Buffy awoke with a jerk, slayer senses on red alert. Oh God, Something in the house, Glory it's got to be Glory Jesus she's coming after Dawn I can't protect her. . .rolling over at roughly the speed of light, she began scrambling underneath the bed for the broadsword she'd always kept there in case of sudden attacks by night creatures.

"Shhh, Buffy, it's just me."

Buffy halted mid-scramble, pushing her hair out of her eyes. Oh great--her own personal night creature had decided to pay one of his less-than-timely visits. "Goddamn it, Spike! That was really stupid, sneaking up on me like that. You almost wound up minus a head."

Spike leaned against the partially open window, crushing the miniblinds in the process. In the pale blue moonlight he looked unearthly, ghostly rough trade made out of cobwebs and shadows. Rebel Without A Pulse, she thought, smiling grimly to herself.

He ignored her anger and focused on what lay beneath it, something he was getting really good at, she'd noticed. "Don't worry, you weren't in danger of dusting me. The broadsword's gone--Willow moved it downstairs with the rest of the big weapons after. . ." He paused. Buffy had also noticed that he only referred to her death indirectly or through euphemism, like a dirty secret. Buffy thought of Victorians covering chair legs with skirts and wondered when thoughts of her demise had become so obscene to her former nemesis. But it was best not to focus on that. That way led to confusing thoughts. She ran nervous fingers through her tangled hair, wincing slightly at the knots which pulled at her scalp. She'd gone to bed with it wet and it probably looked like a rat's nest by now. Best also not to focus on why she was worried about looking messy in front of Spike, either, and zone in on the issue at hand. "Well, that was even stupider. You never know what's going to come in here."

Spike crossed his arms and regarded her with one of those proud smirks that he usually graced her with after she'd made a particularly deft staking. "What, come in the Slayer's room and start trouble? Not likely. The only one who might have tried that was Glory, and you sent her to hell. A different hell from the one she was used to, hopefully." He paused and looked at her, cobalt eyes widening slightly in understanding. "You thought it was Glory, after your sis again. I wondered what you were dreaming about. You've been tossing and turning for the longest time."

"You were watching me sleep?" Buffy stared at him, not sure at all how to feel about his latest admission. The crawly sensation she'd had when he'd come into her room to clue her in about Riley's vamp whores was definitely missing, though.

Spike's smirk deepened. "Well, you looked so cute lying there all comfy in your fish jammies. I hated to disturb you." His eyes roved over her with the predatory expression she remembered from his human-hunting days.

Buffy glanced down at herself. She'd been so tired after her shower that she'd reached for the nearest dry clothes and collapsed into bed, said clothes happening to be a thin white baby t-shirt and her yummy sushi pajama bottoms, which she'd cut off short last year when the hems began to fray. She'd also neglected to put on a bra, she realized. Feeling vulnerable and a little bit trashy, she scooted back against the headboard and hugged a throw pillow to her chest, shielding her upper half from further scrutiny. "Why disturb me in the first place? What are you doing here?" she said as evenly as possible, given the adrenals still pumping through her system.

The self-protective move wasn't lost on Spike, but for once he let the chance for easy innuendo go past, instead ambling over to the bed and sitting down on the edge of it near her feet, invading her carefully demarcated personal space. "I thought we needed a bit of a chat, you and me," he said reasonably. "With the Niblet's trouble yesterday we didn't really get a chance to hash all this out." The patented Spike smirk had disappeared, and for once he looked sincere, almost vulnerable.

Which made Buffy even more uncomfortable, if that were humanly possible. Sarcastic, nasty Spike she could handle. Sincere Spike looking at her with soft blue eyes that were making her insides feel all swirly, and talking about what had happened like it was the start of a real relationship between them was too surreal to even begin to process. Harsh reality check time once again. "There's nothing to hash out, Spike," she said, lifting her chin but refusing to meet his gaze. "Because there is no you and me. The other night was a big mistake. I don't even want to think about it, much less discuss it."

Spike's face hardened instantly into his usual sharp, sly look. "I see. That kiss in the alleyway didn't mean anything, that night at the Bronze was just a distraction, and six hours of sweaty, raging, shake-down-the-house shagging was some sort of momentary fugue, is that it, Slayer?"

Buffy looked down at her hands, which were lying clenched in her lap. She really needed a manicure, she thought. Clawing at diamond-hard undead flesh in the heat of unholy passion and then fighting magicked-up demons in dark alleys was murder on the cuticles. She knew her mind was wandering again but everything else was so mixed up, why not her thinking? She felt tired, so very tired at that moment. Maybe it was time to quit fighting it and simply 'fess up. After all, telling him he was a much-needed antidote to shock and numbness, the sexual equivalent of a good hard slap in the face, wasn't much more flattering than calling him a convenience.

"Life has been so strange, since I came back," she said wearily. "Everyone is different, everything just feels wrong." She felt tears prickle her eyes, knowing she must look weepy and stupid but for once not caring. She needed someone to understand how odd she felt, someone to get it--even him. Especially him. "I walk around, you know, I do things, I try to pay bills and find a normal job, and. . .and keep Dawn from spontaneously combusting into a gigantic flameball of teenage rebellion. I do laundry, and see my friends and keep the streets of Sunnydale clear of the latest horrors that have decided the Hellmouth is a really cool party town. And everything. . .everything hurts, just getting from moment to moment is painful, but at the same time nothing registers, you know? I feel bleached out all over, all the time, except. . ." she trailed off, hoping Spike's usual piercing insight could fill in the blanks.

As usual, he didn't disappoint in the mind-reading department. "Except with me. . ." he said, his tone half-statement, half-question. His face was corpse calm, and for once she couldn't read him. But in this moment of absolute stillness she was struck again by his razor's edge beauty, all planes and pitiless angles, sinuous muscles under marble skin, lithe lines drawn in stark shades of black and white and midnight blue. She had wondered the first time she'd ever seen him how a creature so beautiful could also be so vicious. It was a question that still haunted her.

Spike's paralysis broke after a moment, in the most maddening of ways. One cool, firm hand reached over and began exploring the sensitive skin of her right ankle, slowly working its way up past her knee towards the danger zone of her inner thigh. Buffy shut her eyes to block out the intensity of his gaze, biting her lower lip hard enough to taste blood in her efforts to remain still. This would be so much easier if she could just freeze him out, show him that she could be as indifferent to him as she was to everything else. But something about him constantly cut through her defenses and stripped her bare.

"Slayer. . ." The way the vampire's London drawl caressed the syllables of her given title always made it sound like a slightly obscene endearment. "Look at me," he said, his tone soft but urgent. His fingers had reached the lower edge of her shorts and were teasing around the hem, making the small muscles underneath the skin there quiver involuntarily.

Looking at him under the circumstances was the last thing Buffy wanted to do, but it would be really dumb to sit there with her eyes all screwed up, like she was afraid of what she would see. She slowly opened her eyes and met his gaze almost defiantly. There was no anger in his face, but no pity, either. His eyes burned with the soft, hot glow she knew from other nights.

"If that's true," he whispered in the same low, breathless tone, "then you need me, Summers, and you need this. . ." the vampire underlined his pronouncement by slipping his hand under her pajamas, caressing her already wet and throbbing center through the fragile cotton of her underwear. This would probably have been a good time to twist away or punch him or at least say something really cutting, but the slow, pulsating heat his touch was kindling in her veins made her suddenly languid. "If it's the only thing that's bringing you back to life, then you shouldn't run away from it." Long, elegant fingers gently pushed aside the damp fabric and slipped inside her, zeroing in on the place that always turned her brain to pudding. Without breaking rhythm, he leaned over, lips directly against her ear. "Unless, that is, you want to feel dead," he said, beginning to remove his hand from where she suddenly, desperately needed it to be.

Quicker than thought, Buffy gripped his wrist and held his hand in place. She could feel him smile against her skin. "I didn't think so," he said, starting that delicious rhythm once again. Reaching deep inside her, he found a sweet spot that was half-dizzy pleasure, half-darkling pain, hitting it again and again until Buffy thought she would pass out from sheer overstimulation. He was going to kill her if he didn't stop. She was going to kill him if he did. She could feel a tingling beginning in all her extremities, the sparkling buzz at the crown of her head and the tips of her fingers and toes that signaled the beginning of a truly spine-melting orgasm. At that moment, his searching mouth, which had been exploring the soft skin beneath her right ear, bit down hard on the lobe, and even with blunt teeth the feeling was enough to push her over the edge. She came with a strangled shout, the orgasm washing over her in a tsunami of sensation that left her trembling all over. God, this wasn't healthy.

Spike was undressing now, all cool efficiency as he stripped, his impossibly pale skin striped with darkness by the moonlight streaming in through the miniblinds. He was staring at her again, with that strange, calm look he'd had on his face earlier when she'd told him why she needed him. Buffy tossed the useless pillow shield to one side--a lot of good it had done her--and quickly skinned out of her t-shirt, shorts, and now rather sodden underwear. He'd just given her another skull-splitting orgasm in what had to be a world land-speed record--what was the use of playing coy at this point? Now as naked as he was, she leaned back on her elbows and returned his gaze. He smiled slightly at her sudden lack of shyness, but then his face grew serious again.

"Turn over and get on your knees," he said, his voice as calm as his face, but with a note of command in it she'd never heard before. Under any other circumstances, the do-as-I-say-she-creature tone would have had her fingers itching for something wooden and pointy, but right now it flooded her with that same warm lassitude she'd felt earlier when his hand staked its claim on her inner thigh. Don't have to think. . .don't have to worry. . .just let him take over and everything will feel right, if only for a minute. And turn your brain off before you examine that last thought too closely and ruin the rest of the night.

For once taking her own advice, Buffy quit ruminating and followed orders, clutching the iron bars of the headboard to balance the awkwardness of the position. She felt rather than heard Spike move into place behind her, since the beating of her heart in her ears was drowning outside noise. They'd done this the other night in the abandoned house, splinters and plaster shards grinding into her knees as he ground into her. The luscious degradation of letting him take her from behind on a filthy basement floor had added further tang to the shameful delight of having him in the first place.

This was different, however, she mused as his hands smoothed over her back with the same possessive caress she remembered from their collision at the Bronze. This was her own room, sweet with pastels and postcards, stuffed animals and pictures of her friends, everything as smiling and innocent as a Pottery Barn catalog. What did it mean that she had let Spike invade this, her inner sanctum of normalcy? His hands had found her breasts, and were tweaking her nipples with a force that was kissing cousin to brutal, and she felt the lush weight of his cock bumping against the cleft of her ass. This really shouldn't be happening on top of her grandmother's heirloom quilt, she realized.

Then he entered her in one swift movement, and she couldn't think about anything except the feel of him filling her, the angle of their bodies letting him so far inside that it was like losing her virginity all over again. Different time, different vampire, same soul-deep pain, pain that stunned, pain that clutched at something profound and elemental inside of her, but pain that felt so very, very good. Buffy gripped the headboard harder, the cold iron biting into her hands. "Don't. . .don't stop," she panted.

"No, I won't stop," he replied, the calm surface of his voice breaking, sounding almost as ravaged as she felt. "I won't ever stop." He pulled out of her almost completely and then entered her again with exquisite, excruciating slowness, then repeated the process again and again, a little faster each time, until he was slamming into her full force. The intensity of it was too much, far too much, and not quite enough. She pushed back at him, needing him deeper, harder, faster, anything to help him reach that numb center of frozen feeling at her heart's core and bring it to life, if he had to rip her in two to do it. He was bending over her now, his unneeded breath sounding in her ear, and she felt the familiar ping at the back of her skull that told her a vamp in full demon mode was perilously close. She could feel his fangs grazing the humid skin at the curve of her neck, skating over the crescent-shaped memento of Angel's deepest kiss. The hardened, pearly flesh there was suddenly burning, as if the skin remembered and cried out for what her brain had so desperately tried to forget. He was still pounding into her, with a smooth, serpentine brutality that would have broken a normal woman, but had her almost sobbing with sheer need. She was tottering on the dizzy ledge of release, helplessly caught between anticipation and fulfillment, her climax sparking but refusing to burst into flame.

In that moment of utter desperation she knew what she needed to send her over, longed to feel his teeth slide into her with the same ruthlessness as his cock, filling her up, drinking her in, burning away the icy darkness that still clung to her like a shroud. She opened her mouth to make the fatal request, when Spike, somehow sensing her distress, dug his nails into the smooth flesh of her flanks, scoring her like the predator he was. The extra charge of sensation was enough: the orgasm ripped through her with the merciless force of a lightning bolt, and Buffy, sagging into the pillow with the cold weight of her lover still pressing into her back, could almost hear deadened synapses crackling to life. I am Frankenstein, hear me roar, she thought giddily. Grrr, Argh.

Withdrawing from her carefully, Spike reached forward and gently pried her cramping hands from where they still clung to the headboard. Turning her on her back with the same care, he stretched out beside her on the bed, propping his head in one hand and watching as her breathing returned to semi-normal. "Feel better, love?" he said with cat-like smugness, his face already smoothed out to its normal, deceptively innocent human lines. He looked like a choirboy who knew a little too much about the parish priest.

Buffy stretched, flexing her stiff fingers. "Feel something," she said breathlessly. "That's a start." She was still gasping, deep wracking pants that were as much fear as afterglow. She'd been ready to beg him to bite her. That was so far up on the dysfunctional scale there wasn't even a mark for it. She would have fled again out of sheer panic, but since her bathroom was only about fifteen feet away, the gesture probably wouldn't have the same weight. Plus, she wasn't sure her knees would hold her up, at this point.

The fleeing bit was useless anyway, no matter where she was. What kind of sanctuary did even her own bedroom really offer? This ice-cream colored room had played host to a gaggle of nightmares, from misguided possessed puppets to interdimensional banshees: underneath the scent of vanilla perfume and lilac air freshener the rank odor of fear and death always lingered. Here, Angelus had crept in, stalking her with his insane medley of love and hatred, leaving her his poisonous little mash notes. Dracula had misted his way into her dreams and into her jugular while she slept in this very bed. Even Riley had lain here dreaming of his undead call girls while holding her in his arms. Spike should be as comfortable here as he was in his own crypt--this space was no less deathly, no matter what either of them might like to believe. Her room was like her life: cotton candy cuteness interlaced with creeping horrors, the pastel fabric of her existence soaked through with inky black in every fold. So why try to run from the darkness anymore? The only thing she could do was balance it with the light as best she could.

The problem was, she wasn't sure how Spike tipped the scale. The fact that he clearly wanted to drink her but hadn't, seemed actually to be waiting for some kind of tacit permission, was a sign in his favor. The teasing around Angel's mark was a relatively subtle move from this most direct of beings--obviously, he understood the implications as well as she did, and didn't want to push her too far, too fast. Though Spike might be impetuous to the point of self-destructiveness, he wasn't stupid. His uncharacteristic hesitation underlined how big a deal this really was, and she had been so close to simply closing her eyes and taking the big plunge off the high-jump. But one suicidal swan dive was really enough for this year.

And this whole thing would be so much easier to work out if he didn't keep touching her all the time.

Spike was running his hands over her, lightly skimming her arms and chest and stomach, the gesture soothing rather than possessive this time. He was gazing at her still, his eyes doing that incandescent blue thing again, and in this unguarded moment there was so much love and longing in his gaze that she could hardly bear to look at him. He leaned over and began to nuzzle her neck, a sweet gesture she'd remembered Riley making, though the effect was somewhat different when it was a vampire near where the blood rushed so close to the surface. He didn't try to use teeth, though, not even the shadow of a nibble, seeming content for the moment to simply be near her in this tenderest of ways.

Buffy could feel the familiar throbbing begin in her softest and most vulnerable areas, and in a way that was even more disturbing than her sudden bite-fetish. Spike slamming into her, taking her over, even making her long for the deepest, most intimate kinds of pain they could inflict on each other, was locatable in the twisted landscape of their connection. This thing between them was unhealthy, unnatural, and hence all succeeding trauma and perversion understandable. But these rare moments of quiet, when his demon dove deep under the surface and she saw the remnants of the man he had been adoring her, undid her in a fundamental way. She could accept his rage but not his gentleness.

Too much mental pacing, Buffy, she thought, exasperated with the endless loop-de-loops her brain always did over The Spike Thing. Try to rivet on the basics. Night young. Vampire pretty. She felt the hard evidence of his unsatisfied need prodding her hip, and it occurred to her that she owed him a pleasant hurt or two after the way he'd just bossed her around, a much more cheerful focus than maundering over the impossibility of this whole situation. Putting her supernatural reflexes to use, she pinned him to the bed with one fierce motion, his slim wrists trapped under her hands, his narrow hips caged between the slender steel trap of her thighs.

"My turn to drive," she said, smiling down at him with the same lethal cheerfulness she flashed at demons on the wrong end of her stake.

"Just be careful shifting into third. . .you tend to be a bit hard on the equipment," he replied. The sly, salacious grin was back on his face--the heat between them could have melted titanium.

"No way," she said, punctuating her pronouncement with a not-so-subtle move of her hips that made him clutch helplessly at the bedspread. "Stripping the gears is half the fun."

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