Work Text:
Spike's dreams were getting weirder.
Couldn't be helped, he supposed.
Most of the downstairs level of the crypt was still a wet, sooty bomb site after the Slayer and her corn-fed pride of Iowa had incinerated it in their do-gooder enthusiasm. He'd cleared most of the wreckage best he could, and found a new bed frame from the dump, pilfered a mattress from a shipment down by the docks, but the fumes left over from the decimated demon spawn were likely eating away at his brain.
This dream was definitely something to do with brain rot...
It was the alleyway behind the police station again. Buffy straddling his stomach. Her fist across his cheek. There was no pain though (why would there be?), just light breathing, and faint barely-there touches tickling his brow.
It took a while for him to realize he wasn't asleep—had merely been dozing—and the weight in his lap was the presence of someone perched above him, the warmth from their legs spreading down through the jeans he'd fallen asleep in.
The scent of her permeated through the smell of dank and burn and grief before the rest of him slowly twigged to the situation.
"Buffy?" he mumbled as something soft brushed delicately across his eyelid.
"Don't open your eyes," she said quietly, her voice flat with concentration, "or you'll get poked with the eyeshadow brush."
He paused, motionless beneath her. "I'll what now?"
"Just hold still."
He contemplated refusing, or batting her hands away and moving her off his hips, but the gentle swipes of the make-up brush over his eyelid, the warmth of her wrist pressed against his jaw for accuracy, and the weight of her arm across his bare chest, kept him in place. He tried not to breathe too deeply (not that he needed to but the habit was calming). Didn't want to give away the fact his lungs were straining to pull in as much of her scent as they could.
Shit, he'd starved for her. Never thought he'd have her so close again since she'd seemed bloody adamant the last time she left. Really sounded like she fucking meant it and all.
He swallowed around the tightness in his throat, their last words choking him even as he tried not to fidget beneath her.
"Thought you were done with me," he said bitterly, unable to keep his trap shut. A lump of dread hit his gut. Surely bringing it all up would cause her to pull back and bolt, only momentarily forgetting she'd given him the heave.
And yet she didn't. Instead simply feathered out the corners of his eyes with light caressing strokes.
"Yeah…" she answered absently, her hand retreating briefly to reload the brush before leaning back again. "It's not working out so well." She cursed under her breath as her hand wobbled. She licked her thumb and rubbed under his eye to erase her mistake. "I don't really know how to do the whole… 'it's over'… thing."
Spike held himself marble still as her implication took root; a sickening and unwanted weed of hope sprouting in his chest and wrapping its tendrils around his heart. That seemed much too close to her all-out admitting she missed him.
He wished desperately that he could open his eyes to see the expressions on her face. She was always an open book to him, easy to read, but she could make her voice so detached, and he was adrift without that anchor.
He waited for her to elaborate but nothing came, just slow steady breathing above him as she swiped the brush across his eyelid.
"Managed a week," he said, fishing for more, needing her voice in the oppressive silence. Conversation hadn't ever been the paramount component of their… whatever they'd had… but it was a lot more work when he couldn't riff off her emotions visually. "Personal best for you, ain't it?"
Shit, that sounded like such a dig.
He'd obviously meant it as a dig, but he immediately regretted it nonetheless.
She didn't respond at first, and he didn't blame her. Could've bitten clean through his tongue, and seriously considered doing so, until she finished what she was doing over his left eye and with a warm hand against his jaw tenderly moved his head so she could work on his right.
"Managed a week," Buffy agreed quietly, again in that toneless voice that sounded disconnected. "Sucky week."
Spike almost opened his eyes at that, remembering just in time not to and forcing himself to settle back against the pillow beneath his head.
"That so?" he asked.
"Mm," she hummed and then drew her hand away from his face. "Open your eyes."
He did, taking her in for the first time in what felt like months. To his suppressed shock she was wearing the red dress-shirt he'd discarded at the foot of the bed the night before, loosely buttoned over a black strapless bra that wouldn't need more than a yank with his teeth to divest her of. A far cry from the jeans and lilac blouse she'd broken his heart in, and more intimate than being clothed had any right to feel. Wearing something of his… He'd no idea it would stir something so possessive in him (especially since he'd assumed he had reached the heights of that particular emotion many times over already).
He opened his mouth, but she interrupted him before he could comment on it. "Look up."
He glared at her for breaking the moment, but obliged, tilting his head up as she ran a kohl pencil under his waterline.
"Shouldn't you be off getting ready for Harris' big day?"
"Should be," she admitted, a shade flippantly. "Still have a couple of hours. Dawn's taking my dress to the venue."
"So, you just came round to play at beauty school?" he said, turning his head for her when she finished one eye and moved to the other. "What happened, you run out of bridesmaids and felt compelled to keep going?"
She huffed but didn't sound wounded like he thought she would. More 'amused', despite herself.
"Run out is right." He felt the shrug rather than saw it, just before she took the kohl away from his eye. "Married people are sort of the last people I want to be around right now. Even pending ones."
He agreed with her there. The invitation was tucked in his duster pocket—evidently from Anya to pad out her side of the guestlist with the more human-shaped people she knew—but he was still in two minds about attending, allergic to happily-ever-afters as he'd been feeling since she'd stepped on his heart with such finality.
And yet he doubted Buffy's reasons were the same as his.
"Gonna tell me why?" he prompted as she recapped the kohl and dropped it into the makeup bag by her knee.
Buffy riffled through the bag, a crease forming in between her eyebrows that he suspected was misery being camouflaged as concentration.
He took the opportunity to level himself up onto his elbows. "Buffy," he prodded when she didn't say anything, a hard edge imbuing his tone from the irritation at being ignored. Bloody nerve of her to show up suddenly on top of him and not even give an excuse.
Like every other sodding time, he thought, reliving the multitude of moments that started off with nothing more than her bursting in and claiming him as hers only to discard him again an hour or so later, still hard but bruised inside and out.
She shrugged as she pulled out an eyeshadow palette of pinks, reds, and purples—the pinks overused, the reds barely touched—and a second brush. She dipped it into a dark red and without asking permission started working it along his lower lashes, then over the crease of his eye, blending it with whatever she'd already applied.
She sucked her lip in between her teeth, the flesh there turning white as though she was putting some force into it.
"What do you think is, like… a short engagement?" she asked instead of responding to his question, moving onto his other eye.
Spike raised an eyebrow. "Depends, I guess," he replied as she closed the eyeshadow palette with a click, dropping it back into the bag and rummaging again. "Chaos girl and the whelp been together long enough, wouldn't really call theirs a short engagement. By my count, it's been nearly a year—"
"I'm not talking about Xander and Anya," Buffy cut in quietly, her voice slightly cracked. He waited for her to keep going, her motions becoming more jerky and agitated until she sighed in frustration and tipped out the whole contents of her makeup bag onto the bed.
"If you…" She swallowed thickly, shaky fingers spreading out the brushes and tubes of lipstick, the pots of eyeshadow and a couple of less dramatic palettes, a pack of makeup remover wipes. She picked a mascara out from the hoard. "If you knew someone for less than a year…. And you got married… That's a short engagement, isn't it? If you met them in, say, January and got married in November… that's…that's…" Her words trailed off, her mouth clamping shut as she unscrewed the mascara wand and moved to his eye with a shaking hand.
"Easy," he growled, steadying her with a light grip on her wrist until she suppressed the tremors through sheer will. He released her when she stared at him defiantly and lifted his eyes up to the scorched ceiling as she started coating his lashes.
"What's hurting you, baby?" he asked, taking a chance and sliding a hand onto her thigh. She didn't flinch away—or even argue with the pet name, which was a surprise in itself—just worked the mascara into his lower lashes.
"...Riley got married."
Spike paused to digest this, suffocating an exasperated groan in his throat. Figured her shit-heel ex would come parading in as soon as he landed a bird stupid enough to fall for his brand of Hero Lite. Sodding git had all the emotional depth of a puddle of piss in an alley.
"Right," he sneered, unimpressed as she brushed upwards. "Got under your skin did it?"
Buffy barely reacted, but he could hear the strain in her chest as her heart forced itself to keep beating around a deep fracture.
"I'm happy for him," she managed and he barked a laugh.
"Yeah, you seem elated."
Her face turned stony. "His new girlf—" She shook her head. "His wife seems really nice."
"You met her?"
"...Yeah."
He pulled back away from the mascara brush to narrow his eyes at her, feeling the wand graze the arch beneath his eyebrow. "When?" he asked, but he had a hunch he knew the answer.
Tell me you love me…
Tell me you want me…
At the time, it had seemed too good to be true.
Buffy's eyes flitted away from him for a second in obvious guilt. She licked her thumb and wiped underneath his eyebrow, erasing the mark.
"Just before," she confirmed, a look of shame lending a rosy hue to her cheeks. She finished brushing up the lashes of his right eye, then thrust the wand back into the mascara tube with more force than necessary.
"That's what all that was about then?" He dipped his head, knowing better than to try and get a little eye contact out of her. He'd end up getting a different sort of contact, and that'd fuck up whatever artwork she was inflicting on him. "Guess it was thick of me to hope you were all but starting to listen."
She reached for another compact of something; a soft mauve-colored powder that was probably eyeshadow but she picked up a fat brush and after a pause swiped it across the ridges of his cheekbones.
"I listened."
His eyes darted to her face but she was deliberately not looking at him, overly focused on her slow brushstrokes.
Spike tensed his jaw to keep himself still. He could let it lie. Let her mess about with his face in a whole new way and then dash off like she always did, except he'd been holding in a lot of words all week and silence had never been golden to him.
He waited until her gaze was searching the heap of makeup again, fingers picking up lipstick tubes and turning them on their ends to see the colors and the names.
She discarded a few before finding one, lingering on the label for several beats, biting her lip in thought, and he took his chance.
"Did it help?"
She smirked, shaking her head sourly.
"Made it worse."
He let the air out through his nose to try and ease the tension in his chest. Old habits, it seemed, didn't die at all.
"Must drive you spare, huh?" he asked as she uncapped the lipstick and rolled it up. A dark red that would be far too severe on her delicate features. "Hearing it from me? Not from the ones you want."
Her shoulders squared like he'd thought they would, taking the edge off her sadness as she resisted the urge to rise to the bait.
"Can we drop it?" she huffed, her eyes wide in the gloom, shining a bit too brightly like she was trying not to cry.
"And if I don't want to drop it?"
She considered him for a moment before her free hand wound around to the back of his neck, bringing him close and keeping his head still. With her other hand, she touched the lipstick to his slightly parted mouth, running it along his lower lip.
She recentered it in the middle of his cupid's bow and drew it down first one side then the other.
He stayed still until she was finished—until she was just pulling back her hand, hungry eyes on his lips—before sitting up too fast for her to protest, grabbing her by the shoulders and biting her with a hard kiss that froze her underneath his hands.
She almost opened her mouth—instinctively reacting to him the way she had done so many times—before an offended growl tore from her throat and she pushed him back.
A dark red smear stained her lips. She wiped at it with the back of her hand before remembering the makeup wipes, hurriedly tugging one out and scrubbing away the evidence of his kiss.
"You're such an asshole."
Spike chuckled. "There's my angry bitch." He grinned, edging up towards her. "Want me to make you forget them, Buffy? I'm good at making you forget, aren't I?"
"Not that good," she retorted, stuffing the wipe into the makeup bag.
"You said I make things simpler," he stated, a hopeful inflection almost making it a question.
Her mouth tightened, pursing it in stubborn mutiny of the situation. "When I'm with you," she agreed with difficulty.
His hands crept up to her waist and pawed her through the fabric of his shirt, letting his fingers dig in meaningfully as he shifted his hips beneath her, chasing that warmth between her legs, getting close enough to feel it but not being so brazen as to fully grind against her and incur a fist to the nose.
"You're with me now."
Buffy sighed, eyes briefly flickering closed at the sensation before meeting his again, but her gaze sparkled with a shimmering heat that he'd come to know as her way of handing him the reins.
She didn't protest when he gripped her hips and spun her beneath him. Her eyebrows creased when he climbed up over her until he was sitting on top of her middle, his knees pinning her forearms to the bed with surprisingly no resistance.
She rolled her eyes as though unimpressed, which he guessed she deserved to be, considering he was only straddling her like this by her own consent.
"What are you doing?"
Spike smirked and reached down to the makeup wipes on the bed. "Making things simpler."
Buffy stilled as he pulled one out and wrapped it around his thumb, relaxing microscopically when he brought it to her mouth, wiping away the traces of lipstick she'd missed.
He kept going, taking off the blusher on her cheeks, the foundation across her nose and brow, the eyeliner outlining her eyes.
"You think he replaced you, sweetheart?" he asked. "Is that what you think?"
Her eyes closed tighter in a flinch. "Everyone replaces me," she breathed out.
Spike's hand stalled for a second before he let out a snort of derision.
"Got a bloody short attention span, you do," he grunted as he continued to rub it all away until her face was bare, naked in a way he'd never seen her before. How she might look if instead of fleeing the scene of their copulation like a fugitive, she spent the night, waking up in his arms like they were a pair of old marrieds with not even superficial barriers between them.
He dropped the soiled cloth on the bed and cupped her face, running a thumb across her cheek like she was a precious thing he'd found, yearning to keep. An idea struck him as her eyes opened.
"Stay there," he commanded and raised himself off her. She pumped her fists as though his weight had restricted the blood flow in her arms, but didn't complain. She watched him as he made his way to one of the chests that had miraculously survived the destruction of a week ago, raising herself onto her forearms when he turned with a camera in his hand.
"You have a Polaroid?" she asked.
"How else you think I do my hair?" he retorted and despite the weight of unsaid words between them, she smirked.
He uncapped the lens and loaded the flash.
Buffy raised an eyebrow as he turned it around and pressed it into her hands, moving her index finger onto the shutter with his thumb.
"Show me what you did," he said, gesturing to his face as he took a seat next to her on the bed.
She sucked her cheek in thought before struggling up into more of a sitting position. She pushed him back onto his elbows and lined up the shot, adjusting the angle of his head with a pinch of his chin before releasing the shutter. The flash sparked, his eyes dazzled as the camera whirred and churned out a picture.
She caught it and shook it out, watching it develop. A surprisingly contented smile crept across her face before she handed it over to him.
He blinked to clear his vision of the flash's afterglow before taking it.
The hard blue of his own eyes pierced him, two pieces of sky sunk in dark inky pools of black that feathered out into the red eyeshadow she'd blended in, framed by surprisingly thick lashes he hadn't realized he had.
Dark, dark red burnished his lips, lending an unexpected softness to the smug sneer that was his natural expression.
No wonder she'd looked hungry…
Despite being dolled up to the nines, his face hadn't lost any of its hard edges. The mauve eyeshadow dappling the ridges of his cheekbones made it look like he'd been in a fight. She'd brushed it across a temple too, just above the scar, a faux bruise that heightened the effect. He couldn't help thinking how he preferred this method of application to the times she'd beaten the color into him.
He handed the Polaroid back.
"You like that look?" he asked in amusement. Buffy shrugged, holding in a chuckle. She dropped the photograph on top of the heap of makeup, and he took the momentary break in eye contact to move closer to her, to brace himself with his hands on either side of her hips. "Make me say it all again."
The laughter died on her face as she glanced up at him, edging back from him like his words had been a threat. He made her raise the camera, his hand on her wrist, watching her throat work around a swallow.
"Ask me to," he urged, and after a couple of seconds of hesitation, she brought the camera up to her eye.
He counted the beats of her heart before she spoke. One-two, three-four, five—
"...Tell me you love me," she whispered, her voice trembling like it had done a week ago.
He made sure his face was as sincere as possible. As worshipful on the outside as he felt on the inside. Made sure it filled his heart and lit his eyes so she couldn't possibly miss it, opened the floodgates, imagining this would be the first time she'd say it back.
His thumb covered hers on the shutter release.
"…I love you." He pressed her thumb down, igniting another flash, another whirr, another photograph to drop from the slot into her lap.
She didn't take the camera away from her face, pausing to suck a breath in.
"Tell me you want me."
He leaned towards her and made himself feel the ache he'd tried so hard to suppress for so long. To relive where it started; a coil of dread around his gut and a burn of longing lower still, fingers curling inwards the way they had so many times before, as if pretending to grab hold of her would have summoned her into his embrace.
He forced himself to feel all of the wretched lust that had brought him to the brink of despair time and time again. Every miserable atom of it, no matter how much it would cost him later. And it would cost him.
This was going to hurt something rotten.
"I'll always want you," he rasped, almost growled, almost vamped out as the flash pierced him.
He snatched the camera from her hands and crashed into her, mouth covering hers with a brutal kiss that would leave a mark even underneath the lipstick transfer. She didn't stop him this time. Her hands fisted in his hair, clung to his back as he kissed her down into the bed.
"You want me too," Spike whispered, his fingers digging into the curve of her waist, little snicks heralding the seams of his shirt snapping apart as he gripped too hard.
He almost broke skin as he bit down on her neck, squeezing the tendons between his teeth as her hips arched up into his.
"I know. I wish I didn't." Her words were gasped out and then cut off as he ground into her, the bulge in his jeans pressing against her soft core. Her hands slipped from his back to his hips, dragging him in again. "We can't keep doing this."
He shook his head in awe that she could still have any denial left in her.
He lowered a hand between them, rucking up the hem of the shirt and without stalling dipped beneath the waistband of her underwear, his fingers grazing across her clit and down towards the wet warmth he craved. A thrill tripped up into his heart at the feeling of lace against his knuckles.
She'd known they'd end up here and had apparently dressed the part.
"You belong with me," he said, rutting against her with his hand trapped between them. "You know you do, even if you hate it. Even if I'm not who you'd choose. People like us don't get to choose, Buffy. We don't get to walk away. It is what it is."
She shook her head and he couldn't help but smirk at the thought that unless she'd brought a hairbrush there were going to be some very telling tangles at the base of her skull.
"It's the last time, Spike," she growled, missing the opportunity to refute his statement, her fingernails scoring welts into his hips as her feet locked behind his calves.
"You say that every time."
"I mean it."
His nostrils flared angrily, and he pushed that anger into a kiss so hard he felt his own lips bruise. Her thighs clenched around him as he slipped his fingers lower, spreading her open and pushing two digits inside, swallowing her groan as she bucked against his hand. He pumped into her, building her up as she bit his lips and tangled her tongue with his.
When he felt her walls start to flutter he pulled back, leaving her panting.
"Better make it count then." He drew his hand away and reached for the camera, the evidence of her need shining across his fingers. "If it's the last time, leave me something to remember you by."
He expected her to protest.
Or hit him in the face.
At the very least for her to stall, but she didn't. Only followed him up and wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face there as she ran her tongue over his jugular, sucking a mark under his jaw. He held her to him with a hand at the back of her head and stared into the camera as he took the shot.
He didn't pause to view it but turned his head into her kiss, his fist creating worse knots in her hair as a second flash captured her lips plastered over his, her arms clinging to him desperately.
Buffy gasped as he shoved her down, writhing as he kissed and bit her neck, down her chest to her stomach. He trailed lower, slipping a hand beneath the shirt to stroke the soft skin beneath.
She raised herself up onto her elbows to watch him. Which was odd, since she never normally did, choosing instead to keep her eyes closed, her teeth perforating her lip like she was struggling to conjure a different face between her legs. He was sure she never managed to. Whenever she broke it was to an angry howl that intimated how much she loathed herself that he'd gotten her there, that she couldn't even find respite from him in her imagination.
This time, however, he could feel the intensity of her gaze setting him on fire.
He dropped the camera on the bed and with his hands on her knees spread her legs.
He'd been right about the lace. Red, with black bows over her hips. Not her usual fare, and to his knowledge, not something in her wardrobe either.
These were new.
Deliberate.
"Did you do this for me, luv?" he asked, knowing the answer as her eyes met his, a blush coloring her cheeks.
Buffy hesitated, then nodded. Spike grinned. It was a wonder, really, how she could manage to look simultaneously sex-starved and haughty about it.
His thumbs swiped under the lace over her hips, pulling them up higher so the crotch dug in. "Pretty."
She relaxed slightly at the compliment, but the tension restrung itself as he picked the camera back up from the heap of makeup and Polaroids.
He snapped one, capturing the rumpled mess of her hair, the creases in his shirt, the strip of bare stomach beneath.
She didn't protest as he took her hand and placed it at the edge of the waistband, staging her arm to make it seem she was about to slip them down onto her thighs for him.
She tilted her head brazenly as he raised the camera and snapped the shutter, capturing the way her thumb hooked beneath the lace and the dark red marks over her neck and chest that the lipstick on his lips had left behind, mapping every kiss and bite against the honeyglow of her skin.
As the photograph tumbled from the slot he handed her the camera, slipping down between her legs and resting his head against her thigh.
She hugged him loosely with her knees, and he curled a hand underneath her leg to hold her waist, the black of his nails matching the bows at her hips and the kohl around his eyes. He grinned as her gaze turned glassy and hypnotized, the muscles in her legs quivering as he ran his tongue up the inside of her thigh.
"Take a picture, honey," he purred, pinching her skin with his teeth in a wicked smile. "It'll last longer."
Buffy shivered but raised the camera to her face. The blinding flash dazzled but he didn't blink, sinking down lower towards the crux of her thighs. She gasped as he licked a line through the lace up to her clit and the shutter released a second time (he suspected accidentally, but fuck, did he want to keep that particular angle).
"Spike—" she gulped out as he kneaded the flat of his tongue against her, soaking the crotch of her panties until they clung obscenely. He intended to completely ruin them. Not a chance in hell was she walking out in them.
Her hips bowed upwards, chasing his mouth, and he began pulling away with every lick to make her raise herself off the bed. She growled in exasperation, thighs quivering, and he dove into her, sucking hard through the lace. She screamed and arched her back, her thighs clamped around his face. It might've been too much for some birds, but his Slayer could take a lot of punishment and the hand not clutching the camera flew to his head, gripping the barbs of his gelled-back hair as she ground against him.
He teased her with a roll of his tongue, savoring the groan it elicited from her. More licks, more strokes, more kneading had her shaking. Panting. Her choked gasps trailed into strained silence as sensation took precedence over breathing and he paused to nip her thigh, earning a low groan as she let the air out of her lungs.
"God," she moaned, her head sinking down into the bed as he slipped his hands beneath her, raising her up into his mouth with his palms flat at the small of her back. "Oh, God… Make me forget… Spike, make me forget…"
Spike nodded, her willing slave always, and moved the soaked lace out of the way with the tip of his tongue. He dove into her and she shrieked, bowing so hard off the bed his teeth nearly sank into the soft flesh of her mound. He wrestled her back down to the mattress, forcing her legs wide with all his strength as he fucked her into a howling mess with his tongue.
When she broke she broke with a strangled scream, her hand curling into a fist and nearly pulling out a clump of his hair as her feet hooked around his back. He didn't stop until the quivers around his tongue died back, until the muscles in her legs loosened and slipped off his shoulders, touching down to the wet sheets beneath.
"That's my girl," he purred, nuzzling up her stomach as shivering spasms wracked her frame.
"I'm not your girl," she managed, breathing hard, rolling to one side as he rose back onto his knees.
He flipped her suddenly onto her front, and dragged her back by the waist, emboldened when she didn't protest at all, but flexed her shoulders to brace herself against the mattress on her forearms.
"No?" he sneered, stroking loose fingers across her lower back as he unbuttoned his jeans, palming the erection that had been pressing against the zip ever since he'd realized she was on top of him. "You're wearing my shirt, pet." He bunched up the flimsy lace hugging the curve of her ass until he had hold of it like a leash in his fist. "Dressed yourself up so nice, too. Soaked my bed an' all. Seems like you're mine from where I'm…kneeling."
He yanked hard, splitting the sides of her panties effortlessly as she yelped in protest, only to strangle off into a stunned mewl as he pushed into her without even a twitch of resistance. A second thrust seated him fully, his fingers dug into the supple curves of her waist.
"Mine," he insisted, as he dipped down to leave kisses up her spine. He rutted into her, purposefully scoring with blunt teeth over her vertebrae. She was going to show up at that wedding covered in his scent and in his bite marks. He was sick of hiding, miserable from being her shameful secret; let it be impossible for her to deny—at least to herself—that he had a hold on some part of her.
Her walls tightened around him and a sickened groan tumbled from her throat, her hips thrusting back against him as he bit the jut of her shoulder blade, hooking his teeth beneath the bone and squeezing, nearly breaking the skin.
The scent of blood just beneath the surface was enough to make him swell almost painfully, and he rocked into her as her thighs shook, hair bouncing across her nape until he nuzzled it out of the way and bit her jugular.
He made sure to keep it light. All the sweat and sex and emotional starvation was already too stimulating, and his fangs were itching to sink into her neck and claim her permanently. He pounded harder to appease the hunger in him, salivating as her pulse throbbed under his tongue.
"If you bite me, I really will stake you," Buffy growled thickly, the clench of her pussy robbing her words of their sincerity.
Spike pulled back from her neck, licking over the mark he'd left beneath her jaw; a red welt lined with the divots of his teeth.
"Very convincing," he purred, brushing his nose over the shell of her ear as his hand reached for the camera. With his free hand, he trailed over her collarbones and angled her head up with two fingers against her chin until her eyes met the camera lens. "Gonna smile for me, sweetheart?"
He caught the slight twitch of a grin at the corner of her mouth before she hooked her chin out of his grip, and turned to sink her teeth into the fleshy base of his thumb.
He hissed out a chuckle and snapped the shutter. As soon as it was churned out of the slot he pummeled into her, fucking her deeply into the bed until she let go of his hand in favor of dragging deep breaths married to fevered moans into her lungs.
Her hand gripped one of the bars of the bed frame, knuckles turning white, and he reached up to drag it down and replace it with his hand, his fingers linking with hers and curling into her palm as she screamed. Screamed and screamed and screamed. His name and pleading words and breathless curses.
The last bit of resistance keeping her on her forearms shattered in a tight spasm around his cock. Buffy shuddered beneath him, collapsing into the pillows.
Spike slowed, and God it hurt to slow down now when every fiber of him was insisting he chase his release, bury himself to the hilt whilst she was so warm and welcoming beneath him, so wet around him, but he always was a glutton for her like this. All sweaty and pliant and a little more receptive to some tenderness from him.
He pulled out of her, and rolled her beneath him, finding her kiss-raw lips and brushing them with his own before widening her mouth and winding his tongue around hers. His hands slid up into her hair, and he only just managed to crush the pang of regret that she'd cut it so short. He knew it was because he'd dared to say how much it captivated him.
"You know soldier boy still wants you," he whispered between kisses, lazily rubbing the tip of his cock over her clit until he had her gasping like a fish out of water again. "Didn't miss that look in his eyes, did you, baby? Bloody jealous is what he was. Got a kick out of it myself." Buffy groaned as he sank back into her, slow and torturous as he savored the snug fit of her body around him. "Whatever he's found in Mrs. Cardboard, it doesn't compare to you."
"She's taller than me," she sighed against his neck, begging for a bit more soothing with the pout in her voice.
"Don't be thick," he chuckled, "you stand taller than anyone, pet."
She choked out a breath that was part laugh, part sob, and turned her head, searching for his kiss. He obliged, slipping his arms underneath the shirt to hold her close, their hips rocking together in rhythmic harmony.
He pushed harder, burying her beneath him in an attempt to suffocate any atom of distance, delirious in the feel of her and high on the idea that something would change this time. That she'd stay. She had to feel it too, the way the heat was building, her hairline dampening, and her breathing rattling. The way she kissed became less ferocious. Less starved. More giving. More generous as she hummed against his lips.
He needed to capture it.
He unwound his arms from around her so he could link his hands with hers, pinning her arms gently by her head so she was surrounded completely before transferring both of her petite hands to one of his and reaching for the camera with his free hand. One last shot; of her eyes closed in bliss, her head thrown back as he surged to the back of her, mouth agape as she let loose a low moan.
"Spike," she breathed and he groaned, in love with the sound of his name in her mouth and pushed to the brink by it.
Her final release wasn't anywhere near as dramatic as the first or the second, just a quivering resignation gasped out across his back before her head thumped into the pillows. He shuddered against her, cursing in awe as he tumbled with her.
He didn't let go of her wrists until Buffy cleared her throat, shifting beneath him as he relaxed and moved off her.
"First time on a new bed," she noted in amusement, still panting hard.
Spike grinned as he pointlessly caught his breath, pressing his forehead against her temple. "Gotta love a novelty."
He rolled so they were side by side, both on their backs staring up in a daze at the crypt's burnt ceiling. Unthinkingly, he twined his fingers into hers. "Shouldn't you be bolting for the door?" he asked.
"I definitely should be," she agreed. "Have to go do the whole wedding thing... rice to throw, best-men to dance with. Although I'm pretty sure Willow just thinks of me as a friend."
He smirked. "I'd offer to fill your dance card, luv, but I was bringing a date myself."
She flinched, her head darting up to face him as she pulled her hand out of his. "What?"
"Reckon there's a mighty pissed-off barmaid waiting for me outside the Bronze," he explained, tucking a hand under his head and wiping his mouth with the other. "Or maybe not. Doubt she'd still be there now."
He turned to look at Buffy and blinked in surprise.
He'd meant it to be something for her to laugh about since there was no way she could possibly be in any doubt about how thoroughly owned he was by her at this point. But the disbelief in her eyes was visceral, and the spark of guilt it supplied momentarily ignited his temper. After everything she'd said, everything she'd done, everything she'd destroyed, how dare she look betrayed?
"Remember you saying quite a lot on the theme of 'I don't love you'," he reminded her indignantly. "You seemed pretty goddamn clear on that point."
Buffy's eyes flared out of hurt into anger. She let out a bitter huff, like the sound of ice breaking beneath his feet.
"I said I can't love you," she said, sitting up and shoving him out of the way as he tried to rise with her. She scrambled off the bed and reached for a pair of jeans lying on the floor, tugging them on and hiding the lipstick kisses he'd left on her thighs. Her hands moved rapidly, collecting up brushes and kohl pencils off the bed, noticeably the polaroids of him too (leaving the ones of her) and stuffing them all into her makeup bag so fast he nearly missed the next part, just a whisper as it was. "I didn't say I didn't."
He jolted like he'd been shot.
"Buffy—"
He tried to catch her arm but caught the bag instead as she whirled away from him. She yanked it out of his grip, and the tube of lipstick she'd painted him with tumbled out, clattering to the floor. She glanced down briefly, deciding to leave it there, and ran barefoot for the ladder as he slid off the bed after her.
"Buffy, wait—"
"Don't!" she growled over her shoulder. "Don't follow me."
He bit down another howl of her name, gritting his teeth but remaining where he was until the squeal of rusted hinges above announced his solitude.
"Fuck."
After a moment of unnecessary breathing, he swept up the polaroids—unable to look at them—and tucked them under his pillow, along with the ruined red lace. Out of sight if not out of mind.
He retrieved the lipstick from the crypt's floor too, turning it on its end to read the color label out of curiosity.
He almost choked on a sour laugh bubbling up from his throat.
'True Love.'
He sank down on the bed and dragged a hand down his face, remembering too late the layer of makeup over his eyes as his fingers came away black.
He studied the lipstick's label for a while before letting it drop onto the sheets, falling back onto the bed with weary sigh. Something crinkled beneath him; the corners of a Polaroid photograph digging into his arm.
Must've missed one.
He pulled it out and glanced at it, his dead heart breaking at the final photograph of Buffy he hadn't seen develop.
The expression on her face… Her eyes hadn't been all the way closed. She'd been watching him, and the emotion shining there was unmistakable. As easy to read as the promise on the lipstick's casing.
Spike let out a sad chuckle. "You've got the look, gorgeous."
He let a flare of hope warm his chest as he breathed in the scent of her still lingering in the air and ran a thumb across the glossy print. Drinking in the sight of her heavy-lidded eyes, the soft smile of contentment pulling at the corner of her mouth.
Hope turned into a revelation.
Not over yet…