So after they get Angel and his tattoo sorted, and Eternal Night Unholy #11,943 has been successfully averted ("Seriously, we should get punch cards," Buffy decides. "Why are there no punch cards? I should have earned at least a free mochaccino by now.") Spike reiterates his intention to stay with Angel in LA, and Buffy goes back to London, alone.
And that's how it is, for a while.
Buffy is busy. Slayer.org is still mostly a training and research coalition, and Buffy puts in her teaching hours though she knows she's not as good as that as Faith and some of the other Sunnydale alums. There's other administrivia, and joint training missions with the new-minted, baby Scooby Gangs (which Andrew keeps referring to, gleefully, as SG units, and Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles are SG-1, which has some meaning beyond Buffy's ken that makes Xander pinch his nose like a younger, more suntanned Giles), and then there are the actual missions—the medium-to-large bads that still insist on badding that Willow decides require the full attention of a Slayer of Buffy's expertise.
But there are telephone calls. Stilted, at first. Ostensibly business calls: "...I've sprayed it with soapy water three times and it's still got scale, but at least my African violet is doing really well and okay I've got Willow's freaky crypto-incense lit so you can stop listening to me babble about my potted plants now. You've got Tokyo intel?"
And before they know it six months have passed, and Buffy suggests that Spike visit London to offer a "vamp master class" to the trainees in residence. "And," she offers with a blush so almighty Spike swears he can hear it over the phone, "it'd be really nice to see you again." Spike accepts.
"Hi," Buffy says in the airport arrivals lounge. "Um." She performs a noncommittal little half-step, then grins wryly at him around a bitten lip and reaches out to grip his forearm. "Hi."
"Hi," Spike says back, equally unbalanced, but willing to be amused. Her other hand finds his shoulder and curls. She has hard fingers. They tug, and he goes, and that's apparently all it's going to take to negotiate a kiss, this time around. It's a pretty nice kiss, close-mouthed and introductory. Hello. Good to see you. Welcome to my personal space bubble. They detach in sync, grin at each other a little more (Look, Ma, no apocalypse!), and head for the exit.
Buffy, mystifyingly, drives better on the left side of the road than she ever did on the right. She maneuvers one of the Council's fleet cars, a big, brown station wagon that looks like a partially squashed shoebox and sounds like pots and pans, deftly onto the motorway, pointing northwest.
"We're going to Giles' sister's farm," Buffy explains. The Council hub is in London, but Buffy's rag-tag band made use of Cecilia Giles' guest rooms and barn for a few weeks following the destruction of Sunnydale, and her inner circle has a standing invitation. "It's empty—Cee's in Bath for the weekend, and Dawn won't get in until Monday night."
Spike makes receptive noises and tips his head back against the car's faux leather, watching the moon rise over the rolling twilit landscape.
An hour or so out, they turn onto a long, gravel drive with a quad of stone buildings at the end. Buffy parks on a patch of cobbles by the barn, and, awkwardly, one hand wafting like a bad impression of Vanna White, takes Spike on a tour of the property, the well-maintained gardens and orchard, the drying room and distillery. When they finally make their way inside the house, Spike tries to be unobtrusive about dropping his half-empty rucksack behind the door, but Buffy catches him and says, "Oh, um, you can just leave it there for now, I guess."
Halfway through dinner, Spike realizes he's being seduced. Dinner may be an overstatement; Spike's drinking blood from a boat-sized clay soup mug and Buffy's got both hands wrapped around a leftover burrito—but the blood came straight from a local organic butcher shop, reheated in the double boiler and presented with a selection of burba, oyster crackers, and a little jar of curry paste that Buffy explains away (blushing again) as an impulse purchase, you don't have to, no idea what it tastes like.
Spike licks the spoon thoughtfully, deciding he likes it, and dares to wink at Buffy when he catches her staring.
They do the washing up by hand, with the cheery, incandescent glow of the kitchen overhead making mirrors of the windows, encasing them in a little bubble of domesticity. It's an odd setting for Buffy, this big, unhurried old farmhouse. A full minute passes before Spike realizes he's staring mesmerized at himself, reflected at her side with his green-checkered dish towel—and furthermore, at the heavy, sinister ridges of his vampface, and when he does he jumps like he's been hotwired, interrupting Buffy's patter about Willow's new girlfriend. She turns, and he waves his towel stupidly at the glass.
"Oh!" she exclaims, and then looks embarrassed, like a hostess caught in a breach of etiquette. "God, I'm sorry! I guess you might have liked a warning about that. It's just the house wards."
Just the wards. He'd felt the presence of magic on his approach in the car, but only as a subtle, gentle thing, as intrinsically part of the estate as the sweet-smelling grass and the worn, settled cobbles. The movement of Buffy's hand brings his focus back to her just before she touches his face. "You're not going crazy," she assures him, smoothing her fingers across his forehead—his smooth forehead. He realizes he's got his tongue jammed against his teeth, which, also, are entirely human.
"Some wards," he pants.
"They show you what's there," she says softly. "Better than most mirrors manage." Buffy trails her index finger down his nose, then lets her thumb catch on his lower lip. She presses, inviting him to open. Spike catches her thumb between his teeth and bites just hard enough to hold it still while he touches the tip with his tongue.
"There's—there's a guest room made up," Buffy blurts, making Spike go still—until she finishes, "but I'd really like it if you slept with me."
Then Spike has to let go of her finger, because he's smiling.
Buffy drops her sponge and plucks the towel from his hands, and leads him upstairs and into a big, wall-papered bedroom, blue with moonlight, shuts the door and presses him against it, hands on his chest. Spike takes careful hold of her waist. They touch lips again sweetly, and this time hello flows seamlessly into hello and oh, yes, like that. Spike draws first Buffy's upper lip and then her lower lip between his, releasing them with gentle tugs, and then her tongue is pushing in, licking and twining in a slow, careful, unforced exploration.
Hands reach for buttons, slide along hems. They unfasten their own clothing, smiling as their knuckles get in each other's way, but reach for each other's shirts, and steady themselves on each other's shoulders as they tug off their jeans.
Naked and still standing is new for them. Before, they always toppled to the bed without pausing, ripping seams and mangling their zippers as they went, if they even undressed at all. "Wow," Buffy breathes, looking down at Spike's body and then up into his eyes. Hers are shining. "Here we are."
"Here we are," Spike agrees, and moves one hand from her waist to her palm, linking fingers as if he's going to waltz her across the floor to the bed. Buffy laughs and pulls him forward, nipping at his mouth the whole way. When she spreads herself down and smiles up at him, Spike thinks there's no justice in the universe at all. He's never thought much of fate and destiny and cosmically-monitored redemption, but if there were, he wouldn't be here. There's no way he deserves this. His heart's so full it feels on the cusp of beating.
He knees onto the bed. Kisses his way down her body. His eyes flutter closed so that the scent and feel of her skin consume him. Reaching her mons, he looks back up at her. Her eyes are big and liquid; her lips part. When Spike dips his head again and nuzzles, Buffy releases a deep, shaky sigh and lets her legs fall completely open. Spike settles on his elbows and sets to work.
After a while, Buffy's hips start shifting restlessly. "Spike," she urges, "come—come up here."
"Gonna bring you off, love, then I'll—"
"No, just—" she stretches out her hand, encouraging. "I want you here. With me." Yielding, Spike crawls up her body. Buffy reaches between them and grasps his erection. For a moment, Spike barely feels anything at all; it's just another couple inches of skin on skin—and then all of a sudden the reality of the moment registers and it's Buffy's hand touching his cock, and Spike gulps air like he needs it to live. "Spike," Buffy says again, squirms a little, adjusting her hips—and welcomes him in.
Buffy makes a sound, and Spike freezes, halfway to the hilt, jogging his memory, trying to tell if it's a good sound or a bad. Her hands press at his flanks. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Spike eases into motion, a gentle rocking rhythm. "Is this good, Buffy? Is this okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah. Keep going." Buffy cups his ass, lifts her legs high on his torso, trying to angle him deeper. The rocking goes on for a long time. It's incredible, Spike tells himself, to have her like this again, warm and sweet below him. Incredible.
Gradually, Spike increases his pace, trying to match his movements to Buffy's strained moans. At last, he feels her contract around him, wringing orgasm out of them both. Spike shouts and locks his arms, arching his back; Buffy gasps and clutches him back down close. She puts her hands in his hair, stroking and soothing until he gathers himself to roll away. He lands on his back, and they lie there together, not quite touching, in the patient darkness of the unfamiliar bedroom.
Breakfast is weird. Spike, after waking to find the pillow next to him empty and cool, soft-steps downstairs to find Buffy at the table with a mug of coffee so oppressed with cream and sugar he can only identify it by smell. She gestures at the little percolator on the counter, but Spike, like Buffy, feels in need of the good juice, and goes back to the refrigerator for blood, plunks the double-boiler on the stove. Buffy watches him putter in silence. The sky outside is baggy with heavy, dark clouds, perfect vampire weather. Buffy's left the kitchen light off, though, so his outline in the window is faint.
"So, uh," Spike says, sitting down, "what's on the agenda for today, then?"
Buffy looks a bit caught out, like it's a question she hadn't expected to be necessary. "Well...we should probably take a look at Giles' syllabus for next week, see what he has in mind." She peers at him across vintage formica. "We could go outside and make up a demo fight?"
So they do that, spreading Giles' sheaf of faxed paperwork out on the big, formal table in the dining room and dutifully batting at it for a while. Spike knows a couple spots in London he thinks would make entertaining field trips, but other than that, he can't think of anything clever to contribute. Hi kids, I'm a vampire: grr, argh! Pedagogy isn't Buffy's forte, either, which Giles knows perfectly well. The faxes are a courtesy.
Later, the sky is, if anything, more lowering than it was when they rose, so they pull their boots on and go out to the courtyard to spar. They stick to the familiar and the flashy stuff&—the big flips and the taekwondo, the coach-house-wall-as-springboard that's such a staple in tight alleyways, the capoeira-inspired feint-roll-sweep that Spike had perfected after a near miss during the long summer of '01.
Nobody's winning, which isn't unusual, but nobody's even really scoring, which is. They circle each other cautiously, leap into tense, controlled bursts of kineticism, then circle again.
After about ten minutes of this, Spike lands a punch almost by accident. "Sorry!" he chokes out. And then realizes what he's said and winces as Buffy freezes right in the middle of her follow-through. She raises her fingers to her cheek, where there's a faint pinkness, swiftly fading. The second Spike unclenches and starts to drop his hands, she whacks him sprawling.
Unceremoniously, Buffy sits down on Spike's middle. Peers into his face. Bafflement resolves into consternation as she reads him, though Spike's so jarred just now he hardly knows what he's showing. He wonders frantically if they're about to have a mature conversation, and tries to marshal his thoughts. There's a rock digging into the back of his head.
Buffy stares at him, looking a bit thoughtful and a bit pained, and starts, a little uncertainly, "We've dragged each other through a lot of stupid crap."
"That we have," Spike agrees.
"We've dragged each other through a lot of stupid crap."
Spike gives an 'understatement of the century' snort.
"There is nobody—nobody anywhere—who knows my body better than you do. You know its limits."
Spike is silent. He knows her physical limits.
"You do," Buffy insists. "Okay?"
"You were holding back, too," Spike accuses.
Buffy frowns at him, grumpy about admitting it. But the frown is admission enough. Finally she sniffs and says, "So can we, you know, not?"
Just like that? Spike wants to say. Us? Are you kidding me? But he thinks of the mature conversation alternative and crams a hysterical bray back down his throat.
He holds her eyes for another minute, just because she's there, sitting on him, squashing his organs with her pointy little ass, and he can. I have discovered a new chakra, he thinks ludicrously. Then he headbutts her.
"OW," Buffy yells, and pitches backward, clamping her steely thighs around his neck as she goes—ooh!—and heaving him straight over her head. And then they're off again.
By unvoiced agreement, the acrobatics yield to fast, close, dirty footwork that only a Slayer of Buffy's caliber is willing to risk (her neck is within grabbing distance, if he could get to it), and the rate and force of blows almost doubles. Spike hadn't even realized he was holding back that much, but the heady rush of freedom when Buffy meets him smack for wallop hits like a drug—no. Like the absence of a drug. They're moving demon-fast, driving each other out past the coach house and onto the lawn.
It took them years to learn how to be gentle with each other. Oh well.
Finally Spike catches a whirling fist at just the right angle, gives a mighty yank and a shove, and sends Buffy flying over his shoulder. She kicks as she goes down, viciously precise behind his knee despite being in the middle of an involuntary somersault, so both of them land hard on the grass. They roll instantly, grappling for leverage. Spike lands on top, but it's still a draw: he can't pin both her arms. Were she fighting with a stake, he'd be toast crumbs. They lie nose to nose, quivering. Buffy's thigh is jammed up tight against Spike's crotch. She pants up at him for a minute, then cocks her outside leg, making him tip and settle on top of her like a house on a bog. Her heat soaks through his clothes. She blurts at him, "That was the worst sex we've ever had!"
Spike blinks. Fishmouths for a second, draws a breath—and the sky cracks open and pours. Buffy stares up and Spike stares down, and great, fat raindrops hit the grass beside Buffy's head, and the small of Spike's back where his shirt has rucked up, like miniature water bombs. Oh, for God's sake. The noise of it must have been gaining on them like a herd of orcs for minutes now, but it's clear that Buffy hadn't heard it either. Spike can feel a stream hastening down his forehead; it drips off his nose and onto Buffy's lip.
A beat. Two. Hilarity burbles up like groundwater. It's almost a sexual twinge, it starts so deep inside him, and they're collapsed together, stomach muscles quaking, hee-heeing through their teeth. It's hilarity at the stupid weather, at their own dumbassery, hysterical relief that last night's disaster wasn't all in his own head.
When he pulls himself together enough to realize that the only time in the past twenty-four hours when he's felt entirely sure of himself is now, just after she's implicitly insulted him, he only laughs harder. Eventually he rolls off of Buffy and hoots at the sky, getting a spluttering mouthful of water. Buffy follows, apparently unwilling to break contact, and sort of faceplants on his chest.
An instant later, he jolts. Buffy's flung out a hand to grope his package through his soaked jeans. He's always half hard after sparring with her anyway; it takes only that touch to make him leap to attention. Feeling it, she smirks—right against his nipple—and starts massaging firmly. She's still panting with laughter.
"Fuck, love," Spike gasps out, "if you're gonna do that, lemme—" and tries to get at his fly without discouraging her hand. Buffy helps, and then pets his freed cock as if to apologize for the bad friction. "Oh, yeah," they say at the same time, as her hand wraps around, and crack themselves up.
She pivots, straddles him, grips his waistband; he jerks his hips up just in time for her yank. "Lose the shirt," she orders, but her hands are way ahead of her, already skinning it up, all fingernails and haste. There's a brief, frustrating struggle to haul wet cotton over his chin and nose, and then he's naked below her, dungarees jammed against his boots, outdoors, in daylight.
The exposure is intense. The expression on Buffy's face makes him shake. He's abruptly aware how much it wasn't present last night—driven away by nerves or confusion—but, oh, he's seen it before. Had forgotten (had tried, so hard, to forget) what it was like to be the object of that hunger.
She actually licks her lips. Oh, God.
It makes him want to submit. It makes him want to reach for her to cover that impulse, deny and distract.
She's looking at him with hunger, but with something else, too, that never used to be there. A knowing? A spark of tender adoration. Spike fills his lungs with cool, moist air, stretches his arms out to either side, and tips his chin. Buffy touches his throat.
The sky is huge; the rain seems to be falling from a very great height. Its tattoo on the undersides of his arms and the nerve endings in his fingers is a sharp prickle and a silky slide. Buffy's hand creeps across his torso, knuckles bumping along his ribs, and she strokes her thumb into his armpit. Knuckles follow, gently corkscrewing into the hair. She cups the bend where the tendon curves down into pectoral muscle. A meditative, strangely protective gesture, before she drags her nails across his pecs, pinches both nipples between thumbs and forefingers, and twists. Spike's hips come right off the ground.
She checks his face, and does it again, and again, until they're swollen and red. He tucks his chin, trying to watch. Distantly, he notices his cock jumping with every pull, but his vision is filled with Buffy, her dripping hair, her own nipples showing clearly through her cotton shirt, her fine-boned, deadly hands. "Take over," she instructs, chest-voiced. Spike shakily brings his hands in, meeting Buffy's fingers briefly before she slides them away. He starts to rub as Buffy scoots back over his knees. The friction's a little painful after those pinches. He likes it.
He tips his head back, shuts his eyes. He can hear and feel Buffy rustling and settling herself. Then there's an unexpected and completely weird press of cold on his middle.
She's taken a small stone that was lying in the grass and put it right on top of his belly button. She finds another two and arranges them carefully in a line going up toward his diaphragm, as intent as any child with a toy tea set. "Don't jostle."
And then she swoops down and swallows his cock all at a go—a shocking transition from cool, prickling rain to athanoric heat and hard, sweet suction. Every muscle in Spike's body clamps against the surge of his hips. His shoulders drive into the turf, his jaw lifts, and his fingers claw at his own chest—the stones on his tummy quiver, but stay where they are. The corners of Buffy's eyes crinkle. Her lips stretch around him. He can feel himself touching the back of her throat.
He flails with his hands, unable to decide where to put them, until she rubs her tongue underneath his cockhead and he slaps them both back down into the grass, anchoring. He gasps reflexively, "Oh God oh God oh fuck."
Buffy groans gutturally and shoves her hand between her own legs. Then she reaches forward, supporting his balls on her wrist, and strokes past his perineum with her middle finger until she's just touching his asshole, delicately. She fingers him gently, inquisitively. The second Spike starts to whine, she pushes her finger in, pulls her mouth back and sucks hard. He's gone. The stones go flying. Buffy rides it out calmly, relaxing her throat and not even trying to hold him still, just keeping her other hand on his hipbone for comfort.
When he opens his eyes, she's smiling down at him again, shining and red-mouthed and smug. Her hand is still carefully cupping his balls. "Get down here, Slayer," Spike growls. He has to clear his throat first, but, hey, it works; she lowers her face down to his, hands on his chest. Spike meets her not with a kiss so much as a greedy, delving lick, chasing the taste of himself around inside her mouth. He pulls back enough to swallow. "What do you want?"
Buffy lets loose the brilliant smile, rocks back and pushes to her feet in one fluid motion, gathering up his hands and pulling him with her at the same time. She steadies him; he's still fettered by his pants around his ankles. "You," says Buffy. She squeezes his hands hard and laughs up at him—sheer merriment. Then she turns and breaks for the house, stripping her shirt as she goes. At the porch stairs, she kicks off shoes and starts a bendy-hoppy dance to get out of her denim.
Spike's right with her, one-handedly pulling his jeans up just enough to run—until he turns back around and dashes for the bum-shaped depression in the grass. He finds one of the three pieces of gravel, jams it into a soggy pocket, and follows Buffy inside.
They make it up to the blue bedroom in a puddle-trailing, bare-foot-slapping sprint, banging doors and juddering Cecilia Giles' sturdy banisters. Like a pair of virgins who have jumped the hurdle of the dreaded first time, they dive onto the bed in a disorder of limbs. Spike's knee plants bruisingly on Buffy's inner thigh. Buffy cracks her skull on the headboard. She gets one arm cinched around his neck while the other hand finds a grip on his ass and kneads.
They're kissing. Gasping, biting, unbeautiful kisses with too much spit; Spike stops to swallow and tastes mud and a lingering hint of his own come. Buffy sucks on his jaw, his throat.
And Spike had plans (lovingly cultivated between the kitchen door and the stairwell): he was going to go down on her again, lick a long, wet stripe from pussy to tailbone, wiggle his tongue in her ass. Work her over the way she hadn't let him last night. But he can't seem to get away from her mouth, and the frictionfull drag of damp skin is too good. "Ungh, jeez, let me—" Buffy squirm-kicks her legs free and rolls her lower back, and Spike's eyes roll back as he feels her slippery-hot center open wide underneath him, pressing wetly against his cock. God, he's almost there, he's going to burst too soon, he hasn't been this turned on in eons, despite the fact he just came like Zeus in the middle of a clover bed not three minutes ago. "Buffy," he chokes out. "Buffy. Buffy." There's another flailing moment as she tries to get her knees higher. He unplants one elbow long enough to get it hooked around her leg—opening her further—she groans at the stretch—his cock sawing through her folds the whole time—and then without any guiding hands at all he just sinks into her, to the hilt.
It's almost the same position they were in before. It feels like a whole different universe. Buffy smacks her hands above her head, bracing herself against the headboard. It does gorgeous things to the shape of her breasts. She's already shaking at the first thrust, little orgasmic jolts. Her skin is flushed and mottled, her breathing jagged. "Ya, yes—Sp—" He feels a crazy smile light his face. It's a lot of words: not a talker, his Buffy.
As Spike drives up the pace, Buffy dissolves into incoherent uh uh uhs. She's in the zone: single-minded, ecstatic and demanding, legs splayed, supported by Spike's elbow and a wayward pillow. He can actually feel the geography of her body changing. He wishes he could see it, the mysterious, biological conspiracy of thighs cunt g-spot cervix, shifting, engorging, pillowing, the better to take him. He can't remember ever feeling so taken. He realizes her ha sounds are actually the beginning of harder, harder, so he hikes Buffy's legs higher and re-angles and lets it rip.
Buffy throws her head back, bucks against him, and shrieks. "Oh Christ oh fuck oh bugger!" Spike babbles, and stops moving, and then jerks, hard and uncontrolled, following her over the brink. "Ohhh," Buffy moans back at him, feeling it. She shudders, riding out the aftershocks. Spike collapses on top of her with a dazed wheeze and a pudding-y sound down where their bodies are joined.
It's quiet.
The sheets are blue.
After possibly a long while, Buffy mumbles, "Good thing the house is empty."
"If it weren't, somebody'd a pulled the fire alarm by now an' they'd all be evacuating."
Buffy grunts, and Spike shifts a little so she can lower her arms.
Suddenly the bed issues a terrific clunk, and tilts fifteen degrees. Buffy cranes up and tips her nose over the edge to look. Spike snuffles her armpit. "We broke the thingie where the box joins the headboard," she reports.
"Now, that's more like it," says Spike.
Buffy just laughs.