Seas Between Us (Broad Have Roared)

Author: enigmaticblue <enigmaticblue@yahoo.com>

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Do I have to say it? They aren't mine. If they were, I'd be nicer than Joss.

Archive: Anywhere that already has my stuff. Anywhere else just ask.

Summary: Set in an alternate Angel S5, wherein Andrew tells Buffy that Spike's alive after Damage and she does something about it, upsetting the power structure while she's at it.

A/N: This story takes place after Bring Out Your Dead, and may make a little more sense if you read that one first. The thing to notice is that Lindsey does not enter into this story. I didn't want to deal with the boy since I'm mostly ignoring canon. Just so you aren't terribly surprised.

Chapter 16: The Persistence of Memory

"My memory will not fail me now./Mmm, firefly in the night sky/only lights on the rise/and I need you so, firefly./One satellite with a lazy eye/caught my by surprise/with an ache in my belly/and a taste in my mouth for fire...After the killing frost/where do you go/Firefly?/ My memory will not fail me now/and the rest is history." ~Over the Rhine, "Firefly"

Fred stood in the doorway and watched Wesley as he checked one book against another, his slim fingers sliding across the pages. He quickly made a notation in his notebook, and then went back to the text again.

It was such a familiar sight. Fred wondered how on earth he could look so sexy researching when she'd witnessed the exact same thing before without the accompanying fire in her belly.

They had made some headway in their relationship over the last few weeks. There had been long, slow kisses and casual hand-holding. Arms around shoulders and wandering hands as they relaxed after a case. There was an intimacy there that had not been present before, and for that, Fred was grateful.

Her parents had called just last week, letting her know that they would soon be stopping through on their way to Hawaii. She'd already told them about leaving the law firm, and they had simply said, "Well, you know what you need, Fred. Just let us know if we can help out at all."

During the course of this parental phone call, her mom had asked, "So have you met any nice young men yet?"

Fred's automatic, "Mom!" and her father's remonstrance to let her be, couldn't drown out Trish's, "Well, a mother likes to know these things. Fancy jobs don't replace a warm body in your bed."

Roger's voice cut over hers. He was obviously ill-prepared to think about his baby in bed with anyone other than Mr. Fiegenbaum. "Now, Trish, Fred's smart enough to run her own life."

"I'm dating someone," Fred had blurted out, wanting to tell them. In fact, she'd had the crazy urge to call her parents immediately after she and Wesley had started to get serious, knowing that they would see it as good news.

"Who?" Roger asked, a thread of suspicion in his tone.

"Wesley."

The quiet admission was met with vigorous approval from both parents, with a couple comments from Trish on the attractiveness of her choice. "And that accent," she'd added admiringly.

Remembering the conversation, Fred had to stifle a giggle. She wondered what Wesley would say when he discovered that her parents knew they were dating, and that they were planning on stopping through soon. She knew that Wes liked her folks, and vice versa, so she didn't think there would be any problems.

That was just it, though. There weren't any problems, but there seemed to be a definite sense of space that Wesley maintained between them. Fred was half-afraid that Wesley would view her parents' knowledge as overstepping some invisible boundary. Maybe if she knew why he was keeping her at arm's length, Fred could reassure him.

Because there was one thing she knew for sure—she wanted Wesley. She wanted this relationship to have a fighting chance.

Fred would fight to keep him.

She stepped through the office door, maintaining her silence until Wesley looked up. "Connor just arrived. Spike and Buffy are with him."

"How is he?"

"I think he's okay," Fred replied. "He's had a pretty big shock, and the doctors still can't say if his parents will recover. Cordelia and Dawn are with him."

The same odd emotion flitted through Wesley's eyes that always appeared when parents were mentioned. "Is she planning on saying anything?"

Fred took a seat across from him. "No. She's going to wait for you to do the spell."

"Good."

When he appeared to be going straight back to his research, Fred interrupted him. "Wes?"

"Yes?"

"Is anything wrong?"

Wesley leaned back in his chair so he could view her better. "What are you talking about?"

She sighed. This was going to be more difficult than she'd anticipated. "Is anything wrong? With us. You just seem..." Fred trailed off, unsure of how to put Wesley's apparent distance into words without causing offense.

"No," he was quick to say, then seemed to think better of it. After his conversation with Buffy the previous week, Wesley had thought this might come up. "I need my memories, Fred. I need to know—"

"If it changes anything?" she supplied. Fred's face took on a look of determination that he rarely saw outside of her work. It was fixed on him. "It won't."

"It might," he argued. "You don't know how you'll feel about me afterwards. What if this—between us—is a product of this memory erasure Angel performed?"

Fred stared at him. "How long have you loved me?"

"Fred—"

"How long?"

"For years," Wesley admitted quietly, knowing that she wasn't going to let him off the hook.

Fred nodded, satisfied. "Then you're not worried about your feelings changing. You're worried about mine."

Wesley hesitated, then had to nod in admission.

She stood and walked around the desk, bending to kiss him. "I like you," Fred said bluntly. "More than like. And I know what you did, and I know who you are, so I don't see how actually having the memories are going to change anything."

"You don't know that they won't," he argued.

"And you don't know that they will." Fred sighed. "Trust me, Wes. I'm not going anywhere."

They might have continued the discussion, but there was a loud shriek from upstairs, and then they both heard Spike laughing. Hurrying out of the office to find out what the commotion was, they saw a blur that was Spike heading for the courtyard.

"Spike!" Buffy stood on the landing, wrapped only in a towel, obviously having been unceremoniously routed from the shower. "Spike! Get back here right now!"

Fred could still hear the vampire's laughter. "Is everything okay, Buffy?"

"That—that bastard poured a whole bucket of ice on me!" she spat out. "While I was in the shower!" She raised her voice so that it was certain to carry outside. "When I get my hands on you, you're going to beg for mercy!"

Then, as though she had just realized her state of undress, she let out a rather undignified squeak and dashed back up the stairs. Wesley, ever the gentleman, averted his eyes. The towel was rather short.

Cordelia, Connor, and Dawn came down a few moments later. "What was that all about?"

Wesley started to snicker. "It seems Spike dumped a bucket of ice on Buffy while she was showering."

Dawn grinned. "Did he? That's awesome!" She grinned at Spike who came swaggering through the doors of the courtyard now that Buffy was gone.

"Had to pay her back for that remark she made earlier," he said.

Cordy frowned. "What remark?"

"That's between me an' the Slayer," Spike replied, sprawling across the lobby couch.

Dawn sniggered. "She's going to make you pay for that, you know."

Spike shrugged. "It was worth it. Did you see the look on her face?" He grinned broadly. "Bloody priceless."

Wesley shook his head, heading back to his research. He could just hear Connor ask, "Is it like this all the time here?"

~~~~~

Spike entered the room he shared with Buffy warily. At this point, he was fairly certain she wouldn't have a stake waiting for him, but it was hard to say. She'd been pretty pissed off about that shower stunt.

Still, he wouldn't have done it any differently. Although Spike might not be evil any longer, he had a mischievous streak a mile wide, and Angel wasn't around to torment these days.

He was halfway into the room when Buffy pounced on him, sending them both flying onto the bed. She had his hands pinned above his head in a flash, her eyes glaring daggers at him. "What was that for?"

"You said Angel's kid was prettier," Spike said, his face not losing the smug smile he'd been wearing since she'd sent him running down the stairs.

Buffy tried to maintain the angry-face, but it was difficult. Spike was just so damn sexy when he was smug, and if it had been anyone else, she'd have been laughing too.

It wasn't anyone else, though, and there was no way she could let him get away with pulling a prank like that. Buffy would make him sleep in another room, but that would mean Spike wasn't in her bed, and she didn't like that idea at all. "What am I going to do with you?"

He cocked an eyebrow. "Dunno. You could let me go." His eyes darkened. "I could make it worth your while. Could make you scream."

It was tempting, but knowing that Spike would get just as much pleasure as she would didn't make it much of a punishment. Buffy smiled evilly. "No," she said simply. "I think I'm going to make you scream."

~~~~~

"So how are you?" Dawn asked, poking her head into the room Connor was using. Spike and Buffy had convinced him to come back to the hotel, telling him that he'd be safer there, and if something was after him, he would be leading it away from his parents.

Connor shrugged. "Okay, I guess." There was a roar, and his head shot up. "What was that?"

Dawn came inside the room and shut the door behind her. "Trust me. You don't want to know."

"Do they ever stop?" Connor asked, blinking.

"I don't know. I haven't been here that much since they got back together. My guess would be no, though." She sat next to him on the bed. "I'm really sorry about your parents."

He shrugged. "They're still hanging in there. I'm sure they'll be fine."

Dawn noticed that he sounded less than convinced. "I'm sure."

They stared at each other for a moment before another muffled shout penetrated the door. "Do you want to go downstairs?" Connor asked.

"That sounds like a really good idea."

~~~~~

"Buffy said that Willow would be here in the next couple of days," Wesley informed Cordelia and Fred. "She should be able to perform the spell shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, we just need to be sure that nothing happens to Connor."

"Shouldn't we tell Angel about this?" Fred asked. "Or Lorne or Gunn? It might be unsettling for them just to, you know, suddenly remember everything."

Cordy shook her head. "We aren't telling Angel. He would probably try to stop us, and that's no good. Lorne and Gunn should probably know, though." She looked at Wesley. "What about trying to find out what was after Connor in the first place?"

"I'm looking into it." He sighed. "It's most likely someone tied to Connor's past, and it's difficult to research that given the spell."

"So we wait until the spell is done, and then we figure out what's after Connor," Fred observed, looking out the office window where Dawn and Connor were hanging out. "At least he has some company."

"Indeed," Wesley murmured. "It's probably best to keep him out of the way as much as possible. I do not want to alarm him."

"Any more than he already is?" Cordy commented, a definite note of sarcasm in her voice.

There was a muffled shriek, and Wesley frowned. "What on earth is going on?" He watched as Fred and Cordelia looked at each other and then at him in perfect synchronization. "Oh. I see." The tips of his ears turned pink. "You know, I'm rather hungry. Perhaps we should go out and get something to eat."

"I could go for that," Cordelia replied. "Maybe we'd better take the impressionable kids with us."

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," Fred said, tucking her arm through Wesley's.

When twin shouts filtered downstairs, all of them hurried out the doors.

~~~~~

Buffy wasn't sure she'd ever had so much fun in her entire life. It definitely ranked right up there, at least.

In the past, sex had often been about domination, about losing herself in him, about forgetting. It had been focused on the pleasure that he could give her, and what she could take. On rare occasions, there had been an undercurrent of tenderness, but their coupling was more often brutal.

Recently, that had all changed. They could be tender with each other now—and other nights they could be rough, although Buffy didn't think they'd ever be cruel to one another again. She couldn't recall ever laughing this much during their love-making, however.

She was sprawled on top of him, Spike's hand rubbing circles on her back absently. They were both sticky, and Buffy was pleasantly out of breath. Spike was still breathing, even though he didn't need to. It had been fun—to torture each other, to see how close she could bring him to the edge without sending him over.

Buffy had a feeling that she'd surprised Spike just a bit with her creativity.

"I don't remember the last time I laughed that hard," she said, unwilling to move.

Spike smiled. "Yeah, it was—nice."

"It was a whole lot better than nice!" Buffy said defensively, raising her head so that she could meet his eyes.

His expression was a trifle awed and not a little adoring. "Couldn't think of a better word. My brain's not workin' real well at the moment."

She put her head back down. "It's too bad we couldn't have figured this out earlier, you know?"

"How do you mean?"

"I mean I wish I had known that it could be like this. I wish I had been brave enough to see the possibility."

There was a long pause, and Spike's hand tightened on her shoulder, nudging her off of him and onto her side so he could meet her eyes. "I don't."

Buffy's eyes widened. "You liked—"

"Not what I meant," he said very calmly. "'m just sayin' I like where we are right now."

She understood what he was saying. If things had been different, it might have been better. Then again, it might have been worse, and Spike liked their current situation. For that matter, so did she. "Yeah."

They lay quietly, simply enjoying being in the presence of the other. There was no hurry to move, no troubles to face that wouldn't wait until morning. Spike had nearly drifted off to sleep when he heard Buffy say, "You've spoiled me."

"What now?" he asked, rousing himself with some difficulty.

"You've spoiled me," she repeated. "You're the only guy I want to be with, Spike. There's nobody else like you."

Spike grinned at her, and he looked like a child for a moment. "You're only sayin' that because no one else would have the stones to drop a bucket of ice on you while you're in the shower."

Buffy smiled back. "Yeah. That too."

And they both slept like they hadn't a care in the world.