I'll Fly Away

4-1-02

Part 7: To That Home

4-2-02

"Don't jerk it like that!"

"Would you shut up? I'm trying to concentrate!"

"Concentrate on not jerking it like that!"

"It's been jerked before!"

"You're going to rip it right off!"

"I'm going to rip something else off if you don't stifle it!"

The black car separated itself from the surrounding darkness, lurched twice, stalled, and crept forward again. The voices from within rose in pitch and agitation.

"Are you secretly still trying to kill me?"

"Can it, Spike. And the killing each other thing was your idea. You started it! 'I kill you on Saturday.' Remember?"

"Slayer, you can concentrate now…Oh! Guard rail! Hitting it!"

Buffy swerved back onto the blacktop, pulling at the Desoto's heavy clutch, ignoring Spike's mumbled prayer for deliverance. He clung to the leather seat, nervously eyeing the sheer drop to the sea that lay below.

Buffy was sitting on a balled-up jacket so her feet could reach the peddles, and her tongue stuck out the side of her mouth as she focused on the task at hand. Spike sighed in appreciation. Adorable.

But when she veered dangerously to the left, Spike's thoughts returned to the current crisis. After much cajoling, he had agreed to place their lives in her automotively challenged little hands.

"I think that's enough Driver's Ed for tonight, Ducks."

Buffy pouted, and Spike resisted the urge to kiss her right then and there. Her hands were, after all, still on the wheel, and, although he appreciated a good swim as much as the next bloke, that cliff was a little high for diving.

"Cheer up, Slayer. You did better than the Bit on her first lesson. She almost drove through the front window of the Baskin Robbins." He chuckled, remembering the horrified faces poised over their bubblegum-flavored single scoops and butter pecan sundaes, watching in utter stillness as the huge, hearse-like Desoto careened toward the glass. When everyone calmed down and business had resumed, Spike bought Nibs a cone for stopping so well, then let her drive home.

"You let Dawn drive this thing. There aren't even seatbelts!" Buffy was pulling off of the coast road. They lurched into a rest area, the old car complaining bitterly all the way. "Oh, you are going to be so sex-deprived by morning!"

The Desoto sighed in relief as Buffy cut the engine. "You're precious car is intact, fang-boy, so you can stop with the growlage." Buffy adopted Anya's happy, bird-like chirp. "Outside of sex, it is very ineffective!"

"I don't growl!"

Buffy banged the steering wheel with her palms. "You do! Like Cujo at a steak dinner. I much prefer the purring."

"I don't purr!"

She smiled at him, and Spike felt all the pilfered blood in his body zoom south. "Oh, but you do," she murmured.

Spike's eyes narrowed as Buffy leaped out of the car. Nearby, was a little grassy area dotted with picnic tables, backed by a line of trees. Their long branches waved softly in the night wind. The only light came from scattered lampposts. They were the only car in the lot.

Buffy turned at the edge of the green; crooked one finger at him. "Here, kitty, kitty…"

He climbed slowly out of the passenger seat, then closed the door with deliberate care. Buffy strained to see his face in the half-light, looked for signs of that desperate, love-starved creature that had bloodied the walls in his grief. She looked for the troubadour, the spear-carrier, the willing slave, but found they had been displaced by the dark prince, the wayward son, the most worthy adversary.

They were free to dance again. Such was her healing power. Such was his need.

Buffy turned and fled.

Not out of fear, he knew, but because she was Buffy Summers, the free soul, a strong woman who naturally resisted domination of any kind. Like a colt, she had to stretch her legs first, run free before the ultimate invasion of self.

Spike leaned against the car for a moment, listening to the trees sing like a Greek Chorus. But one eye was on her, waiting, watching. Always watching. When she stopped and turned, hands on hips, he pushed off and strolled toward the picnic area. He sauntered with a casual air, as if he were popping into the Circle K to buy smokes from Tiki.

Buffy saw him coming, leaped a picnic table, tossed her head like a buxom filly.

Oh, she was glorious. His thoughts skittered to the other women he had known, loved, or killed. None of them could touch her. Comparing those lesser females to her was utterly ridiculous, the bite of whisky versus the banality of water. Spike added some swagger to his stride--a little Nash Bridges, a dash of mobster--and pushed a cigarette behind his ear.

She read his body language and promptly jumped another table. Landing on the other side, she grabbed it by the edges and heaved the whole thing into his path.

Spike walked around it.

He was getting closer. Underneath the layers of leather and denim, his body had already responded to the chase. He hummed with the impatience of a cork-trapped wine, bubbled over with heat like Dawn's fish casserole. Next, she rolled a trashcan, hoping to slow him down. It went wild, veered off to his right. Spike shook his head and kept walking. Nice shootin,' Tex. The second barrel stopped about an inch from his toes.

Spike broke into a run and chased her, shedding his coat along the way. He cornered her behind a sapling, waited for her next move. She feinted left. So did he.

Breathless, he flashed her his most evil leer. "Who's the cat and who's the mouse here, Pet?"

She shrugged, tried to trip him with one dainty foot. "Does it matter?"

He shrugged back. "No, not really."

With that, he lunged around the tree and managed to grab up a squealing armload of Buffy. Just the touch of her skin on his sent a lash of pleasure across his body that was almost cruel in its intensity. She was laughing, breasts heaving with the force of expelled breath, but still playing to win. He had her arms pinned, so she tried for his crotch. He turned, and her foot glanced off his thigh. She squirmed and heaved, almost broke his hold. He solved the problem by backing her up against a little supply shed and pinning her to the side with his body. She kicked out, and--in a move she would compliment him on later--he used the moment to slide his legs inside hers. Then, before she had time to react, he lifted her off her feet. His muscled thighs held hers apart and their pelvises were flush against one another. He looked up at her, his golden girl, his muse, his Slayer, la belle dame sans merci. The beautiful lady without pity.

There was no crumbling ceiling above them, now, just a sky full of stars that set off her tawny beauty. Maybe the Slayer's other lovers had looked for themselves in her eyes. Spike had no reflection; he wanted to live in her hair.

Buffy's gaze cut through the gloom, found his, and held it.

"You haven't even come close to hurting me."

Spike gave her a cocky grin. "Afraid to let me try?"

Buffy shook her head. "Not anymore."

Spike didn't release her, just bent, jammed his shoulder into her midsection, and straightened. Dangling over his right shoulder, Buffy had unrestricted access to Spike's backside as he strode purposefully toward the picnic tables. He couldn't do anything about the half-hearted punches she landed on his butt. In fact, it was kind of sexy. So, he just anchored the backs of her knees more firmly and gave her bottom a hearty slap. She yowled and tried to bite him. Draped over his, she was burning hot, a fire gathering sparkage and threatening the neighboring counties. Her body was transforming, nipples pebbling, wet heat penetrating the layers of clothing between them. Dimly, Spike was aware of clothes dropping away as Buffy undressed while still upside down. She slipped her arms around his waist, began working at his belt buckle.

Spike nearly came right then.

He considered taking her right there on the grass--they'd done it in stranger places--but it was wet with the evening dew that comes before rain. There were many things he wanted to give her, but Pneumonia wasn't one of them. He remembered his youngest sister, who took a chill the year before he Turned. She went within a week--many did in those days--and the parlor smelled like candlewax and oleander on the day they laid her out. The whole age reeked of rosewater and loss.

When Spike turned her upright, his breath caught. She was flushed and red-faced, eyes glittering like the sparkly polish Dawn wore on her fingernails. Her clothes formed a rumpled trail in the moonlight. All that was left was her jeans, which she wriggled out of with the slithery grace of a cobra rising from the snake-charmer's basket. Her hands went to the straps of her panties, but he stopped her by placing his larger ones over hers. She looked at him questioningly. He grinned sardonically.

Spike laid her out on the rough boards like an offering, crawled over her like a puma in the barrens of some country where white men had never walked. He slipped his fingers under the fabric that covered places more sacred than any temple, more secret than any society, more dreamed-of than any heaven. Her head tilted back, then returned to meet his gaze fearlessly. Years ago, she would have looked away, but, now, it was okay to be this bare, this vulnerable. Her knees rose to cradle his hips, but he pushed them down, slipped her panties down her legs. Her hands were working at his jeans and he let her because he was, after all, only a man. She moved with the practiced air of a lover who knew the territory blind, and it drove him wild.

If his heart could have beaten, it would have been pounding in time with hers, keeping pace with his hands as they skated mercilessly over her body, from the tips of her breasts to the cage of her ribs, where his fingers hovered over the bruises left by a fight with giant elves in Fresno. That had been their one-and-only work related battle since roaring away from Los Angeles all those weeks ago.

He cursed elves as a people, vowed never to vote for one, and kissed every purple splotch before moving downward to the slick, wet heat of her. He looked up at her through slitted eyes, took note of her heaving form and the sweat pouring down her face. It dripped onto his skin, glued them together.

His voice flowed like dark honey. "Is this where I live now, Buffy?" Always, he had to have words. Spike was a talker, as if all those abandoned poems still lived in him and ached to come forth.

She barked out a sound somewhere between a moan and a sigh. "I think you always did."

Satisfied, Spike traced his tongue where she was swollen and sensitive, and she grabbed at the table slats, convulsing. A damp breeze swept over them as Buffy moaned "Oh, God, " and climaxed. The entire world had narrowed itself down to that picnic table in a seldom-used rest area that didn't even have a toilet. She pulled at Spike's shoulders, drew him up, ran her fingers through that moonlight hair, kissed him like she had in that long-ago dream, the one after Katrina, but before the alley.

She licked the shell curve of his ear, whispered into it. "Spike, I have to tell you something."

"Hmmmmm." He was concentrating on rocking against her leg, which was between his own.

"I think I love you." Well, slap my bottom and color me stunned. Spike opened his mouth to reply, or sing like a git, or upchuck in relief--he wasn't sure which--but Buffy had slipped under his arm. She was behind him now, whispering again.

"Let me show you."

She pressed him down onto the table and Spike didn't really care if he got splinters in his danglies, because Buffy might take them out with tweezers. She was kissing her way down his back, pressing her lips against the masculine ridges of neck and shoulder, lingering over the wing of a shoulderblade. Spike put his head on his folded arms, let her put her lips in places most women would never think of going. But Buffy wasn't like most women. By the time she'd reached the back of his knee, Spike had to have her or explode like the piñata at Dawn's last birthday party. Little girls with bats going after candy had to be one of the scariest things known to God and man. He'd been very proud.

They met on their knees in the middle of the picnic table, where blissfully ignorant parents would continue to set out lemonade, change diapers, and feed their kids Ring Dings and Ho-ho's.

Spike pulled Buffy onto his lap, entered her in one smooth thrust. His blunt teeth worried her shoulder as her body arched in feminine shock at the potency of the connection. They moved together, she oxygen, he hydrogen, the result--a devastating fire, As Spike came, Buffy sank her teeth into his chest.

And that was all she wrote.

He lost his balance and tumbled backwards, taking Buffy with him. They bounced off the bench, cracking it with their combined weight, and landed on the dewy grass in a tangle of naked limbs. They lay, there, panting, until Buffy tugged on Spike's curls. He raised his head.

"Spike, I have something else to tell you."

"What, Poodle?"

"I know I love you, now."

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

Somewhere north of them, at about the same time, Dawn Summers lugged her heavy carry-on through LAX, following her father's rapidly moving back as he moved through the crowds of travelers. She hadn't seen much of him during their time in Japan, which had stretched out to encompass most of June and July. He was always rushing here and there, barking into his cell phone, and rushing off for power breakfasts. Dawn had been invited to exactly one of these meetings, where angry-looking men in suits yelled back and forth in rapid-fire Japanese, making a startled Dawn knock over her egg-cup. Her Father had glared at her before rejoining the screaming match.

Dawn hiked her bag higher and tried to keep up. "Ummm…Dad?"

Hank turned, cell phone pressed to his ear. "What is it, Dawn?" Dawn thought it must be sewed to his head.

"Could you, like, slow down? High school's over. I'm not on the track team anymore." Dawn smiled. Spike would have appreciated the pithiness of that remark.

"I'm in a hurry, Dawn. I have important business." He turned and moved away, faster than ever.

Dawn raised her voice, fed up and frustrated. "Obviously you're unable to assimilate the concept of me NOT BEING ABLE TO KEEP UP into your blighted and retarded world view!" Oh, Spike would have appreciated the sheer rudeness of that one.

Hank hesitated for a second before hurrying on, shaking his head. Dawn sniffled, trying not to cry. She liked being a world-traveler, but felt a little misty for the Hellmouth, for her friends and her tiny whacked-out family. She wondered what interesting creatures had popped up while she was gone.

She could go home, she supposed. Willow was there.

Dawn's half-a-dozen phone conversations with Willow had all led her to the inescapable conclusion that Buffy and Spike had beat feet out of Sunnydale sometime after she left. Willow's explanations for their continued unavailability had grown progressively wilder as the weeks went on. Dawn was seventeen, not dumb. She did not believe that Buffy had taken up bird watching in the Sierra Nevadas. The only birds Buffy watched were under cellophane at the supermarket. Nor did she accept that Spike had taken up downhill slalom skiing and moved to Norway to pursue his dream of winning gold.

Willow was a very bad liar.

Dawn inhaled the sweet summer air as she emerged from the airport, and let the breeze lift her hair. At least some things never changed.

Despite everything, it was good to be home.

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

Late that morning, Buffy awoke from another dream of coffins.

She sat there, blinking in the dim light. The curtains were shut firmly against the sun's rays. Finally, she bent over the still, pale form curled next to hers. The covers bunched at the small of his back, which, she had discovered, still tasted like sea-salt.

"Spike." She shook him.

'What is it, Love?" He blinked up at her.

Buffy bent down, kissed his shoulder. "I think we should go home."

She expected protests, maybe violence. Instead, he just yawned and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. "Okay."

Buffy stared at him. "Why?"

He shrugged sleepily. "Sunnydale is home. It's about time we took this party back where it belongs."

Buffy nodded. The Hellmouth. It called to her with every breath. She felt it in her blood.

It always came down to blood.

TBC-