Chapter Two – She Said, She Said

*~*

Buffy had truthfully intended to patrol.  Her one disastrous punching bag encounter hardly satisfied her need to hit something, and her fists positively itched with desire to sink themselves into the squishy and demonic.  This was one of those times when she was forced to admit that she not only enjoyed, but needed the physical rush she received from fighting.  The existence of this darker part of herself, the part she always tried to hide away in order to embrace normalcy, was partly to blame for her feelings of hardness, of turning into stone, as she’d told Giles.  She hated knowing that, even as she fought for the light, darkness existed inside her that she not only had to live with, but suspected was actually a good part of what gave her strength as the Slayer.  What truly galled her, though, was that Spike knew all about it, called her on it, refused to let her deny it, no matter what words she formed to the contrary.

Of course he would get it, she mused, scanning the quiet graveyard as she wandered slowly amongst the headstones.  That vampire is way too perceptive for my own good.

Though her bones ached for a good fight, her mind kept straying to Spike.  She felt just distracted enough that she feared she’d be unable to maintain her usual vigilance.  All she needed was to get caught up in another argument with herself long enough to miss the arrival of an opportunistic creature of the night.  Thoughts of heading home crossed her mind, but she recalled with unsettling guilt the image of the beaten vampire she’d left behind in his crypt that afternoon.

With a resounding sigh, Buffy made a decision and headed toward town, hoping she could scrounge enough dollars to get what she needed.

*~*

Paper bag clutched protectively beneath her coat, Buffy approached the crypt with caution, all her senses wide open in case anything lingered nearby.  She detected nothing, but kept her guard up all the same as she reached the door, noting with some relief – and how strange was that ? – that the door remained tightly shut.  After a moment of indecision, Buffy chose to knock softly.  She waited, and when no answer came from within, she pushed it open.  The creek of its hinges echoed in the silence.

Moonlight touched unlit candles and cast bluish shadows over the room.  The sarcophagus where she’d left Spike was vacant, but the nearby trapdoor stood open.  Edging inside, Buffy closed the outer door and waited for her eyesight to adjust to the dimmer light filtering in through the crypt’s high, dirty windows.  The relative darkness revealed a muted glow flickering up from the lower level, and Buffy made her way cautiously across the crypt.

“Spike?” she called softly.  She heard a muffled moan as she reached the hole in the floor, and peered down into the opening.

Spike was sprawled face-down in an uncomfortable pile of twisted limbs on the cement block at the base of the ladder.  It looked as though he had fallen through the hole and simply remained where he landed.  Buffy felt a rush of alarm flash through her, and she quickly navigated the narrow stair.

“Spike?” she repeated as she crouched next to him, fingers feathering over his shoulder, unwilling to jolt him awake or inadvertently hurt him by touching too firmly.

Spike mumbled something unintelligible, then fell silent a moment before his whole body grew rigid with tension.

“Spike, it’s Buffy,” she whispered.

Spike’s right eye snapped open, the left one swollen so much his lashes barely twitched.  “Slayer?” he croaked, taking in an obvious breath through his nose and then grimacing in pain.

She should have realized his injuries had affected his sense of smell when he didn’t mark her right away that afternoon.  “It’s me,” she assured him.  “Do you think you can stand, if I help?”

Spike groaned and turned with visible effort onto his back.  “Mind closin’ the door first, love?  Meant to do it myself, but my legs had other ideas.”

“Why’d you come down?” Buffy asked, as she pulled the heavy slab to cover the hole and descended the ladder.

“Figured it better’n waitin’ round up there for hell bitch’s lackeys to show back up,” he answered tersely, clearly agitated over his helplessness and likely her witnessing of it.  He sighed then and she heard the pain behind it.  “I come down here, ‘f I need to lie low a while.”

Buffy stepped gingerly around the supine vampire, climbing down to stand on the dusty floor while a groaning Spike managed to sit, legs dangled over the block’s edge.  She could see the amount of energy required for him to maintain the position, and knew he hated showing even temporary weakness, especially in front of her.  Although some of the abrasions had faded, his fall from the ladder had most likely aggravated his internal injuries, and his arms trembled from holding himself up.

She realized she was staring at him and quickly shifted her gaze, though she felt the lingering presence of Spike’s appraising eye.

“Why are you here, Slayer?”

She looked back up to find him staring at her intently, and she realized that some of the tension she saw in his body stemmed from anxiety over her presence. 

Probably expects me to take back what I said before , Buffy thought, knowing with sudden, self-depreciating certainty that such a turnabout from herself would be neither unexpected nor unprecedented.

She sighed, unsure of whether to smile at him or affect a more familiar expression.  She settled on more or less neutral, though she hoped she managed to convey her lack of hostility.  “Let’s get you off that block, okay, then we’ll talk.”

Judging by the surprise on his face, he clearly hadn’t expected those words from her.  He warred with himself over his response; Buffy saw his features flit between guarded and hopeful, irritated and pleased.  After a short inner conflict, he tilted his head to the left, toward the wall beside them.

“Got a couch round the corner there,” he answered, now looking more or less resigned to the fact that he needed her help to get to it.

It took several attempts, multiple curses, and her hitting her forehead on the block before they finally succeeded in getting him down.  As soon as he tried to take his weight, Spike’s knees buckled and Buffy had to brace herself against the concrete to keep him upright.  With Buffy’s shoulder wedged firmly into his armpit and her arm around his waist, they limped and stumbled their way around the wall and into the open room. 

It seemed Spike had made some effort to tidy the crypt since her last disastrous visit, for all but one of the dusty coffins with their dustier contents that had previously littered the space were now stacked against the side wall.  An oversized, well-made wooden casket sat in the middle of the room, with a few tables, shelves, and boxes of knickknacks – clearly scavenged – scattered nearby in a semi-ordered cluster, as though Spike had not yet figured out where to put them.  Buffy could see that what she had originally thought only a small, blind alcove actually contained a rubble-filled opening back to the ladder, as well as a doorway into yet another room.

Spike nodded toward the opening and Buffy half dragged, half carried him around the obstacles and through the opening in the back wall.  The room was about half the size of the alcove and almost entirely blanketed in darkness.  The glow from the torch near the stairs lit only the doorway, but it was enough for Buffy to make out the shape of a couch in the darkest corner.  Upon reaching it, Spike let himself fall away from her and onto it, wincing and muttering something like bloody hell .

“I . . . I’ll be right back,” Buffy said, backing toward the door, wanting to give him a little dignity while he arranged himself more comfortably.

She hurried back through the alcove and around the corner to the ladder, retrieving the paper bag from where she’d left it on the ground near the block.  She leaned back against the concrete for a moment, taking in a breath and steadying her nerves before heading back to Spike.  Not for the first time, she questioned her decision to come back here tonight, though the thought of him lying helpless, when anything could just wander in and take advantage, made her thankful that she had.  Showing concern for Spike’s wellbeing still felt foreign, but it was the least he deserved after everything he had gone through today.  That knowledge didn’t make it any easier, though, and in and of itself, it wouldn’t help her convince him of her good intentions.  That part was entirely up to her.

Buffy took down the torch from its place on the wall, reminding her of the night she’d first visited the lower level of Spike’s crypt.  The archway to the side passage where he had chained her stood empty, and the shrine of drawings, photographs, and clothing had fortunately disappeared.  She feared her resolve might have fled had she been forced to look at that reminder of the obsessive side of Spike’s feelings for her.  While she grudgingly admitted to herself that he did love her, things like that and the robot served as reminders that despite his changes, he still didn’t always understand the boundaries between appropriate and everything else on the other side of that shaky line.

When she returned to the small room, Spike sat with his back against the arm of the couch and his legs stretched across the cushions.  He leaned with clear exhaustion against the couch’s back, and watched her with a guarded expression as she touched the flame to the unlit torch on the wall nearest the couch, and then placed hers into the empty sconce by the doorway. His position left a small open space at one end of the couch, and she sat there, feeling awkward.  The tension in the room was obvious and Spike’s searching gaze oscillated rapidly between her face and the paper bag she held on her lap. 

“I uh . . . brought you some blood,” Buffy explained, tilting the bag forward so that he could peek at its contents.  “It’s just pig, but I thought you might need it.”

She could not read Spike’s expression, though she’d caught the brief flicker of surprise following her announcement of the bag’s contents.  His eye focused intently on the bag, but his face remained impassive.

“Have you eaten?”

Spike jerked his head back and looked at her as though only just realizing she was there.  The almost wild look in his eye faded immediately into recognition, giving the impression that he’d suddenly come out of a trance.  “Just what I had upstairs.  Wasn’t much.”

His gaze drifted immediately back to the bag and his fingers clenched and unclenched themselves against his jeans.  He was clearly starving.  What small amount of blood he’d consumed to this point hadn’t been enough to sate his hunger, more potent than usual due to the severity of his injuries.

Buffy reached into the sack and pulled out a plastic bag of blood, reaching across the couch to hand it to him.  With trembling fingers, Spike eagerly took it as his face shifted.  With a feral growl, he buried is fangs and his whole face into it, rooting like an infant in one instant, shaking and pulling at it like an animal the next.  He swallowed great, greedy mouthfuls, neither noticing nor caring that the excess dripped from the corners of his mouth and ran down his neck.

Buffy watched with a mixture of fascination and disgust, at once strangely intrigued and instinctually appalled.  She had seen Spike feeding before, from bags, bottles, and mugs, but never with the full, vampiric intensity he now displayed.  It spoke to both how hungry he was and how good he had become at controlling his instincts.  Chip or not, Buffy knew with certainty that any other vampire in this state of hunger would have braved the migraine and gone for her neck, tearing into it with the same ferocity as Spike showed devouring the bagged blood, or frying his brain in the attempt.

Spike quickly drained the bag, dropping it to the floor and wiping his face with the bottom of his ruined shirt.  He looked at her apologetically, an expression made more potent for the fact that it appeared on his demonic face, but took the second bag from her without complaint.  The immediacy of his hunger staved, he held it a moment, expression shifting toward curiosity.  “It’s warm?”

“I asked them to heat it there,” Buffy answered, mouth turning up in a tentative smile.  “Warm’s better, right?  The butcher didn’t even bat an eye, but I did catch him checking for my reflection.”

Spike’s mouth twitched with humour, though she saw his lingering uncertainty.  It wasn’t enough to make him question her generosity yet, though, and he calmly pierced the film of the second bag and drank.  He now showed far more restraint, sucking slowly but eagerly at the punctures without the violent, predatory motions, and by the time he finished, his hands no longer trembled and his face had returned to its human form.  He leaned back against the couch, meeting her eye quizzically.

Obviously, he wanted to know the reasons behind her uncharacteristic compassion, but Buffy didn’t know how exactly to explain it.  She could hardly just open her mouth and blurt out everything she’d been thinking since that afternoon, and she hadn’t thought far enough ahead to realize that he’d want an explanation.  She returned his look uncertainly, and this seemed to ease some of Spike’s wariness. 

“You’d be surprised,” Spike remarked, breaking the silence, “how many of us patronize that butcher.”

Small talk, Buffy thought with some relief, was something she could handle.  “More chip-heads out there?”

He scowled subtly at that, but let the slight go.  “Just me, as far as I know,” he answered.  “But every vampire has a night where food’s scarce and fresh pig’s better ‘n goin’ hungry.”

Buffy raised a sceptical eyebrow.  “And they couldn’t just eat the butcher?”

Spike chuckled at this.  “That’s been known to happen.”

“I have more, if you need it,” she offered, setting the bag on the floor below the couch.

Spike looked pointedly at the bag and back at her, the humour gone from his face and replaced with that hardened mask she’d come to realize represented his most guarded expression.  Whatever he was thinking or feeling, the pursed lips and slightly jutted jaw offered no clues and managed to appear menacing all at once.  “Yeah, about that . . .”

She thought she should feel offended that he would automatically question her motives, but found she could not.  Her treatment of Spike in the recent past offered him no reasons at all to trust her without suspect.  That afternoon, as she’d tried to express her gratitude for what he had done, she’d still been cold and businesslike, aside from the chaste kiss she’d given him.  How many times had she roughed him up, knowing that he could take it but was unable to fight back?  She didn’t make a practice of physically lashing out at harmless creatures, but while Spike could hit demons, he was harmless, in the physical sense, against her.  She had simply considered it the best way of dealing with Spike – violence was something he knew – never thinking that she might get better results appealing to other aspects of the vampire’s personality.

Aspects she hadn’t let herself recognize until tonight.

Intelligence sparkled behind those blue eyes of his, not just the rapacious hunger or wanton destructiveness she usually noted in vampires.  Certainly he glinted with that feral look at times, but never did Spike appear purely an animal.  Perhaps that was a result of existing for over a century or perhaps Spike really was that unique.  Whatever the reason for it, she could not deny it any more. 

“I wanted to thank you,” she answered, tentatively, “for today.  For what you did.”

He maintained the expression, what Buffy could only define as his Spike-face. “Already did that.”

Buffy felt her sense of defensiveness rising in the face of his continued standoffishness, and she crossed her arms over her chest.  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly nice about it.”

Spike leaned forward slightly, unable to fully suppress the grimace of pain in response to his movements.  “Just got done revelling in the afterglow of rompin’ with the robot,” he retorted. “Didn’t expect nice.  Sure didn’t expect a return visit with offerings of warm blood.”

A stab of fury tore through her and she glared down the couch at him.  “God, are you trying to make me change my mind?” 

Buffy knew he’d said it in a blatant attempt to goad her into anger, likely hoping that she’d lose patience in whatever game she was playing and get to the real reason behind her visit.  Nevertheless, Spike had the ability to get under her skin, to crack the surface of her resolve and poke at everything she tried to conceal like no other, and if he wanted her mad, he’d certainly get it.  Even though she knew it, she could no more prevent her response than he could start his heart beating.  “Why do I bother?”

He cocked his head to the side in a way that seemed both curious and filled with mockery.  “Why do you?”

She had no answer for that, at least not one she was ready to give him, and so narrowed her eyes and set her jaw, doing her best to maintain the expression as she stared at the beaten but determined face of the vampire at the other end of the couch.

When he spoke, his voice was low, grave, but thick with emotion he couldn’t bury despite the pointed nature of his words.  “If you’re here outta pity, I don’ want it,” he spat.  “Thanks for the snack but you can take your perky li’l hide and get gone.”

Buffy jumped to her feet so quickly she didn’t even recall moving, and was standing in front of Spike, gripping the tattered remnants of his t-shirt in her fists, face inches away from his.  “I’m not here out of pity, you jerk, I’m here because I wanted to help—”

“Don’ need—”

“No, you don’t, but I don’t know, maybe you might want it?”  She let go of his shirt with a violent opening of her hands, resisting the urge to shove him backward.  “Lord knows you deserve it.”

Buffy stood back and they stared hard at each other, his face unreadable, hers brimming with indignation.

Slowly, Spike’s facial mask fell, and one corner of his mouth curled in snide humour.  “Who are you, and what have you done with the Slayer?”

Buffy tossed her arms in the air and turned away from him, biting back a number of responses likely to lead to nowhere but more of this defensive posturing.  “God, you’re an idiot, you know that?” she growled, rounding on him again.  “I’m here because I wanna be.  I want you to know how much it meant to me what you did today a-and I wanted to make sure you were okay.” 

The last slipped out with far more candour than she was accustomed to using with Spike, leaving him clearly taken aback by her forwardness in admitting her concern for him.  The stunned expression that had replaced the sarcasm shortly faded into wariness.

“Trust me,” she said, sinking back down to her place on the couch, “it’s as weird for me as it is for you.”

If Spike had truly felt any measure of the hostility he’d expressed, his countenance showed no signs of it now.  He appeared contemplative, and regarded her in quiet speculation.  “And on that, we agree,” he decided at last.  “What gives, then?”

He was looking at her expectantly, and she searched his face for a moment, trying to read him.  She couldn’t quite place his expression, except to say that it seemed to hold a certain degree of guarded anticipation, as though he expected her coming words would either make his day, or ruin it entirely.

“What you did today,” Buffy began, trying to ignore the fluttering nervousness rising in her chest.  “Spike, you let her torture you!  You had the answer she wanted and you let her do . . . this . . . to you.”  She gestured vaguely in the direction of his battered face.  “You didn’t have to do it, but you did, and . . . it’s . . . incredible.  I’ve spent all evening trying to get my head around it.”

Buffy almost didn’t hear him answer.  Spike dropped his head and appeared to be watching his fingers pick at his chipped black nail polish.  When the words sounded, they came on a whisper of breath.  “Had to.”

“What?”

“I had to,” he repeated, keeping his head down, intently focused on the motions of his hands.  “I meant it, what I said before.  Couldn’t do that to you.”

When he looked back up at her, the depth of the emotion radiating from him overwhelmed her.  Intense, painful, vibrant feeling poured out to her from his one open eye, and from the honest, desperate expression on his broken face.  All pretence had vanished, and it was just Spike, open and vulnerable and laying his heart out before her. 

“I know it don’t matter much to you, Slayer, but I love you,” he continued, and this time the confession didn’t prompt her to turn away.  “’M fond of the Niblet, too, an’ whether you want me or not, I don’t hurt my women.  Not ever.”

Buffy recalled very few instances during the course of her life where she could say with any honesty that time actually stopped.  The most recent occurrence marked the singular most devastating moment of her existence, when her mother’s lifeless body lay before her and the world had come to a crashing halt.  Other occasions, no less significant, had likewise defied the laws of nature – the moment she truly understood the meaning of her calling, the day her father walked out of their home and away from her life, and a single, blissful, stolen moment during that fateful, rain-soaked night when innocence ceased to exist.

Spike’s words weren’t revolutionary; he had not divulged anything she had not already known.  Yet undeniably, something, some combination of timing, of tone, or her own newly acquired acceptance, rendered time and motion completely irrelevant.  Buffy’s stomach lurched, then dropped away altogether into weightlessness, and she sat, frozen, gaping with unbridled astonishment.  When her heart started beating again, it pulsed loudly, insistently in her ears, whispering its vehement demand for acknowledgement of the significance of the moment.  Time didn’t stop for just anything; what transpired in that instant may well have changed the world.

A beat passed and time resumed, and she struggled to form a coherent word.  After several arrested attempts, she managed an uncertain, “I . . .”

Spike closed off in a flash, clearly misreading the half-witted expression signifying her disorientation.  “Just . . . don’t,” he grumbled, looking down again at his hands.  “I know you don’t believe it’s real, just do us a favour and don’t rub it in.”

“But—”

“I mean it, Slayer.  If you—”

“I believe you.”

Buffy wondered if time stopped for Spike the way it had for her.  His fumbling hands stilled, chest froze mid-breath, and he slowly, warily raised his head to look at her.  His voice trembled as he whispered, “What did you say?”

Buffy tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry.  Her heart continued to pound and her hands trembled with nervousness at giving form to the notion that her one-time enemy, a soulless vampire, truly loved her.  “That you . . . love me.  I believe you.”

For a moment, he remained still and silent.  Then the glistening of hope in his eye intensified into that of unshed tears, and he blinked, ducked his head, and sucked in a deep, tremulous breath.  “Say . . . say that again.”

Buffy rose from her seat on shaking legs, and knelt down in front of him.  “I believe you, Spike,” she whispered, looking up into his uncertain face.  “I believe that you love me.  After what you did, everything you’re doing, how could I not?”

The silence stretched on while he took this in, staring at her with unabashed wonder.  He reached out a hand, timidly, and brushed back a lock of her hair, seemingly more surprised when she let him.  One corner of his bloodied mouth turned up into a ghost of a smile so tender Buffy wondered how she could ever have denied him this simple truth.

“Can . . . another bag, please?” 

She heard his struggle to keep his tone even, and stepped back to give him time to collect himself.  He nodded his thanks to her when she passed him another bag of blood, now cooled to room temperature, and bit into the plastic with his blunt teeth, maintaining his human visage.  Buffy returned to her seat and watched him surreptitiously as he drank, more than once meeting his eye over the curve of the bag.

When he finished, he set the empty plastic onto the growing pile on the ground beside him, and smiled subtly.  “Don’t know what to say to that,” he admitted.

Buffy couldn’t help grinning.  “Finally, I found a way to shut you up.”

Laughter flowed between them and it was easy and natural.

“Couldn’t replace you, you know,” Spike remarked, shifting his legs, bending one and draping the other over the edge of the couch.

Buffy took advantage of the additional room, and swivelled to face him, mirroring his pose.  “Hmm?”

“The bot,” he elaborated, mouth twisting hesitantly.  “Wanted to make it you , not just for . . . the other thing.  But it couldn’t be.  Figured that out right quick.”

Buffy tipped her head in acknowledgement.  She felt better with that affirmation, not only that he hadn’t wanted the robot just for sex, but that he realized how truly artificial it had been.

“It’s weird thinking about . . . what I’m trying hard not to think about,” she confessed.  “You know it was wrong, right?”

“Yeh, I know.”  If possible, he looked even more penitent, glancing at her only briefly before tipping his head back and scowling faintly at the cluster of roots above him.  He didn’t have to add that he hadn’t wanted her to find out about it.   “Thought it’d be the closest I’d get to the real thing.”

Buffy couldn’t deny him that rationale, no matter how wrong his actions had been, and so said nothing.  The silence that followed seemed headed toward awkwardness, until Spike took a renewed interest in the bag on the floor. 

“What else you got in there?”

Buffy followed his eyes and shrugged.  “More blood.  Stuff to clean your wounds.”

Spike chuckled quietly at that and replied, softly, “Vampire, love.  A bitta grit won’t kill me.”

“No,” she agreed, patiently, “but it’s gonna feel better clean.”

Buffy knew she was in trouble the moment his eyebrows lifted and his lip curled in that dangerously alluring grin.  “Maybe I like it dirty.”

Oh he most assuredly did, and damn him for the sudden heat in the room.  That voice coupled with that smirk should be outlawed, if solely for the completely unwarranted flush of desire currently coursing through her.  Well, she relented, perhaps not so much unwarranted as unsettling, because while Spike had certainly mastered the art of innuendo, Buffy wasn’t supposed to appreciate it.

“Oh, ew,” she protested, but it lacked conviction and the half-hearted attempt at a scowl ended with the corner of her mouth lifting in acknowledgement of her having walked head-on into it.

Spike replied with a widening leer that now included one suggestively curled tongue, and to her horror, Buffy felt her cheeks darken treacherously.  She looked away from Spike to the relative safety of the bag, not missing the huff of his delighted chuckle. 

“Will you let me clean you up or not?”  The shortness of her tone only betrayed her fluster, but for once the vampire had the good sense to ignore it.

Spike pivoted until both legs draped over the edge of the couch and pulled his tattered shirt over his head.  “’M all yours, Florence .”

Buffy’s next breath caught in her throat as she took in the extent of Spike’s injuries.  Livid bruising wrapped wicked fingers around his sides, hinting at more extensive contusions to his back.  A long knife wound marred the left side of his chest and a grisly puncture mark – she did not want to know what made it – puckered the flesh on the right.  More bruises ringed the wounds and littered his abdomen, and the mixture of purple and red colouring to his right clavicle suggested it might have been broken.  She suspected more than one of his ribs were, too, and his leg bore sufficient injury to render it incapable of bearing his weight.

It hurt just looking at him, except, with their little exchange not minutes old, it also really didn’t in a way that set her heart beating just a tiny bit faster.  Beneath the carnage, Spike-without-shirt quickly added up to Buffy threatening to drool on hers, and try as she might to focus solely on his wounds, Buffy could not stop herself from noticing and admiring his well-sculpted torso.  Not a chance in hell.

She had always taken note of Spike’s form with the appreciative eye of another whose wellbeing counted heavily upon physical fitness.  Xander’s narrative of compact but well-muscled described aptly the vampire’s physique.  Spike wasn’t a large man by any means, but what he lacked in stature he more than made up for in personality, strength and attitude. 

He looked smaller now, with the latter two by the wayside, but also, beautiful in a way she’d never truly considered.  Attraction to Spike was not something she generally let herself focus on, but in the back of her mind swam the constant knowledge that for all he was technically her enemy, Spike possessed a magnetic attractiveness that could not be denied.  It was only partly based on looks.  The slayer in her was attracted to his strength, his tenacity, his passion for what he called the dance every bit as much as the woman in her appreciated his physical attributes.  After everything else she’d admitted to herself tonight, Buffy found that the knowledge that she was indeed attracted to Spike settled in with little or no resistance.  Not that she would let him know that.

The glint in his eye told her, however, that she’d likely given away too much with whatever expression currently occupied her face, and she realized that she had actually been staring.  She resisted the sudden urge to check her chin for drool.

“Um, that looks painful,” she muttered lamely, quickly averting her eyes.

The warmth of his answering chuckle did nothing to slow her heart.  “Doesn’t tickle,” he drawled, and when she glanced back at him, his whole face was alight with mirth, despite the butchery.

Buffy reached for the bag and scooted over next to Spike, aware more than ever of his proximity.  That awareness had shifted from the basic Slayer/vampire tingle into something less duty-bound and more physically tingly, and Buffy wondered when exactly this had happened.  Now conscious of it, she realized it wasn’t something new at all.

Turning her focus once again to his wounds, though the other simmered in the back of her mind, Buffy rummaged through the bag for the first-aid supplies she had purchased before her stop at the butcher’s.  She bought only saline for cleaning, knowing even without Spike’s reminder the uselessness of more expensive antiseptics.  She poured the salty liquid into the provided bowl and opened the package of gauze squares into it.  Spike took the bowl, setting it on his thighs with a steadying hand wrapped around it.

“Lean back,” she instructed, and Spike complied, his back meeting the couch while he tipped his face up, both eyes closed, a subtle smile lingering on his lips.

Buffy hesitated a moment, studying his face, knowing how much the idea of her tending his injuries appealed to him.  Her desire to do so should have felt wrong, but it didn’t.  Compassion for her one-time enemy topped the list of emotions she felt as she gently started cleansing his wounds, and Spike sighed softly, relaxing into the couch and taking on an air of contentment.   

Buffy was conscious, as she worked, of the amount of physical contact necessitated by her task.  Both knees nestled snugly against his leg, and her forearm rested alongside the sculpted muscles of his upper arm, fingers splayed over his shoulder blade.  Her breast brushed against his chest each time she reached to grab a fresh piece of gauze from the bowl and straightened to apply it to his face, and her rebellious thumb was actually making purposeful circles into the smooth skin over his scapula.  Buffy thought it likely that Spike was even more aware of it than she; each time she moved, Spike gripped the bowl tighter and inhaled, holding unneeded breath in a clearly anticipatory way.  He tried to be subtle about the squirming of his hips as he attempted to ease the strain of his jeans over his obvious erection, just as he struggled not to groan when her hand dipped into the bowl resting against it.  She should mind that particular portion of his reaction, but she found she could not.  At one time, she would have found the idea of affecting him thus cause for immediate disgust, but if nothing else, her relationship with Riley had given her an insight into her own sexuality.  Nothing about Spike’s reaction came from piggish maleness; it was all about her, and she knew it, and the thought was purely exhilarating.  When he dared allow his hand to rest on her knee, Buffy did not protest. 

The whole situation did nothing to alleviate the warmth in her chest or the flush of her cheeks started by the relatively tame verbal exchange earlier.  It seemed that the moment she allowed her brain to accept her attraction to Spike, her body took the opportunity and ran wild with it, leaving her heart pounding and her stomach fluttering madly.  Some vestigial part of Buffy wanted to want to ignore the effect Spike was having on her, to want to see him as a disgusting monster, to want to pretend that she and Spike weren’t both becoming increasingly aroused with each swipe of the gauze and that he didn’t know it.  The truth remained, though, that once her perceptions of Spike altered, everything changed, and the disgusting monster fell away in favour of the brave, loyal man whose devotion to her and her sister resulted in this brutal beating.  The same man who was now making her feel more feminine, more powerful than she had ever felt before.  The sense of disgust over sharing such a moment with Spike never came. 

Spike’s fingers curled into her leg and his smile broadened, but he refrained from speaking in favour of just enjoying the moment.  It wasn’t every day, Buffy reasoned, he had a hot and not-so-bothered-about-it Slayer willingly playing Nightingale.

But things were becoming fairly intense, incongruously to the relatively innocuous contact between them, and she needed to break the silence in order to bring herself down a bit.  “So here’s the thing,” Buffy began, sounding far huskier than she wanted to consider. 

Spike’s eye fluttered open at the sound of her voice and focused on her as she continued speaking.

“I’ve been kinda, no, not kind of, more like very, or-or something bigger than very,” she stammered, sitting back a bit to swab at his chest wounds, though leaving her knees in contact.  “What’s bigger than very?”

His face shone with amusement.  “Incredibly?” he suggested, hissing softly when she inadvertently re-opened his knife wound.  “Immensely, enormously, or—”

“Enormously, that’ll work,” Buffy decided.  “Enormously blind.”

She tried to ignore the way his curl-lipped smile set her heart fluttering and the fingers on her thigh, now moving in an obvious caress, spread a trail of heat straight to her core.  “Your eyes were workin’ a few minutes ago,” Spike teased.

His voice rumbled seductively beneath her hand on his chest and reverberated through the subterranean room.  Buffy had been more blind than she realized not to have noticed before what a thoroughly and intensely sexual creature Spike was.  He’d turned on the charm the moment she’d given him an opening and knew very well what he was doing to her.

“I’m trying to tell you something,” she protested, though she sounded less than convincing in her complaint.

Spike’s fingers stilled but he kept his hand on her leg, and despite his lack of body heat, her skin beneath his palm burned hotter than her reddened cheeks.

“This, today, isn’t the first thing you’ve done, but it’s what made me open my eyes,” Buffy explained, speaking quickly, staring at his hand to avoid the smouldering look in his eye.  “You . . . I see how you’re trying, a-and I can’t, I won’t ignore it anymore.”

She glanced up and saw the smoulder replaced by something intense but unnameable that more than adequately conveyed how much her words touched him.  For a moment, Buffy thought he might say something, but he settled for bobbing his head and resuming the gentle circles on her leg.  Spike continued to watch her as Buffy drew her eyes away to tend his wounds, and she found this affectionate scrutiny far headier than his more obvious seductive efforts.

When she finished, their eyes met again and they shared a smile.

“Thanks, love,” Spike said tenderly, setting the bowl on the floor and then reaching to brush her cheek with the backs of his fingers.  A shiver ran through her in response, and Spike took in a deep breath, wincing notably.

“If it hurts, why are you breathing?”

“Habit,” he answered, now trailing his fingers slowly down her arm.  “Strong emotion or . . . other things . . . and I can’t help it.”  He paused, glanced down quickly and then looked back up.  “That meant a lot to me.”

They looked at each other for a long moment, Buffy’s breath coming heavier than usual in response to his persistent but gentle caresses and the potency of his emotions.  The intensity was building again and oh how easy it would be to just give in to it, give in to him .  He was barely touching her, and nowhere more intimate than her arm and clothed thigh, and already her pulse was racing fast enough for her heart to burst through her ribcage.  Each light touch sent slivers of lightening through her body, stoking the fire blooming low in her belly, and the achingly wet flesh at the apex of her thighs pulsed in time to her raging heart.  The ease with which she had reached this point with him surprised her, and her thoughts and feelings about it were confused enough that she knew she had to slow down before she lost her head completely.  Spike’s actions were as much, maybe more, based in emotion as they were in lust, and impulsiveness on her part may well lead to heartache for him. 

“Can you . . . not do that?” she whispered, and cringed when she saw the hurt creep into his face.  “No . . . it’s just . . . too fast, okay?”

The implication that an acceptable speed existed wiped away the wounded look, and he regarded her adoringly even as he rather grudgingly pulled his hands away from her.

She sighed her relief, though the loss of his hands did nothing to dampen her keyed-up state.  “Do you want more blood?”

The look of hunger in Spike’s eye had very little to do with blood, and she knew it, but he nodded anyway.  “Please.”

Buffy shifted her position to sit beside him, placing the length of her leg in contact with his, loath at this point to sever all physical connection.  She passed him the last of the blood and settled back into the couch while he bit into it, her breath as loud in her ears as the steady thumping of her heart.  This fourth bag Spike consumed leisurely, watching her with renewed contemplativeness.  Buffy remained acutely aware of his intent study, and attempted to search inside herself for the source of her sudden and powerful response to him.  It wasn’t entirely physical, of that she was certain, but like everything else tonight, her recognition of it was too new to have sussed out all the details.  The fact that her heart pounded more forcefully during his most emotional moments indicated some degree of emotional involvement from herself, but she had only begun to scratch the surface of its discovery.

When Spike finished, he let his eyes fall shut and leaned back into the couch, chest rising and falling with unneeded but apparently involuntary breaths.  He appeared to settle in for an extended rest, and Buffy turned her head to watch him.  Despite the hideously wounded face, he appeared peaceful, almost angelic and somehow younger in repose; so completely different from the Spike he showed the world.

Stripped of the defensiveness, the cocky bluster, the Big Bad attitude, the man beneath showed through with startling clarity.  Much of the way Spike carried himself was in effort to protect this surprisingly vulnerable side that he so rarely allowed to surface.  She had seen glimpses of it in the past.  The night he chained her up and professed his love to her he had released that part of him, but she had been too mortified, too furious, to recognize it for anything other than the twisted manifestation of a soulless creature’s unfortunate obsession.

That part of him peeked out night he came to her in search of a truce, to stop Angel from destroying the world and to win back the affections of his lover.  That hint of vulnerability exposed, and Buffy had pounced on it immediately.  It had shown in those few, desperate minutes he waited outside, starved and smoking, for Giles to invite him inside after the chip.  It was there the night at the Bronze, when he’d attempted to kiss her, and once again she had seen his vulnerability and used it to her advantage.  He had perfected the bravado, that tough-guy persona, as a safeguard, for his own self-preservation.  To let this secret part of him out meant showcasing what, to the demon world, amounted to the ultimate weakness.

She could no longer ignore that this side of Spike existed.  For all he was technically evil, he possessed a sense of honour, of morals, to which he held firm.  Perhaps they often differed significantly from the sort of morals considered, well, moral , but something inside her whispered that it mattered more that he had them in the first place.  Buffy had learned today that he was also fiercely loyal.  His devotion to Drusilla showcased that, in retrospect, as much as his actions of this afternoon.

She would never trust just any vampire to keep his word, whether or not the deal involved large sums of money.  Chances were she’d find herself double-crossed, dead, and out a couple hundred dollars.  While one or two moments of less-than-stellar word-keeping on Spike’s part flashed in her memory, she had yet to end up dead or even truly double-crossed.  Yeah, his stunt with the doctor saw Riley’s life in danger, but really, she should not have tried to have Spike help her for Riley’s sake – his part in Spike’s chipping notwithstanding – and she hadn’t exactly been encouraging with attitude or the rewards, either.

He had kept his word during their truce to stop Acathla – took Angel out of the fight while she handled the minions and kept Drusilla distracted.  He had not actually promised never to return to Sunnydale.  Spike had watched over Dawn and her mother, with the words of recognition of his strength and her need for it his only payment.  He patrolled the graveyards as faithfully as she, and while logically he did so to satisfy his innate need for violence as well as his more unsettling urges to stalk her, more than once she came across the remnants of something big and ugly and very recently dead and felt a rush of gratitude that she hadn’t had to fight it herself.  And then, defying everything he was supposed to be, everything she thought he was, Spike had looked a hellgod in the face while she tortured his body and refused to reveal a secret that, if spoken, meant certain death to someone other than himself.  He had chosen his own suffering over the suffering of another.  Another that wasn’t even her.   That was huge.

There was something inherently different about Spike.  The realization was not new, but her recognition of it was profound.  Perhaps it had something to do with age, for most of the vampires she encountered were fledglings, or those less than two decades old.  Her experiences with master vampires was limited to a handful, and even that selection biased itself with a rather homogenous sampling, for five of them belonged to the same ancient line.  The differences between elder vampires and younger existed, for to live as long as they had required certain strengths and intelligence lacking in many vampires – and the stupid-enough-to-linger-alone-at-night humans from which they were sired.

Of those masters, however, only Spike – discounting, of course, the anomaly represented by soulful Angel – had ever done anything not geared toward some personal gain.  After more than a year of living with the chip in his head, Spike had adapted, learned to survive on his own.  He did not need to remain in her good graces in order to maintain his existence, and yet he continued to help her out, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes in small ways she hadn’t even consciously recognized. 

Despite the odds, completely contrary to everything she’d ever been taught about the nature of vampires, Spike was actively trying to be good.  At present, his feelings for Buffy provided the impetus for this shifting of character.  Certainly, much of what he had done and not done related to his attempts to earn her attention, possibly her respect, likely her trust; the amazing part was that he was trying at all.

Everything pointed toward the glaring truth that at the heart of Spike was a man.  A man unlike most, perhaps, with his demon companion constantly whispering sweet nasties in his ear, but a man.  She saw that man clearly, her denial over his existence crumbled to dust in the face of evidence she could no longer ignore.  She saw a vampire struggling against everything he was supposed to be, to become something else.  She saw the creature that by destiny represented her mortal enemy fighting by her side in her endless battle against evil.

Spike wanted to be good, wanted to do good, even though it warred with his instincts.  She saw the conflict, the reluctance at giving up the lifestyle lived over twelve decades for something so foreign, so far outside of his realm, and the simultaneous struggle toward embracing this new path, fraught with sunlight and crosses and sharp, pointed wood.  Today, Spike tried to be good for her , but she saw, saw so clearly she wondered if this new view of him was actually something more prophetic, that someday, someday soon, Spike would strive to be good for himself.

In the face of everything she had realized tonight, the fact that her vehement rejection of the notion that Spike was in love with her had faded into nothingness failed to shock her.  Neither did she doubt the veracity of his feelings.  He did not love her in some twisted, vampiric parody of human emotion.  This love was real and honest and immense.  With his usual guards stripped away, this simple truth radiated from him with brilliant intensity, and rang powerfully in her heart.  And for the first time, this knowledge was not cause for upset or disgust.  That he was capable of such real emotions – where other vampires certainly were not – only bolstered her revelation that Spike was unique . . . special . . . one of a kind.  And he was hers.

Gobsmacked , Buffy figured, was the best way to describe how that stray thought left her feeling after it rocketed its way through her consciousness.  While she undoubtedly owned his heart, however unintentionally on her part, thinking of Spike in the possessive sense was something to which she was completely unaccustomed.  And yet, in a way, he was hers.  Her greatest adversary, her resident pain-in-the-ass, her strongest fighter, and at one time, her only option.  Spike suddenly felt more hers than Angel ever was, and the implications of this threatened to knock her universe right off its axis.

Looking into the endless blue depths of his one visible eye, Buffy saw the possibilities, the potential, that someday this vampire – this man – could, would, coexist with her in an entirely different way.  Already he had managed to tumble down some of her own walls, revealing an emotional connection she hadn’t known existed, mingled somewhere within immediate, overwhelming desire that had, if she were honest with herself, simmered just below the surface for a very long time.  With the world around her spiralling out of control, she didn’t think she could take the time to explore this potential, even if she wanted to.  Something inside her whispered that she did want to find out if Spike could live up to everything she suddenly saw when she looked at him.

Because she did see it, that potential, a potential for greatness beyond anything she could fathom, and while it frightened her, it also thrilled her and filled her heart with an inexplicable sense of pride.  While she didn’t understand it, she knew with certainty that she was proud of him, for everything he was trying to be.

She did not love Spike, but knew that if something happened to him, she would mourn him.  This feeling wasn’t new, either.  Had Glory killed him and she never learned that Spike had refused to talk, or if she’d been forced to dust him herself, she would have felt his loss deeply.  Her world just would not be as interesting without Spike in it.  At times, her polar opposite, at others so startlingly complementary, he fit into her existence in such a unique and irreplaceable way that having him gone from the world would leave a gaping hole that no other could hope to fill.  When he had become this, Buffy didn’t know, but could tell it wasn’t a new state of being.  Likely this odd entanglement had grown upon them slowly, below the radar, outside the recognition of either of them.  Perhaps, she pondered, it had been there all along.

How many times had they failed to kill each other?  Were those failures the result of being so evenly matched, or did it involve something more karmic?  Spike was the greatest adversary she had ever faced – greatest, because everyone else she had gone up against, she had beaten, but not Spike.  He had won as many small battles as she, but neither one had yet bested the other.  Spike gave it as good as he got, whether physically or verbally, and she mourned the loss of his ability to fight with her in the physical sense, despite the obvious benefits.  But so long as he existed, he remained to fill that part of her she had only just discovered.  While she would have no shortage of opponents if Spike became dust, she’d certainly never find another like him.  Likewise, she understood intuitively that long after she left this world, no matter how many slayers he faced – assuming, of course, that he managed to lose that chip – none of them would ever represent to him what she did.

So no, she did not love him.  But she respected him, trusted him, and with everything she had come to realize tonight, she could look upon the man behind the rough exterior and consider him a friend.  The potential for more-than-friend hovered tantalisingly in front of her; part of her was pretty certain she’d already grabbed onto it, and that leap, while initially terrifying, buzzed with potentiality.  Her feelings for Spike were changing and her acknowledgement of it failed to register as shameful or disconcerting.  The possibility that someday she would look at him and realize that she returned the feelings he held for her no longer seemed to linger solely in Spike’s imagination.  Her body tingled with anticipation, excitement, as though this one thought amongst millions was the first step in a long, arduous, epic journey, one that would lead her in directions unforeseeable, the final destination a place of untold greatness.

This shifting of paradigms, while so clear to her now, would grow murky and muddled again come morning.  With daylight came doubt, denial, and the opinions of those yet to make the shift in thinking that brought her to this place.  Buffy stood on the cusp of accepting that which her entire being was meant to reject, and that sort of devastating change was simply too much to handle all at once.  Right now, she could almost make that leap of faith, could nearly throw everything away and take that chance, but reality, common sense, and duty held her back.  Everything inside of her led her to the truth that one day she would do it – this had moved into inevitability, no longer mere possibility – but with hellgods on the loose, sisters to protect, duties to uphold, and friends not yet ready to accept it, she could not let go and take that jump.  She would have to go with baby steps, small shuffles ever closer to the edge of that tempting chasm.

She would start by showing her faith in Spike, despite the expected opposition.  Only by allowing him the chance to prove himself to them, by showing them that she trusted him – by showing Spike that she trusted him – could he ever hope to reach that potential she saw glowing around him like an aura.  It wouldn’t come easily.  Just as he’d fought against his burgeoning feelings for her, she would fight to maintain her recognition of the changing nature of her feelings for him. 

Buffy came slowly to the realization that for an inordinate amount of time, she and Spike had been looking into each other’s eyes.  The silence had stretched on between them, not uncomfortably, leading to her many revelations.  She thought it possible that the odd glimmer of something in Spike’s eye signified revelations of his own.

When his hand found hers, it seemed only natural to lace their fingers together.

“Buffy,” he said softly, and the use of her name rather than her title set every nerve in her body buzzing with sensations she could not define.  “Penny for your thoughts, love.”

Buffy huffed quietly.  “I could ask you the same thing.”

“Might frighten you.”

“Well, mine would frighten you,” she replied, then raised her free hand to form a claw and said, “Grrrr.”

Mingled laughter filled the darkness of the subterranean room, dwindling down until only the sound of their breathing – and it didn’t seem shocking that Spike would have maintained that habit – broke the silence.  Spike’s eye regarded her a moment longer with the same openness to which she’d grown accustomed over the course of the evening, but just before he dropped his gaze, Buffy saw some of his barriers rise back into place.  Though he kept hold of her hand, his whole body vibrated subtly with nervousness.

“Slayer . . . Buffy.  What is this . . . all of this?” 

There was that vulnerable Spike again, that sensitive man terrified of being hurt, as he had been often in the past, and many times by her own hands, her own words. Her heart broke for him, that such a radiant soul should live out its existence in this monstrous shell.  Despite the fact that he technically had no soul, many of Spike’s characteristics forgot that they were only supposed to manifest in soulful human beings.  And that thought added another pull on the already shaky axis of her reality.

Buffy sighed softly, and squeezed his hand tighter, strengthening this physical connectivity.  While she couldn’t hope to put to words everything she was feeling inside, her brain supplied her with a simple but truthful explanation that would do just as well, for now.   “This . . . it’s your crumb, Spike, if you still want it.”

At first he remained stony-faced and uncertain, but as the moment ticked on and her statement lay open and un-repealed, the mask faded away and his eye shone with gratitude.  The most genuine smile he had ever shown slid smoothly onto his face, and he looked down when the emotions of the moment became too great to hide, but to personal to share fully.

“Buffy, I . . .” Spike trailed off, shaking his head as he, the vampire who never shut up, struggled to find words.  In the end, he looked back up at her, hand on the back of his neck, grin lessening into a small, serene smile, and said, “Thank you.”

Anything else she tried to say, any words of explanation, would only ruin the moment.  With the amount of insight she’d gained into his nature tonight, simply by sharing a few hours of quiet sincerity, without their barriers in place, she was certain that Spike had come to understand her more profoundly as well.  So instead of trying to explain herself, to explain what had brought her to that point, she chose to take her confession one baby step further.

“I can’t promise you that we’ll ever be more than we are now,” she said, reaching as they turned to face each other to take his other hand into hers.  She looked down at her lap, at the strong yet gentle hands tangled with hers.  “But I can’t say that we won’t and . . . there’s something inside me whispering that when I let myself take that chance, we’ll be greater than anything either one of us can imagine.”

She had not intended to say that, had meant to stop after I can’t say that we won’t , but the words that followed flowed unbidden, demanded an audience, refused suppression, at once freeing and utterly terrifying.  The shock on her own face was nothing compared to the expression on Spike’s when she looked back up.  Astounded didn’t even begin to cover it.

*~*

~Abby