(The
Heart of the Night)
AUTHOR: 1stRab-id aka Raeann
FEEDBACK: Rabid1st@yahoo.com
ARCHIVED AT: www.oocities.org/drowning_inyou/
BETAS: Binkysab, LostAngel and ElektraWWF from FanForum
CHARACTERS: Buffy/Spike
RATING: NC-17
SPOILERS: Through the fifth Season ending episode, THE GIFT.
SYNOPSIS: This is the story of the Slayer’s final destruction, and the part played by her vampire lover, Spike. So, this is how, I would end the series. This story is set 2 years after THE GIFT. Many things have changed in the lives of the characters but do NOT be alarmed. To my knowledge there are NO spoilers in this fic. However, to avoid confusion let me bring you up to speed. In my little corner of the Buffyverse: Willow and Xander have accepted Spike into the Scoobie Gang, Spike was instrumental in bringing Buffy back from the dead in the Season 6 premiere, Xander and Anya have married and have a child, Tara has died, Dawn is, of course, 16 years old, Giles has moved back to England, Oz has moved back to Sunnydale and Buffy has a job as a traffic cop aka meter maid. This is my idea of logical progression. Hey, lots of things can happen in 2 long years.
PART 6
Buffy thought seriously about rabbitting, leaping for the door and dashing down the stairs. She had never been as terrified as she was by this new development. She could feel her heart pounding and her gut clenching up. She wondered what game Spike was playing. She could so easily kill him. He was offering no resistance. The Slayer in her cried out for a renewal of the violence between them but the woman in her cried out for something much more dangerous. There was a brief struggle and the woman won.
Buffy reached out, fingers trembling, and placed a tentative hand on his chest. Spike remained still, as if carved from marble. His only reaction was to glance up and meet her eye to eye. His gaze was neutral, not mocking or challenging, and barely even questioning. Buffy leaned forward pressing the issue. She slid her hand down to the bottom of his tee shirt and slowly worked her fingers under the fabric. She savored the rough denim of his jeans, the hard leather band of his belt and finally the silken smoothness of his skin against her fingertips. She traced patterns on his flesh, all the way up to the jagged wounds left by her nails.
Eyelids flickering closed, Spike held on to his stillness as Buffy’s hand stroked over him. He could feel the heat increasing in her as she touched him. He took a quick breath and was flooded with the wonderously complex scent of his Slayer. She smelled of lavender, lust and sunlit meadows. She was far too close for comfort. In spite of his resolve not to move, Spike shifted slightly. The sudden tightness in his groin was too much to ignore.
Buffy reveled in his involuntary response. She grinned, mouth open, her tongue pink against her teeth, in unconscious imitation of Spike’s frequent wolfish look. She knew the vampire was watching her again, through barely open eyes. Let him, Buffy thought suddenly. Let him know what I can do to him.
Making eye contact, she ran light claws over Spike’s body moving in a spiral but going inexorably downward. When she reached his jeans she continued dragging her nails along his thigh, sweeping carelessly over the swell of his desire. Spike writhed, the pleasure so intense it was an agony. He rose up pressing in to Buffy’s hand and she pulled away, dropping her feet to the floor. He fell back against the bed, gasping; begging her not to leave. If she did…if she left him now Spike knew he would hunt her down like an animal, throw her to the ground and, though it was said to be impossible, take her by force.
Buffy, however, had no intention of leaving. She was far too fascinated by this newfound power. She watched as Spike fought for self-mastery. Waiting until he was back in control, Buffy leaned across the bed and let her hair brush over his face. She kissed his mouth, slipping her tongue, soft and slick, over his lips. When he didn’t respond, she reached down and unbuttoned his fly with one hand. Spike’s eyes were closed again, other than the unconscious tremor in his muscles, the push of his erection under her questing fingers, he gave no sign that he was aware of her.
Slowly, with torturous deliberation, Buffy began undressing him. She tugged roughly, at times, ripping away cloth when it failed to give, but for the most part she worked gently. Spike did nothing to hinder or assist her. When he was naked, Buffy stood back and studied the contours of his body. He was so different from any other man she had known. Not as massive as Riley or Angel but more defined than Parker. And frankly, much better endowed.
“Wow, there’s a revelation!” Buffy thought, mocking her inner persona.
It wasn’t like she'd never noticed Spike’s natural gift before. For the past three years, every time they were in close proximity it had inevitably come up. Fighting with him or holding him close, she had sometimes been aware of nothing else but the size of his erection pressed against her back or stomach. Spike's hormones weren't subtle. At first it had alarmed and disgusted her but later she had been more than a little in love with it.
He wasn’t circumcised, of course, but then neither was Angel. Buffy knew what to expect from a vampire lover and in many ways Spike was more appealing than a human male. Like the rest of his kind, he didn’t sweat, or urinate, or defecate or harbor smelly bacterial colonies but unlike most vampires, Spike bathed regularly. Standing over him, Buffy could pick up the faint scent of dark amber that fragranced his body soap.
Through barely parted eyelids, Spike watched the Slayer study his body. She stood at the bedside her eyes devouring him, seemingly unable to look away. Then with a tiny sigh, she shrugged out of her dress. He watched the material slide along her skin and heard it puddle on the floor. A half-second later she stepped out of her bikinis, and Spike had to wrestle with a nearly overwhelming desire to attack her.
After what seemed like an eternity to the vampire, the need to touch him overcame all of Buffy’s innate caution. She bent forward, bracing one knee on the bed and ran her hand up his inner thigh and down to cradle him intimately in her palm. Spike convulsed under her as she toyed with him, playing her fingers back and forth until he was shuddering helplessly. Then splaying her other hand against his chest, Buffy brought her mouth down over him, sucking and licking. In one continuous movement, she ran her tongue along the length of his shaft savoring the taste of him. Reaching the tip, she slurped up the glistening pearl of wetness that had formed there and gave a soft murmur of appreciation, as if it was the last drop of her favorite ice cream.
“Buffy…” Spike whispered, hoarsely, his voice resonating with his need for her. "Luv…please…"
She was on him like a lioness springing to the kill. She crouched over him grabbing at his wrists as he reached for her, holding them tight, pressing them back into the pillow on either side of his head. The strength in her was stunning. Spike knew he would have to exert himself fully to break free of her hold but, the truth was, he didn’t really want his freedom. He wanted Buffy to win this round, to take him down, like they both knew she could. Like they both knew she had always wanted to.
“Do it, Baby!” Spike thought, meeting the primal
intensity of her gaze without blinking. "Take me all the way…"
And she did! Rocking her body back she took him inside. He was a perfect fit, filling her like no one before him ever had. Buffy was as shocked as she was thrilled at this turn of events. She remembered their fight, the reason for it, and the fact that she had sworn never to do what she was currently doing. None of that seemed to matter to her. All that mattered was the satisfaction that Spike alone could give her. No one else understood her, appreciated her, and loved her as completely as he did. No one else could endure the onslaught of her unfettered appetite.
Despite not needing oxygen, the vampire was breathing raggedly now, biting down on his lower lip as Buffy engulfed him. During his time with Dru, Spike had held to the spirit of fidelity rather than the letter, and so he had known a number of women, living and undead, virginal and experienced. In fact, he’d once had a Bangkok whore; he would have sworn was half succubus. Her talent had been so great that it purchased her 6 weeks of additional life. And yet, nothing in the past 125 years had prepared him for the Slayer.
She was a Bloody force of nature; a tsunami, washing over him. He was flooded with sensation, from the play of her muscles around him to the heat of her breath by his ear, to the swell of emotion in his chest. He was drowning in her as she raged around him; heedless of the toll she was taking. He began chanting her name like an incantation, a one-word plea for release. Yet, when the release came, he was totally unprepared for the intensity of it. The French call the moment of climax, le petit mort, the small death, and with Buffy, Spike finally understood why. Nothing short of his own death transcended the experience.
It was over. Shuddering, breathing deeply, Buffy lay against Spike’s chest and slowly she became aware of him beneath her. She shifted and froze, not believing her senses. Buffy knew, without a doubt, they had come together. She had felt Spike spill into her like a cool rush of water and heard his helpless mewling cry. But, now, as she moved around him she could feel no change in his rock hardness. She clenched her inner muscles, checking her perceptions before glancing questioningly up at him.
Spike raised his scarred brow slightly and gave her a truly wicked grin before saying, "Wanna have my turn, Pet."
“How…?” she frowned, puzzling out this difference from her earlier experience with Angel.
“It’s like breathing,” Spike replied to her half-formed question and Buffy understood. It was an involuntary process under his conscious control. Not his complete control, however, she remembered with a wicked grin of her own.
The sauciness of Buffy’s unspoken thoughts played out on her face and provoked Spike to action. With a quick twist of his hips, he flipped her onto her back, switching their positions. He buried his hands in her hair and surged against her. Buffy cried out at the violence of it and Spike covered her mouth with his own cutting off the sound of her screams. Once, twice, a half dozen times he lunged into her, going deeper each time, until, desperate for oxygen, Buffy pushed him away. He over-reacted, pulling all the way out of her, kneeling between her legs with one cool hand resting just above her navel.
“No,” she pleaded, reaching for him.
“Be still,” he said, gently, but with a teasing challenge in his voice. “Try not to move.”
“You, Bastard!” Buffy thought, but she forced herself to relax, acknowledging that it was indeed his turn to take charge.
It became a game of bait and switch. Every time Buffy squirmed, twitched or moaned, Spike would let go of her, leaving her shaking as she fought to control her reactions. Using his hands, his teeth, his tongue, he teased out the secrets of her body. He explored her, discovering erogenous zones she’d had no idea she possessed.
Finally, when Buffy felt like she would burn away if he didn’t, Spike slipped one hand between her legs. Stroking over her, spreading the mix of their fluids under his palm, he sought out the small hard treasure nestled in her softness. Finding it with his thumb he rubbed over it in tight quick circles, shattering Buffy’s pretense of self-control.
“Spike…Oh, GOD!” she gasped, arching up under his hand.
This time Spike didn’t release her but instead moved closer, pressing his body along her left side. Buffy could feel his full length hard against her thigh as his mouth closed on the tip of her left breast. He suckled at her for what seemed like eternity, lapping his tongue over her nipple while his thumb continued its relentless circling below. Buffy began to writhe, her hips rotating in time with his stroking hand, the wetness spreading out of her, filling the room with her scent.
Spike took her nipple firmly between his teeth. Biting down just hard enough that she dare not move for fear of injury, he plunged three fingers into her slick velvet core. The Slayer clamped down on him with bone bruising force and screamed out her despair at this exquisite torture. Her hands clawed at the mattress as Spike kept his thumb in place, stroking her inside and out, driving her to the brink of what she knew would be an earthshaking climax. And then…he stopped.
Just short of satisfying her, he stopped. Buffy’s snarl of frustration, promised him torments not even Drusilla could have envisioned. Pulling up to his knees, he chuckled deep in his throat. The sound drew Buffy’s eye and they locked gazes as he held his hand up between them. Slowly, not breaking eye contact for a second, Spike sucked each sticky finger in turn, tonguing the length of them. Buffy could easily imagine his tongue working between her legs the same way. Spike had intended to fulfill her fantasy but the taste, the sight and the scent of her was finally too much for him.
Buffy was bloomed open, wet and more than ready. Spike shifted, until he was kneeling between her thighs, again. Using both hands, he parted her legs, pushing her knees out. Then he reached up, tracing the swell of her breasts, sliding his hands down along the contours of her body, over the slippery mound of her coarse curls and around the full curve of her hips, savoring the power he sensed in them. Cupping his hands under her smooth behind he lifted Buffy, bridging her up. The Slayer locked her fingers around Spike's wrists and held on as he shafted forward. She took him to the hilt, all the way in, and he groaned. They rocked back and forth, pulling apart, surging together. After one or two thrusts, Spike established a cadence, lunging with his lover, sliding out and slamming back into her. This was no tentative exploration. This was a total invasion, demanding total surrender.
The first time, with Buffy on top, they’d simply had sex, deliciously gratifying sex. This time they fucked. There was no other word for it. The harsh, guttural sound was a perfect description of Spike’s desperately intense penetration and Buffy’s full body participation. The heat and the friction and the fire between them threatened to boil the blood in their veins. The Slayer had never known such raw passion.
Even under the influence of malevolent spirits, Riley had been a gentle, considerate lover. Angel had, of course, taken Buffy’s virginity slowly and carefully. He hadn’t allowed himself the luxury of passion. And Parker, the weasel, had been a perfect gentleman. Spike was certainly no gentleman. He was a demonic lover, in a position, at long last, to satisfy his dark lust for the Slayer. And he fucked her until the world started spinning around them.
Her senses blunted by Spike’s relentless assault, Buffy noticed the change in him a second before he struck at her throat. Quick as he was, she was quicker. She released her hold on Spike's wrists, whipping her hands around. Catching his head between her palms, she halted his forward motion so that his fangs snapped closed on thin air. Spike hissed and snarled and twisted like a serpent in his effort to reach her but Buffy held him off.
She rode out his hunger, wrapping her legs around his hips, torquing against him and meeting his yellow gaze without fear. It was unbelievably erotic, a wild rutting and as savage a battle as they had ever engaged in and they ended it together. Buffy climaxed, her fingers slipping from their hold on Spike, just as he, in the midst of his blood lust, came into her and came back to his humanity. They cried out as one, clinging tight.
He was murmuring into her throat as she returned to awareness, “Buffy…sweet Buffy…I love you so much. God help me, I do…if I'd hurt you…Buffy…I swear it would kill me…”
Buffy levered him away and stared, her eyes questioning. She searched his face and saw the truth there. She knew, with complete conviction, Spike would literally die without her. Knew also that he hadn’t killed Alice Peters. Not because he had changed, not because it was wrong but simply because his love wouldn’t allow it. His beloved was his sovereign. Her will was his law. He was a demon and the instinct to kill was strong in him but Buffy finally understood Spike's love for her was stronger.
“You’re mine,” she said fiercely, asserting her mastery over him.
Spike melted into her, submitting completely. He gave himself over to the Slayer, acknowledging her possession of him and almost weeping with the joy of it, “Yes,” he agreed, between deep kisses, “Yours…my god, yes.”
They were both lost and they knew it. There was no fight left in either of them. No more room for denial of what was, what had always been, their destiny. Their love was a supernatural force in it’s own right. Existing outside time and space, it allowed them to span the gulf between good and evil. They moved as one, two halves of a whole, seeking union. They could not seem to get close enough to one another. Legs, bodies, arms, fingers, tongues, their very existence intertwining, Buffy and Spike made love.
And sometime during that last slow dance, Spike opened a vein in his neck and Buffy drank. It was the final act of surrender for both of them, as she accepted his seed in her mouth, took him into her fully and swallowed him down. Spike passed into unconsciousness, giving up his very being to his beloved, letting her drain the strength of his demon from him. Buffy felt him slipping away, his hold on her grew slack and he fell back unto the bed. Fear shot through her and she sat up, wiping blood from her lips with the back of one hand.
"Spike?" she questioned, shakily. He didn't respond and she reached for him, panicking. Gripping her lover's shoulders and shaking him, fiercely, Buffy pleaded, "Come on! You can't die like this, not from blood loss. It's impossible." But quick on the heels of the words came a thought; vampires were supposed to drink first. They drank before the one they were siring fed on them.
One of Spike's hands was under her the other had fallen palm up on the bed, fingers relaxed as in death. His eyes were open but unfocused and deep within them pulsed a garnet redness. Buffy had no way of knowing the same light was glowing in her own eyes. She only knew that Spike needed blood and if he took it from her they wouldn't be able to stop. Wouldn't want to stop until he had drained her completely. If she allowed her lover to drink, Buffy knew, she would become a vampire.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t self-preservation that kept her from opening a vein but rather the remembrance of Spike’s fear of hurting her. Galvanized into action, Buffy scrambled for clothing. She pulled on Spike’s pants, turning up the cuffs and cinching his belt tight around her waist, making them fit. She ripped a long strip from the tattered remains of her ruined dress and wound it around her breasts like a scarf. Then, bare foot, she ran, heading for town where she knew there were two pints of A-negative. In a cold storage safe, in the floor of the Magic Box training room, Giles had a stash of the Slayer’s own blood. It was an emergency transfusion supply and only Buffy and her Watcher were aware of its existence.
The crimson robed figures watched the Slayer dash by, her feet thudding on the grass. They waited, patient as saints, until she disappeared into the night, then they entered the dorm. They glided up the stairs and into the room where Spike lay helpless. Surrounding him they chanted, "Siamo uno con il Cuore della Notte."
One of their number came forward with a white sheet and they shifted Spike onto it. Then wrapping the nearly bloodless vampire in the shroud of fabric, they lifted him up and carried him down into the basement of the building.
______________________________________________________________________
Spike sensed the warmth of a body nearby, felt it stir.
Buffy, he thought and wasn't sure if he spoke aloud.
The name had almost no meaning to him but he knew it was the word for what he needed. He was literally starving to death. And now, like mother’s home cooking, he could smell the sweetness in the air, the faint whiff of Summers’ blood. Blindly, he reached out for the living food source. Desperate for any sustenance, he barely noted the dimensions of the figure he pulled into his arms. The girl’s long dark hair cascaded around him as he sank his teeth into her throat and drank.
It shocked him, like expecting fresh water and gulping down rancid milk. Horridly wrong, the taste of Dawn’s blood twisted up his gut. Spike retched, breaking the bite and shoving his young friend violently away. He spat her blood out onto the floor, without swallowing, and struggled to focus on Dawn’s face. He knew she was alive but he couldn’t tell how badly she was injured. He only knew that there was blood. And, now, more blood was trickling from the puncture wounds in her neck. Wrestling with his hunger, Spike struggled to fight free of the fog in his head.
“He won’t eat,” a voice said, speaking out of the mist. “See how he pushes his food away.”
“He MUST eat,” another voice insisted. “She can not manifest without the blood.”
“Bring the blood of an animal,” Saul’s voice commanded.
“PIG’S BLOOD!” a shocked chorus cried in protest. “It is sacrilege!”
“We must give HER something to sustain the conception or the process will fail before it starts,” Saul snapped, impatiently. “Once he begins to feed he will not be able to stop HER from growing more powerful. Time enough for the blood of the innocent when she is come to the table, my brothers.”
Spike wondered what they were talking about and when they would go away and let him die in peace. He could feel a gaping emptiness inside as if an essential part of his being had been carved away. He knew he needed to feed but he couldn’t bring himself to drink from Dawn. He wanted to save her and himself but he didn’t have the strength to fight or even open his eyes.
He curled up in a ball and waited for Buffy to come or the empty feeling to consume him. Unseen hands lifted his shoulders and held his head. The lip of a silver bowl was pressed against his mouth and a draught of pig’s blood washed over his tongue. Convulsively, Spike swallowed the fluid down. Warmth spread into his limbs, strengthening him. The fog began to clear and he grabbed at the bowl to drink deep again.
“There now,” Saul’s voice spoke close by his ear. “Drink, blessed one, and let HER share in the bounty of this world. You are the vessel of rebirth, give HER your strength as SHE grows in your body.”
Deep inside of Spike, the empty place in his gut began to fill with the swirling embryonic consciousness of a new and hideous life.
________________________________________________________________________
At the exact moment that Spike took his first drink, Buffy wrenched open the training room door. The room was full of people. She registared the fact, looking at them in shock, barely recognizing Willow and Giles, before she was hit with an intense swirl of nausea. The world tipped drunkenly around her and she retched, sinking to her knees in the doorway. She felt as if something was sucking the life from her chest. A red mist blinded her and she struggled to focus through it.
“Buffy?” Giles’ voice cried out. As she raised her head blinking blindly toward him, he whispered, “Dear Lord…her eyes…”
“Yes," Quentin Travers’ said in grim measured tones. “It is as I feared. We are too late.”
"No, I w-won't believe it,” Giles said, his voice catching slightly. “How could she…WHY would she ever…" He hesitated, obviously assessing the evidence of his own eyes, before addressing his Slayer directly, "Have you been with Spike? Accepted him…his…seed?”
“She has taken blood,” Travers’ confirmed, dispassionately, as Buffy retched again. “His demon contagion has passed into the Slayer's body. Nothing we do can save her now.”
“Well, well, well B!” Faith commented, somewhere beyond Buffy's line of unfocused sight. “So you finally did the undead deed once too often? From what these Watcher freaks tell me, you got the morning sickness from Hell, Girlfriend." She came around to kneel before the fallen Slayer, adding nonchalantly, "I guess congratulations are in order.”
“Okay,” Buffy sighed, from her undignified position on the floor. “Vomiting, Travers and the psychotic bitch queen makes a house-call…this can not be of the good.”