"Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: …in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me: and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me."
from Jane Eyre
Space is all there is between us. Nothing else. God, I want it to be you saying that. In my head I can hear you saying it. I feel the warmth in your eyes touch my skin and I believe, just then, that you mean it. You are standing the way I remember, flirting with sincerity just enough to make me listen.
And instead this is it: you and me and this space, heavy with darkness and shards of smoke, splintered, tight, against my chest. So tight I can hardly breathe. I think it is the smoke.
You are silent, turned away from me, a zephyr of silver, moonblood, spilling over your body. Your body that I know as well as my own. Broken. For me.
I thought this through so many times. My way, my rules. I was the one that forgave you. I was untouchable. Too good, too forbearing for the rape-stained vampire. Always above you.
Sometimes you were grateful; sometimes insolent; sometimes desperate. Never this.
Most often it happened outside. A starry night, clear, bright. I stood, hunting, waiting. And I felt it. Space. Between us. Our space, you and me; caught between time and eternity, the way we always have been. I turned round, and you stood there, a little crestfallen, a little defiant, and I saw that you knew. That it didn't matter; that we would put it behind us, and pretend it never happened, with no word of apology and no breach of defence. That we would block the space between us until we couldn't feel it anymore: until it was just space, ordinary space, not defined by a you and me that would never be an us.
Nobody bared heart and soul.
I hear you stir, catch the faintest murmur as I watch you, shrouded in gossamer shadow.
Somewhere in my mind I reach out in the darkness to be touched by you.
And the pain. The pain is gone.
How can it hurt? How can any of it hurt any more, when I close my eyes and I see you still, wrapped in ghost-light, bowed under the weight of your benediction?
Why does a man do what he mustn't? For her, to be hers
It is too real for delirium; more real than words themselves. This is what truth is. It is pain and it is joy: quiet, hard, breathless, still.
I want to feel your soul burn against me; to cool the fire in your flesh with my fingers; to know your broken skin bruised only with the soft weight of my mouth, quiet, gentle. And hungry, so very hungry. Not for flesh but for love, your way: the way it tasted when my name touched your lips; the way it felt when your hand brushed my face and your eyes my soul.
I was blind. I thought you were in love with pain. And now I see that pain and love are the same; that you loved me in spite of the pain, not because of it. That I need them both: the love and the pain. And I need you. I know that now.
You loved me. I look at you and I see it still, everywhere. It runs deeper than the blood in your veins; it cuts deeper than the scars laced across your chest; burns deeper than the soul that purges you from within.
Was I worth it, Spike?
I'm drowning in you, Summers, I'm drowning in you
A whisper of moonlight caresses your face, surf on a tide of darkness.
I will hold onto you.
I will hold onto you through the flood of memory and the pain of now, and I will not let you drown. Not this time.
There are more tears. Tears in my head; my throat; my lungs; my gut; a silent overture of tears inside me. Tears that can wait. Until I feel your tears against my skin, singing. Until I taste your tears in my mouth, bittersweet.
This is it. You and me. This is what it means. Our space, us, holding each other without touching: your mind in my thoughts and my thoughts in your mind.
I love you, and maybe it's not enough. But it's all I have. It's all you get.
We have time.
I'm not going anywhere.
* * * * * *
A/N: I had to do this, to try and get hold of Beneath You in some way, even this shadow of what it meant and what it was. I hope you like it.
Disclaimer: Smashed, Crush, Beneath You were all borrowed from. Spike and Buffy don't belong to me, only to each other.
The haiku, if you can find it, is mine; when not in the middle of B/S ficlets it goes by the title 'Moment'.
Soundtrack: A lot of Coldplay. 'The Scientist' is beautiful beyond compare and had a lot to do with this.