Her cry bounced off the porcelain fixtures, the white tile walls, the sheets of mirror, and shot up her spine, an existential goosing that dragged out another, wilder scream. Sensation coursed through her with the force of a spell taking hold—the whole thing flashing back nearly as vivid as on the night itself. Not pausing to register anything in Spike's look or voice or stance except that he stood between her and escape, Buffy flew at him feet first, knocking him down in a heap, scrambling over the writhing bony tangle of him to get away.


He shouted her name, she ignored him. He grabbed her leg; she kicked him in the face, clambered up, and fled.


Outside, the sun was low, but its rays still stretched, mellow and orange, across the patio. Buffy flung herself out through the sliding glass door and stopped, breathing hard, the glare in her face.


"Oh God. Oh God." Her heart walloped in her chest, missing beats. Spots burst in her line of sight. She sank into a chair. "Shit. Shit."


Nothing like this had happened to her before. Had she developed the habit of reacting like this to the merest flash of threat—with blind frantic horror-flick panic—she'd have been quite permanently killed years ago. This was so not like her.


Now that she was free of the confining room, his blocking presence, panting in the warm slant of sunset, she realized that Spike had almost certainly intended nothing worse in coming after her than to continue their argument.


He might even have been about to backpedal.


Of course he could know nothing of their earlier encounter in that long-destroyed upstairs bathroom in her defunct town.


She'd kicked him in the face just now for nothing. Really nothing, because after all, wasn't what he'd so crudely accused her of so close to the truth as to make no difference? He had every right to be suspicious of her, to call her on what she had and had not told him.


She couldn't do this. It wasn't working.


She sat for more than half an hour, wrapped up in her woe, the encroaching sense that she was making a hash of this because a hash was all it could ever be. The sky pinkened in the west, the blue going deeper and deeper. Venus appeared. The water in the pool rippled in the breeze, which stirred her hair around her shoulders. Only when it was full dark, did she rise. Time to go inside and try to fix this. She didn't know how. Probably it wasn't fixable. Probably she should do what she'd just suggested, call in someone else to take this over, and head back to Scotland.


Her nape tingled. Instinct made her turn, look up.


He stood in the bedroom window, peering down through the parted drapes. His face a white blur in the dark, blotted with a dark stain, features indistinguishable.


Feeling immeasureably foolish and sad, she lifted a hand, made a feeble wave.


Spike waved back, or at least, she thought she saw his hand near the glass, before he withdrew.


We're going to freak each other to death, she thought. That's how this'll end. Mutually assured freak-a-struction.







Behind her, a light flared, throwing a yellow parallelogram out on the terrace, contiguous with the kitchen, a bright stage-set behind the glass doors. Spike was there, moving around slowly, not glancing out to where she stood only some ten feet away on the other side. He opened the refrigerator, some cabinets, went to the stove.


Buffy watched, foggy and dull, as he carried out certain motions that only gradually resolved for her into the understanding that he was cooking eggs, brewing coffee. Putting bread in to toast. She'd never seen him fix a meal, at first it struck her mainly as odd, as though she was watching someone like Prince Charles, who never had to work, setting out to do the same with no more than a vague sense that it couldn't be all that difficult if servants did it all the time. She saw smoke rise from the frying pan, egg shells slide down the outside of the garbage can.


The wind picked up, and she hugged herself, not moving, watching this tableau.


When at last he approached the glass, her every impulse was to retreat into the darkness.


Eyes trained towards her knees, he muttered, "Got your supper."


With her kick she'd opened a cut across his cheek and the bridge of his nose. The orbit of one eye was purpling and puffy. "S'cold out here for you, innit?"


"You didn't have to do this. You should have—" Should have waited, in state, for me to crawl in to you and tell you how sorry I am.


He misconstrued her, but without further resentment. "Yeah, well, tired of sittin'. Wanted somethin' to do. Come in now."


He went back to the stove, slipped the eggs, their edges too brown, off onto a plate, snagged the hot toast out.


"Spike, this was all a mistake."


"Right you are."


"No, I mean—my mis— No. I'm trying to say, a misunderstanding. You were right to question me before, I shouldn't have gotten angry and stomped off on you, and then—"


"An' then you kicked me in my face, which I get a feelin' is only your habit of long usage."


She repressed a wince. What a gift he had, for divining essential truths even out of his darkness.


"I once had a very bad experience with a furious man in a very tight space. When you came into the bathroom I had a flashback. Big big over-reaction. Not about you. Not about anything that we're struggling with here. Please forgive me." She went to him, where he stood by the table, her plate in hand. He was sullen, no surprise, the cut and bruising making a sort of mask across his features.


He still didn't need to know, while he was devoid of context, about the attempted rape.


Now he looked up, carefully examining what she hoped was her own expression of earnest, entreaty. He frowned. "Not about me."


"No." Not a lie, she told herself, because he hasn't been that Spike in a long time. That Spike isn't here. "But if you still want me to go, I'll go. Willow can probably come stay with you until I can recruit someone else, and I will make sure the Council people understand who you are, the care and respect and honor you deserve."


"Don't want—"


"You don't have to say what you think I want to hear. Really, if—"


"Don't bloody want you to go!" He let the plate, which he'd been holding all this time, drop onto the table; it clattered, the eggs slopping halfway over the side, one piece of bacon flipping over to land in the empty fruitbowl.


They were both frozen, his shout echoing against the marble surfaces.


More quietly, he said, "Pet, I've got such a mouth on me. Was my fault."


"No no no."


She reached up, sketched her fingertips over the raw cut, the swollen flesh. Spike's eyes closed; he endured her touch. "Ought to put it to better use, than bitin' you an' sayin' ugly things. I remembered what it was, my poor mind's all shot full of leaks. I spewed a lot of bollocks at you when you came back from your shoppin', an' attacked you, an' you talked me down an' put me to bed like sweet girl you are."


"Spike—I mean, Will—"


"Call me Spike if you like it better. Can't get away from it, it's in the books. It's what I am."


This startled her. He stepped back, out of her reach. "Silly game, to play at bein' some new fellow."


"Oh Spike ... you don't even begin to know all you are."


"'Spect that's so," he said, again misconstruing. His voice dropped to a rasp. "though how you can know it an' go on helpin' me, can't bloody fathom. Even so, couldn't bear it if you were to go."


"I don't want to go. Don't you know yet that I've fallen in love with you—so hard—Spike, look at me—so hard, that if you don't forgive me and hold me, I ... I don't know what I'll do." She knew she must be scarlet, so hot were her cheeks.


He blinked, and for one terrible moment she thought he was going to reject her.


Then he opened his arms to her at last, and she swarmed into them. "Spike—Spike—oh please—"


He swung her to the table so she didn't have to stand on tip-toe to reach for his mouth; his own now against her lips, speaking wordless reconciliation that resonated through her in long sighing tremors.


Kissing wasn't enough, to convey her relief, her joy—she grappled him close, legs slung around his hips. She dropped backwards onto the table top, dragging him with her, feasting on his mouth. Kissing wasn't enough, and yet she'd never felt more eloquent, kissing, she read whole paragraphs in his lips and tongue on hers, as the deaf-blind girl comprehend signs pressed into the palm of the hand.


When at last she dragged her mouth free to suck in air, laughter spangled out. She hid her face against his neck. "Say it, say it, say it."


"What? That I love you? Don't you know it?"


"That you forgive me. Spike, please. Tell me."


He regarded her, a vague fond smile possessing his mouth, hands cradling her head. A thorough examination, his blue gaze heating her, making her squirm inside. "You're afraid I won't forgive you this very thing we're doin' now, when I'm myself again. An' what can I say to that? Can't promise you I'll love you when it all comes back to me. P'raps I'll punish you every cruel way there is when I remember all. P'raps I'll even have a bit of right on my side. You seem to think so."


Though his words sent tendrils of dread through her, it made her feel simultaneously brave, bucked up, to bear his weight in the saddle of her body, to have his face so close to hers it filled her line of sight.


"I made the wrong choice once, I'm not going to do it again. I convinced myself I was being prudent, but it wasn't prudence, it wasn't pragmatism. It was fear. It was taking the easier path."


"All this mean you're gonna give yourself to me now?"


A deep thrill shivered through her. "It does."


He rose; she slid off the table with as much grace as she could muster. Standing upright was dizzying.


Spike plucked a strip of bacon off her sleeve. "Don't you want your supper first?"


She tossed the bacon towards the sink with one hand as she fisted his shirt-front with the other. "Thought you were serious."


"As the grim reaper, pet."