Title: Many Roads

Author: Lily Ann

Contact: saywardluckett2000@yahoo.com



Chapter 8: My Elusive Dream



Buffy didn't say a word while Spike levered himself out of her lap. She held her tongue while he fidgeted on the cushions, scrubbing nervous hands through his hair and looking anywhere but at her. Merely raised an eyebrow when he slipped away and went to lean against the window frame, silent and watchful. Intent on the shadow-shapes of great trees beyond the glass.


She studied him in the shimmering, soft-edged light. The defensively tight joints and crossed arms. Alabaster muscles dotted with gooseflesh. Spike was built like a greyhound, lean right down to his strong nose and arched cheekbones. There was really nothing to him. Even the firm swell of his ass under thin gray fabric couldn't disturb the symmetry of that body. Its clean, spare lines.


If I touch you, will you shatter like crystal? Fragment at my feet? I'm not strong enough to put a man back together.


She knew she should go. Take what was good and leave the rest, like he said. Before her meddling broke him. He carried her lost years deep within his own mystery. She was sure of it. But would searching for the lost pieces only break them both? Destroy the fragile bond of mind and memory? Drive him mad, too? She'd lost seven years. Her youth and her joy. What wicked plan did fate have for him?


How much was she willing to risk?


Not him. Never him. Buffy quietly crossed the hardwood and stopped at his shoulder, so close that he could probably feel her moist breath on his skin. She could certainly feel him, radiating heat in the still, cool night.


He acknowledged her presence with a slight turn of his head and hollow sigh.. "Go on then, if you've got something to say."


Buffy's eyes swept up the slender curve of his neck. Sought his blue eyes, but they were turned into the darkness, shuttered and fathomless. "Earlier, I asked if you dreamed. I guess I have my answer, now." A smile tugged at her lips. "A vivid description would have been slightly less traumatizing, thanks."


Spike snorted. "Didn't appreciate the demo, huh? What was I doin' this time? The bloody quadrille? Driving a buggy?"


Buffy cocked her head curiously. "You really don't remember?"


Spike shrugged. "I remember the dreams–parts of 'em–but not the one man show. Could've gone walkin' five minutes after my head hit the pillow or five hours. S' all a muddle."

"How long have you--?"

"Always," Spike interrupted. "A tiny terror, I was, knocking about at all hours." He chuckled humorlessly. "Mum and Dad finally broke down and locked me in at night." Buffy must have looked shocked, because he hastened to add, "T'was for my own good. Went for a promenade on the roof one Christmas eve. The volunteer firemen had to fetch a ladder." He shuddered minutely. "Still can't abide bein' shut up, though. Not to this very day."

"Claustrophobia?" Buffy asked, surprised.

Spike nodded. "Tend to fall off the trolley a bit in tunnels and underpasses. Dru always had the paper sacks handy."

Buffy could sympathize. "I'm totally down with the wiggage," she sighed. "I still think my front door was trying to swallow me."

Spike barked out a laugh. "Guess we're tit for tat, then, love. A matched set." He shifted a little closer. "Got enough disorders between us to put hair on Dr. Phil's head."

"More issues than Reader's Digest," Buffy agreed, giving in to impulse and resting her cheek on the warm skin where his shoulder melted into his arm. And he let her. That was the wonder of it. How vibrantly aware they were of one another from the first. Had it really been only a day since they collided? The length of time meant nothing, she realized. There was a bone-deep recognition between them that had nothing to do with how many times the sun had risen and set.

Spike's fingers twitched like they itched for a cigarette. "So, where do we go from here?"

"I don't know," Buffy replied carefully. "Maybe we can help each other."

Spike looked dubious. "How's that, pet? Told you before, I don't see your ghosts. Got plenty of my own. Every bleeding night.' He tapped his temple. "S' like Dickens stuffed his rejects up my brain."

Buffy frowned. "Did you ever get, like, hypnotized? To figure out if it could be bad sushi or something?"

Spike rolled his eyes. "For twenty-five years, pet? That's a biological weapon, not dinner." He pushed away from the window, careful to avoid her eyes.

Presented with the white expanse of his back, Buffy soldiered on. "I'm guessing the hypnosis thing wasn't a rollicking success."

"No, it wasn't...good," Spike affirmed, rooting around behind the bookshelf. A few moments later, he emerged with a dusty bottle. "Drink?"

Buffy wrinkled her nose. "A world of no." She watched his throat work around the fiery liquid. Held her breath to avoid the grainy fumes wafting over from addiction central. "Topic, Spike?"

"Hold on a mo. Little miss slobberchops, you are." He took another swig, gasping at the mellow burn. "Back in the day, before Dru legged it, she was heavy into the mojo. Stars and planets and auras. More charts than a buggering fertility clinic. Herbs that smelled like donkey piss." Spike laughed fondly. "Ever step on a rune in the dark?"

Buffy shook her head, but Spike was looking past her, anyway. Remembering. At least one of them had that luxury.

"She had this necklace from some priestess she met gaddin' about in Europe. Waved it back and forth in front o' my nose one night. Said I wouldn't remember shite when she snapped her fingers. Which was a lot of bollocks, unfortunately. Remembered everything, even after. Still do."

Buffy leaned forward, eyes wide."What did you see?"

"Blood," Spike said simply. "Rivers of it. Oceans. All over me, and Dru, and the...bodies." He wrapped his arms around himself like the memory might split him in two. "Some of 'em I think I knew, most I didn't. Piled in a great big crater like broken dolls. And their necks..." Spike reached for the bottle again. "Less said about them the better."

Buffy stared at him. Swallowed. "Oh." Not what she was expecting at all. "Sounds like you had Hannibal Lecter stuffed up your brain." She held out her hand for the whisky. It scorched her windpipe going down, but Buffy swallowed anyway. "I liked Dickens better."

"Preachin' to the choir, pet." Spike raked five fingers through his unruly hair. "Saw enough to know I didn't want to see anymore." He took his bottle back with a sigh. "Should've known better, anyway. The past...it's like a dragon. Poke it in the arse and it won't die, just get ticked off and vomit fire."

Buffy blinked. "Um, okay. That makes sense. In a Rodan kind of way."

Spike flopped back onto the couch. "Course it does. I always make sense." He smirked at her from under his lashes, but the effect was ruined by a jaw-cracking yawn.

"Maybe to Tiny Tim and the Cratchetts." Buffy muttered, shoving Spike's feet out of the way and climbing back onto her corner of the sofa. "I don't suppose you're going back to your own bed?"

"S' too far." Spike threw some pillows on the floor. "Sides, it's my couch. M' just too knackered to toss you out on your tiddly."

"Wow. I guess chivalry isn't dead after all," Buffy dove for the extra blanket, but Spike was quicker. After a brief tug-of-war, she grabbed a trailing corner and pulled it as far over her body as Spike's death-grip on the other end allowed. "Touch me with your cold, bony feet and I swear I'll vomit fire."

"I'll make a point of it, then. You just keep those knobby knees corralled. Already had 'em jimmed in my privates once today."

Boundaries established, they fell silent. Buffy stretched out her hearing to find the country sounds of crickets and rustling leaves. Wind in the trees. But, beyond the soft groans of the house settling, there was only Spike's even breathing and the gentle tap of rain on glass. It was almost too quiet, an unnatural peace, like the hesitation before a lie.

Flopping onto her back, Buffy stared at the overhead beams like they held the answers to all her mysteries. I'm officially losing it, she thought unhappily. What was in that booze? She tossed and turned and tossed some more, searching for a comfy spot. But, wherever she shifted her body, the lumpy couch refused to yield.

After five minutes of sofa acrobatics, Spike jack knifed out of the blankets, dark eyes snapping annoyance.

"Would you park it? It's like a sodding jollyboat over here."

"Sorry." Buffy forced herself to lie quietly. But, still, sleep eluded her. Perhaps, it was the silence, black and bottomless. Wrong, somehow. "Spike, can I ask you something?"

His bark of laughter divided the night. "Bit late for permission slips, love. But, yeah, go ahead."

"Are you afraid of falling? When you walk at night, I mean?"

Spike sat up with a groan. "What kind of daft question is that?"

"I dream of it, sometimes." Buffy whispered. "Standing at the edge of this purple void, this nothingness. Or maybe its an everythingness. I don't know. I'm so afraid, and there's nowhere to go but down."

Spike shrugged. Buffy could just make out his features in the textured darkness. Sleepy, but alert, biting that full lower lip in a way that seemed both sensual and innocent. Serious, despite the flippant tone and shockwave of hair performing an amusing fandango across his scalp. "Say hell with it and jump, then. Can't let fear swing you around by the tail forever, pet. Fucker won't let go till you get nasty."

Buffy released a breath. "I guess that answers my question." Maybe, she really was a coward. Always letting her mind bushwhack her heart, tie it to a boring, comfy chair and run slides of potential failure.

Spike read her morose thoughts with uncanny accuracy . "You're young yet. Few more turns 'round the block and you'll realize fallin' hard can be a bit o' heaven." He paused, long fingers plucking at the skin over his heart, and finished the thought softly, as if to himself: "Its's landing that's hell."

TBC