All About Spike - Plain Version
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Affinity
By Ginmar
Chapter 30
Buffy clicked off the bathroom light and stepped out to find
Spike hovering between the bed and the window. He was dressed again, or rather
completely dressed, because neither of them had gotten undressed, exactly, and
he looked like he didn't know what he was doing. It was if they hadn't just been
silently struggling on that bed scarcely fifteen minutes earlier. Every trace of
that intimacy had been erased. What struck her was that it made her
uncomfortable.
He looked like he was going to leave. At the very least, he
didn't look as if he was sure he could stay.
Boy, isn't this great? Buffy thought. Fight, shag, kiss,
all sorts of things, but say, 'Please stay' and it's impossible. But it was. She
couldn't meet his eyes, because he was staring at her with William's eyes, and
that made it worse. Worse still was the thought of him not being here. No arm
beneath her cheek in place of a pillow, or cool body around hers. But she
couldn't even get the words on her tongue.
Instead, she maneuvered toward him, brushing her hair at the
vanity, dropping her earrings off at the nightstand, turning off the light, and
finally coming round the bed to draw the blinds so there'd be no sun on them in
the morning. She kept her eyes to herself, hoping he'd notice the significance
of that little gesture, but even with an extra century, he was still a guy, post
orgasm. So she padded up to him in the dark, touching his stomach with hands as
light as blown leaves, hesitating, not daring to look into his eyes, shoving his
coat down his arms and lowering it. She heard his breath catch in his throat,
then, and had to look away, so she took the coat away and hung it over the
bathroom door. When she turned back, he was undressing in front of her, and she
found herself mentally stumbling over yet another one of those odd moments that
seemed to lurk where she least expected them.
She'd seen him nude, obviously, it couldn't be that. Not
to put too fine a point on it, they'd been about as intimate as you could get
with another person, so why did she feel so strangely frightened, so suddenly,
at Spike casually tossing his clothes on the floor? Maybe it was the
casualness of it. She checked her mental list of Guy irritations to see if it
was a typical guy-being-messy-type-of-reaction, but it didn't seem to be that.
She padded forward on silent bare feet, and let the drapes fall closed. Turning
to him, she found the pitfall she'd been avoiding.
He was naked, and she was struck by it. Naked, he reminded her
of all the times he'd forced her to look into his eyes when they'd had sex, and
now it was just being forced to look at him while not in the throes of arousal
or ecstasy. Naked, quite simply, he was just a man, not Spike like at all, not a
vampire, not frightening. In fact, with his hair all mussed, and his eyes
smudged with tiredness, the very idea of applying the name 'Spike' to him seemed
amusing. He leaned back on his hands and cocked his head at her, the way he'd
done so many times before, but this time, she climbed into his lap and kissed
him. It wasn't exactly a 'hello sailor' type of kiss, not with her fingertips on
his face, in his hair, her lips barely on his, but he slid down onto his back
and took her with him. "William, William, William..."
"Hm?" He paused, blinking up as she pulled away, and propped herself
on her elbow so she could trace circles on his stomach. "What?"
She couldn't meet his eyes; afraid she'd see the response she
was always afraid of getting, afraid he'd suddenly look at her the way she'd
once looked at him. Except I really deserve it. The thought
unnerved her.
She sat back up and took off her sweats, getting up
and going to the door to toss them haphazardly somewhere in the general
direction of the bathroom. She must not have aimed really well, throwing them
backhanded and blind, because they hit something in the bathroom, and knocked it
to the floor with a clatter, a clatter that made him flinch.
Vampires, Buffy thought, don't usually do that.
Vampires, no. She thought. Dawn did, though; that
was a very Dawn-like thing to do, when Mom's name came up; she supposed she
herself did it, when Riley's name surfaced. She'd seen Xander stiffen abruptly
in his parents' basement, when they reminded him of their existence by anything,
and even Anya gave a little involuntary shudder at the thought of poverty, free
giveaways, and celibacy. All perfectly human, given the provocation.
But here was Spike, twitching at a loud noise around her. And that, she
thought, I did deserve.
He sat all the way up and watched her, watching her
watching him, intrigued, wondering what had shifted. There was something
in the air, something in her eyes, because she wasn't a girl who was comfortable
enough in her own skin to walk around nude and not care if he watched. Except...
Except, just now, for some reason, he got the feeling that she had jumped past
the getting-accustomed stage to the part where... He shook the thought off as
being too optimistic. She tugged at the bedclothes under him and he
obligingly shifted so she could slide under them and cuddle next to him.
She could see practically nothing, and hoped that he could. In
the dark, she felt invisible, but not carefree as she had before. It was
different than escaping her responsibilities, it was as if she could cope with
them differently because they had different shapes and incomplete forms.
In the dark, she was only aware of warmth and comfort and cool skin; his lips
against her forehead, her hands pulling him closer. In the dark, she could do
the things she wanted to do, and hoped that feeling them was as good as seeing
them. So she traced his lips with her fingers, over and again, as if she were
writing her name there, holding his palm to her cheek while she buried her hot
face against his chest, and tried not to let it overwhelm her. His hands stroked
her back, up and down, just fingertips, as if he were tracing her for
memory. She did his gesture; his head on her arm while she curled her
fingers in his hair, tracing his face with the back of her fingers. She couldn't
see at all, only feel, and it gave her the courage to put motion to her
feelings, completion to her impulses. She pressed her face to his, and braided
her fingers with his, wrapping arms and everything around him, not even
thinking, not even worrying. Maybe she couldn't say it with words, what it was
that she felt, but this was her declaration. She pressed her lips to his palm
and held his hand there till he pulled it away to take the gesture from her and
give it back. In the dark, she was no longer a vampire slayer, and
he was not a vampire. He was love and comfort, and all the sorrow that had
permeated her melted in her fibers and seeped away.