CrossingShadowRiver 7 by dutchbuffy2305
Rating: R
Timeline: About ten years after season 5 of AtS; sequel of sorts to Crossing into UnchippedTerritory. You should read that if you want to know everything about how to cross dimensions, and how Buffy and Spike got to be together. If you insist in reading this first, this is the recap: Buffy met evil Spike when she accidentally fell in another dimension. Hijinks ensue. He returns souled Spike to her (I'm not telling how) and they lived happily ever after. I still think you should go read it first, my summary doesn't quite do it justice…
Author's note: Thanks to my dear betas, meko00, ayinhara & mommanerd. Thanks to the ladies from Tea at the Ford and Herself for some great pointers.
Author's website: http:home.planet.nl/dutchbuffy2305
Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305yahoo.co.uk
Buffy hasn't seen Spike in two weeks. When she comes back from her Lamaze session one evening, she glimpses a flash of blue eyes and platinum hair. The grey misery she's been wrapped up in ever since he left lightens up a little. She's sorry she's doubted him. Spike will always come back to her, she thinks, but then realizes this is not true. She's had to go after him before. So she'll have to count herself lucky if he keeps to his end of the bargain.
Deliberately she slows her pace, hoping he'll see the invitation and follow her home. When she's standing in front of her own building, key in hand, disappointed because he hasn't appeared, she feels a whoosh of cold air swirl around her and there he is. A frisson of terror races through her and she feels a faint for a moment. He's night personified. It wraps darkly round his pale limbs and churns in his golden eyes. She's never been afraid of him before, but she is now. Afraid for two.
"Spike? I was hoping you'd show up," she says and holds out her hands to him.
He growls, still showing her his snarling predator's mask. Or perhaps he's showing her who he really is, and his blue-eyed face of beauty is the false front.
"Spike?" she says again. "Honey?"
He sighs very humanly and the vampire face slides off, leaving a pale, unhealthy looking man with incongruous bleached curls catching the inadequate lamp light.
"Hey," he says softly and slides into her arms.
He's cold and hard against her, and for a moment, she has a terrible flashback of a former, cockier Spike, strutting around in that perfect body, daring her to show her appreciation of it. But this incarnation leans heavily on her and looks ravaged and torn, all the cockiness and strut kicked out of him - mostly by her.
"Come," she says, and they walk silently up the stairs to their flat. She turns on the lights and turns back to Spike, who is standing with a strange exhausted patience on the doorstep.
He looks terrible, just outside the threshold of her brightly-lit hallway. His smooth ivory color has disappeared and a deathly bluish pallor has taken its place. Have the last weeks been so hard on him?
"Oh, Spike," she says. "You look so…"
"Dead? Right, coz I am. Now let me in. Time's a-wasting."
The texture of his voice is more ragged than his normal sound, like he's been screaming it hoarse. Slurred and a bit raspy, booze she supposes. Not the first time, and it fits what she's been imagining, Spike on a miserable two-week drinking spree.
"Come in then, baby, what are you waiting for?"
It comes out pitifully small and scared and his face softens as he steps over the threshold.
"You're scared, ain't you? It's just me, same old Spike, dead or alive."
She touches his face with trembling fingers and he leans his cheek into it with a deep sigh. He's filthy, his face streaked with stripes of pale skin and dust, flecked with blood. In his neck is a ragged wound, which looks as if a lion has chewed on it.
"Give us a hug, love," he mumbles, leaning heavily on her.
They stagger to the couch together. Spike slides his head in her lap limply, like he's deathly tired.
"Are you alright, Spike? What happened? You look so…"
"Dead. Been through that one, Buff. Yeah." He rolls over and lies staring at the ceiling, throat working. "Hasn't been a fun ride. I've come a long way." He inspects the nails of his left hand, which are too short to have dirt under them, but the fingertips are blackened and bloody.
"Oh, Spike," Buffy says and is furious at herself. This is about the third time she has contributed these insightful words to the conversation and they aren't getting any wittier or more useful. She strokes his matted bleached curls. The texture of his hair is drier than she remembers.
"Are you hungry? I have blood in the refrigerator?"
His eyes flash yellow and he hides his face in her belly. "That would be a yes, my darling."
He accompanies the words with a sickly close-mouthed grin, which shows muscles that pull oddly crooked and lips that are not a healthy pink. His filthy, lead colored face, the smell of earth, his general condition would repulse her if she didn't already love him so much. She lets his tired head slide gently down on the couch and hurries to the kitchen. Her fingers scrabble over the jumble of provisions in her fridge. She's been too tired and dispirited to store them in their normal order. She finds the bags of blood, empties one in a mug, heats it and takes two others with her into the living room.
Spike lies on the couch with his limbs flung out in abandon, like a corpse, like her mother, and for a single scary moment she's sure he is a real dead guy, not her vampire.
She slides her legs under his head again. He doesn't move. She slowly moves the mug closer to his face. In a motion almost too fast for her to follow, like a cobra striking, his face is in the mug and he's gulping it down. The mug is clamped to a fierce yellow-eyed face, the eyes following her warily when she wants to reach for the other two packets. He rips them out of her hand and tears into them, almost inhaling the blood, not spilling so much as a single drop. She sees him shudder ecstatically as he drinks and notices his hard-on. She's never seen him like this. He holds his stomach when he's finished all the pig blood and rubs it with a grimace.
"What's the matter, Spike?"
"Dunno. Feels wrong, feels nasty."
She helps him up, lets him lean on her as they make their way to the bathroom. She showers the dirt and the blood off him, but she's disappointed in his appearance when he's toweled off and dressed in her robe. He may be clean, but he doesn't look that much better than before, as if the blood had no effect at all. The wound in his neck should be healed by now.
She raises her fingers close to the wound, but not on it, a little ashamed of her fastidiousness but not prepared to touch it.
"You seem to be healing slow, Spike. Haven't you been eating right?"
He grunts and turns to the mirror to check it out.
Buffy can't remember him ever forgetting he's a vampire.
"Oh, God, Buffy," he says and hides his face in his hands.
Buffy's heart bursts with painful love and she hugs him tightly.
"I'm sorry…Are you still mad?" she asks timidly.
Spike starts stroking her arm rhythmically, up and down, and keeps his eyes on it when he answers her. It's little uncomfortable, his rough fingers snag on her skin, but she doesn't want to say so.
"Yeah. That was a nasty trick you pulled on me."
Her throat closes. Yeah. She's sorry. But if he's come back, everything should be all right.
He still doesn't look right. He looks like a Spike-zombie. She escorts him to her bed. He won't allow her to lie down next to him.
"I don't know if I can keep it together, Buffy. Don't wanna kill you by accident, do I?"
No, of course not. Why's he saying this? He's never even come close to killing her.
"Should I get more blood, Spike? Do you need more?"
He looks sickened at the thought, but nods. "Best get more."
Spike coils tightly under the bedclothes, shivering and holding his knees. She'd better get going, this is not looking good. What could be the matter with him?
Buffy phones a cab and finds the all-night butcher's in Camden. She gets home with a selection of bovine, chicken and sheep's blood. Hopefully that'll help. What could have gone wrong with Spike's wounds? Has he been bitten and infected by some new kind of demon?
Spike slobbers down all her offerings. He hardly seems conscious of what he's doing, let alone able to think about table manners. She's never seen him anything other than neat and elegant. Buffy settles on the couch uneasily.
Her sleep is marred by inky nightmares seeping slowly into the Technicolor of her dreams. Almost recognizable shapes creep along the edges of her sleep world, eating it, blackening. She retreats deeper and deeper into the red warmth, cocooning herself, wishing the encroaching terror away, but inevitably the icy chill starts in on her neck.
She wakes up gasping, feeling cold and smothered at the same time. Spike is crouched over her, leaning some of his weight on her chest and bulging belly, lapping at her neck with his cold slimy tongue, sniffling like Gollum and about as attractive. Buffy snips on the reading light. Spike's eyes are closed in his bumpy face, she can see his eyes move busily behind them, dreaming his vampire dreams. Buffy is afraid she can pretty much guess what they are. His hips are humping hers clumsily, his hard on bumps now against her hip bone, then her lower belly, all through a layer of blanket and jammies. Pity and disgust clog the entrance of her throat, making it hard for breath to pass through. Oh Spike. He's really sick. She needs to help him, make him better.
She shimmies out of her pajamas, shivering a little. Should she wake him or just go along with his obvious dream wishes? She licks her fingers and lubricates herself with a little spit. Sleepiness and a little revulsion make her dry as a bone, and she feels ashamed. He's just sick, that's all. She turns on her side and guides him inside her, not looking too closely at the dead meat that slides in. He always was dead, she tells herself. She's tight and dry, and he grunts in frustration as he seeks deeper entrance. She draws her hair to the other side of her head and pushes her throat against his opened mouth.
She can see and feel the conflict on the battlefield of his face. Bumps retreat, then form again. He growls, frowns in human face, drools on her neck in game mask, the bucking of his hips grows more urgent. She loves him too much watch this anymore. She slaps his face, and calls his name.
"Spike!"
His eyes snap open, blinding her with their golden flare.
"Buffy…" he growls, and licks her neck with a long slow stroke. In spite of herself, she melts before the animal, feeling him slide deeper into her suddenly slippery pussy.
"Aaah…" he sighs, and his Spike-face returns, eyes scrunched up in pain or ecstasy, she can't tell.
"Spike, you're not healing well," she says. She can't see lot of detail in the yellow glow of the small lamp, but her fingers feel spongy textures and slide into fissures she'd rather not know were there.
Spike grunts in her neck, his voice slurred. "Buffy…"
He's still fighting something. His shoulders are knotted wood, and he clenches his teeth and shakes his head. His stomach vibrates against her and he's involuntarily thrusting on. He's nuzzling her neck, gnawing on her jugular. He likes to do that, but he's a bit rough tonight. Suddenly, the vampire mask bursts through again with that tearing, breaking sound and he bites her jugular, hard. Her skin popping makes a sound too, not as loud as she thought it would. It's so unexpected, so not like Spike, that she shudders in fear and surprise. Her whole body breaks out in pinpricks of sweat and she's awash in blood red lust. Her own voice keens in her ears. Spike pushes her on her back, although he knows she doesn't like that now, all that pressure on her belly, he's fucking her frantically and hard and she is ready for orgasm with sickening speed. Her mind spins circles of frightened thoughts, she has no idea how much he can take safely or how long he has to drink to have enough. He spasms against her hard, too hard, she'll bruise, but she comes violently instead. He roars bloody bubbles against her shoulders, and she tries to tear him off, this must be enough, she's so scared, it would be so easy to slide over the precipice into blissful death, she won't, the baby, she can't.
Her hips slide out from under him and she kicks up her knees to hit him anywhere she can, slaps him, yells, "Spike, let go!" and finally he does. She crawls to a sitting position, clamping her hand on the wound in her neck. It's not the jugular; she realizes dazedly, it's lower in her shoulder. Whatever is wrong with him, he remembered to take care of her. Oh God, the baby, it can't be good to lose blood now. She wipes away a few annoying tears to get a better look at him.
Spike is on all fours on the couch, cowering like a miserable dog with shivering flanks and bloodied mouth. She leaves him to his solitary misery for a few seconds to switch on the overhead light and see if the healing she expects has started. She thinks it has. His color is less leaden, paler, the fissures she hasn't seen but felt are gone. The luminous glow he used to have isn't in evidence yet, but he looks like Spike again and not a refugee from Night of the Living Dead. She runs her hand over his newly smooth back and puts it on his neck.
"Sweetie? You alright?"
Spike butts his head against her belly, still in doggy mode, refusing to show his face.
She stays like that for a long time, just stroking his head and shoulders, seeing the shivering slowly go down and his breathing become less ragged.
"Spike?"
He looks up and puts his hand on her swollen belly, smiling beatifically. "Mine," he says, still in that low growling voice.
Her heart bounds up and runs off in fear. She's seeing him clearly from the first time tonight, and this can't be her Spike. His right hand is misshapen; the fourth and last fingers are missing and one digit of the middle finger. His teeth are brown, with gaps showing. His eyes are not their usual blue, but clouded and milky, and the greenish sheen of death still hasn't left him. This is not the work of two weeks absence. How did she miss that in the bathroom? He sat hunched over with his arms against his chest, and she just mindlessly sponged him down, not really looking, she guesses.
"Who are you?"
He crooks his head and nuzzles her belly with a sly grin. "Spike, silly Buffy. Who else?"
He dips his fingers in her still sopping pussy and licks them off with a dreamy look on his face. "Missed your taste. So much better now I've got my proper nose back."
He rubs his nose all over her belly again, pokes a little too hard at her distended navel and travels further to her armpits.
"Mmm."
Buffy stands petrified with dread and suspicion. What did he say? Proper nose back?
He grins at her, wide and unsettling. The teeth. She claps her hand before her mouth to shut her self up. The browned teeth, with the first molar missing on the left. Just like the human Spike on the beach. This can't be him. This is a vampire!
"Are you human Spike? The one I stayed with in LA?"
He vamps out again, growls and cuffs her hard. Buffy smacks against the couch and takes a painful fall to the floor. Her hip and knee hurt and she's too stupefied to react quickly.
"Don't you know me? Are we all the same to you? Stupid cunt."
She remembers him as nice enough in his pathetic, broken way, but vamping hasn't improved him. How did he get here? Why is he a vampire again, and such a miserable ruined one?
"Do you have a soul?" she asks.
He vamps out and throws her down on the floor with her legs in the air. He thrusts roughly inside her again before he answers. She's limp as putty, her arms feel too heavy to lift.
"What do you think, Buffy? I got a soul to win you once, and now I lost it to get you back. You're mine. You shouldn't have died again. You shouldn't have left me. Tell me you love me."
Her mind gibbers and cackles inanely at that, while her body lubricates and shivers under his onslaught. Stupid body, this isn't the right one. Love this thing? How can he think he compares to her good and beautiful Spike.
"I'm not yours," she says clearly and slowly. "Go away. You're not my Spike."
He sits back, showing his hollow belly. His big hand, the whole one, clamps hard around her belly. "This is mine. And you will be. Look into my eyes and tell me you love me."
Buffy lifts her chin defiantly and stares back into his burning red rimmed eyes. "I…I love you."
Where did that come from? She tries to say more, but when he lifts her chin gently with his finger and his eyes stare into hers with so much love she melts and gives in. Of course she loves him. He's the father of her baby.
TBC