The shadow in front of her was growing long as Buffy made her way back to Spike’s apartment. Giles had been adamant that she train longer than she usually did, to make up for the past few days, and he had offered to take her to have dinner after that, giving her the perfect opening.


“It might not be such a good idea.”

Giles looked at Buffy with puzzled eyes, taking his glasses off his nose.

“Not a good idea?” he repeated. “I’ve seen what the cafeteria was serving for lunch, and you’ve been training for almost three hours. You must be starving.”

In truth, Buffy was, but she shook her head.

“It’s not that. I’m just thinking, it might not be such a good idea to feed the rumors.”

A blink was Buffy’s first clue that Giles didn’t know what she was talking about; his frown, the second.

“The rumors?”

In as few words as possible, she told him what Cordelia had revealed, adding in her own observations of the students’ and staff’s reactions to her. Giles seemed to grow paler by the second.

“They couldn’t possibly think…” He trailed off as though just realizing something. He wasn’t so pale anymore, his cheeks darkening with something that could have been anger or shame. “So that’s why they’ve been—”

He stopped again, this time giving Buffy a look that was definitely embarrassed. She wondered if he found it more embarrassing that the whole campus thought he had an affair with a student or that he hadn’t even realized they did.

“And that’s why I can’t go back to living with you,” Buffy said, trying to sound completely calm and matter of fact about it. “That’d just fuel the rumors even more.”

Giles agreed that it made sense before frowning once more.

“Where will you live, then?”


Giles hadn’t liked her answer at all, and Buffy had felt vaguely guilty about that. He meant well, even if he was a bit naïve when confronted with non-demonic but still quite serious situations. She wasn’t sure her explanation that Spike had started giving her a hand on patrols and that he was a surprisingly decent host had convinced him. In the end, she hadn’t given him much of a choice. The decision was hers, and it had been easy to make, maybe even too easy.

Now, she just needed to see what Spike thought about it – about her living with him on a more permanent basis, and about the changes she was ready to make to their situation.

Her palms were sweaty when she reached the apartment, and she wiped them off on her jeans before walking in. She had never been scared when he had been trying to kill her but now she couldn’t get her heart to calm down.

She left her school stuff and jacket by the door before walking in, following the sound of the television to the living room. Spike was sprawled on the sofa, still barefoot, but he had buttoned up his shirt and slicked back his hair. He looked just as good as he had that morning, and that gave Buffy pause. Was she being hasty? Was she making a reasoned decision, or one based on her attraction to him?

She pushed the idea away. She had thought about it all, she knew what to say and what to request. There was nothing hasty about it.

“Giles wants me to go back to living at his place.”

She said that first part quickly, eager to get it over with, and was struck by the flash of emotion that ran over Spike’s features. Her carefully prepared words disappeared when she realized what it was; the shock of betrayal. His eyes never leaving her, he sat up then stood, and she noticed his lips were moving, although without making a sound. He frowned suddenly and shook his head, just once, as though shaking off a thought. His gaze suddenly became fiery.

“Done with playing, then?” he sneered. “Had your fun leading me on and now—”

She interrupted him before he could say any more and make things more difficult, more awkward than they would need to be.

“I told him I’m staying here.”

She could feel heat rushing to her cheeks as she said it, and she hated that it did. She used to be a no-nonsense girl, focused on slaying and with little worries other than how to clean out vampire nests. In just a few weeks, Spike had brought her back to the blushing teenager that had done little more than smile at a couple of cute guys at school. And at the same time, he had made her feel like she was so much older. Old enough to stand up to her mother. Old enough to live with a man, with whatever that might entail. Old enough to take a risk with her heart if Spike laughed at her, or with her life if he decided he was done being nice.

Now, though, Spike wasn’t doing anything more than staring at her. The sudden thought that he might not want her to live here any longer started her babbling.

“I mean, if that’s ok with you. If you want me to go, that’s not a problem. I’ll pack up and leave you alone. I’ll do that right away. I was just tired of moving around, so I thought—”

“Liar.”

The barest hint of a smile was tugging at the corner of his mouth when he took a step toward her. It wasn’t a nice smile at all.

“I’m not lying,” she defended herself, and tried very hard not to move back when he kept advancing on her.

“You’re not staying here because you’re tired of moving.”

His voice almost cracked with laughter at that, and Buffy bit the inside of her cheek. She hadn’t believed he would make fun of her, but she had imagined the possibility. She wouldn’t let him upset her.

“And why would I be, then?” she asked, rolling her eyes and trying to sound cool about the whole thing.

He was grinning widely, now. “You’re the only one who knows, but I have a small idea. I’d bet it has something to do with this.”

And then his mouth was upon hers, and there really wasn’t much for Buffy to do except to give back as much as she got.


For a minute that lasted forever, Spike thought the Slayer would leave before giving him the chance he needed to show her, to tell her in actions if not in words what he had just realized he felt for her. He started lashing out, but she stopped him with a few quiet, almost shy words. He hadn’t lost the Slayer, he realized; instead, he just might have won Buffy. Whatever excuses she wanted to give, he knew why she was staying, and he refused to let her fool herself as she was trying to fool him.

He descended on her lips without warning and kissed her hard, enough so that she gasped and gave him access to her mouth. Of their own accord, his arms locked around her, pulling her tight against him. He put into the kiss all his want, all his need, all the frustration and lust he had felt in the past weeks, and even a tiny bit of the lighter emotion that had surfaced earlier that day. Buffy responded with the same intensity, and he would have crowed his satisfaction if he had been able to let go of her lips for even a second.

Trapped against his chest, her hands fisted the fabric of his shirt as though holding on for dear life, and when she finally broke the kiss, it wasn’t to run away as she had always done so far, but rather to catch her breath and look at him with wide eyes.

“We’ve got to talk,” she said, her voice shaky.

“Talk?” Spike repeated as he maneuvered her back to the couch and lay down with her. “I can do that.” On his side, with a leg wedged between hers, he bent to nuzzle her neck even as he slipped his hand beneath her t-shirt. “Can tell you all the lovely things I’ll do to you.” She shuddered when he flicked his tongue at the marks on her throat, then again when he cradled her left breast in his palm. “Worship you like a goddess and make you beg like my pet.” Kisses up her neck and over her jaw made her sigh, almost so quietly he didn’t hear it. “Explore your body until I can make you come as fast or as slowly as I want to. Until you’re mine. My Slayer. My—”

One second, Spike was half lying over her, touching her with hand and lips and the length of his body. The next, he was blinking and trying to understand how she had reversed their positions so that she was now straddling him, her hands pinning his wrists on each side of him. He broke into a lascivious smirk.

“Didn’t think you’d take the lead so fast, luv.”

She shook her head; her cheeks were flushed and she was breathing heavily. “We need to talk,” she said again. “There’s got to be rules if…if we’re going to…if I’m going to stay here.”

Spike bucked his hips, not very high, just to make her realize what rested against the heat of her cunt, with only a couple of fabric layers between them. Her eyes widened just a little more and she caught her bottom lip between her teeth.

“I don’t need a safe word,” he grinned. “And I have the feeling that you don’t either.”

“That’s not…” She took a deep breath, and when she spoke again her voice was just a little steadier, and much more determined. “You can’t hunt humans anymore.”

It took two seconds to Spike to realize she wasn’t joking, and for his grin to fade away. “You can't be serious,” he said with a puzzled blink.

“I am very serious. That’s my condition to being with you.”

He observed her for a few more seconds. The determination was there, and a hint of certitude, too. She was sure he would agree. That, almost more than her demand, angered him.

“Ever since you’ve been here, you haven’t asked me once how I’ve been feeding. And now you make demands like you're the one in charge?”

She let go of his wrists at last, recoiling a little as though his cold words had been a slap. She wasn’t so sure of herself anymore, he could see it in her eyes and hear it in her words.

“If you want me, that’s the price.”

 “I’m not paying a price for what you want to give me for free.” He bucked once more beneath her, just to make his point. She slid off him and stood a little shakily. “If you’ve got a problem with what I am, you can go back to your Watcher.”

He kept his eyes on her while she moved back, retreating until the back of her knees touched the edge of the armchair and sitting down almost as though her legs had given up beneath her. For long minutes, silence stretched between them, thick with what could have happened and the resentment that it hadn’t. Spike sat up and retrieved the pack of cigarettes crammed between the cushions of the sofa and lit one, taking a deep drag before he snapped at her.

“What did you think would happen? That I’d bend to your will and agree to anything you’d say just to get to fuck you?” She flinched at that; the words tasted bitter to Spike. “I’m not a tamed animal. Just because I didn’t kill you doesn’t mean I lost my fangs.”

A lock of her hair, escaped from her braid, came to frame her face when she shook her head just the tiniest bit. She looked lovely, however hard Spike tried not to see it.

“I just thought…” She pinched her lips tight, making the scar that crossed them all but disappear. “I thought you…cared enough about me to stop killing if I asked.”

It wasn’t ‘cared’ that Spike heard, but another word, one he would have laughed at if she had uttered it just a day earlier, one he couldn’t have denied if she had used it now. He didn’t reply to what had been, just barely, a question; if he had, he might have agreed that he did care that much, and she would have kept pushing until he handed her his fangs, his balls and all he was on a silver platter. He couldn’t accept her demands, not if it meant that he’d end up resenting her, maybe even hating her for it.

“So, what do we do, now?” he asked in an exhalation of smoke.

The Slayer didn’t seem to know any more than he did.