A/N: Huge plot twist last chapter, but I need to point out two things I
don't think I'm making very clear. Firstly I never came out and said that
Jake and Willow actually slept together, remember that Jake woke up in his
boxers. Secondly the true dynamic force behind Jake's love for Buffy is
that she is the unattainable. He doesn't feel worthy of anything truly
good; especially her. In addition, we also have Buffy's own conflicting
feelings of self worth to deal with. Hope this clears up a few ideas
behind the actions, so please don't hate anybody too much yet; they still
have to save the world, after all.
It was two weeks before she came to find me. I was on my way toward a real recovery, Willow said, and we worked daily for the first week just on refining and exploring our bond. I learned things about myself by watching her learn them and I was daily amazed by how much alike we actually were. Granted I had a few years and a few more kills than she had, but we'd both learned that we weren't good enough the way we were and had worked to change that, to make ourselves useful to the one that would fight; the one I would love. We had taken to spending most of the day sky clad and meditating with our minds clear and our thoughts affirming our existence in this world and our control within it. Most evenings would be spent around the apartment in conversation or in mutual comfort as we relived our past and with her daily trying to convince me I was good enough for Buffy.
Willow had problems of her own, as all of us do. While she was busy trying to mend my broken heart and mind she was trying to put off working on her own. Her grief over Tara hurt her more than she'd care to admit, almost as much as her negligence causing pain to Dawn did. About the third day was when I had been together enough in my thoughts to bring some of those feelings to the surface of her mind and make her see how much she was needed by other people besides me. She resisted at first, not wanting to relive her own pain, but while showing me some of the reasons for my purpose she'd opened the door to her own past mistakes, so now we worked on those too.
Gradually our bond faded to almost an after thought. We could still easily send thoughts to each other and show each other things that we were seeing, but it stopped being automatic. We stopped having to consciously hold back from each other's senses, but the strong feelings remained the same. After that first week, I made Willow understand that she had other people she had to be there for. Xander's wedding came and went without him in it, and no one could find him, but Willow was there for him and for Anya after he left. I did some occasional shopping and actually ate pretty well, if plainly. I still wasn't ready to try and work anything out with my life. And while I never quite got around to fixing the mirror, I had with Willow's help set the rest of the apartment to rights. The drawings of Buffy still sat on my bedside table and had for days and days before Willow encouraged me to continue letting the pictures relieve my stress and to demonstrate my feelings until I figured out why I couldn't help loving Buffy. I was sitting on the bed, drawing out my love and my angst at not only what I'd seen again but what I was going to do about it, when there was a quiet knock on the door. My eyes focused on it and my hand froze in its careful motion. As the knob slowly turned I made sure my pistol was under the pillow before turning back to see who was intruding, sure by now who it was.
The knob finished turning and Buffy stood for a minute in the threshold before walking in; I froze completely and my skin tingled. I saw her eyes rove the room and her nose crinkled slightly at the smell of incense lingering in the air. She took a few steps into the room, closing the door behind her, and then moved to the counter top to pick up the empty bottle still sitting on it and examine the label. She put it back down and I watched dumb struck as she made her way through the living room and back to my bedroom doorway to stop and look in at me. I was afraid to make a move in case this was a dream and she wasn't really here. She blinked and in the end it was she who spoke first, her eyes on the drawings spread across the floor beside me.
"Hey." Her voice was quiet, contrite... sad. I couldn't respond to it, not like that. I kept my silence and nodded once, my expression as plain as I could make it. I looked into Buffy's eyes and watched her look around my room, everywhere but at me. I saw her look at the pile of drawings from a few weeks ago sitting on my dresser by the door and then back at the others strewn across my bed and down to the floor.
"Angel used to do this too, when he was... upset." I looked at her face as she spoke, but her eyes were distant. She shook her head and brought herself back to the present, finally looking at my face.
"Look, I had a... talk, with Spike. I told him we couldn't be together anymore. I made him understand that we could never work, that I was using him... and you. And that I couldn't do that anymore." I reached across to move some papers to the floor and motioned her to sit down. She did so and we sat together in silence.
"I tried to talk to you, in my head, but I can't hear you anymore." I nodded and spoke for the first time in days, my voice raspy and rough with both emotion and lack of use.
"My walls broke down that night; I had to have time alone to... fix myself." She looked down at her hands.
"I'm sorry...for what I did, for lying about it...for hurting you. I'm so sorry."
'Tell her you love her.' Willow's thought came through loud and clear.
'No, I can't. It's too soon.'
'It really isn't. You can do it, you have to. If you ever want to make this right, you have to tell her. Can't you feel how worried she is about this? How much it's hurting her not to have you in her life? How sorry she is about what happened?' I could, but I didn't want to. At Willow's forceful suggestion I cracked open my wall and felt her pain, all of it, though my still strong link with her. Willow was right.
"I love you, Buffy, and I couldn't change that if I wanted to. But you hurt me. I don't know if I can trust myself around you anymore." I found myself averting my eyes and looked up into her soul probing gaze. I let the words pour from my heart." Every time I see you I want to take you in my arms and it's all I can do to stop myself sometimes. I love you so much; too much maybe. It's like I can't control myself when I'm around you. You don't even realize all the perfect little things you do that drive me crazy. Nothing would make me happier than to just be with you all the time and I think I'd go insane if you weren't near me. But then this happened, again, and now I don't know what to do." I stopped and slouched back against the headboard, the pad on my lap falling forward and I watched her eyes go to the only picture in the room of us together. In the picture we held each other, both of us looking out, with my head leaning down on top of hers and the darkness that permeates all of existence surrounding us, but it can't touch us. Her eyes start to shine and then a single tear makes its way down her face as she leans forward to take the pad out of my hands. She flips a few pages to see almost all of them are filled with more sketches of the two of us in different situations or positions, but always together.
"Wow. I don't know what to say." She puts the pad down on the bed behind her and looks back up at my face. "Thank you, for being there for me when I needed you. I wish we could just go back to the way we were before. I didn't know what to do before, after I came back. It was so hard. I got so much support from you and then I had to go and mess it up again; stupid Buffy." I wanted to interrupt, but stopped myself. I had to let her tell me in her own time. "I had something so great and I messed it up. Twice. Once again, I had one good thing in my life and I screwed it up. I sorry for... everything. God, I am so sorry." Her tears ran more freely now and I again react with the instincts I didn't know I had and didn't know where they came from, reaching out and drawing her into me. She uncoils and trails her feet out behind her as she pulls herself into my chest, continuously telling me how sorry she is. I wrap my arms around her, my face down close in her hair and I breathe in the scent that I missed so much. Tears spring to my own eyes as we slowly rock back and forth together. I don't know why my body betrayed my heart this way, but I haven't felt as perfect in a long time as I did in that moment, with Buffy there with me and Willow silently supporting and cheering for me in my head. I relaxed into the arms of my savior and protector for as long as I could before pulling away slightly to look down on her.
"What are we now, Buffy? Are we together?" She pulled her face away from my chest and looked up at me with those beautiful green eyes and a worried expression on her face.
"Can we... do you want us to be together?" Her voice was hopeful, but reserved; almost like she didn't expect a good answer. As though there was another I could give. I knew I still wasn't worthy, and part of me expected to be betrayed again, but pain is my ally, my friend; I could deal with pain. It was really all I deserved. Anything else was just a bonus until I could get away from all of this again.
"I want us to be together in every sense of the word, Buffy. I love you." Slowly I brought my hand up and gently wiped her tears away from the perfect smile springing up beneath my touch. She pushes herself forward pressing her lips hard against mine, her hand snaking up around my neck. I pulled her to me as she threw her right leg over both of mine and pressed her entire body down onto me and moved against me. It wasn't long before I responded as all men do when a beautiful woman rubs against me the way she was now. My hands pulled her to me, my right moving up her back and my left moving down to the left pocket of her jeans. She moaned softly against me and I pulled her shirt up and over her head. We separated briefly as the cloth obscured her face from me but her lips found mine before her eyes reopened. I stopped her increasingly rapid motions and held her back away from me as I sat up beneath her. Her eyes were wide as I held her away from me for a long minute before I started my mouth and fingers on a different kind of slow journey.
Slowly I traced every curve of her body, my mouth finding every scar on her I could as my right hand reached up to undo the clasp of her bra and I worked my way downward. She shivered as my fingers lightly found one on the back of her neck and my hands stroked down her back to another old cut. Her fingers curled themselves in the collar of my t-shirt as I traced the scar on her stomach, from her own stake I think. My lips found hers and my fingers slowly stroked the length of her back a second time before she pushed me onto my back and tore my shirt in half right down the front. She smiled as she began a similar slow, agonizing, and thoroughly exciting torture that started at my head with her lips tracing the scar on my face before working their way to my chest and the old bullet scars that walked their way down to my stomach. I no longer had the six-pack from high school, but I didn't have much of a paunch at all, and the thick scars that marred my skin were long faded but still very visible. She continued working her way down, unbuckling and pulling off my pants as she continued her search for the marks of war. She started counting the shrapnel wounds in my legs and then caressed her way back up to my face.
I focused my mind slightly and held out my hand to catch the ice cube that floated its way from the freezer. She gasped as I touched it to the back of her neck and trailed it down her back. She was back on top now and moving against me as the ice danced across her skin and my phantom hands caressed every part of her lithe curves. She danced under my touch and I under hers. We slowly reacquainted ourselves with each other's bodies, conscious of each other's needs and feelings as our link slowly re- established itself. Each kiss, caress, touch, taste reasserting our bond and bringing us closer than ever before, culminating in the actual consummation. We lay there together in my bed covered in sweat, cuddling together, and relaxed. I looked at the fridge and two cans of soda made their way across the room to my hands and opened themselves.
"How'd you do that?"
"I'm getting better with some practice. Breaking my walls down seems to have opened myself to more potential, but I still can't do much."
"You can do plenty." Her fingers traced a pattern on my chest and I put my soda down on the bedside table to wrap her up in both arms and settled further into the sheets.
"Do you have anywhere you have to be?"
"Nope, I'm just going to head out later to look for Warren and the rest of the nerd herd. Willow got a list of new rentals in the area and I'll be checking them off one by one."
"Sounds exciting."
"Alright, so it isn't the best job in the world, but it's gotta get done. I've got to stop them before they cause any more trouble."
"Do you need me to come along? We could even split the list up and get it done twice as fast and maybe have time for some dinner afterwards. What do you say?" She smiled at my simple plan and then raised one eyebrow as her smile took a turn to mischievous.
"But we don't have to do that till later do we? What are we going to do until then?" My grin answered hers and it was quite a few hours before we finally got up and showered to head out. The plan was very simple: hit every house on my half of the list and we'd meet up together before getting changed and going out for dinner. I had a change of clothes in my bag so we could both get ready at her house. We started out on our rounds and while it took a little longer than I thought it would, it was a fully uneventful mission. I was waiting with the car in the right parking lot and took the extra time by myself to meditate and try and figure out just what had happened tonight with me and Buffy. Was that going to happen every time we were together?
I cautiously poked my way through my head and sorted out my connections to other people. Willow was definitely still there but she wasn't quite like I remember her first connection to me. We had been bonded before but now the link had faded to a mere thread of what it had once been. I could still tell where she was and, if I thought about it, what she was doing but that was about it. I got none of the flavor, the texture, of her thoughts unless she was thinking at me. Then I thought of Buffy and I saw through her eyes before I realized what I was doing and pulled back. My link to her was stronger, easier to use. I heard her surface thoughts easily and clearly and I knew how she felt about them without thinking; almost like they were my own feelings. She realized I was thinking of her and I felt her thoughts caress mine gently before she sent one clear statement.
'I'm almost done, I'll be there soon.' I sent a distant kiss and pulled back gently into my own body. I wondered at why my bond to Buffy wasn't as strong as Willow's and mine initially was. I'd have to think about it some more and maybe do some research. Time enough for that later, though. As soon as Buffy got here we'd be heading out for some quality time together and I really wanted us to work it all out especially after telling her how I felt about her. What was keeping her? The thought was barely thought when I felt and heard her adrenaline boost and shoved the car into gear. She was only a few blocks away but time stretched as I rushed to her side. I pulled up in front of a nondescript house just like the others next to it and jumped out to find Buffy lying against the hood of a car in the driveway.
"Are you alright?" I sent a probing thought for her but she was seeing something different than the world that I was seeing. She blinked and looked around before looking into my eyes.
"What happened?"
"I was hoping you could tell me. Was there a fight? Your arm is hurt." I could feel it and a flash later I saw her image of the thing that'd done this. I wrapped my arms around her and walked her to the car to sit her down. She seemed a little foggy at first, but cleared up as soon as we were on the road on the way back to her house. She was even back to making witty comments about my driving.
"God, you drive like I do and I don't drive." I grinned in response to her mischievous smile but kept my eyes on the road as I slowed down to the speed limit from the frantic pace I'd been going; I was worried about her. We got to her house and I helped her take her coat off and hung it up before sitting her down on the couch to take a look at her arm. It didn't look like much more than a small puncture, a bit bigger than a needle but nothing too huge or deep. I went upstairs to the bathroom to get the medical stuff box and came back downstairs to find her taking her long sleeved shirt off keeping it draped in front of her. I smiled gently as I carefully cleaned and then bandaged the small wound. I looked up into her eyes a second before she leaned forward and kissed me.
"Thank you for taking care of me. I'm so glad you're here again." She bounced up off the couch and finished pulling her shirt off as she made her way up the stairs and first into her room and then the bathroom. I cleaned up the rest of the med stuff and put it all back in the box and went outside to grab my bag from the car. Before I opened the door something made me stop and I took a whiff of the air around me.
"Hello Spike." I turned around as he stepped out from behind the tree, the smell of his cigarettes unmistakable to a former smoker like myself.
"Well, if it isn't the self important half of a poof what thinks he's good enough for my Slayer." I understood he was bitter; I probably would have been too. I understood that he would react badly to Buffy's talk with him; I probably would too. However, the thing I understood most at that moment was how good it felt to have my fist connect with his face knocking him onto his back where he glared up at me.
"Good bye Spike." I left him there and walked into the house just in time to hear Buffy's bedroom door close and made my way directly up the stairs to take my turn in the shower. I looked at myself in the mirror, something I hadn't done in a while since I'd broken mine. I shook my head as I ran my hand through a few weeks worth of beard and cursed my baby face that made me still look like I was in freakin' college. I decided to leave it be, though. Between the half beard and the scar I guess I didn't look too young anymore. I finished up and applied some deodorant before pulling on my clean shirt and opening the door to find Buffy looking like she had been leaning her ear against the door. She stepped back in surprise and grinned sheepishly up at me and I couldn't help but step forward and bring her into my arms.
"Ready to go?" She nodded against me and pulled back a little to give me a peck on the lips.
"I am but you're not."
"I'm not? I feel ready."
"You're wearing the wrong shirt." She stepped back and pulled out a shirt from behind her back to hold out to me, a shirt that had been in a shopping bag in the back seat of my car half an hour ago. I smiled and obligingly pulled off my shirt and held out my hand for the thin silver felt one in Buffy's hand. I normally wouldn't have worn something as flashy as this was, or as nice. I was more into subdued colors like greens, browns, some blues depending on my mood and don't forget the ever present black. I spun around once and did a little bow as Buffy clapped at my little show. I held out my arm and she took it as we made our way downstairs out the front door and into my car. We held hands all the way to the restaurant where I walked her in and took her leather jacket to hand it to the coat check but stopped as I saw what else she was wearing.
Stick with me now, I'm not a fashion expert but I do know what I like. Her shirt had short sleeves and was a slightly darker gray / silver than my shirt and beautifully complimented her eyes and hair. She wore it over a black almost lacey skirt and black shoes I could tell she could still fight in if she had to. She'd replaced the full wrap bandage I'd put on her arm earlier with a flesh colored band-aid that in no way distracted from the most important and eye-catching thing about her blouse: how low cut it was and the righteous amount of skin left visible. I finally completed the motion of handing over the coats and escorted her to the table, holding out her chair for her as she sat down. The waitress was very polite and smiled a lot as she went to get our drinks and came back with breadsticks.
"You know, I just realized I don't know how old you are." Her statement took my by surprise as I realized she was right. Just how much of the simple stuff didn't we know about each other? I thought back to the first and then the second time we met and chuckled; I guess we didn't get much time for the simple stuff. Most of our relationship had been based on support and understanding, not knowledge of each other. I felt a tinge of pain as I thought about telling her everything about me, thankful my link with her hadn't been forged when I was as out of it as I was with Willow. Time to change my mental subject now and answer her question.
"I'll be thirty two next month." I watched her eyes and listened to her aura as I said it, half expecting shock or at least some kind of surprise. I was disappointed; nothing. She took a second or two as she calculated how much older than her I was before she spoke again.
"Well you're older than my last boyfriend, but younger than my first. What day is your birthday?"
"The twelfth. And you're twenty one?" She nods. "Not too bad of a difference, ten years. How old was your first boyfriend, if you don't mind me asking." At the look on her face I knew I'd be staying away from old boyfriends for the rest of this conversation, but she did answer my question.
"Let's just say he had at least a century on me." I took more than a few seconds to fully absorb her answer and looked up into her worried eyes. I knew full well who it was, well I was pretty sure anyway. But I couldn't tell her he'd sent me here; time to play dumb. The scene from earlier tonight played through my head bringing a smile to my face as I asked her.
"It wasn't Spike was it?" Her eyes got wide and I think she was almost about to laugh, but shook her head instead.
"His name was Angel. He left right after I graduated, headed to LA. Ever been?" At last a safe subject.
"Yeah, just a few weeks ago actually, right before I came here."
"So how is Angel?" I had been taking a sip of my drink and almost spat it back out again in surprise.
"I'm sorry?" I put an innocent (okay, so it was only a 'not guilty') face on and tried to feign ignorance.
"Angel. In LA. Where you just came from before you got here." She waited a few seconds, tapping her fingers against the table and looking at my almost blank stare before continuing. "The guy whose jacket looks, feels, and smells just like yours." I took a deep breath and nodded, giving in. What really took me off guard though was that she wasn't pissed off about it. I decided that now was the right time to tell her.
"He's good, still doing the demon investigator bit. He didn't want me to tell you that he'd asked me to come. I'm sorry for not telling you sooner, I tried but..."
"I know. I figured it out the like first week I knew you."
"The jacket?"
"The jacket. I wore it sometimes before he left. That's why putting it on again that night in the Magic Box made me feel better, it was something familiar to me. Did he say why?" I shook my head and she kind of half sighed, looking to the side. "A year ago, this would have really pissed me off." I could tell that it was a little hard for her to admit that, but she wasn't done. "I guess I've come more to grips with it. With my... relationship with Angel."
"I don't really know all of what went on with you two, but I know he still thinks about it. When I was there we used to drink together at night after work and talk about his old life; he always brought up you when he talked about other women."
"You drank with Angel? He didn't used to drink."
"He doesn't drink much at all, hardly ever in fact. Mostly I drank and he talked. He has a way of telling his stories that makes it easy for me to picture myself there with him, watching him do what he did. It was almost real, you know?"
"He's relived them so many times, regretting his actions from before. How much did he tell you?"
"He told me a lot from his life before he was turned, his escapades with Darla, and some of his life, excuse me un-life, after he got his soul."
"How much did he tell you about us?" Her voice was quiet and if I wasn't really listening I would never have heard her slight nervousness. It made me smile that she was worried about what her ex had told me. It was reassuring, really, that she worried about my opinion.
"He didn't tell me about your relationship, just what kind of a person you are, how you save people and the world all the time, how you care about the people around you." I took her hand in mine. "What an amazing person you are." Our eyes were locked and she squeezed my hand.
"Thank you." It was a whisper, but she meant it and the feelings I got from our connection were overwhelming as I smiled back at her. We took a few minutes, me to take a sip of water and her to wipe her eyes with her napkin, but were fully composed and smiling when our food arrived. It was a very delicious evening: perfect company, wonderful food, nice atmosphere, and no demons breaking in and trying to kill us. We had a few glasses of wine over the course of the evening and judging by how tired Buffy was on the car ride to her house she wasn't a big drinker. She seemed fine once we got there and went upstairs to get ready for bed. I changed my shirt and headed out for a quick patrol after letting her know I'd be back shortly. No action, but I felt better about having such a nice evening instead of fighting the good fight. I came back to find Buffy already in bed asleep and, after a quick shower, crawled under the covers and curled up against her. Looking back, I think that was the moment I considered myself patched.
It was two weeks before she came to find me. I was on my way toward a real recovery, Willow said, and we worked daily for the first week just on refining and exploring our bond. I learned things about myself by watching her learn them and I was daily amazed by how much alike we actually were. Granted I had a few years and a few more kills than she had, but we'd both learned that we weren't good enough the way we were and had worked to change that, to make ourselves useful to the one that would fight; the one I would love. We had taken to spending most of the day sky clad and meditating with our minds clear and our thoughts affirming our existence in this world and our control within it. Most evenings would be spent around the apartment in conversation or in mutual comfort as we relived our past and with her daily trying to convince me I was good enough for Buffy.
Willow had problems of her own, as all of us do. While she was busy trying to mend my broken heart and mind she was trying to put off working on her own. Her grief over Tara hurt her more than she'd care to admit, almost as much as her negligence causing pain to Dawn did. About the third day was when I had been together enough in my thoughts to bring some of those feelings to the surface of her mind and make her see how much she was needed by other people besides me. She resisted at first, not wanting to relive her own pain, but while showing me some of the reasons for my purpose she'd opened the door to her own past mistakes, so now we worked on those too.
Gradually our bond faded to almost an after thought. We could still easily send thoughts to each other and show each other things that we were seeing, but it stopped being automatic. We stopped having to consciously hold back from each other's senses, but the strong feelings remained the same. After that first week, I made Willow understand that she had other people she had to be there for. Xander's wedding came and went without him in it, and no one could find him, but Willow was there for him and for Anya after he left. I did some occasional shopping and actually ate pretty well, if plainly. I still wasn't ready to try and work anything out with my life. And while I never quite got around to fixing the mirror, I had with Willow's help set the rest of the apartment to rights. The drawings of Buffy still sat on my bedside table and had for days and days before Willow encouraged me to continue letting the pictures relieve my stress and to demonstrate my feelings until I figured out why I couldn't help loving Buffy. I was sitting on the bed, drawing out my love and my angst at not only what I'd seen again but what I was going to do about it, when there was a quiet knock on the door. My eyes focused on it and my hand froze in its careful motion. As the knob slowly turned I made sure my pistol was under the pillow before turning back to see who was intruding, sure by now who it was.
The knob finished turning and Buffy stood for a minute in the threshold before walking in; I froze completely and my skin tingled. I saw her eyes rove the room and her nose crinkled slightly at the smell of incense lingering in the air. She took a few steps into the room, closing the door behind her, and then moved to the counter top to pick up the empty bottle still sitting on it and examine the label. She put it back down and I watched dumb struck as she made her way through the living room and back to my bedroom doorway to stop and look in at me. I was afraid to make a move in case this was a dream and she wasn't really here. She blinked and in the end it was she who spoke first, her eyes on the drawings spread across the floor beside me.
"Hey." Her voice was quiet, contrite... sad. I couldn't respond to it, not like that. I kept my silence and nodded once, my expression as plain as I could make it. I looked into Buffy's eyes and watched her look around my room, everywhere but at me. I saw her look at the pile of drawings from a few weeks ago sitting on my dresser by the door and then back at the others strewn across my bed and down to the floor.
"Angel used to do this too, when he was... upset." I looked at her face as she spoke, but her eyes were distant. She shook her head and brought herself back to the present, finally looking at my face.
"Look, I had a... talk, with Spike. I told him we couldn't be together anymore. I made him understand that we could never work, that I was using him... and you. And that I couldn't do that anymore." I reached across to move some papers to the floor and motioned her to sit down. She did so and we sat together in silence.
"I tried to talk to you, in my head, but I can't hear you anymore." I nodded and spoke for the first time in days, my voice raspy and rough with both emotion and lack of use.
"My walls broke down that night; I had to have time alone to... fix myself." She looked down at her hands.
"I'm sorry...for what I did, for lying about it...for hurting you. I'm so sorry."
'Tell her you love her.' Willow's thought came through loud and clear.
'No, I can't. It's too soon.'
'It really isn't. You can do it, you have to. If you ever want to make this right, you have to tell her. Can't you feel how worried she is about this? How much it's hurting her not to have you in her life? How sorry she is about what happened?' I could, but I didn't want to. At Willow's forceful suggestion I cracked open my wall and felt her pain, all of it, though my still strong link with her. Willow was right.
"I love you, Buffy, and I couldn't change that if I wanted to. But you hurt me. I don't know if I can trust myself around you anymore." I found myself averting my eyes and looked up into her soul probing gaze. I let the words pour from my heart." Every time I see you I want to take you in my arms and it's all I can do to stop myself sometimes. I love you so much; too much maybe. It's like I can't control myself when I'm around you. You don't even realize all the perfect little things you do that drive me crazy. Nothing would make me happier than to just be with you all the time and I think I'd go insane if you weren't near me. But then this happened, again, and now I don't know what to do." I stopped and slouched back against the headboard, the pad on my lap falling forward and I watched her eyes go to the only picture in the room of us together. In the picture we held each other, both of us looking out, with my head leaning down on top of hers and the darkness that permeates all of existence surrounding us, but it can't touch us. Her eyes start to shine and then a single tear makes its way down her face as she leans forward to take the pad out of my hands. She flips a few pages to see almost all of them are filled with more sketches of the two of us in different situations or positions, but always together.
"Wow. I don't know what to say." She puts the pad down on the bed behind her and looks back up at my face. "Thank you, for being there for me when I needed you. I wish we could just go back to the way we were before. I didn't know what to do before, after I came back. It was so hard. I got so much support from you and then I had to go and mess it up again; stupid Buffy." I wanted to interrupt, but stopped myself. I had to let her tell me in her own time. "I had something so great and I messed it up. Twice. Once again, I had one good thing in my life and I screwed it up. I sorry for... everything. God, I am so sorry." Her tears ran more freely now and I again react with the instincts I didn't know I had and didn't know where they came from, reaching out and drawing her into me. She uncoils and trails her feet out behind her as she pulls herself into my chest, continuously telling me how sorry she is. I wrap my arms around her, my face down close in her hair and I breathe in the scent that I missed so much. Tears spring to my own eyes as we slowly rock back and forth together. I don't know why my body betrayed my heart this way, but I haven't felt as perfect in a long time as I did in that moment, with Buffy there with me and Willow silently supporting and cheering for me in my head. I relaxed into the arms of my savior and protector for as long as I could before pulling away slightly to look down on her.
"What are we now, Buffy? Are we together?" She pulled her face away from my chest and looked up at me with those beautiful green eyes and a worried expression on her face.
"Can we... do you want us to be together?" Her voice was hopeful, but reserved; almost like she didn't expect a good answer. As though there was another I could give. I knew I still wasn't worthy, and part of me expected to be betrayed again, but pain is my ally, my friend; I could deal with pain. It was really all I deserved. Anything else was just a bonus until I could get away from all of this again.
"I want us to be together in every sense of the word, Buffy. I love you." Slowly I brought my hand up and gently wiped her tears away from the perfect smile springing up beneath my touch. She pushes herself forward pressing her lips hard against mine, her hand snaking up around my neck. I pulled her to me as she threw her right leg over both of mine and pressed her entire body down onto me and moved against me. It wasn't long before I responded as all men do when a beautiful woman rubs against me the way she was now. My hands pulled her to me, my right moving up her back and my left moving down to the left pocket of her jeans. She moaned softly against me and I pulled her shirt up and over her head. We separated briefly as the cloth obscured her face from me but her lips found mine before her eyes reopened. I stopped her increasingly rapid motions and held her back away from me as I sat up beneath her. Her eyes were wide as I held her away from me for a long minute before I started my mouth and fingers on a different kind of slow journey.
Slowly I traced every curve of her body, my mouth finding every scar on her I could as my right hand reached up to undo the clasp of her bra and I worked my way downward. She shivered as my fingers lightly found one on the back of her neck and my hands stroked down her back to another old cut. Her fingers curled themselves in the collar of my t-shirt as I traced the scar on her stomach, from her own stake I think. My lips found hers and my fingers slowly stroked the length of her back a second time before she pushed me onto my back and tore my shirt in half right down the front. She smiled as she began a similar slow, agonizing, and thoroughly exciting torture that started at my head with her lips tracing the scar on my face before working their way to my chest and the old bullet scars that walked their way down to my stomach. I no longer had the six-pack from high school, but I didn't have much of a paunch at all, and the thick scars that marred my skin were long faded but still very visible. She continued working her way down, unbuckling and pulling off my pants as she continued her search for the marks of war. She started counting the shrapnel wounds in my legs and then caressed her way back up to my face.
I focused my mind slightly and held out my hand to catch the ice cube that floated its way from the freezer. She gasped as I touched it to the back of her neck and trailed it down her back. She was back on top now and moving against me as the ice danced across her skin and my phantom hands caressed every part of her lithe curves. She danced under my touch and I under hers. We slowly reacquainted ourselves with each other's bodies, conscious of each other's needs and feelings as our link slowly re- established itself. Each kiss, caress, touch, taste reasserting our bond and bringing us closer than ever before, culminating in the actual consummation. We lay there together in my bed covered in sweat, cuddling together, and relaxed. I looked at the fridge and two cans of soda made their way across the room to my hands and opened themselves.
"How'd you do that?"
"I'm getting better with some practice. Breaking my walls down seems to have opened myself to more potential, but I still can't do much."
"You can do plenty." Her fingers traced a pattern on my chest and I put my soda down on the bedside table to wrap her up in both arms and settled further into the sheets.
"Do you have anywhere you have to be?"
"Nope, I'm just going to head out later to look for Warren and the rest of the nerd herd. Willow got a list of new rentals in the area and I'll be checking them off one by one."
"Sounds exciting."
"Alright, so it isn't the best job in the world, but it's gotta get done. I've got to stop them before they cause any more trouble."
"Do you need me to come along? We could even split the list up and get it done twice as fast and maybe have time for some dinner afterwards. What do you say?" She smiled at my simple plan and then raised one eyebrow as her smile took a turn to mischievous.
"But we don't have to do that till later do we? What are we going to do until then?" My grin answered hers and it was quite a few hours before we finally got up and showered to head out. The plan was very simple: hit every house on my half of the list and we'd meet up together before getting changed and going out for dinner. I had a change of clothes in my bag so we could both get ready at her house. We started out on our rounds and while it took a little longer than I thought it would, it was a fully uneventful mission. I was waiting with the car in the right parking lot and took the extra time by myself to meditate and try and figure out just what had happened tonight with me and Buffy. Was that going to happen every time we were together?
I cautiously poked my way through my head and sorted out my connections to other people. Willow was definitely still there but she wasn't quite like I remember her first connection to me. We had been bonded before but now the link had faded to a mere thread of what it had once been. I could still tell where she was and, if I thought about it, what she was doing but that was about it. I got none of the flavor, the texture, of her thoughts unless she was thinking at me. Then I thought of Buffy and I saw through her eyes before I realized what I was doing and pulled back. My link to her was stronger, easier to use. I heard her surface thoughts easily and clearly and I knew how she felt about them without thinking; almost like they were my own feelings. She realized I was thinking of her and I felt her thoughts caress mine gently before she sent one clear statement.
'I'm almost done, I'll be there soon.' I sent a distant kiss and pulled back gently into my own body. I wondered at why my bond to Buffy wasn't as strong as Willow's and mine initially was. I'd have to think about it some more and maybe do some research. Time enough for that later, though. As soon as Buffy got here we'd be heading out for some quality time together and I really wanted us to work it all out especially after telling her how I felt about her. What was keeping her? The thought was barely thought when I felt and heard her adrenaline boost and shoved the car into gear. She was only a few blocks away but time stretched as I rushed to her side. I pulled up in front of a nondescript house just like the others next to it and jumped out to find Buffy lying against the hood of a car in the driveway.
"Are you alright?" I sent a probing thought for her but she was seeing something different than the world that I was seeing. She blinked and looked around before looking into my eyes.
"What happened?"
"I was hoping you could tell me. Was there a fight? Your arm is hurt." I could feel it and a flash later I saw her image of the thing that'd done this. I wrapped my arms around her and walked her to the car to sit her down. She seemed a little foggy at first, but cleared up as soon as we were on the road on the way back to her house. She was even back to making witty comments about my driving.
"God, you drive like I do and I don't drive." I grinned in response to her mischievous smile but kept my eyes on the road as I slowed down to the speed limit from the frantic pace I'd been going; I was worried about her. We got to her house and I helped her take her coat off and hung it up before sitting her down on the couch to take a look at her arm. It didn't look like much more than a small puncture, a bit bigger than a needle but nothing too huge or deep. I went upstairs to the bathroom to get the medical stuff box and came back downstairs to find her taking her long sleeved shirt off keeping it draped in front of her. I smiled gently as I carefully cleaned and then bandaged the small wound. I looked up into her eyes a second before she leaned forward and kissed me.
"Thank you for taking care of me. I'm so glad you're here again." She bounced up off the couch and finished pulling her shirt off as she made her way up the stairs and first into her room and then the bathroom. I cleaned up the rest of the med stuff and put it all back in the box and went outside to grab my bag from the car. Before I opened the door something made me stop and I took a whiff of the air around me.
"Hello Spike." I turned around as he stepped out from behind the tree, the smell of his cigarettes unmistakable to a former smoker like myself.
"Well, if it isn't the self important half of a poof what thinks he's good enough for my Slayer." I understood he was bitter; I probably would have been too. I understood that he would react badly to Buffy's talk with him; I probably would too. However, the thing I understood most at that moment was how good it felt to have my fist connect with his face knocking him onto his back where he glared up at me.
"Good bye Spike." I left him there and walked into the house just in time to hear Buffy's bedroom door close and made my way directly up the stairs to take my turn in the shower. I looked at myself in the mirror, something I hadn't done in a while since I'd broken mine. I shook my head as I ran my hand through a few weeks worth of beard and cursed my baby face that made me still look like I was in freakin' college. I decided to leave it be, though. Between the half beard and the scar I guess I didn't look too young anymore. I finished up and applied some deodorant before pulling on my clean shirt and opening the door to find Buffy looking like she had been leaning her ear against the door. She stepped back in surprise and grinned sheepishly up at me and I couldn't help but step forward and bring her into my arms.
"Ready to go?" She nodded against me and pulled back a little to give me a peck on the lips.
"I am but you're not."
"I'm not? I feel ready."
"You're wearing the wrong shirt." She stepped back and pulled out a shirt from behind her back to hold out to me, a shirt that had been in a shopping bag in the back seat of my car half an hour ago. I smiled and obligingly pulled off my shirt and held out my hand for the thin silver felt one in Buffy's hand. I normally wouldn't have worn something as flashy as this was, or as nice. I was more into subdued colors like greens, browns, some blues depending on my mood and don't forget the ever present black. I spun around once and did a little bow as Buffy clapped at my little show. I held out my arm and she took it as we made our way downstairs out the front door and into my car. We held hands all the way to the restaurant where I walked her in and took her leather jacket to hand it to the coat check but stopped as I saw what else she was wearing.
Stick with me now, I'm not a fashion expert but I do know what I like. Her shirt had short sleeves and was a slightly darker gray / silver than my shirt and beautifully complimented her eyes and hair. She wore it over a black almost lacey skirt and black shoes I could tell she could still fight in if she had to. She'd replaced the full wrap bandage I'd put on her arm earlier with a flesh colored band-aid that in no way distracted from the most important and eye-catching thing about her blouse: how low cut it was and the righteous amount of skin left visible. I finally completed the motion of handing over the coats and escorted her to the table, holding out her chair for her as she sat down. The waitress was very polite and smiled a lot as she went to get our drinks and came back with breadsticks.
"You know, I just realized I don't know how old you are." Her statement took my by surprise as I realized she was right. Just how much of the simple stuff didn't we know about each other? I thought back to the first and then the second time we met and chuckled; I guess we didn't get much time for the simple stuff. Most of our relationship had been based on support and understanding, not knowledge of each other. I felt a tinge of pain as I thought about telling her everything about me, thankful my link with her hadn't been forged when I was as out of it as I was with Willow. Time to change my mental subject now and answer her question.
"I'll be thirty two next month." I watched her eyes and listened to her aura as I said it, half expecting shock or at least some kind of surprise. I was disappointed; nothing. She took a second or two as she calculated how much older than her I was before she spoke again.
"Well you're older than my last boyfriend, but younger than my first. What day is your birthday?"
"The twelfth. And you're twenty one?" She nods. "Not too bad of a difference, ten years. How old was your first boyfriend, if you don't mind me asking." At the look on her face I knew I'd be staying away from old boyfriends for the rest of this conversation, but she did answer my question.
"Let's just say he had at least a century on me." I took more than a few seconds to fully absorb her answer and looked up into her worried eyes. I knew full well who it was, well I was pretty sure anyway. But I couldn't tell her he'd sent me here; time to play dumb. The scene from earlier tonight played through my head bringing a smile to my face as I asked her.
"It wasn't Spike was it?" Her eyes got wide and I think she was almost about to laugh, but shook her head instead.
"His name was Angel. He left right after I graduated, headed to LA. Ever been?" At last a safe subject.
"Yeah, just a few weeks ago actually, right before I came here."
"So how is Angel?" I had been taking a sip of my drink and almost spat it back out again in surprise.
"I'm sorry?" I put an innocent (okay, so it was only a 'not guilty') face on and tried to feign ignorance.
"Angel. In LA. Where you just came from before you got here." She waited a few seconds, tapping her fingers against the table and looking at my almost blank stare before continuing. "The guy whose jacket looks, feels, and smells just like yours." I took a deep breath and nodded, giving in. What really took me off guard though was that she wasn't pissed off about it. I decided that now was the right time to tell her.
"He's good, still doing the demon investigator bit. He didn't want me to tell you that he'd asked me to come. I'm sorry for not telling you sooner, I tried but..."
"I know. I figured it out the like first week I knew you."
"The jacket?"
"The jacket. I wore it sometimes before he left. That's why putting it on again that night in the Magic Box made me feel better, it was something familiar to me. Did he say why?" I shook my head and she kind of half sighed, looking to the side. "A year ago, this would have really pissed me off." I could tell that it was a little hard for her to admit that, but she wasn't done. "I guess I've come more to grips with it. With my... relationship with Angel."
"I don't really know all of what went on with you two, but I know he still thinks about it. When I was there we used to drink together at night after work and talk about his old life; he always brought up you when he talked about other women."
"You drank with Angel? He didn't used to drink."
"He doesn't drink much at all, hardly ever in fact. Mostly I drank and he talked. He has a way of telling his stories that makes it easy for me to picture myself there with him, watching him do what he did. It was almost real, you know?"
"He's relived them so many times, regretting his actions from before. How much did he tell you?"
"He told me a lot from his life before he was turned, his escapades with Darla, and some of his life, excuse me un-life, after he got his soul."
"How much did he tell you about us?" Her voice was quiet and if I wasn't really listening I would never have heard her slight nervousness. It made me smile that she was worried about what her ex had told me. It was reassuring, really, that she worried about my opinion.
"He didn't tell me about your relationship, just what kind of a person you are, how you save people and the world all the time, how you care about the people around you." I took her hand in mine. "What an amazing person you are." Our eyes were locked and she squeezed my hand.
"Thank you." It was a whisper, but she meant it and the feelings I got from our connection were overwhelming as I smiled back at her. We took a few minutes, me to take a sip of water and her to wipe her eyes with her napkin, but were fully composed and smiling when our food arrived. It was a very delicious evening: perfect company, wonderful food, nice atmosphere, and no demons breaking in and trying to kill us. We had a few glasses of wine over the course of the evening and judging by how tired Buffy was on the car ride to her house she wasn't a big drinker. She seemed fine once we got there and went upstairs to get ready for bed. I changed my shirt and headed out for a quick patrol after letting her know I'd be back shortly. No action, but I felt better about having such a nice evening instead of fighting the good fight. I came back to find Buffy already in bed asleep and, after a quick shower, crawled under the covers and curled up against her. Looking back, I think that was the moment I considered myself patched.