A/N: I won at the Spuffy Awards round 14 for Best General Angst Judge's Choice, Best General Saga Reader's Choice, and Judge's Pick! Thank you! And another thank you to whoever nominated me at the Spark and Burn Awards round 5 for Best WIP, Best Plot, and Best Alternate Reality!

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Chapter 50 - Moments

Spike was still on top of her, his skin warmed from her blood. They’d lain unmoving for minutes, without a word between them.

Though Buffy was fairly certain about what was pressing into her leg.

She thought she’d felt something last time, but she hadn’t been sure. With him lying low on her to get access to her neck, they hadn’t exactly been lined up. But now, with him on either side of her thigh, there was no doubt what was pushing into her.

Buffy twitched faintly.

He seemed to sense her question, and he moved slightly against her.

“Oh gross, Spike!” she said, pushing him partway off.

“Yeah?” His voice was quiet, but she could hear the leer in it. “You didn’t think so the night I—”

“Gross that you got turned on by the blood.”

“You were all pressed up next to me.”

Buffy glared at him in the darkness. She hoped he could see it.

“So it was mostly the blood,” he admitted.

“Again, gross.”

“Vampire. And just your blood.”

“Uh-huh.”

Spike shifted closer to her.

“Just relax, would you?” he snapped as she started to lean away. He covered her chest halfway with his, placing his head just above her shoulder and nestling into her neck. Though he positioned his lower body so that she could no longer feel him.

“Fine.” Buffy sighed. “But really, what is this? In the beginning, I thought you would just bite and go.”

“And here I thought girls liked to cuddle after.”

“After what?”

“Well, I had a good time. Blood, sex—sometimes it’s all mixed together, love.”

Buffy was silent for a moment. Then, “When we had sex, you wanted to bite me. Like really bite me.”

“Yeah.”

“So…does any blood, you know, do it, or is it really just me?”

“If it’s someone you want,” he said quietly. Then he smirked—she could feel it—and said, “Course, doesn’t hurt that you’re the Slayer, either. Slayer blood’s an aphrodisiac.”

“Oh my God, is that true?” she squeaked.

“I’m gonna say yes.”

Buffy couldn’t find a reply to that, and they fell into silence. Spike was still twisted so that his face was buried in her neck, and something about the whole situation was annoying her.

At first she thought it was some Slayer thing going off because there was a vampire close to her neck for so long. Which really made no sense, because he’d actually bitten her like three or four times.

But there was something unnerving about the way he had so enthusiastically settled in above her shoulder. And after all the talk about blood—honestly, it was like he liked her blood better than he liked her.

Oh God, I’m jealous of my own blood.

Buffy rolled her eyes at the thought. But she gently pushed him off and moved down, curling to him and resting her head on his chest.

“Pet?”

“If you wanna cuddle, cuddle with me, not my neck,” she finally said.

Spike said nothing, but his arms came up to encircle her.

“So why didn’t you?” she asked after a moment. “Bite me? Back then.”

“I didn’t wanna hurt you,” he said softly.

“But you want to hurt me now?”

“Stop puttin’ words in my mouth. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” she admitted. Then, “I would have let you, you know.”

“You let me now.”

“That’s different.”

“You’re right, love, it is different. You had no idea what you were doin’ back then, gettin’ involved with a vamp. So yeah, I didn’t bite you. And yeah, I wanted to.”

Buffy paused. “Did you mean what you said, about getting drunk over me?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? I mean, why did you?”

Spike was silent for a long moment before he spoke, as if collecting his words. Still, how he started surprised her.

“I didn’t wanna hurt you. And I could have, love, so quick.” His voice darkened. “It would’ve been easy, simple. I thought I would, whether I wanted to or not. And I didn’t want to. But I’d never…not hurt anyone before.”

Buffy frowned. “You don’t just mean sex bites.”

“I mean hurt you, full stop. There’s a reason vamps don’t rack up human friends.”

“Wesley—” she started.

“I saw him, what, once a month? Until you, anyway. And jobs are over quick, done. But lots of quality time, nice long-term relationships? It doesn’t work. Someone ends up on the menu. So I stayed away.”

“What changed?”

“The vamps in the alley,” he said. “You were so afraid. Terrified of what they’d do to you. Your heart was racin’ and you smelled so scared. I stopped ’em, of course. And you…you stopped being afraid the second you realized I was there. Before, I thought that I’d end up hurtin’ you, but right then I knew I wouldn’t, couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine makin’ you so afraid. Never wanted to hear you say ‘please’ like that cause of somethin’ I did to you. Couldn’t stand it if your frightened eyes were lookin’ at me. You felt safe with me, trusted me. Couldn’t lose that, couldn’t lose you.”

Spike paused and exhaled slowly. “And then I had you,” he whispered, his voice raw. “And it was perfect. And you were somethin’ new and different and bright—somethin’ I had to take care of. Somethin’ not to hurt. Somethin’ to hold. Somethin’ precious to keep.”

Buffy’s breath caught in her throat at his words. Precious to keep.

“And then you weren’t.” His voice hardened. “A day later, you were the Slayer. And everything that that meant. You were bloody untouchable.”

“The good kind of untouchable or the bad kind?”

“Both. You were everything that I thought I’d lost, and everything I should hate.”

“I was still me.”

“Yeah, figured that out.” He sighed. “But then—I thought it’d change you. You wouldn’t be my Buffy, you’d be the Slayer. Other Slayers, well, they were all business. Nothin’ but the fight, no room for anything else.

“I drank myself under the table. After a day or so, I sobered up enough to go the bar and drink some more. Then I thought if I saw you, the Slayer, I could stop wondering, stop wishing, and leave you and go on. So I followed you. But you were the same.” He said it with amazement. “And I didn’t know what to think. You know the rest.”

Buffy was speechless. She knew that Spike had fought his attraction to her after she had become the Slayer, but she’d had no idea until tonight of the devastation he’d felt when she was called. When she had been playing Slayer with Wesley those first days, Spike had been miserable and/or unconscious.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“I don’t know.”

Buffy almost wished she hadn’t been called. Then she could have had the attentions of his words. Even though she knew deep down that it wasn’t that simple, it was a nice dream.

“And how do you feel now?” she asked.

Spike’s hand stroked her back. “I don’t care that you’re the Slayer. Yeah, things aren’t the same, but it doesn’t matter anymore.”

Her breath paused a second time. Did that mean that he wanted her like he had, the way he talked about her before she was called?

“It’s still the same,” she said aloud.

“Yeah?” His tone was light, neutral.

“It’s all the same, if you want it to be. You could still hurt me, if you wanted to. It would still be easy.”

“And I still won’t.”

“You could still keep me safe.”

“I will.”

“You could still take care of me.”

“Precious,” he finished.

Spike pulled her closer and sighed into her hair. He held her to him with one arm, and his other hand came up to brush over her face. After a moment it trailed downward, slowly running up and down the length of her neck. His fingers ghosted over the small tears in her throat before rubbing a wide circle around them, careful not to touch the actual punctures.

“You were right,” she said quietly. “It does hurt every time. I mean, just a little, but it does.”

“Can’t help it, pet.”

“I know you can’t. I know you’re as careful as you can be.”

“Never had much practice at being careful,” he admitted.

The last thing Buffy wanted to do was think about the implications of that statement. But it was too late, her brain had already gone there. Of course Spike wouldn’t care how much pain he caused someone he was killing.

Her mind involuntarily flashed to what she couldn’t forget—seeing him kill. That was what had made her leave, what had turned her away from him during those days when he was crushed over her calling. That was what made his sweet words impossible.

She thought about telling him now—whispering how miserable her days had been, when she had been destroyed because of something he couldn’t understand.

But that was the thing, Spike didn’t understand. He had been satisfied with managing not to hurt her. He couldn’t grasp that he’d hurt her every time he killed someone. Oh, he knew she didn’t like it, but he failed to realize the depth of her despair at it. His first words to her in the alley were ‘I’m not gonna hurt you.’ It didn’t occur to him that seeing another person die had made her sick, not frightened.

Spike didn’t care. He didn’t care about anyone but her. Which was fantastically flattering and devastatingly disturbing.

Buffy swallowed.

“Buffy?” Spike moved against her, running his hand down her back. “What is it?”

“I—do you like my blood better since I’m the Slayer?”

He paused, sensing that she had been about to say something else before she hesitated. But he answered. “It’s still your blood.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I like Slayer blood,” he said flatly. “There’s nothin’ like it—the taste, the power.” He paused, continuing in a softer tone. “But I liked your blood, the bit of it I had before. The fact that they’re together now, that’s just a bonus.”

“What is it, about blood?”

“What?”

“What is it about my blood you like so much?”

“Are you serious?”

“Well, obviously vampire equals likes blood. So I know you like blood. Vampires eat blood. I mean, duh. But this is more than just blood, isn’t it? More than getting the Slayer part even. I mean—” She was rambling and she knew it. “Never mind.”

“Your blood’s delicious, pet. Of course I want to taste it, have it.”

“Forget it. I don’t even know what I mean.”

Spike said nothing, but shifted her so that she was lying on her back, her head resting on his shoulder and his arm wrapping around her body. His other hand lingered near her neck.

They fell into silence for several minutes.

Spike’s hand idly played with the collar of her shirt, sometimes tracing it back and forth, sometimes slowly tapping his fingertips over her exposed skin.

Then he flattened his palm against her chest, fingers splaying under the fabric of her shirt and slipping over the edges of her bra as he brought his hand directly over her heart.

“Your blood is you,” Spike whispered into her hair.

“What?” Whatever she had been expecting him to say, that wasn’t it.

“Your blood,” he said, “is you. I want you, and your blood is you.”

Buffy was silent as she repeated his words in her head.

He said them again. “I want you.” A pause. “And I get to taste you and take you. I hold you and I get all of you. You let me have you, have everything.”

He described it like sex.

Buffy had known before tonight that giving him her blood was something almost as intimate as letting him put himself inside her. It was different, but it was still giving herself to him.

“You want my body,” she ventured.

“Of course I do. But that’s not it. If I had you every night, I’d still want your blood.”

His voice was low and quiet, and while she had been able to feel it rumbling from his chest all evening, his words suddenly seemed to penetrate to her very core.

“When I drink your blood, I have every piece of you. You’re mine and nothing else. When I taste you, the world stops. You give me all of you, and nothing exists but you. I could drown in your essence. Blood is life, and you let me wrap myself in yours. That’s why I like your blood.”

Buffy felt herself melting. No one had ever said anything like that to her. Ever. Well obviously not the blood part, but nothing came close to touching the significance of his words, the raw sentiment in his voice.

Her heart was racing and she had no idea what to say.

“I could hold you afterward for hours. Keep you while you sleep. While you’re weak from what I’ve taken.”

His fingers moved against the skin of her chest. Buffy shivered.

“You can hold me,” she finally got out.

“Tonight.”

“Later. You could later. Other times. I like it when you hold me. I—I like you.”

He heard the falter in her voice.

“But it’s not enough, is it, pet?”

“Now it is.” Buffy blinked rapidly in the darkness and took a breath. “But it won’t be later. It’s not that simple.”

“It could be.”

“Could it?” she asked. Hoped. “This is nice and wonderful and—and the things you just said make me I don’t know what—” She swallowed. “But, neither of us are going to change, are we?”

Are you? she really asked.

“We could work somethin’ out.”

“There’s no working,” Buffy said, her voice wavering. “It’s yes or no. Either no, you’re never going to kill people again after this, or yes, you are. Which is it?”

Spike didn’t answer, and she knew the answer.

“Yes.”

He said it, and the moment that had already been breaking was shattered.

“I’m going to. I want to.”

“You want to.” Her voice was a hollow echo.

“This, now, is fine, but—”

“You don’t want to do it forever.”

“Can’t do it forever, love.”

“You haven’t killed anyone since you’ve been here, have you?”

“No.”

“When’s the last time you thought about it?”

“Last night.”

Buffy closed her eyes and felt a tear run down her cheek.

“Buffy…”

“Don’t. Not anymore. Not tonight.” She sniffed. “Hold me while you can.”

Spike obeyed, rolling onto his side to cradle her against his chest. He tucked her head under his chin and wrapped his arms around her, rocking her slowly. Buffy clutched at the fabric of his shirt, as if by seizing it she could capture something fleeting.