The curtain was rough, its fabric dense and heavy under her fingertips --
Buffy shook off the sensation. Bad to return to the window every five minutes like a lovestruck sophomore waiting for her Harvest Ball date, worse to start meditating about pieces of furniture.
Not much to see outside, anyway. The moon was light enough to illuminate the sliver of the old garden in her line of vision, bright enough that she could make out the individual pebbles of gravel on the weed-besieged drive-way. Everything was dead and silent.
Not even a mouse, Buffy thought, nonsensically -- barely fall, not winter yet, definitely not Christmas (apples and spices and hot cocoa that, even with marshmallows, never tasted the same without Mum), but even October had come so soon, the days having flown by in a rush both heady and heavy: He'd not only survived the L.A. apocalypse but returned to London with her, but too many of them had died, been mourned.
When he finally came home, Spike's skin under her fingers was, as always, vampire-smooth and cool to the touch. And when he tilted his head and smiled at her, she felt warm and golden and alive.