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She said they needed to talk. He didn’t reply, just muttered something affirmative and turned off the telly.
With that the living room was silent, not even a rumble of a late night car coming in through the curtains. The clock should have been ticking on the mantelpiece, but it had stopped the day before, and Spike hadn’t got round to replacing the battery. He wished he had.
He knew what this was about, after all. Buffy had been smelling different for a couple of weeks; nervous almost. It made her perfume work differently, or at least he hoped it did, because otherwise she was just putting more on, and that made everything even worse.
Illyria had told him he was being ridiculous; Dawn had given him a whack on the back of the head. But Willow had just looked at him, an odd sort of sympathy in her eyes, and her phone had rung before she'd been able to answer his question. Buffy... He hadn’t managed to bring the subject up with Buffy, because he was too much of a coward. Which was more fool him, because now it seemed like his time had run out.
She stood near the kitchen doorway, wringing her hands and not meeting his eyes. If this was the moment it was going to end he wanted to be standing, so he stood. He'd be damned if he'd let five years proper coupledom go up in smoke while he sat on his arse.
“There’s this guy,” she began, looking away. “At the Council.”
There was a sharp jab in his chest, winding him. Was it really that surprising a new bloke had been her wake-up call? Maybe not, but it still felt like it.
God, he’d told himself he wouldn’t cry. Not again.
“He trains the Slayers, like, you know, the best ones. He's strong.” She shook her head. “No one really knows how.”
He sounded absolutely perfect.
Spike screwed his eyes shut, covering them with his hands, trying to feign tiredness. It didn’t really matter, because he knew Buffy wasn’t looking at him. She’d probably never look at him again, just run off with Wonderboy and have the dozen kids she’d promised she didn’t want.
“He, uh, hit on me about a month ago, when I was visiting Willow.” She swallowed and he felt like he was choking. “I told him I wasn’t interested, but the next couple times I went he was there again.”
Spike knew he was shaking. The more she spoke, the more he hated himself, for hoping anything could last, for trusting her to love him. Why did it always turn out like this for him? Little fears, little worries, they all seemed like massive portents now, which he should have understood. He was such an idiot.
“Eventually I was just like, I don’t need this crap. You know? I love Spike, and, and I want to spend my life with him. I shouldn’t have to put up with dumb creeps. So I, um, asked Willow to look into it.”
It took until the end of her speech for the first bit to sink in. “Say what?” he asked, jerking his chin up so he could stare at her over his hands. She caught his gaze for a moment, but then went back to looking at the carpet, poking at it with the toe of her boot.
“’Cause, obviously, you haven’t got any papers, so we couldn’t get tax breaks or anything, but there’s a lot of stuff you can do without making it officially official.”
“Buffy?” He padded across the floor, tilting his head to try and catch her eye, but she was having none of it, still garbling away, her nervousness ever more apparent.
“I mean, like, I can tick the ‘Mrs.’ box when I get credit cards and – and when we make dinner reservations? We'd only have to give one name.”
“Buffy?” There was a very, very odd feeling in his chest, and it made it hard to talk without gulping beforehand. “Are you proposing?”
At last her eyes flicked up, as scared as a doe’s beneath her lashes. She blushed and tucked some bits of hair behind her ears. “Um, maybe? I can do it properly, hang on...”
Then, before his very eyes, she took hold of her skirt and dropped to one knee, letting the folds settle over her raised leg, but in no way shielding the rather peculiar position.
Spike felt his mouth open slightly before he could shut it. She took one of his hands and the warmth of her fingertips made him jump at least an inch in the air.
“Spike,” she said. “I mean, uh, William Pratt.” Her hand started to clench, the pressure more than noticeable. “I really suck at this, but d’you want to get married? To me, I mean.”
He’d been admiring the crown of her head, but now she looked up and he had no idea what to say. “Can I take your name?” It was the first thing that flew into his head, and suddenly he was tiptoeing down a little fantasy where never again would he have to admit to anyone that his surname was so appalling. His dear old mum would understand, if he ever saw her again. She’d been pretty forward-thinking after all.
Her hand clenched tighter, fingers digging between bones. “Just answer the damn question.”
It was fair to say that he’d never expected to be in this position. And it was odd. His mouth opened again and the air he breathed in seemed heavier than usual, weighted with meaning. “Yes, love,” he sighed. “Bloody hell, yes.” She grinned and a sort of reckless exhilaration started charging through him. She was still clutching his hand, so he used that to pull her to her feet. “Now get up so I can ravage you.” Butterflies were in his stomach, sending smiles to his face. “Or possibly let you do the ravaging.”
She tossed her arms around his neck and kissed him as she laughed. He laughed as well, the peppered tastes of her slowly reassuring him that he was just a wanker and this wasn't all a dream. One of them deepened the kisses and he found himself against the wall, both wrists trapped high above his head, held by one hand as she pressed the other against his flexing stomach.
He gasped into her cheek, sweeping his tongue along the bone. “Can I get you a ring?” It was another thought, unbidden in his mind, that unbroken circle people dreamed of. “White gold,” he promised, shuddering as she sucked and bit his neck. “Diamonds.” She loved those, craved luxury if not the flash. “Don' t have to wear it – just take it.”
Her mouth struck a trail up to his ear where she paused, whispering dangerously as her hand teased his fly. “You know I'll take it,” she said between breaths, popping buttons open between them.
The first feel of her fingers made him buck in her arms, but it was all too elusive. A perfect moment and then he was spinning to the ground, shuddering as the carpet burned along his backside, alone with air again. She stood above him, covered chin to toe in a cowl-neck sweater, denim jacket, heavy skirt and boots, giving him nothing to feast on but the glints in her eyes. Still his lungs worked faster, breath ripping down his throat.
She knelt with purpose, trapping his wrists at his sides and blocking him in with her knees. Before he could even get used to the warmth beneath her skirt she was sinking down, swallowing him into heat. His head slammed back, striking hard against the floor, pain glancing behind his eyes as he cried her name.
A second passed and then she snorted, a flurry of wicked giggles running through them both. He was chuckling with her, sitting up to arms that curled gently around his neck.
“Nice show,” he said, impressed. “Keep the vamp in line; I like it.”
“Could never keep you in line,” she murmured sweetly, kissing him just once. “That’s the point.”
With a kiss of his own he loosed the clasp on her skirt, dropped the zip and edged the waistband up and over the rest of her clothes. Best to be rid of the obstruction, thing as thick as that.
She took it from him, stretching up enough that he could admire at the angles cutting between their bodies. He loved the way they fit together, the shapes of their disembodied thighs, the three inches of his cock visibly connecting them.. Wanted to feel the muscles carving curves up her hips, promising more skin beneath the fluffy white hem of her jumper.
“Oh, look at us,” her voice came, content as that inside his head. “We're pervy modern art.”
He looked up, locked smiling eyes with hers and on impulse tried to pull himself up into the warmth he felt, fingers itching for her sides. It unbalanced them both, rolling them to one side with a thud and a “Spike!”, and suddenly he was thrusting, dick skipping along ridges as they feverishly kissed, his hands flailing for hers.
Her thighs came up powerfully around his waist, slick but pulling him bodily forward, rubbing his t-shirt out of the way. With every push she kept him closer for longer, letting him feel exactly where her breasts were crushed against him, growing tighter, hotter, wetter than a rainforest around his cock that felt so blissfully restricted. The heavy heels of her boots were thumping into his hipbones, shaking his whole abdomen and causing him to gasp. It had to be on purpose, because it made her shudder too.
He could feel her palms sweating desperately, clothed arms overheating beneath his own. He'd stopped thinking, certainly wasn't of any solution, but their hands unclasped, making Buffy's fly to his face, seize his jawbone and his skull as she whined into his mouth. His right wormed up her back, pressed into the plane between her shoulder blades as his left pushed them up off the carpet, up onto his knees.
She squawked, surprised, balanced high on his body. He felt like he was falling backwards as she rose still further, streaming honeyed stickiness down his cock to warm his balls, but then their teeth clashed together, mouths wide open sharing groans and whimpers as they worked her body over his. Her fingers still clutched at his face; he held her by her sweating armpits, biceps quaking with the rest of him.
It was his calf that jerked, kicking his foot into the carpet. It made her cry out, a single spasm curving her inwards. Their foreheads banged against each other; he was deeper, so much deeper caught inside her. She held him so tightly, thighs a vice and pussy walls a trap around his somehow-throbbing dick. The edge was there in front of him, sharp and cutting every nerve, but still he couldn't step across. He was frozen, teeth grinding, leg still flinching, fingers cramping around burning gooseflesh. Every tendon was taut and craving movement, but still she wouldn't let him go.
Then she breathed again, sucking air in through her nose, down into her lungs and letting it out past his lips, whispering, “Marry me,” as she dissolved into pulses around him.
That was when he fell for real, collapsing yet still holding her to him as gravity shifted, murmured devotion spilling from his mouth. Truth was there in all its brilliance, he had to tell her, but it was rushing away as soon as it had come.
At last they both returned to themselves, a sigh drifting between them. His head was nestled as he loved it to between her breasts, a smile on his face as fingers traced through his hair. The silence was golden, made so by their tiny sighs and the swelling of her chest.
The whiteness of her jumper filled his vision. More specifically it was one gentle curve, soft and out of focus in front of him, so different from the bone beneath his cheek. She'd clearly gone braless, yielding and pushing back against the side of his finger. What a squandered opportunity. Though, wait, was that he pink of her areola he was seeing through the knit?
“Watcha doing?” she whispered curiously as he shifted, right arm curving round under her chin so he could stretch the wool taut with both hands.
“Experiment,” he replied absently. Definitely her areola. And look, there was the red he wanted. With lazy desire he darted out his tongue, mostly licking fuzz, but sure he'd get a prick of nipple too.
He was rewarded by her fingers clenching in his hair, the damp pressure just above his hip growing warmer. “Oh!”
He tried it again, a different angle; she gasped violently and his blood began to wend its way back south. “Up for another go?” he asked.
“Uh huh,” she agreed, the smallest touch of dark humour clouding in her voice: “Up for another fifty years.”