Title: A Guy Can Dream
Author:the_wiggins
Era/season/setting: season 6
Rating: M
Author’s note: I’ve been working on an original (well, Norse-mythology inspired) novel. So I haven’t had much time for fanfic. This weird little story is what happens when I try to shift gears, I guess.
The story was a little rushed and is unbeta’d. Please let me know if you see anything that feels weird or OOC! I’m gonna edit it again before posting to other sites, so all kinds of feedback welcome. :) Oh, and the title’s the best I could think of at the moment, but I’m not really happy with it. So if anyone has any other suggestions, I’m happy to hear them!
He loved the moment just before she came. When tension was replaced by mounting pleasure; when the line of worry between her brows vanished, a wall crumbling away; when they were locked together in a moment of bliss and he could imagine that she’d hidden no part of herself away from him.
Buffy collapsed against him, her skin a winter fever against his own. She lay there for the breadth of a second before pushing her hands against his chest, shoving herself off of him. She slid her legs over the side of the sarcophagus he still sometimes kept made up as a bed (they hadn’t made it down the ladder this time). She grabbed her bra from where it had dangled, half-off the sarcophagus, and pulled it over her shoulders with quick, slayer-efficient movements.
“Wait,” Spike said, grabbing her by the waist. She turned to him, the line back between brows. “Stay. Just a little while.”
He was too proud to beg, but only just.
Buffy sighed. “I can’t. Dawn will be waiting, and not to mention bills and laundry and… I just can’t.”
“Two minutes. The Bit and the bills can wait another two minutes,” he continued, desperation seeping a little too obviously into his voice. “Please?”
So much for being too proud.
Her frown deepened but she surprised him by saying: “Fine. One minute, then I’m gone.”
She settled back on to the blanket swaddled stone, her back to his chest. He put his arm around her, hand resting just below the line of her bra. There was a tension in her body. But she let out a little breath and leaned her weight into him. His hand felt her heartbeat through her ribs. Spike nestled his face into her hair and breathed her in: mango pineapple shampoo and fryer grease, sweat and some flowery deodorant, slayer and… Buffy.
He could spend an eternity just like this.
But she tensed, pulling away from him before (he was almost certain) even a minute could have passed. Her eyes, shrewd and questioning, reflected the moonlight that shone through the small crypt windows.
“What is this?”
“What’s what?”
“Do you think this is some kind of… cuddling relationship?”
“I don’t see what’s wrong with a guy wanting to hold his girl for a minute after they’ve–”
“But you’re not ‘a guy.’ You’re more like a demon wearing a guy suit.” Spike opened his mouth to protest but she continued on, not giving him a chance. “And I’m not your girl.”
“You could be,” he said with quiet fervor.
She just shook her head, looking tired and sad.
“Buffy–”
“No. No, I can’t Spike. I can’t do this with you today. I’ve gotta get home.”
Spike watched her as she gathered her clothes from where they’d fallen to the dusty crypt floor, trying to think of words that would make her stay. That would convince her she was wrong about him. About them. He was still thinking when she pulled open the crypt door, sending a wave of cool, grave-scented air flowing into his crypt, and vanished into the night.
Spike collapsed back onto the tomb, angry and defeated. ‘A demon wearing a guy suit.’ That was all she saw him as. Sometimes she was so blind! He wished she could see him.
Maybe in a different sort of world. He closed his eyes, arm folded under his head for a pillow.
Images unspooled in his head. A different sort of world. Back in his human days, a poet acquaintance had once handed him a book of Norse poems. Too dark and violent for his taste then, but they came back to him now. Or at any rate, an echo of one. He saw himself, a warrior in battle-stained armor moving through a dark tunnel. In one hand he carried a sword, blood dripping the tip in a soft patter, patter against the stone floor. The head of the Beast, its face locked in a terrible snarl of death was held in the other. Blood ran down his arm from the severed neck.
The passage descended, traveling through deep and unknown places before opening on a vast cavern. Stalactites big as Volkswagens hung from the ceiling. And in the center of the chamber was a ring of brilliant flames that threw everything else into shadow. He blinked at the intensity of the flame, but when his eyes adjusted, he saw a figure lying as if asleep or dead beyond them.
He dropped the head of the Beast and it landed with a squelch, suddenly irrelevant. He stepped into the flames and they flared hot around him but did not burn his skin. Then he was standing in the center of the ring of fire, a beautiful warrior girl with full armor and shining golden hair lay before her. For a moment, he feared that she was dead, but then he saw the faint rise and fall of her chest. But her gilded armor, glorious though it was, was weighing her down, constricting her. Maybe she’d breathe better without it. He’d cut the straps of the armor one-by-one and it fell from her, clattering to the floor. When he removed the chest plate, the last section of her shell, her eyes flew open and she saw him. Smoke-blackened and blood-stained, yet she seemed to truly see him. Whatever he was underneath. And he saw her too, unarmored, freed.
The walls of flame died as she sat up.
He offered his hand and she accepted it. He took her through the dark passage and up into the crisp, star-decorated night. There she stood, light and unencumbered without her shining armor. She put her hand to the sword at her hip and grinned. Together, they would walk into the night. And she wouldn’t fear or resent the darkness of her path because she heard it singing to her, the same way it did to him. And she wouldn’t fear the darkness in him, because she’d know it had its mirror inside herself.
And as the walked, side-by-side as equals, she’d turn to him and she’d say… she’d say…
“Oh, bugger,” Spike cursed as the fantasy dried up, crumbling into something like the gray dust that littered the crypt floor. Sodding pathetic. He was no dragon killer and Buffy was no valkyrie. Besides, as he recalled, the original story hadn’t exactly had a happy ending. He’d just have to hope that somehow, one was possible in this reality. Anyway, he thought, staring up into the cobwebs that covered his ceiling, a guy could dream….
End Notes: The Norse story referenced here is that of Sigurd and Brunhild.
Originally posted at https://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/689695.html
