Beta: Hollydb. Many thanks, sweetie! All errors are mine (feel free to point out)

A/N: A small gift for Slaymesoftly's birthday.

***

“Buffy!” His exclamation was but a whisper pressed into her neck as he followed her over the edge.

He’d done this before, she understood; mellow as she floated on a glow of satisfaction and content to just be. Being was of the good right now. When did that happen?

Her body felt lush and full, her heart free of angst, and her mind bloated on sensation gifted by her vampire lover. There, she’d admitted it. Spike was her lover. Currently pressing hesitant lips against her neck, waiting for her to draw the line and kick him into touch, dragging his softening cock from her sated body. Why would she do that? Why had she done it on other occasions?

There didn’t seem to be a good answer. Granted, her life balance had been severely disrupted, what with the resurrection and all. It wasn’t something she was happy about, nor thought she would be until time had worked its mysterious wonder. But how much time did she have, really? And did she want to spend it fucking a vampire?

Well, duh!

He’d worked his way down her neck, nibbling and suckling at her jawline, nipping the sensitive spot just under her ear. Her autonomous body shimmied under him, rewarded by a hardening in just the right place. Pulling back he stared at her, a flit of surprise to find her eyes upon him replaced almost instantly with a piece of armour. The smirk.

“Slayer wants another round?” he purred, dipping down to brush soft lips against hers. She didn’t think she could, but hey, why stop him from trying?

He looked startled when her hand cupped his cheek, her fingers ghosting over all the sharp edges that made up a face remarkable more for what he placed upon it than for its edgy beauty. Buffy knew she’d rarely, if ever, touched him gently before. Her hands had signalled many things to him, but tenderness had never been a feature. His response was humbling, the gratitude and vulnerability he couldn’t hide from one small gesture, one that should be so commonplace between lovers.

If she started to feel guilt, she’d run. And she didn’t want to go, wanted to stay and learn more about him. The stupid vampire who had decided to love her.

“Why?” she asked, letting her fingers travel up to taste the flavour of his violent hair. Soft. Brittle. Both.

He was like an animal deprived of touch, pushing his head against her questing hand, wanting, needing. Such power he gave her, for all he tried to hide it…mostly.

“Why what, luv?”

She smiled, his distraction a compliment but not giving her any answers that she didn’t already have. His hips moved a little, rubbed a bit, made her sigh. Bad body!

“Why are you so good to me? This can’t be what you want.” She hadn’t known she was going to say that, but it seemed right and she wasn’t about to try and take it back. He’d been the one to let her be just Buffy. Buffy the Depressed. Buffy the Resentful. Buffy the Angry. Buffy…the Abuser.

This could be the last time she felt him within her emptiness. Because, that last Buffy so was not who she wanted to be. Not what she was. She didn’t want to be any of the others either but the last made her proactive, and she didn’t want to be that person. It stopped now.

And her question appeared to have stopped Spike.

Though only for a few seconds. He put his reply into actions, not words, rocking then thrusting into her openness, finding welcome and response to the tune he played so skilfully and desperately on her willing flesh. But she could read him now, better than before, and he was hiding. Hiding his eyes which showed more than he would like. Hiding his face that spelt out, or withheld, so much. Only his cock was speaking for him, as if that was the only language she would understand.

“Spike,” she breathed, urgent to communicate with him before the pleasure he was pushing into her became too strong for her to withstand. Not helped because she wanted it, the release from her everyday pain of existence, the connection with life that came from bonding with death…in the guise of Spike.

“Spike,” she said again, palming his face and turning it toward her. “Look at me.”

He could feel it too, the almost-goodbye that hung between them. No amount of disguise could conceal the barely contained panic in his eyes. For a moment she felt like Parker, a master manipulator of the innocent and naive. Knowing that Spike was neither innocent nor naïve helped to the square root of zilch.

Then he succeeded in sidelining coherency and intention, deftly removing her power of speech as he led her deeper into the most ancient and primal dance of all. Just them. Just this. Just now.

***

Something was off with the slayer; Spike could feel it in that small part of him not actively engaged in distracting her body from discourse with the echoes of heaven constantly driving her to wretchedness. It was difficult, given the way she gripped and stroked him with her sweet cunt, to try for reason when immersion and connection were his. His unholy grail gained not through gallant or valiant deeds, but the misbegotten meddling of her friends. How sick they would be if they knew what she was doing with the life they had magically forced into her hallowed remains.

But there she was, his sweet tormented girl, like a flower blooming in the light of his dark sun, just needing a little care and attention to be persuaded to release her intoxicating scent into the night. His care. His attention. She needed him.

Or did she?

Spike’s ruminations paused, the trail lost as he flailed in wonder, the eyes of his love upon him like a caress instead of a whip. Seeing him. She was seeing him.

His body knew the grand finale was near, could feel the spasms pulsing and building through their intimate conjunction, her mewing pants and kneading hands encouraging him onwards, with him through the loss of rhythm and long leap into bliss.

He shattered, fell apart and was remade, put together by her soft touch of hands and lips as she cradled his spent body against her breast, her pounding heart a raft of reality his senses latched onto in stunned, forlorn hope.

Had they just made love?

***

Oh. Oh. Oh.

Spike had broken her with blue, given solace beyond her ability to measure and riven through to touch, with his confounding dedication, a buried chord that yearned for harmony within the symphony of him. Plied with rhapsody beyond her imagining, Buffy barely had enough strength left to hold him to her, thank him with small kisses, as she couldn’t with words, for a gift that really shouldn’t be, but was.

She was glad he seemed disinclined to move from the cushion of her breast, his mouth half latched onto her nipple. It gave her mercy from his gaze and precious moments to think, the very thing she had wanted to avoid in his company but now had to face…or bid him goodbye and leave behind all hope of recapturing the rapture he offered.

Who was Spike?

It had all been so simple, once, to label him vampire and leave it at that; a child of evil, devoid of conscience and covered in the blood of countless victims. Made to kill, and take pleasure in the moment. Her prey, to hunt and slay, not to lay with in a tangle of entwined limbs, almost serene in the aftermath of a physical bonding which left her weighing possibilities she would have shunned only hours before.

Scanning over her many memories of Spike, it was easy to see the changes he had wrought in himself, some because they were forced upon him, but many others through choice in the face of suspicion and loathing. Stubborn, thy name is both Spike and Buffy.

Unbidden, the shades of her friends crowded upon her, faces painted in disgust and condemnation, intervention waved like a sword dedicated to redeem Buffy from the lapse from grace in which she was minded to wallow. The animators of her dead flesh and dictators extraordinaire, all wanting something yet giving her nothing but reason for grief. A mannequin whose shortcomings were picked over, ad nauseam; she wasn’t perky enough, or thankful enough, nor did she earn the money needed to support her sister in the manner provided by her mom. A miserable shadow, but one who constantly failed to disappoint a loving vampire.

Spike stirred, his cock falling from her as he shifted, ungluing bodies bound by her sweat and other slickness, and lifted his head from her breast to regard her steadily.

Buffy prayed he wouldn’t come out with one of his remarks, diabolically designed to throw up her hackles. Not now, not when she was in the best place she’d been since her restoration to this mortal toil of living.

Their eyes met, held, his smile warm enough to dry the tears tipping slowly from his eyes. “Not what I want?” For a moment she was confused, then remembered. “Want nothing else than to be with you, in you, putting aside your cares with the loving you deserve, pet. Know it’s not enough, not for you, but don’t you ever think that I’m left wanting. Not true. Would give you anything, Buffy, anything. I lo—”

She cut him off with a kiss, swallowing the word from his questing tongue and taking it inside herself to keep and hold. Her hands captured his face, pushing him back to grab a breath before tasting the salt of his tears as she pressed her lips to his closed eyelids, his forehead and cheeks.

Time to tell him of her decision, time to put the pretty vampire out of his misery.

She touched her forehead to his, willing herself to keep to her course. “I don’t want to be in the dark with you, Spike.” He went rigid in all the wrong places.

“Listen to me, just listen. Please.” Buffy had to say this now, and quickly, before she forgot her determination and drifted back into apathy. “I know you love me. I can see it, I can. But I don’t feel the same way about you, you know that, right?” The smallest movement, open to interpretation but accepted as a nod. “What you do to me, what we do, it helps me forget, for a while. But then it’s all waiting for me when I leave, and it seems twice as bad because for a little while you made me feel better. So it’s a shock to find it all still there, queuing up without sight of the end; slaying and saveage, working and keeping house, trying to please when I have nothing left because I came back wrong.”

Spike tried to break her grip then, but she shushed him and held on. “I get so frustrated, so angry, at myself, at them. But I take it out on you, because you let me, because you love me. And that is a world of wrong, punishing you when it’s not your fault, unable to take it out on them because, despite everything, I love them.” Might wish she didn’t at times, still found aspects to resent, but Buffy couldn’t pull her love from her friends that easily.

Now he did wrench his head free of her hands, stared down at her, anguished. “You’re finishing this? After… Weren’t you there with me?” The pain in his voice, his face, cut her. Silently thanking the return of her slayer strength, she flipped them over, straddling his thighs and pushing down on his shoulders as her mouth silenced him. Breaking away before he could lead her into blessed temptation, Buffy hurried to finish before she was lost.

“Spike, listen! Please,” she implored. “I was with you, so very with you, stupid vampire! If I hadn’t been I wouldn’t be about to ask you to come out of the darkness with me. I can’t promise to love you, but I can promise to be your lover, in the open, in my life, at my side, for as long as it works out for both of us. This between us, we both know it’s wrong, but it feels so right and I need you. I want to get to know who Spike is, and I can’t do that by hiding in the shadows, frightened that we’ll be discovered.” His attention was rapt, almost disbelieving. And she couldn’t believe herself that she’d said it, made a move for change, wanted – needed – to take him with her.

Relinquishing her grip on one shoulder, her hand fell to its new favourite pastime of cheek strokeage as she waited for an answer. Had she read this all wrong? Was it really just about the shagging, as he so ineloquently put it? Just the groin and grind?

Vampires could move really fast - really, really fast - Spike maybe fastest of all. Suddenly she was wrapped in Spike, cocooned against his chest and rocked like a child, kisses finding her skin as cool hands caressed and soothed wherever his mouth wasn’t, disengaging just enough to murmur, “Yes! Anywhere with you, Buffy. Until the end of the world, for this crumb, anything. Love you, you amazing woman, love you so bloody much.”

Her laughter and his joined, bounced off the walls of the dank crypt, sealing a bargain to leave the darkness behind and face the future together. He was doing it for love, as it was in his nature to do. She, well, she was doing it for love too - his love, which gave her the freedom to be her flawed self and deserved to be acknowledged and rewarded, as best she could.

For now, it was enough.

The End???