"We can fix it."
Willow gasps, panting, her forehead drenched in sweat.
Those words repeat through her head. Shadows move over the walls; thick, disjointed, and not connected to anything physical. Not cast by the moon outside her window. Black eyes—all the way black from pupil to sclera—watch her out of those shadows. Everything is dark, but those eyes are darker still.
The magic won't leave her. It's clinging. Cloying. Refusing to dwindle. Demanding to be used, and she realizes that this—exactly this—was what Giles was so afraid of, what he was so angry about when she told him what she'd done. How she'd managed to drag Buffy back from her eternal rest.
She's let something in. Or let something out.
Both. Something has become unleashed and now its claws are sunk deep in her flesh.
She's too weak to fight it.
"We can fix it," it insists again in a voice that sounds like her own but warped and fractured and feverish with intent. "All of it. Everything you want."
Willow nods. "Yes," she rasps. Her throat is parched.
She struggles up on her cot, hair clinging to her forehead as she wraps a blanket around herself. "I'll fix it."
The shadows don't say anything else, but a hole opens in the wall where the eyes had been staring out at her. A long gash and beyond it more shadows.
Willow takes a breath, fills her lungs. It smells like home, and on trembling legs she pushes herself off the thin mattress, stumbling towards the cleaved opening. A blowing wind around her ankles pulls her in, making the edges of the blanket reach out towards the hole, scooping her forward so she doesn't trip.
She falls through it thoughtlessly, eyes closed. A desperate yearning blooms in her chest and she follows it. Materializes it from within. Allows it to take her by the hand.
"Tara…"
The hole shuts, swallowing her up, and leaving an empty room behind.
"...I'd like it if you felt like you could ask me for what you want."
Spike's hands bury themselves in Buffy's hair, slipping down to her shoulder blades and onto her waist, digging in encouragingly as she cups his face and drags him in deeper.
God, this is what I want, she thinks, drinking him in, drowning in him, the way he holds her setting off an ache she thought died when she did.
She lays her hand flat on his chest and presses him down to the futon, sliding effortlessly on top of him. She settles over his hips, a hand on his cheek as she pins him to the floor with kisses that leave her feeling breathless even as she gives them.
She wants this, but she wants more too. Hasn't felt this sort of fire in so long, needing to be burned with it because without it she's shivering.
Maybe I want it too much…
This has never ended too good in the past…
It always… goes wrong…
She doesn't want to stop but they probably should. Things are twisting out of hand with the position they're in and the desperation for more contact they both seem to have; pressing and pushing into each other as though their very skin is too much of a barrier.
He seems to read her mind and breaks from her.
"Thought you wanted slow?" he asks.
"I do," she answers, and swallows, trying to find her way through the confusion of being pulled in two directions. "I just want this too."
"You want me?" he asks. She answers with her mouth over his and after he widens the kiss with a guttural sound in her throat, part confirmation, part groan.
"I want you," she breathes as he brushes the hair back from her face and cards his hand to the back of her neck.
She decides not to specify in what capacity.
Just a general statement.
She wants him.
All the unintentional touches, night after night of breathing each other in as skin slid across skin, each moment is a penny dropped in a jar almost ready to spill over, love bursting at the seams despite her reservations.
A little longer, she thinks to herself. I'll tell him, I will, but I just want this a little longer. This easy closeness that hasn't been doomed yet by me saying those words that always ruin everything…
Just a little more…
Each time she pulls back for air he follows her up, chasing her lips and stealing more, his hands gripping her shoulders greedily. Buffy's stomach somersaults at how gorgeous it feels not to be held too gently, to have some strength to dance with.
"Spike—" His name is a sigh of relief. Relief that he'd come and found her. That he still wanted her this way, that she was still buried in his heart, and didn't need to do the chasing every time.
"Buffy," he murmurs. "Where's the line, luv?"
She pulls back, steadying herself on her forearms to look down at him, her hair curtaining around her face. "What line?" she asks back, her kiss-drunk mind unable to slot the meaning of his words together.
Spike grins and strains up to nip her bottom lip. "Tell me what you want. Don't wanna overstep."
Buffy swallows, her mind blank as it attempts to find an equilibrium between her desires and her limits.
His hands slip from her shoulders to her biceps as she tries to come to a decision. Even in the dark—in the barest flickering candlelight that barely does more than elevate the scene out of pitch darkness—the stark white of his skin against hers makes her stomach clench in yearning. The deep black of his painted nails contrasts dramatically in the candlelight.
Buffy draws her lip in between her teeth as a decision makes itself. She wants his hands on her. That can be enough. That can be the line.
"Just stay above my clothes?" she answers, meeting his eyes.
She expects a leer, or maybe a smirk, but he only nods like that's all too easy, no further explanation needed.
"Sure, baby," he murmurs and folds her hair back over her shoulder to cup her jaw.
The next kiss is slow but no less intense, no less soporific as his arm swaddles her shoulders, enveloping her in an embrace that she tumbles into, flattening herself against him.
His hand gently grazes down to her neck, down over her back to join the other at her waist, his fingers firm against her spine. Her back curves, pressing her further into him, and Spike moans into her mouth.
"That's definitely not slow, pet," he chuckles as her hips roll slightly, bringing her into contact with the bulge in his jeans.
"Sorry," she murmurs between kisses, but repeats the action as his hands grip her thighs; a low sway of her hips that sends a rush of blood to her head and sets a burn low in her gut. "On second thought, not that sorry."
"Thought not." He grins as his thumbs squeeze the join of her legs, sensitive pressure points making her muscles twitch under his hands and a gasp escapes her lungs.
"Good?" he purrs, obviously wanting permission for a repeat.
"Bad," Buffy gasps. He raises an eyebrow prompting an explanation. "Bad of you. This is… this isn't all with the slow."
He grins and captures her mouth with his briefly. "Tell me to stop, gorgeous," he says, a smug dare coiled around his words like a snake as he nips her chin.
Buffy wets her lip, shivering at the nearness of his mouth over her neck. "Do it again."
He obliges. Another lazy roll of his hips accompanied by a growl over her pulse point raises the hair on Buffy's arms as he drags her hard against him. She moans into his neck as she buries her fingers into his hair, through the soft curls he's kept gel-free since he returned to her home.
Even with the layers of clothes between them, and Spike's hands resting reasonably chastely on her hips, fire is starting to build between them; long desperate kisses stealing her breath and making the skin pressed against him start to bead with sweat. Each movement of him beneath her crescendos into another.
His thumb brushes just a line along bare skin where her tank top has risen up from the pajama bottoms she's wearing, and that minute amount of contact makes her jolt like she's been touched with a livewire, and makes a new desire to shed the layers separating them inflame her cheeks into a fierce blush.
With her hands in his hair, she angles his head back, baring his throat. The ropes of muscles strain as he swallows and she gives in to the urge she's had since their night at the Bronze to run her tongue up from his neck to his ear, nipping gently as his hands dig in, forcing her into another grind that makes her dizzy with want.
"God, what you do to me, Buffy," Spike groans, his hands sliding up her ribcage, squeezing just beneath her breasts so that the air in her lungs trips on an out-breath. "What I'll do to you if we ever cross this line… don't need to, I swear we don't, but I'll make you feel so good, luv, if you give me a chance. Better than you've ever felt, baby, I promise…"
Buffy suppresses a groan of indecision. She knows just a fervent 'yes' is all it would take for those promises to become a reality. The way Spike whispers the words straight into her ear—mindlessly as though he's letting his mouth say whatever it wants without interference—they trickle down her throat and lodge in her gut.
It would feel obscene with anyone else. Her so often bruised and unsure heart would've lurched in terror at the potential disappointment lurking over the horizon. Disappointment caused and disappointment received.
But with him now those words feel like a haven of devotion. All he cares about is her. Nothing could go wrong.
I want him…
She braces herself with one hand by his head as her other trails down his chest, briefly brushing across the scar over his heart and down a ribcage, down to the slash that raises over the peaks of bone beneath. His hand cups the back of her head to bring her closer to his lips, catching her in a kiss that bruises her lips into a darker red. Without thinking, the backs of her fingers brush down his stomach, the muscles quivering lightly at her touch until she grazes the denim of his jeans.
He reaches down between them, and Buffy anticipates he'll flick open the button holding his jeans close, releasing the rigid flesh that's straining the denim. But instead, he takes hold of her fingers, pulling them away, holding them against his stomach.
"Not about to debate myself out of a good thing, Buffy," he says, panting slightly from their kiss despite his lack of need for the oxygen she's grown lightheaded without. "You say the word, luv, and tell me 'yes', but we only get to cross this line once-" he flicks his eyes towards the hole, indicating the sleeping Tara beneath them, "-and I don't particularly want to be quiet about it. Don't wanna be counting the decibels."
Buffy takes a breath as he brushes the hair out of her eyes, swallowing down the need that almost overtook her, and after a beat, lets the tension out of her shoulders, deciding he's right. After so long she certainly doesn't want to be muffled with her hand pressed against her mouth.
"...Later," she concedes, and he nods in agreement.
Long kisses bring her down again, easing her fully back into a boneless, relaxed state, until her body heat begins losing the battle against Spike's cool skin. She presses her lips against his jaw, his cheek, over a closed eye as she pushes him back down to the futon and drags the blankets up over them both, curling into and around him until their nest is filled with warmth.
She feels his throat bob against her temple as he brings her in even closer.
"Just say the word, Buffy," he whispers, and she drifts off to sleep with that promise in her ears.
"TARA?!"
Spike's shout rouses her with a jerk, bringing her out of the murky depths of sleep to screaming coming from the basement.
She bolts upright alongside him. "Tara?!"
They kick the blankets back, sprinting for the hole. Spike gets there first and drops into the pitch below as Buffy scrambles down the ladder.
She reaches the floor and turns to see Spike barrelling into a demon looming over the bottom of the bed, reaching for Tara, black fingers outstretched.
He punches it and it stumbles to the side with a muffled grunt.
Spike reels back, clutching his head, howling in pain.
The demon turns, hand pressed to its mouth, black eyes searching as it steps backward into the candlelight; illuminating a waxy, drawn face and disheveled red hair.
Buffy's heart freezes in her chest, her breath stoppered in her lungs.
"Oh my God," she breathes as she takes a gulp of air. "Willow?"
Willow takes another faltering step back into the shadows—
And vanishes, as though she was never there.
"W-Willow," sputters Tara from the bed where she'd just made it up into a sitting position, tears streaming down her face, hands cupped over her mouth in horror.
Spike groans. "Fucking hell," he huffs as he straightens up. "Thought your watcher had a bloody leash on her, what's she doing back here?"
"I've no idea," Buffy manages, her voice hoarse with shock. "That was definitely her, right? Not a… not a memory apparition thingy?"
"The migraine burning my frontal lobe says definitely real, definitely human," Spike answers as he digs a thumb into his eye. "Tar, you alright? You're trembling like a leaf."
Tara shakes her head, dislodging tears down her cheeks, her hand still clamped over her mouth. "H-her eyes," she whispers, swallowing thickly.
Spike wraps a blanket around her shivering shoulders.
"Think maybe we outta vacate here, too?" he asks Buffy. "Reckon our girl could do with some actual creature comforts."
Buffy nods numbly and starts collecting up the things she'd brought for Tara. "Where though? Xander's is at capacity."
"Watcher's place?" Spike suggests. Buffy grimaces at the suggestion as she bundles clothes into Tara's bag.
"Guaranteed memory hauntsville."
Spike rubs Tara's back as she sobs, and squeezes her shoulder as he thinks. "What about that motel on the outskirts of town? By the Highway?"
"The Sunnydale Motor Inn? That's like… a super mega walk, though?" Buffy answers, glancing at Tara who looks extremely un-walky.
"Got the De Soto in a lot nearby," Spike says with a shrug. "Easy."
Buffy glances at the spot Willow evaporated in, keen to get away from the dark shadows that seem to encroach regardless of the flickering candlelight. "Okay, good plan."