Buffy’s Problem

by

lizerrrbeathan

(A post lizerrr Summing Blue....)

*

Just take a look, one look.

Just look in and see why he hadn't been around and of course not seeing him around was good, it was good–still, why hadn't he been around? That was the drum roll to the thunder clapping it’s hands at her pre-emptive strike.

 

He had been a help at least four times last week when she had gotten into one tight scrape after another and so she had to admit that he was on her radar now in a new way.

 

First there was that troupe calling themselves the ‘Gang of Four’ and Spike had said it was some kinda neo political power club and to watch that den. And then he had stepped in to back her up and had dusted two of the master vampires himself. So. Well. Maybe he was bored and this was his way of killing something’s time; but the end result was...well...she wondered why he had suddenly dropped off and out of sight.

 

So it was good to check in and make sure he wasn't up to something.

 

The rapid breathing should have given it away...but instead it just puzzled her and she almost called out his name but when she opened her mouth to say it: another voice did for her.

 

"Spike...Spike..." a woman’s low voice gasped "oh...goddddd...ahhhh...."

 

Buffy was shocked into dumb curiosity. It was like hearing something that sounded like bad news and she would not like it, no not at all, but she needed to look to be sure she didn’t want to know. Plus there was the Slayer thing going on which sorta gave her permission to poke into other people’s tender unmentionables and all this to say that she held her breath and stepped quietly around the corner of the entranceway in the lower level to see:

 

Spike's naked backside, muscles bunched in his back, his rear end gathering together in a knot and relaxing as he knelt behind a woman on all fours in front of him on his bed. They were facing away from the entranceway and so concentrated they were on the task of copulating they didn't hear.

 

 

She watched his butt flex and push slow and hard into the woman. He was gripping her hips and holding her snug against him as he pumped into her as she mewled beneath him...

 

Buffy watched him push down hard and heard the girl’s moan morph into a yowl and then watched as her body began convulsing in orgasm, and when she couldn't support herself on the bed her body collapsed but Spike still held her to him and pumped slowly, luxuriating in the body before him and now fast, very fast...the girl on the bed was yodeling now and her body was shaking and writhing beneath Spike and Buffy felt sick. Very sick.

 

She moved quickly, quietly up the man hole into the crypt and out into the safety of daylight.

          

 

The woman was bellowing like a cow, crying out like a cat; but...Buffy didn't think she wanted rescue.

 

Buffy was shaking, her insides were flipping and she felt sick...

 

That's what she got for going there. And then all thoughts and feelings were stopped momentarily as her body bucked and she heaved her pancake breakfast up and onto Mike Malloys grave. Retching dying down to a heave ho let-it-all-go and when she finally stilled, she felt like crying.

                                        

Strange...strange terrible feeling of something tearing somewhere inside and something that felt like violation.

 

It felt like a...personal violation...of Buffy.                      

 

It did...it felt like a cold hand reaching into her vitals and dimming her whole life light down to a dribble.                       

 

 

What was happening to her?

 

She looked into her mind and nothing but a big black blank looked back and so O.K. no thinking, thought was gone...she felt a sorta emptiness open under her feet–a kinda vortex maybe and just then there was another cat/cow bellow and her gut twitched and oh yeah, she had to get outa ear shot range. NOW.

                                                   

 

Not thinking, not thinking at all...feeling all bunches of stuff though.

                                                   

 

She was feeling some thing like being punched in the stomach so hard nothing would stay down for a week.

 

Spike...hated her and she hated him; it was a perfectly reciprocal relationship but now after the sight of him gripping some nameless girl backside and pumping into her as if he had no cares, no cares about anything or anyone at all in the world–well now, if she only hated him a lot before--she hated him a whole lot more now.

 

 

It didn’t have to make sense...it was what she was feeling and she had learned to trust her feelings.

          

The bile of it all curled up in her still churning stomach and promised to turn every meal into an ordeal for the next few days. She started to run.

 

 

Cuz if she didn’t...she would certainly go back and stake him...stake him while he was staking that, that female person. By god, she had better be a demon or, or...he was gonna get it from the business end of being in her town. And suddenly she grabbed at this idea while it was still fresh in her mind, still fresh on the vine and squeezed the grape of it until she was whining out loud.

 

 

“If he...he is, is... corrupting...polluting...any human being, any human...I will kill him...I will...not in my town he won’t...”

 

And with the outlet of that she relaxed a mite and slowed down to a walk. But still, but still....and then thinking of buts and butts, she closed her eyes against the image burned on her brain of him pushing into that girl, circling and grinding and–

 

“Shit! SHIT!”

It was because he had been doing that to a person...that was it–oh yeah...that was definitely the problem.        

 

 

Because that girl wasn’t a demon or a vamp and Buffy had known that of course and so that explained her violent physical reaction...oh yes, that explained it all...

                                        

And suddenly and without warning she remembered the weight of him on her, but how he had used his elbows too to hold some of the burden of his body back as they had mated in a fever and the odd, odd thought hanging outside of it all like a cartoon balloon: (‘...well isn’t that kinda sweet?’ Kinda kind to think of not smushing me too much...’) and then there were his fingers stroking her face until she was so, so lite she could fly and just WHY had she thought of that NOW???

 

Damn that spell...damn that spell and these strange flashbacks she had been having and just why did that have to pop in now?

 

 

She was going to be sick all over again but there was nothing left in her stomach and it was Willows fault and it was Spike’s fault but this memory in her head was her problem and just what was she going to do about it?

                                        

 

The answer was easy and obvious.

 

Spike was out. O.U.T.

 

If she didn’t see him anymore, she wouldn’t remember (the other) and so endeth the problem. She had enough other stuff, plenty other problems and Spike just didn’t show up on the scale.

 

                               

*

 

Spike looked at the woman passed out on the bed. He looked at her lithe, tanned body, at her beautiful breasts, flat stomach...and the blonde hair spilling onto the sheets...and even that hadn't been enough...even the blond hair hadn’t been enough. Even her wrapping her blonde hair around him and sucking and stroking him hadn’t been enough.

          

He was still erect.

          

He couldn't ejaculate.

Spike had a problem.

                              

Try as he might, with, what was this now? The fourth woman in seven days? And now he couldn’t come.

                    

 

He had a host of small problems with each one and now this, this flat finale; he couldn't escalate himself to the exclamation mark. This was his one remaining great skill after being chipped and so now he was sitting somewhere between a choking panic attack that would go catatonic and little girly scream.

 

 

He had started this little experiment shortly after Harmony had left. He had lost interest in her. Just like that...well maybe not just like that. Helping the Slayer out, working with the Slayer and watching her slim body every night had given him a taste for something different and that was it. That was all.

 

 

Well, not completely all; the soft small thing that had begun as respect for the Slayer had grown into admiration and so what if he liked being around her now, she entertained him, didn’t she then? That was the price of being chipped and sitting under sentence, like and he had to take his amusements where and when he could.

 

 

And...there was the other thing. That other thing he had been clamping down on for almost half a year and was now percolating, fairly bubbling up at him all the time now.

 

 

Memories...sense memories.

                              

 

The feel of her body beneath his...her arms wound up around his back, her hands in his hair...gripping him tight in all the ways that were sweet and mattered to a man and...and...breathing his name...

                    

 

That’s what was really getting to him these days, not her body, or her wit, it was waiting to hear her say his name. Every time she said his name now in anger or frustration or calling out for help, he found himself looking, feeling for his name in her mouth tasting like honey to his ears.

 

 

He had discovered that when she called out his name asking for help of some kind...that was good, that felt good. That came the closest to what he seemed to need. The semi soft partial plead and bite size demand of” ‘Spike!” Which was her: ‘Spike come thither.’ And then there was: ‘Spike!’ Which was something close to ‘Spike, look out!” Which meant she cared about him, see? Anyway the sound and softer feelings behind her saying his name was payroll times ten.

 

 

And so he had begun to help her.

 

Slipping the odd info in when needed, a hammer hand in combat when wanted and waiting for her to call out:

 

‘Spike!’

 

Which meant: ‘Spike come here...I need you...’

          

 

And then...and then...one night he had heard the sound of her name in his voice when he had called out:

          

‘Buffy! Behind you!’

                    

And he had been shocked.

          

Just when had he started calling her ‘Buffy’ instead of ‘Slayer’? Just when had that begun?

And then he became frightened. Really, bone shaking scared. His odd entertainment and the mild male need of being needed was taking a strange turn on the dreaded knock, knock road, singing out ‘hello, Spike wake up, mate!’

 

But wake up to what? It felt like something creeping inexorably closer to daylight and no where to hide except in other women.

          

Yeah...yeah, that’s it, that’s the way; he could hide in other women in any woman--there was absolutely nothing wrong with him that couldn’t be solved by shaking the dust off the oldest way of the world and so when he had fallen back on this old male standby he had uncovered his new female problem.

          

He had pushed Harmony away and so he hadn’t been concerned about his lack of sexual interest in her...but this new thing was...well...new...

          

With the first girl, he had found that he hadn’t had any trouble becoming aroused...the problem began when he found he couldn’t escalate himself to orgasm...and then suddenly Buffy had flitted across his mind and he had instantly exploded.

          

And then after that happened it had become an issue with him and a dire problem to be solved because he simply couldn’t live with that bint in his head at that moment. It was one thing to think of her when he wanted–quite another for her to begin to dominate his mind and motivations.

          

 

And so he had set to his task with relish and how quickly it had gone sour in various ways-- from feeling a cold detachment to that terrible empty carved out sensation afterward and hating, absolutely hating the sound of his name howled or whispered by anyone but Buffy and finally, ‘ta da!’ This newest issue. And so the problem had remained unsolved or more terrible...there was a solution and a reason only he had been refusing to consider it as real and permanent until now with his body still unsatisfied and fairly screaming and pointing in the Slayer’s direction. (If he cared to see the humor in it all.)

          

 

He drew in a ragged breath and sat on the edge of the bed and thought of Buffy and the hot velvet feel of her. Of being inside her that one time during the spell--he thought of her strength, her inner nebula, her heat, her heart and how... she had loved him.

          

And that was what he wanted. That was it, that was all.

 

He groaned out loud and remembered what girl X Miss Number Four on the menu had said just an hour ago when she couldn’t...well...help him with his problem.

 

 

“Huh...you think you might be under a spell or something? Ex girlfriend visit a vengeance demon maybe? I’ve heard of stuff like that, cuz baby, and you got it bad...”

          

 

That was what she had said and Spike had countered with: “You think?”

 

He looked at girl four sleeping now on the bed and sure, she could sleep...she had been to Pluto and back and had her backside, kissed, bitten and smacked too.

          

But he was still rock hard and earthheld.

Held by Mother earth and her bestest, brightest girl.

          

He might be under a spell...?

          

Bloody hell.

          

The oldest spell in creation and not from hell...

 

More hello, than hell.

 

Oh, god...oh god...and now the memory of Buffy’s eyes, a confusion of green and brown and they were Mother Earth colors of course and remember how Buffy had smiled at him last week? A real smile and now he clenched his teeth against the warmth spreading from his heart and through his chest...it was soft but insistently insidious as it sought to warm every low cold space and then there was the faint sound of his bones cracking a bit as this new elixir spread through his body readjusting, realigning...

          

He looked back at the comatose woman and then looked away. No use.

          

He just had to breath this out. Calm down. Give up the strategy of trying to fuck a path through Sunnydale and admit to the terrible, wonderful thing.

 

He was mated.

          

He had mated Buffy...

 

 

Under the spell Willow had cast he had wanted to marry Buffy and mate her and she had accepted him and so the deed was done in spirit and in fact and it mattered not at all to his demon or he that she had been spellbound and that he had been blued.

 

He was mated...and now, and now he wanted his mate, he wanted his mate and suddenly he felt sick and guilty and polluted. He went into the far corner of the cave where he showered and poured the ready bucket of cold water over his head and down his body and over his still hard body bits and the cold was a shock and a comfort and cooled his heated blood somewhat, more cold water now and slowly his erection eased down to more of a pout. Still asking for mate, still ready to leap up into another debate but eased for the moment.

          

 

Bloody, bloody...hell...

 

He went around the room looking for Number Fours’s clothes, the woman on the bed, whatshername Sheba maybe– grabbed them and threw them at her. As if she would notice.

                                                             

He felt sick, sick to the heart and body of himself and looking at the girl on the bed again made him want to scrub himself clean. He needed to get out of here. Couldn't stand the smell of her and he certainly didn’t want to wait to hear the sound of her voice–to hear him say his name.

 

Oh God, he had mated Buffy, he had mated her, that’s what had happened all right and now his own nature and the natural world wouldn't allow him to consider anyone else.

 

What the hell was he going to do? Buffy hated him; she had been come around to accepting his help, to having him around...but in reality...what would she do with this?

          

What the bloody hell was he going to do with this?

          

And then he thought something interesting. If he was feeling the effects of this cornerstone tie between he and Buffy–shouldn’t she be feeling it too?

 

 

Shouldn’t such a powerful thing go both ways?

          

And then he remembered her arms, tight up around him, her body arched and writhing beneath him and she in such a frenzy of longing she had been leaping up to greet him and dear god, a spell only stoked the coals, didn’t it?

          

Magic couldn’t create something from nothing...there had to be a place for the lodestone to grab hold. That was the way the whole cosmos worked. He had to keep that in mind, he had to cling to that truth and so he knew from hands on experience that the modern American novella called: ‘The Cold Remote Buffy’ was a fiction based on the glimmer off the top; Buffy had a wondrous raw need in her...well, he had one too.

 

He always had, even when he had been alive and so looking back he could see the beginnings of all this in his own nature.

 

 

When he was alive, he used to love the sound of his Mother laughing and singing and the merrymaking and jollification around the holidays. Once a year, what he had inside himself was echoed in the world around him and he could feel it and see it in other people and in those moments he knew he belonged in the world. There was a feeling of communion. William had loved love. And did the shadow side of himself that retained all his memories keep something else as well? In order to retain memory, one needed to keep a touchstone, a beginning point for the memories to hold fast to. This was elemental magic and becoming a vampire couldn’t change cosmic physics.

          

And so was this beginning place, this mustard size seed of his own soul seeking a way out and up at the first good chance it got?

          

Something didn’t come from nothing–he knew that. He had learned only too well how to hide this aspect of himself as a young vampire. And he also knew that hiding something...didn’t make it disappear, simply kept it from view.

 

Perhaps the spell was a trigger in the alchemy–waking up the bitty bits, like and Buffy was certainly a living catalyst for the world at large and how could she not affect everyone, everything around her?

 

 

But all that was chewing gum in the mind, something to gnaw but not right now–right now the small thing in hiding was coming out now hungry and crying to be fed and it wasn’t something that could be sweetened or distracted with sex. When he had been inside Girls One through Four; he had felt himself reaching for the space behind sex...for the reason sex existed.

          

 

If he had to name it now, he would say that it came close to... the need to create something. To build something. His days of destruction were on the wall and numbered.

          

“Love...”

 

 

He said it like the electric shock it was.

          

He felt the word zap through the remaining dust with a sharp static crack.

          

 

“I love her...”

 

He said it out loud this time, testing the words in stunned wonder.

          

He needed a drink. He had no thought past that point–just needed a good long drink and think.

 

 

First things first, he would like a shower, a real shower...cold, and soap and more cold water.

          

He was dressed now and heading out the door...and then stepped back and peeled off a hundred dollar bill and placed it on girl X’s clothes, whoever she was. That would keep things straight if they ever saw each other again. Just business. After the initial slight some woman felt, he knew she'd take it and get a cab from the edge of the graveyard and hopefully before sunset. He stopped and wrote her a note to that effect.

 

 

He went into the cavern adjacent to his crypt and progressed to the sewers and now he was feeling sick of himself and a new kind of guilt about the girl back there–he cared about what might happen to her and what was that?

That had been a new thing growing too...since then, since being with Buffy like that in her Watchers spare bedroom and now he was forced to admit to it; he had picked up love from the Slayer by having sex with her, nay--in making love with her; like a virus or something and now couldn't shake this feeling of...being a right bastard.

          

His body seized and suddenly he was retching as if his body had suddenly taken over and was trying to clean him from the inside out.

 

 

Once that task was completed...he felt better...a little better...

 

 

Oh god...he was trembling now...shaking, really shaking--something was happening to him and he knew from the way his bones were cracking and realigning that it was irrevocable. And...strangely...isn’t this what he had wanted?

          

Hadn’t he wanted something to change?

 

Hadn’t he begged for it?

 

*

 

It was the body count that did it. Buffy had never intended to see him again, but it was the body count that did it.

          

When they had seen each other in the cemetery two nights ago, she had raised her stake and sent him a look that could kill and fist with enough wood in it for the follow through. And she meant it. And he saw it. And so he had remained still and silent as they had stared at each other and when it was clear she wasn’t moving from her hard, hard proposal...he had backed away.

 

She had barely allowed him to back away and all the while his body had been singing: ‘It’s her..it’s her...alack the day! Oh joy! Oh mate mine...’ (note to judging force in the literary world--it isn’t the quality of the poetic ramble that matters, it’s the fact of it.)

                              

But he had seen such cold, cold... contempt in her eyes, his warming heart had chilled with a brand new kind of fear that was the terrible death knoll of ding dong den: the end, the end...

 

She had said nothing and that seemed the hardest flint. Not cutting words...but her eyes, flat and hard and cutting into him saying: ‘leave...leave me...or die...’

          

‘Leave you and die’...Spike amended in his mind.

 

Why was she suddenly so angry with him? She hadn’t spoken a word and now the hard wall of her was so high and wide that he could not.

 

 

Bugger this and bugger her and now the hurt of this rejection boiled rapid fire fast into a tearing anger and this he could deal with, broiling boyo on the burner, he could use and so he cut her with the goodbye look that was his back--his back turned on her like a slamming door and if the stake had come flying he would have wheeled and caught it and they would have been at it until he was dust.

 

*

 

*

 

Buffy told the Scoobies to forget him, forget all about working with Spike. Spike was over and OUT.

          

She was done with him and he was to be avoided at all costs and strangely it was Giles who was the one most put out by the plan. He had suspected an unseen hand in Spike being chipped. He had been around long enough to recognize the higher hand of serendipity working the plot and he had asked Spike about it once and his question had fallen flat with odd vampire...still...Spike had been coming in handy at the right times and often right the wrong ways.

          

And that’s how it worked; knowledge came from friends and...enemies alike and sometimes one became the other and because Spike had come in handy on many occasions for him, personally and professionally, Giles knew him to be a valuable asset. Handled judicially, that is. So. Perhaps this was a phase and Buffy would come around again in time and certainly she and Spike had been on the outs before--and then he remembered something he had been blotting out when he had been blotto during Willows ‘will’ spell gone wrong and had Buffy been especially anti Spike since...then?

No, no...just a few weeks ago she had mentioned that he had been a help and so why did all of this right now feel like a case of ‘protesting too much?’ Well he would have to wait and see. But everyone else had shrugged and agreed and so the cold shoulder it would be and the turn around.

 

He didn’t exist for the Scubies anymore.

 

If he was in a bar, their eyes slipped away, or bounced off and when they scanned back, he would be gone. Buffy didn’t see him chatting up naive young girls any more and that was a relief. Matter of fact, she hadn’t seen him talking to anyone...he would just be there, just there; standing, staring, or quietly drinking and then he would be gone. If he was still watching her, still following her–he was being incredibly discreet and so she couldn’t bust his chops for it and so weeks went by like this and Buffy’s boiling blood was just about simmering down until the reality of the body count.

 

It was the body count that meant confrontation.

 

The girls, his girls putting on the vamp.

 

 

She had killed one herself.

 

It had been the blonde he had brought with him to the graveyard that one time. Bleached blonde and slim and so buxom she fairly burst from her blue T shirt advertising to the world in black block letters: ‘don’t think–drink!’ And so maybe that was why Buffy had remembered her and then one night there she was; leaving the Bronze alongside a guy with blonde hair and Buffy had done a double take to see if the guy was Spike and then she had done a triple take to take her down to dust.

 

She had leapt from her bar stool and stopped the couple just outside the door and the bleached blonde had hissed and spit like a crazed cat and Buffy had snapped back;

 

“Who did this to you? Did Spike? Did Spike do this?”

          

And the girl had laughed hard and said triumphantly.

          

 

“I did it...I did it...but Spike can certainly give a girl some bad ideas...” and then she had asked meekly: “--You see him lately?--”

 

 

And then Buffy had staked her hard and fast, she went to dust and her blonde guy companion started crying.

 

“Oh shut up.”

 

And that wasn’t like her, that wasn’t like her at all. This was all Spike’s fault and he had to be stopped.

 

And even if it wasn't Spike’s fault directly...it was clear that he had been paving the way, that he had given these impressionable girls a taste for vamp but without the benefit of his choke collar. And if it wasn't his fault directly it was definitely his fault indirectly and that was enough for Buffy to tell him to get the hell out of her town. To take his freak show somewhere else.

 

There were all kinds of crimes in the world and taking advantage of a person when she was stumbling in the dark and didn’t know who she was--well...that was big one in her book of blood.

 

Of course now that she went looking for him she couldn't find him.

 

She went to Willies and was just inside the door when a large vampire that had to be named ‘Boris,’ just had to be, stretched himself to display all the delights of his 6'4" frame and called out to Buffy as he strode over.

 

"You looking for some meaty cold cuts? I've seen you with Spike, if you liked him digging you, you'll--"

 

 

His sentence stopped suddenly, his face puzzled, and as he added two plus two, he fell away into dust.

 

 

Spike. It was Spike standing there just four feet away with a jagged chair leg in his hand.

                                                                                                      

Buffy's heart lurched and then a chill came into her eyes as she remembered. Not too hard to remember why she was here.

 

Spike’s expression began as a deliberately blank page that did double duty as begin receptivity and then it slowly became the mirror to Buffy’s Medusa.

 

Buffy broke the eyeball combat first, looked around the bar, noted the curious gazes cast their way and said tersely:

 

 

"Outside."

          

 

And then she spun on her heel and left and he had no choice but to follow.

 

 

Once outside she decked him with a right hook. He had seen it coming of course, but decided to take it on the chin, (so to speak) he wanted the pain, the contact the ‘something’ from her.

 

 

He spun around and fell onto the pavement and then bounced back up and onto his feet.

                                                   

Standing again they faced off and stared at each other.

 

 

"Get. Out. Of. My. Town." She said very clearly.

          

"Your's luv? You holding the charter then?"

          

Her left hook shot out, but he ducked it and grabbed her arm and used the momentum to pull her forward so he could slip behind her and wrap her up against him.

                                                                                 

Oh god...god she felt good...and suddenly, everything, everything fell away except the need to bury his face in her hair and breathe her in and it was true...it was true, touching her, even like this, the tiny light in his heart ignited to nova and burned away everything except the sound of his body singing to her soul; they were mated, they were mated...

          

With his left arm locking her to him and without thinking his right hand moved to her stomach, and slipped in under her t shirt and touched bare Buffy flesh for the first time since...then and she gasped as a hot rainbow showered through her. She arched back against him as he lowered his head and kissed her neck, nuzzling and pressing his lips, his nose, his face up against the flesh of her neck, murmuring, kissing, making contact, any contact...and then slightly more coherent kisses up the column of her throat to her ear, nipping her lobe gently, nuzzling sweetly, slipping his tongue inside, kissing and whispering:

 

“Buffy...ah...Buffy luv...ah luv...”

 

Her body was melting backwards, backwards, the very pores of her skin were leaning back to touch the heat from his heart; she was breathing hard now and then she heard him say:

          

 

"Please...Buffy...please...tell me yes...please, god help me...I love you..."

          

 

She had found herself melting and writhing and wanting something...something, her body asking for the hot and the hard and the gold fire oblivion and she could feel her knees buckling, body yielding until he said those last three words...

 

No sooner said and she jerked away from him, butting up against him to be free.

 

He looked at her, dazed and spinning and grappling now with the empty space that had been her burning in his arms just a moment before...she was just there...he had just been holding her and now she was almost screaming at him...what was she saying?

 

"You can’t. You don’t. No one can do what you do and have any kind of love in them...I could hate you for trying to make me one of them."

 

 

"What?" he asked in a blur.

 

 

"I don't know if you're throwing off super theramones or...or it’s some kind of super thrall spell or scent or WHAT...but...I will never be one of your--you've been fucking innocent girls, Spike and they get confused and now I can count five girls maybe that got themselves killed because of you and I want you out of my town or so help me god Spike, I will stake you the next time we meet. This, what just happened only proves it. Whatever is going on with you--take it out of here or it's going to be stake first, talk later..."

 

 

Spike just stared up at her and then said simply.

 

 

“Do it.”

 

 

Pause...dead, cool calm, the sound of breeze ruffling the tops of the trees outside the bar...the breeze picks up into a slight wind and the sound of an empty pop can rolling across the parking lot...

 

“Do it.”

 

 

He repeated so, so softly she felt herself lean forward to catch the words.

 

 

He faced off to her to make a full frontal target, his hands loose at his side.

 

The quiet again and she could feel her hand tightening on the stake...

 

“I love you Buffy...”

 

His eyes were large and warm and wide and she had to stop him, she had to stop this.

 

 

“No...”

 

“Yes...”

 

He was looking into her eyes now.

 

“Something happened to...us--to me...during that spell...or maybe it was before or after...I can’t tell...and what do you know about vampires Buffy? Really? What do you do now about mating rituals?”

 

“NO! I told you never to talk about that–“

 

Oh, if only she could be a little girl again and clasp her hands over her ears and sing; ‘la, la la I can’t hear you’--she would, but she was not a little girl anymore and wake up you are The Slayer and now he was saying:

 

“–Well, as you are going to kill me, seems I can bloody well say anything I want and something happened to me, to us and we have to face it--Buffy, I can’t be with another woman, can’t even look–“

 

Her sharp laugh cut him off and he stopped speaking to stare at her pain filled face.

 

“You...you are a monster...you are...dead to me, I couldn’t possibly...get out of my town Spike...stop hurting...”

 

And here, did she substitute ‘me’ for?:

 

“...My people...”

 

Oh yes she did and he felt it, he knew it, and so he said softly.

 

“Sorry, I hurt you, pet, didn’t know I was or that...”

 

“--You aren’t hurting me...you could never hurt me, I don’t care enough about you for that–-get out of my town, Spike, get out.”

 

Pause and then very softly.

 

“I can’t.”

 

He said it so simply she stared at him and then he continued with:

 

“Something’s happening to me Buffy...something’s happening and don’t you think I’ve tried? Don’t you think I’ve tried leaving every bloody night of the week–“

 

“--TRY HARDER!”

 

Her anger had turned into an desperate plea.

 

“Buffy....I think I love you...”

 

Her hand tightened around the stake and like a cat that leaps even before it knows it’s going to--just suddenly, suddenly compelled; she leapt at his chest smacking him down hard to the pavement, her arm in a high arc and coming down to true heart.

 

It stopped just inside his flesh, just between the ribs and hello heart throb and dead stop.

 

Her body was leaning up against his, her cheek on his chest as if they had just rested together there on the cool asphalt of the parking lot for a spot of cuddle.

 

Her right hand still held the stake and she was breathing hard now groaning with the effort to push the wood through to, to, to...

 

“Oh...oh god...oh, god...no...no...”

She was panting and gasping with the effort, her heart breaking in the struggle, her soul crying in the sound, words tearing out of her broken and sharp and:

 

“...I can’t...I can’t love you, I can’t...it can’t be you...it can’t be...”

 

Not after everything, not after what you did...to...me...

 

 

These great unspoken words were there in the space in-between and Spike heard them.

He felt the depth of her loneliness and anguish and he knew that the marriage knot tied between them was killing her. The knot that tied them together, this magnet between mutual natures, this thing ‘that is myself looking back’ was choking her in way she didn’t understand. To be married was to be united with the other side of self and ‘how can my enemy be myself?’ How could she go on fighting as The Slayer if that were true?

How to live with this question:

How do I stay alive and slay if my enemy is myself?

If you are the other side of me...

THE question:

 

How do I forgive...us both?

And not just small acts and grand infidelities...everything...once begun, one would need to forgive....everything...and what would be left after that? How did a fighter live without conflict?

And just then Spike had his answer for his part of the equation because he was discovering that he couldn’t bear to see her suffer, couldn’t bear to see her weighed down with the whattall he had cast her way...and suddenly everything that Buffy had ever done to him or Dru or the everyday whatnot was wiped away and he let go of his bundle of burdens...just let go of the stones he cast in her way, and so what could she throw back?

 

Nothing was left but the tie between them and it was hurting her...that was clear.

 

This knot was choking her relationship with Riley, with her family, with her friends, with the very way she lived in the world until she ended up chasing him through the public streets, shrieking like a fish wife at his adultery.

 

And it would kill her to kill him--he understood that too and because he felt her beginning to understand what he had just discovered, because he felt her there, just there at the rough and ready to snap forever under the weight of it all, he gathered himself for her sake to say:

 

“All right luv...all right, I’ll do it, shh...shh, now...tis’ all right...I’ll leave...I’ll go...”

 

And then he stroked the back of her hand gently and eased her grip on the stake that was still partially imbedded in his chest.

 

Her head was still downcast, her waterfall of golden hair was still hiding her eyes but he felt her body yielding, trembling, limbs shaking with some terrible internal relief that felt like a nod, like mercy, like thank you.

 

“An’ I’m sorry...I am..I din’ know we were mated like...wouldn’t now...couldn’t...I get sick at the thought and touch of anyone but you, luv...’an I don’t know how it happened...don’t now how I can leave you...but I’ll try, if you need me to...I will... I’ll go the night.”

 

She said nothing and turned her face slightly to lean into him for a long moment and then she pressed her face up against his chest in a gesture that he would remember as a kiss, it felt like a kiss. A soft fusion of bodies saying grace, saying: this is me in you now...with this kiss I leave you me...

 

She pulled back slightly to look into his eyes and were her hands resting on his shoulders to pin him in place or use him as a springboard to bounce back?

 

Only time would tell.

 

There was a pause in the night with nothing at all in it.

 

No sound...

 

No breath...

 

No thinking...

 

No feeling...

 

Just being, just being in the world without explanation or excuses; like you were on vacation maybe, in some paradise perhaps and with all the time in the world...

 

And then: she pulled back

 

 

And then: she turned and ran.

 

And then he raised himself slowly to sitting, to kneeling, to standing and then looked about and... wondered, wondered, wondered; ‘where in the world would he go?’

 

*

 

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No more to say here...on to ‘Map Me’, my friends...