Panting...

Clinging…

Grasping…

Not crying—not fucking crying—but fuck knows how to stop now the floodgates have opened…

Spike's lips devour. They consume Buffy's kiss uncaring for the airless gasps she makes any time he briefly releases her lips, pressing her downwards until she's beneath him, pliant and receptive, and kissing him back just as hard.

I love you—

Those three words said with such careful deliberation had cut him open. Split him down the center like a hacksaw, leaving a gaping hole that he needs to fill it with her. Needs to pack the wound or it'd bleed him dry.

"Love you, I love you—" he breathes out repeatedly, the only thing stopping his words from being heartbreaking and pathetic is the fact that she's whispering them back whenever she can. Her echoed responses sting his eyes even as he scrunches them shut.

"Buffy," he moans and is endlessly grateful she's moaning too, breathing out his name in sweet needy exhales of pleasure.

He's still buried inside her, and each whispered word of devotion has him hardening all over again, stretching against her walls until the fit is exquisitely snug. He rolls his hips, barely leaving her, and her calves tighten around his thighs to limit any retreat from him, unnecessary as that is. It's not slow, or gentle, or even cognizant but shit it's comfort, definitely comfort, as he presses his tongue into hers and feels her heart beating there. Over his chest too where her breasts are crushed against him, along his hips where her legs are wrapped tight.

"I took too long to say it," she murmurs almost to herself, as he continues to rut gently against her, the movement subtle and more like a winding and unwinding than a thrust, no closeness sacrificed.

"Too long?" he asks, confused, his blissed-out mind struggling to follow an important train of thought. It eventually reaches the station of realization and he levels himself up onto his elbows. She's loved me for longer than just today…?

"When did… when did you…?"

When did you know?

She's breathing so hard that it seems to take her a while to fill in the blank spaces in his words. He can't do it for her though. He still feels if he gives too much of his emotions away the illusion will shatter and it'll turn out that these past few weeks of beautiful intimacy and comfort have been nothing but a grief-induced delusion.

"When…" Buffy swallows and he leans down closer so her words don't have to travel a single unneeded inch. A look of calculation flits across her face in between flickers of ecstasy as he grinds gently against her. She moans lightly, struggling to figure out which second flipped the switch in her heart.

Spike shivers with impatience.

When… tell me when…

"When I asked you to stay," she says eventually. Tenuously. But then her eyes meet his and it's there—really really there—that old familiar look of fearlessness, unfiltered bravery lit in glittering green tones that is so unendingly Buffy he could truly believe none of it had happened. That it was all just a bad dream. She didn't jump, she didn't die, she didn't suffer a single moment of trauma. Instead, she'd always been here, in his arms, happy and whole and warm and soft beneath him, the way he'd fantasized so many times.

"Oh, luv," he groans and dips to kiss her cheek. Her jaw. Her throat, wanting to soothe the tightness he's feeling in his own by lavishing hers with affection.

"I wanted to feel safe," she adds, winding her arms around his shoulders. "For a little while."

"I know."

"I feel safe with you," she whispers, holding tighter as though such a raw sentiment might repel him.

"You are… you are…"

His arms hold her around her middle, her stomach pressed against his as her thighs tighten around him, and he lets himself be dragged down completely, effortlessly sinking down in slow thrusts that prompts a groan out of her lungs and into his.

They couldn't be wrapped tighter around each other if they tried. Clinging to each other with just the slightest rutting movement of Spike's hips against hers.

"I love you," she murmurs into his neck and he shivers at the tickling caress of air over his shoulder. "...William."

He doesn't know if she cognitively used his real name, if she could possibly know what those words would do to him but it hurts. It fractures something permanent and makes every moment before this one—every second of existence that wasn't this one—a revolting misery.

How could she know? How those featherweight words have broken his back. How they cut like a knife.

How he needs them again.

"Please," he manages, but even that syllable is an effort to get past his teeth with the weight of his need crushing the air from his lungs. "Again."

She gives them freely on a groan as he pulls her against him, hitting a spot that previously had her screaming, and this time has her arching her back as though the sensation was torturous.

"Oh, fuck—" she moans as he does it again, and he could almost chuckle, being so unused to hearing foul language cursed out by her. The high pitch of her voice—that always sounds younger than it is— is completely unfitting for the sentiment.

He could almost laugh about it if his tears weren't dappling her collarbone.

"I'm going to—" she rushes out on an out breath, unnecessarily since the telltale coiling around him is more than enough of an indication she's about to hit the high notes.

Hasty words of devotion tumble from his lips as she clenches around him, her arms hugging him so tight that if he were human she might choke the air from his lungs—but it doesn't stop him. She should have all the beautiful words he can think of. She should've had them the time before too, before she gave him this immense gift, before she changed everything with her perfectly imperfect declaration.

She fractures and hauls him along with her, her arms so tight across his back and her feet hooked at his calves that he can only sink into her as he gasps out his own release.

He expects her arms to loosen now that they're on the other side of their mutual desperation but she doesn't, just winds tighter around him.

"I'm sorry," she whispers after an age filled with the last lingering jolts of electricity shudder through their overworked muscles. "I should've said it sooner."

He shakes his head, burying his face into her neck as he cradles her shoulders. "Worth the wait."

She relaxes in increments, but it's an age before he can shift off enough for her to catch her breath, just for a second before he pulls her into a deep kiss meant to steal it again. Brief, though—since they're both breathing so hard from the heat of the room—any longer might actually cause her to faint. Soft kisses decorate her cheeks and temple, and he stretches out languidly next to her as her eyes start to close.

Buffy's heartbeat is almost deafening. His head pillows on her chest so his cheek rests over her heart, listening to the wet drumming of it like his very own all-percussion symphony as the thoughts in his head beat with it…

Loves me.

She loves me…

She loves me.

"...It's unclear whether these apparitions are some sort of gimmick, a hoax, or a large-scale promotional for the latest release of the Scary Movie franchise, set to hit theaters later this year. Whatever the cause, residents of Sunnydale are being advised to keep a distance—"

Brian's eyes drop from the Sunnydale Motor Inn reception's TV as the tall blonde from last night's trio slides in through the glass doors, brushing the Dorito dust coating his fingers onto his formerly white tank, and leaving a smear of fluorescent orange beneath his Manager badge.

"H-Hi," she stammers, tucking her hair behind her ears. "C-can I extend the stay on our two rooms? Number's th-three and eight?"

Brian nods, noting the tired eyes, the fretful expression, and decides to keep the lewd comment on the tip of his tongue to himself for once. "Sure thing, doll. How many nights?"

"Just another one."

She pays with her credit card and fumbles the receipt he hands out to her, nearly dropping her purse before turning on her heel and tripping back out into the blue early morning half-light, taking with her a summery floral scent that had seemed to permeate the air around her.

"In other news-," continues the news anchor in a brightly chipper tone as Brian takes his seat again, digging back into the half-empty back of chips, "-local horticulturalists are stumped at a sudden surge of—believe it or not—rose bushes spontaneously blooming in central Sunnydale. Could contaminated fertilizer be the cause? Find out at eleven."

Willow moans, twisting and fidgeting in sleep. Herself had told her to rest but she hasn't stopped whispering; a continuous litany of bad memories, stacking up and up and up, crushing the life out of her like stones heaped on top of her until she can't breathe, pressing down with all the things that need to be changed. Every wrong that needs to be reversed.

They feel so real, flickering in and out of solidity around her. Tendrils of her memories encroaching out of the cage of her mind and touching their feet down in reality, leaking out of her. Such rotten thoughts; visions of Tara, Buffy, Giles, Xander.

Every harsh word, every disagreement, every shed tear.

Every heartbreak.

Every loss.

"We can change all of it," Herself promises, her voice hasty and full of impatience as she pulls more memories outwards, encouraging them into vivid, revolting reality. "Just give Us the power to change it. We can fix it, just let Us out."

Willow nods feverishly, shivering on top of the bed sheets as sweat dampens her brow, her whimpers drowned out by the deafening memories parading through her head.

So much so she doesn't hear the crack of splitting earth from outside the window.