Chapter Three

"Did you have nightmares?"

Buffy blinked. Closet door. Shoes. She snapped fully awake and half sat up. She was lying on a sleeping bag on the floor of her room, and she was looking into her closet. Boy, is that appropriate, she thought. "What?" She looked around.

Spike, bundled in blankets on her bed, was visible only as half a face and one blue eye, surrounded by bruises already fading. His hand clutched the covers at his chin and she saw that his knuckles were bruised and cut. Slowly, she straightened up, and hitched over to him, laying her head next to his on the pillow. With one finger, she traced the lines and bumps of his hand. "What?"

"Did you have nightmares about me?"

"I have nightmares all the time." She said quietly. "Part of the job."

"About me."

She sighed, studying him. "I had lots of dreams about you."

"Not what I asked, pet."

"You want me to be honest, or polite?"

"You can't be both?"

She shifted and looked at him, wondering how much honesty he could take. A flick of the wrist, and her hand was in his. She studied what was visible of his face, and sighed, both burdened and released. The person she least wanted to be honest with wanted honesty. The people who most needed it fled at the thought. "With you..." She hesitated. "Do we have to talk about this now?"

"Middle of the day for me."

"Not for me."

"You weren't having pleasant dreams just then, pet."

"Wasn't I?" She glanced over her shoulder at the sleeping bag, as if it was guilty somehow.

"No," Spike said quietly. "Just wanted to make sure what the cause was."

"Spike," she whispered, "not you, now that you're safe, okay? That was what I was having nightmares about."

"Then you're stupid."

She drew back sharply. "I am not!"

"You shouldn't have done that. Rescued me."

"Don't tell me what to do. Besides, I already did it. Over, done with. One more word, and you're sleeping on the floor."

"I offered."

"Shyah," she scoffed, but she laid her head back down on the pillow, looking at his eyes, blue and confused. There was something like pleading in them, and she marveled at the twists and turns of their reality. What's Saturday? She strained to remember. If she had known that that vampire, out of all the others, would turn out this way, she'd have taken notes. All she'd thought at the time was, I like that coat. Not my size, though. Another one saying he's going to kill me. Why isn't there a greeting card for that?

That's when I get to kill you.

I know you'll never love me.

Every night I save you.

"There are rules," she said quietly.

"About not being stupid? Because you've broken those."

"And this is because...?"

"Caught hell from the Scoobies, didn't you?"

"That's usually when I figure I'm right." He stared at her, shaken out of his soft little sleepy bed cave by her feistiness.

"Buffy..."

"What?" She pulled back, pulled her hand away, and stuck out her lower lip at him. Part of him rejoiced at the return of Bitch!Buffy. The other part of him, the part that had flinched when she pulled her hand away, quailed. Nothing like a soul to make a man a wuss, he thought. Does it every time. "You are not going to argue with me, are you?" Buffy teased, and the minute the words dropped out of her mouth, the exploded.

They both stared at each other, thinking the same thought; a dark alley, a vampire, and a Slayer. She was the one who flinched, staring stricken at him. "Sorry....I didn't mean it like that...I mean....I..."

"Buff..." He scooted forward, and grimaced. Her eyes were huge.

"You can argue with me," she whispered.

"That's not the point."

"Yes it is."

"No, it's not."

"I'm not worth it, Buffy," he said quietly. "This thing in me...I don't know who I am any more. Neither do you. Don't know what'll happen. Or when. You don't need that..."

"Spike..." She took a deep breath, then hitched herself forward, face flaming with emotion. They all seemed to try to escape all at once, and then get jammed up before they reached her lips, choking her with a dammed tide of frustration. Slowly, she drew herself back to the edge of the bed, a place he'd never been before, and lifted one hand to his face. She waited for him to flinch but instead, his eyes studied her, their color shifting and changing before her own. "You know what I figured out? I figured out it's not perfect, okay? Nothing is. I'm not, and you're not. I'm not expecting it any more. I'm not trying for it any more." She stopped and cleared her throat, which suddenly seemed to have developed a terrible ache. "I stopped looking for it...for the whole thing, and I keep stumbling over little pieces of it, little moments, that I wouldn't have noticed before, you know? Because I wanted the whole perfect thing, the whole...I can't live like that, and I can't ask for that, not now."

He thought he'd accommodated the hopelessness of his love for her into his existence but just then he realized how much he had not. The ache of it silenced him, stung at the corners of his swollen eyes, tracked salt over the cuts and bruises. "Why shouldn't you? Girl that saves the world, that's what..." He gathered himself over that hump, the sudden stab of memory: one hundred and forty seven days. "...that's what you deserve..."

"I don't want what I deserve," Buffy said softly. She rested her face next to his, and he could feel the heat of her flush against him. She tried a wry smile, but it twisted into something tremulous. "What I deserve could be kind of scary."

"No, it's not...It's...."

"Spike..." she bit her lip, and they were so close he could practically taste the salt. "Deserving is not the same as earning, is it?"

He shook his head slightly, too tired, too rung out, to move more. "You don't need to earn anything, not..."

"All I know is this," she whispered. "I don't know how much future I have left. I don't want to waste it, going over the past. I can't change that." She touched his lips with one fingertip only, but he could feel her pulse rocketing away. "All I can do is make sure that tomorrow is better. And I don't even know I can do that. I don't know what's out there." Her voice shook, and she sniffed. "I just know what's here," she whispered. He reached out, and she took his hand and molded his palm to her face, beyond words now. He had to close his eyes against the sensory overload of it all.

Buffy got up and gently pulled away, silently crossing around the bed. He blinked as she stepped away, then rolled over on his back to squint painfully at her as she hesitated at the side of the bed. He pushed the covers back, and she slipped beneath them, holding her hands flat on the mattress to minimize the jostling. She leaned over and smoothed his hair from his face. He closed his eyes and sighed into her hand, relaxing into her touch like a grateful cat. Slowly, she eased down onto her side, pillowing her forehead on her hand. "How bad does it hurt?"

He shrugged, but the truth was, in her bed, with her next to him, he felt no pain at all. All he could feel was her. He gestured to the side of his body next to her, his left. "I think the First is right-handed."

"Turn over then," she said firmly. He had to turn his back to her, but it was worth it, because then she fluffed his pillows---her pillows, he thought with awe----and lifted his head to plump them till he was cushioned and cosseted like some baby. She was taking care of him, doing things to him---for him---that he'd never even dared to dream of, puffing up his pillows, smoothing the covers---her covers, he thought again, still amazed. Then he felt her at his back, curling up against him, her face against the nape of his neck, and he knew then that he was still somewhere in a dungeon, because nothing they'd ever done, on the floor, against the wall, on the ground, anywhere, set his nerve endings to shivering the way the feel of her arm around him then. Her fingers laced with his, and he thought, she's at my back. No dangers there any more. He remembered, then, what it felt like to be alive, because his every pore seemed to drink her in, and his every cell seemed to be on alert. Her warmth, though, wrapped around him, thawed the chill of fear from him, and he found himself sinking into lassitude, sagging against her, even though he tried to stay awake. I want to remember this, I don't want it to end. It might not happen again. I want it to...

She felt him going limp against her, and she smiled into his neck, breathing with his rhythm, smiling against the tickle of his hair against her face. His relaxation eased some of her tension, and she leaned against him, sleep making her hand go limp in his. Demons fought, battles won and lost, but now she realized something she'd never known before: her love had given him some peace, and she felt heroic for the first time in weeks. I could Slay nightmares right now, she thought, and wished she could remember it to tell him the next morning. Love is peace, she thought, and though sleep took the thought from her, she drifted not into nightmares but renewal. Safeguarding him was balm to her worries, salve to her failures. In protecting him, she'd protected herself.