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Fic: Life in the Present Tense
Continuing the tradition (established last year) of posting fic on my birthday. Yay!
[ETA] Aaaand the title is changed. Sorry for any confusion!
You know, for someone who's madly obsessed with the idea of post-NFA fluffy Spuffy domesticity, I sure don't write very much of it. Let's rectify that, shall we?
Title: Life in the Present Tense
Fandom: Buffyverse
Characters/Pairing: Buffy/Spike
Timeline: post-NFA, ignores the comics
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angearia for the quick read through. The summary quote comes from Patty Griffin's "Forgiveness."
Summary: "Open your eyes, boy, we made it through the night." This is Buffy, creating a life of her own choosing—with Spike’s help.
They spend the first few days in bed (and no they don’t only have sex, thank you very much. There’s crying and teasing and really, really loud arguments and cuddling and laughing and lots and lots of talking. And okay, yes. A ton of sex. Really good sex).
Night three and Dawn’s tired of being ignored. So after an overly loud knock and an exaggeratedly disgusted announcement that she’s coming in and they better have clothes on (they don’t, but it doesn’t take them long to tug them on), she stalks into the room and plops down in between them on the bed and says, “Time to pay attention to me now.”
And Buffy’s not usually the sentimental type, but being all safe and warm with the two people she needs (read: loves) most in the world is kind of perfect.
--
It’s been years since she spent hours just kissing, just for the pure pleasure of it, but he’s eager to reacquaint her with the joys.
--
They sneak into the Coliseum after midnight. It's August, and the moon is almost full, like a big wheel of cheese with just the edge shaved off (she lives in Italy now. Cheese is often on her mind).
It’s beautiful by moonlight, and she can believe in the ancientness of it in ways she can’t when surrounded by crowds of sunscreen-scented, picture-taking, socks-and-sandals-clad tourists. (And then there’s the moonlight. She always thought of herself as a sunshine girl, but somewhere along the way, she started to belong to the moonlight just as much. It makes things beautiful and strange in ways she never could have imagined in her life before the Hellmouth).
They play hide-and-seek behind massive piles of rocks and underneath arches, darting through moonlight and shadow and trying to keep their laughter quiet enough that they don't alert the night guard. Buffy does cartwheels across the sand, and pretends that it's the same sand that soaked up the blood of gladiators and martyrs and that she's reclaiming it (for life). They lay on their backs, her head on his shoulder, and watch the stars within the circle of the stone, and it looks like a bowl full of sky.
--
He blasts his awful punk rock—the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks and The Clash, The Voidoids and the Minutemen, Chelsea and The Damned—singing along and drumming his fingers against the counter in time. She tries to get revenge by singing along with Beyonce, but it backfires (he loves it, hooting with laughter and demanding that she do it again).
--
He orders pizza with extra garlic, despite her complaints, and then he teases her (till she blushes and shoves him away) about that time she tried to use it to keep him away (she tries to remember what that was like, sitting curled into herself on her bed, lights off, dozens and dozens of bulbs of garlic gleaming in what little of the moonlight could slip in between the shades; the smell, the overwhelmingness of it, just one more reminder that she's here and she's not getting out. She tries to remember what it was like to be that miserable, lonely and constantly cold and full of self-loathing and resentment, but she's so far past that place now that she can't even touch it).
His breath smells foul and she knows hers does, too, but she lets him kiss her anyway (and that feels more like intimacy than anything they shared during that year of hell back in Sunnydale).
--
She starts to find pieces of paper, balled up and scribbled on, in the trash can. She (smiles or cries or blushes as she) reads every one (and saves them).
--
The sewers here are so different than in California—ancient or antique or merely old, depending upon where you are in the city—but the smell is the same, and the Roman sludge can ruin her new shoes just as easily as the California variety did. Still, there’s something so homey, so familiar about trudging her way through them, Spike by her side, weapons in hand. Something so right about slicing and dicing and making julienne demon and knowing that one less person may die because of what she just did.
And something about emerging again into the soft air of the Roman night that feels a little bit like rebirth.
--
Her hair’s grown out past her shoulder blades now, split ends galore, and she considers cutting it, maybe changing the color, but it’s far more fun to let him talk her out of it. She gets a trim instead.
--
She climbs out the(ir) bedroom window and sprawls on the roof in the afternoon sun, decked out in coconut oil and a turquoise bikini, prepared for some serious relaxing. But she props her chin up on her hands and gazes inside through the open window. He's sitting in the corner in the shade, scrawling in a battered notebook and occasionally glancing up at her with a soft smile (if he thinks her eyes are closed behind her sunglasses) or a dirty leer (if he thinks she's watching him—she’ll never be able to convince him that his reputation was shot long ago).
When the sun finally sinks below the jagged horizon of a million Roman rooftops, he climbs out to join her.
--
One night he and Dawn spend five and a half hours figuring out how to fry an onion into one of those blossom things he loves so much. The house smells like onions and oil and burnt things for three days.
--
It’s not that she really minds bumping into him whenever she turns around (“whenever you look up, there I shall be—and whenever I look up, there will be you,” he quotes with a grin) but they really do need more room to accommodate their growing weapons collection (and her shoes, too), and Dawn’s tired of sharing her room whenever anyone comes to visit, so they go apartment hunting.
It feels scarily grown-up (this is the first time she’s done this—Giles had arranged for the last apartment, and even though her DMP paycheck went toward mortgage payments, she still felt as though the house wasn’t hers: she was keeping it safe for her mother) and domestic (asking Spike his opinion, and taking Dawn’s into consideration, and yes, Spike keeps making white picket fence jokes), following the realtor through so many apartments that they all start to bleed together.
But they find the right one, finally (big but not too big, a good view, close sewer access so that Spike can get around during the day, lots of closet space, a large enough kitchen to accommodate Dawn’s experiments, a pampering-perfect sort of bathtub, and an extra bedroom for guests), and Spike makes more I-ate-a-decorate-once jokes (their way of healing: joking about things that used to hurt) as they settle in, and there are pictures of their friends on the walls and blood in the fridge and the weapons chest at the foot of their bed, and it’s home.
--
The best thing about Giles being the head of the Council now is the paycheck that arrives every month with her name printed on it boldly (sometimes she tears up a little when she sees it, but Spike doesn’t tease her about it, just says, “It’s about bloody time,” and that’s another reason she loves him).
--
She’d forgotten just how angry he can make her, the tension building in her shoulders and behind her eyes, and the urge to pummel him tightening her fists (she won’t. Not again: not ever. She never wants to even visit that place, that person that she was. But still, the urge is there). She’d forgotten how much his snarkiness infuriates her (and he always seems even snarkier than usual when they’re fighting), how that sneer twists his face into something she can barely recognize, how much he can hurt her (she’s just as insecure as he is, in her own way). She’d forgotten how shrill and loud her own voice can get, how cruel her own words can be, how anger grows like a shell around her, hardening her, tilting her chin back, making her treat so casually something she usually views as precious.
She’d forgotten how loud a slamming door can be, no matter who’s doing the slamming (she doesn’t know what’s worse—when he walks out or when she does). Forgotten how empty her bed can feel, how cold her life is when he isn’t around to make her laugh and tease her into growing. Forgotten what it feels like to wait alone, scared he won’t come back, or to stride through the streets of Rome, not sure whether she can bend her pride enough to head back home.
(But she’d also forgotten how her smile can stretch so wide that it hurts when they make things right again—and how good makeup sex can be, so there’s always that).
--
She'd thought that nothing in the whole world could taste better than stracciatella gelato, but that was before she licked it off of Spike's skin.
--
She goes back to Slaying in little skirts and stiletto-heeled leather boots (Spike beside her and still, mostly, in black and peroxide), and some nights she goes dancing before, and some nights she goes dancing after (she’d always known that Spike could dance like that—they never danced before, not literally, but from all their metaphorical dances, she knew he would be her perfect partner).
Rome has some of the best shopping she’s ever seen, and she drags Spike along with her, gleefully making him carry her bags (but he doesn’t complain, because she models everything she tries on just for him, and she grants him veto power). She buys his clothes, too, because he can’t be bothered, and though she mostly sticks with basic black (she rolls her eyes, but it makes him happy), she’s slowly introducing color back into his wardrobe—some navy, olive green, deep red, and now and then a brighter shade.
(Her closets fill up, and it’ll never stop being funny, seeing his black t-shirts sharing drawer space with her slinky underthings, his beat-up old boots tucked in between her gold heels).
--
He hogs all the blankets, and even sleeping turns into a battle over covers (but it’s better—so, so much better—than sleeping alone, so she doesn’t really mind).
--
The Slayer schools are in Cleveland and London, and Faith and Giles are doing a great job of running them, and Buffy thinks that maybe someday she’ll join them, but for now they sometimes send a girl or two to Rome, a girl who’s more scared or more angry or more lonely than usual, and between Buffy’s serious guidance (she’s getting better at being soft, getting better at saying, “I know how you feel” and meaning it) and Spike’s teasing training (nobody knows Slayers like Spike knows Slayers) and Dawn’s constantly deepening Watcher-skills (how many languages does she speak now? More than Buffy could probably name), they turn the girls into Slayers (and into family).
--
He disappears some nights and either returns drunk or with a trinket in hand—a pink pashmina scarf, a beautifully simple dagger, a bottle of wine—and she never asks where he was, just as he never mentions the nights she spends wandering through ancient Roman graveyards (they both know the value of alone time).
--
He and Dawn team up to convince her that they need a Vespa, and the two of them together have always been just about the only thing that can defeat her so absolutely. She agrees with a profound sigh and pretends to be grumpy, all the while hiding her smile behind the scowl as they launch into a weeks-long argument about the color (Spike absolutely insists on black—the only color for a motorbike. Dawn wants pastels—mint green or pale pink or sky blue or yellow. Do they even make yellow?).
They finally settle on classic red and Buffy will never admit to loving zipping through the strata (is that the only Italian word Spike knows?) as much as the other two do.
(But she does.)
--
She likes nights spent at home, bad TV and good pizza and sharpening weapons together (maybe this is her reward for all those years of sacrifice).
--
Giles calls, and it’s another apocalypse, and off they go, bound for snowier landscapes, Scythe and dufflebags (stuffed full of more weapons than clothes, honestly, and she never thought she’d live to see the day) in hand. The demon-sorcerer-thingie has white fur and green blood and smells like wet dog, and he/she/it (Buffy was never quite clear on gender or lack thereof—fur, remember?) makes this horrible the-world-is-ending screeching noise when Buffy slices his head off, and this time no one had to die (she knows it won’t always be this way, but this once, it feels so good).
Spike wants to stick around, go sledding, do some exploring, look up some old contacts. They stay long enough to let him introduce her to the wonders that are hot spring baths under the Northern Lights, but then Buffy insists on heading back towards the equator—she needs the warmth (no matter where she goes, how far she travels, she’ll always be a California girl, the Hellmouth her hometown).
--
She wriggles her fingers through his hair, dislodging the gel and twisting it into spiky curls. She’ll get rid of that helmet hair if it’s the last thing she does.
--
It's an alley just like any alley, cobblestones and graffiti, a scruffy, mean-looking cat pawing through a dumpster, someone's music floating down from a third or fourth storey open window. But he freezes like he's seen a ghost (well, really, he probably wouldn't freeze if he saw a ghost, would probably say something snide and know just how to defeat it because of that one time in Savannah back in 1915, because this is Spike we’re talking about, and he’s experienced everything from mummies to hellgods and somehow—somehow—come out on top), and then he starts to tremble.
It takes quite a few minutes of begging him to talk to her, hands gentle but firm on his face, and longer than that for him to choke out the words and for her to reassemble them into something that makes sense. It’s his sins returning to haunt him, blood and children’s desperate pleas and the bloodlustpleasure she knows he can still feel screaming in his veins. The guiltghostsmemories don’t return to haunt him often, but when they do, he feels like he’s going to buckle under the weight of the things that he’s done, the blood on his hands (he doesn’t wear his soul nearly as lightly as others think).
She takes him home and strips off his clothes, wraps him up in a blanket like that'll make him warm (his body might not feel temperature changes, but he loves comfort as much as the next person). Then she sheds her own clothes, tugs him into bed beside her, wraps herself and the duvet around him and doesn't let go.
--
They visit London for Christmas, and it’s so good to see the Scoobies again and exchange ridiculous presents that reminded them of each other, but she still sighs with relief when they finally stumble back into their little Roman apartment, weighed down with gifts, and can collapse onto their bed.
--
They bump right into the Immortal one night at a club, and she tries to be pleasant. That is, until she sees Spike's eyes go all vulnerable behind his bravado (“oh, so he just stopped in for a quickie, then?” echoes in her head). She's never been much of one for public displays of affection (she's pretty proud of herself that she's gotten to the point that she'll hold his hand in public, and she doesn't pull away when he slips his arm around her waist), but she thinks, What the hell?.
When she releases him from the kiss, he's got a goofy grin on his face and his eyes are glassy, and the Immortal looks disgusted and flounces away in a cloud of cologne and pomposity (what was she thinking?).
Laughing, she drags a still-stunned Spike onto the dance floor, and dancing with him is the best thing she can imagine.
They run into a group of Vinji demons later in an alley behind the Pantheon, and fighting with him is even better.
And then they go home, and tumble into bed, and he tells her a thousand times (ways) how much he loves her, and that's the best thing of all.
--
He recites poetry to her in his caramel-rich voice: the Romantics, of course, and the sonnets of Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but he’s got a much more diverse repertoire than she’d have thought—Neruda, Ginsberg, Donne, Sappho, Auden, Rilke, H.D. She tosses back Dorothy Parker (it’s all sass and wit, and it gets him hot: her and poetry).
--
Angel drops in from time to time, or they cross paths on apocalypse watch. He’s more solemn but less mysterious than she remembers, and she’s impressed that he doesn’t seem either resentful-petty or martyr-sorrowful about her being with Spike (though resignation isn’t really a good look on him, either).
That doesn’t stop him and Spike from picking at each other, and they remind her of little boys caught up in sibling rivalry, sniping and snarking and then lapsing into these weird moments of uncomfortable understanding (they’re brothers in all the ways that count and Buffy’s amazed at the love they would both deny but that she can easily see below the surface).
Those times with Spike (fighting over the Xbox or the details of some visit to St. Petersburg at the end of the 19th century) are the only times he loses that dogged look (she sees him with the clear eyes of a woman now, a woman who still cares about him deeply even if she’s left the love-struck girl she was so far behind that she can’t quite see what it was that captivated her so completely back then), even if he’s slowly assembling a new team of comrades to fight by his side (though he seems all too aware that he’ll lose them eventually: Angel feels immortal, weighted down with the heaviness of eternity, in the same way that Spike feels alive, buoyed up by his own vitality).
But whenever anyone asks about Connor, he breaks out into a real, genuine smile, and Buffy thinks (and Spike agrees, so she must be right) that he’ll be alright.
--
Spike and Xander start sending each other antagonistic emails—arguing over which sport is superior, which beer is better, which one’s latest kill is bigger—and Buffy and Willow and Dawn exchange happy smiles.
--
One night in New York City—another year, another apocalypse—he takes her to a poetry slam in one of those dive-y clubs in a basement, all neon beer signs and local drinkers.
She’s seen him at his most loser-ly moments—drunk and weeping over Drusilla, chipped and starving at Giles’ door, sullen and resentful in chains in the bathtub—but she’s never seen him act as geeky as he turns now, and the contrast between his black leather and the eagerness with which he follows the back-and-forth battle of words makes her dissolve into giggles again and again (but he knows the laughter comes from glee, not mockery, and she glows warm with the realization that he trusts her enough with himself to show her this part of him).
As they stroll back to the hotel hand in hand, she asks him why he didn’t join the war of words: she knows how much he loves that sort of thing (she remembers all the times they’ve tossed quips and insults and innuendos back and forth like that was the real battle).
He tugs her close, nibbles at her bottom lip, and slides a callused hand through her hair. “I’ve already taken on the best,” he says.
And she can’t argue with that.
--
They watch action movies and critique the fighting, horror films and critique the monsters, screwball comedies and critique the dialogue (the black-and-white makes her think of Mom, and she thinks that if her mother could see her now, she’d be happy for her—and maybe even proud).
--
Giles sends them a Slayer, a girl from Albania, solemn-eyed and tiny, only thirteen (she looks even younger than she is, and Buffy starts in on a new round of beating herself up about the spell, the one that was her her idea, the one that saved the world and doomed this little girl to a life like Buffy’s own). Tirana and Spike take to each other immediately, him trying to tease her out of her solemnity, her slyly insulting him in ways that catch up with him a minute later, leaving him crowing with delighted laughter and Tirana’s eyes shining.
As always, it takes Buffy longer to grow comfortable around the girl (she looks at Tirana and all she can see is the thousand hues of her own responsibilities), but her slow smile is winning over even the original Slayer when it happens.
A freak accident: both Buffy and Spike’s backs turned for a split second, and some random vamp slips in and gets his one good day.
Buffy’s eyes are dry as she cradles Spike to her, rocking him and murmuring soothing words as he sobs (yes, her eyes might be dry, but her heart is nearly as raw as his, and two weeks later when her own tears finally come, he’s the one who holds her).
--
No matter how hard she tries, she can’t get him to remember to hang up his wet towels. She trips over the clammy terry cloth in the middle of the night and rolls her eyes.
--
One night a visiting Andrew, sniffling and sappy-eyed after yet another viewing of Ladyhawke, wanders into the kitchen and asks Buffy what the best thing about being with Spike is. Buffy stares at him, completely taken aback at the question, until she hears that annoying music from whatever videogame Spike's playing in the living room cut off abruptly and an ridiculously macho voice intone, "GAME PAUSED."
She grins, eyes flickering to the door, picturing him sitting upright now, no more boneless sprawl on the couch, waiting to hear her answer.
"Having someone around to taste-test Dawn's experiments," she says.
That night, he tackles her into bed and tickles her till she promises to tell him what she really loves about him (she crawls into his lap and whispers in his ear, and it isn't nearly as hard as she'd thought it would be, saying things, not when his eyes flutter closed, the lashes soft and long against his cheeks, not when he trembles with each detail she lists and when she's done he opens those eyes and looks at her like she's something beyond human, something divine).
--
One morning she stands with the fridge door open and laughs for five minutes: the bags of blood look so innocuous beside her yogurt cups and Dawn’s collection of cheeses, and this is her life.
--
It was never something they talked about, going back, but somehow they find themselves standing at the edge of the crater that was Sunnydale (a hole where her home used to be) one evening in late summer. They don’t speak as they climb down, sweaty and straining with each painstaking motion, picking their way from rock to rock and down into the depths.
She can’t really find her mother’s grave or Tara’s final resting place or the school where Anya died and Amanda and all the other brand-new Slayers were cut down just moments after becoming Slayers. She can’t really find Revello Drive or Restfield Cemetary or the high school library or any of the dozens of other places that made up the landscape of her formative years (the places she protected every night of her life, the places she died to preserve). But she can find the space to finally mourn, to talk to her mom as though she can hear the words, and to cry (finally).
They climb up out of the grave-that-was-a-city, into the desert air, getting closer and closer to the stars. And she thinks that this is really the end of the story of the Hellmouth: it wasn’t that school bus speeding away from the collapse those years ago (her leaving behind her home, her belongings, her mother’s grave, the man she loved). It’s her and Spike climbing back out again, together, knowing that her friends (her family), her sister (her blood), and the whole world (her charge) are out there and safe, and that no Slayer (sister) has to be alone ever again.
(And neither does she.)
[ETA] Aaaand the title is changed. Sorry for any confusion!
You know, for someone who's madly obsessed with the idea of post-NFA fluffy Spuffy domesticity, I sure don't write very much of it. Let's rectify that, shall we?
Title: Life in the Present Tense
Fandom: Buffyverse
Characters/Pairing: Buffy/Spike
Timeline: post-NFA, ignores the comics
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Thanks to
angearia for the quick read through. The summary quote comes from Patty Griffin's "Forgiveness."Summary: "Open your eyes, boy, we made it through the night." This is Buffy, creating a life of her own choosing—with Spike’s help.
They spend the first few days in bed (and no they don’t only have sex, thank you very much. There’s crying and teasing and really, really loud arguments and cuddling and laughing and lots and lots of talking. And okay, yes. A ton of sex. Really good sex).
Night three and Dawn’s tired of being ignored. So after an overly loud knock and an exaggeratedly disgusted announcement that she’s coming in and they better have clothes on (they don’t, but it doesn’t take them long to tug them on), she stalks into the room and plops down in between them on the bed and says, “Time to pay attention to me now.”
And Buffy’s not usually the sentimental type, but being all safe and warm with the two people she needs (read: loves) most in the world is kind of perfect.
--
It’s been years since she spent hours just kissing, just for the pure pleasure of it, but he’s eager to reacquaint her with the joys.
--
They sneak into the Coliseum after midnight. It's August, and the moon is almost full, like a big wheel of cheese with just the edge shaved off (she lives in Italy now. Cheese is often on her mind).
It’s beautiful by moonlight, and she can believe in the ancientness of it in ways she can’t when surrounded by crowds of sunscreen-scented, picture-taking, socks-and-sandals-clad tourists. (And then there’s the moonlight. She always thought of herself as a sunshine girl, but somewhere along the way, she started to belong to the moonlight just as much. It makes things beautiful and strange in ways she never could have imagined in her life before the Hellmouth).
They play hide-and-seek behind massive piles of rocks and underneath arches, darting through moonlight and shadow and trying to keep their laughter quiet enough that they don't alert the night guard. Buffy does cartwheels across the sand, and pretends that it's the same sand that soaked up the blood of gladiators and martyrs and that she's reclaiming it (for life). They lay on their backs, her head on his shoulder, and watch the stars within the circle of the stone, and it looks like a bowl full of sky.
--
He blasts his awful punk rock—the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks and The Clash, The Voidoids and the Minutemen, Chelsea and The Damned—singing along and drumming his fingers against the counter in time. She tries to get revenge by singing along with Beyonce, but it backfires (he loves it, hooting with laughter and demanding that she do it again).
--
He orders pizza with extra garlic, despite her complaints, and then he teases her (till she blushes and shoves him away) about that time she tried to use it to keep him away (she tries to remember what that was like, sitting curled into herself on her bed, lights off, dozens and dozens of bulbs of garlic gleaming in what little of the moonlight could slip in between the shades; the smell, the overwhelmingness of it, just one more reminder that she's here and she's not getting out. She tries to remember what it was like to be that miserable, lonely and constantly cold and full of self-loathing and resentment, but she's so far past that place now that she can't even touch it).
His breath smells foul and she knows hers does, too, but she lets him kiss her anyway (and that feels more like intimacy than anything they shared during that year of hell back in Sunnydale).
--
She starts to find pieces of paper, balled up and scribbled on, in the trash can. She (smiles or cries or blushes as she) reads every one (and saves them).
--
The sewers here are so different than in California—ancient or antique or merely old, depending upon where you are in the city—but the smell is the same, and the Roman sludge can ruin her new shoes just as easily as the California variety did. Still, there’s something so homey, so familiar about trudging her way through them, Spike by her side, weapons in hand. Something so right about slicing and dicing and making julienne demon and knowing that one less person may die because of what she just did.
And something about emerging again into the soft air of the Roman night that feels a little bit like rebirth.
--
Her hair’s grown out past her shoulder blades now, split ends galore, and she considers cutting it, maybe changing the color, but it’s far more fun to let him talk her out of it. She gets a trim instead.
--
She climbs out the(ir) bedroom window and sprawls on the roof in the afternoon sun, decked out in coconut oil and a turquoise bikini, prepared for some serious relaxing. But she props her chin up on her hands and gazes inside through the open window. He's sitting in the corner in the shade, scrawling in a battered notebook and occasionally glancing up at her with a soft smile (if he thinks her eyes are closed behind her sunglasses) or a dirty leer (if he thinks she's watching him—she’ll never be able to convince him that his reputation was shot long ago).
When the sun finally sinks below the jagged horizon of a million Roman rooftops, he climbs out to join her.
--
One night he and Dawn spend five and a half hours figuring out how to fry an onion into one of those blossom things he loves so much. The house smells like onions and oil and burnt things for three days.
--
It’s not that she really minds bumping into him whenever she turns around (“whenever you look up, there I shall be—and whenever I look up, there will be you,” he quotes with a grin) but they really do need more room to accommodate their growing weapons collection (and her shoes, too), and Dawn’s tired of sharing her room whenever anyone comes to visit, so they go apartment hunting.
It feels scarily grown-up (this is the first time she’s done this—Giles had arranged for the last apartment, and even though her DMP paycheck went toward mortgage payments, she still felt as though the house wasn’t hers: she was keeping it safe for her mother) and domestic (asking Spike his opinion, and taking Dawn’s into consideration, and yes, Spike keeps making white picket fence jokes), following the realtor through so many apartments that they all start to bleed together.
But they find the right one, finally (big but not too big, a good view, close sewer access so that Spike can get around during the day, lots of closet space, a large enough kitchen to accommodate Dawn’s experiments, a pampering-perfect sort of bathtub, and an extra bedroom for guests), and Spike makes more I-ate-a-decorate-once jokes (their way of healing: joking about things that used to hurt) as they settle in, and there are pictures of their friends on the walls and blood in the fridge and the weapons chest at the foot of their bed, and it’s home.
--
The best thing about Giles being the head of the Council now is the paycheck that arrives every month with her name printed on it boldly (sometimes she tears up a little when she sees it, but Spike doesn’t tease her about it, just says, “It’s about bloody time,” and that’s another reason she loves him).
--
She’d forgotten just how angry he can make her, the tension building in her shoulders and behind her eyes, and the urge to pummel him tightening her fists (she won’t. Not again: not ever. She never wants to even visit that place, that person that she was. But still, the urge is there). She’d forgotten how much his snarkiness infuriates her (and he always seems even snarkier than usual when they’re fighting), how that sneer twists his face into something she can barely recognize, how much he can hurt her (she’s just as insecure as he is, in her own way). She’d forgotten how shrill and loud her own voice can get, how cruel her own words can be, how anger grows like a shell around her, hardening her, tilting her chin back, making her treat so casually something she usually views as precious.
She’d forgotten how loud a slamming door can be, no matter who’s doing the slamming (she doesn’t know what’s worse—when he walks out or when she does). Forgotten how empty her bed can feel, how cold her life is when he isn’t around to make her laugh and tease her into growing. Forgotten what it feels like to wait alone, scared he won’t come back, or to stride through the streets of Rome, not sure whether she can bend her pride enough to head back home.
(But she’d also forgotten how her smile can stretch so wide that it hurts when they make things right again—and how good makeup sex can be, so there’s always that).
--
She'd thought that nothing in the whole world could taste better than stracciatella gelato, but that was before she licked it off of Spike's skin.
--
She goes back to Slaying in little skirts and stiletto-heeled leather boots (Spike beside her and still, mostly, in black and peroxide), and some nights she goes dancing before, and some nights she goes dancing after (she’d always known that Spike could dance like that—they never danced before, not literally, but from all their metaphorical dances, she knew he would be her perfect partner).
Rome has some of the best shopping she’s ever seen, and she drags Spike along with her, gleefully making him carry her bags (but he doesn’t complain, because she models everything she tries on just for him, and she grants him veto power). She buys his clothes, too, because he can’t be bothered, and though she mostly sticks with basic black (she rolls her eyes, but it makes him happy), she’s slowly introducing color back into his wardrobe—some navy, olive green, deep red, and now and then a brighter shade.
(Her closets fill up, and it’ll never stop being funny, seeing his black t-shirts sharing drawer space with her slinky underthings, his beat-up old boots tucked in between her gold heels).
--
He hogs all the blankets, and even sleeping turns into a battle over covers (but it’s better—so, so much better—than sleeping alone, so she doesn’t really mind).
--
The Slayer schools are in Cleveland and London, and Faith and Giles are doing a great job of running them, and Buffy thinks that maybe someday she’ll join them, but for now they sometimes send a girl or two to Rome, a girl who’s more scared or more angry or more lonely than usual, and between Buffy’s serious guidance (she’s getting better at being soft, getting better at saying, “I know how you feel” and meaning it) and Spike’s teasing training (nobody knows Slayers like Spike knows Slayers) and Dawn’s constantly deepening Watcher-skills (how many languages does she speak now? More than Buffy could probably name), they turn the girls into Slayers (and into family).
--
He disappears some nights and either returns drunk or with a trinket in hand—a pink pashmina scarf, a beautifully simple dagger, a bottle of wine—and she never asks where he was, just as he never mentions the nights she spends wandering through ancient Roman graveyards (they both know the value of alone time).
--
He and Dawn team up to convince her that they need a Vespa, and the two of them together have always been just about the only thing that can defeat her so absolutely. She agrees with a profound sigh and pretends to be grumpy, all the while hiding her smile behind the scowl as they launch into a weeks-long argument about the color (Spike absolutely insists on black—the only color for a motorbike. Dawn wants pastels—mint green or pale pink or sky blue or yellow. Do they even make yellow?).
They finally settle on classic red and Buffy will never admit to loving zipping through the strata (is that the only Italian word Spike knows?) as much as the other two do.
(But she does.)
--
She likes nights spent at home, bad TV and good pizza and sharpening weapons together (maybe this is her reward for all those years of sacrifice).
--
Giles calls, and it’s another apocalypse, and off they go, bound for snowier landscapes, Scythe and dufflebags (stuffed full of more weapons than clothes, honestly, and she never thought she’d live to see the day) in hand. The demon-sorcerer-thingie has white fur and green blood and smells like wet dog, and he/she/it (Buffy was never quite clear on gender or lack thereof—fur, remember?) makes this horrible the-world-is-ending screeching noise when Buffy slices his head off, and this time no one had to die (she knows it won’t always be this way, but this once, it feels so good).
Spike wants to stick around, go sledding, do some exploring, look up some old contacts. They stay long enough to let him introduce her to the wonders that are hot spring baths under the Northern Lights, but then Buffy insists on heading back towards the equator—she needs the warmth (no matter where she goes, how far she travels, she’ll always be a California girl, the Hellmouth her hometown).
--
She wriggles her fingers through his hair, dislodging the gel and twisting it into spiky curls. She’ll get rid of that helmet hair if it’s the last thing she does.
--
It's an alley just like any alley, cobblestones and graffiti, a scruffy, mean-looking cat pawing through a dumpster, someone's music floating down from a third or fourth storey open window. But he freezes like he's seen a ghost (well, really, he probably wouldn't freeze if he saw a ghost, would probably say something snide and know just how to defeat it because of that one time in Savannah back in 1915, because this is Spike we’re talking about, and he’s experienced everything from mummies to hellgods and somehow—somehow—come out on top), and then he starts to tremble.
It takes quite a few minutes of begging him to talk to her, hands gentle but firm on his face, and longer than that for him to choke out the words and for her to reassemble them into something that makes sense. It’s his sins returning to haunt him, blood and children’s desperate pleas and the bloodlustpleasure she knows he can still feel screaming in his veins. The guiltghostsmemories don’t return to haunt him often, but when they do, he feels like he’s going to buckle under the weight of the things that he’s done, the blood on his hands (he doesn’t wear his soul nearly as lightly as others think).
She takes him home and strips off his clothes, wraps him up in a blanket like that'll make him warm (his body might not feel temperature changes, but he loves comfort as much as the next person). Then she sheds her own clothes, tugs him into bed beside her, wraps herself and the duvet around him and doesn't let go.
--
They visit London for Christmas, and it’s so good to see the Scoobies again and exchange ridiculous presents that reminded them of each other, but she still sighs with relief when they finally stumble back into their little Roman apartment, weighed down with gifts, and can collapse onto their bed.
--
They bump right into the Immortal one night at a club, and she tries to be pleasant. That is, until she sees Spike's eyes go all vulnerable behind his bravado (“oh, so he just stopped in for a quickie, then?” echoes in her head). She's never been much of one for public displays of affection (she's pretty proud of herself that she's gotten to the point that she'll hold his hand in public, and she doesn't pull away when he slips his arm around her waist), but she thinks, What the hell?.
When she releases him from the kiss, he's got a goofy grin on his face and his eyes are glassy, and the Immortal looks disgusted and flounces away in a cloud of cologne and pomposity (what was she thinking?).
Laughing, she drags a still-stunned Spike onto the dance floor, and dancing with him is the best thing she can imagine.
They run into a group of Vinji demons later in an alley behind the Pantheon, and fighting with him is even better.
And then they go home, and tumble into bed, and he tells her a thousand times (ways) how much he loves her, and that's the best thing of all.
--
He recites poetry to her in his caramel-rich voice: the Romantics, of course, and the sonnets of Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but he’s got a much more diverse repertoire than she’d have thought—Neruda, Ginsberg, Donne, Sappho, Auden, Rilke, H.D. She tosses back Dorothy Parker (it’s all sass and wit, and it gets him hot: her and poetry).
--
Angel drops in from time to time, or they cross paths on apocalypse watch. He’s more solemn but less mysterious than she remembers, and she’s impressed that he doesn’t seem either resentful-petty or martyr-sorrowful about her being with Spike (though resignation isn’t really a good look on him, either).
That doesn’t stop him and Spike from picking at each other, and they remind her of little boys caught up in sibling rivalry, sniping and snarking and then lapsing into these weird moments of uncomfortable understanding (they’re brothers in all the ways that count and Buffy’s amazed at the love they would both deny but that she can easily see below the surface).
Those times with Spike (fighting over the Xbox or the details of some visit to St. Petersburg at the end of the 19th century) are the only times he loses that dogged look (she sees him with the clear eyes of a woman now, a woman who still cares about him deeply even if she’s left the love-struck girl she was so far behind that she can’t quite see what it was that captivated her so completely back then), even if he’s slowly assembling a new team of comrades to fight by his side (though he seems all too aware that he’ll lose them eventually: Angel feels immortal, weighted down with the heaviness of eternity, in the same way that Spike feels alive, buoyed up by his own vitality).
But whenever anyone asks about Connor, he breaks out into a real, genuine smile, and Buffy thinks (and Spike agrees, so she must be right) that he’ll be alright.
--
Spike and Xander start sending each other antagonistic emails—arguing over which sport is superior, which beer is better, which one’s latest kill is bigger—and Buffy and Willow and Dawn exchange happy smiles.
--
One night in New York City—another year, another apocalypse—he takes her to a poetry slam in one of those dive-y clubs in a basement, all neon beer signs and local drinkers.
She’s seen him at his most loser-ly moments—drunk and weeping over Drusilla, chipped and starving at Giles’ door, sullen and resentful in chains in the bathtub—but she’s never seen him act as geeky as he turns now, and the contrast between his black leather and the eagerness with which he follows the back-and-forth battle of words makes her dissolve into giggles again and again (but he knows the laughter comes from glee, not mockery, and she glows warm with the realization that he trusts her enough with himself to show her this part of him).
As they stroll back to the hotel hand in hand, she asks him why he didn’t join the war of words: she knows how much he loves that sort of thing (she remembers all the times they’ve tossed quips and insults and innuendos back and forth like that was the real battle).
He tugs her close, nibbles at her bottom lip, and slides a callused hand through her hair. “I’ve already taken on the best,” he says.
And she can’t argue with that.
--
They watch action movies and critique the fighting, horror films and critique the monsters, screwball comedies and critique the dialogue (the black-and-white makes her think of Mom, and she thinks that if her mother could see her now, she’d be happy for her—and maybe even proud).
--
Giles sends them a Slayer, a girl from Albania, solemn-eyed and tiny, only thirteen (she looks even younger than she is, and Buffy starts in on a new round of beating herself up about the spell, the one that was her her idea, the one that saved the world and doomed this little girl to a life like Buffy’s own). Tirana and Spike take to each other immediately, him trying to tease her out of her solemnity, her slyly insulting him in ways that catch up with him a minute later, leaving him crowing with delighted laughter and Tirana’s eyes shining.
As always, it takes Buffy longer to grow comfortable around the girl (she looks at Tirana and all she can see is the thousand hues of her own responsibilities), but her slow smile is winning over even the original Slayer when it happens.
A freak accident: both Buffy and Spike’s backs turned for a split second, and some random vamp slips in and gets his one good day.
Buffy’s eyes are dry as she cradles Spike to her, rocking him and murmuring soothing words as he sobs (yes, her eyes might be dry, but her heart is nearly as raw as his, and two weeks later when her own tears finally come, he’s the one who holds her).
--
No matter how hard she tries, she can’t get him to remember to hang up his wet towels. She trips over the clammy terry cloth in the middle of the night and rolls her eyes.
--
One night a visiting Andrew, sniffling and sappy-eyed after yet another viewing of Ladyhawke, wanders into the kitchen and asks Buffy what the best thing about being with Spike is. Buffy stares at him, completely taken aback at the question, until she hears that annoying music from whatever videogame Spike's playing in the living room cut off abruptly and an ridiculously macho voice intone, "GAME PAUSED."
She grins, eyes flickering to the door, picturing him sitting upright now, no more boneless sprawl on the couch, waiting to hear her answer.
"Having someone around to taste-test Dawn's experiments," she says.
That night, he tackles her into bed and tickles her till she promises to tell him what she really loves about him (she crawls into his lap and whispers in his ear, and it isn't nearly as hard as she'd thought it would be, saying things, not when his eyes flutter closed, the lashes soft and long against his cheeks, not when he trembles with each detail she lists and when she's done he opens those eyes and looks at her like she's something beyond human, something divine).
--
One morning she stands with the fridge door open and laughs for five minutes: the bags of blood look so innocuous beside her yogurt cups and Dawn’s collection of cheeses, and this is her life.
--
It was never something they talked about, going back, but somehow they find themselves standing at the edge of the crater that was Sunnydale (a hole where her home used to be) one evening in late summer. They don’t speak as they climb down, sweaty and straining with each painstaking motion, picking their way from rock to rock and down into the depths.
She can’t really find her mother’s grave or Tara’s final resting place or the school where Anya died and Amanda and all the other brand-new Slayers were cut down just moments after becoming Slayers. She can’t really find Revello Drive or Restfield Cemetary or the high school library or any of the dozens of other places that made up the landscape of her formative years (the places she protected every night of her life, the places she died to preserve). But she can find the space to finally mourn, to talk to her mom as though she can hear the words, and to cry (finally).
They climb up out of the grave-that-was-a-city, into the desert air, getting closer and closer to the stars. And she thinks that this is really the end of the story of the Hellmouth: it wasn’t that school bus speeding away from the collapse those years ago (her leaving behind her home, her belongings, her mother’s grave, the man she loved). It’s her and Spike climbing back out again, together, knowing that her friends (her family), her sister (her blood), and the whole world (her charge) are out there and safe, and that no Slayer (sister) has to be alone ever again.
(And neither does she.)