DARKEST 7
By Annie
Summary: Buffy and Spike have a conversation Rated: R Disclaimer: Don't own them; wish I did. Special thanks to Miranda, as usual. ( Feedback: crehnert@ptd.net
DARKEST 7
I stood in front of the place for quite a long time, while the sun rose all around me. I knew from experience that it would be dark and gloomy inside anyway, which is the reason Angel had bought it in the first place. Still owned it, as far as I knew. And I hadn't set foot inside the mansion since he had left for LA.
But I knew Spike was in there. I could feel him. I also knew that he could feel me, so there wasn't any point in stealth. I held a stake in each hand, and my grip tightened on them imperceptibly as I got closer to the back entrance, the one through which I had gone all those times to find Angel quietly reading in front of the fireplace. Didn't think there was any reading going on in there now.
It was as dark inside as I expected in the dawn of a new day. Didn't matter how sunny it would be today, darkness enveloped me, swallowed me, ate me whole until all I had left inside was this incredibly empty sense of failure.
I had just entered the room where the huge fireplace was when his voice broke into the darkness calmly.
"Smelled ya' coming, Slayer. Felt ya' coming a mile before that. What the fuck have you done?"
"I just.I wanted." I started to speak, but the sight of him as he emerged into clearer view from his stance next to the big hearth stopped the words in my throat. He was so. powerful. He'd gotten clothes, of course, black jeans and a black shirt. His feet were bare, and the buttons on the shirt were open, the exposed skin and his hair standing out eerily in the grayness surrounding us. He looked - angry. I loved him so much just at that minute and I was scared. I wouldn't be able to do it again, and The Big Bad would bag his third Slayer today.
"You staked me," he stated simply, taking a slow step toward me. "It hurt like all Hell. I'm thinking it must have been an accident, especially as I've been brought back. Don't know how you did it, or even why, but that hurt like Hell, too."
"Spike," I wanted to explain, but he wasn't finished.
"Do you have any idea how bloody awful that was? You, of all people, should know that resurrections usually don't go well, Pet. Except I wasn't in anything resembling Heaven, so I should be grateful. Somehow, I'm not. I was on a good run there for a while, barring a mistake or two the last few months. When you brought me back, however you did it, it was like the first time I woke as a vampire. I was starving, desperate," he put a fist on his chest. "You don't understand that bloodlust, how driving it is, how hard I've tried to get over it and be content with my refrigerated meals."
He took another step closer, and my heart was pounding by then.
"I'm starving now. Mostly because I couldn't drink from the two or three people I happened on last night."
I frowned. "You couldn't attack anyone? But you attacked us in your crypt as soon as you came back."
He smiled darkly. "Nature of the beast, Luv. I didn't even know who, or where, I was. It took a few hours, but it all came rushing back. So, tell me your tale, little Slayer, and try to distract me from this feeling in my gut."
So, I told him the whole story; my accidentally staking him; gathering the dust and taking it home so carefully; stashing it safely away.
He raised an eyebrow at that bit. "So, what? Wouldn't spring for the gold cigarette case? Put me away like leftovers?"
"I wanted to make sure we wouldn't lose any. Then I remembered how you said Darla had gotten brought back, so I called Angel."
"Nancy Boy knows you staked me? Bloody hell, Slayer, couldn't you leave me just a bit of dignity?"
I explained about the phone calls to LA, and the spell, and how it had gotten so mucked up. How it was all my fault.
"You're bloody right about that," he agreed. "And now for the $64.000 question - what happened to my brain? I attacked Anya and the lamebrain in the crypt and the chip never fired off. But I still couldn't attack those other people. What did you do to me?"
Now I stepped toward him. "Spike, the chip didn't reappear in your head when we brought you back. I have the chip. I found it on the ground where..I have it. If you couldn't attack anyone, believe me, it's not the chip. It has to be you yourself."
He laughed shortly. "Oh, right, that's it, then. I've come back wrong! You cast a spell to bring me back and you fucked it up! So, here I am again, not a man, not a monster, some kind of something stuck in between."
"We'll figure it out, Spike, we will. Is it so bad, that you can't attack people? You haven't been able to anyway for so long. You can still drink your bags of blood.." As I spoke I was moving closer to him and he was eyeing the two stakes I still held.
"You're not getting it, Buffy," he tried to explain. "I want to be able to attack. That's my nature. If there's no chip in here," he said poking the side of his head, "then that means there's something else stopping me. Why do you have the pointy sticks? You came here to dust me again, didn't you? You bloody bitch! This is all your fault, you're right about that!"
He put his black-clad arms out to the side and looked down at his chest.
"So have at it, Slayer! Do your worst!"
He looked back up at me then, anger on his face, trying to hide the desperation I knew he was feeling. He had grown so used to being good, to trying to be good - for me- that now he couldn't find it in his stilled heart to be bad.
His eyes were so startlingly blue in the dimness that I almost couldn't breathe. And there was something else, something darker in his eyes, the desire I recognized from those times we had been together. The few times I had actually looked at him, at Spike, making love to me, without trying to distance myself from the fact that I was there. It came to me with sudden, blinding clarity that I wouldn't need the stakes, that no matter what, chip or not, he was incapable of killing me. He had truly stopped himself from being the Big Bad, and blamed it on a minute piece of technology whose power supply was probably ready to give out any day.
"Well, come on, Slayer! Do me if that's what you came for! I'm useless anyway. No good to me. No good to you. Go for it!"
I saw his nostrils flare slightly as I got even closer, and I threw the two stakes onto the floor carelessly. I knew him better than he knew himself now, and I would prove it.
"You can smell it, can't you, Spike? My blood. In my veins. Hot. Tasty. I know you can. Do you want it? Are you hungry? Here, feel it."
I reached out and grasped one of his hands, placing it on my throat. I could feel his fingers, trembling, feeling the pulsing blood beneath them. His eyes were even darker now, and I moved closer yet, almost touching his body with mine. I was unafraid, sure in my own knowledge, my own intuition.
"Slayer," he said, in a voice that sounded like it could barely make its' way out of him. "Don't do this. You have no idea how dangerous this game is."
"Not playing," I informed him softly. I reached up again and placed one of my hands on the back of his head, pulling it down to me. He resisted, but I could tell it was weak resistance at best. I pulled harder, forcing his face into my neck, leaning my body against his. My heart was pounding and it must have been driving him insane, this pulsating, rushing blood, right here at his fingertips, bare inches from his mouth.
"Buffy," he managed, in a voice strangled with want. I could feel it, in the tension of his body, in the erection I could feel against me.
"Take it, if you really want it," I teased him, tiny doubt forming as he placed his cold tongue exactly on the place where my pulse beat. His body stiffened, froze, I could sense the two different needs warring within him, the physical desire he had for me and the demonic need for my blood.
Without warning, I found myself flying across the room. He had pushed me away frantically. He had gone into vamp mode now, and he stormed around the big room, throwing what little furniture there was, smashing it against the walls.
"Why are you doing this to me?" he raged. "Why can't I just kill you and get away from here?"
"Because you can't do it anymore," I shouted at him. "Don't you see? You don't even have the chip anymore and you still can't hurt me. And you didn't hurt anyone else. Can't you just accept the fact that maybe you've changed? That maybe you never were the Big Bad at all, and just acted that way to keep Dru around? Because you didn't have anyone else."
He stalked toward me in the dim room, de-vamped now, and pulled me off my feet by the front of my shirt. "I never had anyone. I never will." He stated grimly. He put me down roughly and walked away again, back across the room. Safely away from me. "Chip or no chip, I'm still useless, except for helping your little Scooby gang with demons and such. Go home, Slayer. Go home to your friends and the Little Bit, where you belong."
I wasn't leaving without making myself clear. "You're wrong, Spike. You're not useless, and you do have someone. Much as I've denied it in the past, you have me. I don't know why, because I should have staked you three or four years ago. Now it's too late. Too late for me and too late for you. We're stuck with each other. You say you love me. You just proved it."
"So, all of a sudden, you believe me. After all this time?" He was incredulous that I had said it, that I believed him. "And what, I'm supposed to be the good dog now? You still don't get it! I like being bad! I can be bad!"
He was back to my side of the room in a few long strides, and I suddenly found myself up against the wall, arms pinned to my sides, cool, muscular body leaning into mine, eyes of dark ice barely inches from my own. "I can be bad," he repeated in a whisper. "I know it. You bloody well know it, Slayer."
I shook my head slightly, never letting my gaze leave his, driven to distraction by the familiar feel of his body on mine. I could almost see the internal struggle he was waging; the want to be bad versus the desire and love, could see the brief flicker of change in his eyes when he decided he would show me the bad.
I didn't struggle. I wanted to prove to him that he wouldn't hurt me. And, gods help me, I wanted him. It had been so long, and my body had missed him so much. He dipped his head to my neck, licking, following the track of the hot pulsing there beneath my skin. I gasped involuntarily, and heard the little snicker deep in his throat. He pressed me harder into the wall, the tantalizing feel of his cock heating my insides into roiling fire. He nipped the skin of my throat lightly, groaning with pleasure, his hands traveling to mine to entwine our fingers and grip me tightly. So tightly it hurt, and I almost cried out, but it felt so good at the same time. I instinctively pulled away from his face a bit in response to the gentle bite. Even though I was sure he wouldn't go as far as to drain me, kill me, I knew from experience what an incredibly sensual thing this was, this feeding of the body that reached far beyond anything resembling an appetite for food. What he was doing right now was different from all our other times together. All those times we had practically beaten each other into unconsciousness and trashed his crypt in the search for great sex. This was pure need on his part, the need to fill that ravenous hunger he had when he returned from dust. I wanted, no needed, to give him something, some modicum of love and trust so he could prove himself.
I moaned and ground my hips against his. "Do it," I told him softly. "Do it if you can."
More groaning from him, and he pushed harder against me now. I could feel the wetness between my legs and would have tossed him to the floor and ravaged him if I hadn't wanted to prove a point. I wanted to tear off my clothes so I could feel myself touch his smooth, cool skin.
I sensed him vamping even though I couldn't see him, not with his face buried in my neck. But I knew, and I felt the sharpness as he grazed my skin. It excited me, and I moved in closer to him, uncontrollably, breath becoming ragged, trying to get my hands away from his so I could reach down and touch him. He wouldn't let them go, and even that excited me. He pressed against me again, at the same time slipping fangs into my throat just the slightest bit, tiniest little pull against the flow of my blood so he could taste me, just enough for me to feel. Just enough to send me over the edge into an orgasm so intense he had to hold me up.
He released my arms then and kissed me, softly, running his hands all over me, all the places he could reach, removing my clothes slowly.
"Spike," I tried to speak, but he wouldn't release my mouth. I reached to take his own clothes off and we stood there, against the wall, making love slowly instead of frantically pawing at each other like we usually had done before. I climbed up onto him, legs wrapped around him tightly, and put my hands on the sides of his face, his wonderful face, looking into the dark eyes that were no longer icy. I leaned down to kiss him hungrily, and he thrust up into me, cold marble filling my hot insides, finally. I ground my hips on him mindlessly, shuddering again through my whole body, as he spent himself inside me, moaning into my mouth, whispering my name over and over.
We stayed there, like that, standing against the wall. I have no idea where he found the strength to stand and hold me, but that was Spike. I kissed his face softly, regaining my breath, and he waited patiently till I was ready to be put down.
"I told you," he said, examining the two small marks on my throat. "I told you I could be bad. I wanted to taste your blood and I did. As soon as I had you near me, without that sodding chip, I did."
"No, you didn't." I argued. "You did something that comes naturally to you, something that has been denied to you for years. But you didn't hurt me. You tried once before, but you did stop. And even that wasn't about trying to hurt me. You were trying to be close to me the only way I'd ever let you. But am I dead? Drained? Vamped? You tell me how you can hurt me now."
"I can't hurt you because I love you, Pet. You know that. I can still be bad."
"You didn't love those two or three people you tried to attack last night, did you? I know you've changed Spike. You just proved it yourself. I'm so sure, I let you bite me, because I knew it would be nothing more than a little foreplay. Which works very well, by the way, just in case you didn't notice."
"I noticed." He replied, looking around for his clothes, throwing mine to me and locating a cigarette for himself. He stopped to light the smoke even before he pulled his jeans back on, squinting at me through the rising smoke. "I told you, Buffy. You belong with me, in the dark. I'm bad. And you like it, whether you want to or not. That's what you just proved to me."
"You'll see, Spike." I warned him, putting my own clothes back on, then walking over to meet him in the middle of the big, dim room. "You'll see, when you go out to hunt and can't. When you see you're stuck drinking butcher's blood the rest of your days."
He exhaled upward, then looked back down at me challengingly. "Think so, Luv? I think you're wrong. I like it here, where it's dark. I like you here with me and I think you like it more than you'll admit. Even to yourself. What draws you to me? What drew you to Angel? Even G.I. Finn had a secret agenda when you started to get interested in him. You like it dark, you'll come round to my way of thinking."
"Well, that remains to be seen, William," I replied deliberately. "As for the right now, I suppose you're going back to your crypt at sundown. I'll bring your chip, if you want to talk about it."
He leaned in closer to kiss me hungrily, discarding the cigarette to put his arms around me and pull me close. The man was insatiable.
He pulled back and put a cool hand over the two little marks on my throat. "As for the right now, Luv, I think I'll get Clem to help me bring my things over here. The Ponce shouldn't leave nice digs like this empty, and come the time you decide to join me, which you will, we'll have plenty of room. Something tells me Angelus is never coming back to Sunnydale anyway. Go home now, tell your mates we both survived the encounter. As for that sodding chip, you just hang onto that for a bit."
"In case I'm wrong?" I asked quietly.
He smiled then, an actual smile. "No, in case I feel the need to destroy it. I'll know where it is. Wouldn't want anyone sneaking up behind me and slipping the bugger back inside, would we?"
I nodded as I headed for the door. "Whatever you say, Spike."
But deep down, way in the darkest reaches of my heart and soul, I knew the Big Bad had, sometime, somehow, ceased to exist.
The End
By Annie
Summary: Buffy and Spike have a conversation Rated: R Disclaimer: Don't own them; wish I did. Special thanks to Miranda, as usual. ( Feedback: crehnert@ptd.net
DARKEST 7
I stood in front of the place for quite a long time, while the sun rose all around me. I knew from experience that it would be dark and gloomy inside anyway, which is the reason Angel had bought it in the first place. Still owned it, as far as I knew. And I hadn't set foot inside the mansion since he had left for LA.
But I knew Spike was in there. I could feel him. I also knew that he could feel me, so there wasn't any point in stealth. I held a stake in each hand, and my grip tightened on them imperceptibly as I got closer to the back entrance, the one through which I had gone all those times to find Angel quietly reading in front of the fireplace. Didn't think there was any reading going on in there now.
It was as dark inside as I expected in the dawn of a new day. Didn't matter how sunny it would be today, darkness enveloped me, swallowed me, ate me whole until all I had left inside was this incredibly empty sense of failure.
I had just entered the room where the huge fireplace was when his voice broke into the darkness calmly.
"Smelled ya' coming, Slayer. Felt ya' coming a mile before that. What the fuck have you done?"
"I just.I wanted." I started to speak, but the sight of him as he emerged into clearer view from his stance next to the big hearth stopped the words in my throat. He was so. powerful. He'd gotten clothes, of course, black jeans and a black shirt. His feet were bare, and the buttons on the shirt were open, the exposed skin and his hair standing out eerily in the grayness surrounding us. He looked - angry. I loved him so much just at that minute and I was scared. I wouldn't be able to do it again, and The Big Bad would bag his third Slayer today.
"You staked me," he stated simply, taking a slow step toward me. "It hurt like all Hell. I'm thinking it must have been an accident, especially as I've been brought back. Don't know how you did it, or even why, but that hurt like Hell, too."
"Spike," I wanted to explain, but he wasn't finished.
"Do you have any idea how bloody awful that was? You, of all people, should know that resurrections usually don't go well, Pet. Except I wasn't in anything resembling Heaven, so I should be grateful. Somehow, I'm not. I was on a good run there for a while, barring a mistake or two the last few months. When you brought me back, however you did it, it was like the first time I woke as a vampire. I was starving, desperate," he put a fist on his chest. "You don't understand that bloodlust, how driving it is, how hard I've tried to get over it and be content with my refrigerated meals."
He took another step closer, and my heart was pounding by then.
"I'm starving now. Mostly because I couldn't drink from the two or three people I happened on last night."
I frowned. "You couldn't attack anyone? But you attacked us in your crypt as soon as you came back."
He smiled darkly. "Nature of the beast, Luv. I didn't even know who, or where, I was. It took a few hours, but it all came rushing back. So, tell me your tale, little Slayer, and try to distract me from this feeling in my gut."
So, I told him the whole story; my accidentally staking him; gathering the dust and taking it home so carefully; stashing it safely away.
He raised an eyebrow at that bit. "So, what? Wouldn't spring for the gold cigarette case? Put me away like leftovers?"
"I wanted to make sure we wouldn't lose any. Then I remembered how you said Darla had gotten brought back, so I called Angel."
"Nancy Boy knows you staked me? Bloody hell, Slayer, couldn't you leave me just a bit of dignity?"
I explained about the phone calls to LA, and the spell, and how it had gotten so mucked up. How it was all my fault.
"You're bloody right about that," he agreed. "And now for the $64.000 question - what happened to my brain? I attacked Anya and the lamebrain in the crypt and the chip never fired off. But I still couldn't attack those other people. What did you do to me?"
Now I stepped toward him. "Spike, the chip didn't reappear in your head when we brought you back. I have the chip. I found it on the ground where..I have it. If you couldn't attack anyone, believe me, it's not the chip. It has to be you yourself."
He laughed shortly. "Oh, right, that's it, then. I've come back wrong! You cast a spell to bring me back and you fucked it up! So, here I am again, not a man, not a monster, some kind of something stuck in between."
"We'll figure it out, Spike, we will. Is it so bad, that you can't attack people? You haven't been able to anyway for so long. You can still drink your bags of blood.." As I spoke I was moving closer to him and he was eyeing the two stakes I still held.
"You're not getting it, Buffy," he tried to explain. "I want to be able to attack. That's my nature. If there's no chip in here," he said poking the side of his head, "then that means there's something else stopping me. Why do you have the pointy sticks? You came here to dust me again, didn't you? You bloody bitch! This is all your fault, you're right about that!"
He put his black-clad arms out to the side and looked down at his chest.
"So have at it, Slayer! Do your worst!"
He looked back up at me then, anger on his face, trying to hide the desperation I knew he was feeling. He had grown so used to being good, to trying to be good - for me- that now he couldn't find it in his stilled heart to be bad.
His eyes were so startlingly blue in the dimness that I almost couldn't breathe. And there was something else, something darker in his eyes, the desire I recognized from those times we had been together. The few times I had actually looked at him, at Spike, making love to me, without trying to distance myself from the fact that I was there. It came to me with sudden, blinding clarity that I wouldn't need the stakes, that no matter what, chip or not, he was incapable of killing me. He had truly stopped himself from being the Big Bad, and blamed it on a minute piece of technology whose power supply was probably ready to give out any day.
"Well, come on, Slayer! Do me if that's what you came for! I'm useless anyway. No good to me. No good to you. Go for it!"
I saw his nostrils flare slightly as I got even closer, and I threw the two stakes onto the floor carelessly. I knew him better than he knew himself now, and I would prove it.
"You can smell it, can't you, Spike? My blood. In my veins. Hot. Tasty. I know you can. Do you want it? Are you hungry? Here, feel it."
I reached out and grasped one of his hands, placing it on my throat. I could feel his fingers, trembling, feeling the pulsing blood beneath them. His eyes were even darker now, and I moved closer yet, almost touching his body with mine. I was unafraid, sure in my own knowledge, my own intuition.
"Slayer," he said, in a voice that sounded like it could barely make its' way out of him. "Don't do this. You have no idea how dangerous this game is."
"Not playing," I informed him softly. I reached up again and placed one of my hands on the back of his head, pulling it down to me. He resisted, but I could tell it was weak resistance at best. I pulled harder, forcing his face into my neck, leaning my body against his. My heart was pounding and it must have been driving him insane, this pulsating, rushing blood, right here at his fingertips, bare inches from his mouth.
"Buffy," he managed, in a voice strangled with want. I could feel it, in the tension of his body, in the erection I could feel against me.
"Take it, if you really want it," I teased him, tiny doubt forming as he placed his cold tongue exactly on the place where my pulse beat. His body stiffened, froze, I could sense the two different needs warring within him, the physical desire he had for me and the demonic need for my blood.
Without warning, I found myself flying across the room. He had pushed me away frantically. He had gone into vamp mode now, and he stormed around the big room, throwing what little furniture there was, smashing it against the walls.
"Why are you doing this to me?" he raged. "Why can't I just kill you and get away from here?"
"Because you can't do it anymore," I shouted at him. "Don't you see? You don't even have the chip anymore and you still can't hurt me. And you didn't hurt anyone else. Can't you just accept the fact that maybe you've changed? That maybe you never were the Big Bad at all, and just acted that way to keep Dru around? Because you didn't have anyone else."
He stalked toward me in the dim room, de-vamped now, and pulled me off my feet by the front of my shirt. "I never had anyone. I never will." He stated grimly. He put me down roughly and walked away again, back across the room. Safely away from me. "Chip or no chip, I'm still useless, except for helping your little Scooby gang with demons and such. Go home, Slayer. Go home to your friends and the Little Bit, where you belong."
I wasn't leaving without making myself clear. "You're wrong, Spike. You're not useless, and you do have someone. Much as I've denied it in the past, you have me. I don't know why, because I should have staked you three or four years ago. Now it's too late. Too late for me and too late for you. We're stuck with each other. You say you love me. You just proved it."
"So, all of a sudden, you believe me. After all this time?" He was incredulous that I had said it, that I believed him. "And what, I'm supposed to be the good dog now? You still don't get it! I like being bad! I can be bad!"
He was back to my side of the room in a few long strides, and I suddenly found myself up against the wall, arms pinned to my sides, cool, muscular body leaning into mine, eyes of dark ice barely inches from my own. "I can be bad," he repeated in a whisper. "I know it. You bloody well know it, Slayer."
I shook my head slightly, never letting my gaze leave his, driven to distraction by the familiar feel of his body on mine. I could almost see the internal struggle he was waging; the want to be bad versus the desire and love, could see the brief flicker of change in his eyes when he decided he would show me the bad.
I didn't struggle. I wanted to prove to him that he wouldn't hurt me. And, gods help me, I wanted him. It had been so long, and my body had missed him so much. He dipped his head to my neck, licking, following the track of the hot pulsing there beneath my skin. I gasped involuntarily, and heard the little snicker deep in his throat. He pressed me harder into the wall, the tantalizing feel of his cock heating my insides into roiling fire. He nipped the skin of my throat lightly, groaning with pleasure, his hands traveling to mine to entwine our fingers and grip me tightly. So tightly it hurt, and I almost cried out, but it felt so good at the same time. I instinctively pulled away from his face a bit in response to the gentle bite. Even though I was sure he wouldn't go as far as to drain me, kill me, I knew from experience what an incredibly sensual thing this was, this feeding of the body that reached far beyond anything resembling an appetite for food. What he was doing right now was different from all our other times together. All those times we had practically beaten each other into unconsciousness and trashed his crypt in the search for great sex. This was pure need on his part, the need to fill that ravenous hunger he had when he returned from dust. I wanted, no needed, to give him something, some modicum of love and trust so he could prove himself.
I moaned and ground my hips against his. "Do it," I told him softly. "Do it if you can."
More groaning from him, and he pushed harder against me now. I could feel the wetness between my legs and would have tossed him to the floor and ravaged him if I hadn't wanted to prove a point. I wanted to tear off my clothes so I could feel myself touch his smooth, cool skin.
I sensed him vamping even though I couldn't see him, not with his face buried in my neck. But I knew, and I felt the sharpness as he grazed my skin. It excited me, and I moved in closer to him, uncontrollably, breath becoming ragged, trying to get my hands away from his so I could reach down and touch him. He wouldn't let them go, and even that excited me. He pressed against me again, at the same time slipping fangs into my throat just the slightest bit, tiniest little pull against the flow of my blood so he could taste me, just enough for me to feel. Just enough to send me over the edge into an orgasm so intense he had to hold me up.
He released my arms then and kissed me, softly, running his hands all over me, all the places he could reach, removing my clothes slowly.
"Spike," I tried to speak, but he wouldn't release my mouth. I reached to take his own clothes off and we stood there, against the wall, making love slowly instead of frantically pawing at each other like we usually had done before. I climbed up onto him, legs wrapped around him tightly, and put my hands on the sides of his face, his wonderful face, looking into the dark eyes that were no longer icy. I leaned down to kiss him hungrily, and he thrust up into me, cold marble filling my hot insides, finally. I ground my hips on him mindlessly, shuddering again through my whole body, as he spent himself inside me, moaning into my mouth, whispering my name over and over.
We stayed there, like that, standing against the wall. I have no idea where he found the strength to stand and hold me, but that was Spike. I kissed his face softly, regaining my breath, and he waited patiently till I was ready to be put down.
"I told you," he said, examining the two small marks on my throat. "I told you I could be bad. I wanted to taste your blood and I did. As soon as I had you near me, without that sodding chip, I did."
"No, you didn't." I argued. "You did something that comes naturally to you, something that has been denied to you for years. But you didn't hurt me. You tried once before, but you did stop. And even that wasn't about trying to hurt me. You were trying to be close to me the only way I'd ever let you. But am I dead? Drained? Vamped? You tell me how you can hurt me now."
"I can't hurt you because I love you, Pet. You know that. I can still be bad."
"You didn't love those two or three people you tried to attack last night, did you? I know you've changed Spike. You just proved it yourself. I'm so sure, I let you bite me, because I knew it would be nothing more than a little foreplay. Which works very well, by the way, just in case you didn't notice."
"I noticed." He replied, looking around for his clothes, throwing mine to me and locating a cigarette for himself. He stopped to light the smoke even before he pulled his jeans back on, squinting at me through the rising smoke. "I told you, Buffy. You belong with me, in the dark. I'm bad. And you like it, whether you want to or not. That's what you just proved to me."
"You'll see, Spike." I warned him, putting my own clothes back on, then walking over to meet him in the middle of the big, dim room. "You'll see, when you go out to hunt and can't. When you see you're stuck drinking butcher's blood the rest of your days."
He exhaled upward, then looked back down at me challengingly. "Think so, Luv? I think you're wrong. I like it here, where it's dark. I like you here with me and I think you like it more than you'll admit. Even to yourself. What draws you to me? What drew you to Angel? Even G.I. Finn had a secret agenda when you started to get interested in him. You like it dark, you'll come round to my way of thinking."
"Well, that remains to be seen, William," I replied deliberately. "As for the right now, I suppose you're going back to your crypt at sundown. I'll bring your chip, if you want to talk about it."
He leaned in closer to kiss me hungrily, discarding the cigarette to put his arms around me and pull me close. The man was insatiable.
He pulled back and put a cool hand over the two little marks on my throat. "As for the right now, Luv, I think I'll get Clem to help me bring my things over here. The Ponce shouldn't leave nice digs like this empty, and come the time you decide to join me, which you will, we'll have plenty of room. Something tells me Angelus is never coming back to Sunnydale anyway. Go home now, tell your mates we both survived the encounter. As for that sodding chip, you just hang onto that for a bit."
"In case I'm wrong?" I asked quietly.
He smiled then, an actual smile. "No, in case I feel the need to destroy it. I'll know where it is. Wouldn't want anyone sneaking up behind me and slipping the bugger back inside, would we?"
I nodded as I headed for the door. "Whatever you say, Spike."
But deep down, way in the darkest reaches of my heart and soul, I knew the Big Bad had, sometime, somehow, ceased to exist.
The End