Chapter Text
Everything was all right for a while. Tara and Giles did the research on why the chip didn’t work on Buffy and came to the conclusion that it was probably just another fluke of resurrection, which kinda paled in comparison to all the other complications. In fact, this one was actually a gift—Buffy had missed testing her skills against the best, and now she didn’t have to: the best fighter she’d ever met was now at her beck and call for sparring.
(That her husband could also give her a little pain with her pleasure in bed when she felt like leaning into the whole Kitten thing was also a nice bonus.)
Otherwise, married life wasn’t that much different than the months of cohabitation that came before. They just got to gross Dawn out with PDA now, which was a bunch of fun until they’d walked in on Dawn frenching Tam in the kitchen, and they’d all agreed to keep tongues to themselves in the common areas.
A month after the wedding, a sleek black package arrived at the front door. Buffy didn’t recognize the handwriting—no one she knew would write in calligraphic script. Even Giles was a chicken scratcher unless he was writing for posterity.
“Spike? I think this one is from your side!”
“Why? Because it’s tasteful?”
He appeared in the kitchen door with a kitchen towel over his shoulder. His hands were covered in bubbles from doing the dishes, and as he stalked closer, he reached up to dry them. Buffy just stared at him—her husband, the domesticated vampire who’d once promised to kill her on Saturday—and she didn’t think she could ever love him more.
“‘Cause the hand writing is, like, way old,” Buffy said with a grin. “Open it!”
“Give it here then.”
He reached out for the package, only to snatch his hand back when he saw the script.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s never nothing,” Buffy said. “What’s wrong?”
Spike tried to stare her down and failed. Why he thought he was ever going to be able to say no to her was an eternal mystery.
“It’s Dru,” he said, and Buffy sighed and looked back down at the black box. She really should have known from the start. It had a gorgeous plum-purple bow on it and everything.
“Right,” she said. “She’s psychic.”
“Yeah,” Spike said, nodding, and then he shrugged. “Also might have sent her a postcard…”
“Spike!”
“She’s family,” he said. “Might have sent one to Peaches too…”
“Oh my God!”
“Didn’t give a toss about family on that one—just wanted to rub it in.”
“He’s gonna be such a drama queen about finding out that way!”
“Yeah.” Spike grinned. “It’s gonna be a treat.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Someday, I’m going stick you both in a room and make you fight it out…” She got a dreamy little smile on her face. “There could be oil involved…”
“Kitten, you want a threesome, you only have to ask—”
Spike’s grin had turned teasing—his eyes the kind of dark that got her almost instantly wet these days. Good things usually came her way when his eyes looked like that…
“—but I draw the line at the guy we’ve both already f*cked. He’s a prick for one thing—plus the soul of it all—plus I’d rather stick my prick in an anthill than have either one of us have to lay back and think of England under him again.”
Buffy stared at him. She wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly—ringing in the ears could do that for a person.
“You—?”
“Yep.”
“And Angel?”
“Sure did.”
“Did he—?”
“Oh, yeah,” Spike said—tongue curling over his teeth like a dare. “You could too, Kitten, if you fancied it.”
“Oh,” she said, still trying to wrap her head around the idea of Spike andAngel, and then she realized what he was offering, and she blushed from her toes to the tip of her ears.
“Oh…” she said again—a touch more breathless. “Should we add it to the list?”
“The Kitten list?”
“Don’t call it that,” she said sharply, and then she grinned. “But, yeah, that one.”
“It’s a date,” he said happily, reaching out to finally take the gift from her hands. “Shall we see what fresh hell Dru’s sent our way?”
“Do you think it might be cursed?”
Spike frowned. “Well, now I do. We’ll get Rupert to check it out later.”
It didn’t matter—he was already halfway through opening the box, and Buffy was pretty sure curses didn’t care if you didn’t open the gift box all the way. Like Shrodinger’s cat, only much, much worse.
“Huh.” Spike held up the box to show her the gift inside: two exquisitely carved stakes modeled after Mr. Pointy—one bright blonde and one darkest ebony. Beside them there was a little note in flowing script:Love, Mummy.
“Are they supposed to be a gift or a threat?” Buffy asked. Spike shrugged.
“Knowing Dru? Probably both.”
“Oh, good,” Buffy said. “Turns out I do have a mother-in-law, and she already hates me.”
***
It took another month for Buffy to recognize that maybeall rightwas going to take a little more work than a simple proclamation. Loving Spike was one of the easiest things she’d ever done, and despite his chronic inability to keep a secret from her, she’d been too busy just enjoying him to realize that he was struggling with any of the new elements of their relationship. That changed one otherwise unremarkable day when she asked him to spank her harder in the middle of a pretty lazy round of afternoon delight, and he nearly collapsed on the floor in his hurry to get out of their bed.
She was already halfway through asking what was wrong before she realized maybe they both shouldn’t be naked for that conversation. Spike was nearly shaking out of his skin—he looked so naked and vulnerable huddled in front of the end of their bed—so she grabbed their quilt and wrapped it around him before helping him find a careful seat propped up against the pillows at the head of the bed.
“I’m going to get dressed,” she told him clearly, stroking his cheek with her thumb while she held his eyes with her own. “I love you, and I’m going to love you no matter what. Try and take a few deep breaths for me while I find some pants—can you do that for me, baby?”
It took a moment, but eventually he swallowed and nodded, and she was happy to see his nostrils flare on an intake of air. He didn’t need it of course, but his body didn’t always know that.
She got dressed, and then she climbed back into bed and took him in her arms, letting his head come to rest on her shoulder so she could stroke his hair and press kisses to his temple.
“Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
He shook his head.
“Okay,” she said gently. “I can help. We were having sex—I asked you to give me a little more pain—it struck you the wrong way.”
He nodded, forehead brushing against her chin. She smiled and kissed it.
“You don’t want to hurt me?” she offered.
Spike shrugged. Buffy took that to mean he wanted to give her whatever she wanted, including a little pain with her pleasure. She tried again.
“You’re scared that you’re able to hurt me? You don’t trust yourself not to take it too far?”
He nodded slowly, and Buffy felt cool drops of moisture fall against her collarbone.
Spike was crying.
“Oh, baby…”
It wasn’t the first time she’d held him while he cried, but they hadn’t been honest about their relationship then—she hadn’t been able to stroke her hands all over him to soothe him—hadn’t been able to kiss him as many times as she wanted to. He took such good care of her—it was something of a pleasure to get to take good care of him now too.
They spent a long afternoon together in bed with Spike cradled in Buffy’s arms while she petted his hair and whispered sweet nothings to him. She’d thought she couldn’t love him any more, but when he trusted her to take care of him like this, she was pretty sure her heart grew just so that she could.
Eventually the sun set. Dawn had come home hours ago and looked in on them. Buffy had met her sister's eyes calmly, and Dawnie just nodded and went to make them both something to eat. Spike could only manage a few swallows of pig’s blood—Buffy had been worried it was going to make him sick, he’d looked so nauseous while drinking it.
With the darkness now shrouding their bedroom, Spike finally started to move—not swiftly or smoothly—nothing like a vampire usually would. He pushed himself out of her arms and set his eyes on the mirror across from their bed where her reflection sat alone in the dark.
“I need my soul,” he said—voice all but dead—and Buffy shivered like a breath of grave frost had just passed over her skin.
“No, you don’t,” she said softly. “Not for me.”
He snorted and shook his head.
“I need it for us—for me. I’m not…whole. I love you so much, but inside it’s like I’m missing something—some part of me that’s just barren and empty—some desert place that just wants to take and take and take, even though nothing could ever fill it. You deserve better than that, luv—I want to give you better than that. I’ve been doing some research—there’s a wish demon in Africa might do the trick. Offers a prize for surviving his trials. It’d stick—no pesky curse that could break. Lord knows you make me too happy to hold on to the thing any other way.”
“You want to leave me?”
Buffy hated how those words sounded in her mouth—like a little girl terrified of being left behind. Spike was supposed to be the guy who stayed—she didn’t know what she was going to do if he didn’t.
“Don’t want to be anywhere you’re not, Slayer.”
“Then don’t go, Spike. Please don’t leave me—stay?”
“Won’t be forever.” He was still staring into the mirror—at the place where he should be beside her and wasn’t. When this conversation was over, she was barring all mirrors from their bedroom. “If I pass the trials, I could be back by the fall, maybe?”
“If you come back,” Buffy said. “If you survive the trials—if you don’t go mad in the process—if you don’t burn up in the desert sun. That’s a lot of ifs, Spike.”
“You’re worth it,” he said, and then he finally turned to look at her, and the darkness in his eyes tonight had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with fear.
“You are too,” she said, reaching out to draw him close, stroking her fingers into the short curls at the base of his neck, resting her forehead against his.
What was it Beth had said on their wedding day?
Trying to keep things the same is the quickest way to make them slip through your fingers.
Maybe it was time to let go of her own fear and trust the man she loved to find his way back to her.
“Okay,” she said. “If you need to go for you, then okay. I never want to hold you back if you need to do something for yourself. All I ask is that if you are going for me—if I’m the only reason you want your soul—then I just want you to know that I'd much rather have you here as you are now than away getting something I don’t need to love you or to trust you. I love you just the way you are—soul or no soul, chip or no chip. I trust you—I know you’re never going to hurt me—I know that you’re always going to come home.”
She pulled back and pressed a kiss to his forehead—a moment of grace and peace and love just for the two of them, even here and now on the precipice of their next big challenge.
“It’s up to you, Spike,” Buffy said. “I’m going to love you no matter what.”
***
Spike sat at the bar in a haze of pain and fear and imminent heartbreak, trying to muster up the courage to go home to his girls and tell them he’d made up his mind, and his mind was set on the soul.
The Bit hadn’t taken the prospect any better than the Slayer, but Buffy had stood behind him and told her sister that if he needed to go then they would love and support him, because that’s what families did, and Spike had left the house because otherwise he would have gone to his knees and promised them anything they wanted because he loved them just that bloody much.
But what they wanted this time wasn’t what he wanted for them. He’d never been too bothered about the idea of a soul before, and the chip was a nuisance more than anything else, but this past year he’d actually been grateful to the bloody chip for giving him the chance to be with Buffy. And call it vampire short sightedness, but he’d never thought about how he might feel if it failed—if it turned out that the only thing between him and the potential to hurt the woman he loved was his own infamously unreliable self control when it came to her. He’d never thought he might one day understand Peaches’s impulse to leave for her own good—never thought it might be him who might be the next man she had to watch walk away.
It would have been easier to go if she’d hated him. Well, easy was a strong word, but it would have been simpler. Martyrdom usually was—it hurt like hell, but it was usually pretty straightforward. Dying for a cause meant you didn’t have to live with the consequences—it was living for something that was the real son of a bitch.
Spike was living for a lot of things these days. Buffy—the Bit—Clem and the Scoobies and the crowd at Gertrude’s, not to mention Ms. Lam and the night patrons at the Sunnyhell Public Library. He wanted to be a better man for all of them—wanted to fill the part of him that sometimes felt like a blackhole sucking all the light around him in and in and in—but he also didn’t want to leave any of them behind for even a second because the Slayer was right: there was no way of knowing when he’d be back or who he’d even be if he made it.
Another lowball of whiskey slid across the counter in front of him. He looked up in surprise to find Alice watching him with one raised eyebrow.
“You’ve got a friend,” she said and nodded along the bar. Spike turned to look at the bloke leaning against the bar three stools down.
Xander Harris.
“Well, howdy,” Xander said, slipping onto the stool beside him. “Drinking alone, I see—always a good sign.”
Spike grunted and took another sip of whiskey.
“I’m on patrol,” he said. “What’s your excuse?”
Xander looked around at the crowd at Gertrude’s, which pretty much amounted to just a few locals now that the college was out for the summer.
“Ah, yes,” Xander said. “Quite the little nexus of evil you’ve got under surveillance here.”
Spike glared at him; Xander grinned.
“I was just talking to Beth,” he said. “She’s got a couple of openings for new clients—maybe you wanna check her out?”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Spike said. It wasn’t like he was opposed to therapy—he was the one who’d given the boy the idea in the first place. It was just a little galling to find himself on the other end of this particular advice.
“Did the Slayer send you?” Spike wasn’t sure what he wanted the answer to be—was she playing games to keep him or was she letting him go without a fight? Both possibilities made his heart lurch in opposite directions.
“Nah.” Xander shrugged. “I just didn’t expect to be returning this particular favor so soon, so I thought we might as well get it over with.”
“Fine,” Spike said, staring into his whiskey. “Do your worst.”
“I don’t have to,” Xander said. “If I wanted you gone, I could just shut my mouth right now and leave you to it. You could be gone tomorrow, and maybe you’d come back with a soul and maybe you wouldn’t, but either way, the current pain-in-the-ass that is your soulless self wouldn’t be my problem any more.”
“Maybe you should do that then.”
“Well sure, but then who the hell am I going to ask for advice about women? You think Giles knows a single thing about keeping a woman happy? Poor bastard can’t even make it through a dirty weekend without the girl running for the airport. Do you want me to ask Clem or Jonathan orAndrew? You want me to go toAndrewfor girl advice? Com’on, man—you can’t leave me with these people—I’ll be sleeping on the couch in, like, a week, tops!”
Spike sipped his whiskey to hide a little smirk.It wasn’t like the boy was wrong.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Spike didn’t have much to say, and Xander was clearly out of his depth. With a century of experience under his belt, Spike knew that he was the de facto relationship expert in the group, which was a hell of a referendum on the rest of them considering the fact that his experience boiled down to keeping one madwoman pretty much just happy enough not to kill him most of the time.
Still, who was the relationship expert supposed to go to when he needed relationship advice?
Certainly not Xander bloody Harris.
“Well, anyway,” Xander said with a little pat of his hand against the bar, “I guess I just wanted to make sure you remembered that guilt is not the same thing as love. I know that’s pretty freaking easy to forget sometimes. And you probably don’t need to hear it from me, but you do deserve love, Spike, just as much as any of the rest of us. Maybe it’s time to start trusting Buffy to love all of you just as much as you love all of her? Just a thought, you know—one married man to another.”
Xander stood and left the bar—pausing to squeeze Spike’s shoulder on the way out. Spike spent a long time staring at the space Xander had left behind, feeling the phantom pressure of that friendly hand on his shoulder. Had any of the Slayer’s mates ever touched him in anything but anger or fear before? Spike didn’t know, but it figured that tonight would be the night they started.
Eventually Alice came back down the bar to collect his glass. Spike shook himself and looked up to meet her eyes. They were soul piercers to be sure, but even though he didn’t have one, Spike didn’t think she was measuring the gap where it was missing, and that was when he began to realize that maybe the space that ached inside of him had nothing to do with anyone but him.
He’d always assumed he was unloveable, and a century and a half of experience had pretty much proven that. But now he was loved—completely and unconditionally—and he didn’t know how to accept something he’d never even given to himself. He’d thought going to get his soul might be the scariest, bravest thing he could possibly do for the woman he loved, but what if staying and doing the work to untangle this mess of fear and pain and cumulative heartbreak was actually scarier and braver? What if Buffy didn’t need him to do anything for her—what if he decided to do it for himself—just because he deserved to feel better—just because he wanted to…
“Did I hear right that Beth’s still taking new clients?” he asked Alice, and she scowled.
“I’m not her secretary,” she said sternly, but then she smiled gently and patted his hand. “But since it’s you, I’ll tell her to save you a spot. The way things are going, maybe you should see if you all can get a family rate.”
“Yeah,” Spike said with a little chuckle that released some of the pressure that had been piling up on his chest unnoticed for weeks. “Yeah, I like the sound of that.”
***
The house was dark when Spike went home. His girls were in bed—he’d left it too late to catch them up and about together.
He kicked off his boots and lined them up besides theirs—the Bit’s trainers and the Slayer’s boots and his Docs all in a row.Baby bear and mommy bear and daddy bear…He stared at the little line for a long moment. It’d become so commonplace to him this past year that he’d almost started taking the little bits for granted, rather than appreciating them for the miracles they were.
He was home—this was his family—this was where he belonged.
He went up to the bedroom and shucked off everything else—duster and button down and jeans—but he left on the sweet fuzzy socks she liked and crawled into bed behind his wife, slipping an arm over her waist and nestling his nose into her hair. She was awake—he could tell—but she didn’t say anything, just relaxed back against him and let him take his time.
“I’m staying,” he said finally, speaking the words into her ear and enjoying the little shiver she gave him in exchange. “If I’m going to get a soul, then I’m going to wait until the Bit is grown and you can come with me, because there’s nowhere I want to go that doesn’t have you beside me every step of the way. That’s what I know today, but I’m going to start seeing Beth to see what else I can figure out. We can see her together too, if you like. Alice says maybe we should ask for a family rate.”
Buffy huffed out a laugh, but he could smell the salt of her tears too. Not a storm of grief but rather the release of relief, and he knew that he’d made the right decision.
“You don’t mind waiting?” she asked. “I don’t want to be the one that holds you back.”
“You’re the one I’m running to—how could you ever hold me back?” He pressed a kiss to her neck—to the chalice she trusted him with every night—the life’s blood that he knew wouldn’t bring any relief to the desert place inside him that still sometimes hungered for it. “We’ll take our time—I’ll work on my sh*t, you’ll keep working on yours, and we’ll both be outpaced by the Bit sooner than we’d like. And then when we’re ready, we’ll figure out what comes next. We have time, luv—all the time we can get.”
“I want all of it,” Buffy said, turning in his arms to press a searing kiss to his lips. “I want all of you for as long as I can get.”
“You’ve got me, luv,” Spike promised—solemn as his wedding vows. “I’m not going anywhere.”
***
The next morning, Spike woke up to the scent of bacon in the air. There wasn’t a man dead enough on this whole planet not to salivate at the prospect of bacon, but Spike also registered the empty space beside him in bed, and the combination of the two had him up and struggling into his jeans before he could even parse which way the zipper was supposed to go. He slowed himself and tried again—front, yeah? Front made sense—and then he was off down the stairs because evidence seemed to suggest that the Slayer wascooking, and he was rather attached to the old homestead.
All was suspiciously quiet and domestic when he reached the kitchen. The Slayer was nursing a mug of coffee at the island while flipping through one of her girly magazines. That usually meant new items for the Kitten list, even if he was going to have to fill in most of the details that the bloody menace of a publication couldn’t be arsed to get right.
It was a sacrifice he was willing to make.
Beside her, Dawn was sipping orange juice and flipping through her own, younger version of a girly magazine. Spike shuddered to think what Tam might have to correct out of there, so he very carefully didn’t think about it and instead sniffed the air.
“It’s bacon,” Dawn said, like it wasn’t bloody obvious. “I’m teaching Buffy how to cook it in the oven. I figured less potential for a grease fire.”
“Hey! I made a whole Thanksgiving dinner once—I’m not that bad of a cook.”
“I was there, pet—I don’t think we can survive that level of excitement on the daily.”
“Well, it’s not like I’m going to make a bear again,” Buffy said with a huff, and when both Dawn and Spike just stared at her, she sighed. “Okay, I’m going totrynot to make a bear again, happy?”
“Ecstatic,” Spike said dryly, and then he turned to the fridge to find his breakfast and stopped in his tracks.
The Slayer’s wonky behavioral chart was still on the fridge. She liked to use it from time to time—she said some days she just needed some gold stars. But today it was Spike’s row that was crammed full of the little buggers, all packed in so tight that now his row was just solid gold—overflowing with layers and layers of little gold stars—and as his eyes got teary and his poor dead heart tried to beat, Spike finally understood why the stars mattered to her so bloody much.
“What’s this?”
He had to choke out the question. He already knew of course, but he wanted the words.
“For you,” Buffy said, already off of her stool and sliding her arms around his waist. “We were going to show you last night, but you were out longer than Dawn could keep her eyes open.”
“I’m a freak, but I still don’t have superpowers,” Dawn said, coming to wrap her arms around him from the other side. “I need a human bedtime—it’s my fatal flaw.”
“But last night—”
Spike broke off and looked down at his girls—gentle, loving, and smiling hazel and blue looked back. Last night he’d been pretty sure he was leaving town, but his girls had given him all of the gold stars anyway.
“We’re proud of you,” Buffy said. “Staying or going—you’re doing the work, Spike. You deserve all the gold stars.”
“Besides,” Dawn said, “how the hell were you going to leave us after all of that?”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Dawnie, we talked about this—”
“No way in hell,” Spike said, hugging his girls closer to his chest. He pressed a kiss to the Slayer’s hair and stared at the gold stars on the fridge. He’d never felt more seen or loved in his entire existence. “I’m never leaving you. Who the hell would feed you both?”
“I don’t know,” Dawn said, “because we’re totally burning the bacon right now.”
“That’s okay,” Buffy said, squeezing him tighter and pressing a kiss to his chest. “Loving you is more important than bacon.”
Oh,he thought, and then he stopped thinking and just let himself feel it—their love and care and attention seeping in through the desert where his soul must have once been, watering the barren landscape within him and feeding the dormant roots of sweet blooms just waiting for the chance to grow anew.
With enough love in your heart, could you grow a soul from scratch?
Like everything else he’d ever done in the last century and a half, Spike was prepared to give it a go.
