"That was different. I got to feel warm lips from you for once..." Buffy mused cheerily, snuggled up against Spike's bare chest on their hotel bed.

Spike purred, stroking his lover's face.

"Great sex too," Buffy indicated with matter-of-fact satisfaction.

"Hush luv, don't ruin it," Spike let his finger glide to the corner of her mouth and raised an eyebrow.

"Ruin what?" Buffy teased.

"Oh...can you feel that curious warmth in the air, that's magic!" Spike went on ironically as if recounting a story to a child.

"Oh, I thought the water had just raised your body temperature above normal," Buffy pulled a face and eyed him petulantly.

Spike growled and rolled over onto Buffy as punishment. He was met with a peel of laughter and slender thighs twining with his. The feel of their bare skin meeting everywhere exceeded description.

He kissed her forehead with playful ceremony.

"Are you mine?"

"Will..."

"Don't Will me, tell me. Am I yours and are you mine?"

Buffy looked up with a sleepy smile sneaking across her features.

"Give me a kiss and I'll tell you."

"No, I asked first..." he raised a finger and chided.

"You mean do I love you? Yes. I do."

"Buff..." he taunted her with the proximity of his lips.

"Or you mean do I want Nanna and puppies and kittens and fluffy endings with you..." Buffy started babbling as she tried to thrash and tickle Spike until he lost his balance on top of her.

He slid to one side, and she turned so they were still facing. Letting a hand comb through his still wet hair, Buffy looked at him a minute before continuing.

"Will, you know I don't have all the answers. You said it yourself. I'm not even sure how a vampire and a human are supposed to have a life together. I mean, you don't die. You're already dead. I'll grow old."

"But you wanted this with Angel." The temperature in his heart cooled a few degrees.

"Spike...Will, I wasn't even 18. I hadn't thought of those things with...him. But I do want it with you, now, even though I don't know how it's possible."

"If I were a man, not a vampire, would you be mine?"

Buffy stared uncomprehending for a moment, and then giggled with dawning understanding.

"Like marry you? Is that..." her laughing grew hushed, "Will, is that what you mean?"

"Yes," he locked eyes with her, vision charged with intensity.

Both her hands reached out to clasp his face in her hands.

Spike's heart sank. Already memories of a past long buried erupted into his psyche. Buffy would be no different.

"But what if I get old? Would we make vampire-human babies? What if..."

"Buffy, it's okay, forget it," he cut her wonder off with the sound of barely contained disappointment.

"Hey..." her smile faded, "What did I just say, Will, you heard me right?"

"I heard a lot of maybes." Spike grumbled and tried to pretend he was engrossed in tracing another one of her ringlets along the pillow, raising his gaze to meet hers here and there.

"I didn't say maybe."

"You didn't have to. All I heard was what you didn't say," the muscles around his jaw flexed.

"Spike," she cooed softly, enjoying the familiar taste of that name in her mouth.

He kept his poker face and ignored the slight plea in her voice.

"I think I would, I mean, if you were a man and not a vampire. But I don't know. I think I'd be different too. Because I'm a slayer. And it's different now too, not being the only slayer anymore..." she continued, letting her free hand move along his neck.

He remained silent.

"But that's not what you were asking, was it?" she bit her lower lip and raised an eyebrow knowingly.

"I don't know what I was asking, forget it."

Buffy inched in to snuggle up more closely to a slightly reluctant Spike. In the end, he gave in and let his arms curl slowly around her warm and supple body.

"Who knows, Will, maybe I'll get killed doing the slayer thing one day and it won't matter. I mean, I won't have to think about what it means to grow old with a vampire who never changes."

For the glint of one instant, Spike's fear of disappointment stayed quiet enough to let him remember how much being a slayer had shaped Buffy's expectation of life.

"But it's not like it worked out with regular humans that well either. Maybe that's just how relationships work. I know you don't want a maybe right now," she lowered her eyes, a little embarrassed at her inability to find the right words.

"Look, you've heard my speech, luv. You know how I feel about you. It hasn't changed."

"I liked your speech," Buffy said shyly and grinned sheepishly, "You do mean the one before..." she continued, as if not quite sure of herself.

"Yeah, before the big fight," Spike quickly interjected.

"When we felt close," Buffy finished, pleased with the recollection.

"You kissed Angel." Spike couldn't help himself.

"But I also told him that I loved you," Buffy tried to squirm, but now Spike had her.

"You did?" He was all ears. This was news.

"Yeah, I mean, kind of..."

Spike's excitement waned a degree.

"I really didn't know what was going to happen then," Buffy started as if to excuse herself, "If I was going to even live to see another day. I'm not sure if I ever really came out of that. Maybe it's just part of being a slayer."

"The future's never certain, Luv. Are you going to let that fact keep your heart from ever truly living?" Spike didn't really know what he was saying, though somehow he felt qualified to speak on the subject.

"I've tried, Spike."

Now it was Buffy resisting, and Spike pushing forward.

"Live with me, we can try together. I could show you, or at least try..." he trailed, eyes lost in a blurred mixture of his own frightening hopes and the angelic face in front of him.

"Aren't we?" Buffy asked with a note of innocent confusion.

"But do we belong to one another?" Spike's voice pronounced the question in a slow hush. He knew he'd placed his hand on excalibur's stoney sheath.

You want a certainty I don't know how to give. Can't I just lie here with you, feel you, be with you? Confusion was the first emotion Buffy felt, but she had no time to turn her thought into words, for all at once the phone broke out in a loud ring and a knock thudded violently at the door.

"Open the door, this is the police," a gruff, masculine voice shouted in English.

"Eeello?" Spike answered with mock nonchalance masking his aggravation into the phone receiver.

Buffy scurried to get decent before attending to the door.

She heard the muffled babble of a female voice from the phone laying against her lover's cheek, wondering who on earth it could be.

"Oh, God, sorry, I mean wrong number, sorry, goodbye!"

Spike raised an eyebrow and tossed the phone roughly back into place, letting his legs land solidly on the carpeted floor, he started looking idly for his jeans, remembering after a second or two they were still in the bathroom.

"Don't open that door until I get back. There's something fishy going on here, I can smell it," he warned pointedly.

"Oh yeah, like you're my guardian angel," Buffy laughed, and then regretted it slightly.

"Guardian angel, devil, demon, vampire whatever, just wait until I find my..." Spike trailed off in the bathroom. The sound of denim and the ring of a shifting belt buckle, told Buffy he'd found his pants.