"Are you ever gonna let go?" Buffy asks into the crook of Spike's arm, his other arm firmly around her waist. One of his legs is between hers, hooking around the calf.

Since making it back to the house he'd barely been out of arm's reach, the space between them dwindling the nearer they got to privacy:

…His fingers entwined in a bruising grip with hers as they drove back to Revello Drive in the back of Giles' car, tears still wetting the waterline under their eyes.

…His hand on her hip as Giles and Tara settled an unconscious Willow into bed. He'd hadn't left her side as the rest of the group had clattered in, congregating in the hallway outside Willow's room. Her heart had skipped a momentary beat when Giles' gaze had slid across Spike's arm wrapped around her, until something like acknowledgement had softened his stare. Not the disapproval she was expecting, and with that inaudible conversation between them, she'd lain her head on Spike's shoulder, a last shard of apprehension leaving her body.

…And finally, his arms had wound around her as they tucked in under the blankets in her bed, crashing into an unconsciousness that lasted through to the next day.

His torso molds to the curve of her spine, his face buried in her hair, nuzzling back in every time she shifts position, the way it had been the first night alone.

She feels him take a breath in.

"Wasn't planning on it," he mumbles.

He winds tighter, holding on to her like he can't bare to let go, and she squeezes his arm with her hand—

I'm here.

I'm alive and I'm here.

—and his muscles relax again as though he heard her. There's scar tissue on top of scar tissue inside both of them—white welts that go all the way down to the bone—but they're still here. That's the only thing that matters.

He sniffs in, matter-of-factly and a touch too wet to be believably nonchalant, but she doesn't turn around, letting him bury whatever horror is on his mind rather than unearth it now in this warm feeling of safety.

Cool kisses press against the base of her neck, decorating her skin, moving at a leisurely pace up to the tip of her shoulder.

She lets out a contented sigh, widening the angle of her neck as his lips linger there. All she wants is this. This weightless intimacy that's making time feel sluggish and unconnected, easing the tension around her chest in small increments. The only thing that would unwind it quicker would be hearing his voice too.

"Do you wanna play a game?" she asks in a whisper.

It doesn't stall him; cool fingers slip under her cami onto her stomach.

He nods against her skin. "What game?"

Buffy hums out a low moan as he sucks gently over her pulse, bracing himself on an elbow. All the misery of the past day melting from her mind like early morning frost under a sunrise.

She wriggles in his arms. "Do you know Two Truths and a Lie?"

"Yeah?" He sounds a little drunk, just slightly drowsy as need laces his voice. "There some particular truth on your mind you wanna get off your chest?"

There is. But she needs a run up to reach it. Needs some laughter between them before she solidifies the air with something so earnest. Needs some levity the way she'd needed it after he'd nearly kissed her under that smokey fug, and Dawn had broken the moment.

"No," she lies, shivering as his lips brush across a sweet spot beneath her ear. "I was just… thinking about our night at the Bronze."

"Our first date?" he asks teasingly, his hand traveling high to splay across her ribcage.

"Yeah," she agrees, arching into his touch. "Thought maybe we could both do with some non-scary conversation."

He hums in agreement, moving slowly around her body with soft touches and worshipful kisses until he has her ear between his teeth, pinching with his incisors as her back bows.

"Penalties, luv? What do I get if I guess right?"

"What do you want?" she giggles since it's not particularly difficult to guess.

He smiles into her hairline, and tucks his hand under the waistband of both her pajamas and her underwear, his hand flat on her bare hip. "Every time I guess right, take something off."

She rolls her eyes. "You've seen me naked a lot by now, so that's not really a penalty for me."

He chuckles and his voice is clear now of any wet, cloying grief. "No, but I'll enjoy that pouty little face you make when you lose."

Buffy lets out an unimpressed huff. "Overconfident much?"

"You're an open book, I'm not shaking in my lack-of-boots here."

She laughs, reaching back to stroke a hand through his wild curls.

"Fine. But that's your penalty too."

Spike smirks, the breath tickling the hair at her nape. "Whatever you say, luv," he purrs, flattening the curve of her spine against the taut planes of his stomach with an insistent tug, their skin separated by her cami and his t-shirt, but not for long. "Tell me some truths then."

Buffy shifts deeper against him, holding her breath as his fingers caress her side beneath the cotton of her top.

The only truths available in her mind now are the ones they shared in the Bronze. And some that she didn't share, so she starts there.

"I wanted to punch you when you dared me to stage dive," she says, laying a kiss on his forearm beneath her head.

"That's a truth," he interrupts.

"Shut up." The kiss becomes a nibble with blunt teeth pinching his skin, but he only chuckles in response. "I wanted to kiss you when you told me about the merlot moment—"

"I hope that's a truth."

"And…" she pauses to think of a lie, knowing the extended hesitation is a dead give away but it's surprisingly hard to conjure one up on the spot, especially when his fingers are swirling over the sensitive skin of her hourglass. "And I wanted to do a shot off your stomach when you dangled off the railing."

Spike snorts. "And that's a lie. I didn't miss that flinch in your eyes, sweetheart."

"My fixation sold me out, huh?" she mutters. She drops her hand from his hair and bends her arm, wedging it between them so her fingers ruck up his t-shirt and skim his stomach. "I love them, you know?" she says as she strokes over the bumps and ridges of his scars. "They're… important. To me. Scary but… important."

"I know," he whispers, and as she turns back to see his face he catches her lips in his, kissing slowly and insistently until that particular heavy truth melts between them.

His hand drops to her hip. Thumb tucking in beneath the elastic.

"Off."

She smiles to herself. "Fine. But that was just a warm-up."

"Still gotta pay the penalty, darlin'."

Buffy sighs dramatically, then shifts onto her back, glaring into his smugly glinting eyes as she wriggles out of her pajama bottoms, kicking them off her ankles and wrapping her newly bare legs around one of his calves.

"Your turn."

"Alright… if we're talking about the Bronze..." he hooks his ankles behind hers, bringing her leg deeper in between his. "The worst moment was when you laughed at me." Buffy's heart suddenly drops, her brow furrowing as a sadness fills her gut. "The worst moment was the gin on that chit's breath," he continues and the image of him kissing Wednesday surges into her mind, observing all the sweet touches given as jealousy had closed her throat, rebranding her cheeks in a blush. "The worst moment was when you jumped."

Buffy swallows, skin icy with nerves as she clears her throat and tries to think. His face is unusually unreadable, serenely calm, giving nothing away.

If he's not lying about the laugh, she'd severely miscalculated their teasing camaraderie.

If he's lying about the kiss, she thinks she might cry.

And he's lying about the jump…

She takes a wild guess, opting for what she desperately hopes is the right answer.

"When I laughed at you? That's the lie?"

His face splits in a grin. "Yeah." He nudges her nose with his and she relaxes. "Love that laugh of yours, pet."

"And the kiss?"

"Truthfully was disgusting," he answers, grinning wider. "Besides," he adds as he brushes hair back from her face, "it wasn't you."

Buffy hums blissfully as his lips meet hers, a repeat performance of that kiss that should have been hers. His hand gently cupping and tilting her head up as his mouth widens with hers.

And then her brain catches up. "Wait…" she mumbles against his lips. "But the jump?"

"...Joint worst," he confirms, his thumb stroking her jaw in a gesture that's soothing and easy before his fingers dip into her hair. "Just for a second I thought I'd… thought I'd really fucked up."

Buffy blinks as her eyes sting. She knows what Herself made him see, and if he had any doubts about that jump before, she can only imagine how much worse they are now.

"It saved me, you know?" she says quietly, laying a hand on his cheek and he turns into it like a cat seeking warmth. "It really did. I don't… I don't think I could've carried that memory around with me any longer and you helped me put it down."

He raises his eyes to hers, offering a flicker of a smile as he lets those words have room in his head, pushing aside lingering uncertainty.

She doesn't give him a chance to wallow.

"Okay, so, point to me," she says, tugging at the collar of his t-shirt. "Off."

He rolls his eyes at her high-handedness, but rises into a half-sit as he pulls it over his head and flings it over the side of the bed.

"Happy?"

She smirks. "I'm not completely dissatisfied."

He snuggles back down with her, and the natural way they curl into each other provides inspiration for the next round.

"Okay. When I woke up as Sunny," she starts as he makes himself comfortable. "My first thought was how gorgeous you were."

He smiles arrogantly and she laughs. "Think we can comfortably cut this guess down to a fifty-fifty," he says.

"When I woke up as Sunny, your lips were pressed to my neck."

His eyes drift there longingly. A need to feel his lips there again unfurls slowly in her stomach, but she doesn't stop.

"When I woke up as Sunny, I didn't need to see your face to know you were a guy." His brow furrows and she pumps her eyebrows meaningfully. "I could hard-ly keep from noticing."

"Bugger off!" he laughs. "You're the worst liar in the world, pet. If Charlie was sporting wood waking up next to Sunny he would've been a lot more persuasive about staying in bed."

"Oh, he tried," Buffy argues with a pointed finger.

"Not hard," he bats back with a grin, before nipping the tip of her finger, making it withdraw. "But even without knowing who you were, he wanted to treat you right."

"Did treating me right include getting hot and heavy on my bedroom desk?" she parries.

"I said right, luv, not gentle." And the next kiss is nowhere near gentle. Hot and hungry as he digs his fingers into the flesh of her hips and rolls them so she's straddling him. He hooks a finger into the strap of her cami and lets it snap back as he leers. "Off."

Buffy purses her lips, leveling a glower at him that isn't even remotely serious, before she sits up, and with crossed arms slowly peels it up her stomach, over her breasts and off her head, shaking out her hair.

The hypnotized look in his eyes fills her belly with a warm glow, and she shifts her hips downwards, lowering herself to straddle his thighs.

Unlike Charlie, he's hard beneath her, a rigid shaft pressing against her stomach as she dips her head to kiss across his collarbone.

"Tell me some Charlie truths," she purrs as he moans and bucks upwards into her.

He swallows audibly, eyelids closing in intoxicated arousal, and Buffy smiles to herself, slipping lower to graze her lips down his side. His hand strokes up her arm.

"Charlie thought about pulling those pretty yellow shorts down with his teeth," he whispers, carding his fingers through her tangled locks as she runs her lips down his ribcage, earning a low growl and a clenched hand in her hair, encouraging her into a gentle bite. "Charlie looked in your secret drawer—Ah!" he laughs as she nips him harder, glaring up through her lashes as his spine bows away from the mattress. "But Charlie never thought about using what he found in that secret drawer on you, even a little bit."

"Lie," Buffy states, unimpressed, even as her cheeks begin to burn.

"Couldn't be helped, honey. Charlie doesn't have my pure intentions."

"Mm. So pure." She tucks her fingers beneath the waistband of the pajamas hugging his hips (hers; patterned with an assortment of pizza slices and hamburgers on a navy background). "Off."

He raises his hips to help her pull them down, shifting his legs as she takes them off his ankles. She lies down on top of him, resting her head on his sternum, his naked body warmed from being wrapped around her all day and all night.

"I love you," she whispers as his fingers caress her back, delicately caressing the prickly nerve endings into life.

"That's not a lie, is it?" he teases as she smirks up at him.

She strokes up a hand, lying it flat over his heart, staying splayed across him for a few more seconds.

"I nearly said I loved you when you kissed me after our night at the Bronze," she says, raising her eyes to catch his gaze. "I nearly said I loved you when you came back after the super bad week."

"God, that week," he moans, hooking a leg over the back of her thigh as though needing to anchor himself to her. "Bloody awful."

She nods in agreement.

"And I nearly said I loved you when we were curled up on the sofa together."

Spike sighs, half content and half lovesick. "Can they all be true?"

Buffy hums softly, wrapping her arms beneath him to hug him by the waist. "That's cheating, but… sure."

He smiles, running a thumb across her lips. She kisses it and he shivers.

"The bad week," he starts. "I smoked twenty-nine and a half packs of cigarettes. I drank thirteen bottles of whiskey and a canister of what I think in hindsight was turpentine. I slept for six days straight."

Buffy's throat tightens. The lie is obvious, and a brief wave of grief rolls over her. She swallows. "Can they all be lies?"

"It's cheating, luv," he says, but his smile widens as she burrows into his hand, laying a kiss on the palm as she blinks hard. She's not going to cry.

If he says yes to what she's going to ask, she doesn't want it to be because she cried.

"I didn't sleep either," she says, slipping down, resting her head on the jut of his hip, delicately trailing her fingers down his stomach and he bows into her touch. "But I dreamed. Of you. And when you came back I thought it was another dream."

"All I do is dream of you," he whispers as she kisses lower. She wriggles in between his legs and widens his thighs with her shoulders.

"Buffy…" his breath shivers out of him as she kisses across the join of his thigh, her lips brushing the thatch of hair before pressing against the root of his cock.

He audibly suffocates a moan, gasping as she licks from the base to the tip, trying to keep quiet in the heavy hush of early morning and the thought brings with it the memory of their time in that nest of pillows and blankets. Counting the decibels.

She presses her tongue against the underside of his shaft, tracing a vein with the tip of her tongue, and a groan escapes him.

"Shh," she admonishes with a giggle, before licking again, swirling her tongue against the sensitive bundle of nerves just beneath his tip and he jolts like he's been electrocuted.

"Christ," he curses, and then really moans as she sinks her mouth down over him. "Oh Christ, Buffy…"

She flicks her tongue, flutters around him as she takes him deeper, relishing the way his thighs clench against her shoulders. He's too big to take fully, and she wraps her hand around the base, pumping in time with her mouth and the roll of his hips.

"I love you," he whispers, sounding almost panicked like he needs to fill the air with as much devotion as possible. "Buffy, I love you. You're all I want, I love you."

She picks up the pace and his hand tightens into a fist in her hair. Not using it to steer her or control her motions but just holding on as though to let go would be disastrous.

"Fuck, luv, I can't hold on."

She pulls off just before he comes, climbing up his body, littering kisses up his torso as she shimmies out of the underwear still clinging to her hips. He rises into a sit to hold her as she takes his head in her hands and kisses him deeply.

"Figure out the lie," she instructs, now that she's ready for that final truth. She drops a hand, running it from his neck down his chest, before grasping him lightly, notching the head of his cock at her core. She doesn't know why it's so much easier to say scary things, big things, when he's between her legs except that everything is stripped away. He's so raw when they're so close, and it feels like there's space for anything and everything when there's no space between them.

"I want us to stay in this bed for the rest of the week," she whispers, slipping down just enough to take an inch of him.

His eyes flutter shut with a sigh, as she retreats and then lowers back down, taking another inch. "Only a week?" he grunts.

She chuckles. Raises herself, before dipping lower, relishing the way his fingers dig in at her waist, pleading for more. "I want to shave my head."

He laughs, strained and tight, and he encourages her hips into a grind. "That bloody well better be the lie."

She wraps her arms around his shoulders, and takes him fully, groaning with him as they cling to each other. "I want you to stay."

"I'm not going anywhere," he promises, rolling his hips beneath her, the words spilling furiously from his lips like he can't say them fast enough. "Won't go 'til you say the word, luv, I swear, whatever you need, I—"

She silences him with a kiss, biting firmly with teeth as he melts against her, moaning gratefully.

"I want you to move in," she clarifies, and he blinks before pulling back to look at her fully, disbelief written clearly in his eyes. "I want you to live here." She swallows, suddenly nervous, her heart thrumming as words start to clog her mouth. "Or… or undead here, or whatever, but the being here part is the true thing."

The roll of his hips slows beneath her, his mouth opening and closing as he tries to grapple with what she's just asked him and she cups his head, pulling him close.

"Will you stay?"

His mouth cracks into a bewildered smile.

"'course, luv."

She laughs at his artless, overwhelmed acceptance and topples him back into the pillows, the pair of them writhing and fevered as they take and give.

Buffy gasps, breathless, as her world turns into a million little stars pulsing in her vision, burning under her skin.

Bliss.

Every movement is constant bliss, beating through her bloodstream, glowing in her heart as his fractured breath fans her neck.

Just like this she could let the air run out of her lungs, and take a long, wonderful one back in again. Let his arms hold her tight against him.

Let them both sink into this soft, perfect moment.

The rest of her life…

Let it begin.

Author Note:

Good grief.

Blood. Sweat. Tears. Multiple betas, endless discussions about plot, direction, and word game choices… and this story is finally finished. I might cry. I've considered this story my baby for two years, and now that it's over, I just want to thank you all.

Here's a list of some of the all:

Thank you to all the wonderful people who helped shape this work: my tireless beta RavenLove12 who's been invaluable and the best sounding board a girl could ever ask for, your advice is never anything less than inspirational.

And a host of temporary beta's over those two years whose advice was just what was needed at the time (you'll see them in the chapter notes).

Thank you to all the regular readers of this piece—(shockingly) so many of you. Every comment, like, favourite, and bookmark is so so treasured.

To Cd85 (Claire); this story was the first banner she made for me (go look on EF/SAD), and I'm so in love with everything she makes, but this was the first time I lost my breath over her art.

To Violettathepiratequeen, who has been a champion of this story for so long, I can't find enough words to say thank you.

But especially to Emily... This story became yours very quickly. And it is yours, my dear friend. I had no intention of it becoming this monstrous 36 chaptered work, and I doubt without your devotion (and yeah okay fanaticism, spades are spades) it ever would have been. If this was a published work, you would be the dedication. Yours Emily. Always.

And to everyone else on ao3, , EF, and SAD, this fandom is a haven to me, and a community I hope never to leave. Love to you all!

See you on the next one!

Geliot x