written by a fan

Summerhall at dusk was built to make ordinary people feel small, and even now, with the last copper light bleeding down the stone and the courtyards settling into their evening hush, it still managed the trick. The towers held heat from the day and gave it back in slow breaths, the banners above the inner wall hanging almost still, as if even the wind knew better than to interrupt Targaryens when they were pretending peace. You stood at the open window of your chamber with your hands braced on the carved sill, watching grooms lead in lathered horses and kitchen boys hurry with baskets under linen cloths, each of them moving with that practiced speed of servants who understood that a royal household could turn from calm to catastrophe between one bell and the next. Somewhere below, a child laughed and was shushed. Somewhere farther, a smith’s hammer rang three times and stopped. The world narrowed to warm stone under your palms, the scent of smoke and rosemary from the lower kitchens, and the old, familiar ache of being spoken about more than spoken to.

You had long ago learned the shape of pity in a court full of polished mouths. It arrived as gentleness and stayed as judgment. It wore silks, prayed loudly, asked after your health, and counted months on invisible fingers while smiling. Lady so-and-so touching your sleeve to say she was sure the Mother would bless your marriage soon. A septa with careful eyes reminding you that patience was a virtue, as if patience had not already become your daily bread. Valarr had never blamed you. That was perhaps the most unbearable part of it. Your husband was kind in the way men are kind when they are ashamed of something they cannot fix, and he carried that shame like armor, bright and heavy and impossible to remove. He had sat beside you through prayers, through physicians, through whispered remedies from old women who should have known better. He had held your hand after another quiet bleeding and said nothing because there was nothing to say that did not sound like surrender. In the corridors they blamed your womb because it was easier, because men wrote histories and women carried consequences, and nobody wanted to look too directly at the prince who could not give the realm the certainty it demanded.

The knock on your door came just as the last light slipped. Not the brisk knock of a maid. Not the uncertain tap of a page. Three measured strikes, spaced evenly, as disciplined as a drumbeat before battle.

“Enter,” you called, turning with your pulse already rising for no reason you wanted to name.

The door opened, and Prince Baelor Breakspear stepped inside without retinue, without herald, without even the soft shuffle of a guard beyond the threshold. He wore no crown, only a dark doublet plain enough to have belonged to any highborn knight returning late from council, though nothing about him could ever be mistaken for ordinary. Age had sharpened him rather than softened him. The lines at the corners of his eyes looked carved by sunlight and difficult choices. The silver at his temples caught candlelight and made him seem more dangerous, not less. He closed the door himself, and the latch settling into place sounded far louder than it should have.

“My lady,” he said, inclining his head with the exact courtesy owed to his son’s wife.

“Your Grace.” You bent into a curtsy, deeper than custom required, because protocol was a shield and you had suddenly remembered needing one. “Had I known you would visit, I would have received you in the solar.”

“I did not want a formal reception.” His voice stayed even, but you heard the strain beneath it, like a rope pulled tight enough to sing. “May I sit?”

“You do not need my leave in my own chambers, Your Grace.”

“No,” he said, and there was a flicker of grim humor at the edge of his mouth, “but I would rather have it.”

He sat by the hearth where the coals were banked low, and you took the chair across from him, careful to leave a small table between you as though polished oak could keep the realm at bay. For a moment he said nothing. He studied the fire, his hands resting on his knees, and when he finally looked at you, it was with a directness that made you forget every rehearsed answer you had prepared for every difficult conversation in your life.

“I have spent my life weighing words before I speak them,” he said. “Tonight I find I dislike all of mine.”

“Then speak plain,” you replied before caution could catch your tongue. “I am tired of polished words.”

His gaze held yours. “So am I.”

Silence settled again, heavier this time. Outside, a bell rang the hour. Somewhere down the corridor, footsteps passed and faded.

“You know why we are here at Summerhall,” he said at last. “Officially, we are taking rest. In truth, we are waiting. Watching. Counting.” He let out a breath through his nose, almost a laugh, almost a curse. “The court in King’s Landing has become a nest of listeners. Every failed pregnancy is a feast to them. Every rumor grows teeth.”

You felt your spine go rigid. “You think I do not know that?”

“I think you know it too well.” He did not flinch. “I think you have borne more of that cruelty than any woman should.”

The words should have comforted you. Instead they stung. “Compassion from a prince is generous. It changes nothing.”

“No.” He looked at the fire again, then back at you. “It does not.”

You watched him as one watches a storm line moving across open water, beautiful and inevitable and dangerous. Baelor Breakspear was not a man who entered private chambers at night for nothing. He had commanded armies. He had endured councils full of fools and flatterers without strangling half of them. He did not waste motion, and he did not improvise unless forced. You could feel the force of whatever had brought him here pressing against the room.

“Say it,” you said softly.

His jaw tightened. “Valarr is my son. He is my heir. He is a good man.”

“He is.”

“He is loved by many who have no idea what that love will cost him when the realm smells uncertainty. Lords begin to dream of alternatives when lines of inheritance blur. Cousins appear from shadows. Alliances shift overnight. Men who drink at one another’s tables start calculating bloodlines between courses.” His voice roughened. “You have seen it.”

“I have lived it.”

“Yes.” He looked briefly toward the window, toward the dark beyond the glass. “The line must be secured.”

The words landed between you like a blade laid flat. You did not move. You did not breathe.

“Secured,” you repeated, tasting bitterness. “By what means?”

His eyes did not leave your face. “By an heir.”

You laughed once, quiet and harsh. “If I could summon one by command, we would not be having this conversation.”

“No,” he said again, and this time the word sounded like regret. “We would not.”

You rose and crossed to the hearth because sitting felt impossible, because stillness made you feel trapped. Heat brushed your skirts. Shadows climbed the walls in long, uncertain shapes.

“Did Valarr send you?” you asked without turning.

A pause. “No.”

“Does he know you are here?”

Another pause, longer. “No.”

You closed your eyes. There it was. The shape of it, at last, standing in the room with you like a third person neither of you had invited by name. You turned back slowly. Baelor remained seated, but his shoulders looked heavier, as if armor had been laid on them piece by piece for years and tonight he had finally noticed the weight.

“You came alone,” you said. “At night. To your son’s wife. To speak of succession.”

“Yes.”

The single syllable held no excuse. No plea. Only fact.

“I should call for my women,” you said, though your voice came out thinner than you intended. “I should end this now and let you return to your chambers with your honor intact.”

“If you wish it, do so.” His hands flexed once on his knees and stilled. “I will not stop you.”

You studied him, this man who had won tourneys and wars and respect from enemies who despised his house, and for the first time you saw not just the prince but the father, the statesman, the man cornered by the same machine he had spent his life trying to steer. Duty had eaten most of him and left little room for anything else. Yet he was here, asking you to step into a sin for the sake of order, to make your body a treaty where politics had failed.

“Do you believe this is mercy?” you asked.

“I believe it is necessary.” The answer came immediately, then slowed. “Mercy would have been a world where you were never asked.”

Your throat tightened with something that was not quite anger and not quite grief. “Necessary for whom?”

“For Valarr,” he said. “For the realm. For the thousands who never hear our names until we fail them.” His gaze hardened, not at you but at himself. “And, if I am honest, for me. I will not pretend otherwise. I have fought too long to hand my son a crumbling future and call it fate.”

You moved back to your chair and sat because your legs had begun to tremble in a way you refused to let him see. “You ask me to betray my husband.”

He shook his head once. “I ask you to preserve him.”

“By deceiving him.”

“By giving him what the world demands of him before it devours him for lacking it.”

It was monstrous. It was pragmatic. It was the kind of cruel arithmetic noble houses called wisdom once enough generations had benefited from it. You hated it because part of you understood it too quickly. You hated yourself for understanding.

“You speak like this is only strategy,” you said. “As if flesh is a map and bloodlines are roads and no one bleeds on the way.”

Something flashed across his expression, gone as soon as it came. “Do not mistake discipline for indifference.”

“Then tell me what it costs you.”

He went still. For a long moment the only sound was the settling of coals and distant wind against shutters. When he answered, his voice was lower.

“It costs me my pride,” he said. “My sleep. Whatever peace I thought I had earned by doing my duty cleanly.” His mouth curved without humor. “It costs me the right to look my son in the eye without knowing what stands between us. It costs me you, my lady, if you decide tonight that you despise me and never forgive it.” He drew breath. “It costs me the last illusion that there is any clean path left.”

You stared at him. You had expected command, calculation, perhaps pressure wrapped in courtesy. You had not expected confession.

“Why me?” you whispered, though you already knew.

“Because you are his wife,” he said. “Because you are clever and brave and harder than court gossips understand. Because if this is done with anyone else, the lie rots before the child can walk. Because you can carry this.” His eyes searched yours with an intensity that made your skin prickle. “Because I think you already have.”

The candle on the table burned lower, wax bending toward brass in a slow spill. You could hear your own heartbeat like a fist against a locked door.

“If I refuse?” You asked.

“Then nothing happens tonight.” He rose at last, not abruptly, but with care, as if sudden movement might break the fragile terms of your speaking. “I leave. I never return to this room uninvited. We continue as we are and pray for a miracle that has not come.”

“And if I agree?”

His answer came quieter than all the others. “Then we choose what kind of ruin we can live with.”

You almost laughed at the bleak honesty of it. Of course that was what nobility truly was in the end, not honor songs and gilded feasts, but choosing your ruin and pretending it was destiny.

He stood a few paces away now, close enough that you could see the fine scar near his left brow, the faint exhaustion under his eyes, the self-command held together by force. You rose too, because remaining seated felt like surrender to fear. The room seemed smaller, heat gathering in corners, air thick with smoke and the scent of orange oil from the candles.

“Look at me,” you said.

He already was.

“No titles,” you said. “No ‘my lady.’ No ‘Your Grace.’ Not for this.”

A muscle moved in his jaw. “Very well.”

“You do not get to command me here.”

“I know.”

“You do not get to pity me either.”

“I would not insult you with pity.”

You stepped closer, enough to feel the warmth from him, enough that your pulse changed rhythm and your breath shortened despite yourself. “Tell me what you want, plainly.”

His eyes darkened, not with lust alone, though that was there now, finally unhidden, but with hunger tied to fear and duty and years of restraint. “I want my son safe,” he said. “I want his line secure. I want House Targaryen intact when I am gone. I want you protected from the carrion that circles you.” He swallowed once. “And I want you.”

The last three words settled into your bones. Not because they were romantic. They were not. They were too late for romance, too burdened for fantasy. But they were true, and truth was rare currency in palaces.

You lifted a hand, slow enough to give him time to step back. He did not. Your fingers touched his cheek, rough with evening stubble. He closed his eyes briefly, a single heartbeat, then opened them again with the look of a man bracing for impact.

“This changes everything,” you said.

“It already has.”

Your hand slid to the side of his neck, feeling the strong beat there. His hand came to your waist, careful, almost reverent, as if asking one final time without words. You answered by moving into him, by letting your forehead rest against his for a breath that tasted of smoke and citrus and inevitability.

When he kissed you, it was not gentle in the way songs promised, nor rough in the way frightened girls warned each other about in whispered giggles. It was deliberate, restrained by will and undone by need, and it told you exactly what this night was: not seduction, not conquest, but a bargain sealed in heat and silence and the unbearable knowledge that both of you understood the price.

And you kissed him back.

His mouth left yours just long enough for both of you to breathe, though breathing did nothing to settle the pull between you. His hand at your waist tightened, not possessive but anchoring, like a man finally allowing himself to touch something he had been warned away from for too long. You felt the tremor in him when your fingers slid down his chest, tracing the line of buttons, feeling the heat under the fabric. You expected him to hesitate, to measure out each motion with princely caution. He didn’t. He stepped in until your back met the stone beside the hearth, warm from the banked coals, and his body pressed against yours with all the restraint of a man who had spent years denying simple human want.

“Tell me to stop,” he said, voice rough enough that it scraped over your nerves. His forehead rested against your temple, his breath hot against your cheek. “Say the word and I walk out that door.”

“If I wanted you gone,” you answered, fingers already at the fastening of his doublet, “you would not be here.”

Your voice shook. Not from fear. From hunger and the weight of a choice you had already made the moment you let him speak without calling your women.

The last of his reserve cracked. You felt it in the way his mouth found your throat, slow at first, then deeper when you tilted your head to give him more skin. His lips traced the line where your pulse hammered too fast, and the sound he made against your neck was not princely at all. It was male and conflicted and starving.

Your hands worked open the front of his doublet. He breathed out hard when your palms slid over his shirt, then under it, meeting warm muscle and old scars. His skin burned under your touch, his abdomen tightening when you trailed your fingers over the faint marks left by battles won years before. He lifted your chin with one hand, forcing your eyes to his. Something fierce lived there now, made by years of carrying other people’s futures and the sudden realization that tonight he was allowed one moment that was only his.

“You are certain,” he said. “Say it plainly.”

“I want you.” Your hands pushed his shirt higher, baring more of him. “If we pretend this is only duty, we insult both of us.”

He kissed you again, deeper this time, stripped of every last piece of ceremony. Your nails dragged lightly across his stomach and his control faltered. You felt his body harden against you, unmistakable and unhidden. His hand slid from your waist to your hip, then lower, gripping firmly enough to draw a quiet gasp from your lips. He swallowed the sound in a kiss that left your knees unsteady.

He lifted you without effort, not tossing you but gathering you with deliberate strength, and you wrapped your legs around him because there was nowhere else your body wanted to be. Your back hit the edge of the bedpost before he laid you down, and the small shock of impact only made you pull him closer. He followed you down onto the mattress, bracing himself with one arm as if afraid of crushing you, even now caught between gentleness and need.

“Look at me,” he said again, softer this time. You did. His eyes held a kind of reverence that had nothing to do with crowns or banners. His hand slid up your thigh, slow enough to make you shake. “I will not treat you as a vessel. I want you to feel this.”

“I already do.”

The words seemed to undo him. He leaned down, kissing you with a hunger that had no patience left. His hand pushed your skirts aside, fingers skimming the inside of your thigh. You arched into his touch without thinking. He groaned, low and harsh, when he felt how ready you were for him.

“Tell me,” he said, lips moving along your jaw. “Tell me you want this.”

“I want you,” you whispered, one hand in his hair, the other gripping his shoulder. “I want all of it.”

That was the last thread holding him back. His mouth moved down your throat, across your collarbone, tasting you like a dying man discovering water. He pulled fabric aside with impatient hands, baring skin inch by inch, his breath growing ragged as he memorized every bit he exposed. You felt him shaking slightly, not from hesitation but from the effort of keeping himself from taking you too fast.

When he finally pushed inside you, the world narrowed to heat and pressure and the sound he made when he felt you tighten around him. His forehead dropped to your shoulder, his breath breaking in a way that made your stomach flip.

“Gods help me,” he muttered against your skin. “You feel like fire.”

Your fingers clenched at his back, dragging him closer, urging him deeper. The first thrust stole your breath. The second shattered whatever composure either of you had left. He moved with controlled force, hips finding a rhythm that was far more primal than either of you had intended. His hand gripped the back of your thigh, lifting it higher, opening you further to him. The angle changed and a cry tore from your throat before you could muffle it.

His mouth was there instantly, kissing you, swallowing the sound, losing himself in the taste of you. Your nails raked down his spine and he surged forward with a growl of pure instinct, the kind of sound men make only when every barrier inside them has fallen.

“Tell me if it is too much,” he said, though the words themselves trembled.

“It is not enough,” you answered, pulling him harder against you.

That undid him completely. His thrusts became deeper, rougher, driven by a hunger he could no longer disguise. The bed shifted under both of you, sheets twisting around your legs, the scent of sweat and heat filling the room. Your breath came in broken gasps, matching his. Every time he drove into you, pleasure flared hot and sharp, building fast enough to frighten you.

He kissed you again, desperate, as if trying to hold on to the last moment before the world tipped. You felt his body tighten, felt the strain in his muscles as he fought to keep control. You cupped his face and forced him to look at you.

“Let go,” you whispered.

His answer was a shattered sound into your mouth. He thrust once more, deep enough that your vision blurred, and the pleasure broke through you in a rush that left you trembling. The feeling dragged him with you. He came with a fierce, helpless groan, his body pressing into yours as if trying to fuse you together, one hand gripping yours so tightly your fingers went numb.

For a moment neither of you moved. He stayed inside you, breathing hard against your shoulder, his weight braced above you, his pulse hammering against your breast. You felt the tremor still running through him, the aftershocks of a man who had held himself together for too many years and finally let himself break in one place where no one could see.

He lifted his head slowly. His eyes were darker, softer, stripped of every mask he had ever worn. His thumb brushed your cheek, gentle now, almost reverent.

“This was meant to be duty,” he said quietly. “It was never going to stay that.”

You touched his jaw, feeling the coarse stubble and the heat still rolling off him. “Duty had nothing to do with what just happened.”

His mouth curved, not quite a smile, but close. He lowered himself to you again, resting his forehead against yours.

“Then the realm will forgive us later,” he murmured. “Tonight… we are only two people who wanted each other too much to lie about it.”

His hand slid down your side, slow, steady, almost tender now.

And you knew the night was far from over.

Nine months later, the Red Keep sounded different to you, though no one else seemed willing to admit it. The bells still marked the hours with the same bronze authority, the ravens still beat at the morning air above Maegor’s Holdfast, the servants still moved in disciplined streams through corridors that smelled of rushes, tallow, and damp stone after rain. Yet every sound reached you through a new body and a new fear. Your hips ached. Your back carried a steady, brutal pull that did not care about crowns or bloodlines. Your hands had begun to swell in the heat of late summer and your ladies clicked their tongues over salt and rest and old wives’ rules while pretending not to watch your belly like it held the fate of half the realm, which, in the grim arithmetic of dynasties, it did. Outside your chamber windows, King’s Landing sprawled under a pale dawn haze, roofs and alleys and market cries already rising with the sun, but in your rooms time had narrowed to breaths and pains and the measured voices of women who had seen too much blood to waste motion on panic. The midwife from Dragonstone had arrived three days ago. The Grand Maester had sent tinctures and stern instruction as if your body were a fortress to be defended by parchment. Septas had prayed. Courtiers had smiled too long. Valarr had not slept more than a few hours at a time for a week.

You were standing when the first true labor pain struck, because of course your body had chosen that moment, while a maid was braiding your hair and another was fussing over linen shifts laid out in careful stacks as though order might bargain with what was coming. Pain climbed your spine like fire finding dry timber, fast and merciless, and you gripped the bedpost hard enough to whiten your knuckles while the braid fell apart down your shoulder. You did not scream. You bit down so hard your jaw rang. The maid nearest you whispered your name in alarm, the other dropped the folded cloth she held, and by the time you could breathe through the fading edge of it, the room had transformed into motion and command. “Call Lady Serra. Now. Send for the midwife. Tell Prince Valarr.” Your voice sounded strange to your own ears, rough and low, but it held. They ran. Someone closed the shutters halfway to dull the glare. Someone banked the brazier. Someone else brought warm water and forgot to set it down softly. The world became a chamber of preparation, every face taut with purpose.

Valarr arrived before the next wave, hair unbound, boots unlaced, shirt thrown on in haste with one tie hanging loose at his throat. He looked younger when frightened, almost like the boy the songs had once promised before duty taught him to carry himself like a blade. He crossed the room in three strides and stopped just short of you, as if asking permission without words. You gave it by reaching for him. He took your hand and pressed his forehead to yours, breathing hard.

“I am here,” he said. “I am not going anywhere.”

“You look terrible,” you murmured, because cruelty was easier than trembling.

He gave a strained laugh. “I learned from the best.”

Another contraction took you in the middle of his smile and stole the room from under your feet. He held you through it, one arm around your back, whispering nonsense and prayer and your name until the pain eased to a low, grinding pull. When you opened your eyes again, the midwife was there, broad-shouldered, calm as winter stone, sleeves already rolled. Lady Serra stood beside her with a face carved from composure. The midwife asked practical questions in a voice that refused drama. How far apart? How strong? Any bleeding? Any dizziness? You answered between breaths. She nodded once, satisfied or pretending to be, and began issuing instructions with the authority of someone who outranked princes whenever birth entered a room.

Hours passed in broken pieces. The sun climbed. Heat gathered behind the shutters. Sweat dampened your neck and spine, soaked your shift, cooled, returned. Pain came and went and came again, each time larger, more deliberate, as though your body had been claimed by a tide with no interest in mercy. Valarr stayed. He wiped your face with cool cloths, held water to your mouth, took curses meant for no one and flinched through none of them. At one point you told him you hated him and he kissed your knuckles and said he accepted his sentence. At another you clutched his sleeve and whispered, “If I die, do not let them turn me into a song.” His face changed then, not with courtly sorrow but with naked terror.

“Do not speak like that.”

“I am speaking truth.”

“Then hear mine.” His voice shook and steadied by force. “You are not dying. You are not leaving me in a room full of men who think policy is a personality. You are staying.”

A laugh ripped out of you and turned into a gasp as the next pain hit. You leaned into him, into labor, into the brute fact of what flesh could do and what it could break.

By midday the outer corridors had filled with waiting. You knew it because news leaked in through servants with flushed faces and hurried feet. Lords had found reasons to linger nearby. Ladies had suddenly remembered vows and visited septs. Messages had flown between apartments like startled birds. No one said what everyone thought, but the air in the Red Keep had gone taut as wire. If you birthed a living son, lines of ambition would harden by nightfall. If the child died, soft voices would turn ugly by supper. In every court from Dorne to the Neck, men who had never touched you would have opinions about your body before the blood dried.

Near the sixth hour, when labor had reduced language to fragments and breathing, the door opened again under strict protest from the women around you. You heard the argument first, then the hush. Prince Baelor stepped in and stopped just inside, as if the threshold itself burned. He had changed since Summerhall. Or perhaps you had learned how to see him. The same controlled bearing, the same soldier’s stillness, but with a strain now that lived behind his eyes like a sleepless storm. He did not approach at once. He looked to Valarr.

“I came only if I am not in the way,” he said.

Valarr, pale with fear and stubbornness, did not release your hand. “You are in the way of everyone, Father. Today is no different. Stay.”

The words carried wit and accusation and love all tangled together. Baelor accepted them without defense. He moved to the far side of the bed, close enough to be present, distant enough to honor the room’s brutal intimacy. For a long moment the three of you stayed there in the thick heat and low candle smoke and female command, bound by blood and lies and something uglier and kinder than either.

You found his eyes during a quieter stretch between contractions. No one else could have read what passed there. No one else had stood in that Summerhall room and heard necessity named aloud. He did not look away. He inclined his head once, very slightly, not as prince to lady, not as conspirator to conspirator, but as one witness to another at the edge of consequence.

The next hours were war. There was no gentler word. Your body opened in increments that felt impossible, then demanded more. The midwife’s voice cut through the haze, firm and unyielding. “Now breathe. Again. Good. Do not waste strength shouting. Use it here. Push with the pain, not against it.” Lady Serra held your shoulders through shaking spells. A young maid wept silently in a corner until the midwife ordered her out. Valarr refused to move even when his arm went numb under your grip. Baelor stood like carved iron, hands clasped behind his back so tightly his knuckles blanched, and every time you cried out his jaw tightened as if each sound were a blade he chose not to dodge.

Twilight began to gather before the end came. The chamber shifted to amber and shadow. Your vision narrowed to faces, candle flame, the carved canopy above you, then narrowed further to one command at a time. Push. Breathe. Again. Again. The final stretch felt like your body split open on purpose, like an old gate forced by a flood. You roared through clenched teeth, blind with effort, and the world broke with you.

Then a cry. Thin, outraged, alive.

For one suspended heartbeat no one moved. The sound came again, stronger, and the room exhaled in one ragged wave. The midwife lifted a slick, furious infant into cloth, worked with swift practiced hands, then turned with something like triumph held in discipline.

“A boy,” she said.

The words flew through the chamber and out into the corridors faster than ravens ever could. A boy. Living. Loud. Whole enough for now.

Valarr made a sound you had never heard from him before, half laugh, half sob, and bent over you with tears standing in his eyes. He kissed your damp forehead, your temple, your hand, as if touch could prove you remained. “You did it,” he whispered, voice breaking. “Gods, you did it.”

You were too emptied to answer properly. You smiled with cracked lips and managed, “I did most of it, yes.”

He laughed wetly and pressed his brow to yours again, shaking.

The midwife brought the child nearer so you could see him before they cleaned him fully. He was red-faced and furious at existence, fists clenched, dark hair pasted in damp swirls to his skull. You felt the jolt of him in your chest like a second heartbeat igniting. Love arrived like terror, immediate and total. You touched one tiny wrist with your fingertip and he flinched, then settled when your voice, wrecked and quiet, reached him.

“Hello, little dragon,” you whispered.

From where he stood, Baelor did not move for several breaths. Then he stepped forward, slowly, as if nearing an altar. The midwife hesitated only a moment before allowing him a look. He studied the child with an expression stripped bare of court and title, stripped down to awe and dread and relief so profound it almost looked like pain.

“He has Valarr’s mouth,” Baelor said softly.

Valarr gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “He has your scowl already.”

“Then the gods have humor.”

The room, exhausted and giddy, almost smiled with him.

When the babe was swaddled and laid against your chest, warmth spread through you that had nothing to do with blankets or braziers. He rooted clumsily, found what he needed, and the small animal certainty of him cracked something open inside you that power never could. Around you the chamber quieted. Women cleaned. Cloths were changed. Blood was carried out discreetly by hands trained to erase evidence of peril once survival had been secured. Outside, somewhere beyond thick walls, you heard the swell of distant cheers catching rumor and turning it into celebration.

Later, when the room had thinned and only a few trusted women remained, Valarr sank onto the chair by your bedside with the boneless collapse of a man who had spent all his strength standing upright. He took your free hand and held it against his cheek.

“I do not have words for what I owe you,” he said.

“You are my husband. This is not debt.”

“It is everything.” He looked at the child, then at you, wonder and grief and gratitude warring openly across his face. “I thought I had made peace with never hearing that cry. I thought I had learned to live with less.”

You looked at him for a long moment. Valarr, kind and dutiful, the man you had pitied and resented and clung to in equal measure. He would love this child fiercely. That much had never been in doubt.

“He is yours,” you said, and your voice held more meanings than the words themselves. “Whatever else this world says, he is yours.”

Valarr nodded, eyes wet again. “I know.”

Baelor approached only after the midwife gave a pointed glance that implied princes bled like anyone else if they ignored their limits. He stood by the bed and bowed his head to you, formal at first, then less so as he took in your face, the child against you, the brutal tenderness of the scene.

“You have given this House a future tonight,” he said. “There is no honor I can offer equal to that.”

You were too tired for ceremony. “Do not turn me into a banner, Baelor.”

His eyes flickered, startled by the bare use of his name, then softened with recognition and restraint. “I will not.”

“Good.” You adjusted the swaddling with clumsy fingers. “Give him peace instead. That is rarer.”

He inclined his head. “On my life.”

Night settled fully by the time the chamber finally emptied to a manageable hush. Lady Serra dismissed the last hovering maid and left one lamp burning low near the hearth. Valarr had been convinced to eat and nearly fell asleep with bread in his hand before stumbling back to your bedside. The child, having screamed his way into history, now slept in little snuffling intervals between feeds, as if exhausted by his own entrance.

Near midnight you woke to quiet footsteps and opened your eyes to find Baelor alone by the window, keeping to shadow out of habit. He turned when he heard you stir.

“I did not mean to wake you,” he said.

“You did not.” Your voice was little more than breath. “I have not truly slept yet.”

He looked toward the cradle where the baby lay swaddled beside your bed. In lamplight his face seemed older, all the years of command and compromise visible at once.

“Tomorrow they will begin planning feasts,” he said. “Commissions, proclamations, gifts, calculated smiles. By next week half the realm will claim they always knew this day would come.”

You gave a tired, dry smile. “Courtiers are very devout worshippers of hindsight.”

A faint huff of laughter escaped him. Then the gravity returned. “I should say this once, clearly, and never again. What happened at Summerhall remains buried with us. No hint. No crack. No careless word spoken in fatigue or anger. Too many lives are tied to that silence now.”

You held his gaze. “I know the cost.”

“I know you do.” He paused, searching your face with something like apology he could not afford to name. “If there were another path, I would have chosen it.”

“Perhaps.” You looked at your son, then back at him. “But this is the path that exists.”

He stepped closer, stopping at the edge of your reach. For a moment neither of you spoke. The room held only the faint hiss of oil in the lamp, the distant call of a watchman on the wall, the soft breathing of your child.

“What shall he be called?” Baelor asked.

“Valarr wants Daeron, for your father,” you said. “I suggested Aerion to start an argument. He nearly died.”

Baelor’s mouth twitched despite himself. “Keep that talent. It may save him more than swords.”

You hesitated, then added, “I want a name with steel in it. A name that survives.”

“He will need more than a name.” Baelor’s eyes returned to the cradle. “He will need patience, cunning, restraint, and a taste for mercy that does not make him weak.”

“He might get stubbornness from all sides,” you said.

“That is already guaranteed.”

You watched him, this man who would never stand in a sept and confess what he had done, who would rule and advise and guard and carry his own private ruin like a hidden wound until it killed him or became him. You did not forgive him because forgiveness implied a simple sin and this had never been simple. But you understood him in the terrible way only accomplices and survivors understand each other.

“Go rest,” you said quietly. “You look like death in silk.”

He inclined his head, accepting the insult as kindness. “As you command.”

He turned to leave, then stopped at the door and looked back, not at you first, but at the cradle, at the sleeping child who had just rewritten the map of the future.

“For what it is worth,” he said, voice low, “I will protect him. From court. From cousins. From fools with banners and old grudges. From me, if need be.”

“I will hold you to that,” you replied.

“I would expect nothing less.”

He left without ceremony. The door shut softly behind him.

In the weeks that followed, the city drowned itself in relief. Bells rang. Wine flowed. Pious men thanked gods they had ignored the day before. Tailors worked through the night to finish celebratory livery. Gifts arrived in absurd numbers, from jeweled rattles to tiny daggers with blunted edges, because noblemen could not imagine blessing a prince without steel involved. Ballads appeared before your stitches even healed, each one lying differently about how calm and radiant you had been in labor. You let them lie. You let wet nurses and septas and old ladies debate omens in his cry. You let lords swear loyalty with hands still sticky from opportunism. You recovered in pieces. You learned your son’s breathing patterns in the dark. You learned the exact pitch of his hungry wail versus his angry one. You learned that fear never leaves after childbirth, it simply changes clothing and follows you into every hour.

On the fortieth day, under a sky the color of worn silver, you stood in the garden with Valarr and your son in your arms while leaves shifted above like quiet applause. The child slept through most of the ceremony, unimpressed by priestly gravity. Valarr rested a protective hand at your back, steady and warm. Baelor stood several paces away among lords and kin, composed as ever, unreadable to everyone and not unreadable to you.

When it ended and the court began to drift toward wine and congratulations, Valarr leaned close and kissed your temple.

“We are a family,” he said, as if saying it could make it indestructible.

You looked down at the tiny face tucked in embroidered wool, at the dark lashes against rounded cheeks, at the mouth that did indeed resemble Valarr’s when relaxed and Baelor’s when set in stubborn outrage. You thought of Summerhall’s dusk, of bargains and silence, of blood and candlelight and that first furious cry.

“We are,” you answered.

It was true, even if truth in royal houses was never clean.

By sunset, as the Red Keep burned gold and shadow and your son slept against your chest in the quiet after ceremony, you understood the final shape of your life. You would be wife, mother, princess, target, shield. You would smile when expected and strike when required. You would protect the boy from men who would use him, love him, tutor him, claim him, betray him, kneel to him. You would keep one secret buried beneath stone and silk and history, not because the lie was noble, but because the child was real and innocence should not be asked to pay for the sins of survival. The realm would call him hope. The singers would call him destiny. You would call him by his name in the dark and hold him through nightmares no one else could hear.

And when he opened his eyes and fixed you with that fierce, old-souled stare too wise for an infant, you smiled despite everything, pressed your lips to his warm brow, and promised him in a whisper only he could keep.

You envied the people whose high school experiences were wonderful.

For them, high school was a place of friendships, first loves, and memories they would cherish forever. For you, it was nothing short of hell.

Some like to say that everyone gets bullied at some point, but is it normal for your bullies to hold you down and press a burning-hot straightener against your skin? Is it normal for your uniform to soak in blood from the burns, for the scars to remain years later as a reminder of their cruelty? Is it normal for their parents to bribe the police, ensuring that no justice was served?

No.

Everyone claims they were bullied, but they were never bullied the way you were.

You weren’t the only one they tormented. Yeon-jin and her group had favorites—victims they singled out and broke down piece by piece. You were one of them. Moon Dong-eun was another. She was the one they bullied the most.

Then, one day, she dropped out.

Dong-eun dropped out in her senior year, the school records listing bullying as the reason. In the official report, she named Yeon-jin, Sara, Jae-joon, Hye-jeong, and Myeong-oh. Some students whispered that Dong-eun’s homeroom teacher, Kim Jong-mun, had beaten her in the staff lounge for daring to speak up.

And then, silence.

She was gone.

You never saw her again.

For you, graduation was your only salvation. You escaped high school, but escaping didn't mean forgetting. The scars remained—not just on your skin but in your mind, woven into your thoughts, your fears, your very existence.

Yeon-jin thrived. She became a respected news reporter. Jae-joon built a luxury brand empire. Sara turned to painting, hiding her addictions behind expensive art. Hye-jeong climbed the social ladder, desperate for a place among the elite. And Myeong-oh? He remained their lapdog, their fixer, ensuring their past sins never saw the light of day.

Meanwhile, the people they destroyed were still suffering.

You swallowed your pain, buried it beneath layers of professionalism and cold calculation. You built a life—one far away from them, or so you thought.

Until one evening, eighteen years later, Moon Dong-eun appeared before you.

"Would you like to get revenge on them?"

It was the first time she had ever spoken to you. The first time someone had acknowledged the injustice of what happened.

And it was the moment you realized you would do anything to see them suffer.

Dong-eun had spent years planning her revenge. Every detail was meticulously crafted, every step carefully considered.

"Yeon-jin’s husband—Ha Do-yeong."

She slid a file toward you. Inside were documents, photographs, notes. The CEO of Jaepyeong Construction. Unlike his wife, he had built his success through hard work rather than manipulation. From all accounts, he was a man of integrity.

"I need more information on Do-yeong. If Do-yeong knew the truth about Yeon-jin, he would never stand by her," Dong-eun said. "I need someone to get close to him."

So you entered his world as his assistant in his company.

The first time you met Ha Do-yeong in person, he barely spared you a glance. A man like him—brilliant and composed—had no reason to concern himself with a new assistant. But you understood the rules of the game, the subtle art of gaining his attention.

You didn’t seek it outright. Instead, you let him notice you.

Your work was flawless, your insights unexpectedly sharp. During a high-stakes meeting, you corrected a minor yet crucial calculation before the finance team could. When an important client hesitated on a deal, you subtly shifted the conversation, using your knowledge of their company’s inner workings to sway them in Do-yeong’s favor.

He watched you after that. Not obviously, never openly. But you felt the weight of his gaze in meetings, in passing conversations. He started asking for your thoughts on projects, not just reports. He started testing you, too, throwing unexpected questions your way, just to see how you would respond.

And each time, you met him head-on.

It was a slow, methodical dance. You never overstepped, never gave him reason to doubt your professionalism. But you let him see glimpses of you—the way your mind worked, the way you saw the world.

Then, one evening, after a late meeting, he finally acknowledged what had been building between you.

“You don’t think like a typical assistant,” Do-yeong remarked as you rode the elevator down together.

You tilted your head, a small, knowing smile playing on your lips. “Is that a compliment, sir?”

He studied you for a long moment. “It’s an observation. One I’ve been making for some time now.”

You let the silence stretch between you, feeling the shift in the air. Then, with quiet confidence, you met his gaze.

“Then I hope you continue to observe.”

It was late when you finally had the chance to ask. The office was empty except for the two of you, the air heavy with the scent of coffee and paper, the quiet hum of the city beyond the windows the only sound between you. Ha Do-yeong was reviewing reports, his sleeves rolled up, his tie loosened—an image of control even in his moments of exhaustion.

You sat across from him, feigning casual interest as you set down your tablet.

"Do you ever wonder about the past?" you asked lightly, as if the question was just an idle thought.

Do-yeong barely glanced up. "Depends on the past."

"Your wife's, for example."

That made him pause. His eyes lifted to meet yours, sharp and unreadable. "What about it?"

You tilted your head, choosing your words carefully.

"I just mean… She’s a public figure. A reporter. People like that usually have well-documented histories." You offered a small, knowing smile. "You must have known everything about her before you married her."

He studied you for a moment, setting his pen down. "I knew enough," he said evenly.

"Enough," you repeated, as if turning the word over in your mind. "That’s interesting. Because people tend to hide things. Especially about their youth."

He leaned back slightly, his gaze assessing. "Is there something you’re trying to ask me?"

You met his stare, letting the silence stretch. Then, finally, you shook your head, offering a small chuckle. "No, just making conversation."

Do-yeong didn’t respond right away, but you could tell he was still watching you closely. After a long pause, he exhaled, returning his attention to his reports.

"Yeon-jin’s past isn’t something I’ve ever had reason to doubt," he said, his voice measured. "And I don’t keep records of things I don’t find relevant."

That told you everything you needed to know.

He didn’t have anything. No evidence, no knowledge of what Yeon-jin had done. He had never looked into her past because, in his world, she had never given him a reason to.

The conversation shifted after that, the moment passing without further weight. But as you left his office that night, you felt the weight of disappointment settle in your chest. Moon Dong-eun had hoped for something—anything—that could be used against Yeon-jin. But Do-yeong, for all his intelligence, was in the dark.

When you met Dong-eun later that night, you delivered the news succinctly.

"He doesn’t know," you said, watching her expression remain eerily neutral. "He never looked into her past. And if he has anything that could be used against her, he doesn’t realize it."

Dong-eun nodded, though there was no surprise in her gaze. "Then we keep going," she murmured. "If he doesn’t know the truth now… we make sure he finds out."

Days turned into weeks, and you continued weaving yourself into Ha Do-yeong’s world. You played the long game, careful and strategic, ensuring that your presence in his life remained irreplaceable.

With each passing day, he became more attuned to you—his gaze lingering a second longer, his words carrying an unspoken weight. He trusted you, even if he didn’t yet realize it.

And then, the cracks began to show.

The first was a subtle shift in Do-yeong’s demeanor.

It happened after a business dinner, an evening filled with conversation about stocks, market trends, and construction projects. But in between those discussions, Do-yeong had let something slip.

"Yeon-jin has been distracted lately," he had murmured, swirling the whiskey in his glass. "More secretive than usual."

You had only hummed in response, feigning mild interest. "Trouble at work?"

"Maybe." He glanced at you, as if weighing his next words. "Or maybe something else."

That was when you knew.

Moon Dong-eun’s plan was working.

The moment everything changed came on an unassuming afternoon.

You were in the office, organizing reports, when Do-yeong received a package—an unmarked envelope, hand-delivered. He opened it without much thought, expecting business documents or a contract.

Instead, he found photographs.

Burn scars.

Not Yeon-jin’s. Not anyone he recognized. But unmistakable in their cruelty. The skin melted and twisted, the wounds deep enough to have been inflicted deliberately.

And at the bottom of the envelope was a single note.

Your wife did this.

You kept your gaze trained on your work, feigning ignorance, but you could feel the shift in the room. The way Do-yeong stiffened, his breathing going shallow as he processed what he was seeing.

For the first time, the undeniable truth had been placed before him.

He left early that day, the envelope clutched in his hand.

After that, Do-yeong started searching.

You could tell by the way his phone calls grew colder, his interactions with Yeon-jin more distant. He started spending nights at hotels instead of home, using business as an excuse. But the real reason was written in the way he barely looked at her when they did cross paths.

He was pulling away.

And that was when you knew it was time for the next step.

One evening, as you prepared to leave the office, Do-yeong spoke up.

“Do you believe in justice?”

The question was abrupt, catching you off guard—but only for a moment.

You turned to face him, tilting your head slightly. “That depends on what kind of justice you’re looking for.”

He exhaled, running a hand over his face. “The kind that fixes mistakes that should never have been made.”

For a brief second, his mask slipped. The exhaustion in his eyes, the weight of knowing that his wife—the mother of his child—wasn’t the woman he thought she was.

You held his gaze, your voice soft when you finally spoke.

“Then maybe it’s time you start looking for the truth.”

Do-yeong was nothing if not thorough.

Once doubt had taken root, he didn’t stop until he had answers. And when he started looking, the truth unraveled faster than even you expected.

He found old school records. Reports of bullying buried under bribes. Witnesses who had long since moved on but still carried the memories. And then, finally, he found Moon Dong-eun.

She was waiting for him.

They met in a quiet café, away from prying eyes. You weren’t there for the conversation, but you didn’t need to be.

When Do-yeong returned to the office that evening, his expression was unreadable.

“She told me everything.” His voice was low, distant. “And I believe her.”

You nodded, not surprised.

“Yeon-jin doesn’t know that I know.” He exhaled, gripping the edge of his desk. “But she will soon.”

The calm before the storm.

And you were more than ready to watch it all unfold.

The scandal broke like wildfire.

Ha Do-yeong filed for divorce. Not quietly, not discreetly—but in full view of the public eye, ensuring that there would be no escaping the scrutiny.

Moon Dong-eun had done her part, exposing the truth in a way that no amount of money could bury. The testimonies, the evidence—it was all there.

Yeon-jin’s career was ruined overnight. Jae-joon, Sara, and Hye-jeong were dragged down with her. Myeong-oh? Dead. A casualty of the war long before it reached its peak.

And you?

You stood by, watching as justice was finally served.

Watching as Ha Do-yeong, the man who had once been oblivious to the darkness in his own home, walked away from it all.

Months later, in a quiet moment, Do-yeong sat across from you in a small café in London, far from the chaos of Seoul.

Ye-sol played by the window, her laughter soft, innocent—untouched by the sins of her parents.

Do-yeong sipped his coffee, his gaze settling on you. “You were right,” he murmured.

You raised a brow. “About what?”

“About the choices we don’t remember making.” His lips curved slightly. “And the ones that change everything.”

You held his gaze, feeling the weight of everything that had led you here.

“I never expected to find this,” he admitted. “Not after everything.”

You smiled. “Then maybe this was a choice worth making.”

Buffy rolls her eyes when she recognizes who’s behind all the commotion by the door, turning away from Giles to give the intruder one of her meanest eyebrow-raises.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, fists clenched and knuckles white as she glares at Spike, tension etched into every line of her body. Her voice is a low, warning growl, her fingers itching to wrap around something sharp and stabby. Anything will do, really. “It’s the middle of the day.”

It’s been only a few weeks since bizarro entered Spike’s brain and he tried to tell her he loved her, and in that time it’s like it never really happened. Sure, he’s been loitering around the house like a pervert, glances lasting a little too long on her as she deliberately ignores him to unlock the door and retreat to the safety of a freshly-Spike-free zone, but his focus is all screwy. It’s like the tap of grossness has spun itself off, still dripping a bit but like… not flooding. Or something. She’s bad with figures of speech.

The evil bleached wonder sneers over at her, still furiously smacking at the smoke trails rising from his exposed skin and stinking up the shop. “None of your business, Slayer. Ain’t my bloody keeper. I can go where I like.”

“Does that have to be where Buffy is?” Xander snipes. “You know you’re never getting a shot with her. Why make us all put up with you?”

Dawn’s here, so Buffy makes a cutty-motion with her hand at him, warning him off the tangent he’s on. Even though Dawnie’s just as mad as the rest of them about Spike’s confession, she still gets huffy and moody whenever anyone spends too long mocking him for it, and Buffy totally can’t deal right now.

Spike shakes his head. “Look, I dunno what Buffy told you about that stuff with Dru―”

Giles advances on him, shielding her from view. “Spike, you’re not welcome here.”

“Yeah, and by the way, we’re working on a way to de-invite you from here,” Willow adds. Though there’s nothing super snarky about the indifferent way she looks Spike up and down, for Wills it’s positively cruel. “Even if it is a public place.”

Spike looks away, lower lip curling under his teeth as he scoffs. “Alright, maybe there was some expression of feelings, but ’m all―”

Whatever he was gonna say dies in his throat. He straightens himself up and runs his fingers through his hair, which, strange, isn’t slicked back like he usually wears it. Has he suddenly realized―re-realized, or whatever―that she’s there and is doing some uber-sketchy peacocking thing? She’s just about to ask him what the hell is up when you brush just past her, bookbag swinging as you rifle through its contents.

“Buff,” you say, absent-minded, “d’you know where I put my―oh, hey, Spike. Nice hair.”

You look up and smile at him, a bit unfocused as you wander over to the table, scattering the items inside on its surface. Pens and textbooks go skidding across the wood as you dig through, muttering an aha! when you find your tube of chapstick buried at the bottom. Dawnie shoves at the stuff that’s rolled onto her homework, but you don’t seem to notice at all.

“Afternoon,” Spike says. Buffy narrows her eyes at him. “Settlin’ in alright?”

“Mm,” you hum, smiling, lips freshly glossy and reddened. “Stuff’s unpacked, classes all sorted… everything’s coming up me. How ’bout you?”

“Can’t complai―”

“Seriously, Spike,” Buffy snaps, folding her arms. “Clear outta here.”

She’s totally a hypocrite for being so freaked by him basically ignoring her, she knows that. It’s not like she wants him stalking her, but she’s Puzzle Girl. She solves things, and the mystery is that Spike is acting stranger than usual.

She hasn’t had time to figure it out, not between helping Mom, rearranging Dawn’s room—well, your shared room now—and grilling you about Hank’s way-too-young girlfriend. That doesn’t even begin to cover the stress of keeping Glory’s demon goons off Dawn’s back. Time is totally against her right now. And after Mom told you about the tumor? Yeah, no wonder you were all in for moving back.

“Wait,” Anya says, frowning. “I thought Spike didn’t know her. Why are they talking?”

“Introduced meself, yeah?” Spike’s stink-eye is ineffective as usual. “S’what civilized people do and all that rot.”

“If that’s civilized,” Anya mutters, too low for anyone but Buffy to properly catch, “then I’ve been using the wrong definition. Civilized people don’t pant like wolves in heat—”

“He’s nice,” you say.

“—yeah, most men pretend to listen,” Buffy hears her whispering to Tara. She tunes it out. “Vampires probably do it better. Less hormonal noise.”

Patting your sides down―looking for pockets, though as usual you’re wearing a dress that doesn’t have them―you shove your chapstick down the neckline before going back to sorting through the things you’ve discarded. Buffy watches Spike watch you, watches his eyes settle where the balm presses through your bra. Disgust curdles in her belly—but it’s not just disgust, and that’s the worst part. It shouldn’t matter. Really. He should look anywhere but at her. Still, the absence of his usual obsession lands like a slap. Her chest tightens, breath caught in her throat. Embarrassing. She rolls her shoulders back, forces her focus elsewhere.

“We talk sometimes,” you add. “He’s a good listener.”

“Thanks, pet.” Spike’s smile looks genuine enough to fool even her.

“Uh, he’s a vampire.”

“Good for you, Xan,” you say, levelling him with one of your are-you-the-dumbest-person-in-the-world? looks. You’ve always been good at that. “Your observational skills are A-okay. Congrats.”

Xander sputters. “He’s evil!”

“Not this again,” you mutter. Continuing in a deceptively mild tone, you say louder, “Evil’s relative, isn’t it? Is the lion evil for hunting and eating the gazelle? No, because you can’t moralize about the predatory drive of a completely different species with different—”

“He’s not another species, though,” Giles interrupts, taking his glasses off and scrubbing at them with his cloth. “He’s a demon.”

You cock your head, slight curve to your lip. “So, not human, right? Ergo, another species.”

“Okay, difference of opinion, agree to disagree!” Buffy calls out loudly. She really doesn’t want to deal with broken-brain Giles, and he always comes out when you prod at his whole Watcher upbringing. “We’re wasting time. Can we seriously get back to the whole April thing?”

Her resolve face is enough to get the Scoobies moving back to the counter, and though the conversation begins flowing in the right direction once again, Buffy can’t help but pay just a little more attention to what’s going on across the room. You’ve sat down opposite Dawnie, tugging out the worn copy of Emily Dickinson poems that Buffy had to read when she was in junior year, too. You probably borrowed it from her closet, actually, where she keeps all her old high school stuff. That’s not the problem, though. It’s that Spike’s gone and swung himself across the seat right next to you, spread-kneed with arms folded and resting on the chairback. You shift obligingly, murmuring something just out of earshot to him, and he seems to be considering your words thoughtfully—for him, at least—gesturing to the text on the open page before you.

She watches Spike watch you as you’re preoccupied with getting your essay perfect. He used to look at her like that. In fact, he hasn’t so much as glanced her way like he would usually. She doesn’t know what to make of it.

“It’s weird, right?” Willow’s nervous voice interrupts her focus, and she turns to find her staring in exactly the same direction. “That. It’s like, all sorts of ooky.”

“Spike’s, um… he was a poet, wasn’t he?” Tara asks, uncertain. “It’s no–not that weird. He prob–probably knows a lot and wants to he–help with her assignment.”

Suddenly, you laugh, drawing their eyes back to you. Buffy’s stomach twists. That laugh—light, happy, normal—doesn’t belong here. Not in this context. Not with him. Spike’s grinning at you, unaware of all the attention on him. Even Dawnie seems a bit startled, her gaze darting from you to him and back again. And you… you’re looking back at him like he’s a good friend of yours. Like he’s safe. Like he’s normal, and not the soulless demon who’s caused so much hurt to so many people in the room right now, who would go on to cause even more pain and suffering if not for the leash in his brain keeping him from harming them. It’s like watching someone pet a cobra and call it a puppy. And Spike just… lets you.

“Yeah, right.” Xander huffs, scathing. “He’s probably thinking ‘gee, maybe the Slayer’ll get the lust on for me if I play besties with little sis’―”

“Unlike the rest of you,” Giles cuts across, adjusting his glasses, “I have little care to understand why Spike does what he does. So long as he is being useful and is leaving Buffy be, then by all means… Shall we return to the problem at hand?”

Buffy nods absently, mind still whirling as she tunes back in to the previous discussion. She can totally do two things at once. Xander’s right. Spike’s probably just trying to get her interest. Is it that you’re her younger sister, or is he just trying to make her jealous? That won’t work. You don’t get involved in stuff like that. She’s wondered if you even notice boys sometimes, let alone get dragged into some messy demon-y love triangle. Line. Whatever. So it must be him thinking that you’ll get him on her good side or something, which ew. Talk about desperate.

It’s a good explanation. Perfect, actually. If only her chest didn’t feel tight in that way it gets when she knows, deep down, that she’s missing something. Not danger. She knows that feeling too well. This is worse. It’s something personal. Something close.

“… your thoughts, Buffy? Buffy? Buffy!”

“Huh?” Giles’s face is unimpressed. Buffy smiles apologetically, turning to face him properly. “Sorry. Problem-Solver Buffy, reporting for duty. Hit me again.”

For now, she’ll have to deal with the weirdness. She’ll figure it out later. There are more important things to worry about… like superstrong robot girlfriends causing havoc across Sunnydale. When did it begin?

Since you came back. The thought pops unbidden in her head as she tunes in to Slayer mode. Hm.

The muscle below his eye twitches as he watches Spike across the cemetery, moonlight tracing the sharp lines of his face. The graveyard is silent now, empty of mourners, the solemn faces of those in black who came to watch as Joyce Summers was laid to rest in the ground. Even Buffy is home now, numbed and tired from the hours spent cradled in Angel’s arms. Just faintly, his senses pick up the murmur of hushed voices: yours soft and raw, Spike’s a slow, gentle rumble. Of course he’s found a way to worm his way in, always lurking where he doesn’t belong.

You stand too close, arms wrapped tight around yourself and shivering despite the mildness of the night air. It’s the first time he’s seen you since you were sent away. Since Angelus. You were small then, too. Frightened, stalwart in your sadness over Buffy having convinced Joyce that spending some time with your father might make the night terrors go away. A cover that should’ve put you out for a month, maybe two, and instead led to years of isolation, all because of him. Guilt congeals acrid in the back of his mouth, from memory and from here and now, blurring together. He didn’t even think to check on you, so wrapped up in Buffy’s grief as he’s been. You look like Buffy did after the funeral. But not the Slayer version—the kid version. The girl who used to beg her mother for a later curfew. The one he couldn’t save from heartache, then or now.

He sees Spike shrug off his duster and drape it around you, fingers lingering on your shoulders. You tug it closer, inhaling deeply, the sleeves all but swallowing your hands. You look like a child in too-big clothing, hunched as though grief itself is sitting on your shoulders. Your eyes are puffy and red as you look down at the hole in the dirt, the place where what is left of your mother now lay, your cheeks streaked with the gloss of tears that glimmer under the glow of the night sky. Angel can hear the ragged edges of your breathing, the way you try and fail to even it out.

And Spike—

His posture’s casual, the type of relaxed Angel knows is deceptive, calculated. His focus is wholly on you, head bowed, eyes flicking over your face as if memorizing every twitch and quiver. His fingers find the crook of your elbow, stroking gently. Too practiced. Too careful. As if care could be learned by imitation. He’s never mastered the art of guile, for all that Angelus tried to beat it into him. Too soft. If not for the hair, the coat, Angel might mistake the demon ahead for the human he’d been.

It’s not just the way he looks at you that bothers Angel. It’s the way you look back. The small, anxious clutch of your fingers on his lapels, how you lean instinctively into the rumble of his voice, unguarded, drifting closer as though the space between you is a safety net. Spike’s too close, saying something low that makes your lips quirk up in a wobbly, trembling smile. His answering smile, lax around the edges, is unsettling—not the predatory leer or cocky smirk Angel’s used to seeing on his face. You step toward him, easily accepting the embrace he offers, and the way you fold into him makes the hairs at Angel’s nape rise.

He clenches his fists. It’s an act. It has to be.

Pushing forward, his bootfalls are deliberate and heavy, purposeful, and the noise draws your attention as he knew it would. The talking stops. You glance up, startled, and Angel takes note of how quickly you wipe your eyes, trying to hide the tears. Spike’s features harden, his mouth curved into a stubborn, disdainful sneer.

“What are you doing here, Spike?” Angel demands, crossing his arms. The chill of the air seeps through the layers of his clothing.

Spike smirks. “Nice to see you too, Peaches. Out for an evenin’ stroll?”

Angel’s glare doesn’t waver. “Get away from her. Now.”

You wince, but Spike doesn’t move. Instead, he lets his thumb brush the back of your arm, a gesture so brief, so casual that Angel might’ve missed it if he wasn’t watching so closely.

“Girl’s having a rough go, not that you’d notice,” Spike says arrogantly, “trailing after Buffy like you’re her bitch. Thought someone ought to check in.”

Angel’s eyes dart back to you, ignoring the barb. “You can talk to Buffy. Or Giles. Not him.”

“I tried, but… She’s got so much on her plate. She’s doing her best. I don’t—I don’t blame her.” You sigh, weary, pulling Spike’s coat tighter around you. “I just… I needed someone who could listen. Without trying to fix it.”

Spike glances down at you, the hardness in his gaze melting like ice in the heat. “Gotta let yourself feel it, pet. S’not weakness.”

You look up, eyes wet. It’s as though you’ve forgotten Angel exists. “It’s stupid,” you whisper. “I keep thinking she—she’s gonna just… walk in, tell me to wash my face, snap out of it.”

“Not stupid.” Spike’s mouth twitches. “Just means you love her.”

The words hang heavy in the air for a beat; two; three. Your chin dips, face crumpling, and Spike’s grip tightens, hand sliding to span the back of your head. You lean fully into him, forehead pressing to his chest, and he mutters something too low for Angel to catch. It makes you nod, knuckles clutching his red jacket. His hand drifts to your spine, drawing soothing circles, gentle and patient. It looks practiced. Habitual. Wrong.

“You’re using her,” Angel growls at him, feeling a bit of fang slip with the flare of his temper. “Trying to get to Buffy. It’s pathetic.”

Spike rolls his eyes. “Oh, right. Because I’m raring for the Slayer’s approval. Tell yourself whatever helps you sleep, mate. Assuming you can.”

Angel’s jaw clenches. “If you think for a second that I’ll let you manipulate her—”

“Not manipulating anyone,” Spike snaps, snarling. His arm curls tighter around you, unconscious. You glance between them, wary. “She’s grieving. Thought I’d help.”

“Help yourself, more like.”

Spike’s eyes flash, his own fangs bearing down against his lip. “Don’t care what you think, sire. Just here for her. So unless you plan to dust me, sod off.”

Angel hesitates. He’d like to. It’s bad enough that Spike’s been after Buffy. But she can handle herself—you’re too easy a target.

“It’s okay,” you say then, shifting in place. You press closer to Spike’s side, entirely unbothered by the appearance of his game face. “He’s… he’s my friend. He’s kind.”

Spike scoffs. “Careful, pet. Man’s liable to think I’ve gone soft.”

“Nah.” You shake your head, the side of your mouth curling up ever so slightly. “You’re evil, remember?”

“Too right.” It’s warm, indulgent.

The words land heavy in Angel’s chest, like stones in a sinking ship. He glowers. “This isn’t a game, Spike.”

He’s not talking about Spike’s sudden helpfulness. The meaning is clear. ‘Not her. She’s too good for you.’

Spike stiffens, drawing himself up to height. “Never was. That’s your problem, Angel—you think everything’s about you. S’nothing to do with you, or anyone. Just me ’n her.”

Angel’s scowl deepens. “If you hurt her—”

“Get in line,” Spike interrupts, all arrogant swagger. “A popular threat, where she’s concerned.”

Angel’s stare lingers on you, on the openness of your expression: face relaxed, eyebrows tilted just upward, lax jaw. He watches the way you lean into Spike, nonchalant, his grip proprietary.

“You deserve better,” Angel says.

“Maybe. Maybe not.” You hold his gaze, unconcerned and unafraid, bolder than he remembers. Surely, it’s easy for you to front up to him when you’re tucked under the arm of someone like Spike. “Either way, it’s my choice to make.”

He eyes Spike, who glares back with an unspoken challenge. ‘Leave,’ he says without speaking. ‘Go back to where you came from. You aren’t needed here.’ Eventually, Angel turns away, shadows clinging to him. “If he lets you down—”

“He won’t,” you say, conviction lacing your voice.

The certainty makes Spike’s eyes widen, smile hinting at the edges of his mouth, a glimmer of something raw and unspoken to be read in the planes of his face. Angel’s frown deepens. How can you trust him? What has he ever done to deserve your confidence? Angel earned Buffy’s affection, her faith, and look where it got him: no girl, no love, no happy ever after. It’s as though Spike hasn’t even had to try, the resentment a sword to his chest all over again. He murmurs some vague attempt at goodbye, an invitation to reach out if you need anything, though you and he both know you’ll never do it. You’ll never need it. Spike, he snubs entirely, suddenly exhausted, not wanting to see the victory in the set of his frame. As he sets off, a shade in the moonlight, he expects some final dig to reverberate across the cemetery, some juvenile taunting yell that’s so typical of the other vampire. Instead, nothing. Angel turns, taking one final look at the pair of you, standing together so damn closely.

Cigarette smoke drifts up, curling in revolutions from Spike’s loose grip. “Brave girl,” he tells you, fond.

“Or stupid.” You sigh.

“Never that, pet.” Spike’s palm drops to the small of your back, spanning wide. He cards through your hair, rubbing the strands between his fingers. “Never that.”

Angel swallows, flexes his fists once, again, and walks away.

He doesn’t hear what Spike says next. Doesn’t see the way you press your cheek into his shoulder like you’ve done it a hundred times before. He never sees it coming. That’s what hurts most of all.

The sun is setting, the sky colored in bruised purples and fiery oranges. Anya leans against the half-wall that separates the porch from the side of the Summers house where she slumps, watching as night falls. A storm is brewing. A metaphor, maybe, but it definitely feels like something’s up with the world. It’s like the Earth knows what’s about to happen. What they’re up against. Dawn’s in trouble, and they have to save her from the hellgod who wants to bring death and destruction to this dimension.

Everyone inside is tense: dealing out weapons, talking through battle plans, trading worried looks. Buffy’s on a rampage, taking everything anyone says the wrong way, as an attack on her littlest sister—especially Giles. He only suggested killing Dawn once, and he apologized for it, but Buffy won’t let it go. Willow’s busy trying to distract Tara from walking out the door until it’s time to fix the brain-suck Glory pulled on her, so she can’t stop them from fighting like she would normally. Xander’s the one trying that, and even though Anya loves Xander, he’s not the best at calming people down. So yeah, everyone’s freaked, driven to it by all the waiting, trying to pretend like they aren’t secretly hoping for some miracle.

Anya doesn’t believe in miracles. She’s lived for a thousand years. She believes in what’s real: power, blood, the occasional loophole in cosmic prophecies. She knows the sound of desperation, though, the smell of it, even if she doesn’t have her old senses anymore. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand what she’s seeing now.

Spike’s standing in the front yard under the tree, far enough away that he probably can’t tell she’s out here too, smoking one of his cigarettes with a too-casual stance that only makes the tension on his face more obvious. He’s not alone: you’re with him, arms hugged to yourself like you can keep all your bottled-up worry and fear from exploding out. Anya’s watched the two of you skirting around each other for weeks now. She’s not the only one who’s noticed. Most of the others have. They’re just too determined to pretend they don’t know what it means.

She remembers the argument from earlier, how Buffy and the others tried to order you to stay behind, to leave Dawn’s fate to the rest of them. ‘Too young,’ they said. ‘Too helpless.’ Anya disagrees. She knows better than most that appearances can be deceiving. The fire in your eyes reminded her of a certain vengeance demon who once went toe-to-toe with hell lords and never flinched. She wasn’t all that shocked when you refused them, furious, but it was Spike’s support that threw her a bit. He sneered at them, claiming he’d make sure nothing happens to you. After you stormed outside, he rounded on the Slayer, reminding her how headstrong you were when you thought you were right, asked how she planned to stop you from following after. That exchange was ugly.

Buffy’s eyes narrow, lips pulled into a thin, furious line. “You think you can keep her safe?” she snaps, crossing her arms. “Like you kept Dawn safe?”

Spike’s jaw tightens, muscles twitching. “That was a trick. Can’t fall for the same one twice.”

“Doubt you’ll get the chance,” Buffy says, voice cold as a blade. “If you even think of letting her get hurt—”

“Yeah, yeah. Big, scary threats,” Spike drawls. “But if you think anyone’s gonna keep her from fighting, you’re wrong. Least this way, I’ll be there when the fists and fireballs start flyin’.”

For a moment, Buffy looks like she might argue, but then her shoulders sag, and she nods sharply. “Fine. But if she dies—”

“I’ll be dead first,” Spike interrupts. The promise lands heavy and solid, and Buffy’s glare softens, but only slightly. She turns away, shoulders stiff. He watches her go, tension simmering, then stalks outside.

Anya ducks a bit further down when Spike starts speaking, not wanting to get caught. Something’s telling her she’ll want to hear whatever it is that’s going on.

“I might die tonight,” he drawls, flicking ash to the ground. His voice is rough, a strange sort of fragility lurking underneath. Her brows arch. It doesn’t sound like his usual bravado.

Anya’s eyes flicker over Spike’s tense stance, and she huffs softly. She’s never understood him. A vampire with no bite, a demon mooning after a Slayer and now her sister. Pathetic, she’d say, but he fights for them anyway, chipped or not. Sometimes, she thinks he’s a fool. Other times, she wonders if he’s the only one who really gets it—that love comes with a cost.

You startle, brows knitting together as you frown. “Don’t—don’t say that.”

“Why not? Might be true.” Spike’s smirk is twisted, bitter. “Glory on the rampage, me all chipped ’n useless. But if—”

“Stop it,” you mutter, grabbing his sleeve. “Don’t give me your ‘if I die’ speech.”

He huffs a bitter laugh. “Feels like the end, luv. Night like this—you say your piece or regret it forever.”

He tosses the cigarette, the cherry glowing and then fading in the grass. He doesn’t look at you, jaw tightening. “Bloody hell. Can’t believe I’m doing this. Stupid. Pointless. But when you’re up against a soddin’ hellgod and odds that make death look cozy, what’s the use in leavin’ things unsaid?”

He huffs, scrubbing a hand through his hair, agitation radiating off him. You stay silent, but the concern shows in your face, your posture.

“Suppose I should’ve said something sooner,” he continues, half to himself. “Not like I’m any good at this. Maybe never was. Back when I was… well, different story. Used to be all flowery words and grand gestures. Always had to prove meself.”

He risks a glance at you, eyes flicking away when they meet yours.

“Not much of a man now, am I? But the way you look at me… bugger me if it doesn’t make me feel like I could be.” He forces a chuckle, brittle around the edges. “Maybe it’s just my own foolishness talking. Wouldn’t be the first time.” Spike stops, swallowing hard. “But if this is the end, I need you to know that… that every stupid poem I scratched out, back when my heart was still beatin’—they were shadows of what I feel now. For you.”

You take a slow, shuddering breath, eyes wide and lips parted in a soft ‘O’ as you stare up at him. The porch light’s come on, the glow shading warmth into your expression. His fingers reach out and touch, delicate across your cheekbone, down to cup your chin. “You’ve gone and wrapped yourself ’round me. Tight as sin, sweeter than blood. I can’t stop wantin’ more… Reckon I never will.”

You’re voiceless, your mouth opening once, then again, before giving up. Anya smirks to herself. Powerless in the face of blunt truth. You mortals and your weird little problems.

Spike rubs the back of his neck, avoiding your gaze. “Said more than I meant to already. Should shut up before I make an even bigger mess. Send you runnin’. Hell, maybe I deserve it. Always cocked things up when it mattered.”

You inhale sharply, staring at him. “Oh…” You swallow. “Spike…”

His smile widens, but it’s not a happy thing.

“S’alright, pet,” he says, stepping back a foot. Ash is smeared across your cheek. “Not expectin’ anything. Just wanted to say it.” He hesitates, gaze dropping. “Never thought I’d be worth a damn to anyone, not really. But you—hell, you make me feel like I am. Like I’m enough. Like there’s somethin’ good left in me worth savin’.”

He turns to go, but you stop him. “Wait―I―”

The surprise on his face might seem deliberately put there to anyone who didn’t truly get demons. Anya knows it’s real. He really wasn’t expecting a response.

“You are enough. You are. And I―” You huff, biting your lip and averting your eyes. “You weren’t supposed to… be this—this important. To me.”

He looks at you then, eyebrows drawing together. You twist at your fingers, looking as though you’re desperate for something to hold on to.

“You drive me crazy,” you say suddenly, words tumbling. “With the attitude, and the way you think you can just―just―say stuff like that, like it doesn’t mean anything. Except it does. It does, and I—” You stop, breath trembling. “I can’t―I can’t lose you.”

His eyes widen, mouth opening, but you plow on, words spilling over themselves. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did. You make me feel… like I can breathe, even when everything is falling apart. And I know it’s insane, and I shouldn’t, and everyone will hate it, but I—” You take a breath. “But I’m already lost. I don’t want to find my way back.”

Something startlingly human spreads across Spike’s face. He cocks his head as he stares down at you, shy wonder making his features less cutting. It’s as though he’s just a guy and you’re just a girl, and this is just a scene out of an ordinary life.

Suddenly, you laugh, a short, small sound, but it breaks the oppressive atmosphere. “Damn. This is so cliché,” you say, shaking your head ruefully. “It’s like we’re in a movie.”

The mood shifts, and with it Spike’s distinctive brashness returns. His posture adjusts, less bumbling fool and more leonine hunter, tongue curling behind his lip in invitation.

“Yeah?” he asks, sauntering into your space, up close and personal. “Pretty sure the sort you mean ends in a kiss. Rounds out all the talk.”

He’s goading you, trying to recoup and save face, but it’s also an offer veiled by provocative words. Anya sees your uncertainty, the red flush working its way across your skin, and her anticipation begins to fade. Darn. She should’ve expected you to quail under the full force of his charm. She’s realistic enough to recognize that even she wouldn’t be unaffected by him. He’s very pretty for a vampire, and he knows it.

But wait—

After a moment of vacillation, you surge forward, fists grasping the collar of his duster to pull his mouth to yours. Spike’s eyes widen briefly before sliding shut, hand tangling in your hair. She watches your lips mash together awkwardly for a second before Spike takes over, tilting your head just so until you slot together like puzzle pieces, your bodies converging to match. He kisses you like he’s memorizing the shape of your mouth, the taste of you, like it’s the last time he’ll ever kiss anyone—and it might just be. It’s intense. Desperate. Romantic.

You let out a squeaking sort of sigh, muffled, a sound answered by the bass growl of the vampire attached to you as his arm spans across your waist, raising you up on tiptoes and into him even further. The flickering globe lighting the front of the house paints shadows across your entwined forms. The corners of Anya’s mouth lift.

You look very nice together. The sex will be great, she’s sure—when you’re ready, of course. And you could do worse than someone like Spike, who definitely has decades of experience in giving pleasure. She’s happy for you. Quality orgasms are necessary.

But there’s an obvious catch. Buffy, Giles, Xander—they’ll hate it. Spike is nothing but a monster to them, a rabid animal on a choke chain. No way they’ll tolerate his increased presence, never mind the very idea of him even touching you. You might get Tara and Dawn on side—and if you have Tara, you’ll most likely get Willow, too—but the possibility is far-fetched. Even if you do, it’s easy enough to sway them. Anya’s seen it in action time and time again. She knows how it’s going to go, when this gets out: they’ll call it disgusting, wrong, the scheming of a soulless demon. She can already hear it.

In her heart, she wishes they were more understanding. Humans make love messy when it doesn’t have to be. Demons love simpler. When they want something, they just take it. No wringing hands, no guessing games. But there’s something intoxicating about all the fussing. She understands why some demons get obsessed.

Anya crosses her arms, thinking back to Xander’s proposal—so clear, so certain, like he’d already made the decision a hundred times before asking. It’s a rare, beautiful thing, certainty. Not like the mess playing out on the lawn now. She thinks about the ring, nestled in the little black box Xander offered. She didn’t take it then—no point in promises if they don’t survive the night—but the offer sparked something bright and unexpected in her. Delight, disbelief, a warmth and depth of emotion she didn’t know she was capable of. A reminder that demons, ex or otherwise, can know love as fiercely and deeply as any human.

Watching as the kiss breaks, Spike’s forehead resting against yours, she sighs. When it blows up, and it will, she’ll inevitably be dragged into it. Great, she thinks. More drama.

But, as she sees you embrace under the steadily darkening sky, she can’t help but feel a pang of… something. Envy, maybe, at your audacity. Nostalgia. Or the bitter understanding that love is a gamble, and fools are the only ones brave enough to take it. But it’s a gamble worth fighting, worth losing, maybe even dying for.

Giles stands in the corner of the back room, pretending to clean a counter already spotless. The pretence is for your benefit, perhaps Spike’s too, but not his own. He knows exactly why he’s here. Buffy is dead. And you, her younger sister, are throwing yourself into the very life she died living. He tells himself it’s just concern. That he’s watching to ensure you’re safe. But it’s more than that. With Buffy gone, everything he failed to protect now rests in you. And Spike—compulsive, volatile—is the one you’ve chosen to help carry that weight.

The Magic Box is still and dim, cloaked in that aching quiet that has lingered since her death. The only sounds are the thud of your fists on the heavy bag and Spike’s low, muttered instructions. You’re quick, focused, but Giles can see it in the way your shoulders tighten, the way your mouth presses into a hard line. You’re angry. You’re hurting, and Spike is right in the middle of it.

Once, he stood in this very spot and watched Buffy move.

Not like this.

She was light, fluid, grace sharpened into purpose, a dancer in motion even at her most frustrated. He remembers the flash of her blonde ponytail in the air as she twisted into a spin-kick that sent the padded dummy reeling. How she bounced on the balls of her feet with a smirk and said, “Again?” even when sweat was dripping into her eyes.

He remembers correcting her stance, only for her to adjust just slightly wrong on purpose, just to get a rise out of him. The way she’d laugh when she nailed something new. How she complained, always, but never stopped trying. Now, the echoes of those moments sit in the corners of the room like ghosts. But watching you move—raw, stiff, driven by pain instead of instinct—feels like watching someone drown slowly under the weight of her shadow.

You decided to train properly just days after her death. It’s understandable: each of you have found your own methods of working through your sorrow, Dawn blaring her uncomfortably loud music from within the confines of her room while you find yourself here, or away from the house, out at all hours of the night. The others are wrapped up in their own hurt, the wound too fresh to consider the plight of the Summers girls beyond the most basic of necessities. While Giles cannot make himself comfortable with the notion of you in any sort of battle, at least here he can keep vigil. For her.

You aren’t built like your elder sister: your frame is too slight, too small, and your punches lack the power to truly hurt. You’re about as threatening as a fly, but Spike does not coddle you.

“Potential there, yeah?” he said enigmatically when last Giles asked, smirking. “Something raw ’n fierce. She’s no Slayer, but she can surprise a nasty or two.”

When Spike offered to train you, he framed it as a way to keep you from getting yourself killed on the patrols you’d abruptly become insistent on joining. It is your way of honouring your sister’s sacrifice, Giles thinks, though he wishes you might choose some other means. With the Slayer gone, there were none suited to the task save Spike, and thus the proposition was reluctantly agreed to. The chip in the vampire’s head makes his sparring with you impossible, much to everyone’s relief, but he has turned instruction into drills for evasion, for striking with speed and precision, for using your size to your advantage. You’ll not make for a spectacular fighter, no, but Spike ensures you might hold your own.

“Footwork,” the vampire barks as you stumble back from a missed hit. “You’re dancing like a drunk. Move your feet.”

You scowl, breathing hard. “I am moving.”

“Yeah, like a duck. Gotta be faster, light on your toes.” His gaze flicks over you, lazy but appraising, lips curling. “All that talk about training—wouldn’t want to bruise anything too delicate, would we? Keep your face pretty. Gotta keep the goods intact, yeah?” He leans closer, a teasing lilt in his voice. “Though you might wear a bruise well, pet. Bit of edge suits you.”

You bristle, cheeks flushing and indignation flaring in the pout you level him as you obey, focusing on the way Spike glides predatory, almost elegant. He demonstrates a simple but effective series of moves, unnaturally fast, hands ghosting close but never touching. Giles can see your mounting frustration at your inability to replicate the finesse of the supernatural, limbs shaking with exertion.

You lunge abruptly, no rhyme or reason to it, throwing a punch that flies wide. Spike dodges easily, grinning. “That it? Come on, you can hit harder than a wet noodle.”

“Not like you can punch back,” you mutter, blowing a strand of hair out of your face.

His eyes narrow, playful. “Then make me dodge.”

You strike again, quicker this time, a low jab aimed at his ribs. He twists away, swift as a snake, but instead of stepping back, he moves into your space and catches your wrist in a carefully firm grip. Before you can react, his other arm wraps around your waist, pinning you flush against his body. Giles jumps, box slipping from his hands to the counter with a dull thud. Neither of you appear to notice.

“Close,” Spike is murmuring to you, voice a rough rumble, “but no.” His hand slides just a bit lower, fingers splayed against the curve of your hip. His mouth brushes your ear. “Distracted, baby? Can’t blame you. Hard to focus when you’re all tangled up, yeah?”

His hand twitches lower―just enough to provoke, to threaten―before releasing you with an odd little twist to his lips. Giles stiffens, teeth clenching as he looks on, sees Spike’s regard intent and glimmering on you. For a moment, he thinks the vampire wishes to bite you, to drain you dry, but in an instant, the moment is past and you return to starting positions.

It is hard to watch. But watch he must, for it has long been his mandate to guard against the malevolent creatures who hunt and slaughter innocents. Not only that, but in Buffy’s absence―the pang each time the memory resurfaces of her lying there atop the rubble nearly bowls him over―someone ought to keep their eye on this strange development between the pair of you.

“Ready?” Spike’s tone is clipped, stance relaxed. “Again.”

Giles watches as you push harder, your muscles trembling, frustration mounting with every falter. Spike’s needling is mild but targeted, sustained, enough to build up the uncharacteristic anger in you. The vampire never raises a hand against you―he cannot, after all―but he pushes, demands, making you curse your own limits and curse him just the same. He’d perhaps be grateful for the efforts Spike is undertaking if not for the way his gaze lingers just a fraction too long, or how carefully he listens when your voice cracks.

He’s tried to intervene. Truly, he has. It seems from the very second you returned to Sunnydale, armed with a superciliousness that can only come from having attended an institute like Thacher for near three years, you have met his every entreaty with a discourse on the intellectual failings of dichotomous thinking. Spike has no soul―one cannot unilaterally quantify a soul’s impact on the quality of personhood. Spike is evil―‘evil’ is subject to time, place, culture, any number of qualifiers that make it impossible to define concretely. Spike can only cause harm―then that is your cross to bear, and your lesson to learn. Interesting, certainly, but gullible. The accusation that Giles is in some way lacking rationality is galling, though he sees your point. However, he’s seen Spike in all his unholy glory, knows what he is capable of. You can question the basis of his suspicion all you like, but it does not change the simple fact that Spike has done things that even the most abominable human beings would shudder to behold, and he has rejoiced in the horror.

Ben, hand clawing at his arm, weakly trying to twist away—No. His thoughts turn back to you.

You protest Giles’s every exhortation, strong-willed, resilient and reckless in such an unassuming manner that it terrifies him. You aren’t a Slayer, but you are a Summers, and let no one tell you what you can and cannot do. You insist that Spike is helping. That you need the distraction, the outlet. That you need someone who sees you for more than the grief and the guilt that plague your waking hours. And perhaps that’s what terrifies him most: that Spike might actually be helping. That darkness, once cut loose from consequence, can learn the shape of meaning, wear it like a mask.

Over the following weeks, Giles observes from a distance, acutely aware of how your dynamic with Spike has changed. The vampire’s instruction has become softer, more invested. Confident, maybe, in the lack of challenge to his conduct. Spike encourages you, listens to you. Something protective lays in the way he steps closer when your voice wavers or when fatigue drags your movement. Giles sees it all.

The contradiction bothers him. Spike has no soul, his every innate impulse leashed by the metal sliver in his skull. And yet, here he is, teaching you, protecting you, caring. The chip keeps Spike in check, but it does nothing to curb emotions. Even a soulless vampire can develop fixations, obsessions that mask themselves as something softer, sweeter. Spike is a being of passion, his fascinations consuming. His almost violent preoccupation with Buffy has transmuted, found a new form in you as he reveals himself a man possessed, but it is the way you look back that worries Giles more. Longing, visceral and bursting. You cling to him like a tether, held together by someone just as lost and just as dangerous. He knows that Spike would chomp at the bit to take you in hand, to save you, possess you; though for what purpose, he knows not. It gnaws at him.

Giles lingers late in the shop now, a Watcher in a ghost town, listening to your sessions with Spike. He tells himself it is concern that keeps him still, ears searching for snippets of conversation―but the more he hears, the more he realises with growing dread that there is something more to your connection. Mouths too close. Bodies too familiar. Words too tender, hidden behind closed doors and from averted eyes. Spike is no longer a distraction. He’s become vital, like breath, like blood. A companion, a confidant. The full scope of it hides below the surface and out of Giles’s sight, save for the ripples of recognition that make themselves evident in gradual increments.

The question eats at him: what happens when Spike’s obsession inevitably turns darker, when fleeting touch and veiled intent no longer serve his desires? Will you recognize the danger before it consumes you? Will you even care? Though it keeps him up at night, Giles cannot bring himself to confront you. Not yet. Grief drives people to foolishness, the need for comfort outweighing common sense. He’s considered confronting Spike directly—pulling him aside, demanding he explain himself, threatening consequences if he oversteps again—but what good would it do? Spike would only smirk, lean back with that insufferable slouch, and twist concern into something vulgar. A taunt, a dare. He would make it a game, because that’s what vampires do. They play at humanity. And Giles is so very tired of playing.

The time for subtlety is drawing to a close. He must make you understand the risk, even if it costs your trust. Watching isn’t enough. Not anymore.

Upon an evening after your training comes to a close and you rest, smarting and sore as Spike prowls away to his shift on patrol, Giles corners you.

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” he begins, the edge in his voice betraying his fear.

You look up at him. He sees it in your face when you grasp his meaning, your nostrils flaring just the once, frustration fleeting. “I know what he is,” you say after a pause, quiet and tired. “But that doesn’t mean he can’t choose to be more.”

Giles sighs. “He’s a vampire. Change isn’t in their nature.”

“Isn’t it?” you challenge softly. “He protects Dawn. He fights the good fight. He ca―He’s… trying. That has to mean something. Maybe he just needs a chance. Maybe everyone does.”

“Naive,” Giles mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Evil doesn’t change. It adapts.”

“Maybe I’m wrong,” you admit, gaze unwavering. “But if people never get a chance to be better, what’s the point? Even you gave Angel a chance. Or was that different?”

Giles looks away, ashamed at how small the truth sounds when you say it like that. He absently pats the pocket of his jacket, fingers brushing the edges of a plane ticket he hasn’t yet decided to use. He doesn’t know if it’s cowardice, or mercy, that’s kept him from boarding it. “He had a soul.”

“And Spike has a choice.”

Silence hangs between you. Giles wonders if you’ll ever understand what he’s seen, what he’s lost. But the fire in your eyes is familiar. Unyielding. He thinks of Buffy, of her tenacity and persistence, and then of you: juvenile, grieving, determined to carry burdens too heavy for your shoulders. With her gone, he is supposed to protect you. But how can he protect you from yourself?

There is no future to be found here. Not with Spike. Not like this. And if Giles does not leave while he still can, he will remain stuck, resigned to watching the inevitable fall.

God help you both.

Dawn’s tears feel cold as they slide down her cheeks. She’s not sure if she’s crying because she’s angry or just tired—but either way, she’s so sick of them.

She doesn’t mean it. Deep down, she knows that. They’re trying. They get her up in the mornings, drive her to school. Pick her up, spend afternoons making stilted conversation. They help you with the bills, with dinner, with making sense of all of Buffy’s ID stuff so that Social Services still thinks she’s in the picture. Dawn sees the self-help books they hide whenever she enters the room, the step-by-step how-tos on helping their child cope with loss. There probably isn’t one on ways to fix a ball of mystical energy after her fake mom and fake sister die. She hates how they avoid it, how they won’t say Buffy’s name. The looks, the half-finished sentences, the careful choice of words. It feels like they’re all pretending. Months have passed, and nothing’s better. Mom’s dead. Buffy’s dead, and no one wants to say it out loud.

Tara’s soft voice echoes in her ears, gentle, soothing, so understanding it made Dawn want to scream. Willow’s hovering didn’t help either. It felt like drowning in marshmallow fluff. She had to get out. She needed air, space, somewhere she wasn’t the Key or a broken kid sister. Somewhere no one would baby her, hover, be in her face all the time.

It’s kinda depressing, but the cemetery has always felt peaceful to her. It’s familiar: the dirt beneath her sneakers, the rot of dying grass, the mildew dirtying the headstones that stick up like crooked teeth out of the ground. It’s bleak, but honest. The air feels cleaner here, cool and bite-y, a reminder that she’s still alive.

“The hardest thing in this world is to live. Be brave. Live… for me.”

Buffy’s last words hit her like a hammer, shocking her with a fresh wave of sadness prickling in the corners of her eyes. She looks up. The stars are out, cold and distant, glinting in the sky so far above her. It’s comforting, in a way. They’re all trapped in their own galaxies billions of light years away, never getting to meet each other. Alone in the dark, just like her.

Her vision blurs. She swallows hard, the lump in her throat thick and heavy. Everyone leaves her. Mom and Buffy, bodies in the ground, Dad and Giles an ocean away. She feels small. Insignificant. But at least here, the quiet feels less accusing, less full of expectations. She drags in a breath, shaky but grounding.

Shivering, she looks around as she nears Spike’s crypt. Everyone thinks she’s pretty weird for hanging out with him sometimes, but he’s the only one who doesn’t try to tell her everything’s going to be okay. He doesn’t try to make her talk. Sometimes, he doesn’t even say hello to her. He just nods at her, lets her sit there in silence until the anger and the hurt melts away. Spike is… Spike. He gets it. She remembers what he was like before: obsessed with Buffy, creepy and desperate, kinda vicious in his insistence that her sister felt something for him. The way Buffy looked at him—like he was disgusting, an ant under her shoe, like he was less than a bug to her—comes back to her. That was always painful to watch. But he learned from it, grew, turned his feelings into something else. He got less threatening and aggressive; pulled back, focused less on her and more on what was important to her, on you and Dawn. Showed Buffy that he could be someone to rely on, someone to help with the Slayer’s kid sisters.

Guilt eats at Dawn. She hasn’t come to see him a while. All the Scoobies have taken up so much of her time by dragging her through the motions, convinced that she’ll just move on with her life if they remind her to do her homework and stick a chore chart on the fridge. She’s seen him plenty at home, but it’s always hard to tell how someone’s doing when they’re just visiting.

I guess I’ll find out, she thinks with a slight prickle of nerves.

As she draws closer, she instantly notices something off. She squints, taking in the sight of the stone outside. Is the door… painted? Yup. Still has that slightly funky chemical smell, so it’s gotta be pretty fresh. The stoop is clear for once, none of the crackly dead leaves announcing her presence under her feet, and there’s a broom tucked behind the pot plant. Weird. There’s even a flowerpot sitting just next to the column, a splash of bright. The inside is cleaner than she remembers. Swept floors, no cigarette butts, the beer bottles gone. A faded throw is tossed over the back of the armchair Spike took from their house, and the moldy damp smell seems a little less intense.

Huh. Spike isn’t exactly Mr. Domestic. What gives?

It takes her a moment to realize that the trapdoor is open. He doesn’t usually leave it like that, whether he’s out or staying in. She’s heading for the ladder before she’s fully aware of it, careful not to make a sound as she goes down. Her steps are light, careful, not wanting to disturb Spike, or whoever’s in here.

Edging along the wall—not too close, because erghh and ick with the spiderwebs—she’s just before the bend when her ears pick up voices. More than one. Muffled, but clear enough to hear the difference. One is definitely Spike’s—gruff, low, offensively British—but the other one is… softer. Younger. Familiar. Her heart lurches before she can stop it.

What are you doing here?

Her curiosity outweighs her sense, and she peers just around the corner to see you. And Spike. You and Spike, together.

Her eyes widen. Spike lays in bed—a real one, not a ratty cot or a stone slab—bare-chested and propped up by kitschy pillows that match the new rugs on the floor. You’re spread out atop him, equally free of clothes, your chest pressed to his so that all she can really see is the span of your back and the way Spike’s fingers trace lazy circles across your skin. Your cheek rests in the crook of his neck, your hair messy. The rumpled sheets just barely cover some seriously X-rated stuff, though Dawn can tell that your legs are tangled together, and that his other hand is on your thigh beneath the coverings. It’s obvious what you’ve been doing. The scent of it clings to the air: sweat, skin, warm and strong. Heat climbs her cheeks, but she can’t look away.

She knows this is a scene she was never meant to see. Something private. It makes a strange, painful knot form in her stomach, but at least she’s finally figured out where you’ve been going now that you’re not at home as much. You’re here. With Spike.

Privacy, boundaries, respect, blah blah blah, she thinks, intending to back away until you speak again, finally near enough that she can hear you.

“… and I—I can’t fall apart,” you say, voice thick with sadness. She finally takes in your expression: crumpled, eyes rimmed red. The kind of face you make when you’ve cried too much and can’t anymore. “Buffy’s… she’s gone. Mom’s gone. And I―”

Spike hushes you, gaze locked on you in a way that makes Dawn’s heart skip a beat.

Your breath hitches. “I’m supposed to hold it together. For Dawnie. I’m the oldest now. And everyone expects me to―” You stop, hesitant.

“You can say it, sweetheart. Go on,” Spike encourages softly. “Let it out.”

You choke on a sob. When you begin again, your voice is small. “I… I’m her sister. Buffy’s. Her real one. The one with real memories and real love, and I have to… I have to bury it all. Because if I don’t, who steps up? Buffy’s the Slayer, but I’m the strong one, and I can’t―”

Your words break, face turning into his throat as a noise unlike anything Dawn’s ever heard escapes you. She almost throws up. Wants to storm in, yelling, asking you if that’s what you really think of her, if you see her as just some thing instead of a person. It hurts something fragile and breakable in the very darkest parts of her to hear you say what no one else will: that she’s a fraud, a phony that doesn’t belong. Not real. Alone. If that’s how you feel, then why do you even bother?

But then, Spike’s arms tighten around you, holding you even closer, and she pauses.

“Not wrong for what you feel,” he murmurs. “Bloody awful mess. Not fair. And you’ve been carrying too much of it alone.”

Your fingers curl against his chest. “I hate feeling this way. I hate that I even thought it. Dawnie… I love her.”

Spike presses a kiss to your hair. “You’re allowed. Doesn’t make you a bad sister. Makes you human.”

“I… I miss her,” you say, unsteady and so, so young. “I miss Buffy. I miss… I want my mom. I want them back. How do―how can―how am I supposed to do this?”

“I know, baby.” His hand slides up to cup the back of your head. You grip him like a lifeline. “It’s rotten, the hand you’ve been dealt. But you’ll get along. You’re brave. And you’re not alone. Never alone.”

Dawn presses a hand over her mouth, backing away slowly. The quiet, broken sound of your crying follows her as she slips out, heart pounding. She makes it halfway home before her legs wobble, forcing her to sit on a crumbling stone wall.

The way he held you… Like you were something precious to him. She swallows back the lump in her throat. You and Spike. You and Spike, together. It’s weird, and part of her wants to be grossed out, but the look on his face sticks in her mind. He’s never looked at anyone like that before. Not Drusilla, not Harmony, not Buffy, not Dawn. No one. No one but you.

She gets it now. Why Spike’s around so much. Why she seems to always find him with you at the Magic Box, at the house, in the cemetery, the Bronze. She wonders when it all started. What she’s seen tonight isn’t just random. It didn’t look like two people just trying to cope. It looked like… it reminds her of Buffy, how she was with Angel.

Dawn sighs. Sure, it stings, but she gets it. Her rage has left her, replaced by something stinging and bittersweet. She can’t unhear the pain in your voice, can’t unsee the way Spike held you like you matter, maybe more than anyone else in the world. She knows she should tell someone what she saw—maybe Willow or Tara—but the idea makes her stomach churn. It would hurt you, betray you. And Spike, he would never forgive her.

She rubs the salt from her eyes with the heel of her hand, then grips the edge of the wall like it might steady her. The choice settles into her chest, warm and a little heavy. She’ll keep your secret. For now.

The house feels thinner tonight, hollowed out. Smaller. Quieter than she’s used to.

Buffy’s away, dragged by Willow and Xander to the Bronze in the hopes that bass and bodies might shake loose the shadows she’s been carrying since her resurrection. Dawn’s at Janice’s, sleeping over, probably halfway through a horror movie and a bag of microwave popcorn, equipped with gossip and a parent who can pretend not to notice how late they stay up. And you—you’re usually the one who stays behind, always so gentle with Buffy lately, so patient with Dawn. Steady, in your own quiet, hurting way. Tara assumes you’ve gone to sleep already, or out again, whereabouts unknown.

For once, she can breathe. No awkward silences. No Buffy’s thousand-yard stare across the table. No tiptoeing around the tension that still clings to the walls like smoke. She’s been floating for weeks, a warm presence pressed into the background, not quite seen, not quite necessary. The only time anyone touches her anymore is when she initiates it. She can’t remember the last time someone held her like they needed to.

She moves softly through the hallway now, mug of tea in one hand, the intention simple: grab the spare quilt from the room you share with your little sister and curl up on the couch with a book. But then she hears it. A sound, soft and aching. A moan, breathy and real, the kind of sound that doesn’t come from pain.

Tara pauses outside your bedroom door, which hangs just slightly ajar. She should walk away. She knows she should. But something makes her glance through the gap. She tells herself it’s concern, not curiosity, that the sound you made could’ve been from pain. Just checking. One breath. One heartbeat. Just long enough to see something that will never leave her.

She freezes.

You’re on the bed, bare from the waist down, hips tilted to the edge of the mattress and thighs parted in surrender. Spike is on his knees on the floor, shirtless, pants riding low and sagging, undone, skin pale as milk in the moonlight. His shoulders ripple with restrained tension, arms banded tight around your thighs as he buries his face between them like a man starved. The lamplight from the corner casts long shadows across his back, glinting along the ridges of his spine, the curve of his neck. One of your legs is slung high over his shoulder, trembling. The other braces against the mattress, and you're huffing, squirming.

Your head tosses back on the pillow, lips parting on a soft, drawn-out moan. He’s working you over with slow, luxuriating confidence, worshipping, hungering. His tongue traces slick, purposeful circles, every movement intentional. Tara hears him, hears the filthy little noises he makes when you twitch and jolt beneath him, the wet suck of his lips when he draws your clit between them, savoring you like sin.

“Spike,” you breathe, and he groans like it’s the only word that matters.

Her breath catches.

Spike pulls back only to spear into the furl of your entrance, pressing his nose in hard and inhaling. Your body judders helplessly, your fingers digging into the bedspread, into the air, into nothing at all. The muscles in your stomach flex, then tremble. You whimper, low and wrecked, and he makes a sound in return: something primal, appreciative, entirely unashamed. It’s obscene. And yet, there’s something soft about it.

Tara’s seen Spike grin through blood and violence, heard him mock the pain of others. But this—this isn’t that. She remembers the tower: his hands slick with blood, the way he stood, shaking, hollering your name as a stray hit sent you reeling to the ground, afraid. Broken. She hadn’t known then what it meant. She might now.

His hands aren’t being cruel. His mouth isn’t taking. It’s giving. Something in him is folded open, gentle. Wanting. He moves, draws his tongue over your clit with careful precision, then slips lower again, teasing your opening before easing back in, slow and sure. One hand trails up to splay wide across your belly, grounding you. He growls, eyes half-lidded like it’s better than blood.

“Such a sweet li’l cunt. Heaven,” he murmurs, voice gravel-soft and decadent, velvet dragged over grit. “Could die here, buried in you. Wouldn’t even mind.”

Tara flinches, face flaming. But you—you make a shuddering sound of agreement, helpless and high-pitched. Your hand fists in his hair, pulling without thought, and Spike laughs, low and delighted. Not mocking; giddy, like a man dizzy with luck.

“Greedy thing, aren’t you?” he chuckles, nosing along your thigh before dipping back in, tongue wicked and unrelenting. “Already twitchin’, beggin’ for more. Look at you. Bloody gorgeous when you come undone.”

Your hips cant forward, chasing his mouth.

“C’mon then,” he urges, licking slow and deep, practically cooing. “Lemme feel you break.”

Tara swallows, heart thudding. The room smells like skin and salt and something sweet, air balmy and thick enough to taste. She presses the mug to her mouth like an anchor. Doesn’t drink. Just holds it, fingers damp with warmth. Everything else goes quiet.

She should look away. But the way you move—hips lifting, breath catching—draws her in. You whisper his name like a plea, and he doubles down, suckling hard enough to make you arch off the mattress. Crying out, you twist the sheet in one hand and reach for him with the other. He catches your wrist and kisses your palm, never pausing.

Then—

“Oh god,” you sob. “Please, please, I—”

“Shh,” Spike soothes, voice ragged against you. “Give it to me. Let go, baby, I’ve got you.”

And you do.

You crest with a gasping, hitched cry, back arched and mouth open. Spike moans against you like he’s the one unraveling as you tremble, thighs clamped around his ears. Your chest heaves. Your lips part. For a moment, you look unmade: tears streak your cheeks, sweat glistens on your skin, and your breath comes in gulps, shallow.

He doesn’t pull away, his caresses softening, slow and adoring. It reminds Tara of how Willow once touched her wrist in a crowded room. She envies it, the ache turned to tenderness. To be truly seen, desired. She mourns how rare that feeling has become. There’s awe in it, and something worse. Need, maybe, or love. Ever since Buffy came back, the world’s been tilted slightly sideways—sunlight too yellow, silence too thick. But this? This feels real, loud, alive.

Spike presses his mouth to your thigh as you come down, uttering affection too low to catch. He licks up the mess he’s made of you, gentle now, like you’re sacred.

“Too much,” you whisper, blinking. “Can’t…”

He eases back, wiping his mouth, then nestles into the cradle of your hips. His fingers trace the wet between your legs—not to arouse, but to relish in, the tip of his nose gliding along your belly, devoted. He lingers, lips brushing the slope of your mound like prayer.

Tara starts to move. She should leave. Any longer, and it won’t be an accident. If you see her, it becomes something else. A breeze shivers through the hallway and she stills, heart pounding, suddenly certain that if Spike turns his head, he’ll know; that if you catch her, it will live between you like a ghost. She tells herself it’s only curiosity, that it’ll vanish from her memory come morning. But she knows it won’t.

She stays. Listens.

“I didn’t mean to cry,” you mumble, throwing an arm over your eyes.

“I like it when you do.” He kisses your hip and climbs up over you, licking his lips. It doesn’t sound cruel. “Means you feel me. Means ’m not just makin’ this up in the dark, yeah?” He pulls you into the crook of his arm, palm cradling your cheek, thumb gentle beneath your eye. You sniffle. His mouth skims along your temple. “There she is. My brave girl.”

The way you melt into him, it’s not just comfort. It’s trust. Tara knows love doesn’t always look gentle. He coils around you like you might vanish, nose grazing your temple, hand stroking your back. You toss your leg over his, and he slides his fingers to touch where you’re still slick, to which you wriggle but say nothing.

“Still with me, kitten?” he asks.

You nod. “You didn’t have to be so—”

“Didn’t have to. Wanted to.” He nuzzles your hair. “Wanted to make you feel good. You always make me feel like I’m still… real.”

You bury your face in his chest. He exhales.

Tara never thought vampires spoke in anything but hunger—but Spike does. He calls you gorgeous. Brave. And the way you twine around each other… it’s not lust. It’s sanctuary.

“Love you,” he whispers. It sounds like confession, like surrender. “So much it hurts. So much I’d burn for it.”

Your fingers curl against his skin. “I know. I love you, too.”

That’s when Tara steps back. She closes the door gently, careful not to make a sound, her hand lingering too long on the knob before letting go.

She should feel horrified. She doesn’t. What she saw wasn’t twisted, wasn’t wrong. It was private, fierce, soft in a way Spike isn’t with anyone else. If Buffy knew, it would break something. If Xander knew, he’d burn it down. But Tara understands the truth of it—the strange, aching, imperfect truth. She saw you: the girl clinging to something fragile and fierce, and the monster who looked like he was terrified to let you go.

That truth belongs to you and Spike. Not the rest of the world. She walks away, silent and thoughtful, and decides she didn’t see anything at all.

Buffy will come home tonight with mascara smudged and shoulders slumped. She’ll shuffle through the door like a ghost who got lost on the way back to her grave, and Tara will hand her tea and ask about the music. Neither of them will mention how long it’s been since anyone laughed.

The house still feels hollow, but not lifeless. Something still beats beneath its ribs, reckless and messy and lit with want. Tara doesn’t know if it’s hope, but it’s something. She doesn’t know what it is she envies more: the hunger, or the way it’s fed.

He wants to tear his eyes out, rip his eardrums from his skull and swallow them all. Anything to escape the full-on assault in front of him.

Well. Not an assault. It’s pretty quiet, all things considered. But still. There’s a special kind of hell in watching whatever the crap this is. Your face is pretty much all Xander can really see of what’s going on―brows furrowed, mouth open, eyes hooded―but the uh. Bouncing. Yeah. That’s painting a pretty graphic picture. And the sounds. Wet, gross, thrusting sounds.

Your hands are clasped against the back of Evil Dead’s neck, fingers twisting and twisting away in the ungelled hairs at his nape as you make those haunting little wounded noises with each―oh god, yuck―drive of his hips against you, pushing you further into the wall of the dusty old crypt you’re hoisted up against. Xander’s eyes flicker down before he can stop himself―bare calves jolting with the rhythm, skirt hiked high—and snaps them back up just in time to see Spike’s mouth dragging along your throat. Hands flex on your hips, steering you squirming into each harsh roll of his body. Thank the Powers That Be that he’s still fully clothed.

Well―

Nope. Not thinking about what’s unclothed right now.

"Spike…” you gasp, high and pitchy, but whatever you were going to say is swallowed by a vicious kiss, Spike’s bleach-blond head blocking your face from view as he devours you. The sight jolts Xander’s heart sideways, but he can’t—can’t—look away.

You used to call him Xan the Man. Used to ask for rides home from school and come to him for help with the printer. Now you’re wrapped around a monster like he’s the only thing keeping you upright.

“The thing he’s doing with his tongue,” Anya whispers, wide-eyed. “She’s probably having multiple orga―”

He waves a harried hand at her, the universal motion for shut the hell up, Ahn, partly because he so does not want to hear the end of that line of thought and partly because he doesn’t want Spike to know they’re here. Also, to be honest, because he’s still kinda trying to process what he’s seeing. It’s like watching a train wreck: he can’t look away. Are you under a spell?

“Shh, shh,” he can hear Spike murmur then, voice low and coaxing, his nose dipping to glide along the arch of your throat as he hitches your legs higher. “Gotta stay quiet, yeah? Don’t want any beasties coming ’round.”

You yelp, and Xander flinches. The bleached wonder makes his own series of sounds, then, deep and growly, and his lips curve in a wicked smile against your ear. Fingers curl tighter against your hips in a way that should be making that chip of his fire off, make him scream in agony, stumble off and away. But nope, of course Xander’s not that lucky. You writhe closer, gasping.

His pulse pounds. A hundred bad scenarios run wild through his head—Buffy’s face twisting in rage, Dawn crying, you lying cold and broken after Spike gets bored. He feels sick.

“You want that, then, baby?” Spike croons, lips skimming your jaw, your cheek, the corner of your mouth. “Want ’em to see you hanging off the Big Bad’s cock, slack-jawed ’n titties bouncing? Mm, give ’em the treat of their lives. Show off my girl and her tight li’l quim.”

“Oh my god,” Anya mutters. Her expression is fascinated and maybe a little aroused, but she doesn’t seem surprised, which is one to file away for later.

Xander’s stomach revolts. He’s heard Spike talk like this before—sick, lecherous, all swagger and filth—but hearing it directed at you is… it’s wrong. You’re too young, too trusting, too damn human. You’re Buffy’s sister. Dawn’s sister. Hell, you’re practically his kid sister, still fourteen in his mind, still asking him to reach the cereal from the top shelf. And Spike? He’s leering at you like a prize to ruin. But you don’t look ruined. You look… hungry. Yearning, with the bright flush spreading across your face and your arms winding tighter around his neck, ankles locking round his back like a limpet.

You’re shaking your head, but your lower body is curving off the stone to grind back down on him, keening out, “No, no―”

Spike grins, tongue flicking against your earlobe as his hips roll deeper. Xander wants to snap something—an insult, a threat—but he can’t risk it. “Course not. You’re a good girl, aren’t you? Selfish, I am. Plucked you for my own and I’m keepin’ you, all mine. My good girl.”

‘A good girl.’ The phrase slithers down Xander’s spine like ice water. The edge in Spike’s voice freaks him out. Maybe… maybe we should’ve been more wigged out when he started spending time with her instead of sniffing around Buffy.

His gut clenches hard as you cry out, clearly in pain as the vamp staccatos his thrusts like he’s stabbing you through to your core. The chip still doesn’t go off and you’re writhing closer, not away, completely unbothered by the slamming of the hand by your shoulder and the rock that crumbles under superstrong fingers digging into the wall.

Xander keeps hoping the chip’s gone dead.

Because that’s easier than admitting you’re not fighting back.

God, do you even want Spike to stop?

Xander’s stuck, warring with his desire to burst through the thicket concealing him and Ahn and stake Spike for what he’s doing to you, but he can’t figure out if the chip’s malfunctioning or not.

“You gonna cum, kitten?” Spike’s asking, teeth fixated on the skin where your neck and shoulder meet, nipping and sucking like he’s getting ready for a feast. You’re clinging to his hair, crunching the gel all out of it, knees scrabbling but unable to find purchase against the leather coat until he hooks his arms under them. He folds you near in half so you let out a squeal, feet kicking. “Yeah? Feel you gettin’ hot for it, squeezin’ down all desperate … Come on, gimme it, get me all drippin’ with it, yeah―”

You seize up like you’ve been tazed, electrocuted, a sobbing whimper bursting out as he works you up and through it, pace frantic―

“Yeah, baby,” he’s moaning, “came like a dream―know it’s hurtin’, jus’ gotta let me finish, lemme―”

―and you wilt, limbs loosening to jelly so much so that Spike’s all but shoving you through the crypt wall. Your voice is fervent and cracking as you say, “Please, Spike, please—want it inside, want you in me—please, please—”

You whine high and clear while Spike pounds at you, animalistic, though you clutch yourself to him tight as he grunts and blusters his way to his end. Making little encouraging cries, you arch back obligingly as his chin dips and―hoo boy, that’s definitely more of you than Xander ever planned to see, thanks, never mind the tongue and teeth all over you. The movements slow and slow until there’s nothing more than a lazy shuddering roll of Spike’s lower body against yours. You tilt your head back, eyes closed and sighing.

“Wow,” Anya breathes. Yeah, wow’s right.

Xander feels like he’s been gutted. He’s seen plenty of things on patrol, but this… this is something else. Something private and raw and so, so wrong. No, not just wrong. It’s unwatchable. Buffy’s sister, tangled in Spike’s claws, and he can’t do a damn thing about it. The helplessness burns.

Spike kisses you again, touches you like he’s starved for it, his body cradling yours with sickening tenderness.

“Come back with me, sweetheart?” he asks you softly.

Huh, still with the nickname-y thing. Xander’s mind twists back to Drusilla, how she used to cling, how Spike would all but melt into her, feral and indulgent. The comparison knots something ugly inside him.

“Got you all messy,” Spike’s still saying. One of his hands disappears, and you make a noise Xander can’t really place until he sees the vamp stick his fingers in his mouth, lewdly suck them with a pop. “Can’t go off leakin’ all the way home.”

“If I had my panties back,” you say, laughing, “maybe that wouldn’t be a problem.”

Zipper sounds, and Spike lowers you with more care than Xander’s ever seen him use, fiddling with the skirt of your dress. Your knees are pressed tight together.

“Were you wearin’ any?” he asks with false innocence, tucking strands of hair behind your ear and following the plane of your shoulder, your arm, winding his fingers with yours. “Can’t remember.”

You laugh again. You keep doing that. “Spike.”

He tugs you from the wall, arms holding you like a vice against him. The expression on Spike’s face as he looks at you… Awareness feels like nausea.

This isn’t just screwing around, is it?

Of course. The way Dawn hovers. Tara’s looks. Giles leaving—not after Buffy died, but after something else. They all knew. They just didn’t say it. How long has this been happening while everyone’s looked away?

“Feel better when you’re with me,” he says, voice low. His forehead presses down against yours and you sway together, idle, caught in a spell. “Watchin’ you sleep, heart beatin’… Get to hold you, too. S’nice. How ‘bout it, hm?”

Too soft, too soft.

Your eyes are wide, adoring. “I’ll call home. Tell them I’m out for the night.”

Suddenly, Xander’s thinking back to all those times Buffy or Dawnie or Willow or Tara have mentioned you staying over with a friend, going out late and coming back the next afternoon, or the afternoon after that. How many of those times have you actually just been with Spike?

You shriek, nearly cackling as the vamp hoists you up into a carry, spinning in an arc so your hair flies gleaming behind you. “Oh my god, Spike!”

“Yeah, baby, say my name.” He stalks off into the night with you, no doubt to make good on taking you back to his crypt.

Xander just stands there.

He wishes he never agreed to go patrolling tonight; wishes he decided to turn right instead of left; wishes he didn’t hear those noises and decide to stop, to creep up and scope out the source beyond the cover of bushes. Wishes he didn’t have to know that you and Spike are together, and that―worst of all―this isn’t just some fling. You’re in deep. Maybe he is, too.

He lets out a slow, deep breath, searching for his inner calm. “That was… disturbing as hell.”

“Why?” Anya tilts her head, frowning. “Because they’re in love?”

“Wha―No! No, that’s not the issue!” He rubs his face, trying to ignore the heart palpitations at Ahn’s use of the word love.

Her eyes narrow slightly, brow set in an even deeper furrow. “I don’t know why you’re so upset.”

“I don’t—” He stops. Don’t lash out. Inner calm. He sighs. Starts again. “This is bad. This is very, very bad.”

Anya nods, clearly not understanding. The great thing about her is that she doesn’t push when she doesn’t get it. “Okay. Should we―should we just go home for now? Maybe you’ll feel better about it there.”

If Buffy finds out and doesn’t stop it—if she looks at this and says it’s fine—then maybe the world’s already broken beyond repair.

Xander shakes his head, already pulling out his phone, scrolling to ‘B’. “Not yet. I gotta make a call.”

He doesn’t even know what he’s gonna say. Just that someone has to know. Someone stronger. Someone who can stop it before it’s too late.

Willow steps through the front door like she’s bracing for a spell to blow back in her face.

The house feels wrong the second she enters. Too still, like the quiet after a slammed door. The air’s brittle with tension, the kind of tension that’s made her call in sick to work and grab the first bus back across town. It’s been a while since this atmosphere settled, long enough for her to head back out, get her copy of Witchcraft from where she’d left it behind the counter at the Magic Box. It was Buffy’s request. She thinks Spike’s put some kind of love spell on you. No one has the heart to tell her that you’re not acting like you’ve been under a spell.

Tara’s waiting in the entryway, pale and subdued.

“She knows they know,” she murmurs, voice soft but heavy. “I called her.”

Willow nods, avoiding her gaze. It’s painful, seeing her so soon after she moved out. “Thanks.”

Dawn’s been sent up to her room. The conversation that’s coming isn’t one for her ears, though Willow assumes she’ll probably just hide herself in the hall upstairs so she can listen in. For once, though, she didn’t put up a fight against her oldest sister’s demand. There was something sad in the set of her mouth, like she knew what was about to happen.

In the living room, it’s a standoff. Buffy’s pacing like a caged animal, arms crossed so tightly they could splinter bone. Xander’s by the fireplace, jaw set and eyes sharp, practically vibrating with righteous fury, while Anya is perched on the arm of the couch, watching everything like she’s about to start taking bets. That leaves her and Tara, awkwardly dancing around each other. Willow doesn’t know what to think. She doesn’t have long to figure it out.

The front door opens again. You come in first, proud and tense, daring anyone to speak. You’re holding Spike’s hand, clutching it with knuckles white. He remains a half-step behind you, his usual leather and arrogance somewhat marred by the tired, guarded expression on his face, like he’s expecting a stake through the ribs at any second but will gladly take it if it means standing with you. You pause in the entry to the living room, hovering, indecisive.

Willow’s stomach flips. She doesn’t mean to stare, but she can’t help it. The way your fingers are laced with his, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world—as though you’re not standing in a room full of people who once would’ve bled to keep you safe from evil like him. It’s shocking.

Buffy’s the first to speak. Of course she is.

“Really?” she spits, voice like a lash. “You thought this was a good idea? Bringing him he―”

“We didn’t come for your permission, or your blessing,” you say flatly, raising your chin. A blaze burns in your eyes, threatening. “We came because I’m tired of hiding.”

Spike raises his eyebrows slightly, clearly amused despite everything. Willow wants to scream.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Xander cuts in, face red. “No one thought you did. But maybe you should have. Or, I don’t know, used the part of your brain that goes ‘hey, maybe I shouldn’t be having freaky sex with the guy who’s tried to kill everyone in this room?’”

Buffy whirls around to glare at him, but you beat her to it.

“Shut up, Xander,” you snap, the hostility so unlike you. Perhaps you’ve finally been pushed to the edge. Or maybe―just maybe―you’ve found something, someone worth the fight. “You don’t know a damn thing about us.”

“Please,” Xander scoffs. “What, you think that because he’s not killing people anymore, it makes this okay? He’s a monster! He’s—”

“He’s not!” you snap, stepping forward unconsciously. “He’s more human than half the people in this room.”

Willow finally speaks. “He’s a vampire with no soul. Do you even hear yourself?”

You look at her like she’s failed a test you thought she’d pass. “Yeah. I do. Better than you do, apparently.”

She flinches. That stings.

“You think this is some epic romance?” Xander scoffs. “This is Spike. He doesn’t love; he obsesses. You’re just the next thing he’s latched onto.”

Shaking your head, you say, “You’re wrong. He cares about me.”

Buffy’s in Spike’s face before Willow can blink. “Stay away from her. Stay away from my family. You touch her again and I swear to god—”

“Buffy.” Willow tries, she really does. But her voice is small, hesitant. She doesn’t know how to fix this. She doesn’t even know what this is.

Anya chimes in, voice low but unflinching. “This isn’t helping. Yelling at her like this. It’s not going to make her stop loving him.”

Everyone freezes for a moment, surprised. Anya shrugs, then folds her hands primly in her lap. “If yelling could fix love, none of us would’ve ever made a single relationship mistake. But here we are.”

The bite in the room is momentarily thrown off.

You’re shaking now, but not from fear. “I’m not some toy you can shove in a box when it makes you uncomfortable! I’m not yours to protect, or judge, or decide for. I’m the only one who gets to decide who I love.”

“Oh, god,” Buffy mutters, eyes wide with something between horror and heartbreak. “You really think this is love?”

“I know it is.”

Buffy’s breathing is sharp now, unsteady. She’s staring at you like she’s seeing someone else, someone she can’t recognize. Her voice, when it comes, is cracked at the edges. “Giles knew, didn’t he?”

The words land with more weight than Willow expects. There’s no venom in them, only something raw and wounded, almost betrayed.

You flinch, just barely. “What?”

“That’s why he left,” Buffy says, eyes narrowing. “He couldn’t watch it. Couldn’t watch you… this.” She gestures to you and Spike like the very sight of you burns.

Willow stiffens, heart sinking. She knows Giles’s departure had nothing to do with you—at least, not directly. But Buffy’s not really asking for answers. She’s lashing out because it’s easier than facing the loneliness that’s been creeping closer every day since he left. Willow can see it in the clench of her jaw, in the brittle shine of her eyes. Buffy’s not stupid. Deep down, she knows the distance between her and Giles is her own doing. But tonight, she needs someone to blame, and it’s fallen on you.

“Don’t put that on her,” Spike says, low and warning.

“Don’t speak,” Buffy snaps, flicking her gaze to him. “You don’t get to talk. You’re the reason she’s like this.”

“I’m not some project he corrupted,” you fire back, shaking now. “I chose him. I wanted him. And he—”

“Stop,” Buffy barks, stepping forward. “Stop talking like… like it means something! Like this is anything but sick.”

The heat radiating off you is palpable. “You don’t get to judge me just because I love someone you couldn’t handle! You want someone to hate? Fine. Hate me. But don’t pretend this is about Spike!”

“Like hell it’s not,” Buffy growls. “You’re dragging him into this house again like he belongs here. Like you do, while you’re—you’re letting him crawl inside you like some… some thing.”

Willow doesn’t even have time to intervene before you go cold, your voice like ice. “Don’t you dare.”

“Oh, I dare,” Buffy spits. “Because someone has to! Someone has to tell you how disgusting this is—”

“No,” you snap, sharp and clear. “You don’t care about what’s right. You want someone to blame. Someone to scream at, to shove out, so you don’t have to feel the way you feel. Because you’re still mad the world kept turning without you in it.” You gulp, unsteady, readying for the killing blow. “Because my vampire gives me what yours never could. Guess a soul doesn’t count for much after all, does it?”

Buffy raises her hand. Time slows.

The slap cracks across your cheek, the sound sharp and awful. For half a second, everything stills—and then Spike moves, shoving past Willow, fist meeting Buffy’s jaw with a brutal crunch. It sends her stumbling back against the wall.

“Don’t you touch her!” he growls, yellow eyes scorching as his human mask slips, revealing the demon below.

She’s already pulling a stake from her waistband. Tara moves at last.

“Buffy, no!” she gasps, her voice trembling as she reaches out instinctively, but she doesn’t make it far. She halts behind Willow, one hand outstretched like she’s forgotten what she meant to do with it. Her voice cracks. “Don’t do this. This won’t help. None of this will.”

It’s not loud. It’s not enough. But Willow hears it like a bell: clear, desperate, and already too late.

“Buffy, stop—” Willow adds, stepping forward, but you’re already in between them.

“If you kill him,” you warn, “you lose me too.”

Buffy’s hand is frozen mid-air, stake shaking. Like a puppet with its strings cut, her arm falls, stake clattering to the ground. “I can’t even look at you.”

“Then don’t.” You inhale, but it doesn’t steady anything. A strange look passes over your face, your shoulders squaring in some unknown resolution. “Isn’t that what Mom said to you? When you wouldn’t stop being the Slayer long enough to be her daughter?”

Buffy’s face crumples, just for a second. A tear falls. Then she whispers, devastating in its quiet: “Get out.”

No one breathes.

She walks away, slips through the back to the kitchen, and Willow hears the kitchen door slamming shut, the silence that follows unnatural.

You turn to the door.

“Come on,” Xander says, stepping a foot toward you. His hands are raised, his voice placating, like he’s speaking to a little kid. “Don’t… she didn’t mean it. She’s just angry. It doesn’t have to be a―a thing. Cut him loose. That’s all it takes. Let him go, and things can go back to the way they were.”

“That’s all it takes?” you repeat, quiet but deadly. “Toss him aside so Buffy feels better? Like he’s garbage I dragged in and forgot to take out?”

Xander shrugs, defensive. “I’m saying it’ll fix things. Make it right again. So we can… we can all move past this.”

Your eyes lock on him. “So you can all breathe easier. Buffy stops feeling grossed out, you stop feeling threatened. As long as I pay for it—right?”

Willow tries to interject, voice uncertain. “That’s not what he meant—”

You cut her off, sharp.

“It’s exactly what he meant.” You look back to Xander. “You, of all people, Xander. You’ve loved people you weren’t supposed to. What makes me different?”

Xander’s face tightens. Willow has no words.

“I love him,” you say. “He loves me. And there’s nothing any of you can say or do to make me give him up.” It rings with finality, lines drawn once and for all.

A hush descends for a beat. Spike’s voice sounds out, hesitant, uttering your name.

“No,” you tell him firmly, shaking your head. “Don’t even think it.” Your tone gentles, wavers, lower lip trembling. “Let’s… let’s just go, okay? Please?”

He wavers for a moment, searching for something in your expression. Willow sees the subtle slackening of his rigid frame, certainty propelling the nod he directs at you. “Yeah, kitten.”

A wan smile crosses your face. Without so much as glancing back, you let him open the door, hand on the small of your back as you both leave.

Willow casts around the room beseechingly. Xander’s all but shut down, staring at the space you just occupied with an inscrutable look. Anya’s folded in on herself, chin pressed to bent knees and avoiding meeting anyone else’s gaze. Tara clutches the banister, face deathly pale and eyes bright, distraught. A sliver of brown hair at the top of the stairs. Dawn. No one’s moving.

It’s up to her, then.

“Spike,” she calls out, rushing out onto the porch. One final attempt at ending this insanity. “Don’t―don’t let this happen. Don’t… there’s no going back. From this. If she goes now…”

You won’t even look at her. It’s like she’s ceased to exist. Staring up at Spike, you let him lay a hand on your cheek, let him nudge at your temple with the jut of his nose. Your arm’s tucked under his duster, held fast to his waist.

“Wait for me, sweetheart,” he says to you. “I’ll deal with Red for a mo’.”

He pushes you gently in the direction of the tree and you go, sinking to the ground with your back against the trunk. You stare out at the street, something horribly lost and afraid in the shape of your body curled up in a ball. Spike makes his way back up the steps, murder in his eyes. He does nothing―just halts. Stares expectantly.

Willow wavers. “Why are you doing this? Haven’t you hurt us enough?”

Spike barks out a sharp, disbelieving laugh.

“You know, I held back in there. Let my girl handle it.” He snorts, though there’s nothing funny about this. “Bunch of self-absorbed wankers, you are. S’not about you lot.”

“Then what?” She frowns. She wants to understand. “What is it about? Why?”

Just like that, the fight goes out of him. He sighs, sounding every inch a creature that’s spent the last hundred years scrapping for everything he had, everything he needed. It’s strange, coming from him. Resigned. Weary. Sad.

“Got used to takers, didn’t I?” he says at long last, soft and reminiscent. He’s gazing at you. “Dru. Buffy. Needed me, never wanted me. Never saw me.” His voice is low, guttural. “She… she sees me. She gives. It’s simple, with her. No proving myself. No trying to be something I’m not.”

His eyes flicker to Willow, not accusing—just honest.

“Thought I knew love, before her. I didn’t. Not really.” He taps his chest, softly. “She’s in here. Part of me. I’m not giving her up. Can’t.”

She’s speechless. Her throat is tight, her pulse thrumming with guilt and something else she can’t name. She’s seen people walk away before. But this feels different. Final.

He doesn’t add anything else. Just sighs again, presses his lips together like he’s steeling himself, and slinks back down the walkway that leads away from the house. You reach up to him, childlike, his grasp solid and gentle as he helps you up from where you’re sat. Together, your head against his arm, you leave.

This time, she doesn’t stop you.

Willow stands alone on the porch, heart hammering like she’s finally feeling the spell’s backlash, too late to undo and too late to stop. Her hands tremble at her sides. Some part of her, deep and insistent, whispers that there’s a way to fix this. A ritual, or incantation. A simple one: memory, clarity, obedience. Just a few words, and she could make this right again. She could make you see sense. Make Spike let go, make Buffy forgive. Make Tara come back.

Just a few words, the magicks whisper. So simple. So clean.

But she doesn’t move. She just watches you disappear into the night and tells herself it’s not the magicks calling her. It’s grief. It’s fear.

She doesn’t believe it.

You didn’t mean to cry.

You wanted to keep your head held high, secure in the knowledge that it wasn’t you who broke in that messy, vicious confrontation that you’d known for a while was coming. But the second the crypt door shut behind you, Spike looked at you. Just a look: expectant, forlorn, waiting. You didn’t mean to, but one glimpse of that expression and you crumbled—violent, choking sobs, wilting like a flower left too long without water. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. He just gathered you into his arms and let you bury your face in the curve of his neck, let you shake apart against him as you mourned for what could no longer be. And, afterward, when you’d turned into yourself, hollow and spent, he carried you like a baby to bed, nestled you up tight and wound around you like you’d float away if he didn’t.

Days later, he still treats you like glass.

The Spike who once barked sarcasm and wore his smirks like armor has been replaced by someone quieter, gentler, his fingers featherlight and his gaze fixed on you like he’s afraid you’ll disappear. When he kisses you, it’s a confessional. He pours out all his sins into the open maw of your mouth like your touch can absolve him of everything he is. When he’s inside you, he moves slow and aching and careful, his words sweet and gasping.

“You’re the most incredible thing I’ve ever had," he murmurs on one occasion, voice thick with awe as he stirs against you, body covering yours. He feels hard and real in you, deep, grounding. His thumb strokes your cheek. "Dunno what I did to deserve this. To deserve you.”

Each thrust is a question, each brush of his lips a promise, his hands holding you like you’re made of silk, like he’s never been capable of destruction. When you call his name, he exhales like it’s a prayer. You both shake by the end, your fingers curled against his spine, his mouth against your temple crooning things neither of you will remember clearly later on.

It’s like he thinks one wrong move will make you bolt. You wish you had the words to convince him of your certainty, but he’s the poet. Words can be manipulated, used to lie and misdirect. He doesn’t believe you when you tell him that you’re staying, that this is for good—but you know he wants to. You know it has less to do with you and more to do with his past, with all the many people who’ve screwed him over and hurt him so badly, so you try not to take it to heart. You let him hover, let him treat you as though you’re a porcelain doll, easily breakable. You should resent it, probably, and part of you does. But mostly, you’re just grateful. He doesn’t push. Doesn’t ask you to prove anything. He just stays.

That morning, he’s pressed against your side, bare skin against bare skin, fingers lazily tracing patterns over your lower back. Save for school, you haven’t left the crypt in days. The bed below ground is new—plush blankets piled over a surprisingly good-quality mattress that he’s dragged in from who-knows-where. He probably stole it, but that habit of his has never bothered you. Besides, you sleep better here than you ever did at home.

“You gonna go back today?” Spike asks. It’s spoken softly, vibrating low against your shoulder. “Get your stuff?”

“Nah.” You shake your head against the pillow, mussing your hair even further. “Last night, while Willow and—while the others were busy, Tara brought Dawn over. She packed my suitcase. Couple important things. Birth certificate, stuff like that. The rest… some other time, maybe.”

Spike was patrolling then, safe in the assumption that you were asleep. It’s not really that surprising that he hasn’t noticed the bags over in the corner.

Now, he hums, lips trailing across your neck. It’s aimless, casual in its intimacy. So like him, like all the love he has to give. Effortless.

“Dawn hugged me,” you add quietly, trying hard to hold back the tears. “Said she saw us. Before. Said Tara and Anya knew, too. That they’re on our side.”

Spike doesn’t reply—just tightens his hold a little. You don’t have to say what you’re both thinking: that support from a few doesn’t make the silence from the rest hurt any less.

You sit up eventually. The crypt can be cold and damp at times, but Spike’s done a pretty great job at softening it up, making it almost livable. There are little touches of normality now: rugs plastering the dirt floor, a mismatched set of mugs, a bookshelf that wobbles only slightly whenever you walk by.

“Come on,” he says, slipping out of the bed like a panther, naked as the day he was born so long ago. It’s a fantastic sight, one that not even low spirits can stop you from admiring: cut muscles, lean form, perfectly proportionate everywhere. He’s a god among men. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

You grin. The makeshift shower he’s rigged up is more affection than function. A pilfered showerhead duct-taped to the end of the pipe, a clunky water heater that hums loudly and makes the whole wall clank. It’s not pretty and it doesn’t hide the fact that this really isn’t a place to be living in, but the water is warm. Mostly. He helps you wash your hair, fingers gentle, nails never scratching. You can tell he’s muttering his usual sweet nothings against your skin—jokes, compliments, promises—but as always, it’s impossible to hear over the heater’s groaning.

When the machine abruptly turns off—another short, probably—you can actually hear him curse under his breath.

“Time’s up, baby,” he says, quickly rinsing the last of the conditioner from his bleached hair. You’d helped him touch up the roots yesterday. “Gotta get dry before the pipes go cold again.”

He wraps you in a towel, glaring at the run-down thing like he can make it work through sheer will alone. If anyone could, it would be him, and the sight makes you laugh. It’s the first real one in a while.

Later on, you’re perched on the bed, your homework splayed around you. Spike’s horribly insistent on you getting a good hour a day on it, at least. It reminds you of how Hank should’ve been: razor-focused on your success. Unbearably proud. Insistent that you’re “gonna go places, just you wait.” Instead, all he did was ship you off to boarding school at the first opportunity. Even though you’re probably going to get valedictorian, that reminder always hurts. Like in all things, Spike eases the pain.

You’re just about to double-check your references when your phone buzzes. Unknown number. Huh.

You answer. “Hello?”

“You’re living with him?” Angel’s voice is unmistakable, if crackly. The reception’s not so great down here. “Buffy told me.”

Hearing her name pinches something in your chest. You ignore it, rolling your eyes. “Hello to you too, Angel. Sorry, but I’m not interested in hearing your self-righteous opinion today, thanks.”

“You don’t know what he’s like—”

“Don’t care.”

Spike appears in the doorway. He takes the phone gently from your hand.

“Go on, kitten,” he coaxes. You catch the flicker of anger in his eyes, but his voice stays calm. “Finish your essay. I’ll deal with the poof.”

You watch him go, surprised by how civil his tone is as he says, “Oi, Peaches. Got nothin’ better to do with your time than bother my lady?”

When you stick your head upstairs after wrapping everything up, he’s still on the phone. Pacing back and forward, his words are too hushed to pick up. Damn vampire senses. It’s weirdly civil for an exchange with his so-called undead enemy, though you wouldn’t call it friendly—he looks as though he’s about ten seconds away from beating the wall in. Still. You wonder what’s making him so… controlled.

Days bleed together. School, home, school, home, the occasional patrol in places you know Buffy isn’t. You see Dawn in the halls at Sunnydale High, or sometimes when she stops by in the late afternoon with Tara or Anya. You watch Passions with Spike, though most of your focus is occupied by his reactions to whatever mess is going on on-screen. You get your schoolwork done, and you try to get used to this new normal, patching up the giant hole in your heart with these small little glimpses into your old life.

Spike keeps bringing things home like a magpie nesting: a tiny gas stove that sputters and clicks but usually works well enough to make dinner. A battered washing machine that walks a few inches every time it’s used. A foldable hanging line with half its wires snapped. He insists they’re all only temporary, but he never says what he’s waiting for. Neither do you.

Graduation looms nearer. Your final scores are out, though the victory is hollow. No one will be there to celebrate, will they? Or only some will. You wonder which option is worse. When school gets out, you begin the trek home in despondent silence. Usually, you’d hum a tune to yourself or maybe even read as you walk, but you just feel drained. Going through the motions, you stop by the bathroom next to the cemetery’s reception building. After, you meander through the grass, letting your feet take you along your customary route while your mind spins in circles, lethargic.

That’s when you see her.

Buffy.

She’s waiting just outside the crypt, sitting on the stoop. Smaller than you remember. Her expression is weary, aged. She looks how you feel. When your feet crunch on dead leaves, her head snaps up and she makes eye contact with you. The corner of her mouth twitches in an almost-smile. That’s how you know she’s not here to duke it out again. Not intentionally.

Steeling yourself, you move toward her, step around her form as you dig through your pocket for the key to the lock Spike’s jerry-rigged to make things safer. The door swings open, too loud in the stillness of this moment. You enter, but don’t shut the door behind you—an unspoken invitation. She takes it.

You turn and watch Buffy look around with something like disbelief. She takes in the kettle, the electronics, the random décor. The laundry line, full as it can be with yours and his clothing. The half-dead pot plant Spike brought home because you mentioned you liked sunflowers. The photographs you’ve tacked to the musty walls of friends, family, of you and him.

“I thought… I thought this was just a phase,” she says finally. No hello, then. Her gaze travels back to you, wide and vulnerable. “I thought you’d leave him.”

You fold your arms, chin high—not combative, just done entertaining this. “I’m not stupid, and I don’t do things for the hell of it. You should know that.”

Something unreadable flickers in her face. A fight, maybe. But no—she sighs, a sound of complete and utter defeat. “I do now.”

Neither of you talk for a moment. Spike chooses this time to appear from the trapdoor, deliberately slow, telegraphing his movements like your sister’s a wounded animal backed into a corner. She just stares at him as he approaches. He lowers himself carefully into the beaten-up armchair. You settle on his knee, in part to shield him from any attempt by her to follow through on her actions from the other week, but mostly because you can. You want to. Her eyes narrow, but she doesn’t comment on it. It’s awkward. Painful.

Finally, Buffy clears her throat.

“Come home,” she urges you. You blink. You weren’t expecting that. She pushes on, ignoring the snort from Spike beneath you. “I’m not saying I’m okay with—with this. I’m not. But I’ll… I’ll deal. Maybe he’ll grow on me.”

“Thanks ever so,” he mutters. His hand tenses on your thigh when she levels him with a withering sneer.

“No,” you tell her. “I’m not going to let you or anyone else try to trick me into giving him up. We’re a package deal. Where he goes, so do I.”

She frowns. “That’s—I’m not gonna try and break you up. I’m not that petty.”

“Well, then,” you say, “I guess I just don’t trust you anymore. How am I supposed to believe you?”

Buffy flinches, looking away. Her arms fold on themselves as her eyes begin to glisten.

“Ouch.” She takes a breath. “But… I deserve that.”

A pause.

“I meant it, Buff.” The words come out quiet, but firm. “When I said I love him. I know that it—I know you’re upset, but I’m not sorry for what I feel. And I won’t be made to believe it’s wrong. It isn’t.”

She raises her hands, a white flag. “Okay, okay. It’s just…”

Again, she glances around, but this time it’s like she’s looking at something particularly disgusting. You bristle despite yourself.

“What—what kind of life can he give you?” she asks, pleading as she turns once more to you. You notice that she’s not once stepped foot down the steps into the main area. “I mean… are you really going to stay here? What about a future—marriage, kids? How are you gonna support yourself?” At your scoff, she adds, “I’m just being realistic here. Somebody’s gotta be.”

“God, Buffy,” you snap, standing up. “Not everyone wants the same things you do. And who’s to say I’ll even live long enough to seriously consider stuff like that? It’s the Hellmouth.”

“Oi.” Spike taps the outside of your knee—the nearest part of you in reach—in reprimand. “Don’t say things like that. S’not good for my constitution.”

Buffy huffs. “You don’t have a constitution, Spike. You’re a vampire.”

“Do too,” he retorts immaturely. Then, all of a sudden, he coughs awkwardly, scratching his neck. “Dunno about the rest of it. But I—uh—I got a place. Decent, but not much. Has a proper bathroom, bedroom. All the fixings. Near the cemetery, so I can still keep my hunt. Near your bus stop, too, baby.”

This is news to you. “Huh?”

Spike raises an eyebrow at you, gesturing around. “What—think this here was my choice? Dru took all me cards ’n stuff when she ran off with that chaos demon. Order of Aurelius’s got a fair bit of dosh squirrelled away.”

Here, his chin tips up arrogantly, smug as any vampire with a lineage like his would get. Your nostrils flare, a smile tugging at your lips even in the tense atmosphere. Buffy’s not interested in discussing pedigree, though.

“Then why didn’t you just get it back?” she asks skeptically. “Not hard to call a bank.”

“Is when it’s a demon bank, Slayer.” He rolls his eyes, shifting uncomfortably. “‘Sides, gotta get permission for that. Most senior member, all that rot.” He looks down. “Didn’t want to give Peaches the satisfaction. Y’know, of asking for help,” he mutters. “Sodding wanker.”

Oh. Oh. That’s what he was talking about on the phone with Angel. Something warm and impossibly affectionate wells in your chest.

Buffy studies him. “What changed?”

The weight of his stare falls on you, full of significance. It’s an answer all in itself.

I love him, I love him, I love him, you think, heart full to bursting. You’re overcome with the urge to reach down, kiss him, thank him with everything you have for tearing up his pride and throwing it away just to give you a home. A real one—with him.

You see Buffy’s face change as she begins to understand. To see what you see. It’s dawning on her, that maybe she’s got the wrong idea about him. You’re sure the shattering of her worldview is as painful to her as her slap was to you. A strange sort of peace follows this realization.

No one says anything for a while. It’s strained, but not hostile. Not anymore.

“I’m—I’m gonna go now,” she says at long last. There’s no dejection in her voice now. Just a quiet sort of acceptance. To Spike, she adds, “Take care of her. I’m… I’m trusting you.”

You know what it means to him to hear that—not just for your sake, but for everything he once felt for her. When he nods, it’s full of unspoken confidence. “Of course.”

She turns to you, and you’re heading toward her before you even realize it. Coming face-to-face, eye-to-eye—for the first time in a long time, it feels—a stone in the pit of your stomach starts to finally work its way free.

“I’m sorry,” she says, voice breaking.

You step into her arms, hug her, feel the iron band of her arms squeezing you too tight, too much for your bird-bones. You feel them grind below your skin. It hurts, not only physically, but you do it anyway. You breathe her in—shampoo, sweat, and that familiar weight of the world she always seems to carry. She’s trying. You can feel it, the way you’re trying too. When she pulls away, there are tears in her eyes. You don’t wipe them away.

What’s broken isn’t fixed. Not nearly. But maybe, one day, it could be.

Spike waits until she’s gone to speak. “You alright?”

You glance toward the door, then back at him—this strange, stubborn vampire who’s built you a home out of scraps and love.

“Yeah,” you say, reaching for his hand. And this time, you mean it.

Spike loves his unlife.

He hasn’t always. There’d been a decade or two of repletion—rage and rot and revelry, blood from the veins of whores in Paris and cowards in Prague, nothing lasting, nothing real. The rest? Just endless nights and meaningless hunger, and the thrill of fear cracking open in a scream. Thought he had something, with Dru, ’til she pissed off and left him. Then Buffy came along, all fire and fury, and he thought, Yes. This. This is meaning. Purpose.

He doesn’t know. Not until you. Not until now.

Not until this: you on your knees, bent forward across the mattress, spine a taut bow beneath his palms, back arched as he thrusts into you with filthy, measured force. You’re folded down over the bed, your cheek pressed to the pillow and drooling, hands fisted in the sheets, body trembling beneath the relentless pace he sets. Your thighs are already drenched with both of you, his cock disappearing into your perfect, aching cunt over and over, the sound of it obscene, wet and sharp and constant.

The room is dim and hot, the air choked with sex and the smell of skin and sweat. Tangy, piquant. Gorgeous. The sheets are kicked down to your calves, twisted up under your knees. Your moans are high and bitten off, teeth buried in the pillow as you try to quiet yourself. Habit, that—leftover fear. For so long, you’ve both lived in the silence, in the shadows, sneaking and muffling and hushing every cry.

But not anymore.

“Go on, baby,” he rasps, bent over your back, his mouth dragging slow kisses over your spine. “Let ’em hear you. Nobody left to catch us now.”

You whimper, hips pushing back instinctively, greedy for more. He grins, sharp and delighted, bringing his palm down on your arse in a light slap, the sound echoing. Your whole body jolts. You keen around the pillow, voice breaking into something raw and helpless.

“Uh—Spike!”

“That’s it,” he says, all gritting teeth as you squeeze down hard, dizzying enough to choke the veins in his prick. The demon peeks out for a moment, control slipping. “That’s my girl.”

It still astonishes him sometimes—how much you like this. How much you crave being split open, filled full, stretched past your limit until you’re crying and shaking and still begging for more. Turns out the chip doesn’t fire when the victim likes the pain, and bloody hell, do you ever. You like it when he’s reverent, whispering soft, desperate poetry into your cunt, but you love it when he’s like this: filthy, possessive, shagging you like he owns every inch of your body.

And he does.

He watches the way your shoulders shake, the flushed skin of your back shivering each time he slams into you. Watches your fingers clutch the pillow like a lifeline. Watches your body bloom under him, red and marked, so alive.

“Bloody goddess, you are,” he growls into the crook of your neck, panting against the salt of your sweat. “Tightest little snatch I’ve ever had. Made for me, weren’t you?”

You nod frantically, breath catching on a sob as you try to speak. Can’t. The words never make it past the pillow, and you give up trying. Instead, you just feel, bucking back against him, desperate and loud now, your cries slipping free without shame.

“Say it,” he hisses, slamming into you harder, deeper. He feels the twinge of your answering wail in the back of his head, threatening, splitting his lips apart in a vicious smile. “Tell me you’re mine.”

“Yours,” you gasp, nearly sobbing. “Yours, Spike, ’m yours—”

Your orgasm crashes into you like a tidal wave. You yowl into the pillow, cunt knotting around him so fiercely it makes him snarl, hips stuttering for only a moment before he keeps going. You’re whimpering now, all breathy and high and wrecked from the overstimulation, your voice cracking every time his cock punches deep into your oversensitive walls.

“S’too much,” you whine, but your body never stops moving, still pressing back against him, still so greedy for it.

“Oh, you can take it,” he pants, mouth at your ear, voice low and hungry. “You’re so good like this—fallin’ apart for me, still lettin’ me fuck you through it.”

He’s obsessed. Obsessed with how you quake under him, how your cunt keeps fluttering and squeezing like it doesn’t want to let him go. He groans, driving into you harder, chasing his release with a fervour that borders on worship. You sob again, and he can’t stop himself. He wraps an arm around your waist and hauls you back, chest flush to your spine, shoving up into you at a brutal, punishing pace.

When he comes, it’s with a guttural shout, hips grinding deep, prick pulsing as he fills you. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even try to pull out. Knows you like it messy and trickling afterward, how it makes him mad with wanting.

You collapse to the mattress, winded and utterly stunning. He stays braced over you, breathing hard even though he doesn’t need to, pressing kisses to your spine and shoulder and hair. You’re trembling, still twitching beneath him. You don’t let him go. Instead, you reach back, grab his hand, pull him down to lie with you, still buried deep in the slick patch you’ve both made.

He rolls the both of you onto your sides, panting, trembling, your sweet little quim keeping him locked inside like it means something. Like it always has.

“Don’t go,” you murmur, voice hoarse and wrecked, fingers clutching his arm like a tether. Your face is rosy, flushed with exertion, and so bloody beautiful it twists something violent inside him.

“Not planning on it,” he says, kissing the top of your head.

The bed is new. Big. Expensive. Mattress so plush it makes him want to roll around like a pampered tabby. The apartment is still shite in a lot of ways—rickety fridge, a coffee table with one short leg—but it’s his. Yours. And Glinda’s out for the night, enjoying her life instead of staying on the pull-out sofa in the living room as she has since realisin’ she’d got too used to the peace of rooming off-campus. There’s all the time in the world to lay here, linger, or at least it feels that way.

You’re still wet around him. Still clenching, pulsing every few minutes with aftershocks, like your body hasn’t quite gotten the message that he’s finished. Greedy. Filthy, greedy girl. His baby. His sunshine princess, all aglow with love and lust.

Spike’s cock twitches in response, and you both feel it. You tilt your head, meet his eyes. He kisses your collarbone before raising a brow, smirking.

“Fancy round two?” he asks, sick with the feeling racing in his veins. The need. A constant, thrumming thing, near breaking him into pieces.

You laugh, breathless and delighted and gorgeous.

Things have settled into something approaching normal; or, well, a new normal. Spike’s never had a normal quite like this before. Little Bit’s over all the buggering time, mostly to steal your clothes and pilfer through his things and fill the place with her junk food and loud music, but she likes the apartment. Likes the big window in the living room when the blackout curtain’s pushed to the side. Likes the sitting area, big telly showing MTV in crystal clear graphics, and the way his stuff looks less ramshackle and stolen and more deliberately incongruous. She really likes the bathroom, with its big tub and generous vanity. It’s why he got the place, to be fair: something nice for his girl, forced to walk into the chill of night just to use the loo for all those months. None of that here.

The rest of the lot trickle in too, one by one. Always awkward, always uncertain. Like they’re not sure if this is a visit or reconnaissance. Red’s come by twice, once with baked goods she barely managed to make eye contact while offering. No one else wants to put up with her right now, so he entertains it best he can. Demon girl stops in randomly with opinions about the wallpaper and detailed suggestions about spicing up your sex life. You laugh, Spike doesn’t. Bint’s awful presumptuous, thinking he needs help getting you off. The Slayer shows up, digging into every nook and cranny like she’s trying to find a reason this won’t work. She offers a strained smile at the end of her visit, unsatisfied. Bitch. Even the boy shows up once, a six-pack in hand and his mouth pressed in a tight line, nearly disappearing off his ugly mug. He doesn’t say much. Doesn’t have to. He looks at you—glowing, happy, curled up against Spike’s side in that ratty old blanket—and just nods. Doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t start fights. For now, that’s enough.

And then there’s Peaches.

He arrives like a thundercloud, tall and grim, taking up too much space and too much air. He walks the apartment like he’s cataloguing faults, eyes landing on the ghosts of water rings on the coffee table, the mismatched pillows, the scuff on the wall from when you’d tripped and knocked over the lamp. He doesn’t say anything outright, but the judgment radiates off him like heat.

Spike doesn’t bother pretending. Your legs are slung over his lap, and he strokes lazy circles into your calf with his thumb, teases his fingers under the hem of your skirt. Loves your dresses. How wicked it makes him, copping a feel of all that innocence. You shift closer to him, head resting against his shoulder, fingers tracing patterns over his collarbone, casual and affectionate and utterly his. Spike feels like a king. Tall, dark and forehead scowls the entire time you make harmless small talk. It’s glorious.

Later, after you disappear down the hall to dig through the pantry or put away some other sundry item—Spike’s not even sure—Angel finally makes his move. He waits until your footsteps fade, until the apartment quiets. Spike doesn’t look at him at first. Just listens to the silence. Then, slowly, his gaze returns to his grandsire.

Angel’s arms are crossed, his brow a storm cloud. He looks like he’s swallowed a lemon. Wanker. “You really think this is going to last?”

Spike leans back into the couch, cool as sin, folding one ankle over his knee. “Dunno. Been plenty long already. She’s still here, yeah? Still laughs at my jokes. Still screams my name. That’s gotta count for somethin’.”

Angel winces like someone’s sprayed holy water up his arse. Spike savours it.

“You’re reckless,” the big, strapping hero mutters. “You always have been. This—her—she’s not just a fling you can—”

“Watch your bloody mouth,” Spike snaps. The amusement’s gone in a blink, replaced with something cold and lethal. “You don’t get to talk about her like that. Not after the way you dangled the Slayer on a chain like she was the only thing between you and damnation.”

Peaches opens his mouth, then shuts it again. There’s no defense.

Spike leans forward, elbows on his knees, his voice low. “She’s not some passing fancy, mate. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And if you can’t see that, maybe it’s not her you should be worried about.”

Angel looks away. “She’s not like us,” he says finally. Quietly.

Spike’s smile softens. “No,” he agrees. “She’s better.”

The silence hangs for a long beat. Angel doesn’t have anything left. Nothing worth saying. He looks like he wants to argue, wants to do something, but there’s nothing left to fight. Spike’s not giving him anything to push against. Then you come back in, grocery list in hand, all nonchalant in your ease.

“Honey,” you say, “I’m heading out. You want more Weetabix?”

Spike beams. “Yeah. And maybe those little marshmallows?”

Your grin is blinding, waving the list about like he’s guessed correctly. He knows you’ve already written it down. “I know what you like.”

It hits him like a sledgehammer, then. How you see him―not just the vampire, not the body, not the snarl, but all of it. And you love it anyway.

He reaches into his wallet, pulls out his brand-new credit card—the one Captain Forehead set him up with, the only thing he’s ever been good for—and hands it to you. “Take this, yeah?”

“I’ve got money,” you say, stubborn as ever, but smiling.

“I’ll spank you if you don’t let me pay,” he teases, voice low and fond. “And don’t pout. Gonna get that lip if you ain’t careful.”

You giggle, step in close, lean down to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“Pervert,” you whisper, your lips lingering just a second longer on his skin.

“Only for you.”

And then he watches, all dumbstruck and dopey, as you take the card, tuck it into your purse, and head out the door.

The silence that follows is thick. He doesn’t look at Angel. Doesn’t need to, because—for the first time in a long time—he doesn’t care what the poof thinks. He’s got everything he wants, and the poor sod knows it. The satisfaction in shutting the door on his slack, stupid face makes Spike want to laugh and laugh until his dead lungs crumble to dust.

His days pass in a blur of disgusting bliss. Truly, it makes him think sometimes that he should hang up his post as Big Bad. He’s got to be testing some cosmic force, being so unbelievably happy with his lot, but he doesn’t get struck down by a flying spell, or staked, or zapped into some other dimension. Nah, he keeps kicking. He gets to be with you.

Attending your graduation day is hell: sunlight everywhere, too many people, a mish-mash of scents that, if he were living, would make him gag. But he does it anyway. Sneaks in through the sewers, creeps up through the sub-basement of Sunnydale High, taking his awkward place by Little Bit and the others in the bleachers.

It’s all worth it when he sees you. Radiant, cap tilted, gown a little too big.

You cross the stage with that bright smile he loves, all cheeks and squinted eyes, shaking hands and collecting your little rolled-up paper. And, when you step up to the podium to give your big first-place speech, it’s like you were born to it—clever, kind, full of biting humour and practiced to perfection. The whole damn place hangs on your every word, and he feels pride well up like it’s his own achievement, seeing you up there.

His clever girl. His light.

Afterward, he lingers with your sisters, with the odd assortment of people you’ve chosen as family. He sticks out like a sore thumb, so clearly not part of the group, but that’s never bothered him before. You rush to them, beaming, diploma in hand and cute little cap askew as they take their turns congratulating you, voices overlapping in their relief and pride.

Spike doesn’t bother with platitudes. When you turn to him, he does what he does best and shows you how proud he is by tugging you into his body, mouth pressing down against yours. Long. Hungry. A little too much tongue. He overhears someone nearby make a fuss about it, but he doesn’t give a fig, and neither do you. The world is your oyster now, and he’s too excited to see what you make of it now that you’re free.

That night, he takes you dancing.

The Bronze is a hole, always has been—one day soon, he’ll take you to the real spots he’s seen on his jaunts through unlife—but it’s what passes for a good time in this sorry town. He lets you spend a few paltry minutes with your friends, decent bloke that he is. Besides, it means he gets to relish in the look on their faces when they realise for the thousandth time that your presence is only temporary, that soon enough, you’ll head back to where you truly belong. To him. So he nurses his beer as you laugh with them, dance with Dawn and the Slayer, bounce around like a stoned rabbit with Lackbrain and demon girl and Glinda, and he waits.

Eventually, you come to him as you always do.

He doesn’t need to be asked. Taking you in his arms, he presses close and sways you about to some pathetically sappy slow song that you probably don’t even like. But you’re warm, and happy, and he can feel the eyes on you both.

Spike’s always felt them.

They’ve all seen you together at some point. By accident, by circumstance, through open doorways and down dark hallways. They’ve seen the truth of it: the way you cling, the way you gasp, the way you let him worship you with teeth and tongue and desperate hands. He doesn’t give a single rat’s arse. He’s evil.

And god, Christ and all the saints he’s ever remembered the names of, he loves you.

He never expected this. Never expected you. You were cute. Smart. Sharp. He thought you’d be a momentary distraction, a splash of intrigue while he waited for Buffy to make her mind up about him. Buffy: a splash of color in his grey, dismal world. But then—you. Accepted him, listened like the stuff he said was important, like he mattered. Defended him, never shied away, never called him a thing or a demon or a monster, even though that’s what he is, what he’ll always be. You crept up on him, quiet and subtle-like until he caught sight of you across the room, laughing at something Xapper was saying to you, and it hit him over the head like your mum with that axe all those years ago. You happened, and he realised the truth. You have his dead, unbeating, black heart in your hand, and it fits there like it was always meant to.

He knows now. You’re the Gem of Amara in bitty, beautiful human form. Not just colour, but a supernova, blazing and teeming with vitality. Being with you is like feeling the sun on his face every goddamned day. Spike’s whole world is brighter with you in it.

Still, even now, there’s a flicker of doubt in his chest. A shadow. The part of him that’s been broken too many times. This can’t last, it whispers. This is too good, too soft. Things like this—things like her—don’t stay.

Then you look up at him, eyes sparkling under the Bronze’s lights. Your arms loop around his neck, your forehead presses against his. You breathe him in like you mean to keep him, and you say, “I love you, Spike.”

He closes his eyes, and just like that, the shadow’s gone. Everything’s still.

“I love you, Spike.”

He closes his eyes, and for once, the world is quiet. There’s only you.

It’s always been only you.

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