4: THANKS FOR SAYING IT
As Spike approached the medical ward, he overheard an angry Angel talking on the phone.
"What do you mean delay? Why would there be a delay? Our jets don't have delays...Well I don't care if there is a storm, can't you fly around it?"
Spike inhaled unnecessarily, gathering the sufficient courage. He had to move quickly and never once hesitate; he couldn't afford to be stopped by Angel. And the wanker will certainly try, he prepared himself. I'll just try not to think about... his thoughts stopped abruptly. He couldn't do this to Buffy.
But could he just let her die? Spike remembered the last time he'd failed to save the Slayer. I saved you... he'd said, Not when it counted, of course, but every night after that... This time, "not when it counted" wouldn't be good enough. He couldn't fail her again.
With new resolve, Spike burst through the door and walked quickly over to Buffy's hospital bed. He sat down beside her, and looked at her tortured face. She looked resigned to her horrible fate, and tears silently pooled in her eyes and made her mascara run. Spike ran his thumb across her wet cheek, and then bent forward.
"Spike, just what do you think you're -" Angel spat argumentatively, but his question was answered before he was done asking it. The blonde vampire's face changed a brief second before he sank his fangs into Buffy's neck.
Angel rushed over to the bed, game face on, and dealt Spike a vicious kick in his ribs. Spike shuddered under blow, but did not release his dental hold on the Slayer. Angel grabbed Spike by the waist, trying to pull him off, and Spike could feel flesh tearing beneath his teeth. He continued drinking.
He was saving Buffy.
The wonderful sensation of Slayer's blood running down his throat was one he hadn't felt in a long time. He found himself enjoying every second of drinking, revelled in the sensation of holding Buffy's life between his teeth, but part of him worried that he wouldn't be able to stop. What if he drained Buffy completely, and killed her instead of saving her life?
On the other side of the room, Angel was gearing up for another attack as the door opened.
"Angel?" Harmony's singsong voice asked.
He turned towards his secretary. "Not right now, Harmony! I'm a little busy.""But Angel," she persisted, "It's really important. The Korikan Consul is on the phone, and he's growling - that can't be a good thing - and he really wants to talk to you!"
Angel also growled at Harmony, waving his hands around like a particularly frustrated madman. "Just tell him to wait a few minutes, or something! I'm in the middle of something..."
Spike waited to feel the heart below him slow its beating. The noise around him seemed like a muddle of background noise, and the only thing he could feel like it was the only thing in the world was his living, breathing, pumping, beating connection to the Slayer, as what she was poured into him and filled him with warmth in a way that only human blood - only Slayer blood - could do...
As her heartbeat grow slower, he felt her stir underneath him, and immediately he released his bite and put his human face back on. "Buffy?" he asked softly as he licked her blood from his lips.
"Spike," she rasped. "I feel...dizzy..." She frowned, trying to comprehend the reason behind the feeling, but Spike cupped his hand along the side of her face.
"Shh..."
He fished a pocketknife out of his duster and used it to slit his wrist. "Just drink," he told her.
Buffy weakly closed her lips around the cut on Spike's wrist as Angel continued to argue with Harmony.
Spike hadn't felt someone drink from him since Drusilla had turned him, and he'd forgotten how good it felt to be needed in such a simple, instinctual way. But Buffy looked fatigued, and she was barely managing to swallow the blood. She's dying! Spike feared, and he hurriedly checked her pulse. The vampire was relieved to find it growing more steady by the second. Soon he could feel the suction from her mouth and the fleeting flicks of her tongue against the soft skin of his wrist. For a moment he delighted in the intimacy of sharing blood with Buffy, the ghosts of hints of passion awakened by the sensual act. Suddenly feeling like he was exploiting Buffy in her illness, Spike gently extricated his wrist from her grasp.
Angel was shouting at Harmony. "NOT NOW! I'M BUSY!"
Buffy briefly opened her eyes to look into Spike's clear blue ones before closing them again.
"Buffy..." he whispered. Had he saved her?
She weakly whispered back, eyes closed peacefully. "Take me home with you."
Buffy woke up in a rather uncomfortable bed, which was hard and narrow and feeble enough to be more accurately termed a cot. At first she wasn't exactly sure where she was, but then she saw a black duster draped across the arm of a decrepit cozy-chair. A small smile curled one corner of her mouth.
She sat up, causing the "bed" to creak. From another room, a familiar voice called to her. "Buffy? Are you awake, luv?"
"Yeah." Buffy rolled off the bed and stood up, only to find herself in the hospital gown. "Um, just a minute." She began searching for clothes, before she remembered that they would still be at Wolfram and Hart.
"Did you find your things?" Spike asked from the other room. "I got them from Angel. I figured you'd be wanting to change your clothes, as it's you and all." He spoke like he had a smile on his lips. Buffy looked around the room, and sure enough, she spied her duffel bag against the wall.
"Don't come in," she warned, aware of how ridiculous it was to be modest after the things they'd done but unable to fight a sudden bout of sixteen-year-old shyness.
She had brought lots of Italian outfits, and she selected a deep red blouse that draped down below her hips and which she considered one of her most flattering garments.
Buffy looked around for a mirror, even though she didn't expect to find one. To her surprise, there was a small hand mirror on the bedside table. She brushed her blonde hair into a ponytail, but then suddenly pulled the rubber band out and shook her hair loose. She shook her head a few more times, watching the hair. The way it bounces... She brushed a bit of it behind her ear and tossed the brush in her bag.
Buffy tiptoed into the other room. She wanted to surprise him.
Still, the vampire ears heard her enter. "Morning, pet," he said from across the small kitchenette. "Er - do you like pancakes?"
Buffy sat at the two-person table, grinning in amusement. "Sure. Why?" She could smell the answer.
Spike didn't meet her gaze. "Well I, er - I made you some," he told her tentatively.
"Thanks," the Slayer laughed, finding it all extremely cute. "You don't even eat them yourself, do you?"
The vampire replied, "Not usually," as he set two plates and a platter of pancakes on the table.
Buffy noticed the deformities of the breakfast: one pancake was folded in half, and all were horribly misshapen. Her smile widened but she didn't say anything. Spike opened the refrigerator and took out a jar of blood. He then turned to Buffy. "Is it alright if I -"
Buffy, whose mouth was full of pancake, stared at him blankly. As soon as she understood, she swallowed and launched into a rushed and excessive explanation. "Sure! I mean, of course! If I can eat, why can't you? Anyway, it's not like I've never seen a vampire drink blood before...So...yeah, go ahead."
Spike looked at her face, trying to read it. "I...just thought you might have seen one do it too recently."
Buffy put her fingers to the bite on her neck, which someone had bandaged carefully. She'd almost forgotten about the whole affair; she only remembered Spike leaning over her, mouth on her neck, and the feeling of cuddling into him, as if the two of them were melting into one. Turning back to Spike, she shook her head. "Nah."
Spike poured the red liquid into a mug and put it in the beat-up microwave, and then joined Buffy at the table. Pulling an awkwardly-shaped pancake onto his plate, he asked, "Do they...Are they anything like normal pancakes? All I had to go on was that bloody Moosewood..."
"They're fine," an amused Buffy assured him. The idea Spike cooking at all was almost grounds for a reality check, and Moosewood? Reality had lost all coherence. Buffy continued: "Far better than the ones Dawn makes. I mean, pineapples? Yuck." She smiled at Spike.
Spike followed her lead and smiled back.
Angel was not in the best of moods. In fact, he was in a worse mood than usual. Unlike his co-workers, he didn't find the way in which Buffy was cured to be particularly amusing. He was even less amused by her choice to go home with Spike. Gunn even went so far as to describe Angel's feeling as blatant anger.
"I don't think I've ever seen Angel this mad," he said to Harmony, who was painting her nails at her desk. "Even at Spike."
Harmony was in a bad mood herself. "Everyone's mad at Blondie Bear," she commented. "I mean, who gave him permission to run off with" she put on a prissy voice, "the Vampire Slayer?"
Gunn shrugged noncommittally. Just then, the door opened, admitting a Wolfram and Hart employee and two young women. "Willow!" Gunn heard from behind, as Wesley arrived to greet the arrivals.
"Hey." Willow looked around for Angel, and was obviously a bit overwhelmed by the corporate surroundings. "Um, what exactly is wrong with Buffy?" she inquired.
"Nothing." Gunn seemed almost surprised by his own answer, as if his brain had not fully assimilated the new installments in with accepted truth.
"Nothing?"
"Nothing," interjected Captain Forehead. "A short little fairy flew down and gave her the hickey of her life," he muttered bitterly.
"A fairy visited Buffy? Angel, can you make sense for just once in your life?"
Thinking Angel's answer was perhaps no, Wesley explained instead. "Spike...Seems to have discovered how to cure her and proceeded to do so...And now Buffy is with him, in his...apartment." Willow knew Giles would be cleaning his glasses if he were in Wesley's position.
"And the hickey?"
Wesley grimaced. "The method of healing involved...biting. And drinking."
"Oh my god," gasped Kennedy.
Willow punctuated the following silence with a question. "Well...Can we stay here anyway?"
Shreds of deteriorating sponge washed down the drain. Buffy's attention was entirely focused on watching Spike drink his microwaved blood, and not even remotely turned towards the dishes she was washing. She scrubbed vigorously, not noticing the damage being done to the sponge. Spike had said she didn't have to wash dishes in his house - she was a guest, after all - but she'd insisted. Sometimes he was too generous. Too selfless.
As soon had he'd finished, she quickly switched her gaze back to the shreds of sponge she was holding. Both of them could feel the awkwardness mounting to nearly unsurmountable levels.
With her back turned to him, Spike noticed her hair. "Buffy, your hair -"
Her appearance at possible risk, Buffy turned her head sharply, causing her hair to flip around and bounce. "What?" she asked fearfully, running her fingers over her hair.
Spike smiled at her reaction. "It's long again," he said, moving up close behind her.
"Oh." Buffy was nervous; his nearness threatened made her afraid, but at the same time it was captivating and exciting. "It...grew. It tends to...do that."
Spike ran his fingers through her hair, all the while watching her face for a signal warning him to stop. "It's beautiful," he whispered centimeters from her ear.
The air near her ear tickled her, and she giggled. I feel like I'm in high school again, she thought. Buffy was then seized by impulse, and she pulled his face towards hers and pressed a hard kiss into his lips. The tension seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Spike was caught by surprise, but he quickly adapted to the situation, digging his fingers into the hair at the base of her scalp. Buffy moved her hands, using one to pull his head closer to hers, and wrapping the other arm around his neck.
Spike snaked one hand down the Slayer's back, and then curved it around her butt. Suddenly, he lifted her and set her down on the countertop, a bit roughly. Buffy exhaled sharply, far from hurt, and pulled his head closer to her. She forced her tongue into his mouth, where his greeted it, and the two tongues began a vicious push-and-shove battle.
"So, you missed me, Slayer?" Spike eventually managed.
Buffy pulled on his bottom lip with her teeth. "Obviously."
"You don't have some -" he felt a fiery surge of pleasure when he felt her fingers fumbling with his belt buckle, "Italian boyfriend to - keep you company?"
She stuck out her tongue at him, and he sucked on it. She responded once she'd regained tongue control. "Nope." She pulled his belt out through the loops. "Just me and Dawn...Okay, let's forget how wrong that sounded."
Spike smirked. "Time to get you to bed," he told her.
She whined, using a full-strength pouty face. "But I'm not tired yet," she whined.
"All the better to shag you with, pet," was the reply.
"There. Sqmush. I win!"
"Sqmush isn't a word," Dawn protested. "It's a sound. It's not even really a normal sound," she added after thinking a bit. "But I don't think 'scrabble' is really a word either...Fine." She started laughing.
Xander selected a few more lettered wooden blocks and set them in front of him. He wondered if proper names were allowed, and noticed that three of the letters were well on their way to spelling a name. A-N-Y - No. Thinking about that name didn't lead to good emotional places. And he needed to be in good emotional places, for Dawn and Buffy. Dawn was teenaged and angsty, and Buffy was a young single woman and also angsty. She had never really gotten over the destruction of Sunnydale.
Xander put the wood blocks back in the pile. "How about doing something else, Dawnie?" he proposed. Buffy hadn't said much about what had happened down there. She'd told them who had saved them, but they'd already known when he hadn't come out of the mess.
"So Dawn, would you...like to talk? About something? Anything?"
Dawn smiled knowingly, amusedly. God, she was acting more like her sister every day. She was even starting to smile like Buffy. "Xander? I kinda get the feeling that you wanna talk about something. What is it?"
Xander stalled, scratching his head. It really wasn't one of his favorite conversation topics, but he had to know. He had to know the things Buffy would never tell him because of things he'd said before. "Spike. I want to talk about Spike. What he did, that we didn't hear about. Why he did what he did, why he changed." Xander sighed. He was asking for a lot from the Slayer's sister. "I want to know what she felt...As much as you know. What Buffy felt for Spike."
Spike threw Buffy down on the "bed," but her legs were wrapped so tightly around his waist that he came down with her. "I can't believe it took me long to get you to bed," she whispered playfully. "Do vampires get less horny with age?"
Spike smirked back at her and set to work on removing her shirt and bra, working quickly with nimble fingers that had plenty of practice. "Doubt it, pet."
Buffy had managed to de-belt and un-zip Spike's black jeans, but was not as successful with pulling them off using only her feet. "Spike," she complained, "you have to help me here, you know." He kicked them down, tangling them in the sheets.
Spike cupped his hands around her breasts, his mouth placing kisses down her throat. The kisses continued to move downwards, his tongue as well as his lips occasionally pressing against her tender skin. By the time he'd reached her navel, she'd managed to remove all his clothes, as well as wriggle out of her underwear. She shivered with anticipation, feeling an almost over-powering desire for something she hadn't had for over a year.
It suddenly struck her as extremely silly: why hadn't they had sex even once since he'd returned with his soul, when they both wanted each so badly? She knew she'd wanted to teach him a lesson, to make him think that he needed to win her back, when in fact she was waiting for him, already won.
She moaned as Spike made full use of his thumbs and tongue. As he came back up to kiss her some more, he asked, "Was it ever like this, with Angel?"
Buffy thought about what Spike meant, and thought about her answer to his question. Did he mean, was Angel this good? Or, had she felt the same way? She thought it bizarre that he was bringing it up at that moment, and wondered how he could bear hearing the answer. "I thought you didn't want to talk about him while we're making love," she said.
"I don't," he replied.
Buffy kissed him reassuringly. She couldn't follow his train of thought, but she could tell he was hurting. He was always hurting, because of her. "No."
Spike looked at her with a trace of fear and surprise, as if he'd forgotten what question she was answering.
"It wasn't like this. It was different." She'd been different.
Spike nodded. She'd loved Angel; of course it had been different. He felt everything inside him clench. An ice-cold hand reached up through his chest, trying to pull him in through his stomach and down into nothing. But he kept his face expressionless. She'd come to him for something, and he was going to give it to her.
Spike pushed Buffy roughly into the bed. As his body entered hers, his heart sped off in the opposite direction.The Slayer snuggled into Spike's bare chest while watching Passions for the first time. The vampire had adjusted to her body temperature, so feeling him felt like feeling more of herself.
Spike trailed his fingers up her bare leg. She was wearing nothing but her underwear and his shirt. She enjoyed being surrounded by his arms and his smell. She wanted him to have all of her - her mind, her body, her heart, her soul. She knew he'd take care of her. He loved her so much. She adored how much he cared for her. It was beyond adorable.
Buffy thought about the night before, when he'd saved her from a nightmare worse than any possible description. She could hardly believe he'd had the courage to bite her, when for years he'd tried his best to avoid anything there was a chance she wouldn't like.
She gently fitted her teeth around his shoulder; he turned to look at her quizzically. "Bite me," she told him.
"No." He brushed his knuckles against her cheek, almost too gently to be felt. "I'm not doing anything that could hurt you."
"C'mon, please," she urged, tilting her head to the side and moving her hair out of the way. "I trust you."
He guided her head back upright, declining the offer.
Buffy figured he needed to be reminded. She turned his face towards hers, fingers on his jaw. "I love you."
Spikes eyes betrayed him, displaying the clenching sadness in his stomach. How could she look him in the eyes and lie to him?
The 8 words she'd tried to forget since Sunnydale's collapse came rushing up to drown her. She bit her lip, clamping her jaw tight to keep it from quivering.
No, you don't. But thanks for saying it.
Spike felt the Slayer go limp in his arms, her head loosely hanging back on her neck.
"Buffy?"
Suddenly the Slayer's body went tense, straining against nothing. She wheezed air in, and moaned while her limbs flailed frantically. Buffy's eyeballs rolled back in her head, trying to escape some haunting sight. Her mind was being sucked into its Hell once again, and she could not fight the world of terror closing in on her.
"BUFFY!" Spike screamed, bending over her and violently shaking her shoulders.
Her mind tumbled backwards into nowhere, forcing her to repeat the same scene endlessly.
I love you.
No, you don't. But thanks for saying it.
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