Chapter Fourteen

Hell didn't come on so fast. It worked through his world in capricious ways, intermixed with joy and peace. Spike was no stranger to loneliness and was slow to recognize it as it began to seep into their home like the autumn fog. He knew that in creating a new life for Buffy it would eventually carry her away into the day, and one couldn't expect to court the sun without getting a little burned. Her shop opened more or less on schedule and with the opening of that small glass door, another one began to ease closed. Humans, it would seem, preferred eating their soups and salads in the daylight. Which left Spike little choice but to poke Buffy awake before dawn and see her to the shower and out the door by sunrise to meet the morning rush. The shop closed at two, after luncheon, but there were orders to make, food to stow and bills to collect and pay. She'd hired some help to come in to chop and simmer, but the afternoons and evenings were spent holed up in her office alone, punching adding machine keys.

Left to himself all day, Spike saw to the home. He swept, dusted, laundered and hauled rubbish. Domesticated, he would have called himself if he could admit it to anyone. It was easy to see now how the midnight surfers could have second guessed him for the vampire he was if they saw him swiffering the hardwood floors and hanging scanties to dry in the shower stall. He didn't venture out much, even at night. Buffy would come home smelling of dried onions and most nights wanted a shower and a foot rub and little else. He'd tuck her up into bed and kiss her hair and watch her sleep, counting the nights until Saturday, their only true time together, as the shop stood closed on Sundays.

Between weekends, Spike settled into the TV Guide and took up a renewed interest in reading paperbacks and even tried his hand at cooking. Sort of, as long as Rachael Ray kept it simple and cheery for him and the results could be put up for when Buffy came home and got a chance to taste it. Day by day the apartment was becoming his castle again. Spike found owning a loveseat and an armoire with matching end tables wasn't the killing stroke to his sense of personal identity as he feared it would be. He still wore mostly black, peroxided another layer of porcelain off the sink once a month, drank blood from a tacky gothic chalice Clem sent him once as a house warming gift (although never in bed anymore) and smoked like a furnace - though now he was an outdoor furnace who lounged in a rusty folding chair with his legs up on the fire escape railing with an old coffee can for company. This arrangement worked fine for them as long as the rain kept away and he remembered to brush his fangs before bed.

But one mundane circumstance all couples take in stride proved to be a particularly sticky situation for a platelet-sensitive vampire whose lover happens to be a healthy living female. It was something they'd never run into before, having lived apart, and Spike hadn't even thought of it, until it began and then it was all he could think of. He tried to come up with excuses for needing to get out alone in the evenings after she came home from the shop. She accepted his fabrications blithely with a kiss goodbye at the door as he moved away from her brief embrace to make himself scarce and clear the scent from his brain.

By midweek even walking into the flat while she was out became a private torture for him. She was discrete, of course, but struggling to sleep in their bed alone with a bloodhound's sensitivity only made the cravings worse. Giles had been wise to secure him a steady supply of human blood to placate his nature. It nearly did the trick most days, especially when warmed slowly over the stove in one of Buffy's fancy copper saucepans. And it wasn't as if he didn't walk past countless females every night in a similar state. Her chemistry was different, however, far more potent and seductive. The faintest scent of her now would bring down his teeth and sully his head with impossible demands. This wasn't a matter easily resolved by a coffee can and folding chair. So Spike grabbed his coat and an extra pack of type-O to go and headed deep into the park where he sweated out the days in a drainage culvert watching the living walk their pets across the bridge above through yellow eyes.

She was on to him before long and came home a few hours early one afternoon to catch him running his arm under the kitchen sink while sucking the last of a cold blood pack through his teeth.

"Spike? What are you doing?"

He spit the spent bag out on the counter with the other two - all punctured and sucked clean. Her timing wasn't perfect, but he'd had a chance to fill his belly and calm his face at least. He shut off the water and managed to wrap his bleeding arm in a dishtowel before she entered.

"What happened to you?"

"It's nothing," he said, holding the wound to his chest.

"Let me see," she said, trying to take his arm. When he resisted she reached for his hair instead, plucking out a leaf. "Have you been sleeping in the park?"

"I've had some…things to see to," he argued lamely. Her scent wasn't as strong now but it made him stupid all the same.

"What things?" she pressed, getting his arm away from him and starting to unwrap it. "Were you in a fight? Oh, my God. Who bit you?"

He shook his head, embarrassed. "I didn't think you'd be home…I'm…having a bit of a bad week."

"I guess. Spike, I don't understand what's going on with you, you've been twitchy for a while now. Is somebody after you? Is it kittens again? I need to know."

"Buffy, it's not your problem."

"Like hell it isn't. Tell me who did this so I can go kick them a new ass."

He sighed. "It's me, Buffy."

"Huh?"

"I'm the guy whose ass you need to replace."

She was completely bamboozled. "Spike, pretend I don't speak doubletalk for a minute. Who. Bit. You?"

"I bit me. It was stupid. I got caught out in the daylight. I needed to feed."

She eyed the empty bags dripping onto the beige tile. "And you couldn't come home the last two nights because…?"

"Because I didn't want…I've been having a bad week." He shut his eyes, mortified. "We've both been having a bad week."

"Oh!" Her headlights came on. "Oh, God. I didn't even think about that."

"Yeah, neither of us did," he said, much relieved he hadn't needed to draw her a picture - with one of Giles' big red Sharpies no less.

"Hasn't this come up already? I mean, I've been living here with you now for…oh, I was at Dawn's last time. Yipes. How did you handle this one before?"

"Before you, all my girlfriends were conveniently dead. And when we were in…well, back then, it was easy enough to slip off for a week."

She let his arm go and leaned back against the sink with an odd grin. "And here I thought maybe you were stepping out on me."

He laughed ruefully. "Hardly."

"These are the kinds of things couples need to be frank about, you know. You really had me worried."

"I'm sorry. I just thought the subject was a mite too delicate to bring up over popcorn and Wheel of Fortune."

"So what do we do? We've got to figure something out. Can't have you biting off a limb every time I get a cramp."

"I stay away; that's what I do. This is my problem, not yours."

"You need to get in here for blood."

He looked to the fridge. "I could get a cooler."

She started to giggle.

"What?"

"The things my mother never told me about dating…I'm sorry, I don't mean to tease you. This is easy. I'll come home an hour or so after sunset and leave a half hour before sunrise. That way you won't burn up trying to get back home and save your back from bench-rail marks."

"I guess that would work."

"It'll have to. Gah, your arm is a wreck." She reached for him, stroking his hand. "Let me bind that for you."

"Buffy…" The pleading in his voice stopped her. His eyes were fixed on where her fingers touched his wrist.

She withdrew her hand, taking a step back. "It's worse when I touch you."

"Infinitely."

Her expression changed into one of fascination. She caught his eyes. "Does it…have to be a bad thing?"

He swallowed down the urgency he felt thrumming through his dead flesh. "I wish not. But I can't trust myself to explore that possibility. You know why."

"Angel," she said quietly. "But he was going to die."

"And so will I if we don't stop bloody talking about it, all right? It's not going to happen."

She nodded and moved to the doorway. "Well, I'll go run off to the store or the movies or something. We need pickles. Go clean up, sleep for a while if you can and I'll come back after sundown."

"Buffy…"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you…for putting up with me."

She smiled sweetly at him as she got her coat. "Don't mention it. You certainly keep things interesting."

He washed up, wiped down the kitchen tiles, showered the park dirt out of his hair, bound the holes in his arm and collapsed in their bed. He could still smell her, but the gorging and the sharp pain of his self-inflicted wound were distracting enough to send him into an uneasy sleep.

That is until he felt the cold click of the manacle fasten around his right wrist. He whipped around, ready for a fight to find himself chained, arms behind his back, an iron band snug around each wrist. "What the...?" It was fully dark in the room, but he knew he wasn't alone - warm mellow musk laden with the bright burn of blood filled his nose. The trunk was out in the center of the bedroom floor, open. These were her chains. "This isn't a good time for games, pet."

"It's the perfect time and it's not a game," she said, coming into his line of sight and kneeling next to the bed so they were nose to nose. "It's about who we are."

He tried to wriggle closer to her, but the chains held him. He watched her eyes, a fierce desire burned in them, as it always did when the demon threatened to rise in him. "I said no. Go back to the pictures, love, like a good girl and let me sleep this one off."

She shrugged and stood up, walking around the bed. "The movie was lame. I couldn't keep my mind on it. Who cares about two people sending emails to each other hoping to meet up one day when you've got a vampire waiting at home, half out of his mind for a taste of you."

He twisted around, the iron biting his wrists as the chains rolled under his back. "Buffy, listen to me. I'm more than just half out of mind, it's more like four-fifths and that's a very dangerous place to have me."

She stopped and looked down at him, as he was, unclothed and chained. She licked her bottom lip. "I know."

"Damn you. Have you any idea what it would do to me if I hurt you?"

She slipped her dress to the floor, soon followed by a string of lace. She crawled to him, her arms to either side of his shoulders, her lips close to his. "You can't, I've got you bound."

He shut his eyes and tried to resist breathing, but her tongue was working a spell along his chin and across his lips where he gasped and let her in all sweet and hungry - and they called Willow the witch.

He threw his head aside to break from her, trying to avert the anger that was rising in him as hotly as the lust as she kissed and nipped at his throat. The two passions only fed each other and he wouldn't have it - even though her scent was so close and ready - her blood, a taste of it could make it good, pure. One taste. He'd had it before, a lick from a chance cut of glass, and it had thundered him right back into himself.

She was eyeing him, waiting, breathing on him, sure in her knowledge that his nature would win out.

"You'll have to do better," he said.

"Really...?" In a flicker of movement, she drew her finger across her slit and spread the red tip along his upper lip, right under his nose.

"I meant..." he said with a shudder as he breathed it in. "...with the chains. Bind my legs - I can't have any advantage."

She leaned to his ear, "That's what I wanted to hear."

She restrained him well - chains, padlocks, the works. He was bound wrists to ankles with not much more than his head free to move about. That still left the teeth.

"Buffy," he said as she spread her thighs across his face. "Watch my eyes. If they start to turn, hit me. Hard."

"I can take you," she said as his tongue found her.

She was so wet it took several licks to get at the source of her, centered in hot swollen folds. In pretense he told himself this was for her, a special treat to feed her dark sense of romance. He and the animal within would lie dormant, only to rise in solitude when putting a fist through a wall as he worked it out with the other would seem sensible. And he told his tongue to do so, to work magic on her tender nerves, tease her, work her up slow, please her and end this before it got out of hand.

That fiction played well until he got his first real taste - she was nearly done, but it ran out with her arousal like a vein of hidden gold. It shook him through, the hot zing of it as it ran down his throat into his belly, spreading into his greedy veins, driving his cock to attention as his tongue wriggled in deep for more. He fought the chains to try and rise up, abandoning every pleasuring effort for the sake of the hunt, licking her hard, spreading her with his nose, sniffling like a dog. It made her cry and writhe, calling for God and the saints too, maybe, to save her from her lover's demon mouth. He'd fallen into it so easily, the warning clang of the soul all drowned in the excitement of her ripe blood, until the tight twist of her fingers pulling his hair back tore him off.

"Eyes," she said and he opened them, forgetting. His human eyes could still see her in the darkness all shadow and slick sheen - his path to glory open and wet above him. She let him go and he was back to it, eyes open this time as the sweetest stream bubbled up out of her, bathing his tongue where he savored it, let his mouth fill, before the throat took it down and the room went red.

The pain must have come from her blow, precise and merciless to the side of his head. It knocked him back just long enough for her to leap away. She crouched now at his chained and struggling knees, listening to his growls, keeping a calculated distance. She was all heat and blood to him now, yellow and red lines running hard through a body of cooler blue. Her mouth and nostrils were a warm open pink - the heat of her cunt a slice of brilliant white. He fought at his chains, twisting his head about, trying to bite himself free. The ecstasy of the blood ran hard and fast in him, eating away everything but the drive for more, to tear flesh from limb to suck out the rest. She waited all pulsing and alive until his thrashings settled in defeat, leaving him with curled lips and the breath hissing through clamped fangs. She pulled up his chains so his legs came together with his arms tight behind him and she mounted his hips, taking the dead blackness of his cock up into her light where she rode him down, feeding her own hungers, catching him, pulling him back from the insanity of the blood and into the salvation of the flesh. He met her blow for blow, her fingers a blur at her clit, until she tipped her head and moaned one long sweet cry that shot off his balls and his roar echoed hers into oblivion.

It was early morning when she came back in the room. He was nearly awake, lying in his restraints where she'd left him to sleep it off. He was human enough again, though the warmth of her blood still flowed in him, dying gently, leaving his flesh renewed and primed in its wake.

Buffy knelt on the sheets next to him and fit a cigarette between his lips. She reached and fished his lighter out of a discarded pocket and struck a flame for him.

"Thanks," he said around the end of it after a few puffs.

"Thought you might need it," she said, drawing her fingers through his hair. "How do you feel?"

He felt fucking incredible, but he wasn't going to let on, not on his undead life. "Unchain me, love."

She went to her trunk for the keys and set about it as he tried to keep ash off the sheets. His wrists were a bit worse for wear, but he didn't feel the pain, far from it. He grabbed a coffee mug off the nightstand for an ashtray and sat back against the headboard pillows, finishing the smoke. She came and sat beside him, leaning her head against his shoulder.

"I thought it was pretty great," she said as if they'd just watched a rerun of Roseanne together.

He crushed the sputtering cigarette in the mug and lit a new one. "It was bloody stupid, that's what it was."

She sat up and looked at him. "I didn't hear you complaining."

"That's because there's a side of you that's gone deaf," he said, pointing at his head where he could feel a nice red welt. "Or maybe it's always been that way, I don't bloody know. I used to think it was all me. I was the one who let things get out of hand - the soulless one minus the hand-brake. But that's only half the truth of it."

"I was giving you what you wanted. No reason to have a snit about it."

"It was dangerous, pet. What's more you knew it, too - it's what gets you all bothered - toying with the monster in me. You've got a knack for bringing him out for a slap and tickle when it suits you - better than chocolate, or whatever the hell it is women want."

She was hurt. Embarrassed, even, by his scolding. God, it was adorable. "That road runs two ways, Spike."

He chuckled. "Of course it does, but then one might expect that from a demon."

"What I would expect is for you to understand."

"Buffy," he said, eyeing her carefully. "Don't ever doubt that I do. I know you, better than you think. I also know you have the upper hand. But don't mistake that for exemption. When it comes to the blood, your blood, all I see is red."

She absorbed this slowly - the heat in her cheeks faded. "I'm sorry."

"Hm, no you're not. You've got one now for the scrapbook. You can bury that treasure however you like - but from here out I don't give you the opportunity. It's the park for me and the pictures for you, until we can both behave without all the anarchy."

She gave him that look. "I was good, huh?"

"Good is rather an understatement but it's all this bloody vampire's going to share on the subject. You'll have to hunt my dreams for the rest."

She took the cigarette from his fingers and tossed it in the mug where it sent up a swirl of smoke. She spread herself across his chest and began to kiss all the places where the iron had bruised his skin and where her fists had struck in her own defense - and it was heaven to just lie back and feel.