AN: Another Buffy shortie... Enjoy, review, get a cookie. =)

Standard disclaimers apply cause, yeah...



******************************* Beautiful ********************************


He marveled at her beauty, for she was beautiful. More beautiful than Night in all her
mystical guises. She was remarkable in that her beauty was a causal, accidental thing.
The Fates, the Powers, all who made her who she was did not care if the children of evil
who she bled and killed and fought thought her beautiful.

But she was, achingly so.

Spike studied her, when her fierce attention was elsewhere, or when she slept, uneasy but
sound, in his corded arms. He memorized the planes of her face and the inviting tilt of
her nose. He knew the rainbow of her eyes and the dark sweep of her lashes by heart.

He yearned to see her bathed in sunlight and stained golden. He wanted to see the woman he
loved consumed by dawn's fire and lit as brightly without as she was within. He wanted to
hold her when her skin was warm from the towering sun, and kiss lips chapped from day's wind.
He wanted his lover immortalized and made into the image of a goddess.

But she was his only by night and even then, his hold was tenuous.

He had given up pride and dignity to be with her for a few stolen moments. He had few
regrets... If she ever found it in herself to love him back he would have none. She had
loved the darkness once- Spike had reason to hope for the future, their future.

He had already given her what was no longer his to give.

Spike didn't know where his soul was, damned or fled and saved, but wherever it was it was
Buffy's... It was devoted, hers, and hers alone. Despite his sometimes blinding rages,
despite his frustration, he was hers too.

And he thought her so beautiful that sometimes he ached with it. With the thought of her
losing herself in him. With the thought of her waking up, midnight or blazing noon, it didn't
matter which, cradled by him. Loved by him.

He never told her his thoughts. Sometimes, late, when she slipped off to slumber he whispered
sweet nothings in her ears. She was too unnerved, too shamed, to allow such endearments to be
spoken openly.

She never would have let him tell her how beautiful he thought, knew her to be. How radiant
she looked, even after a night of patrolling, even covered in gore from a dozen different
kills... Her beauty was not a timid thing, nor a fragile one. It was the beauty of elegantly
designed buildings, pure steel.

But it did not change the truth, Spike's truth. It did not change a thing. Buffy Summers was
beautiful and Spike, the undead, soulless, and dark, heaven or hell help him, loved her.