"Tell me you love me."

"I love you. You know I do."

"Tell me you want me."

"I always want you. In point of fact -- "

"Shut up."

Buffy kisses him, drawing his body over hers, her mouth soft yet insistent. As she tugs his shirt down his shoulders and strains upward to meet his lips, Spike can't decipher what role she expects him to play. He's a little distracted by the cargo downstairs, as well. He kisses her back, guardedly, feeding off her hesitation. It's a scant meal. No tongue yet, almost polite, testing the waters and finding them tepid, but deep. There's an abyss beneath the bright surface, ready to break open. A slowly bursting dam.

Buffy briefly wonders why she's here. She could have ditched Sam, (Mistress of All That I Am Not and Never Will Be), circled back to the house, freed Willow's inner Bitchy Cat and fed it a treat. Willow said she was prepared to hate her. Xander would have offered his own patented brand of consolation, too. Bad jokes, good laughs. I could have let them comfort me. Instead, her feet had steered her immediately to Spike's crypt. And for what purpose? To gather information? Not likely. To fuck, and not confide?

That's what we do best after all: Not Confide.

Wasn't always the case, though. Once upon a Time Warner we used to talk, at least, a little bit.

Hmm, I wonder why that changed? Gee, could it be the sex having? Otherwise known as The Death Knell of any Buffy Summers Relationship?

Bitterness is an acquired taste.

Buffy shifts backward along the surface of the crypt, tethering their kisses and providing more room to stretch and spread their bodies.

Spike observes her, but not quickly enough to interpret her mood before she pulls him to her again, quivering with need.

Their noses bump. Buffy turns her face in accommodation. She tries to sink her tongue between his lips, but finds them sealed and hastily retreats.

He opens his mouth too late, regretful, supplicating. She grips his clothing in her fingers, body rising like a gentle tide, trying to press into him, use him as cover. Spike ascends at the same time, leveling the flow and rendering it non-existent. Her wave drifts ashore, abandoning her there and severing the pull of the moon.

They can't find a rhythm.

After a few more shallow, skipping kisses he admits, "I don't, um -- " understand what you want. Can't read you.

"Maybe... slower," she whispers, questioning, searching his eyes with her own.

"Yeah," he agrees, just as quietly, primed to dive back in.

They continue removing each other's clothes.

Spike runs his hand curiously across tough, black material. "Don't tell me The Council coughed up the pounds to start outfitting you?"

Buffy doesn't respond right away. Then, with a sigh, "Does it actually matter?"

He sees her point. Right. Off they go.

The rest of her Riley Wear drips to the floor in a puddle, leaving her clad in only a modest cotton bra and panties. Spike's completely naked.

They kiss again, a gradual, passionate crawl, mouths rending and sewing, opening for each other at the right time now. Buffy gasps for air then plunges herself again willfully into their shared sea of lust, submerging and releasing, over and over. Gathering just enough air at the surface to prolong the drowning indefinitely.

Riley coasts around the edges of her mind, buoyed there, bobbing in the distance, but Spike will eradicate him, splash and rock, send him over the edge at the end of the world. Buffy is sure of this.

Without ceasing the movement of his mouth on hers, Spike runs his hands lightly over her neck, then along her collarbone and covered breasts, almost no pressure, infatuated with her not-quite-nude form. He loves the fact that even though she wears bras, she doesn't need to. Loves being able to cup her firm breasts so easily... loves the perfect little handfuls.

Too many of their liaisons have been conducted fully dressed, next to a dumpster, against a wall, clothing to clothing... Leather and denim, black and blue, their new skin, causing the one area where they *do* touch -- the place he surges inside her -- to feel unbearably carnal by comparison. Sometimes they'll rip the threads from each other's bodies, frantically copulate, and re-dress so rapidly, angrily, that even the sensation of skin sliding along skin provides no lasting satisfaction.

We don't do after glow, Spike thinks.

It's no wonder he likes her this way, about to be undressed. This is something he's not yet experienced with her: An In-between State. An About To.

Spike also appreciates her choice of undergarments. They're not terribly sexy, but they're well worn, smell of her, speak of her: her daily anxieties, her yielding pussy, the hollow between her breasts that sometimes accumulates beaded pearls of sweat. They're not her usual attire, and for that reason, that rarity, he covets both pieces of material almost desperately. Must have them. Must devise a way to distract her later, take them, keep them.

His fingers wander across her smooth stomach, causing her to arch, seeking more pressure. He opens her legs just enough to slip his hand under her knee, slowly, like she'd asked.

Buffy suddenly worries that any greater movement might cause them to fall off the stone surface. She imagines bunk beds at camp: the nighttime fear of waking up on the floor with broken limbs.

"Spike," she whispers tremulously, but he continues his caresses, doesn't look up. He strokes the back of her knee with the barest tips of his fingers, and she finds it oddly pleasurable when ticklish shivers run up to her neck. When he scoots down and traces his tongue there, speckling the skin and tendons with small bites, Buffy squirms a little, on the brink of a giggle, but doesn't ask him to stop.

He presses his nose into the tender cotton between her legs, causing his eyes to roll back in sensory overload. Darts the fabric aside with one finger so he can torment her with his tongue.

Upon contact, Buffy makes a soft, strangled noise in the back of her throat. Keeping his hands low, Spike rises up her body and burrows his face deeply in her lovely, upturned neck. It doesn't even occur to her to be afraid. He nibbles her flesh, eating her without biting, coating her skin, softening it for ease of digestion. Below, his middle finger slips inside her, palm pressing against her small, eager mound. Her hips rock diligently against him and appeal for more.

She's not quite as wet inside as she normally gets, he notices, so the fit around even his one finger is tight as hell. The very idea of this same, hot, tense flesh wrapped around his cock makes him shudder.

He manages to shove the savory anticipation aside, promising to get back to it later. Spike prefers to give her at least one orgasm before taking her fully, if time and her permission allow. While his finger thrusts smoothly in and out, making her wetter, he continues lavishing her neck with nipping kisses, then undoes her bra, memorizing where the scrap falls so he can filch it later. Buffy runs her nails, sharp as pins, across his back, over his shoulders, in his hair, trying to tug him around her, force his body to cover hers, make him protect her from excruciating graveyard conversations with perfect wives of stupid ex-boyfriends.

Riley was good at covering me with his body.

But Spike... Oh God, the way Spike... his fingers, his mouth... Spike coerces her to peaks of pleasure so staggering that all other sensation is rendered bland in contrast. Providing her with such exquisite bliss is definitely his worst cruelty, because she so often has to exist without it. Willow has no clue what addiction really is.

Spike smirks knowingly at Buffy's panting, pleading expression. Maybe we don't do after glow, but she bloody well glows during.

"Come for me, Slayer," he murmurs, as if there's to be absolutely no argument in this matter. For added incentive, he sucks one of Buffy's hardened nipples into his mouth and quickens the pace of his finger.

Sometimes, simply ordering her to orgasm is enough, and embarrassingly effective. But tonight, she needs extended urging.

His lips sway to her other, neglected breast. Buffy clutches fistfuls of his hair possessively. Spike can't prevent his hips from brushing against her, can't prevent his stiff, aching cock from rubbing the side of her belly in sync with his joyously pumping finger. Despite his mind's best intentions, his body searches tenaciously for gratification.

Buffy presents him with another beseeching look, then squeezes her eyes shut. Spike grits his teeth, more determined than ever to heave her over the cliff, catch her and hurl her off again.

After several minutes of continuous writhing and moaning, Spike's voice penetrates the fog of her mind again.

"Buffy," he commands, thrusting now with two fingers, his voice a smooth, seductive slither, "Grind on me, ride it hard, rub yourself off, scream to high hell -- "

There's nothing she wants more than to soar head first into the fleeting oblivion of climax... but something's holding her back.

She pictures her and Spike standing in an empty room at opposite doorways. They each guard their respective doors, backs to them, staring at each other across the distance. And if they move even one step toward each other, to meet in the center of the room, everything outside, pounding and clamoring, will break in: Her friends, Angel, Drusilla, Riley... Just one step, and everything they refuse to acknowledge or put into words will splinter through the doors and attack them both.

Buffy stops thrashing against his hand.

Upset, Spike removes his fingers from her tantalizing depths. He's nervous, and more than a little desperate. What can I give her, if not this? Bloody useless blasted fuck. She won't let me give her anything else, this is it, this is all, the only thing. If I can't give her this, it's a wasted visit, she'll remember that, won't be coming 'round anytime soon.

While Buffy registers the vague anguish of loss, he lifts her legs and removes the last scrap of clothing that clings to her body. It takes every ounce of his will power not to rub his face in her faded, sweet, aromatic underwear, but he fears the ramifications of acting on this impulse too much. Tosses the material behind him, hoping his ruse of casualness will be convincing. Leans in toward her face.

"Do you want my tongue?" he asks softly, eyes conveying concern, "is that it?"

"No -- just -- be in me, be inside me," she begs in an almost inhuman cry, opening her legs wider, twisting and plying them around his back.

He's stubborn, though, wants her to come this way first. "Let me use my mouth on you," he insists, returning her legs and descending. He laps resolutely at her clit, causing her to swallow and shiver with impending delight. But his determination proves distracting to her, in the end. Why does he care so much if I come? Why is it a big deal? Riley wouldn't have minded - I mean, as long as it didn't bother me, it didn't bother him. Okay. Stop. Thinking. About him. Now.

"Spike, please, I just want..." she beseeches, arms flailing down and seizing his shoulders, trying to pull him back up. God, she needs him inside, filling her, stretching her, why can't he see that? Be in me, fill me, make me less empty.

Spike rises, lips wet, distressed. It feels like giving up, and he detests that feeling, but then he looks at her... and stifles unexpected exultation: Her eyes glisten with appreciative lust as she gapes intently at his body.

God, his chest is amazing, so hard and smooth and solid... his skin, compressed, tight, perfect, how can something like him be so goddamn hot, beautiful, totally hot, hard, gorgeous, just get him in me, *now*, in me, in me...

Spike lifts her thighs in his strong, steady hands, then slides and pushes the head of his dick along her heated slit. She's so small. How do I even fit inside her? Her body, despite the slippery arousal lining her trim tunnel, puts up a thin barrier of resistance. The thrust necessary to breach it is one of his favorite parts about screwing her.

"Ohh," she whimpers, as he teases her entrance with his cock, and this is a good sign, he thinks, a very good sign.

He repeats the motion and she repeats the sound. He's the conductor, dictating her melody.

Spike drives all the way inside her, hitting a deep and lonely spot.

Buffy comes instantly, mouth open wide in silent ecstasy. She rocks madly against him, fists clenched, neck curved, trying to stay afloat, prevent the orgasm from ebbing back out to sea.

"Told you," she gasps, playfully admonishing, when she regains the ability to speak.

He smiles contritely, relieved, pressure vanishing slightly. "I'll listen to you next time." Her slick walls swell around him, engorged, and he unabashedly humps the fleshy prison she provides him with.

They find the rhythm at last, pummeling each other at the perfect pace, rising and falling brutally, waves smacking jagged cliffs, white water rafting.

After a single minute of hard, fast fucking, she comes again, replenishing his ears with high, girlish grunts and sporadic breaths. She falls back, shimmying her butt and hips in drowsy, unpredictable jerks. "Mmmph, Spike..."

Just hearing his name on her tongue makes him insane. He bounces against her, trying to follow the random, circular movements of her pussy. He feels like a dog jerked on a leash, yanked in several directions, never allowed to explore one place for long. Despite the lack of steady pattern to her thrusts, he manages to hold onto her wriggling, twisting body. He crashes in and out a few more times, then climaxes with a low, rapturous moan of release.

Sated, he lies within her for a moment, then begins to withdraw. Buffy squeezes tight, and digs her fingers into his arms. Tries to grab his side, but his skin is stretched so tightly across his muscles that there's almost nothing to clutch.

She toils upward and decorates his entire chest with kisses, small, quick open mouthed busses of her lips, a blind newborn kitten seeking milk and warmth. Love me need me want me fill me "More, fill me with more," she pleads, uncensored, drunk off pleasure and need.

He'd chuckle, but the quiet, desperate tenor of her voice breaks his heart. "Don't think I have any more, Pet," he consoles her.

Logically, she knows he's depleted. Everything that's vacated his body is now inside her body, yet she feels empty as ever, and you'd think the emptiness wouldn't hurt because it's nothing, emptiness is nothing, but I can *feel* the emptiness, and that's what... hurts.

"Find some," she mopes in a fading voice, head dropping. "More."

"Could probably coax some out of me," Spike remarks suggestively, settling next to her on his back, propping his arms leisurely behind his head. "Put that darling pink tongue o' yours to good use for once..."

He closes his eyes, lips curled into a grin. The assumptive smugness of the act pisses her off. Arrogant prick! He just supposes I'll...

But next thing she knows, she's straddling his waist and running the tip of her tongue around the base of his cock, where her inner flavor coats him. Buffy still hasn't gotten used to the sharp, sticky tang of her own come, but they swap each other's fluids so habitually during sex now that she forgets to be embarrassed. Par for the course and all that. A disturbing, heinous and *wrong* course, but our course none-the-less.

At this spent size, his penis fits inside her mouth completely, but only for a bare moment, then he's growing and hardening already and she has to open her throat and glide her lips up. She grips his foreskin back with slick fingers and sucks him swiftly to full size.

Spike groans contently, jerking with vigorous thrusts of his hips. She's accomplished her goal, however - he's hard enough to go back inside her - and thus endeth the blow job. Spike disagrees. When she tries to rise up and off, he smothers her face with both hands and pushes her back down.

Oh, fuck you, Spike!

Which is the point, actually.

She closes her teeth ever so slightly around his hyper sensitive tip. He tenses and immediately frees her. She lets his cock drop from her lips onto his stomach.

Spike waggles a finger at her, dead serious. "You don't do that."

She mimes the movement of his hands pushing her head down. "Well you don't do *that.*"

"I was merely assisting -- "

"Do I look like I need assisting -- ?! "

"Chirpin' about it earlier," (breathy voice) " 'fill me, Spike, with more of your precious fluid' -- "

"Shut up!" she fumes, blushing furiously. "I never said that!"

Arguing with Spike brings her back to adolescence, like an old shoe. I'll shoot a spit ball at you in Math and call you names, you'll pull my hair, we'll meet at the water fountain between classes and call it a successful day of dating.

And you know things are irreparably fucked when *I* start looking like the mature one in the relationship.

She sits in his lap, wraps her fingers around his cock and angrily shoves downward. Spike feels pouty. I spend plenty of time between her legs, but she rarely gives me complete and thorough suck offs.

Seconds later he forgets his complaint entirely because nothing's better than this. Buffy rides him like a rollar coaster, and he wants to scream out, demand that she tell him precisely what she's thinking, drag and wrench the words he so pitifully craves from her, discover once and for all if she feels even a tenth of what he does. She must! If this isn't love, it's something equally horrible. Why can't she see that?! Oh, but it *is* love, it truly is, it is, it is! Buffy... Love you, love you, love you...

"Love you, love you..." Spike doesn't realize he's segued into gasping the words aloud until he witnesses the guilty frown on Buffy's face.

"Stop saying that," she hisses, without halting the violent, see-saw motion of her hips.

"Seemed to like it well enough before," he responds, melancholy, thrusting back.

Her voice is so quiet he almost doesn't hear her response: "Well it's not before, is it?"

End of discussion.

As her back arches and her eyes bore into his, Buffy splays both of her hands on his chest, one across the other, creating an unintentional X over the area where his heart used to beat.

He wrenches his gaze from hers to peek at this: X marks the spot but the treasure's long gone. Is that all it would take for her to love me? A thumping under her hands? A red pumper, bloody and visceral, to rip out?

The distinct lack of pulsation in his chest does wig her slightly, despite its supposed familiarity. He's looking at her again with such unadulterated longing it makes her feel sick and ashamed. God, Spike, what the hell is wrong with you?! What is wrong with you, that you would want me?!

This pure, undiluted hostility, for herself, for him, launches her down the path to orgasm, a trajectory so powerful she couldn't stop it even if she wanted to... and in fact she'd prefer to prolong the build up, but she bucks helplessly, compulsively faster, squeezing tight, and whips her now loose, damp hair back and forth. For his part, Spike cups her jiggling breasts then coasts his hands lightly over her sweat softened spine.

"When?" he groans, begging, eyes shut painfully tight, ready to burst and barely suppressing it. It's a full time job.

"Soon!" she pants back.

He shakes her like a can of soda, plunging her up and down his slippery erection, making her howl.

"Now, now, now now now -- !"

Permission granted (demanded), he convulses ferociously beneath her, and she's almost afraid he's having a seizure. Then she's not afraid of anything because she's blacking out, falling, plunging, breaking the surface, sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

An eternity later, when the tremors subside, Buffy flounces onto her back. She feels ship wrecked and dizzy, like she just swam a hundred miles to safety with an anchor around her leg.

Spike lets her rest, until her breathing resurfaces. She faces away from him.

He leans in to tentatively nuzzle the back of her neck. Buffy stiffens.

They don't touch unless they're fucking.

If he wants to rub her back or arms, he has to do it covertly, concealed in tandem with direct sexual stimulation.

To that end, he worms his free hand between her closed thighs. Fist-size spasms of tension sprout immediately in her belly, signaling the production of fresh arousal.

Buffy groans softly. The bottom of the ocean is black, not blue like people think. S'pose it doesn't matter, it's a Bruised Motif, either way. Often during sex with Spike, she imagines herself scrambling for shore, frantic to reach dry land, but every time she thinks she's made it, with sand beneath and sun above, he drags her back under deep, murky water. She doesn't know how much longer she can handle the agonizing lust, because the only cure for it is to come again.

And again after that...

"Open uh-up," he whispers in sing song, directly into her ear.

Her legs spread.

While he kisses her neck and outlines the angles of her shoulder blades, Spike works his fingers in merciless circles over her sore clit.

"Bet I could keep you wet nonstop for days," he brags softly, ramming his finger in, ladling the warm, abundant liquid out and spreading it around. "Longer, if you let me."

Why does he have to talk like that, say those things? Oh, right, because it *works.* She gives in and twitches against his hand, albeit somewhat reluctantly and diminutively. The tugging movement wrings another orgasm from her exhausted body, and she cries out forlornly.

Spike adores the sound she makes, but ultimately derives more enjoyment from touching her back. He knows it's the closest he'll ever get to cuddling with her.

We cannot keep doing this, she thinks.

But Spike's hard again, pressing into her butt, nudging her in that possessive, predatory way, and she's dripping with everything he previously fired into her as well as her most recent come, and it doesn't take any effort to suck him back inside... so they fuck one more time, sort of sideways and behind, two lonely bodies undulating ungracefully.

Well if he's gonna have one, I should have one... she theorizes weakly, gripping his hand and tugging it around her hips.

"Can't get enough of you," he slurs into her neck, "Never get enough of you."

Riley had enough of her, Parker had enough of her, Angel had enough of her.

"Really?" she whispers, unsteady, unbelieving, unconvinced.

For the next half hour he proceeds to prove it to her, barely moving inside her, just enough to deliver them each to completion, a shallow wading pool of endless, flowing, gratifying release. Buffy bites her lip as the steam rises.

At last they separate.

"I'd listen," he remarks quietly, daring to run his fingers through a careless strand of her hair.

She reflexively swats him away. Huh? Beat. "Huh?"

"If you had something to say, I'd listen," he tells her, making sure to relay the honest intent behind the words.

The first random thought that pops into her head is, You are so very old. She doesn't even *know* how old he is, though she specifically recollects Giles and Angel informing her about it in the school library. This is something she could ask Spike, but what would be the point? Seriously, what's the point? Everything Buffy needs to know about Spike, from the moment he arrived in Sunnydale at least, she already knows - and everything about Spike from before he arrived in Sunnydale, she doesn't *want* to know, or even particularly think about.

So instead, she thinks about age 19, a lifetime ago, lying in bed with Riley, his room at Lowell House, the lopsided basketball hoop on the door. She thinks about the sheets on his bed, which were Snuggle soft, though I always thought the Snuggle Bear was creepy, especially when he's wandering around the field and flying the kite, I mean, that is *not* natural, is it supposed to be cute(?!), because hey, failing utterly to convince me...

She thinks of lying in that bed with Riley, 'cause, yeah, we'd be in a nice warm bed, and not, ya know, for example, oh, I don't know, a *crypt*. She thinks of a time she woke up there, in that clean, Snuggle-soft bed, and discovered in the most mortifying way possible that her period had arrived early.

He was kind about it, said it was okay, but there was a split second, a flash of distaste - she saw it in his eyes and lips, he couldn't take it back -- it existed forever, surely as if she'd snapped a Polaroid of it. She offered to wash the spots off the sheets, got up to do so right away despite the discomfort of a guys-only laundry room, and he, gallant as ever, refused, wouldn't let her.

It was odd. Riley dealt with all manner of slime and goo and hideous demon this and monster creature that, but it took a girl, a *girl* to make him squeamish (if just for that split second) --

Nothing about her or her body ever disgusts Spike, heh, menstruation least of all. There are, in fact, times when he astounds her with his unflinching acceptance, murmuring how every single part of her makes him stiff.

Nothing about Spike's body disgusts her either, she realizes, a bit startled. Nothing, that is, except his very existence, and hers, for being with him, using him.

Spike is still waiting for her to talk. Buffy has no clue how long she's been staring into her memories. Fidgeting, she increases the distance between their bodies so they aren't touching at all. Closes her eyes. May as well pretend to be asleep until I don't have to pretend anymore.

Sighing with resignation, knowing she's lost to him, Spike pulls the blanket over them both. Lies on his side, facing her. He wraps his own arms around his middle, because what's the alternative?

As they often do prior to sleep, Buffy's thoughts drift toward her time under the earth, the Finish Line, the Big Dirt Nap.

That's all it turned out to be: a nap.

Buffy remembers reading somewhere that you shouldn't take naps longer than 45 minutes, because you might enter REM sleep (and lose your religion, and it's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine). If you enter REM sleep during a nap, and dream, it's jarring to be woken up. You won't sleep that night.

They must have woken me at the wrong time. Maybe they waited too long. Or maybe they didn't wait long enough, and I didn't get enough sleep, and that's why I'm so tired, every day, all the time.

Even though her eyes are closed, Buffy can sense Spike watching her, like one might sense impending illness.

He said he'd listen. Part of her wants to open her mouth and let words stumble out, about this... about anything... but she can't.

She doesn't know how.