lucetilogs | you gave your heart to me

you gave your heart to me

Who: [Bad username or site: univalent title= @ livejournal.com] & [Bad username or site: slaying title= @ livejournal.com]
What: The vampire and the Slayer work through the war and just a few of their abundant issues.
When: Backdated - last full evening of the draft.
Where: Battlefield/Dorms
Summary: It's a lot of violence with an extra punch of emotional turmoil. This is their typical canon recipe for sentimentality.
Rating: R (violence, etc)

Buffy closed her eyes tight against one more spray of blood. She felt it hit her face, warm enough to cause her stomach to heave with an instinct of disgust. It was a sign that even her resolve was beginning to tarnish. It wasn't that she enjoyed killing. Or, at least, it wasn't the kill she enjoyed. The fight was separate to that. The punches, the hits, the bruises and the adrenaline. They were all so easily separated from that final blow, the scythe slicing roughly through the base of a person's wings. Just like the General. It was that much harder when they didn't burst into a cloud of dust. So much more personal.

The Slayer had fared well enough throughout the week of battling. A few serious injuries, but they had been dealt with. Tonight, fighting in the eerily extra black-and-white moonlit night, she had collected an assortment of superficial cuts and slashes. Her jeans were torn on both knees--it could have been from any number of attacks. She couldn't remember which ones, specifically. Far too focused on the task at hand. She tugged back. Hard. Disengaging her weapon from deep in the back of her latest enemy. In the early days of the battle, she had tried telling herself not to care too much because--enemy or not--these were people and they would come back. Just like the rest of the dead in Luceti. Only that rationalization lost its appeal rather quickly. Resurrection rarely translated to hope for Buffy Summers.

She breathed out. There were so few members of the Third Part left in their little slice of Hell. She dropped out of slaughter-mode for a moment to try and catch her comrade's eyes. Spike. She knew he was close. She could feel the vampire's vampire-ness all the more strongly thanks to the removal of whatever restrain the village normally had in place on her abilities.

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The fighting was a lot more hands on for the vampire, who was much more lethal without a sword in hand - though he had one and alternated between using it and discarding it in favor of just making due with his hands - and didn't shy away from the splatter of blood. In fact, in a way he would not soon admit to for the sake of not disturbing others with facts he was pretty sure they could guess well at anyway, the blood gave fuel to the energy he felt. Not in the sense that it was literally feeding him, of course, but the mere smell and sight of it made him feel alive with restlessness that needed to be spent and drove him to fight more, to keep going and tear more into the forms of those they'd been sent to fight against.

He liked killing and then he didn't. His demon thrived on it, sang out in a roaring chorus of triumph each time someone fell at his hand, smirking within his being at the smell, the sight, the sounds, the feel - all of it was like one beautiful, blood musical number he was taking part in. The part of him that was human, the soul, hated it; made him frown and cringe at the sound of bones snapping and flesh ripping, but knew it was necessary. He'd told her once, before he'd gotten it back, that war and killing were a natural part of the cycle of history, that people like Caesar and the Europeans who claimed the Americas from it's natives were just following the steps of that waltz. That still rang true to him. You did what you had to do, because it was what needed to be done.

And what needed to be done wasn't always pretty or what you wanted. You make due, suck it up and deal.

Spike stepped back and wiped blood off his face from a cut on his left cheek, just below the eye, with the back of his hand. He looked over at the Buffy, a few paces away, and watched, silently, as she did her duty just as he was doing his. His mouth twitched up at one corner for a brief moment when he caught her gaze, a quiet signal of being alive - or rather, still undead with the 'un' not threatened.

Unintentionally, she mirrored him. Her hand also reaches up and pushes blood away from her eyelids where it gummed and stuck. Buffy suppressed the gag reflex. It wasn't that it was blood--oh, God. She has been around blood for long enough not to care. It was just the purely gross feel of something coagulating on her skin. Something not of her own body. A different source of gore, enemy and alien. The gesture leaves a streak on her forehead and her efforts to clean up only dirtied her further. What a metaphor for her life.

Her scythe fell casually to her side, held by just a few fingers still gripping it. Other enemies, still alive, were far off. These lulls were coming more and more frequently as the opposition's numbers dwindled. With just a hint of regret, Buffy touched the locket around her neck. She fingered its chain. The General had not shown his face this week. He had not come to reclaim the trophy she had taken from him. She would be dishonest if she did not admit to feeling ripped off for that.

"I guess this is what victory feels like." Her voice was rough and tinged with a croak. It was clear that she hadn't used it in quite a while. So busy had the war effort been. And she hadn't really felt like giving these guys the typical sharp-tongued treatment. "Funny, I'm used to a bit more horrible, horrible desperation being involved. Y'know, down to the wire decisions and on the fly game-changers."

The underlying admission was that standing tall and dishing death like a production line worker wasn't exactly her cupcake. Vamp slaying got routine, yes. This was a true fact she would not dispute. But there was something very different about hitting a cemetery to find the predators and stop them. Or, she wanted to think that there was something different about it. She wanted to find a way to deny the comfortable buzz she was feeling.

Edited 2010-08-01 13:57 (UTC)

Spike dusted himself off and strolled closer, perhaps a bit too casually for a man who had mere moments before snapped the neck of one of their winged foes, stepping over the now lifeless body on his way over to her like it was a fallen log and not something that used to be a living, breathing individual. Thinking too hard about those kinds of details put one in a place that was full of distraction and more Angel-like tendencies than he was comfortable with stepping into. Those weren't his shoes. He wasn't on a quest for redemption and wanting to sit in a corner and pout about the bad things he'd done. He'd been an evil, soulless vampire for Christ's sake. Killing was what evil, soulless vampires did.

Unless you're Harmony. Then you just fail entirely at the execution of anything remotely situation appropriate and instead focus on fashion and generally being annoying.

...there's one upside to being in Luceti and one thing fighting a war that's not his certainly trumps.

"Don't know about you, but I'm in favor of that not exploding part that tends to come with that typical sort."

Edited 2010-08-02 02:09 (UTC)

"Not exploding is a plus." She conceded. How them was this? In the middle of a winding-down battlefield, they find the energy and the time to fall straight into a chat. And not just any chat, but one about that pesky recurring theme of death. Their deaths. "A hypothetical plus, I guess. I haven't been there. The exploding kind of there, I mean. I never...exploded." Deep breath. "But you already know that." Her voice faltered, lamely.

She shouldered her weapon, like some drifter's pack hung behind her. Speaking of exploding--Buffy looked down at the trendy watch on her wrist, frowned, and wiped blood off of its face--the sun would be making a cameo, soon. Not too soon, but soon enough. She knew there were other still-living bodies out there. They might have to wait, but she doesn't pass on a word of it to the vampire. He would know. She knew he would know. They could dance this dance until he called last call. He was the one with the curfew, not her.

"I think there's more, that-a-way." She pointed, paused for three seconds, and then began walking in the direction. It was clear that she expected Spike to join her.

Edited 2010-08-02 02:34 (UTC)

Oh, he knew. He could feel it. That defense mechanism that was built in to all vampires that made them feel antsy and pulled towards corners of shade and darkness told him the sun would be up soon. He could smell it, too; the way things just smelled more warm when light started to touch them. Back in the day, when he'd been new at this ("and a little dim," if one were to ask Angelus' opinion which Spike considered invalid), he'd dash for shelter, despite being able to tolerate sunlight a little longer than most vampires due to the strong, ancient blood that flowed the veins of vampires of the Order of Aurelius line, not wanting to take the risk.

These days, he was a bit more bold and reckless, willing to wait until that split second moment where getting out of the fresh rays of light was a necessity to keeping oneself from becoming a glorified pile of dust. With a seemingly disregard for just that, he followed her.

"You didn't explode. Just sorta fell. Slow motion, like it was a scene right out of a movie. Don't know if it was that portal or just the way I saw it, but...you saw." Spike gestured to his head to indicate those ridiculous thought bubbles that had projected memories around a while back. "Not falling's a definite plus. Not fun, that. The fall and then the part after where things just bloody well hurt."

Buffy nodded. She saw. Part of her was glad to have received some other POV of it. Seeing the portal rush straight at her as she rushed straight at it. It wasn't her idea of a leap with a view. And she doesn't speak to how sure she was about being dead long before hitting the ground.

Her steps were measured and practised. This was confidence in the face of uncertainty. It was the kind of duality and emotional negotiation that she was familiar with. Spike was a part of that. Things surrounding him were finding clarity in the heat of battle, too. She could keenly feel appreciation for what he provided on the battlefield and--maybe, perhaps--she could feel that leading to an off-field appreciation as well. It wasn't a feeling she felt like owning up to just for the sake of epiphany. She didn't even know how to tell if it was real.

"It wasn't like how I imagined it." She jabbed a thumb to the space above Spike's head. Mutual short hand for that experiment. "Because I mostly imagined more...splattage."

"You didn't go splat," Spike said with an odd amount of ease, though the underlying emotion that the memories dredged up could be heard in his tone, altering his usual timbre by a slight amount only those who knew him well would be able to pick up on. Like the woman at his side. "Must've been more the portal, then. Slowed it down or somethin'. From that height, there should have been a splat--" He mimicked this by raising one hand up and slapping it against the palm of the other. "--but wasn't. Glad for that. Would've been messy and made what Red did a hell of a lot more difficult. Easier to reanimate a body than it is to put goo back together."

So morbid, yet so the usual when it came to conversation topics. They were both so very desensitized to the sorts of things that made people squirm with discomfort and tremble in fear. Probably what made them good candidates for this sort of job outside of their mutual fighting abilities and strength.

Oh, what a bees' nest of touchy subjects. Right there. Death, viscera, reanimation. No, more than that. Revivification. She had been so much more than just reanimated. Any other person, and she might have deflected it all with a dry comment and drier smile. Any other moment, and she might have barked at Spike for putting the image of her-as-goo in her mind. But, today--tonight? This was a time of clarity. Battle could put things into perspective. Tidy up all those wayward frustrations and emotions and do away with all the face-saving motives present outside of combat.

So Buffy simply nodded. She agreed. It would've made things harder for Willow--perhaps even impossible. And those were possibilities she did not want to dwell on. So far away from that incident, it was hard to decide what would have been preferable. So much has happened. Would she trade it away for--? The Slayer's shoulders sank.

"Would things've even been better if--wait!" Buffy turned sharply as a wayward Third Party soldier came on the scene. Truthfully, the intruder looked just as surprised as Buffy. But her guard doesn't stay off for long. There is a quick right hook to the face and, then, as Buffy stepped past the mute soldier. She launched the flat of the scythe backwards, shoving the enemy back into Spike's reach. Corroborative combat.

That's Spike for you, picking up a stick and poking at the bees' nest just to see what it'll do, regardless of the potential negative repercussions that could come from that sort of careless prodding. Not that it was anyway careless, as he'd picked his words as carefully as he was capable of. The wrong slip of the tongue and he'd find himself in a squabble with her when they were supposed to be fighting an enemy that wasn't one another.

Speaking of enemy-- The vampire took a step back, shifting into game face due to the rising morning sun pulling at him for the added strength letting his demon out gave him. He delivered the necessary blow with a good kick, then grabbed the body and gave the bloke a good toss off into the distance. If he wasn't dead, he wouldn't be able to move and would be soon. Win/win and no more effort required.

He sniffed the air for good measure, then shook the game face off. "Don't smell anyone else. Good too, sun's comin'. Need to head in." There's an unspoken, open question there of whether she's going to follow or stay out and fight some more.

Edited 2010-08-03 15:01 (UTC)

The pickings were getting slim. Buffy gave Spike an appreciative look for the dispatching of that enemy, then looked back the way they had come. The hike back to the battlefield teleporters was not so bad. They should be able to make it in time. And, if not? Then they could run. Or--Buffy realized her jarringly inclusive thought process--he could run. What made her think she should have to tie her immediate fate so directly to Spike?

And yet, she showed her agreement by turned her back on the rest of the field. "In the immortal words of the Beatles, it's been a long day's night. Only it's more like a long week's night. Let's all have one big rousing cheer for productivity." Exhaustion and satisfaction duked it out in her voice. She was satisfied because she had played her part and she had played it well. Exhausted because even though she had not pushed beyond her absolute limits, it had been a while since she had hit the field quite as hard as this. Most of her was only human, after all...and this war had none of the adrenaline pumping friends-and-family threat that disasters back home usually had.

Her weapon remained shouldered. "One last night in hotelsville, I guess. Then it's back to the village."

"Been workin' like dogs and all," he said by way of agreeing with (and approving of) her Beatles reference. The song played on silently in his head as he walked along side her on their trek back to the teleporters.

He wasn't sure how he felt about this being the last day they were doing this, out here fighting side by side like it was a Sunnydale standard apocalypse. Without the threat of the world coming to an end, of course. This was just...a war. Spike had seen 'just wars' and had even participated in them. Not by choice, mind you, as the Nazi's had lured him in under false pretenses and left him in that box on that submarine without asking if he'd be good for going along with their vampire army plans. He'd gotten out, of course, and Angel's (who he still thought was Angelus at the time) had put a stop to that nonsense, but still. In a war. Sort of.

"Least we're going back without another smudge to our already up there die and return records."

"It's kinda impressive. I haven't heard about any non-them casualties. Guess our side really was stacked, this time around."

Not dying was nice. Buffy hadn't expected that staying alive would be an issue for her or for Spike--but there had been others that she had been worried about. Emil. Raine. That other blonde girl that had joined their team...the one who wasn't an insufferable diva-vamp. Ugh. Two diva-vamps on one team had been headache enough. Except--except, Spike had done well to not ruffle her feathers. Or was it her tolerance that had changed and not his behaviour? She frowned. It was a whole new kid of headache just to work that out.

"And I'll be way more than glad to get out of this checkerboard chic colour palette." She was talking about the camo-inspired clothing choices for the dreary monochromatic location. The Silverbergs had come up with the idea and she had thrown her chip down in support of the older brother. "For the next few foreseeable weeks I am so packing as much hue-related punch as possible. There may even be yellows involved."

Hah. She could easily figure that Spike cared little for her mini fashion monologue. But there was method to her madness. Smaller, inconsequential topics could lead to larger ones. The kind of topics that had been brewing just below her measurable thoughts for a few weeks, now.

Spike gave her a good look over - for once not pausing to linger on the obvious areas...or all the blood, which was very tempting to stare at, but he knew well that she would be off-put by his attention being drawn to the blood covering her. Yes, he wanted to look, but he didn't. Because drawing unnecessary attention to the fact that he was a blood-craving monster wasn't what she needed right now and any potential negative reaction she would have to that wasn't what he needed right now. That jazzed up, restless feeling he'd been met with so often since coming here wasn't there anymore, that energy having been spent on the trail of bodies they left behind them. Killers, the both of them, in their own ways. It was who they were, what they were; it defined them whether they wanted it to or not.

"Doesn't really work for you," he said, half-criticizing, half-teasing. "I said bugger that. Got that stealth thing down without looking like the wallpaper I'm standin' against. Not about blending in so much as it's about not drawing attention to yourself. Do that just fine without looking like I'm Riley bloody Finn."

--wait. Crap. Too late. He winced, his face screwing up for a second at his word vomit that normally, he wouldn't bother to reign in, but tonight was different. They weren't slinging mud. He hadn't meant to sling it. ...she got that, right?

"At least he never wore gold." The words should have been vehement, but instead they came out strangely soft. It was a cryptic enough reaction as neither of the two currently involved in the conversation had ever had a penchant for gold. "Believe me, folks could do a lot worse--fashionwise--than Riley."

Where was her fire? Her drive to get upset over Spike dragging her choices out to air? Or his teasing comment on her own fashion failure. Buffy did adjust her black jacket. Fidgeting. She had thought the fit was nice enough, though it did kind of sallow her out. And they had enough pale kids on the team, already. "Besides," she mustered what little indignation she could. "Leave Riley out of this. God, it's not like he'd even have me if he was here because--remember--he's the one who ran off and married Superwife Sam."

Whoa, Buffy. Slow down. No one had brought up the romantic angle; after all, Spike had only been taking shots at the admittedly quite dorky wardrobe choices of the Initiative. It had been herself who had made the leap from Riley to Jim and from the two of them to the larger issue of who'd have her. Being the non-relationship equivalent of dumped by Jack Sparrow had pressed the matter further. It didn't matter that Buffy didn't even want to be had by Sparrow. The fact that he had decided not to want her was aggravating enough. Never mind that the Slayer was refusing to look a gift horse in its rather obvious mouth. Things should and would be less complicated without Jack Sparrow playing puppy dog in her romantic-comedy-gone-horror-flick version of life

So, again--what had brought on this fixation? Buffy met Spike's appraising gaze with one in kind. "The red worked for you." She tried to shrug off her outburst concerning the two Iowa boys. "What with all the--y'know--way too much gore and blood all over the place."

Edited 2010-08-03 17:40 (UTC)

Spike stopped just shy of stepping onto the transporter, his skin starting to tingle as the light started to lift itself up over the horizon. The look he gave her was a strange one, almost scrutinizing as if she'd spoken to him in German or some other tongue he didn't know a word of and he was trying to make sense of what she was trying to say. Which was precisely what he was doing, for not only did her words make no sense at all - gold? - her tone was a miss. He was expecting snark and venom, not this lightheartedness she was giving him.

Red. What did she mean by-- That red shirt he used to wear instead of the duster? He hadn't worn that since...it'd been a while and not here. He just stuck to the black on black on black ensemble here. And since when did she compliment the way he looked, anyway? Had this been any other morning in any other setting, he would've launched at her with a verbal assault and accused her of messing with him, baiting him, playing one of her little games in order to get a laugh or a rise or something, but right now... She was just being plain confusing.

"You're not making any sense, love. And while I'd like to get into the why of that how, I'm starting to sizzle."

Buffy recognized the confusion her spate of wordiness had inspired. She expected nothing else, really. She had breathed so few things about Jim to Spike and having never met the guy, he could never realize the identifiability of gold clothing. Not unless someone else had filled him in and, really, if they had? She would've expected those cards to have been played long before now. But for the moment, she relished being one informational step above him. In the warped economics of this exchange, Buffy felt that it put her at an advantage. This was a moment where she wanted so badly to ask for so much from him--it payed to start out by making him feel as though he had to ask things of her. Even if those things only involved clarification.

"Then...let's hi-tech it back to the dorm before I'm left cleaning up Stirfry-au-Spike." Then Buffy pulled a face. A failed quip could leave such a bad taste. "Or, just...before I have to ask the Malnosso to please send a vacuum. That works, too."

And with this, she stepped onto a transporter and blinked out of the here.

"I am never going to get used to that, for the record," Spike said the moment they rematerialized on the other side in the dorms. Part of his discomfort with popping out of one place and popping into another was largely due to a good chunk of his ghost time that he hadn't told her about. Pavayne toying with him and pulling him down, phasing him in and out of visibility to Fred and Angel and the others at his will.

He stepped off it - perhaps a bit too quickly - but covered up his unrelated discomfort with the transporter with his displeasure and her baffling words. "Alright, no dusting threat, aside from you and that scythe of yours, so spill. Word vomit. Less vomit, more words and please to be usin' ones that make sense, because I'm afraid I left my How To Speak Buffy Babble dictionary in another world."

Edited 2010-08-03 19:19 (UTC)

Buffy was also not in a hurry to stay anywhere near that tech. If asked, she would blame the cantankerous Doctor McCoy and his scare-tactic tales of transporters and all the things he thought could go wrong with them. The Slayer would've trusted a spell or an enchantment above a science so advanced that she can barely recognize it as science. She took a few extra steps away from the thing just for good measure.

"Which ones?" She had her emotional shields up even as she began to relax, physically. "Which words do you want me to whip the definitions out for? The Riley thing? Because--forget it. That definition pretty much just amounts to over and done for."

There were questions right there on the tip of his tongue, but his attentiveness to tact in this situation kept him from uttering them. He wanted to so badly and was very tempted to just blurt things out where all could here, but he could not bring himself to be so careless for a variety of reasons that weren't as simple as her perhaps made them out to be. With an impatient roll of his eyes, Spike grabbed one of her arms and hauled her off and towards his room. 'Hauled' was perhaps too strong of a word as her more guided her and pulled her along while being careful not to further injure her than she already was.

His room was the first they came to and thankfully devoid of his bunk mate. He pulled her in and shut the door. They were both a mess, dirty and covered in blood that was not their own. Perhaps the sensible thing to do would be to put whatever this talk was on pause and get cleaned up, but since when did Buffy and Spike do sensible?

"Red. You said red works on me and you didn't say it with sarcasm or spite. If this is some sort of game, I'm bowing out now. Got enough at the moment without adding that dance to the show."

Once inside, she roughly jerked her arm out of his grip; however, she didn't storm out. She didn't leave. She stayed of her own accord and dove straight into the stand-off that either of them could have expected at this juncture. Buffy, still in his personal space but bristling. The weapon now just a barely remembered accessory to a whole different kind of battle. Forget violence--this was about emotional supremacy.

She swallowed. She pursed her lips and she shook her head. Clawing at her mind for words or actions that might salvage some part of this. Buffy had tried to pay the vamp--man a compliment. It surely did not fit with their usual steps, but it had seemed like the right idea at the time. It was how she would approach any other potential rom--no. Too much energy wasted on correcting her own thoughts, on the fly. And still not enough answering Spike.

Buffy's mouth opened. "It's not a game. It's not always a game, Spike." She repeated the shake of her head and stepped backwards, tossing the scythe onto his bed and freeing both hands for emphatic gesturing. "You've got the red wings and you're rocking them. Is saying so some kind of crime? Because I'm kinda recalling the whole lack of a legal system in Luceti, so good luck making the charges stick."

Edited 2010-08-03 19:56 (UTC)

For a long moment, Spike was silent. It was rare for her to honestly throw him for a full loop. He knew her too well, whether they acknowledged it or not. But right now, he had no earthly clue what-so-ever what she was getting on about. Red wings. He glanced back at them, having often forgotten they were even there. He'd grown accustomed to them in the months he'd been here. He rocked them.

What was that? The compliment and saying not once, but twice?

"...if it's not a game, then what are you doing, pet? I can't... I don't know what you're trying to pull here and I don't like not knowing, especially when it comes to you. I can usually suss out what's going on in your head, but I haven't a bleeding clue."

"Welcome to the club. I've already called dibs on president." She huffed, insinuating that she was just about equally flabbergasted with herself. Buffy would rather that all of this was a non-issue. She would rather be able to go right back to her room and sleep and then leave tomorrow. Return to the village and step right back into not feeling these things. Or, even better? Get the golden ticket home. Golden. There comes that word, again.

Buffy rubbed one thumb against her right temple. It would have smeared the blood had it not begun to dry and gum on her skin. So, instead of smearing, it more likely could be referred to as smudging. "Look, how do you feel about second chances?"

She lifted her eyes and stared him down. A surprisingly hostile demeanour for what she knew she was doing. "Giving them, I mean. Not taking them. Obviously. 'Cause you're so far past your second chance by now. At least the fifth stuck."

Edited 2010-08-03 20:15 (UTC)

"Don't really have the right to withhold them, given what I am and what I've done," tumbled out of his mouth. He didn't necessarily mean her as he did with second chances as a whole, for it had yet to click into place what exactly she was getting at. "Doesn't mean I'm going to give them. Not having that right and obeying it are two completely different things and obeying, not really sitting firm in the seat I was told to sit in. I'm more standing against the wall in the back, because let's face it, watching the teacher squirm is a hell of a lot more fun than caving to direction."

He smirked slyly at that, but her looked made his own melt off his face. She was... She couldn't, could she?

Spike took a step back, then two forward - a third, then stopped. "You're not...asking what I think you're asking, are you?"

"No, I'm not asking." She stood in place, arms quick to fold over her chest. "Not yet, at least. I mean--it's more like I'm asking about asking. Not actually...asking." Her babble kicked it into high gear.

Congratulations, Spike. The teacher was squirming. Except it might have been more accurate to say that the Slayer was shaking. She felt her nerves rather keenly. It wasn't because of what she thought the felt. It wasn't even from any fear of rejection. The slight tremble came from her pride, as it took a beating. To turn to Spike with any kind of supplication was not necessarily the best food for her ego.

"I said I didn't regret it and I meant it." She began again, quickly. This was an easily decoded reference to evening they had tried (and ultimately failed) to find Drusilla. "And I just thought..."

Buffy shook her head. "Never mind. This? This was a bad idea. The baddest of bad ideas. I call do over."

Buffy isn't good with words and Spike knows it. He likes that they're back, partially, into a realm of the know. Her word failure is a bit adorable, but that's not getting voiced. In other situations he'd voice it to be sweet or voice it to get on her nerves, but right now, he doesn't much trust himself to speak in the face of the plate of information she's just served him. She wants a second chance with him. It's not the second chance that's got him, it's the with. When they were...whatever they were two years ago, it had been about the sex for her, about her feeling and taking out her confusion on him where she wouldn't allow herself to with others. He'd taken and given selfishly back then because he'd been incapable of fully understanding it due to the lack of his soul. Now that he had it..

This wasn't the same confused girl who'd clawed her way out of her own grave after being brought back to life by her best friend. This was a young woman tempered by battle and losses, both her own and others. And he'd never seen her look quite so serious. If she was playing... He'd deal with it and kill her for it or something later. He took chances and didn't think. It was his way. Thinking was overrated.

"No, no do over. No need for one. No need for asking, either, love. You should already know. If you want one, you've got one."

There were other things that she wanted to say. Other paltry offerings. Like telling him that he had been right, that time on the Hellmouth. She had told him I love you and he had called her bullshit. But she wanted to explain how she thought that, now, she could feel that way; however, that had way too much of a chance to turn ugly. To be misconstrued. To make it sound like she was forcing things.

Well, wasn't she? Buffy closed her eyes for a brief second. "I want one." Her arms unfolded. Folded. Unfolded again. "I'm a walking disaster and you're a walking...typhoon." Her shoulders sagged.

"And you said it yourself that we can pretty much practically manage not destroying each other and--right now? That's a serious plus in the dating column--" Buffy snapped her mouth shut. She didn't really just say that. Please, let her just tap her heels together and wish those words unsaid.

Yes, she had been full of bullshit then, down in the Hellmouth, hadn't she? He'd seen it as clear as he could see his own hand if he were to wave it in front of his face. Spike didn't know what he was more startled by now, though, the fact that she was actually offering this - asking this or the fact that she was genuinely sincere about it. Part of him felt like he'd wake up any minute from some mockery of a dream, for it wasn't like he hadn't had those before. His mind liked to taunt him, especially now that there was a soul attached to it, which just made the kind of fucked up dreams he was capable of producing all the more special. (Special, of course, being code for 'horrifying' and something he would sooner walk into traffic than admit was bothersome.)

"You sure about this? 'Cause I'm not in the mood to play push-me-pull-you or whatever it was we were doing back then. If you want to do this, then we're going to do it the way it should be and not like we're having secret club meetings where instead of a secret handshake, I get punched in the face while you scamper off."

"I'm sure. I mean--it's not as out of the blue as it sounds." And that was about as wordy as Buffy was going to get on just how much thought she has put into this possibility coming to pass. It hadn't been easy to come to this conclusion. In fact, Buffy would probably never had acted on it if not for the strange comforting cooperation of the battle. It had strengthened the already strongest link between the two of them--what they could offer each other in the most basic, primal capacities for violence and the instinctive support they could give. It had made her feel just close enough to take this leap. Buffy could only hope that it would not prove to be as fatal as her last split-second jump.

She untied her hair and redid the elastic-held ponytail. More fidgeting. "I'm not interested in getting back on the rollercoaster of secrets and subterfuge, either. If we do this, we do it right." She was unable to meet his eyes at that point. "I do it right. I mean...I will. I want to. No face-punching." Another pause. "Okay, minimal face-punching."

Spike reached out, placing his fingers gently under her chin and tipping her face up so that she would be forced to meet his eyes. "No playing, then. No games, no secrets and subterfuge. ...yes." His fingers trailed along the line of her jaw to her ear, where he traced the shell of it with his fingertips and slipped his hand against her hair.

"Your call, love. You've already seen my cards. Showed them to you long ago."

"My hand's a little more recently dealt, but..." Buffy shrugged and did not shy away once eye contact had been re-established. Time to throw the baby out with the bathwater. "But that's it. If there's gonna be an anyone, then it's gotta be someone who already owns the cliff notes. I don't deal so well with the slow reveal and even a blind and deaf and dumb chihuahua can see that there's sparkage, here."

John Hart had seen it. So had others. Buffy was now becoming retroactively amazed that they had kept their indiscretions from the Scoobies for so long. She nodded and planted a palm firmly against Spike's chest. Vampires were her type, after all. While she felt him not breathing, her own breath quickened in a heady mix of nerves and insecurity grounded in the firm believe that this could definitely have gone worse.

"I want you because of those reasons and...and because of what you've got to offer." She licked her lips, quick to clarify: "Not because of what I can take. That was then and this is now."

And this was probably the last time she would go so far as to verbalize the difference. It came far too close to an apology and she did not like to do those.

Spike was well aware of how many saw the sparks between them. John Hart, Jack Sparrow - hell, he suspected even that doctor saw it. He'd either denied it or hadn't acknowledged it, for a variety of reasons that were largely wanting to not fall back on old habits he hadn't sought out for a reason after he was de-ghostified and not wanting to deal with her outrage for letting on that there was something going on that wasn't there. Yet, apparently Spike had been wrong about that. There was something going on, he'd just missed it because seeing something there like this was such a shot in the dark that trying to aim and shoot hadn't been worth it.

Yet, here she was. Cards on the table, wanting him. Wanting him. If this was a dream, he was going to kill someone. ...more someone's.

"I already said yes, love. Don't need to keep on trying to convince me."

Buffy knew that it was herself that she kept on trying to convince. Time to shut up those last screaming nodes of common sense before they send her running from the room after punching Spike in the face just for good measure. But she realized that she was already past the point of no return. Having said so much, to back off now would be to relapse into the cruelty of the last time. And here he was, treating her so gently and handing the second chance over like it was nothing. Casual as could be. God, but she envied him for a fraction of a second. Buffy also knew that he could not be so cool and collected beneath the surface and this was because she knew him. The knowledge went both ways.

But she stamped down on that jealousy and instead took a step forward into scintillatingly new territory. This involved taking a step closer to Spike. One hand--the hand not currently engaged in pressing against his chest--reached to the back of the vampire's head. At the last moment, Buffy remembered being head-to-toe'd in other people's blood. Oh, well. What was another slice of temptation thrown into the mix?

Buffy leaned upward to kick-start a kiss that was newer than anything she'd had in a while. New because there was an important lack of shame involved in this kiss. And an absence of weighty guilt. It wasn't kicked off quickly or furtively. The scariest part was just how new it felt to open up this Buffy to the vampire. This moment was still held down by enough hesitation to power a whole production of Hamlet, but it was a very small taste of an unforeseen possibility. Being more then enemies in arms or violent Sunnydale equivalents of booty-calls.

To be fair, Spike was half expecting that knee-jerk reaction in the face of such naked truth. He'd been wound up tense, prepared to take a hit and was honestly surprised with himself for not flinching away when she reached up. Perhaps it had been because her hand had been relaxed, fingers out instead of curled into her palm in a fist ready to strike. Once her intentions became clear, he rather happily met her halfway in that kiss, letting actions, rather than words, show just what this offer - no, this request of hers meant to him. Neither were very good with words. Best to let that which wasn't their futile attempts at making the English language work for them do the expressing.

And express he did, with unabashed fervor as he gathered her into his arms and held her in place, kissing her like he hadn't ever before.

Old urges pushed hard. Kissing Spike felt like opening a can of well-worn worms. It made Buffy want to kick things into old gears--where kisses turned tough and needy and laced with all the fire that secrecy could muster. And it could muster a lot. She was having difficulty accessing that softer, more romantic side of intimacy. The one reserved for--she'd choke on the word if she ever tried to say it aloud--boyfriends.

Slowly, she relaxed the dig of her nails into the back of Spike's neck. The rough edges could be electrifying. The two of them knew that better than anyone. But she had to show him that she was capable of more than that. Of more than greeting him with just her animal wants and instincts.

She was thrilled to feel how such relaxation paid off. From what reserves did Spike conjure up his own half of this exchange? Buffy--vaguely humbled by his fervour--turned soft and leaned into the kiss. That is...until she had to stop (predictably) to breath. But it wasn't the gulping, desperate affair of past instances. Nope. She breathed calmly, pulling barely back and setting her forehead against his shoulder.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

you gave your heart to me

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/keywords, since they seem providential

so fitting.

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