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something from the archives: in the shadows

it's a new year and after the long, journey that was say goodbye, i thought i'd switch things up. every once in a while i would write some non-polar fan fiction. this one is actually not even roswell-related. i was also a huge buffy, the vampire slayer fan, and of course, i was a spike/buffy shipper. i've heard the arguments for and against their pairing and i understand why people love angel. but i just never did. as a character spike seemed richer and more complex. and the relationship between him and buffy was darker and more complicated.

anyway, this is an angsty one-parter. (with a bonus sequel scene to post next week)

Category: Buffy/Spike
Spoilers: After "As You Were", includes spoilers from Hell's Bells
Summary: After their break-up, both Buffy and Spike think about each other.






In the Shadows


Spike watched as the slayer fought the pair of vampires. He watched as she fought and kicked and punched and saved the world from monsters just like he was yet again. He’d stayed away for two months.

Seeing her at the wedding that wasn’t had been too much.

At least she had admitted it hurt to see him too. Crumbs perhaps, but he’d take what he could.

Hell, he always had when it came to her.

He had let her use him.

But being close to her. Being able to touch her skin. Knowing that he made her feel something. It had been empowering. It had been enough to give him hope.

He’d been a fool. But then he’d always been love’s bitch.

A self-deprecating smirk crossed his face as she staked the vampire that she had been fighting. Leaving nothing of her opponent but dust.

He’d been around for two-hundred years. He’d killed two slayers and hundreds of unfortunate humans. Often he wondered why it was that she hadn’t yet killed him.

Was it because she knew it hurt so much more to watch her, to love her, to fight alongside her, and still not be able to touch her?

Was it because she knew that once they’d consummated their attraction he’d never be able to get enough of her?

Was it because she knew that it would be too easy to slay him? That she bloody well already had.

Spike watched her from his place in the shadows.

He was destined for the shadows. His life would always be shadows. And he knew that she needed light. She needed light to dispel the darkness that had a grasp on her soul.

He had only exacerbated what she feared most. The darkness within her. The killer within her. He knew she hated to think of the origins of her super strength.

She was beautiful when she fought. Lithe and strong and fearless. Determined and fraught with the knowledge that she was on the side of good.

Perhaps that was what he had always lacked.

He itched to smoke a cigarette. He needed something to distract him from his thoughts of her. His remembrances of everything they had shared. Because it had meant something to him.

Who was he bloody well kidding? It had meant everything to him.

*****

She wondered if he honestly thought she hadn’t sensed him.

She’d known he was there the instant he’d appeared. Or rather not-appeared in the shadows.

She didn’t let that distract her from her battle with a bunch of the stupidest vampires she’d had the misfortune to come across.

She couldn’t afford to be distracted. After all, she had a purpose. A mission. And being distracted by a vampire who looked like Billy Idol complete with a smirk and a sexy British accent was not on the agenda.

She executed a backflip and with a sleight of hand dusted the last of the pesky vamps who had sought to beat the legendary slayer she was.

She stood there for a moment, staring down at the stake in her hands. She could throw it. She knew where his heart was, after all, she’d broken it. And if she staked him perhaps he’d finally stop torturing her.

Because she missed him.

And having to admit that tortured her.

“I know you’re there,” she said facing the shadowed alley.

He emerged, wearing his signature smirk and leather duster.

“It’s been a while pet.”

“Not much for helping lately are you?”

“Haven’t really been in the mood for a tussle. ‘Sides didn’t think you’d appreciate it.”

“Spike…”

“What luv? There’s nothing to say there is there. You’ve made it bloody obvious…it’s over. Well, I get it. I don’t need to be told twice, I’m not a complete shit.”

“Why?” she asked quietly.

His gazed coolly flicked over her. He shrugged. Turning on his heel he walked away.

She watched him leave and tried to squelch the anguish that burgeoned in her gut.

*****

He was a sodding idiot.

Why was it she reduced him to bloody nothing?

Why was it that he felt so much when it came to her? That she brought him to his knees.

He kicked the door to his crypt open. He’d done some extensive redecorating since she had blown his pad to bits. The place looked even more like a bordello than ever.

Only now, ironies of ironies, he wasn’t having the best sex he had ever had.

Two hundred bloody years and this girl was the best sex he’d ever had.

She wasn’t just a girl. She was the Slayer, he reminded himself. She was an amazing woman.

And she had brought him to heel.

That and the bleeding chip in his head he supposed.

He threw himself on the lush satin bedding he’d stolen and stared up at the ceiling.

He really had to stop this dopey mooning.

It was over.

*****

It had been her call.

And she had to be strong. Every night, however, she found herself cutting through the cemetery, stopping by the one crypt that had become her haven for a while, and wanting so much to push open the door and rush into the arms she knew were waiting.

Would he wait forever, she wondered.

Or would there be a time where it was too late?

He was in there. She could feel his want, his need, from where she stood.

It never mattered where she was, she always felt it.

And it was driving her just as crazy as being with him had.

Because if she was honest with herself, it had come to mean something to her. Their relationship had been special. It had fulfilled her in ways none of her previous relationships ever had.

But she couldn’t forget what he was.

A soulless demon. A monster. A killer.

Vampire.

And she was the Vampire Slayer.

*****

She was out there.

He knew this instinctively.

Everything in him wanted to fling the front door to his crypt open and pull her in. Pull her in.

He wanted to be inside her so badly. He wanted to be within, beneath, inside her skin.

He wanted to feel her body moving beneath him, above him, around him, as they came in wave after wave of ecstasy.

But she had to want too. She had made it clear. She’d spoken his name.

And he had to accept what he didn’t want to.

*****

A part of her wished he’d open the door and take her right then and there. That he’d sweep her off her feet and disregard her every protest and tear off her clothes and tear off his own and mate their bodies until the fire that burned within them was sated.

But she had to be strong. She had to resist the ache her body yearned filled.

Because Spike could never be it for her. She wanted a life that went beyond fighting demons.

She wanted sunlight and roses and picnics on beaches and laughter and hope.

And Spike could never give her that.

He belonged in the shadows.

And she had known enough of that.

*****

The End

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