She was running.

Something was chasing her—or maybe it was that she was chasing something—but she was running. hard enough to rattle the bones in her legs, hard enough to make her muscles feel the strain, her feet drumming on the sterile white tiles, the glass cells framing the hallway she was flying down casting back the blur of her reflection.

I'm here again.

Buffy blinked and came to a halt. It's a dream.

It's this dream again.

But that knowledge did nothing to snap her out of it.

Some of the cells were streaked with blood. And somewhere there was screaming.

Thump.

Buffy froze.

Thump.

Heavy footsteps echoed behind her, a slow plodding gait; Thump. Thump. Thump—

She turned, her eyes widening as the light at the end of the corridor was suddenly blacked out by a monstrous form—

What the—?!

She jolted awake in Willow's bed, the shocked gasp in her lungs bringing her sharply out of sleep and through the several stages of drowsiness on an in-breath.

That's not just a nightmare, she thought as her heartbeat thudded in her ears. Slayer dreams…

I've gotta talk to Giles about that one…

Heart still jumping, Buffy took some slow, deep breaths, and rolled onto her side to try and regain her foothold on sleep.

The sight in front of her only served to pull her further away from it.

Spike was sitting up on her bed, reading one of her books by the poor light filtering in through a crack in the curtains, and Buffy frowned, wondering if she was still dreaming. The sliver of light caught any bit of exposed skin and made it glow white in the moonlight; bare torso shadowed by the swell of the muscles in his arms and chest, bare feet crossed at the ankle. She didn't think she'd ever seen him so relaxed, a look of tranquility across his sharp features; a statue brought to life and reclining in her bed, distracting her completely from the last cloying tendrils of the dream.

"I can tell when you're watching me, luv," he said and turned over a page. "Bad dream?"

"No," Buffy replied reflexively after a beat and pushed herself up into a sitting position.

"You were snarling."

"I was not snarling," she bit back.

Spike snorted, a smile stretching his lips.

"Shouldda warned me I was moving in with a wild animal."

Buffy glared, but he continued to take no notice.

"What are you reading?"

"One of your favorites, from the look of the thing," he replied with a slow grin, turning another page, and Buffy managed to catch a glimpse of her Introduction to Poetry collection, liberally dogeared in places she was sure it hadn't been before.

Spike likes poetry, she thought to herself, suddenly reevaluating the poetry he'd whispered in her ear as they'd walked hip to hip two nights prior. She'd assumed that he had just been finding new ways to get under her skin, that maybe when she'd told him she was taking poetry as one of her classes he'd honed in on that point as a prospective place to hit a nerve and had orchestrated that impromptu recital by opening a book and committing whatever he could find to memory.

The fact that the moment they'd shared—his arm around her he recited Shelley into her ear—was actually something sincere was leaving her feeling more than a little unstable.

Spike likes poetry… and not just to mess with me…

Huh…

She fussed with the blanket over her knees, her lip pinched between her teeth. A question had lined itself up on her tongue without her permission and she found she couldn't swallow it back down.

"Will you read some to me?"

Spike turned his head to face her, moving slowly like he wasn't entirely sure he'd really heard her ask. He closed the book over his finger to keep his place and appraised her shamelessly.

"If you come closer."

Dark eyes dared her, and Buffy's heart made a dangerous flutter, the stern resolve she'd managed to cling to all evening taking another hit and fracturing.

There had been a slow goodnight kiss—broken off before things could escalate too far, he could cause further damage—and a hurried 'goodnight' as she'd tucked herself into Willow's bed. That had been all she'd allowed herself after she'd regained a sense of calm, trying to rationalize her way out of flinging herself out of her bedroom after him, desperate to set the record straight.

Are we still playing?

The question burned as a tingling spot on her lips. At her jugular and the dip of her throat too. All the places on her Spike haunted, the memory of his touch lingering. A tight band of tension cinched around her lungs and squeezed.

Fantasy and reality had started to bleed irreversibly into each other. Maybe it was still possible to untangle whatever it was that had been unintentionally knotted between them, but it was taking more and more of her concentration to determine where the line should be. The complexities were starting to drown her.

If they stopped now, maybe they could swim back to saner shores…

Spike tilted his head in a beckoning gesture, obviously reading her indecision in the tension of her shoulders and deciding to push her just a bit further towards action.

"Come here, baby."

Buffy let out a slow breath but didn't argue against the pet name. Not when it had been offered without even the minutest leer...

She let her threadbare reluctance slip off her shoulders and moved the blankets back, swinging her feet over the edge of the bed, and touching down to the floor. Every movement felt weighted like it was being permanently committed to memory, and she took a breath to shake it off.

When she was close enough, Spike held out a hand, catching her fingers in his and drawing her down to the bed. Buffy let herself be drawn, stiffly sitting by his hip until he moved his leg to the side of her, wound an arm around her middle, and reclined into the pillows, taking her with him. She shifted, and the shift brought her firmly into the crux of his thighs, her head on his shoulder, her back flush with his chest.

It's just playing, she reminded herself, but that mantra didn't seem able to settle her nerves anymore. Why this felt so much more tense than the times she'd literally been perched in his lap she couldn't say.

His arms surrounded her, cradling her, and as she turned her head to face him he caught her lips in a kiss that brought an only-just subdued moan into her throat.

It's just playing… isn't it?

"Forever is composed of nows," Spike purred against her mouth and Buffy felt her eyes dilate even further than the encompassing darkness required, holding her breath as Spike laid another kiss on the corner of her lips. "'Tis not a different time, except for infiniteness, and latitude of home."

Oh, Buffy thought, tilting her head as Spike pressed kisses along her jaw. I like this one…

"From this experienced here, remove the dates to these," Spike continued and Buffy's gaze flicked to the page, reading along with him, though his attention was clearly nowhere near the page. "Let months dissolve in further months, and years exhale in years. Without debate or pause or celebrated days no different our years would be, from Anno Dominies."

"Do you just know these by heart?" Buffy asked, her eyes drowsily half-lidded as Spike's kisses moved lower onto the base of her neck.

"I know a few."

Buffy bit down a sound that, if allowed to escape, might have been a groan as Spike's teeth gently bit down, stoking a nerve into a shivering voltage.

"Can you do another?"

She felt his smile against her skin as he brushed his mouth back up to her ear, grazing the shell of it with his nose and sending a shiver down her spine.

"Mm… Let love clasp grief lest both be drown'd," he whispered and Buffy's skin broke out in gooseflesh. She knew he noticed, his arms holding her tighter. "Let darkness keep her raven gloss. Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss; to dance with death, to beat the ground, than that the victor hours should scorn. The long result of love, and boast, behold the man that loved and lost, but all he was is overworn."

"Dickinson?" Buffy guessed. She felt him shake his head.

"Tennyson."

Buffy nodded, her gaze flicking over to Willow's bed and the distance she should reinstate, feeling so shivery and dazed.

This is way nicer than bad dreams though, that overly persuasive voice in her head piped up. Just one more wouldn't hurt, right? Just–-

"One more?" she asked, more to herself, but Spike was bringing her gaze back to him with two fingers on her chin.

"Ask nicely."

Buffy scowled back playfully.

And rather than give him the 'please' he was obnoxiously angling for, kissed him so softly, so tenderly, she felt him shudder. She wriggled in his arms—turning so she was pressed up against him—and delicately cupped his face in her hand, laying it on thick until he half-moaned a curse.

She slowed the kiss, pumping the breaks and swerving around the biting passion she could feel them heading towards.

His eyes pried open as she pulled back. Watchful, and a little sullen. His tongue darted out to taste her on his lip. A shivery breath expelled from his lungs as his fingers fanned through her hair, tucking it back behind her ear as he nuzzled closer to her. His hand dropped, squeezed her shoulder as though he was bolstering himself, and Buffy let his mouth graze hers again.

"Who said that love is just a game," Spike started, stealing another brief kiss. "They never held a sickened breath, and with trembling fingers struck the match that sparked a devastating flame." He was close enough that she could practically taste the words in her mouth. Was all but edging closer to him for them. "Wished to burn or else for death," he continued in a whisper, tilting his head as her hands linked at the nape of his neck. "Begged those drifting embers catch an empty heart in all but name." His hand dropped from her shoulder, fingers briefly stroking her throat until they flattened over her heart. "Who said that love is just a game?"

Buffy could feel the jolt that battering muscle in her chest made under his fingers. Could feel it twitching at her jugular, and in her gut too, spilling all her secrets into Spike's open palm, thudding wetly as his eyes drank her in.

Oh wow… I might be really in trouble… she thought to herself, but the sentiment seemed far away and unreachable.

She cleared her throat but didn't pull back, letting herself stay wrapped in his arms. Just for now.

"That's not Dickinson either, right?" she asked, certain if she'd come across that poem in her textbooks she would've ripped it out and framed it, return policy be damned.

Spike shook his head, still watching her intently.

"Bloke called William Pratt," he said after what felt like an age.

"He was a romantic?"

She caught a flash of a smile in the dark. "To the bone, luv."

Buffy hummed appreciatively.

"Think that's my favorite so far."

Spike's throat bobbed as he swallowed, and Buffy tried to steel her heart against the look in his eyes. Strangely full of longing but empty of the usual leer that offset it. Consuming in a way that was hard to pull back from.

But she couldn't lie here entangled around him all night. She just couldn't.

"I should get some more sleep," she murmured and moved to rise off the bed.

His hand held onto her forearm, stalling her.

"Stay."

His voice was so tight it almost sounded like begging, and Buffy turned back. His hand didn't let go, fingers circling her arm, but stroking soothingly; his thumb rubbing back and forth across the vein in her wrist as though he could gentle her back down to the mattress.

Are we still playing?

That question was going to haunt her, she could tell. But it did nothing to scare off the greed that was edging her back into Spike's arms.

If I say it's still just a game…? If I say that's all it is…?

She turned her hand over to link with his. Letting her fingers slot into place.

"Ask nicely," she whispered, and Spike's eyes all but sparkled, his hand dragging hers towards him until she had to follow.

"Slayer," he pleaded, wrapping arms around her middle, legs across her calves, until she was tucked in against him, her head settled on his shoulder, meeting his gaze in the dark. "Stay."

Author Note Poetry cites

"Forever – is composed of Nows –
'Tis not a different time –
Except for Infiniteness –
And Latitude of Home –"
Forever Is Composed of Nows by Emily Dickinson

"Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss…"
In Memoriam by Lord Alfred Tennyson

"Who said that love is just a game;
They never held a sickened breath,
And with trembling fingers struck the match,
That sparked a devastating flame.
Wished to burn or else for death,
Begged those drifting embers catch,
An empty heart in all but name,
Who said that love is just a game?"
Just a Game by G. Eliot (writing as William the Bloody) copyright me ;)