Daylight

Title: Daylight

Rating: "Chiaroscuro" is mostly R and PG. However, some content may be considered NC-17.

Disclaimer: All characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc. Only the lame plots and dialogue herein are mine.

Thanks: I would never have started writing this without the encouragement and beta of DorothyL. She introduced me to the concept of fanfic and discusses BtVS with me endlessly. I owe a tremendous debt to her insights.

Notes: This is a sequel to “Accommodations." Buffy and Spike are married, so, of course, they’ll live happily ever after. Right? Because they know each other so well, there can’t be any more surprises. Right? Right? Why are all the married people out there snickering?

“You want to what?” Buffy was incredulous.

“It’s our honeymoon. It’s traditional.” Spike’s voice was coaxing.

“I think you’re supposed to carry the bride over the threshold of your own house. This is a borrowed cabin.”

“Yeah, but this is where we’re going to consummate our marriage.”

“Really? Then what was it we did in the back seat of your car when you pulled over on the way up here?”

“That was just some hors d’oeuvres.”

“And I’m looking forward to the entrée too, but--”

“Buffy, that is a low pun, even for you.”

They had just reached the house that had been lent to them as a honeymoon spot. The witches who had handed them the keys belonged to a very large family, and the building was really too large to be called a cabin. It had two bedrooms, a kitchen, an indoor bathroom, and a very large great room with several couches that could serve as additional sleeping quarters. Even more encouragingly, an electrical line ran up the mountainside to the side of the building. However, Buffy and Spike had gotten no further than the porch and had not yet checked out the amenities.

“It’s so silly, Spike. How many times have we had sex? All that stuff is for people who didn’t jump the gun—and each other—as many times as we did before the wedding.”

Spike was silent for a long time, and when he did speak, he was very serious. “I wish I could make it the first time again, love. I wish I had the chance to do everything right instead of—”

“Shh.” Her fingers went to his lips to stop his apology. Then she kissed him gently to keep him from saying any more. She made no objection when he picked her up and carried her inside. But as he was about to slam the door, something flew down from the roof that overhung the porch, and he set her down with a thud. They both spun around, checking for danger, only to realize the creature was long gone.

“What was it?” she asked.

He grimaced. “A bloody bat,” he said. “Forget the sublime, pet, our lives seem destined to slide into the ridiculous.”

She tried not to laugh because she knew he really was annoyed by that most inappropriate of all creatures interrupting his romantic moment. She desperately hoped no wolves would howl in the woods that night.

Spike began poking around the cabin. Buffy followed him into the kitchen and stared in dismay at the ancient stove. “I can’t work that thing,” she said.

“What? Don’t worry, love, I can,” he said. He opened the refrigerator door. “This is running, at least. I’ll get the groceries and go through the list Saffron gave me.”

Buffy stayed behind staring at the stove. Sometimes, it was hard to remember that things that looked like antiques to her had once been the latest in modern devices to him.

Fifteen minutes later, Spike announced, “I got the hot water heater going, so there should be enough water to wash the dishes and shower.”

Buffy shivered. “I hope there’s a furnace. It’s already starting to get cold, and the sun hasn’t even gone down yet.”

He rubbed her arms to increase her circulation. “No furnace. But don’t worry, Slayer, I’ll make sure you stay warm.”

She expected him to follow this suggestive comment with an embrace, but instead he released her and turned away. She watched him stride out the back door purposefully, and her eyebrows twitched in confusion. Then there was a loud noise from behind the cabin, as if something had been broken with extreme force. A similar noise followed a few moments later.

She ran to the door and looked out. When she saw what he was doing, she began to smile in amusement. Apparently, he had meant his statement about keeping her warm literally. He was chopping wood.

Spike swung the axe easily, not thinking twice about this simple job. He decided that he liked this place, even though quiet and bucolic surroundings were not usually his preference. Anticipation of the evening to come provided all the excitement he could wish, and he could sense the veil of benign magic that would protect them from unseemly interruptions. No demons should be able to disturb them tonight.

He could hear Buffy moving around inside the house. She had apparently found a CD she liked, and music poured out from the kitchen. He heard the melody, but paid no attention to the words. He judged the pile of firewood and tried to decide if he had cut enough to get them through the night.

Daylight forms, and I’m lost in the big parade

Hold my hand, darling, I’m afraid

Of the daylight.

Shade is dark, cool and languid for lovers’ lorn,

Safe in shadows never as stark

As the daylight.

As Spike stepped forward to grab another log, a cloud that had been hovering overhead moved away, and he suddenly found himself stepping onto a bright, sunny patch of grass. Reflexively, he drew back, anticipating burning pain before he realized that the sunbeams offered nothing but pleasant warmth. He cursed himself, stepping back into the sunlight to finish his self-imposed chore. It was a source of embarrassment near shame to him that the same daylight that gave him so much pleasure when he awaited it each dawn could still cause him fear when he encountered it unexpectedly.

A wandering child so lost at play,

He’s found himself, but he can’t find his way

In the daylight.

Buffy finished putting the groceries away and glanced out the window just in time to see Spike start away from the shaft of sunlight. Her smile faded into thoughtful sadness as she watched him grit his teeth and walk into the light. She never mentioned that she noticed these small lapses to him, but they pained her, just as it pained her whenever she saw him automatically avert his eyes from a mirror. She watched him carefully, noting the renewed tension in his shoulders and back. She didn’t need to see his face to tell that he was upset, and she only wished that there was some way she could help him forget the fears that should no longer have a place in his psyche.

Buffy wondered if this wedding had come too soon, before Spike had had a chance to find out what kind of a human he could be. Was it unfair of her to bind him to her now, when he was still taking tentative steps into the daylight world? Her friends seemed to assume that the risk in this marriage was all on Buffy’s side, but she knew that the reverse was true. She had already committed herself to Spike when she changed him in that strange other dimension where Dawn had taken them. By making his heart beat again, Buffy had quite literally and irrevocably made the decision to share her life with him.

But although he had agreed to the change, at the time he had still been a confused, hybrid creature in the throes of a strange metamorphosis. In an odd way, she had taken advantage of her demon lover, altering his very nature and thrusting him into a strange new existence. The fact that she didn’t fully understand her own nature yet made no difference. She had been the Slayer for a long time, and had traveled further into the realm of death than he. The way back had been arduous, but it had left her well prepared for this journey into self discovery.

She shivered a little, but not with the cold. Only stupid women married men expecting to change them. However, Spike was already changing, and Buffy would have had to be very stupid indeed not to mark the trajectory of his course. But when he reached an equilibrium, would he still want to stand by her side?

On the other hand, the other men she had loved had seemed to her unchanging at first. She had counted on them to be steady and resolute, but they had each betrayed her and left her. Spike had already demonstrated that he could change fundamentally and still love her. Perhaps the truly frightening thing about Spike was not that he was changing, but that he would expect her to change and grow with him.

Later that night, Buffy sat in front of the fire by the big bed, trying to brush out her hair. She had been letting it grow out, and caring for it was becoming more and more of a chore. “How could I forget a hair dryer?” she said peevishly.

Spike came out of the shower, toweling his own hair off. “How indeed? One of the basic necessities of life—food, clothing, shelter, shagging, and hair dryers. A hairdryer would probably blow every fuse in this place anyway.”

She put down the hairbrush as he came to sit down next to her. He smiled and bent to kiss her lips. Her mouth opened under his, and she felt his hands pull open the robe she wore. He had cast aside the towel he had used after showering, and his naked body was warm against her skin. Her arms went around his shoulders and she pushed him gently down on the hearthrug. He relaxed underneath her, content to follow her lead for the moment. He became even more content as her lips moved slowly down his body, stimulating his neck, chest, and belly. He was already fully erect, but she took his cock in her mouth, loving the feel of the hard length of it against her tongue, and enjoying his pleasure as much as if it had been her own. His hands moved along her still-damp hair and caressed her back and shoulders as she stimulated him almost to the point of climax.

They knew each others’ bodies and reactions well by now; she sensed just when he would no longer be able to control himself, and she pulled away. He sighed, but not with frustration. His eyes gleamed in the firelight as he rolled her over until she lay beneath him, and he began to kiss her mouth and neck as his hands roamed over her body.

First his hands, then his lips, stimulated her breasts, teasing the erect nipples and stroking and kissing the soft undersides that were so incredibly sensitive. Buffy caught her lip between her teeth as his hands gently stimulated her clitoris, making her writhe underneath him with a desire so strong it was almost agony.

But unlike him, she had no need to be patient. She gasped in pleasure first under the pressure of his hands, then again as his tongue teased her. Her body shivered and pulsed with passion, only to be stimulated into yet another climax.

She ran her fingers through his hair and tugged on his shoulders. He raised his head, and they locked in a close embrace, rolling a bit too close to the grate. He moved away and put his arms around her waist, pulling her back and away from the hearth. “Careful, love,” he murmured into her ear.

“Not the way I want our love to set us on fire,” she agreed, staring into the flames. She was lying on her side, facing the fire, as he lay behind her, pressed against her back. He began to kiss her shoulder, his hands coming up to caress her breasts. Then one hand strayed downward to stimulate her yet again.

She stared into the fire, transfixed by the leaping flames and by the touch of his hands. She was nestled between the warmth of the fire and the heat of his body, her first waves of passion already sated. No longer consumed by urgent need, each renewal of desire was a gift that she could savor to the fullest. Slowly, she felt her excitement build again under his expert care. She shifted closer to him, and murmured an invitation. She was moist and more than ready when his cock slid between her legs as he entered her from behind, his hands still caressing her. The position was almost unbelievably stimulating, and she gasped in ecstasy, still staring at the fire as if she were reading some ancient message in the depths of the flames. She could not see his face, but she knew that he too was trying to understand that strange text as he shuddered to a climax as satisfying as her own.

They lay quietly together without moving for a few minutes, until Spike began to feel a vague sense of unease at the sight of the flickering flames. He shivered a little, kissed the back of Buffy’s neck, and sat up. She rolled over, looking at him with the blank eyes of the nearly asleep. He smiled lovingly, picked her up, and carried her to the bed. She gave a wordless murmur of satisfaction as she curled up amongst the pillows. He climbed in after her and pulled the bedclothes over them. She snuggled down against him, her head pressed against his chest so that the sound of his beating heart could lull her into deep sleep. He wanted to lie awake and savor the moment, but he was asleep almost before she was.

Buffy began to toss and turn under the quilt. To her sleeping self, the bed was suddenly too comfortable and the covers too warm. They were lulling her to inaction when it was her duty to be alert in the darkness. She tossed the quilt aside and rose to a crouch, staring around her with eyes that held cunning and hunger, but were void of rational thought. She crept to the hearth and stared into the flames. The message that had been waiting for millennia now leapt up at her in letters of fire.

“Buffy? Slayer?” Spike’s voice was muffled at first, then anxious as he saw her crouched in front of the fireplace. He came to sit beside her, and his breath hissed in awe and dismay.

Her gaze focused on him, and as he looked into the depths of her golden eyes, he thought he saw at least a shadow of the woman he loved return to the mind of this wild creature. Then she raised her left hand, and he saw the angry red line that crossed the palm. She shook her head, and her hair flowed back like a lion’s mane. She bared her fangs in a smile. “It only looked to them like it was healed. Some secrets are for you and me alone.”

He raised his own hand and saw the twin to her wound. He felt her fingers clasp his, and as their blood mingled, his body shuddered with the impact of the change. He needed no mirror other than her eyes to see what had happened to him; he knew what she saw and what she wanted.

“Tonight is not about the hunt,” she growled. “Tonight, after so many nights alone, I will taste my full of the pleasure I have earned in battle.”

Their wedding night was the first time after all. Nothing they had experienced while in human form could have prepared them for that wild mating. The creatures whose limbs entangled in front of the fire coupled with a passion that was literally inhuman but no less transcendent for that.

She crouched over him, moving her hips from side to side as he thrust deep inside her, reaching a part of her that he had not known existed when they had made love earlier that evening. Those amazing eyes were as yellow as the sun, bright enough to bathe him in light even in the depths of the night. As he came inside her, he knew that she had the power to bring daylight even into the pits of hell, and he was overwhelmed with awe that this incredible creature could love him.

Buffy lay across Spike’s body, her cheek pressed against his chest. She heard his heartbeat slowing to a human rate, and her own beginning to match its rhythm. She drew a gasping breath and began to sob helplessly. She felt him pick her up in his arms and carry her to the bed for the second time that night. He wrapped her in the blankets and held her close to him.

How had she been so arrogant as to assume that she could help him on his path towards humanity, when she had been only hours away from dragging them both into that strange demon world? She shivered in his arms. “I’m sorry, William,” she cried. “I had no idea that would happen, that I could do that to us.”

“Sssh, love,” he said, holding her and stroking her hair. “It’s all right. It was a wild ride, but we’re back from it now, with no harm done.”

“No harm? We, we changed. We changed into--” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“Into what? I don’t know for sure. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever experienced before.”

“It wasn’t?” She stared at him in sudden hope.

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t. It was nothing like being a vampire, Buffy. It was the wildest rush I’ve ever experienced, though. Scary as hell, too.”

“We were demons.”

He shrugged. “Lots of things are demons, and not all of them are evil. Whatever I became just now, it wasn’t evil. It wasn’t exactly a candidate for a contemplative order, either. But we knew that, Buffy. Whatever we get our strength from, it’s not entirely housebroken. Holding the leash is our job.”

“The leash was off just now.”

“Was it? Look around you. Nothing went wrong. We didn’t hurt each other or anyone else, Buffy. It seems to me that our other selves were just out for a good time tonight.”

“And they certainly succeeded at that.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t think we should make a habit of it.” His hands gently stroked her hair and the back of her neck until her breathing stilled and she stopped shivering. Eventually, they both slept again.

In the morning, it was Buffy who stirred first. She sat up, moving away from the warmth of Spike’s body with a conscious effort. Her eyes turned toward the window. She stood up and went to draw the curtains, staring out into the darkness.

“You sense it too,” said Spike’s voice from the bed.

She turned around to stare at him. “The sun. I can feel the dawn coming.” Her voice cracked a little.

He held out his hand, and she returned to the bed to take it. Her eyes were drawn unwillingly to the window.

Spike said gently, “It’s important to the hunter as well as to the hunted. We feel it, but we don’t need to fear it.”

“No, I don’t fear it,” she said. “Although sometimes I’m jealous of the way it calls you. You run to it every morning instead of staying with me.”

“I won’t, not any more.”

“No, William, you mustn’t stop because of me. If it’s something you need to do, then you should watch each sunrise and savor it. Your life can’t just be about me anymore. We learned that lesson already.”

He nodded, but he made no move to get up. “All right. But not today, love. This morning I stay with you.” He smiled at the window, where a faint rose color was beginning to push its way through the darkness. “‘Busy old fool, unruly Sun,’” he murmured. “‘Why dost thou thus, through windows, and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?’”

Buffy smiled. “I like that. Who wrote it?”

“A much better poet than I could ever be.”

“But not, I’m sure, a better lover.”

“I think he must have known a thing or two.”

“Well, you do much higher mathematics than that.” She gasped with laughter as he grabbed her and they rolled over on the bed, pushing the sheets and blankets aside as they kissed. A shaft of sunlight worked its way through the window to the bed, warming their naked bodies.

Her passion increased as the room lightened, as she felt her body stroked and stimulated by Spike’s hands and lips and the touch of the sun. She had some faint understanding now of why he went outside to greet the dawn each day. The heat that she had always taken for granted was now revealed as a gift of life and a sign of freedom from the terrors of the darkness. Each dawn was their temporary release from fear and duty, a chance for laughter and renewal.

Later, bathing in the full light of day, Buffy rested with her head on Spike’s chest, listening to his heartbeat and musing on his matter-of-fact attitude to the events of the previous night. Perhaps he was well prepared to adapt to his new life, after all. His experience as a vampire had given him a perspective she could not have. He knew what it felt like to be evil and out of control, and he was sure that what happened to them was not taking them down that dark road. She was suddenly sure that he could give her the confidence she needed to face what she really was, just as he had already forced her to face the challenges of living after she had returned from the dead. What could she give him in return?

Perhaps she needed to give him the confidence to face himself, even if it meant breaking into his self-imposed silences. She sat up, meeting his eyes. “What was it like?” she asked “Being a vampire? You said it wasn’t like what happened last night. What was it like, then?”

He was so startled he answered quickly, and she realized, honestly. “Quiet,” he said.

“Quiet?”

“Inside my head. When you’re a vampire, your heart doesn’t beat, so you don’t hear the rushing of your blood through your body. Humans think that they don’t either, but they’re just not paying attention. It’s there. When you’re a vamp, it’s deadly quiet. Deadly, eternal, unchanging emptiness.” He paused a moment, then quoted, “‘For I am every dead thing in whom love has wrought new alchemy. . . I am re-begot of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.’”

She shivered, wishing she could wipe that recollection from his mind. Again, she wondered just how his memory of his vampire life worked. It was so rare to hear him speak of it with passion, as he had just now. Most of the time he seemed emotionally detached from it. “Those poems,” she asked, “when did you learn them?”

“Long ago,” he said. “They meant nothing to me at the time. I thought then that life and death were separate, and that I could understand love without knowing what it was to hate. Now I know that one thing is the absence of the other, and you can’t really taste life until you’ve drunk the bitterness of the void.”

Buffy pondered this statement. Did he feel little about his vampire existence because to him it was a wasteland empty of everything, even true emotion? Had the passions that had moved him then disintegrated into ashes? And were the crimes he had committed insubstantial shadows in his memory? Buffy ran her hands over his shoulders and arms, noting where his once deathly pale skin was now tanned by the warmth of the sun. He has been marked by this new life, she thought. He has accepted the changes that his transformation forced on him. I forced those changes on him to keep him with me. Why did I imagine that I could do that without paying a price myself? Why should I be surprised that now I am marked as well?

She shook her head, her long blonde locks shivering like a lion’s mane as she pushed her worries about her own nature to the back of her mind. She still felt that this creature lying beside her was a puzzle she needed to solve. This was not the first transformation Spike had undergone. She could still see the shadow of the vampire in her lover. Where was the shadow of the man?

“That boy,” she said. “The one who read those poems and didn’t understand them. What would he say if he were here now?”

Apparently she had finally found a way to phrase a question about his first human life so that he would answer. “Ah, love, he would be speechless. That poor little sod never did more than imagine that he could hold a vision like you in his arms. He wouldn’t have the least idea what to say—or do.”

“Or do?” She started to laugh. “No idea at all? Do you mean, I’d have to show him?”

He started to laugh too. “Yeah, love, you’d have to lead him by the, er—hand.”

“Now, that might be fun,” she murmured. “Let me see, where would I begin—”

As Buffy pushed him down on the bed, she thought that this was more than just a silly game; it was a step that she had helped him take on the road back to humanity. Oddly enough, this step did not seem incompatible with that strange trip that they had taken together in the shadows of the night. She wondered if it was her destiny to teach him to walk in the sun and his to teach her to see in the darkness.

Spike closed his eyes for a moment, letting Buffy’s hands roam over him. He could feel the warmth of the sun over their bodies, soothing and stimulating at the same time. His eyelids fluttered. He looked up slowly, meeting the bright day and Buffy’s sunny smile. For once, his pleasure wasn’t overshadowed by any sense of his own unworthiness, and the smile he gave her in return was delightfully effortless. He had the odd sensation that he was traveling home.

I miss the forest shade that took me there,

The promise I made never to leave the dark so dear, safe, soothing,

Yet I fear, as I recall and now reflect,

I see it’s safer to connect

To the daylight.

In my mind, there’s a corner I need to turn,

Lesson lived is a lesson learned

In the daylight.

Daylight is from Alison Krauss’ New Favorite album. I found it and started this fic before they used another one of her songs in Entropy, so I actually feel ahead of the curve musically for once. Trust me, this will never happen again. I transcribed it, so some of the lyrics may be wrong.

Most of the poetry is by the sublime John Donne, a very sexy dead guy. Check out his work at http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/donnebib.htm

Chapter 11: Father Figure

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