The challenge this week is: Unexpected

Cross posted to open_on_sunday and my regular journal.


BtVS – Season 6 – Post Bargaining – Buffy/Spike - 3 drabbles


1. A Show of Hands

She remembers checking over Spike’s hands in a rough, assessing manner, eying the sliced flesh and bloodied muscle he’d obtained keeping the blade from impaling her head. “You’ll live,” she’d said, shoving him aside in a perfunctory manner, off to the next crisis that demanded her attention.

Sitting with her hands in his, Buffy’s surprised at the gentleness of Spike’s touch. The tenderness in his eyes. The understanding in his body language. A shared experience – clawing one’s way out of the coffin. An unexpected bonding between vampire and slayer. We’re having an Oprah moment, she thought with a mad giggle.

~*~

Buffy listens as Dawn angrily stamps her way around the livingroom. She’d love to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the teenager and just burrow under her covers, but no… she has to be older sister, mother and father and it’s just too...

The sudden quiet makes her look up, astonished at what she finds: Spike calmly brushing her sister’s long hair. She hears soft snippets of conversation, the easy affection impossible to miss.

She might be able to explain Spike’s attention in regards to herself, but the sweet devotion to her baby sister is completely unexpected.

~*~

The sight of Spike sitting outside of the Magic Box in the daytime is unexpected, but comforting. Some sort of explanation about indirect sunlight goes in one ear and out the other. Surprisingly, Buffy feels at ease around the squinting vampire; more relaxed than with her friends.

When the words tumble out about having been in heaven, Spike’s expression of horror is reassuring. He truly had nothing to do with her resurrection. She wants… no, she needs the comfort and peace she finds in his presence.

It’s not death she’s seeking, but the simplicity of shared experience. Death and rebirth.

.