Summary: Life goes a little differently for Buffy beginning in season 4. She gets everything she thought she wanted only to find that life often plays out much differently than fantasy. Warnings for light sexual content and adultery.

J is for Jealous

I am not jealous

of what came before me.

Come with a man

on your shoulders,

come with a hundred men in your hair,

come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,

come like a river

full of drowned men

which flows down to the wild sea,

to the eternal surf, to Time!

Bring them all

to where I am waiting for you;

we shall always be alone,

we shall always be you and I

alone on earth,

to start our life!

-Always, Pablo Neruda.

It burned through his veins, acidic and toxic. He knew he shouldn't feel that way, he did have the girl after all. He watched her though, the way her hip jutted out as she came to a stop across from him, the fire that lit her bright green eyes. He saw the damn near seductive saunter she adopted when she'd move towards him, and they way she tossed her honey blonde hair over her shoulder in faux annoyance.

Most of all, he saw the way her eyes trailed after him as he weaved through the club when she had reclaimed her seat at his side. How, even as she laughed at one of Xander's jokes, she was always aware of where he was. Yeah, it burned him up.

~BTVS~

She was playing with fire and she was completely, utterly aware of it. If anyone had told her a few years ago, when she was sixteen and madly in love, that she'd one day grow discontent and bored of the very thing she'd have once died to have she'd have laughed her ass off. Here she was, though. Twenty one and feeling like an old maid in a stale marriage to a man who was a shell of who he'd once been. It was her fault.

Your first love is rarely your last. Intellectually Buffy knew that, she always had. The younger version of herself fancied herself the exception rather than the rule. Present Buffy knew that she wasn't. It was pathetic when she thought of just how quickly the all consuming love they'd felt when she was a teen had burned away into resentment on both their parts.

Angel wasn't a bad man, he just wasn't a very good one either. It was probably something she should have been prepared for, how many times had Giles tried to beat his history into her head? Who he was as a human, as one quarter of the Scourge of Europe. Who he was- or rather, what he wasn't- in the century he'd had his soul before he'd met her.

She'd been blind, would fully admit to wearing those pretty rose colored glasses. When he'd been miraculously turned human by the Mohra demon all she'd seen was the future she'd wanted for over three years gift wrapped and dropped into her lap. What were the chances that it'd happen while she was in at his office in Los Angeles? Fate. It had to have been.

An idea that was only solidified when the conduits for the Powers That Be refused to turn back time. Sure, she had been bitter that he'd wanted to give up the very thing that would allow them to finally be together, but she got over it. She had to because he was human and lost and she was his beacon. His guide in a world he no longer understood. Maybe though...maybe that was the first crack in their foundation. The unspoken fact that she wasn't what he'd wanted most. She was just all that he'd had left to fall back on.

They'd come back to Sunnydale. Happy, free and in love. At least, she had been. Distance and age had thrown into sharp relief the reality of what they'd come back to. Joyce had been less than thrilled but she'd tried, for her daughter's sake, to paint on a happy smile. Giles had been disappointed but bowed to the stubbornness of his Slayer. Willow, cautiously optimistic. Xander...it had taken him awhile to come around.

When the wedding happened the new dynamic in her scooby gang had been set and they were all on good footing. Xander had been jolly as he'd helped her move into the little apartment she and her new husband had rented. Angel began working as a graveyard shift security guard for the local bank. He loved the hours, hated the job. Their lives settled into a happy mediocrity that Buffy never thought she'd live long enough to see.

Then he had blown back into town and Buffy's eyes were finally opened. She hadn't seen much of Spike after they'd learned the commandos got hold of him and implanted the chip in his head. The one that stopped him from hurting humans. He'd been pissed, damn near suicidal, the last time she'd seen him just before he'd disappeared. The Slayer had kind of assumed he'd done the world a favor and quit it.

"I might be a demon, Slayer, but even I'm not as sadistic as those military bastards. Friendly word of advice? Keep those bright eyes of yours open. Doubt they care much for the difference between the Slayer and the things she kills."

That was the last thing he'd said to her before turning on his heel and stalking into the night. She had rolled her eyes and wondered when he'd started giving 'friendly advice' before shrugging and going on with her life. He'd been right though. A few months after she'd come back to Sunnydale with Angel in tow the Initiative had caught sight of her while she was on patrol.

They captured her a few weeks later. She'd been cocky. Happy in her new marriage and feeling untouchable. She was on top of the world. Until she was drugged and lying in a cage. The things that they had done to her in the three days before her friends had busted her out...well, she understood then why Spike would have given her 'friendly advice'. He was evil, yeah, and he wanted her dead. Dead at his hand and in a straight up fight for their lives. Not drugged and tortured by the very humans she'd dedicated her life to keeping alive.

She recalled, vague though it was through the haze of drugs and pain, the impassive way Angel had taken in the broken, still living, bodies of the various species of demon as he'd carried her out of the underground compound. She could still, when she closed her eyes, see the almost satisfied gleam in his eye as he took in the carnage. It was then that she remembered that her husband had been the type who would have once loved to have seen her tortured and broken.

She could forgive that though, because that wasn't who he was anymore. She could ignore the glimpse of Angelus she still caught sometimes, it would always be a facet of who he had been but it wasn't who he was now. It was the way he began to look at her that she couldn't forgive. The scars left behind by the Initiative, that even her advanced healing wouldn't allow to completely fade, made her feel ugly. The way Angel couldn't even look at the marks made her feel even uglier.

Her face was unmarred, her body was not so lucky. Once angry scars were now just pink and white lines that covered her torso from where they had dissected her, trying to figure out what she was and how her body worked. It had taken awhile before the patch of hair that they'd shaved so they could inspect her brain had grown back. She had a large hat and scarf collection left over from that time.

Her friends had eventually stopped walking eggshells around her and her mother had stopped hovering but Angel had never looked at her the same way. He was supposed to be one of the few who could really understand her life. He knew all about the monsters in the night and what they could do to the one girl in the world who was meant to face them. She should have felt stronger for surviving and picking herself back up. Instead she felt weaker. Angel made her feel weaker. The resentment and something bordering on hate began to bloom within her then.

When Spike came back to Sunnydale it had been to collect some things from a buddy who had been holding onto them when he'd blazed out of town. Buffy didn't think he'd ever meant for her to know that he was even there but their paths had crossed while she was on patrol. She had just recovered from her stint in the Initiative's torture chamber.

He had held up his hands when he'd rounded the corner and came face to face with her.

"Still got the bloody chip, Slayer. Not here to fight."

Buffy studied him for a long moment before replying. "Too bad. I'm taking down the Initiative and could use the extra manpower."

Spike raised his scarred brow in surprise. "Not sure how much help I'd be against those human wankers."

Buffy shrugged. "They've got some kind of Frankenmonster down there...you can still hurt demons, right?"

She'd watched his eyes lit up and a wolfish grin split his face, he looked dangerous and so much like the Spike she'd first met at the Bronze that she had been overcome with nostalgia. Simpler times. "Count me in then, luv," he said as he casually lit up a cigarette.

So with the scoobys, Angel and Spike, Buffy had taken down Adam and the rest of what had been left of the local Initiative. Giles had gotten in touch with the Watcher's Council for the first time since he'd been fired to let them know about the rogue government branch and, when they'd called back, they assured them that it had been taken care of.

Spike had never looked more satisfied than he had when the compound burned down. Except for maybe when he saw what had become of his former tormentor.

"Bloody useless human then, eh, Liam?" he chortled.

"Better than an impotent vampire, eh William?" Angel had shot back, fire in his eyes.

Buffy saw the flash of anger in the vampire's eyes but it was gone quickly, replaced with a devil may care smirk and a shrug. "Not impotent in any way that really matters, mate," he said, his hand sliding obscenely down towards his crotch. "Can human you even keep up with a Slayer, I wonder?" he mused.

Angel lunged forward in anger but Spike merely danced out of his way with a laugh. "Thought not," he replied to himself as he slipped away into the night.

Angel had been pissed and Buffy hadn't been entirely sure why he was so upset over something Spike had said. She realized later that it was because Spike had been entirely accurate in his observations, annoying as he was she'd almost forgotten how astute the vampire was.

The next time she'd run into him after they'd brought down the Initiative had been at the Bronze. She'd arrived before the rest of her group and she'd seen him sitting at the bar. She wouldn't have been able to say why she'd walked up to him, not at that time, anyway.

"You're still here?" Buffy asked as she slid onto the bar stool next to Spike.

"Your powers of observations never cease to amaze, Slayer," he replied dryly.

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Why are you still here, Spike?"

Spike shrugged. "Don't really have anywhere else to go."

Buffy had about a hundred scathing remarks locked and loaded on the tip of her tongue but she found herself silent for a long moment. "Yeah," she agreed. "I get that."

Spike had peered down at her from the corner of his eye before waving the bartender over and ordering another whiskey, passing it over to her. She stared at it like it'd bite her for a moment before shrugging and taking a sip.

"Blech!" she exclaimed as soon as she'd managed to swallow it down.

It had been dangerous, what happened next. Spike had turned fully towards her and laughed. Not his sarcastic laugh, or his taunting laugh but a genuine laugh that had her insides heating up with a warmth that couldn't just be attributed to the whiskey.

That had marked the beginning of the end. Those fifteen minutes she spent sat next to her once mortal enemy before her friends had shown up. Before her husband had shown up. A few weeks working on taking down the military and a show of camaraderie had her seeing the vampire in a new light. A very bad, dangerous light that she was sure would burn her just as soon as the sun would burn the vampire.

~BTVS~

The fire that lit her eyes when she found something to argue with him about never failed to turn him on. Luckily for him, Buffy never failed to find something to argue with him over. It had become an unspoken routine for them to find each other at the Bronze while Angel was at work- a mental image that never failed to tickle his fancy. Her friends would be there too sometimes, dancing and drinking while she found an excuse to slip away to the dark corner he'd be sitting in.

Other times she'd already be there alone and pretending not to watch the door until he came in and sauntered her way. The nights they didn't meet at the Bronze usually found them in a cemetery where he'd patrol with her- just to get his aggression out, of course.

It had started off awkwardly, with him crossing her path and then joining without thought. Until she had questioned him and he hadn't really had a good answer. Sure, he could kill demons but that didn't mean he had to kill demons with her. Only...he wanted to. He just didn't want to examine too hard why he wanted to.

She'd accepted his answer with a shrug though and flounced on with him by her side. They met up like that off an on for a few months and their conversations gradually grew less acerbic and more friendly. She'd complain about her new shoes getting ruined and he'd complain about the lack of nice furniture in the dump, mostly because he enjoyed the way her nose would scrunch up. The first real shift in their dynamic happened when she'd gotten thrown on her ass and had been impaled by her own stake.

Spike had been meandering through the streets when the smell of her blood hit him. He didn't think he'd ever moved so quickly. Staking the 80's reject that had gotten a lucky shot and kneeling at her side. "

Getting a little too big for your britches, Slayer?" he asked as he pressed his hand against her wound.

Buffy's pain shocked eyes met his as she shook her head. "Told myself I wouldn't ever do that again," she muttered vaguely. Spike gathered her up and carried her the short distance to his crypt, a place she'd never set foot in. A boundary she'd never crossed.

He had set her down on his dumpster couch (he'd successfully gotten the smell out, thank you very much), and grabbed the first aid kit he had stashed by his mini fridge. When he got back to her side his hands moved to the hem of her shirt. "Gonna have to take this off, luv," he warned her. Before he could raise it very high her hand was on his, forcing them back down.

"No," she gasped painfully.

Spike rolled his eyes. "Don't flatter yourself Slayer. Not gonna cop a feel, but we need to patch this up if you don't want to bleed to death," he told her wryly.

"It's not...I don't…" she sighed in dismay before reluctantly nodding and releasing her grip on him, looking anywhere but at him.

He understood her hesitation after he'd gotten her shirt off of her and saw the surgical looking scars that marred her golden skin. He frowned but kept quiet as he focused on the angry wound at the side of her belly. He carefully removed the wooden splinters, debriding it before wrapping it tightly, her quick healing had already helped stem the flow of blood.

"Gonna have to move carefully for a bit, pet," he told her softly as he helped her put her shirt back on. She had yet to say a word and though he knew it might piss her off he just had to ask, so he moved his thumb over the bottom of one of her scars as he lowered her shirt. "What happened, luv?" he murmured.

Anger lit the green orbs that still avoided his gaze. She was quiet for a long moment and he sighed, assuming she wasn't going to answer. Wasn't really his business either, was it? "The Initiative," he heard her quiet voice as he stood up to bin the blood soaked rags and whatnot.

He froze, shoulders tense and jaw clenched. "What?" he asked.

"You...were right. When you warned me, before you left last time. I...just, you were right," came her halting reply.

His find flashed unwillingly back to his own capture and stay within the military complex. The torture dungeons that would have made Angelus envious. Screams and pain. Drugs- and not the good kind. Blood- not the good kind. He'd never really fancied his blood on the outside of his body. He remembered the rank smell. Chemicals and fear and pain. The sadistic 'scientists' with absolutely no regard for the sentient, still living, creatures they were dissecting.

The sound of the Slayer's breath catching snapped him back to the present and he finally turned to face her. Her face was turned away from him, the dim candle light caught the gleam of tears in her eyes and he moved, without thought, back to her side. His hand reached out- seemingly of it's own volition- and caressed her cheek.

"Sorry, luv," he murmured. "I didn't want that for you...not even then," he told her softly.

She met his eyes for the first time since before he'd started patching her up and he nearly flinched at the pain reflected in her gaze. "I know."

She cleared her throat and stood up, wavering slightly from the blood loss. "I should get home. Angel will be off work soon."

Spike nodded. "Good night, Slayer," he said as she walked away.

She paused as she reached his door. "Night, Spike," she replied softly. He waited a tick before slipping out and shadowing her all the way home.

She had avoided him for a few weeks after that and he'd let her. She shown him her weakness and she'd needed to build herself back up afterwards. It had been for the best anyway, things were starting to get...complicated.

~BTVS~

There hadn't been judgment, or pity or disgust in Spike's face when he'd seen her scars for the first time. Sorrow, yes, and understanding. A shared experience that neither would wish on the other even when they'd been mortal enemies. It had thrown Buffy's world off it's axis. She gotten used to feeling pretty only at a surface level. Pretty clothes and shiny hair that hid the disfigurement beneath.

She had taken it easy the next few days, Angel changed her bandages for her. She'd noticed, like she always did that he gazed at her surgical scars sometimes with disgust and other times with something akin to rapture. She felt like a bug beneath a magnifying glass and she didn't like it at all.

When she'd forced herself to stop avoiding Spike it had been following a fight with Angel. She'd been angry and sexually frustrated. He never seemed to want her anymore unless he had been out drinking. She yelled at him, told him that she knew he found her ugly ever since she'd gotten her scars. He'd yelled at her and told her she'd stopped wanting him once he became a real boy.

Damn, if there wasn't truth in all of it. So she'd told him as much. "I stopped wanting you because you stopped being the man I fell in love with!" she had screamed at him, throwing her arms out wildly. Hurt had flashed across his face and guilt across hers. Then he'd left and she'd followed soon afterwards. Him to the bar, her to the cemetery.

Spike was leaning against a mausoleum lighting a cigarette when she'd found him. "Fancy seein' you here," he drawled without looking in her direction.

"I had a fight with Angel," she blurted out.

"Oh?" he asked, raising a brow.

"It was bad," she admitted.

"Isn't this something you should be telling your friends about?" he scoffed.

Buffy frowned. "I am," she told him, willing him to understand.

Spike sighed and let his head fall back against the stone with a solid thwack. "Is friends what we are now, Slayer?"

"Yes," she said with more confidence than she felt. "Angel is disgusted by my scars," she said, throwing her arms up and pacing. "He has been ever since they got me out of the Initiative, he can barely stand to look at me. For the first time in my life I feel...ugly," she shook her head. "And I'm tired of feeling that way, Spike. I feel ugly every time I step foot in my own home and I have for a year now."

Spike was in front of her suddenly, a frown heavy on his lips and an indecipherable look in his eyes. "Angelus isn't disgusted by your scars, luv. He's disgusted with himself," he told her darkly.

"What? Why?" she asked, even as a little voice inside of her told her she already knew.

"Because he's drawn to the pain and misery. Doesn't matter if he's Liam, Angelus or Angel. He enjoys the suffering of others and poncy, souled up and human Angel feels guilty that he loves it. He feels guilty that he loves the look of it on you."

His words startled her. The bluntness of them, the truth in them. "I—that's…" she trailed off.

His hands cupped her face, forcing her to look him in the eyes. "The last thing in the world you are, Buffy, is ugly."

Tears burned at the back of her eyes as she surged up onto her tip toes and kissed him, her arms flung around his neck to bring him down towards her. She could feel him tense, clearly caught of guard, but he recovered quickly as one hand slipped around to the back of her head and the other fell down to her waist. She was burning alive with his kisses.

He broke away first, his eyes dark and inscrutable, lips nearly bruised from the force of her attentions. "Buffy…" he said lowly, trailing off.

"I just want to feel beautiful again, Spike," she whispered, nearly wincing at the desperation she heard in her own voice.

He pulled further away, head tilted up towards the sky as he cursed. Buffy bit her lip, her confidence flagging, until suddenly her hand was in his and they were moving. He was weaving them through the tombstones until they came to a stop in front of his crypt. He watched her, dark blue eyes assessing her every movement. She slowly reached forward and pushed the door open before walking through and disappearing into the darkness.

The next few moments were pretty much a blur as Spike took the lead once again and lead her deeper into his crypt, dropping down to the lower level and allowing his hands to settle around her hips when she joined him a moment later. It was dimly lit from the candles he'd left lit before leaving earlier and she wasn't surprised to see the rich reds and deep blacks that adorned the makeshift bedroom.

She wasn't surprised to see red silk sheets. Spike was definitely a red silk kind of guy. Her nerves started to flutter deep within her gut as he backed her up towards his bed, his mouth slanting down and reclaiming her lips. His fingers were sure as they unzipped the side of her shirt and slowly pulled the soft fabric down until it dropped to the floor. He broke their kiss and studied her body as he unclasped her bra and relieved her of her skirt and panties, until he was the only one still clothed.

His eyes followed the lines of her scars and she started to fidget in discomfort. She moved her hands up to shield them from his gaze when he caught them and forced them back down to her sides, gently bending her back so that she was laying half on the bed. He dropped to his knees in front of her and she watched with baited breath as his head lowered towards her abdomen.

She inhaled sharply at the first touch of his cool lips over the raised flesh she'd been so ashamed of. She melted as he kissed, licked and nipped at every scar before traveling further south and showing her just how talented his mouth really was.

She broke apart beneath his ministrations and nearly did again as he climbed up her body, making sure they were both solidly on the bed, before surging forward and burying himself within her warmth. He whispered to her the whole time. Told her she was beautiful, warm, tight. That she was sunshine and he would happily burn up in her.

She shattered again, him following soon behind, and had never felt more beautiful.

~BTVS~

The guilt had come the next morning, waking up in Spikes arms. It wasn't as strong as she would have expected it to be but it was there nonetheless. She'd turned her head towards the vampire and found him staring blankly up at the stone ceiling. Her guilt doubled. Spike wasn't the cheating type. She knew that about him, it had become glaringly obvious in the aftermath of his relationship with Drusilla, how hurt he'd been.

She'd apologized, slowly and reluctantly broke away from his embrace and searched for her clothes. Once she was dressed she turned to face him. He had propped himself up against the headboard and was watching her, she couldn't read the expression in his eyes at that point. She didn't know what to say or do, she'd never been a cheater before but she didn't want to leave without something. So she had walked around to his side of the bed- momentarily forgetting that she shouldn't even have had a side in his bed- and leaned down, pressing her lips against his in a chaste kiss. Trying to convey all the things she didn't know how to say.

Then she'd left and returned to her husband. Angel had been home when she got there, she lied and said she'd stayed at her mother's house. He apologized, said she'd been partially right and admitted he hadn't been fair to her. Her guilt bubbled angrily within her as she accepted his kiss and apologized for her own words. Apologized for more than that too...more than she was willing to admit. Apologized because she wasn't entirely sure how sorry she really was. Then she resumed life as normal, avoiding Spike and putting more effort into her marriage than she had since before the bleached blond vampire had reentered her life.

~BTVS~

Cheating had always been Dru's bag. Angelus and Darla too, really. Maybe he was the odd one out, he usually was. Thing of it was that the Slayer burned him up and he loved it. Craved it. There was a time he would have delighted in stealing Angelus' woman, god knew he had done it to ol' Spike time and again.

Buffy had avoided him for weeks after she'd jumped him in the cemetery. After she'd practically begged him to make her feel beautiful. He'd considered leaving Sunnydale, for her own good and his. He was a moth and she the flame and leaving her, now that he knew her struggles...he just couldn't do it.

The next time he'd see her would be at The Bronze. He'd noticed out of the corner of his eye as she threw back her drink before kissing Angel and excusing herself. Noticed her approaching him. How she stopped with her hip popped out, her hand on it almost threateningly but not quite managing it, and asked why he was there.

He'd smirked. "Don't have anywhere else to go." He'd told her, recalling that first conversation that had bordered on friendly.

She had stuttered, her eyes going from predatory to pleading and he'd cursed himself as he took pity on him. "Relax, Slayer. Just here for a drink," he said with a roll of his eyes as he continued back towards the bar. She didn't follow him physically but he felt her eyes trail after him. He tried, and mostly succeeded, to keep his eyes off of her...off of them.

The next time she'd come around his crypt he snuck out through the tunnels the moment he'd felt her presence. Cowardly, maybe, if that's what you want to call self preservation. No good could come of her showing up on his doorstep.

A few days later she'd cornered him as he walked through the cemetery gates with his bag of booze and fags. And thus their dance really began.

A flutter of the eyelashes, a toss of her hair and a warm, genuine grin aimed straight at him. The chit was apparently done feeling guilty, and Spike was helpless to resist her. They took great care to avoid his crypt, instead returning to the days of patrol and late night drinks at The Bronze. Safe.

Only it wasn't safe. The infuriating bint was determined to torture him. Her hand skimming past his, her quirked lips as she studied him when she thought he wasn't looking. The look in her eyes in unguarded moments. He'd be damned if she wasn't going to be the death of him.

They grew bolder over the months and it wasn't long until avoiding the crypt wasn't anything more than an acknowledgment that they shouldn't be doing what they were most definitely doing. She'd brush past him, her hand swiping across his ass as she maneuvered towards the table her friends sat at. She'd giggle as he'd finger her up on the balcony while she looked down towards her husband, gasping for more.

She'd look up at him, a dangerous glint in her eyes as she slowly dropped to her knees in the darkest corner of the club, her husband just a few yards away. A seductive, secretive smirk on her face as she unzipped his trousers and freed him from their confines. Her eyes darkening as she nipped, licked and sucked at him until he came undone. Standing up in victory afterwards and helping him fix himself back up before returning to her table.

For the first time in his unlife he wasn't jealous of Angelus. His Slayer might go home to the brooding git but he knew that with him she felt alive. He wouldn't trade places with his grandsire for the world.

It was dangerous and shameful and fun. Sneaking around with her, falling in love with her. He had often wondered, though, when it would all fall apart.

~BTVS~

She'd given up on her marriage in all ways except the most important one. It had been months of sneaking around with Spike, of falling in love with Spike. Willow and Xander had figured it out, not the who so much as the what. She was too happy for it to be Angel, how sad was that?

How do you leave when you're all a person has? If she'd known the answer to that then she'd have left him the moment she first started even thinking about having an affair. Turns out she didn't need to leave him.

"What?" she asked in surprise, looking up from where she was whittling her stake.

"I'm moving back to L.A.," Angel repeated, barely looking at her. "Doyle is still set up there, he has a group that's continued to run Angel Investigations. They've been wanting me to come back ever since I left...I think it's time."

"I can't leave the Hellmouth," she blurted out.

"I'm not asking you to come with me," he told her blandly. "I'm leaving, we'll get a divorce...we'll never have to see each other again if you don't want to. Honestly...I'm not sure I want to," he told her, the bitterness entering his tone.

"Angel…" she hedged, unsure of where this was going exactly.

He looked her in the eye for the first time and she sucked in a deep breath at the pain reflected there. "I know we haven't made each other happy since the beginning, Buffy. I'm not stupid or blind. I don't even blame you, not really. I can't give you what you need any more than you can give me what I need. We tried to make the best of a bad situation and it just didn't work out. You and...Spike…" he trailed off and the world seemed to tunnel around Buffy.

Angel shook his head. "I thought about killing him, you know. Wouldn't be hard, not like he can hurt me. I've never done well with jealousy," he admitted.

"Angel," she said again, fear seizing her chest.

"Don't," he stopped her. "I've suspected for quite some time. Followed you on patrol the other night…" Buffy's eyes squeezed shut at the admission. "Spike is an idiot but if he loves you then he'll love you well. Better than I can."

"I think he does," she said quietly, shame burning through her.

"So do I. William's never really been one to cheat before," he said with a bitter sigh.

"I'm sorry," she told him sincerely, brokenly. "I didn't know how to…" she trailed off.

"Yeah," Angel replied. "Well, I haven't been perfect either."

"But you didn't cheat," she pointed out. His gaze darted away and he shifted guiltily. "Unless...you did."

"Like I said, he can love you better than I can," he repeated.

"Oh," Buffy replied, feeling numb.

The silence engulfed them for several long moments until she finally broke it. "When are you leaving?" she asked.

"Tonight."

"Oh," she said again, her eyes falling on his packed bags for the first time.

Angel sighed and stepped towards her, bending down to place a kiss on the top of her head. "Take care of yourself, Buffy. Tell Spike...if you die I'll kill him myself."

"Angel?" she asked as he made it halfway out the door. "I really did love you."

"I know, Buffy," he told her with a sad smile before walking the rest of the way out and closing the door behind him. She couldn't help but wonder if he'd really ever loved her back.

~BTVS~

Despite their not so subtle affair she hadn't been back inside his crypt since they first got together so finding her in his bed when he got home after poker night was a surprise. "Buffy, luv?" he asked as he squatted down beside her and brushed some hair off her face.

She was groggy as she awoke and it took her a second to figure out where she was and why he was there. "Spike?" she became more alert then. "Oh," she huffed as she threw herself in his arms.

"Hey, what's this then?" he asked as he ran his hands over her soothingly.

"Angel's gone," she told him.

"For the night?" he asked, not daring to hope.

She shook her head against his chest. "For good," she replied. "He knew about you...about us. He went back to Los Angeles."

Spike felt hope war with fear at this news. "And you're feeling…?" he prompted.

She lifted her head up and smiled at him through tear filled eyes. "Relieved," she told him with a laugh broken with emotion.

"Sure he's not gonna come lookin' to stake yours truly?" he asked with a raised brow.

Buffy laughed and nodded her head. "Said he'd thought about it but he wants me to be happy...even if you're the one who makes me that way," she told him.

"And do I?" he questioned.

Buffy smiled that blinding sun-filled smile that would have made his heart skip a beat were he still alive and framed his face in between her small hands. "Spike," she whispered, looking deep into his eyes. "I love you."

He felt the smile bloom across his face at her confession and the confidence behind it. "I love you too, Buffy," he replied seconds before molding his lips against hers.

~BTVS~

Buffy laughed as Willow and Xander argued playfully. Tara and Anya exchanged an amused glance with her and when Spike came back to the table with a tray full of drinks everyone lit up. "Spike, tell the Willster here Star Trek is superior to Star Wars," Xander demanded as her vampire settled back onto his seat beside her.

Spike shrugged. "Sorry mate, I gotta agree with Red on this one," he said, not so apologetically.

"Hah!" Willow exclaimed followed by a little happy dance.

"Traitor," Xander muttered into his beer, tossing a faux glare towards the other man.

Spike chuckled as he found her hand beneath the table giving it a squeeze and causing Buffy to grace him with a blinding smile. It was so nice to be happy and in love again. Her friends accepted Spike just for that fact alone, that he tended to get along with them just fine was just the icing on the cake.

She leaned against him as she dove back into the conversation with a grin.