***************************************

He held his body rigid, eyes shut tight but his mouth…after a second’s shock his mouth was pliant and responsive, answering her, giving back the tenderness she’d been reluctantly harboring for days now. So Nikki kissed him over and over again, around the edges of his absent smile, along his cheekbones, upon that scarred eyebrow that had beckoned her often.

His reprieve didn’t last long, which she expected.

“This isn’t you,” Spike gasped. Of course. It wasn’t but hours ago that she’d been the gleeful puppet of the First – an episode that Spike had witnessed firsthand. And now here she was, bending over him and peppering him with kisses despite their savage history.

“It is.” Still with that low calming tone, keeping him with her when he would flee. “I don’t know about tomorrow, or the next day or when the First is going to call me out again. But it’s just you and me in this room tonight. Nobody else.”

With a strangled moan he pulled away, turned his face from her. But when he went to rise she stopped him, guided him down and brought his head to her chest while she lay back on the rumpled linens. If he left this bed, she knew he wouldn’t return.

He whispered pleas into her skin, sending her nerves thrumming.

“Don’t,” he was saying. “Don’t, don’t…” But even as he spoke he nestled closer and brought a single hesitant hand up, fluttering along the arm that held him to her. Never alighting.

“It’s all right, Spike.” Soothing words, while she stroked his hair, pressed chaste kisses to his forehead. And hadn’t he done just this for her, not too long ago?

And now – oh, now his full mouth, that mouth that had once seemed cruel and cold to her, was nipping along her collarbone. Bringing her to life, again.

“Hate me,” he murmured. “Hate me, hatemehateme…”

“But I don’t, Spike. I don’t hate you -"

Suddenly his head was level with hers again and a single finger covered her lips, hushing her. “I’ll take everything from you. Everything. You mustn’t let me.”

In response she brought her own hands up to his face, held him steady. “There’s always more love to give, Spike. Always. You know that better than anyone.”

***************************************

That broke something inside him, and he was kissing her back, greedy for contact. “I’m sorry,” he choked out. “I’m sorry, Nikki, so sorry. So sorry.” Every word punctuated by a kiss, anywhere, everywhere.

“I know, Spike.”

He held his face in her hands, worried distantly that he was hurting her but so desperate to make her understand.

“That first night, at the house – I sat and watched you sleep – knew I couldn’t let any harm come to you. No more. My life is yours now. Do with me what you will.”

“Shhhh…” She lifted her head up to his, angling so that his mouth met hers and for Spike it was like drinking from a well of absolution. Terrifying, because he hadn’t seen this coming and such a thing had never happened to him, never – this gentle acceptance of who he was and what he’d done.

They were kneeling on the bed, chest to chest and Spike still couldn’t get close enough. She was made of such precious stuff, her breath and blood and tart tongue. How had he gone this long without assuring himself of her? How had she known what he’d craved?

They rocked together, but he suspected that she was more or less holding him up. Christ, he was useless. But she’d torn him down and built him up in the space of a few minutes, and he couldn’t quite make sense of it.

She was so firm and healthy in his arms. He pulled back, clumsily brought her hand to his lips and pressed fervent kisses to her knuckles.

“Won’t lose you,” he promised raggedly. “Not again. Gonna keep you safe.”

“Spike.” She bent, so that their foreheads were touching. “Whatever happens doesn’t change this. Tonight. No matter what it does tomorrow, the First can’t destroy this. Do you hear me?”

“You forgive me.”

“Yes.”

And then he was burying himself in her, probably crushing her but she didn’t waver, didn’t sway. Comforted him when everything came pouring out – what a pillock he was, couldn’t be helped. He asked her over and over again – you forgive me? – and each time her answer was the same.

After a while she didn’t bother to hide the strange soft smile his question brought, and then she was beaming at him when she said it – Yes. Yes! And finally laying him down like a child, stroking the crisp-curly hair at the base of his neck while he settled himself.

“You still ought to kick my ass,” he told her presently.

She waved a hand. “Oh, I will. I’m going to turn that pretty face of yours into hamburger meat, that’s a promise. You’ll be so pathetic even Dawn won’t be able to hold out. And you’ll have her and Buffy and a dozen Slayers-in-Training to mother you.” She grinned widely. “Constantly. Every minute."

“How could you?”

She rolled her eyes. “Please. You know you’d love it.”

“Not that. How could you forgive me?”

She said nothing, and Spike wondered if it shamed her. Maybe she hadn’t had a choice – the mechanics of the soul still mostly eluded him – and resented him for it.

But she just burrowed further into the covers, biting her lip as she thought. “It happened all along the way, I think. It wasn’t something I had to fight for. And it wasn’t something I had to fight.” She paused, waited for that to sink in. “A little bit in that Godawful excuse for a shower, after I was sick. You smoothed my hair back, do you remember that?”

“Yes.”

“A little bit in the way you look at Buffy, and see what her friends don’t – that she’s tired. That she doesn’t have much hope left in her. Nobody wants to see that, but you do. A little bit each night when the stakes and the knife would be laid out next to my bed. A little bit every time you made me feel strong, even when I was dying. Always treated me like a warrior. That…helped. You knowing how I was, once, made it easier to get back there.” She looked up at him.

“A little bit whenever I look at you and see that vampire in the subway.” A bone-deep tremor went through him at that but she kept on. “Not because you’re someone else now, Spike. Because you’re the same.” She scooted nearer, as if she knew he was ready to bolt.

“I don’t know what they think, about your soul,” she told him. “But I saw you at your worst.” She swallowed. “So I know that it wasn’t just – just flipping a switch inside you, Spike. You can tell that to those kids, but not to me. I know better. When I look at you, I see all of you.”

He shoved her away, welling up with an inexplicable anger. “If I hadn’t –"

“If you hadn’t done me,” she said harshly, “something else would have. I came back. And you kept me here. Nothing can take that away.”

“What if that’s not enough?”

Part 14 (Alternate Continuation):...Waits There For The Nails
(NC-17; non-Spuffy pairing)

Or

Part 15: This Mess We're In

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