TITLE: Not by His Hand
AUTHOR: Aurora
SPOILERS: 'Dead Things'
SUMMARY: Ficlet.  Post-'Dead Things' Spike muse of sorts.
RATING: PG-13/R, hell if I know.
DISTRIBUTION: It's a short-un, if you want it send a shout my way.
FEEDBACK: always!  girl292@hotmail.com
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I know it's short, it's the result of a quick improv writing 
exercise to try and get beyond this strange bout of writer's block that came 
to visit uninvited.
**

**
Not by His Hand
by Aurora
**

Spike leans casually against the tree, attention trained solely on the scene 
playing out in the warm light leaking from the living room window. Watches, 
with the one eye that's not swelled completely shut, as Buffy's face shifts 
from shock, to horror, to shame and then... pain.

Pain.

He can bloody well smell the pain. Drowning out the tang of the smoke in his 
lungs, filling him with need. Want. Lust. Coating his tongue with the 
familiar taste of it, soothing like the blood still seeping lazily from his 
split lip.

He watches as she cracks, tears sliding past her Slayer resolve, body 
trembling as she keels forward into the waiting arms of the blonde witch.

Forgets all else save for the echo of her fist slamming into his face. The 
terror surfacing in the rage of her words.

(I'll ((smack)) never ((crack)) be ((slap)) your ((crunch)) girl.)

Watches the girl fall to pieces on her own.

Falling to bits and pieces of broken Buffy, but... Not. By. His. Hand.

Shielded gaze stares off into the silence, letting his cigarette burn down 
to the butt and beyond, the fiery center scorching the flesh of his 
fingertips and still he doesn't flinch.

Didn't flinch then. When she split his skin and poured her pain into replace 
the blood spreading from his wounds to cover the rain-slicked surface of 
street.

Won't flinch now.

**
end