in love with me." He quirked a half-grin. "A total stranger."


"You're not a total stranger. I wish you were."


"Wish I was," he echoed. His expression changed, as if part of this was only now becoming vivid to him, that he contained so many assocations for her he was himself entirely ignorant of. He went solemn, and with a respectful gesture, pulled her shirt down again to cover her breasts and belly.


They remained sprawled together, lightly touching. Buffy put her hand up to his hairline, smoothed fingers through the curls there. "There's so much to feel just like this," she said. "It's kind of overwhelming for me."


"Is it?" He sounded pleased. She envied him his in-the-momentness. With no past goading him with expectations and rue, he could luxuriate in the present, anticipate pleasure to come.


"I'm afraid." I've just handed you the power to destroy me.


"Don't want you to be afraid. Afraid's no good to me. Anything else goin' on in here?" Light finger laid on her heart.


"Happy," she gasped. She repeated it, to make sure he understood, even though she was still in tears, still quaking with little sobs. "But I'm afraid to be happy."


"Hasn't worked out for you before."


"That's an understatement." How surreal it was, to have this conversation with Spike. Looking into those eyes she so thoroughly knew, and telling him what he ought to know about her, used to know, would know again. That she was a walking disaster of the heart.


"You're a brave girl. This time'll be different."


"It's never different."


"Tellin' you it will. You mind me, now."


He was so solemn, scolding, that a laugh erupted out of her final sob, burbling up with as little intention, drawing forth more tears. He chuckled too, and drew her closer to him. Half sprawled on him as she was now, she felt his erection trapped in his jeans.


"Does it excite you when I cry?"


The question startled him. "At this point, everythin' you do gets me hard." He brushed at her tears. "Don't need to do anythin' about it. Said I'd wait."


"I know. It's okay." She shifted herself, so her head still rested on his shoulder. "It's been so long since I just ... did anything like this."


"How long?"


"Long."


"Who was the man? Anyone I ought to know?"


"Ought to. But don't."


"You like plaguin' me with mysteries."


When you remember me again, you're not going to want me. Why am I letting myself in for this? She couldn't drag herself away now. It would've been like going out an airlock.


"I want to ask you to tell me about yourself, but of course you can't. That's weird." Angel, loving her, had wanted to share as little of his past with her as he could. He'd deflected most of her questions, plied her with kisses when she got too inquisitive. "There's nothing good to say," he'd remind her, and she'd pout, comprehending and not comprehending.


The clean deft naivety she'd been capable of, ten years ago, shocked her now.


"Can tell you how you make me feel. Can ask to hear all about you."


She'd never remotely had a conversation like this with Spike. Had resented his declaratons, his inventories of her charms. Refused the few questions he dared put to her over the course of their head-on collision affair, and of course never dreamed of asking him for information. Who wanted details of the pit of filth one was wallowing in?


Oh God, how can I do this to him?


"Soon," she breathed.


"When you're ready," he agreed. "Pet, you've no idea what this's like, right here. All lost I am, but feel like I've found home."


"So do I." She could do it again, tuck her face in against his neck—why did that feel, above any other possibility, like the most consoling, the most delicious place she knew—and be held. Spike seemed contented too, to idle like this, unpressing. She breathed him in, familiar faint tang of clean undead flesh, notes of chlorine from the pool, and shampoo. What did he smell? He'd said, a little while ago, that she'd had an aroma of happiness. Like a secret confession, given only to him.


After a long silence, she murmured, "Do you really think of Spike as gone? Wiped. I mean ... aren't you really him? Beyond ... underneath ... I don't know how to say it."


"Not a philosopher, you."


No, not a philosopher. But you talk like him, and you move like him, and—" You kiss like him.


"Well, yeah, know I must be him, somehow. All I meant, before, is it's no good holdin' back because somethin' you're nervous about might happen someday. You can't know if it will or won't. An' I can't know if I'll ever get my memories back. Do know I've come to love you, an' don't want to put that off."


"You've been so patient."


"With all you're not tellin' me."


Curl of disquiet in her belly. "That too."


He shrugged. "Each day, seems to matter less and less, my past, yours, anybody's. Without mine in my own head, what's your testimony to me? Hearsay. Could tell me Spike hated you like poison, but I don't hate you, so what'd I do with the information?"


"You can't really mean that you like being cut off from ... from everything you know. You haven't given up on wanting to be cured."


"No." He frowned. "Don't mean that. Makes me feel small, an' lost like I said."


"I still need to help you recover."


"You're doin' all sorts for me."


"It's just, the consequences, when you do—"


"Hush. Love, you're tremblin' again. Hush. Am I really such an angry an' retributive fellow when I'm at home?"


"I can't even begin to explain."


"Don't fret yourself. Let's go out, get a breath of air."


She washed her face, then followed him outside, along the trail through the thick trees that led to the stairs down to the Pacific. A long, switched-back wooden staircase, bolted to the cliff, the view amazing all the way down, dark restless ocean. He held her hand, leading the way, and she walked just behind him, feeling like a trusting child. At the bottom they took off their shoes, rolled up the bottoms of their jeans. Spike took her hand again, and tucked it into the crook of his arm. The gesture felt old-fashioned to her, reminding her of the little glimpses he'd given her in the last few days, of the man he'd perhaps been before he was turned. Parts of his personality he'd repressed, but didn't know to repress now? Traits that were William's. She didn't want to ask. Anyway, it was lovely to stroll this way, to feel him looking at her like she was precious, the ocean wind blowing her hair back, the sand moist and crunchy under her feet.


"There's only right now," she said. "That's all there is, isn't there?"


"All we need."


They approached the edge of the water, where the waves broke into lacy foam, and the wet sand was startlingly cold under her soles.


This was the romantic beachy get-away she'd never had, with Angel, with Riley, with anybody. She hadn't fantasized about anything like this since she'd come back from the dead. Since then, her musings about what would really content her, informed by memories of heaven—actual heaven, not just things anyone could say were heavenly, stupid approximate ignorant word—all had to do with, she realized now, oblivion. Some kind of oblivion beyond effort and responsibility.


Death, really. Where other people daydreamed about moonlit strolls on the beach with a beautiful lover, she conjured pleasant moments of unexistence.


"What're you thinkin'?"


It was what the lover in the story, the movie, always asked. She laughed. "You don't want to know."


"But I do. Don't ask for what I don't want. You'll learn that about me."


"I already have. Okay, if you must now, I was thinking about being dead."


"Don't want you to think of that."


"But I was. I was remembering it."


"Been dead, have you?"


"Oh yes. A lot, actually. Well, twice. The first time didn't last very long. The second time though, I was very much elsewhere, and else ... wise."


"Elsewise?"


"Completely at peace, enfolded in love."


He stopped, and pulled her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin, encompassing her in his embrace. "Like this?"


No. "Yes."







In her pocket, her phone began hollering at her like a cat with a grievance.


She fumbled it out. "Sorry."


"You got to jet off an' kill beasties?"


Quickly scanning the incoming messages, she shook her head. "No." There were texts and emails, from her sister, from Xander, from, unexpectedly, Faith. Also Giles. They scrambled up to sit on an outcropping of flat rock, just out of reach of the plashing eddying tide. She let Spike look over her shoulder at the photos the screen displayed of each of her correspondents. Maybe some recognition would spark.


"Who's that pretty girl?"


"My sister Dawn. She is pretty, isn't she?"


"Exquisite, yeah." He stared. "Do I know her?"


"You do. When I was dead, you helped take care of her."


"Did I? Ahhh. An' who's that bloke?"


"Xander. You know him too. You know all these people, actually. And they're all interested in how you're doing."



They're the world, starting to encroach on this private little illusion of ours. Starting to make it impossible.


"Well, go on an' tell 'em. I'll give you a bit of privacy." He shifted around, so his back was against hers; they leaned together, propping each other. She let her head rest on his shoulder, before remembering the gunshot wounds.


"Does this hurt?"


"Not a bit. Go on, I'm lookin' out to sea." He chuckled. "Beats bein' all at sea, though I'm still that too, aren't I?"


"Probably not for much longer," she said, knowing she'd passed the turning point of hoping he'd recover. When he recovered, she'd be caught, and punished.


Dawn's email alternated mundane news about TV shows and slayer gossip with questions about where she was and what was wrong with Spike and was he really alive and what was he like and could Buffy tell him please that she forgave him? Xander's text said only that he was thinking about her, that Martha and Steffi were making progress with the nunchuks, and if it wasn't too much trouble could she bring him a couple boxes of Oreos when she came back, because they didn't have any American cookies at the shop in the village and he was sick of Hob Nobs. Giles just wanted to know if all was well at the safe-house and did she need anything.


Faith's message was a little video of her, sticking out her tongue, rolling her eyes, grimacing, and then saying she assumed Spike hadn't ripped her throat out yet so he must be less crazy now she'd abducted him from the L.A. headquarters. "You'd better be makin' some serious time there, B, or else you're even more pathetic than I always knew you were."


Sorry you had to hear that," Buffy said, slipping the phone back in her pocket. "Faith's a fan."


"Who's she then?"


"Slayer Number Two."


"Didn't sound like she looks up to you much."


"Your fan, I mean."


"What was she talkin' about, you abducting me?"


"When they called me to come to L.A. to see you, you were in a bad way. Incommunicative, and violent. They had you locked up and sedated. I made an executive decision that you'd be better off with me, away from there."


"Good call."


"I think so. But you were the one who bombed out of my car in traffic and led me to the alley. That's where you woke up from the crazy. I don't know why."


"So went from a wild animal that wouldn't talk, to this."


"Trauma can do that." He'd been crazy when he got back from Africa. All those weeks cowering and hiding in the high school cellar—where she'd been all too happy to abandon him, as she cringingly recalled. Though then he'd been mostly quite gentle, and had plenty to say, none of it making the least bit of sense.


He lolled back, his head rolling against hers. "Wonder if I'll be sorry, to remember what happened to me. To the others, whoever they were. Maybe it was such a horror that it's better it's all gone."


She suspected that could turn out to be the case, but still she couldn't just agree with him. She'd always been someone who believed in facing facts, dealing with reality. Hated being tricked or lied to or hoodwinked. If it was she who'd been robbed of memory, no matter how devastating, she'd want her mind back.


Even if it meant losing your peace of mind? REALLY?


"You're musing."


"I am, and I shouldn't. Like we said before, we only have right now, and it's all we need." She turned to face him. He was waiting to receive her, drawing her face close in his two hands, smoothing the wind tumbled hair away from her mouth. The rock was hard under her folded knees, but his kisses were silky and absorbing. After a little bit, he drew her across his lap, a more comfortable angle to taste her mouth, to offer his. She hadn't kissed like this since high school, nothing but mouths, no progression to more serious action, and with a sense that nothing could be more serious than this gentle persistent penetrating exploration of lips and tongues and teeth. She could feel that he was smiling as he kissed her; she could feel the tenderness brimming up in him. His hands petted her blowing hair, cupped and adored her face, her neck, but went no further. She held his head in her outspread hands, smoothing the hair under her thumbs that felt like the feathers on a breast of a bird, detaching from his lips to press hers to the points of his cheeks, to his lids, the lashes fluttering, the whorls of his ears, hard shield of his forehead, and lower down, nibbling along the sharp jaw, to the tempting hollows beneath. She nipped at his adams apple, and drew a gasp. Made a shallow experimental bite at the curve of his throat, was rewarded with a louder gasp, and when she drew back, a flash of gold-eye.


"Oh, you like that." Why this reminder of his vampirism charmed and excited her, she wasn't sure. But it did.


Fingers on her chin, tipping her face up again, redirecting her efforts back to his mouth. More languid, fervid kisses. Her body pulsed with warmth, despite the chill night ocean air, yet somehow the intense throbbing was easy to ignore in favor of this limpid concentration of mouth on mouth. Spike's mouth was the only mouth, and it was hers, hers to possess and enjoy. He wanted nothing else but her hypnotic kisses. They were in the same place, shared the one desire.


When that had ever happened before?


It was only the leading edge of morning that drove them from their perch. Spike could smell it before she detected any change in the color of the sky. "Come, sweetheart."


Again he held her hand as they hastened along the beach.


"Am I your sweetheart?" She asked the question like an eager, silly child, already embarrassed to be requesting compliments, but unable to quell the urge. He smiled, squeezing her fingers.


"Are you my sweetheart? Silly girl."