Do I Feel Your Arms Embracing Me?

Disclaimer: I own nothing. I would like a Spike though.

A/N: Sorry for the shortness factor. I have decided to definitely do a sequel, possibly even make it a trilogy. 'Cause I got such good reception for this story, so this is more of a 'yes-they're-happy-and-together-now-hurry-up-and-wait-for-the-next-part" than an actual chapter... But I hope you like it anyway!!! Oh, and thanks to everyone who's reviewed this story so far, and I hope you like the sequel! Oh, and to my one reviewer for the last chapter: Cecily was the girl Spike was in love with when she was human, she was also Halfrek in a wierd same-actress way.

Dawn was the only one who heard the entire fight, it started out with ten minutes of solid silence, when she assumed Buffy was either not looking at Spike or crying, which meant Spike wouldn't be able to get up the strength to yell at her. Then came a couple minutes of tersely muttered words, insults, Dawn guessed. Followed shortly by the shouting, mostly, they all noticed, Buffy, with an occasional interruption from a severely ticked off Spike. They'd brought up the past, the future, and at one point, bizarrely, Clem's sexual preferences, but, everyone in the house (including Andrew, who had brought his video camera and was curled up by the vent in Dawn's room) noted that never at any point, had there been a threat to leave the other. Buffy's promise that Spike would be sleeping in Andrew's room for a week not withstanding.

"YOU'RE A MONSTER!" Buffy spat out finally, shrieking, and that was when it all went silent. Andrew was thinking sex. Xander was assuming Spike had left through the window to go out and kill something. Dina thought someone must have died. Dawn, who was the closest to right, thought that Spike had probably gotten so offended that he had stopped speaking to Buffy until he could be sure of what would come out of his mouth.

In truth, Buffy had realized what had come out of her mouth in anger a few seconds after she'd said it.

"I'm sorry, Spike... I... I don't have an excuse," she laughed bitterly, "that was a bloody stupid thing to say and I don't mean it. You're not a monster, you know that."

"Bloody right you don't have an excuse, that was a low blow, Slayer," Spike said, from where he had turned to face her window, the faint light from between the curtains outlining him perfectly to Buffy, who was sitting on the bed. "And you meant it when you said it."

"You called me a whore, did you mean that when you said it?" She spat back, any thoughts of apologizing for the fight in general sweeping themselves out of her head.

"Meant it at the time, Buffy, not so much any more."

"Please don't call me Buffy," she pleaded, his cold tone biting her deeply.

"What then?"

"Anything other than that- I hate it when you get this angry with me and actually use my name, you know that. I always have, at first I was just disgusted that you knew my name, then I started liking being called other things by you- Goldilocks, even- and now it means you're mad at me. And when people get mad, they leave." She looked at his back, willing him to turn around. "And don't you dare try to pretend you haven't even thought of it."

"I haven't," he said, turning to her, expression softening as he saw her face. Maybe their past was never going to leave them alone, but that didn't mean he had to screw up the present quite so much. He hated fighting with her- punching each other and trying to skewer her with a sword could be fun- though he was always careful not to hurt her, hated to admit that he always had been, she was delicate, in his mind at least, but with words? He couldn't pull up strength to actually hurt her, probably never would be able too.

"Buffy," that same hurt look in her eyes softening his resolve even more, "love, you know I'm not going anywhere. I figure as long as you're not dating the Poofster and there aren't men worthy of you, I'll be selfish and keep you all to myself." He kneeled down by the bed where she was sitting, putting his head on her lap as she began to run her hands through his hair.

"This might not be the easiest thing for either of us to do, pet, but we'll do it anyway. Sure, we're always going to fight, and unless Red wants to give us a very nice gift in the form of a time travel spell, our past is always going to be the same. There will always be Drusilla, Angel, hell, even Harmony's probably given us both a bit of emotional hell. And that Parker bloke, and Captain Cardboard. They'll never properly leave us alone, we talked about that earlier tonight. Halfrek too, I guess.

"And I'm never not going to have tried to..." there was an uncomfortable pause where Spike looked for a word and Buffy lay down, pulling him up to lie with his head on her stomach, still running her hands through his hair, "force myself. You're never not going to have treated me like shit for a year.

"But, in the end, we're going to be together. Trust me on that one, Slayer. Don't ask any questions, don't even try to take care of it more than you have to. I've failed you twice, I'm not doing it again, love, never again."

"Spike, don't, you never let me down. Not that night at the tower and definitely not in Sunnydale. You defeated the First- you saved the freaking world. So, yeah, I spent a year being a bit catatonic- but I was here to be all Buffy-Bot!" She protested, pulling him up so he was propped on his arms over her, looking her in the eyes. "I'm sorry I may have overreacted to what you said. And I am going to try to make this work, just as hard as you are. And it is going to work... isn't it?" She lets the unease that came from the fact that they could still yell at each other until her throat was raw and there were very few things she wants to do more than sprinkle a bit of holy water on him creep into her voice.

"Of course it is, pet. Remember, love's bitch here. I think I may actually enjoy having my heart systematically ripped apart from time to time..." he grinned at her and the mood changed instantly, she forgave him for the things he'd said to her, and he forgave her.

Yes, it may seem far too simple, but that was the funny thing about their new relationship. Everything was so simple. Their past was there, like Spike had said, always would be, but, for the first time, the future stretched out for them clear and unblemished. Buffy and Spike both knew they'd screw up more times than either could count, but they also knew that they couldn't bear to lose each other again so it would always work out. Hopefully.

Spike was just about to lean down to kiss her on the lips when Andrew burst into the room. Seeing a shirtless Spike leaning over Buffy, whose robe was hanging quite conspicuously open shocked him into silence, before, in that every-annoying squeak he spoke:

"Can I film this?" Buffy just laughed, not wanting to break her moment quite so soon with unreal reality (a term she'd come up with for the people living in her house other than she and Spike recently, because it seemed like they were the only two people in existence sometimes), so she laughed into his mouth. Maybe, Buffy paused to consider halfway through their kiss, she was insane to try this again. When had it ever worked before?

But then she considered the difference between the twenty-one year old girl just back from the dead and looking for some way to feel something other than emptiness in all the wrong places- which in the end turned out to be right, and the twenty-four year old woman who knew exactly what she wanted, exactly where it was, and exactly how she was getting it.

Spike wondered why he was doing this to himself, letting himself go completely and totally – and no, not only because he thought Andrew was probably filming this. Mostly because he had realized he wasn't having second thoughts. Which probably meant that this wasn't something he could decide not to do. And that lead him to wonder; who exactly was making this choice? So many small changes could have ruined these perfect moments between them; if he'd decided to ambush her somewhere other than the Bronze- if his first sight of her had been the Slayer side, he wouldn't have had a problem killing her. But seeing Buffy- really seeing her- that changed everything.

He planned, someday, on telling her about all the little moments when he fell in love with her- there must be millions, there's one every day at least. The way she flicked Andrew with one hand while she's writing something with the other one. Or perhaps, sometimes, the way she looked at the oven as if it was the most confusing thing she'd ever met and someone at the kitchen table- Spike thought that these people spent an inordinate amount of time in the kitchen- got up to help her. He, personally, hadn't tried yet, preferring to see her somehow actually burn water than help her. He chuckled deeply, pulling back and pulling her robe shut.

"Do we really want to star in Andrew's new porno?" He asked her as she looked at him, slightly disappointed.

"Guess not," she grumbled, "but we'll pick this up later?"

"Most definitely. Now. Who gets to threaten Andrew?"

"I'm thinking we get Dawn- he's more scared of her than he is of you. Which is weird," Buffy commented.

"You're supposed to pretend I'm not here! So it's like the Blair Witch Project... no one knows whether or not it's real and..." Andrew trailed off as two death glares were shot his way. "Did you two know you look freakishly alike when you're really, really ticked off at me?" More death glaring, "I think this means you don't want me here?"

"Really, Andrew? Because from all the threatening to get Dawn to come in and yell at you like she did when you hung yourself from the roof to film her breaking up with Gerald, and the glaring, I was getting a real come-watch-us-have-sex vibe," Buffy said sarcastically.

"Freakishly alike, really, and you should get a dog that gives that death stare for, like, the perfect Stepford family 'cause you know, vamps can't make babies and..." Andrew, wisely, shut up and back out of the room, closing the door behind him.

"Remind me again why he lives with us?" Spike said, rolling off her and collapsing on the sheets with an arm across her stomach.

"Well, it was supposed to be until Giles let him be a Watcher-In-Training, but then we kind of ran out of Slayers old enough to be, err, Watched. So we got to keep Andrew until he 'found his place in the world', which he decided was 'to be with Buffy like a Jedi', whatever the hell that means. So I wanted him out, but then Dawn wanted him here, God knows why, I don't think she likes him any more than I do."

"Love," Spike said patiently, his worst suspicions confirmed, "do you like me?"

"Sometimes, why?"

"Do you love me?"

"'Course I do," she said, quickly pecking him on the lips, "what I don't see is what-" Buffy froze for a second, "Dawn, my poor little innocent baby sister and Andrew? He's older than her ... lots older."

"I'm about a hundred and thirty years older than you, pet."

"Yeah, but your mental age is about twelve!"

"Thirteen year age difference, then," Spike commented, flipping onto his stomach and beginning to play with her hair. "Besides, it's better Andrew than, say, the king of Poofiness, you were younger than her when you started carrying on with that buffoon."

"Someday, Spike, some very lovely day, we're going to teach you to swear like a normal person."

"We're in Britain, my love, you're the odd one out here."

"Spike, does making fun of the way I talk get me into your pants any faster?"

"No, love."

"Then, why, Spike, are you doing it?"

"Banter?"

"Spike, you're an idiot. Now shut up and kiss me."

"Done and done, love."