Prompt 368 - Light - Meanwhile Ten Years Later - Chapter 7 - comlodge - BTVS

[comlodge.livejournal.com]

Title:  Time Past

Author: comlodge
Charachters: Spike, Buffy
Rating: PG
Words: 1000
Prompt:  sb_fag_ends Wildfire tamingthemuse Light
Disclaimer: Charachters belong to someone cleverer than I. Just having a free for all play with them. The sandbox is big enough for all of us.
Summary: Chapter 7 of ?.  Previous parts here.You probably need to read those first, if you haven't.

They sat staring at each other across his plate of cold onion rings, her scraped clean plate, the mug, and glass and felt the fire building. Like wild fire racing through their blood, bringing a flush of pink to her face; making him feel as though, at any moment, his heart would beat again.

"Hot chocolate?" The waitress shook her head. Lucky cow to have someone who looked like that, staring like that at her. She put the mug on the table between them and left them to it.

"Thanks." He said it automatically without shifting his gaze from the face of light in front of him. He leant forward and reached his hand toward where hers rested on the table surface, clasped it in his; ran his thumb back and forth across it, savouring the feel, the connection. She looked down, mesmerised by the movement, felt the heat building in her palm and flow along her fingers.

"So, are you going to tell me where you've been for the last nine years?" She looked up and gazed into blue so bright, so deep, she felt instantly as though she were drowning and almost gasped for air, in reflex. He leaned back against the padding of the booth, shifted in his seat. His eyes withdrew a little, searching an inner space, sorting through memories to find the words he wanted to say. Instead he sighed, went for the short version, filtered; not lies, exactly; not all the truth. Not yet.

"Died, again. Didn't take, again. Ended up here, of all places. Hard to think it was just coincidence, I should end up in the same city that Angel moved to. Didn't rightly know who I was, for a bit. Himself and wolf girl found me, bit out of it, in an empty warehouse they were looking at buying. Took me home, took care of me till I figured things. Been working for them ever since. That's about it. Don't know where I was before then. Don't think I want to know."

She watched his mouth move, recognised the words, took them in but they weren't registering. Her tongue ran along her bottom lip, looking for the long ago remembered taste of his. She caught glimpses of his tongue, between white teeth, as he talked; moist, glistening. She felt again its soft caress inside her mouth, the shiver that always ran through her body as it licked the roof, and then curled around her tongue. No-one had ever played her body like he did. No-one danced as he had.

His thumb had continued its circling path across the back of her hand as he'd talked. The vibrations that had begun as a slight tingle, built into a warm flush, had grown into a searing heat that flicked along her hand like flames. Made her remember the last time she'd held that hand in her hers; when at last they'd connected. She turned her hand inside his and clasped it, lifted it to her lips and kissed his knuckles. Her eyes closed as she moved her head to run her cheek along them, mouth open as she let the feelings inside her, out.

Pictures flashed through her head; her hand reaching out to a white chest, scored deep with red, angry cuts; that chest, blue clad, standing in her lounge room door; that chest, bare and bright in the dim light of a shadowed church, heaving with emotion; that chest bare again, cut deep again, held against hard rock walls; that chest, black clad, wrapping around her, holding her, strengthening her; that chest, dazzling bright as her medallion began to burn his soul.

She raised her head, eyes searching his. "I've missed you, Spike.” A tiny smile flicked across her face. “Don’t get me wrong; I've dated; had an affair or two. Thought I'd found someone, once or twice, that maybe I could spend my life with. But, they were never you, William." She raised her hand when she thought he was going to say something. "I've had a good life. I've been happy. If... if I'd have really loved someone, I'd have settled down with them."

She smiled at herself as she said this. She knew it was true. "I was so mad at you, when I found out you were in LA. With Angel. You know we came, after the battle started?" He shook his head. "Yep. Willow found out. Came back from some other dimension she'd been visiting; said we all had to hop it to LA 'cos there was a huge fight coming. You... you must have already been... I mean, no-one remembers seeing you at all, though of course it was chaos, what with all the demons of hell there."

She took a breath, remembering the sight that had greeted them; the tremble of fear that had gone through their little group before they steeled themselves to do what they did best. What they'd been called for. Slay.  "We jumped in. I saw Angel dust. He was fighting the dragon. It got him when he got it. Anyway, we won. I went back to Scotland with most of the girls. Then we heard Angel came back human 'cos of some prophecy.”

“Thought maybe you’d have been together.” He said this sadly, hesitantly, a flicker of jealousy pushing through.

“No. He did come to see me. But he had Nina with him. He, he was happy and you know, it didn't hurt. I was happy for him, for them.” She looked down at her hands that smile playing on her lips. “Our time had passed. Like I’d thought our time, yours and mine, Spike, was past.” She looked up again, to search his face, looking for a sign, that maybe, just maybe their time had come again. He however was looking past her, over her head, his lips pursed in that way he had, when something had gone wrong. She realised someone was blocking the light.

“Angel.”

TBC