9-20-02

Xander shuffled his feet and muttered a choice insult under his breath, hoping his restless scufflings were somehow reaching the ears of a certain annoying vampire. On the other hand, telepathic linkage—of any sort—with the Platinum Menace was definitely not of the good. Stuffing his hands deep in his pockets, Xander mentally reviewed the evening’s events while trying to make himself look innocent and unassuming to passerby.

While, after eating a burger I filled in a violated grave and acted as lookout while one of the century’s most notorious killers depleted the town’s blood supply. Perfectly normal stuff.

Xander pulled a hand tiredly through his hair. This whole operation stank like a rotten mackerel. He felt like apologizing to the pasty and injured-looking Sunnydalites coming in and out of the ER. Sorry, Mister. Apologies, kid. My friend’s inside, stealing your transfusion.

Xander jumped when a pale hand landed on his shoulder.

“Don’t do that!” he hissed, whirling on the hand’s owner.

Spike stood behind him, smirking. “Sorry. Next time I’ll scream a warning and attract all kinds of attention.” He pulled three squishy red bags from the depths of his duster and shoved them into Xander’s coat pocket. “Here. Carry these.”

Xander sputtered and tried, unsuccessfully, to give them back. “Gross much, Spike? Carry your own gross dinner, you freak!” He protested a bit too loudly, and a couple of passerby stopped and stared. Spike offered them a tight smile that was grinchy rather than friendly.

“Are you, like, Billy Idol?” The younger of the two asked him, in all seriousness.

The smile turned into a full-out leer. “No, but I ate a couple of his fans in ‘83.You look kind of tasty yourself.”

“Very smooth, ace.” Xander rolled his eyes as the teenagers fled, probably scarred for life.

“I liked it. C’mon, Whelp.” He grabbed Xander by the collar and towed him down the sidewalk. “My lady awaits.”

“Let go!” Xander squirmed away and cast Spike a resentful look. “I can’t believe I helped you sully Clara Barton’s good name.”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Harris. I did all the dirty work. John bloody Walsh isn’t goin’ to be flashin’ your bio anytime soon.”

Xander glared at the vampire as they left the hospital parking lot and walked toward Main Street. “I’ve spent too much time in your presence lately, Deadboy. It’s a habit I’d like to kick. With both feet.”

Spike snorted. “Fine. Hang out with the girlies. Listen to tampon disaster stories and eat Tofutti to your smarmy little heart’s content.”

Xander shook his head in disgust. “You possess a mind that is not merely twisted, but sprained.”

“Thanks, ever so.”

They were silent for a few minutes. Spike strolled. Xander simmered. Finally, he couldn’t stand the silence anymore. A night of pent-up fear and frustration bubbled over onto Spike, the marks on Buffy’s neck still fresh in his mind.  “Hard to believe you’ve got the hungries so soon after dinner.”

Spike stopped walking. “You got somethin’ to say, Harris?”

“Oh, I got plenty to say.” Xander faced the vampire angrily. There was little traffic at that time of night and the street was eerily silent.

Spike was half in shadow, his voice low and dangerous. “Well spit it out then, boy. Say whatever you have to right here, right now, before we get back.” He paused and calmly lit a cigarette, to Xander’s irritation. “I’ll listen to whatever ignorant crap’s been bumpin’ around in your brainpan, but breathe a word of it to Buffy and I’ll smash you into paste with Big Olaf’s hammer. Your spoutin’ off isn’t what she needs right now.”

Xander batted at the acrid fumes floating into his face. “And your using her as a wet bar is?’’ he asked bitterly.

Spike pinned Xander with a strange look. “Yeah. At that moment, it was everything she needed.”  

Xander rolled his eyes. “Great, just great. Joyce Brothers, move aside. Here comes Dr.

Spike with naked biting rehab.”

Spike sighed. “Wasn’t planned. Just happened.” He waved his cigarette at the sky, pinning responsibility for such cosmic events on the stars themselves. “And neither of us owe an explanation to the likes of you.”

Xander sputtered. “She’s my best friend! She’s Buffy. She’s—“

“—My lover, not yours.” Spike looked him straight in the eye, a rarity. “And she knows her own mind. Charging brontosaurus are more likely to change direction, once an idea’s fixed in her head.”

Xander glared at him, this sometime-ally slouched under a streetlight, draped in leather and smoke. Why do you haunt my life, vampire? Why do you have to be different than the rest? He was such a wild card, Spike, always following his own star, not safe to have at the center of your life. What was it about him that made the women in his life forget that fact? Xander was mystified by that question.

“So, she had to coerce you into it?” Xander asked in his most sarcastic voice

“You don’t know the half of it, mate.” Spike was silent for a moment, remembering their stormy confrontation, the insults they’d hurled, the glass she broken with her tiny fist. And, of course, the way it ended, with a decadent joining, a shattering of self. He sighed; such a tragic, erotic, never to be forgotten night, full of blessed moments and creeping horrors, each coming fast on the heels of another.

He tried not to think of Dawn, and what she’d done. His battered mind refused to grasp the situation fully, which was good, because he’d surely shatter. Instead, he thought of Buffy, always of Buffy, the one he could still save. Harris was still lobbing the hairy eyeball in his direction, and, suddenly, Spike felt very tired. He just wanted to hobble home with his broken ankle and his bruised heart, crawl into Buffy’s arms, and re-learn the nuances of her skin before he fell asleep.

Raising a placating hand, he turned to Xander. “I get it, Harris. You don’t approve. The situation would be of great concern to me if I gave a rat’s ass what you thought, one way or the other. ”

He started to walk away. Xander stayed on his heels, yakking away, and Spike clenched his fists to keep from punching the Whelp  in his doughy face.

“Stop!” Xander grabbed his arm. Spike wrenched it away and kept walking, growing more short-tempered with every step.

“Watch it, Whelp. I can bite you, remember?” They were passing the darkened Magic Box when Spike’s growled threat made Xander fall back a step.

“Angel!” he suddenly cried.

“Spike stopped and swung around, curious. “What about the dead poof?”

Xander waved an agitated hand in the air. “You’ve seen the scars, Spike. He almost killed her! How is this different from that, or from Dracula’s thrall? She’s like a chew toy for the undead!”

Spike crossed his arms. “Not that this is any of your business, Harris, but it is different. No gypsy tricks, no thrall. I’m not about to expire from hairgel poisoning, or whatever the hell the galloping geek had.” He paced back and forth on the sidewalk, not sure how to frame such a moment in words. “You know how it is when you’re lyin’ there with a bird, havin’ the greatest sex ever, sex so good you’re sure you’ll walk like John freakin’ Wayne until Easter, sex so bloody good that—“

Xander coughed dryly. “I get the picture, Spike. Make haste and skip ahead, before I hurl.”

“Right, right.” Spike’s duster whipped around his legs as he warmed to his topic. “Skipping ahead.”

“My stomach lining thanks you.”

“Would you shut up and let me talk?”

“Fine. I’m all lip-zippy.” Xander drew an imaginary key across his mouth and mimed throwing it into an alley.

“As I was saying, “ he cast Xander a very Gilesish look . “You know how it is when she’s on the edge, and you are too, and then it happens—“

“I can’t believe we’re talking about orgasms.” Xander interrupted, looking mildly ill.

“Don’t be such an old Aunty, Harris. I’m trying to explain.”

“Sorry. Keep going, if you must.”

“Well, she kind of closes her eyes and…goes away.” At Xander’s confused look, he amended that. “Not physically away, idiot. To some place in her head where you can’t follow. It’s like, in the middle of all that intimacy, you stand apart.”

Xander scratched his head. “Oookay. And this is related to the original topic in what way?”

Spike rolled his eyes like Xander was a moron. “When I bit Buffy, there wasn’t any space between us, not a shred of her wasn’t mine, not a whit of me wasn’t hers. I knew her, Harris, every sinew, fiber, and synapse.” He looked off into the distance, seemingly far away for a moment. “How many people can say that about their lovers? I mean, do we ever really know them at all?”

Xander wondered if he was thinking of crazy, broken Drusilla. He thought of his own lost loves, Buffy—she would always be the girl that got away—city-bound Cordelia, rebellious Faith. Anya. All gone from him, each in their own way.

“What I’m sayin’ is that it’s not about the hunger or the sex.” At Xander’s look, he hastily added, “Well, not totally. It’s about that moment in time, when she’s in your arms and in your blood and just…everywhere. It’s perfect and priceless and sad, because you know nothing will ever be that good again, you’ve been to the mountaintop. But it’s okay, too, because you’re not afraid of the descent, anymore.” He shook hi head in wonderment. “And that’s how love should be, I think. It should make you less afraid.” He looked over at Xander, whose eyes were as wide as tea saucers. “What?”

Xander stared at him, a tiny snort escaping his lips. “Holy Harlequin, Spike.”

Spike barked out a self-conscious laugh. “Yeah, I’m a git.” Grabbing a laughing Xander by the collar of his jacket, he resumed their trek down the street. “I’m also the luckiest son-of-a-bitch that ever unlived.”

“Ow! Leggo!”

Tara slipped onto the back porch, carefully shutting the screen door so it wouldn’t bang in the wind and disturb the silent figure slumped on the steps. She hesitated for a moment, biting her lip, not sure if she was overstepping the boundaries of a Scooby-by-proxy. No, that wasn’t fair. They weren’t unkind to her, ever. This group just resisted change, and who could blame them, when every lover and season and phase of the moon brought a new tragedy.

“Buffy?” Tara stepped quietly to the edge of the porch, shivering slightly as the wind snapped her skirt around her legs. It was cold for this time of year. Mabon, the Autumn Equinox, was still a month away. “Can I…can I get you anything?”

Tara relaxed. A small smile tugged at her lips as she settled next to the smaller woman, taking care not to overturn the steaming mug she’d brought with her from the kitchen. “Is that a request?” She held out the cup. “Sorry, all I brought is warm milk.”

Hot drink transfer complete, Tara continued. “But he’s on his way. Had to make a blood run, I think.”

Glad to see some of the tension leave Buffy’s shoulders, Tara tucked her feet up. Buffy and Spike fascinated her. She liked the yin and yang of them, their cosmic couplehood, the way opposites achieved balance. Buffy looked thoroughly loved these days, and she deserved that more than anyone Tara knew.

Buffy looked into the mug and gave the liquid within an experimental swirl. “What’s in it?”

“Boneset, for nerves. It will help you sleep.” Tara looked over at the Slayer and blushed slightly.

Dressed in one of Spike’s shirts, wearing his bite marks like a badge, smelling like earth and dusk as she sat on the steps, awaiting his return, this was Buffy’s statement to the world. Tara, a shy creature at heart, felt her cheeks warm, scorched by the sheer heat of a sensuous bond she respected, but could never fully fathom. Her love for Willow, timeless and serene, was probably equally mysterious to the more bombastic pair. But love was love, however it came to you, quiet or passionate, subtle or loud, most unexpectedly or a long time coming.

Buffy traced a finger around the mug’s rim. “I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.” She set the cup aside and wrapped her arms around herself tightly, resuming her hunched position.

Tara looked at her with compassion, noting the tear tracks and faint odor of cemetery grass clinging to her hands and feet. Buffy’s stoicism, her silence, said more than ashes and wailing. Tara wondered what powerful things she and Spike had said to each other while the others were off on a Doublemeat adventure. What was keeping her from flying apart right now? She thought of her own mother, buried in a rough pine box Donnie and the cousins hammered together in the barn one blazing mountain morning, her body a seed to nourish the few viable crops that flourished in hill country. Tara closed her eyes, remembering the scents of wood smoke and dandelion on funeral day, how her tights had itched and the bible pages curled in the wind.

What was it her Aunt Ruthie had said to the shrouded form?

“Journey on now, Sister. We’ll follow along as soon as soon as we can.”

Tara looked up at the moon, at a loss, for once, on how to comfort another human being. Empathy was one of her great talents. She came by it naturally; the women in her family were floorwalkers, veterans of the fever and colic wars, handy with herbs, needle and thread, but never really healthy themselves. She thought of telling Buffy about the moon, how it represented the Goddess and the phases of a woman’s life. It was almost full, tonight, plump and ripe, entering the “mother” stage of fertility and completeness. But it seemed wrong to say such things to a girl who would probably never reach the savanna of middle years.

Instead, she cleared her throat. “My mother died in the bed where I was born.”

The words popped out before Tara was aware of opening her mouth, but they felt important. Not very comforting, but they spanned the silence between Buffy and herself. Tara had never killed a lover, or lost a sister. She had never left heaven. But mother-loss she carried, in the very marrow of her bones.

Buffy stopped twisting the sleeve of Spike’s shirt and swung startled eyes over to Tara. “Excuse me?”

Tara just shrugged, knowing she’d been heard. Buffy fell silent again. A plane flew overhead, bound for the helipad, and Tara wondered what they looked like from above. To a stranger, they could be any two girls, sitting on the porch in their summer shirts, not extraordinary at all, not a witch and a Slayer, just Buffy and Tara.

Buffy broke the silence. “What was your mother’s name?”

Tara smiled. “January. She was a New Years baby.” She nudged the cooling milk toward Buffy. “Drink that, or your vampire will think I’m slacking off.”

Buffy turned the Sunnydale High mug in her hands. “I miss Giles.”

Tara nodded, propping her chin in her hand. “Right now, I miss his dad-ness. And his Scotch.”

Buffy whipped her head around. “Tara!”

“What? I never claimed to be a saint!”

Buffy’s tired, pinched face took on a welcome, mischievous, almost like her old self. “Spike has a bottle around here somewhere.”

Tara’s eyes gleamed. “Do we dare?”

“We do.”

***************************************************8

Willow leaned against the refrigerator, listening to the quiet rise and fall of voices on the back porch. The occasional scuff of feet punctuated the conversation, along with the unmistakable swish of  liquor swirling in a bottle.

Tara burped gently, and Bufft’s gentle scolding followed.

“Would you stop that? I’m telling a story, here! So, we stop off in Albuquerque so he can buy cigarettes, and, for some reason known only to God and man, we go in a K-Mart. He hops on a motorized cart---“

“Those are for handicapped people!”

“—And drives it down an aisle. Unfortunately, the wheel gets hooked on a rack of bras, spilling them all over him, the cart, the floor and your truly, who happened to be in lingerie looking at panties…”

Willow listened quietly, tears springing to her eyes. She loved them both so much it hurt.

“So what did you do?” Tara asked, amused.

“The only thing I could, yelled, “You can walk! It’s a miracle!”

Willow pressed her forehead against the fridge and closed her eyes. She couldn’t lose them, or Xander, or anyone else in this neurotic little group. There had to be a way to solve the Dawn problem without destroying Buffy. The memory of Glory was still fresh, her legacy alive—so to speak--in Dawn. Buffy was willing to let the world die for her magical sister, to unleash hell on earth, to condemn them all in the name of love.

Tell me to kill my sister.

We are not talking about this!

Buffy wasn’t going to save them. Willow knew it, and the Slayer herself probably did, too.

Willow blinked back tears. Tara, her Melpomene, gentle and soothing, with shades of Urania, the stargazer. What if Dawn killed her? She’d taken out Angel with terrifying ease.

There had to be a way to stop this.

Slowly, a plan hatched from her grief and worry, and Willow began to feel better, more like big gun Willow.

She’d do it tonight. Tonight…

Caught up in her thoughts, Willow nearly jumped through the roof when a hand landed on her shoulder, accompanied by a wave of upscale perfume.

“Gah!” She spun around, heart pounding like a snare drum, and came face to face with a curious Anya. “You scared me!”

“I’m sorry!” the former demon chirped. Years into her mortality, Anya still talked like a novice human, reminding Willow of a first-grader just learning her letters. “Were you eavesdropping?”

“No, I was just…”

“Listening in on a private conversation?”

“Yes!” Willow sputtered, “I mean no! I was just resting here. You know, taking a load off.”

Anya shrugged, clearly not believing a word of it. “Take it easy, Willow. There’s nothing wrong with being a buttinski. It’s the best way to learn about people.”

“No, it’s not.” Willow’s temples throbbed. Conversations with Anya were painful, like watching a train plow into a church bus full of school children in slow motion. They’d never got on, the two of them, always struggling over Xander, vying for his affections, haggling over who loved him more. Always, in the back of Willow’s mind, was the memory of how Anya had come to them, as a vengeful wish.

Anya sighed. “Obviously, you don’t want to bond—in a sisterly, not sexual way, of course—so I’ll just go.” She spun on her heel and started to flounce away.

Feeling unaccountably guilty, Willow reached out and grabbed her arm. “Listen, I’m sorry I was Miss Snappypants. Did you want something?”

Anya brightened, her emotions, as always, turning on a dime. “Chai tea. I had a craving. Do you have any?”

“Uh, I think so.” Willow opened the cupboard next to the sink and rooted around on the top shelf. “Success!” she pulled out a fragrant packet and held it for a moment before reaching for another.

Sisterly bonding with Anya wasn’t high on her to-do list, but it couldn’t hurt, with the gang in crisis. And maybe, if she drank the damn tea with her, Anya wouldn’t blab about the listening in on Buffy and Tara. Willow had hope, even if Anya being discreet was about as likely as No Smoking laws becoming all the rage in hell.

Willow leaned awkwardly against the counter while Anya filled the teakettle with water.

She wondered if they’d ever had a meaningful conversation before. Eye rolling and pursed lips and Xander running intervention, these were the things that the Willow and Anya truce was made of. They didn’t talk the girl talk, didn’t throw down on colds and cramps, menstrual cycles and mood swings. Willow wondered whom Anya had talked to, when all those things were new, strange and awful after centuries of vengeance.

Willow bit her lip, trying to think of a something to say that wasn’t mean. Anya tended to bring out her inner Cordelia.

“You like tea?” she finally asked. Not a deep topic, but a safe one. What on earth did you talk about with someone you’d seen for years, and didn’t know at all.

Anya nodded. “I had my first cup around 1675, in Holland. Tea hadn’t reached the Americas yet.”

Willow swallowed. “Wow.” Anya’s young face made it easy to disregard her history, her millennia of globetrotting rage. Willow tried not to think of what the woman standing next to her had done to countless men. Don’t ask, don’t tell, that was Scooby law when it came to Anya’s past. Their law, not hers, Willow suddenly realized. For the first time, she found herself curious about Anya.

“No Starbucks in Siberia, huh?” Willow watched her dump boiling water on the tealeaves.

Anya smiled. “No. No coffee houses; a lot of wolves, though.” She handed Willow a cup. “They had yellow eyes.”

Willow shivered, suddenly chilled.

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

Tara wasn’t much of a drinker.

Spike’s bourbon wasn’t even half-gone when she bailed, pleading queasiness. Getting to her feet, though, proved easier in theory than in execution.

“Is that hedge moving?” She wobbled and clung to Buffy.

“Probably,” Buffy agreed mildly. “I imagine something nasty’s probably hiding in there, waiting to kill us.”

“Oh, okay.” Tara managed to get the screen door open with effort.

Buffy shook her head. “You weren’t kidding. You really can’t hold your liquor.” She grabbed Tara by the arm and steered her through the kitchen, which smelled faintly figgy, like herbs. She noticed two mugs in the dish drainer. “Do you need help?”

Tara shook her head vigorously, and immediately regretted the motion when the earth tilted, threatening to tip her off completely. “I can do it.”

“If you say so.” Buffy looked doubtful. Tara ignored her and concentrated on climbing the stairs without falling down.

See, I did it. Tara congratulated herself as she staggered through the bedroom door, peeling her shirt off as she approached the bed. Collapsing face down on the quilt, she groaned in relief. Just before she fell into asleep, a hazy realization touched her mind.

Hey, this isn’t my room.

Quickly followed by—

I don’t have a room here, anymore.

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

Buffy lay in darkness.

It touched her at all points, from the tips of her toes to the top of her aching head. Someone, Willow, maybe, had thoughtfully pinned blankets up over the windows, and she was glad for the absence of light. The alcohol buzz was already fading, leaving her desolate, threatening more tears, and she didn’t want to see herself in any reflected surface. In the darkness, she was safe from her red, puffy, eyes, from her haunted face and hands stained green. She’d fallen leaving the cemetery, and clawed her way across the grass. That she remembered. The rest was a blur of hands and voices, steering her this way and that, mouthing words at her. Spike was there, grasping her arms, keeping her anchored to the world. When he left—where did he go—she just drifted.

Eventually, she’d found herself on the back porch without the foggiest idea of how she got there. And then came Tara, with her sad eyes and her goddess smile, making Buffy feel better—he’s on his way, she said—and worse—I’ve never asked her mother’s name, in all this time. Rolling onto her side, she squeezed her eyes shut, hugging a pillow that smelled faintly of peroxide and sex. It was a poor substitute, though, and she soon tossed it away.

Behind her closed eyelids, images scrolled by like running film from her vault of manufactured memory. Dawn in a thousand different poses, in a thousand different lights, with a thousand different looks on her flower face. Dawn smiling, Dawn crying, Dawn waving goodbye. Dawn on the verge of adulthood, Dawn as a knee-socked fourth-grader, Dawn behind the rails of her peach-scented crib, eternity’s child in footie pajamas. Milk and peaches, blood and crypt dust, ivory soap, these were the scents of Dawn’s life, drifting through Buffy’s consciousness. She couldn’t bear it.

Jumping to her feet, Buffy paced the length of the room. The silence that had been so comforting only a short time before had grown oppressive. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. Her throat was dry. She kept swallowing. The wind, whistling through the fist-sized hole she’d put in the glass that night, buzzing across her nerve endings.

Six long steps took her to the bed and back.

Six-five-four-three-two-one-reverse-

Recognizing the signs of a world-class panic attack, Buffy thought of getting Willow, or waking poor, blitzed Tara, then rejected the idea. She was embarrassed to be seen like this.

And she didn’t want either of them, as dear as they were.

Six-five-four-three-two-one-reverse-

Up and down, she paced, anxiety lacing every step. She couldn’t breathe. Mind, body, soul, heart, womb—they were all under assault, being crushed down by the giant weight of losses to great to bear. Acid and stones filled her stomach, leaving no room for breath, only ragged gasps. At least they filled the silence, the horrible, unbearable silence that stretched on forever, like death, like the sisterless years ahead.

Dead! She’s dead!

The pain was physical, a sucker punch to the gut that doubled her over like a gale force wind. She would have screamed if there was any air left in her lungs. She pressed her hands to her stomach, wondering if she was dying, too, of simple despair. Was such a thing possible?

Then, like a gift from—well, not God—but some more merciful deity, she heard scuffling in the downstairs hall, accompanied by the thump of heavy boots and a door slamming against the night. Mentally and physically exhausted, Buffy had just enough strength left to propel her body through the bedroom door.

“She up there?” His voice, all whisky and cinders, sent that delicious Spike-induced shiver up her spine. She completely missed Anya’s birdlike reply, so intent was she on getting to the top of the stairs before her ligaments turned to jelly. If she was indeed dying, he had the cells necessary for her restoration. He and no other.

Clinging to the banister like a fever victim, afraid her knees wouldn’t hold her, she felt vaguely ridiculous, and knew her wild hair and swollen face were less than wildly attractive. She also knew he wouldn’t care. He had, after all, seen her with her head in the toilet bowl only hours earlier.

The bathroom. Oh God.

The memory of those intimate hours before the cemetery came rushing back with sudden and ferocious force, taking her breath away. What he’d given her, what she’d given in return…the things they’d said. The barriers they’d broken, smashed through like flimsy walls on a long ago, never to be forgotten night. Sex had never been like that before, all bound up with identity and dreams, culminating in an earth-shattering exchange of life. There wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t hers, now.

The cemetery. Shit.

How quickly she’d fallen back into old habits, and left him in a heap on the ground.

A wave of guilt and recrimination swept over her, riding shotgun to an inexplicable and overwhelming need for the simple animal comfort of his presence, an undeniable yearning that was visceral and frightening in its intensity. At the first soft thud of his footfall on the stair her heart took off like a marathon runner, threatening to beat right out of her chest. Her mouth went dry. Her arms literally ached for him. Was this what it was like to be Spike, in love without shields or barriers? How did he survive? Could she? She wasn’t sure, but she knew she needed him right then—right then—when she was so shattered, needed him to make her feel strong by holding her like she wouldn’t break.

The scent of cigarettes and nightfall preceded him up the stairs, like she knew they would, and then he was there, one hand tiredly scrubbing through his hair as he made his way up the stairs. He froze at the sight of her, swaying in her Sushi pajamas, about to forfeit her death grip on the banister in favor of reaching for him. “The hell?” he muttered, eyes raking over her in alarm.

Buffy wasn’t sure if she fell forward or he covered the distance at light speed, but within seconds the world went black. For a moment, she thought she’d fainted, but the darkness, it turned out, was the leather of Spike’s coat, pressed against her face, allowing her the luxury of hiding her eyes like a child. The wetness on her face was tears, running all over them both as she kissed him like they’d been apart for years, holding his chiseled face between her hands in case he even thought of withdrawing before her senses were completely saturated in copper and smoke.

He made a raw gurgling sound deep in his throat and pulled her roughly to his chest, throwing them off balance, but she refused to surrender his mouth, only softening the pressure when she feared his lips might burst like cranberries. Her exhaled breath misted his face like rain, making things even more damp and sloppy. It was too wild of a kiss to be graceful—definitely not their best—but she didn’t care, because his hell-for-leather body was braced against hers, strong enough to keep them both upright through Dawn’s tragedy and whatever awaited them after that. She was not alone.

His hand crept under the hem of her tank top, trailing cold fire up the furrow of her spine and she was torn between leaning into that touch or tasting more deeply of his full, soft mouth. In the end, he made the choice for her by breaking away to drop kisses on her cheek and forehead, clumsily bumping her eye with his nose like a big, affectionate cat. “Buffy,” he murmured raggedly.

“Shhh, William.” She nipped at his lower lip before pushing him back just far enough to run her fingers through his moonlight hair. Her eyes roved over his features like they were a new discovery. “I just want to look at you.”

A cough interrupted the moment, and Buffy tore her eyes away from Spike long enough too look down the stairs. Willow stood in the shadows below, wringing her delicate hands.

“Buffy, are you alright?”

Closing her eyes, Buffy let her head loll back against one strong, leather-clad shoulder. “I am now, Will. I am now.”

TBC