Spuffy. PG-13. Written for Melissa's bday and fondly dedicated to her.
Morning
If someone had told Spike when he first arrived in Sunnydale that
he would end up where he was now, he would probably have thought that
person was as loony as Dru, if not more. And if Dru herself had
predicted it, he would have undoubtedly run away from the cursed town
with his dark princess, cured or not; done anything rather than lose
her and fall for his mortal enemy.
It was all so clear in his mind when he had first arrived. Cure Dru.
Make the town his. Kill the Slayer. Not necessarily in that order.
Dru had been cured. That was one out of the three at least. He
wondered, sometimes, where she was now. Not that he wanted to see her,
quite the contrary in fact. He would just have felt infinitely better
if he had known she wasn’t going to come back and ruin his little
dream. He would have hated to have to dust her, would have hated Buffy
to have to do it. It was impossible not to feel something for the
vampiress after more than a century of taking care of her day after
day, night after night. She used to be the reason for his unlife; he
had learned since that he was his own sufficient reason.
Sunnydale had become home, so technically it was his town too, wasn’t
it? Still, that wasn’t what he had thought would happen when he first
had a look at where he wanted to make his domain. Sharing a house with
his Slayer, helping with expenses and paying taxes like the good
citizen he was… All he needed to do was register to vote and he would
be an almost perfectly normal resident of the not so normal town.
He never had killed the Slayer – not unless he counted the many petites morts
he had given her. He even had done – and still did – his damn best to
keep her alive. It was a bit thanks to him, and he was proud of this
fact, that both the Slayer and the Bit had survived Glory. And that was
why each night he was next to Buffy on patrol. Not fighting her fight,
no, he knew better than to stand between her and her prey. Just
guarding her back. Watching her, answering her requests for help,
kissing her all better when she was a little hurt. It was never more
than a little hurt; he never let it go farther than that before
intervening.
Still, all of this wasn’t what surprised him the most. It wasn’t either
the way he got to this point that baffled him. Fighting Angelus, losing
Dru, the Initiative, the chip, falling in love with Buffy, joining her
fight against Glory and slowly winning her heart… All of it was a
surprise in itself, but together they were the necessary parts of his
story.
What surprised him most, on mornings like this one, was to wake up next
to a human and realize that he wanted nothing more than to be happy
with her. It was to think about what he would prepare for her breakfast
– and the Bit’s – as if it had been the most normal thing in the world.
It was to wonder whether they would be busy at the Magic Box that day.
It was to start a mental list on what groceries they would need to buy
that night after patrol, and to plan how to convince his girls that it
was his turn to pick the movie rental.
If the vampire he had been just five years earlier met him today, Spike
knew what he would have told himself. Pathetic wanker. Domesticated.
Fangless. A shame. This was not how a vampire existed, he was very
aware of it. And that was why even after several weeks of living with
the Slayer, after several months of being her lover, he still was
perplexed that he could be happy like this, as happy as he had ever
been in his best years with Dru, even though his days and nights were
the complete opposite of what they had been then. They quarreled
sometimes, they couldn’t not, but it never lasted long.
When Buffy stirred against him, he smiled and watched her slowly
awaken. She stretched like a cat as her eyelids fluttered open, made a
tiny mewling sound when he reached to stroke her side. A glance at the
clock and she was snuggling closer to him. They had time, yet, before
they needed to be up. Time for a cuddle, maybe a little more.
As they often did, his fingers wandered to her hip and the small tattoo
that lay there, branding her as his, mirror of the one on his arm. It
was half a lie, and he knew it. She was her own person, belonged to no
one, not even him. In that respect, he had grown over the years and
found his own peace within himself too. Once, he would have said he
would die the day she did; now he knew he would carry her in him as
long as he lived. However long they had, they were together, matching
ink, matching hearts, matching souls if not for the small detail that
he had lost his long ago.
Twin smiles bloomed and their lips met, a lazy kiss, a tender good morning.
Spike didn’t know how many mornings they still had ahead of them, but
he intended to enjoy every last one to its fullest. He didn’t question
it. Didn’t try to guess if it would last, if he would tire of it, if
she would tire of him, if his demon would finally rebel and demand that
he act like a proper vampire.
All he did was enjoy the moment, the too normal days, the passion
filled nights, the little details that meant much more than they should
have. All he did was live and love. Who cared if vampires supposedly
did neither?
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The characters and names used in these stories do not belong to me. All copyrights remain with Fox and Mutant Enemy. No profit is made from this fanfiction.
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