When Harry Met Buffy

When Harry Met Buffy - Chapter Four

Notes: This is going to be a difficult chapter to cover. A) because of the Buffy/Harry thing which I still don´t wanna be liking and B) because of their secret identities to one another not being quite so secret. Gah. How to do this without making it seem like they´re bragging...gah...

Plus, they still have to survive :D *plots to kill everyone!* Muahaha!

________________________________

They gaped at each other.

"You...you snuck out. I was worried..." Harry felt like his face was on fire and took a step back. What had he been thinking? Why had he been stupid enough to let himself get seen with his wand?

Daft question.

He had thought Buffy was in trouble.

He couldn´t stand the thought of her being hurt and managed to get himself attacked by a couple of vampires in the process of trying to save her.

And yet, here she was: tiny; blonde; mussed; beautiful: beating some demon arses into submission with what he recognised as a stake and a dagger, a fire in her eyes making him wonder how he could ever have even entertained the notion that she was an average, normal girl.

A smile lit up her face. "You were worried about me?"

"Er...well..." A ice-cold hand locked around Harry´s neck and, caught off-guard, he was jerked back by one of the two remaining vampires, whipped around to face an attack from the other before Buffy could move.

A yell escaped him as he was launched across the yard by an almighty kick to the centre of his chest. He hit the side of one of the mausoleums with a sickening crunch and dropped to the ground, inert.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Buffy felt like her stomach had plunged to her shoes at the sight of her dark-haired friend´s limp body dropping out of her line of sight and she started forwards, only to be blocked by the two younger vampires.

"Harry!"

There was no way he could have survived the impact.

No way...

She felt the sting of tears in her eyes.

No. Not Harry.

He couldn´t be dead...

Especially not killed by Spike´s puny little band of minions.

Drawing rasping breaths, she launched herself at the two demons, managing to stab her stake through the throat, then heart of one, before the second kicked her and sent her stumbling backwards.

"Newest boy-toy, ducks?" Spike sneered from close behind Buffy, his freezing hands coming down to squeeze her shoulders painfully hard. "Gotta say he didn´t last very long, did he?"

"You bastard!"

Gold eyes glittered cruelly. "What´s this?" he drawled, blocking the furious punches and kicks that the Slayer was launching at him. "So attached already?" Buffy started at his words. The vampire´s eyes widened and he laughed. "So that´s it, eh? You fell in love with a little poofter who can´t even last five minutes?"

"Shut up!" Tears of anger and despair blurred her vision and she took a hard blow to the chin, the heel of Spike´s hand driving her head back. One foot caught on a slab of a gravestone and she crashed down on her back.

Dodging the younger vampire, who stabbed down at her with a spar broken from one of the mausoleums, she swung her legs out to kick between his legs, sending him crashing to the ground, as she leapt back onto her feet.

So help her, if Harry wasn´t all right...

"Couldn´t even take a little kick...bet his brains are spilling out all over the grass..."

Rolling onto her feet, Buffy drew herself up coldly, her eyes dark with rage. "You should have left him alone," she growled, her voice low and dangerous, her hands gripping onto her stake and dagger.

"And miss seeing you in `heart-broken´ mode?"

"I´ll kill you Spike, I swear to God..."

"Now we´re talking, Slayer," he smirked at her. "You and me, one on one."

Hazel eyes flashed with fury. "You let me check on him..."

"Like hell I will."

The fight began afresh, Buffy´s sole concern to get to Harry and - as soon as possible - get him to the hospital. She could anticipate Spike´s every blow, her rage focusing in a outflow of hatred towards the vampire in front of her.

How DARE he harm her friend!

How DARE he come near her again!

How DARE he show his face in Sunnydale!

"You were crap, you know, luv," the vampire´s insidious voice whispered in her ear coldly. "You didn´t have a clue...what to do...how to do it...just like you´ve lost your touch now...you´re wrong, ducks. Wrong..."

"And you´re the one who kept coming back for more, fangless," she hissed back at him, crying out in pain as he managed to slip a blow passed her defences and caught across one cheek, one hand jerking up to feel blood on her burst skin.

He smirked, raising his right fist, revealing black gloves with sharp steel studs protruding over the knuckles. "Surprise, luv," he murmured. "I´m not afraid to break that pretty face of yours anymore."

Looking down at her fingertips, stained with warm blood, she looked up to receive a face full of studs, the force of the blow sending her tumbling, shock hitting her like a wrecking ball.

Yes, Spike had been able to hurt her last year, but he never had. Not really.

Now, he had lost all the qualms he had before.

Using the gravestone she had landed against for leverage, she flipped onto it and kicked out with her legs, her feet smacking squarely into the centre of Spike´s chest, but he had anticipated her move, familiar after watching her so often.

His hand jerked and she yelled out in pain as she felt the bone snap. He continued the twist motion, hard and fast, and sent her tumbling on the ground at his feet, his eyes aglow with manic delight.

~~~~~~~~~

He couldn´t believe it.

The Slayer, there, at his mercy, defenceless...

She really must have had it bad for that dark-haired kid who had tried to pick a fight with something out of his control. She had kept shooting looks to the place where he had fallen, as if she wanted to run to him.

Stupid little bint that she was...

Looming over her, Spike grinned widely as she tried to pull back, looking frantically for her stake. It had slipped from her fingers when she had fallen, in the grass and she wouldn´t find it before he did the business.

"Lookie lookie, Slayer," he sneered, bending down towards her. "All brought back down to the level that you came from. Dirt you were and dirt you shall be... Bible... bloody interesting book...smart..."

"Shut up, Spike," she spat, her eyes streaming with tears and burning with pain and anger. Her right ankle was lying at an odd angle, the toe of her boot digging into the dirt beneath her.

"No friends. Where are all your little Scoobies now?"

"Well, I don´t know about them," another voice put in. "But I´m here."

Spike jerked around to see a flash of furious green eyes.

"Lumara solem!"

Brilliant, dazzling light erupted around them, pouring forth from the direction of those burning green eyes and like those emerald eyes, it burned...bloody hell! It burned! It really burned!

"Sunlight," the voice said, strangely calm, but with an underlying note of danger. "I hear it´s a little bad for you."

Spike looked down at himself.

Fire!

He was on fire!

Agony was spreading through him and he started to run, to run and get away from the light that was still blazing, those green eyes, to smother the pain. He heard a strange swishing sound, that of a stick being swept through the air like a whip.

"Vampirus exhime!"

He heard the words cried out from behind him, then nothing...

~~~~~~~~

Leaning heavily against the statue that was looming over Buffy, Harry looked down at her in consternation. "Are you all right?" he asked, his left hand pinning his limp right arm to his side.

They looked to be on even footing in the injuries table.

She had raw cuts open on one side of her face, as well as some scratches and bites on her arms and legs. Bruises were liberally dashed over bare patches of skin and her ankle was clearly in a bad way.

He, on the other hand, seemed to have misplaced a lot of the skin from the right side of his face, blood trickling ticklishly down behind his left ear, his nose bloodied and one eye swollen. His right arm was limp and his ribs felt like they had been whacked with a sledgehammer.

Well, hit with a mausoleum was close enough.

"Yeah...broken ankle..." She looked at the limb, leaning forward to shift the bone back into place, then at him. "No biggie...you?"

Swallowing hard, he drew a breath then released it. His shoulder and upper arm felt like they were on fire and his wand felt strange against his numbing fingertips. "Think I might have a dislocated shoulder...or something broken..." he paused and blinked at her. "And what do you mean `no biggie´? A broken ankle and having your face ripped to shreds are very much... er... `biggie´!"

"I´m not the one who got thrown against a mausoleum," she reminded him, easing herself onto her feet.

"Oh, I´m all right," Harry gave her a faint grin, his hand slipping to the middle of his chest and rubbing the indentation of a shoe there. "I bounce."

"Obviously," she said, wincing and almost falling as she took a step, Harry´s hand coming out to stabilise her. Her eyes went to the stick that had been stuck in the belt of his trousers. "What...what are you?"

"Um...what do you mean?"

"I mean you, pointing a stick and things happening," she answered, nodding to the stick in question. "That wasn´t my imagination. I´ve seen far too many things in this town to know that wasn´t imagination."

"I...I...um...I´m a wizard," he replied awkwardly.

Much to his surprise, Buffy didn´t seem the least bit shocked or surprised by this revelation. "Neat," she replied. "And since I know what you are, I guess its only fair you know what I am, seeing as you´ve told me your dark secret."

"And that is?"

She gave him a nervous smile. "I´m the Slayer."

"The Slayer?" Green eyes rounded.

"Mmm-hmm."

"THE Slayer?"

"Yeah," she answered. "Welcome to the Hellmouth."

Harry felt dizzy.

Very, very dizzy.

"I think," he said, as the ground started rising towards him at a rapid rate. "I need to lie down..."

~~~~~~~~

"You told him?"

His eyes still closed, Harry could hear Xander´s voice grating on his consciousness and he winced, his hard head still aching after it had been rather forcibly connected with the somewhat harder wall of a crypt.

"Are you sure that was a good idea, Buffy?"

Willow.

What was Willow doing in a cemetery?

Or Xander for that matter?

And why was the ground so soft underneath him and why did he smell antiseptic lotion and why was someone sponging the rather painful bump on his head with something cold and wet?

"He saved my life," Buffy´s quiet voice spoke, closest to him. She sounded tired and very concerned. "He ran in on a fight I was having and they almost killed him, but he saved me, okay?"

"He did...?"

"Spike was about to kill me."

"Spike´s back?" Xander sounded angry.

There was a weary sigh from the Slayer. "Spike´s gone. Permanently this time. Harry dusted him."

"Harry...?" Willow sounded incredulous.

"Harry. He who lies beside me. He killed Spike and saved my life."

"But he..." Xander sounded equally stunned. "He...doesn´t know about vampires."

Buffy´s soft laugh almost succeeded in making Harry smile. "He does," she replied quietly. "He knows more than we guessed he knew. He teaches kids how to defend themselves the kind of things that I fight. I´ll explain later."

Xander and Willow both fell silent.

Wincing as his nurse sponged a cut on his right temple, Harry reluctantly forced his eyes open, the bright light of the room making him squint, his vision out of focus, his head ache intensifying.

"Harry," Buffy´s blurred face swam into his line of sight. "Harry?"

"Ow," he mumbled.

"I´ll say," she replied softly, stroking damp hair back from his forehead, her fingers so gentle. He wanted to smile, but even that felt like it would make his face break if he tried. "How do you feel?"

"Ditto above," he groaned, as the feeling started to return to his whole body. "Ow..."

"You´ll be okay, Harry," Buffy´s voice reached his ears, but his vision still seemed strangely hazy. "We got you back to the house and Willow helped me to patch you up a bit. You just need to rest, okay?"

"Unless he has a concussion. When Giles had one of them, you had to keep him awake, remember..."

"I´ll keep him awake!" Dawn´s voice reached him. Was she there? He hadn´t even noticed where he was lying. As far as he knew, he was on top of a rather comfortable gravestone in the Summers house.

"No, you won´t. You have school tomorrow."

"Well, you have classes and you go out slaying all night! You did it when you were at High School too!"

Harry´s mind vaguely registered this piece of information and added it to the small collection he was rapidly building up in the Buffy-file of his mind, which currently took up ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of his brain.

One.

There was a Vampire Slayer, in whose house he was now resting.

Two.

The Vampire Slayer´s friends and sister apparently knew who she was.

Three.

Sirius was going to LOVE this.

Harry hadn´t just gone and fallen in love.

He´d only gone and fallen in love with the Slayer. A legend. He had argued black was white with his Godfather. He had insisted and repeatedly hunted down evidence that nullified the existence of the Slayer as a myth and nothing more.

And now, he was in love with the one argument he had won over Sirius.

Sometimes, he mused as he listened to the hum of voices around him, life just liked to bite you on the arse when you weren´t looking.

~~~~~~~~

Apparently, he had slept.

It blurred into the timeline somewhere between getting kicked across a cemetery and lying on something soft and warm with Buffy - with a blurry face, which he assumed had something to do with his glasses missing - treating his wounds.

And waking.

That was the unfortunate part.

Waking brought all the pain back to him, full force. Yes, since he was a wizard, he did have a quicker healing ability than most muggles would and he had been injured in the most absurd ways possible, but still! Ouch!

Letting his eyes open slowly, he found a white ceiling above him and a room filled with the warm, golden light of early morning. He also felt something kind of soft and warm pressed against his side.

Tilting his head slightly - he was sure that he heard every bone from his jaw to his sternum crackle with the effort - he found a golden head resting on the pillow next to his. He brought his right hand carefully across his chest, to brush some loose strands of blonde hair back from the sleeping Slayer´s face.

Her eyes snapped open instantly and, once again, he saw the energy and fire in them that he had seen the night before, as she came instantly awake and appeared to assess the situation, the wary fire faded to an affectionate look.

"You´re awake," she said softly, sitting up.

"Apparently," he acknowledged, then realised just what he was lying on. It wasn´t his couch, as he had been so sure it was. It was a bed. And not just any bed. A double bed, which Buffy had apparently shared with him.

He could feel the colour rushing to his face, wondering if this was considered at all inappropriate. Buffy noticed and laughed, as he struggled into a sitting potion against the pillows, his eyes averted.

"Don´t worry," she said playfully, kneeling beside him. "We didn´t do anything of the indecent and kinky," Harry was flooded with relief, which was replaced with... ahem... another emotion, when she added. "Yet."

He didn´t need to be thinking along those lines.

Not now at least.

He had questions, as she no doubt did as well.

"Buffy..."

"Ah, I recognise that tone of voice..." Her hands uncomfortably smoothed down her trousers and she looked down at her splayed fingers. "Its time for the talk, I guess. I haven´t told you enough about me for you to know me properly."

Harry was studying his own bruised arm. "Well, I haven´t exactly been completely honest myself, Buffy," he replied quietly. "I didn´t want you to know, because so many other people do. I didn´t want you to see me as a name like everyone else."

"Huh?"

"My full name is Harry James Potter," he said, wondering how on earth he was going to explain his whole messed-up life to her. "My parents were a witch and a wizard, a good witch and wizard. They were killed by the Darkest Wizard to ever live and yet, when he tried to kill me, I survived and he was blown apart. All I was left with was this," His hand lifted his hair back from his scar. "I´m famous because of it. I was expected to be the saviour of my world, because of a cut on my head that I got when I was only a year old."

Buffy leaned forward, staring intently at the scar. Her small hand rose, her fingertips tracing lightly along the narrow line of red. It was like a spike of delicious heat had jarred through Harry´s body and he jerked with a gasp.

"Oh! I´m sorry!"

"No...no, it´s all right," Harry gasped, wondering what had caused him to react like that. No one ever touched his scar, especially not as gently as she had. No one had ever made him feel like he was on fire before. "It...it sometimes twinges...depends on my mood..."

"A mood scar," Buffy raised her eyes to his face, smiling slightly. "So...I know your basics, time for me to do my part. I´m the Slayer, the Chosen one, which you know already..." A puzzled look crossed her face. "How do you know about the Slayer?"

Harry´s grin was watery as he replied, "I´m a teacher of defence against the dark arts at a wizarding school in Britain. You´re one of the legends that gets referred to in the books we use. Not you personally, but `Slayer comma the´. I didn´t actually believe you existed."

"And now?"

"Now, I saw you kicking the arses of a pack of fledglings and if I hadn´t distracted you, I´m pretty certain you could have taken them on and won. If that doesn´t tell me you´re definitely a Vampire Slayer, nothing would."

Buffy´s lips rose a little, but the smile didn´t reach her eyes. "Well, when you´ve been doing it almost every night since you were fifteen, you do kinda build up some technique," she said, self-depreciatingly.

"Fifteen?" Harry gaped at her. He was in love with a Wonder Woman who had been a wonder woman for nearly seven years.

"Yeah," she smiled again, although it was bittersweet. "Had good friends to help me. No Slayer ever had that before. They kept me going. Kept me alive. Helped me when no one else could. Willow, Xander, Angel, Oz, Kendra, Faith, Tara, Cordelia...so many people. Only three of us are left now. One died. The rest...left."

"We were the same," Harry remarked sadly. "We were very close, my whole class at school. Ron, Hermione, Dean, Seamus, Neville, Parvati, Lavender. Ron, Hermione and I were together from the beginning, but they joined us and now...Seamus and Neville both died, Dean left the wizarding community permanently and the two girls... they left as well, but we still keep in touch occasionally."

"You were all wizards?"

"And witches," Harry nodded.

Buffy looked down at her hands, which were resting in her lap. "Something tells me that we´re going to have a lot to talk about here," she murmured. "But you..." Her eyes came up. "You don´t worship Chaos or sell your soul or anything like that and you´re not a Vengeance demon?"

"Not that I know of...would that be a bad thing?"

Buffy nodded. "Something tells me its going to be a long day with a whole lot of explaining," she said, shifting on the mattress. "We could sit on the couch downstairs if it would be more comfortable..."

"If I managed to move, I don´t think I´d be able to do anything more than fall on my face," Harry said apologetically. "Is...would it be all right if we just stayed here and talked instead?"

"I can do that," she replied, shifting to sit cross-legged beside him. "So...where do we start? You or me?"

Harry shrugged helplessly. "You? And what being a Slayer is about? What kind of things you´ve done...I mean, I´ve read about the killing vampires and demons, but what kind? And how and where and why?"

Buffy smiled slightly. "This could take a while."

"I´ve got all the time you need. I´m not going anywhere."

~~~~~~~~

Evening had come.

People were rattling around downstairs in the Summers house.

However, on the double bed in the largest bedroom in the house, a Vampire Slayer who had saved the world more times than she even dared to count and a Wizard, who had accidentally saved the world more times than he wanted to contemplate were still talking quietly.

They had filled one another in on their very different worlds, their loves, their losses, the battles they had faced. Buffy had found herself crying softly, at the memory of her mother, Harry embracing her.

In return, his shaking references to his parents - to seeing their shadows, hearing their voices from beyond the grave - had almost shattered his resolve to continue to tell his tale.

Buffy had knelt over him and let him cling to her in pained silence, his wounded face pressed against her neck, hot and damp, as he had tried to force down the tears she knew he was on the verge of shedding.

He didn´t want to cry, but he had to, she knew.

Something told him that he was the kind of person to hide his tears, but now...

"You can cry," she had whispered and he had. His arms around her, his bruised body held protectively by her, he had wept, soft and bitter, without saying a word. Her hands brushed over his hair, unable to say anything, but simply holding him.

That had been early afternoon, shortly before Willow had arrived with a new healing potion from the magic shop, where she now helped out the young witch and wizard, whom Giles had sent to take care of it.

The potion had helped, but poor Harry was still a mass of bruises.

However, the pain that his body was no doubt in couldn´t even come close to matching the pain in his green eyes, as he relayed his memories onto the girl who was sitting in front of him.

"I had to fight a friend to save my other friends. I had to injure him to get passed him," he said, sitting up and looking down at his hands. One fingertip traced along a line of cut left from the night before. "The hardest thing I´ve ever had to do was look him in the eyes when he came out of the power of the imperius curse, a curse that means you´re under the control of someone else, and he was bleeding to death because of me. I didn´t mean to hurt him, but I had to save them...all of them. He was looking at me, so trustingly, like he expected me to make everything all right, that I could save him..."

Buffy´s face contorted in shock and remembrance. She could clearly remember the brown eyes, staring at her, confused and full of hope, even heard Angel´s voice as he breathed her name.

"I´ve been there."

Green eyes, full of torment rose to her. "What?"

"I sent the man I loved to Hell. Angel," Her voice was clipped. "The souled vampire. It was when he had lost his soul. I was fighting him. Willow returned his soul, but it was too late. I had to kill him to stop a demon from swallowing the world. He looked at me. Didn´t know what he had done. I...I kissed him. And I...I stabbed him through the chest and sent him to hell."

Harry´s eyes widened into circles, his mouth opening and shutting.

"Shocked, huh?" She gave him a tired look, raising a hand to push her hair back from her pale face. "Which part? The dating a vampire thing? Or the losing soul and having to fight him?"

"Being able to do it," Harry said quietly. "Even though you loved him."

Buffy looked down as one of his hands covered hers. Strangely, the touch felt like sunlight pouring into a darkened room and she managed to smile slightly up at him. "I guess this is a bad time to tell you that I died."

Those green eyes blinked.

"Er...pardon?"

"Me. Dead. Over a year ago."

There was another confused blink.

"Obviously, not so much with the being-dead now, but back then...I was gone for a few months."

"You were...actually dead? As in dead-dead?"

"In a coffin, in the ground, soul in Heaven kinda dead," she affirmed.

"How?"

Buffy shrugged. "Super demon Goddess wanted to kill Dawnie and opened a portal with Dawn´s blood. I beat the Goddess but it was too late to stop the portal. One of us had to die to close the portal and it wasn´t going to be my sister. I jumped. Fell," Her face contorted slightly in pain at the memory. "There was pain...light and pain... then... peace...and then, Willow brought me back with uber-bad magics. Not a good thing, waking up six feet underground."

"Oh..."

A soft, weary laugh escaped the Slayer. "Not really much else you can say to that, is there? `Hey, Harry, come and visit me, a completely normal girl and oh, by the way, I´m a vampire Slayer with a sister who was an interdimensional lock-pick, I´ve died twice, been raised from the dead by a witchy friend who dated a werewolf, been in love with a souled vampire, screwed another vampire, had a commando boyfriend who went for vampire-bite sessions´."

"You haven´t had much luck, have you?"

"Understatement," she agreed, looking down at his hand again. His thumb was moving in circles on the back of her hand and it was definitely a sensation that was of the pleasant. "But hey! You´re still here. You haven´t run screaming."

Harry´s lips lifted in a smile. "Buffy, I´ve been the main target of a Dark Lord my whole life. If you turned out to be him in disguise, I would be long gone, but being involved with a Wonder Woman who has died for love...nothing you can say would scare me away from you."

"I´m actually a man?" she suggested in a small voice, looking down.

"I said," he repeated, his voice soft, as one hand cupped her chin and lifted her face up. She could feel the calluses of his thumb and fingertips against the smooth skin of her cheek. "Nothing. Not even if you were a six-foot-eight Gorilla woman...although I hope you´re not."

Buffy´s lips quirked at one side. "You´re crazy," she said.

"In love. It´s not the same."

"In...love?"

Hesitantly leaning forward, the sofa shifting beneath them, Harry nervously brushed a cautious kiss across her lips. He started to draw back, but a hand caught his shoulder and green met hazel.

"Don´t," she whispered. She was drowning, drowning in those emerald eyes, eyes that held as much pain and loss as she did, eyes that matched her and yet could counterpoint her as well.

"Don´t what?"

Her small hand slid along his shoulder, the brush of her fingers against his neck making him shiver. His dark hair was soft against her fingertips and she stared up at him. "Don´t stop," she breathed, bringing his mouth back down on hers.

She felt his hands draw her closer to him, his touch light, his kiss tentative, as if he expected her to pull back or to push him away.

"I won´t break," she whispered, as they came apart for air, one of her hands wound through his dark hair, her eyes dark with need. "Don´t be afraid to touch me, Harry. I´m not made of glass."

His eyes fell, then returned to hers and he wet his lips with his tongue. "It...it´s been a while since anyone..." He looked down again, a furrow visible in his brow. His voice was strained, shaking. "I...I couldn´t let anyone close..."

She understood.

He´d touched fire and he´d been burnt, just as she had.

"Do you trust me, Harry?" she asked softly.

He nodded immediately. "I do."

"And you love me..." this was said with a slight grin.

Green eyes met hers. "I think I was made to love you, Buffy."

If she hadn´t already been practically in his lap, Buffy knew for a fact that she would have fainted into his arms at those words. She had never heard anything so beautiful or so sincere in her life.

Unable to think of anything more to say, she moved forward until she was pressed against his body and met his lips in another kiss, which made her tremble from the intensity of it all.

She had had intense before. Angel had been intense. Spike had been intense. Riley had been...well, he had been intense in his own way.

But this...this was beyond intense. This was liquid heat, this was fire, fire that didn´t just singe or burn. It was all-consuming and she was willing to let it swallow her alive as long as it didn´t end.

His brilliant eyes closed a heartbeat before hers and she felt his hands sliding over her hips and spreading on her back, his fingertips digging through the thin material of her shirt.

Somehow, she didn´t know how, one of those warm, gentle hands managed to ease beneath her shirt. His skin was dry and warm which was an unfamiliar sensation to say the least, a little rough, but the moment his fingertips skimmed against her back, she arched back with a gasp.

Her chest pressed against his and she heard him yelp in pain.

"Oh crap..."

Harry grinned apologetically at her. "Sorry."

"Does it hurt bad?" she asked, her fingers nimbly undoing the buttons down the front of Xander´s shirt, which had been the only piece of clothing they could get a hold of when Buffy had brought him in from the cemetery.

Wincing, he nodded. "A little," he replied, as she eased the shirt down, revealing a thin body still covered with bruises. "Typical," he murmured morosely, looking down at his chest. "The one time I´m sure of wanting to do something, I look like I´ve been used as a punch bag."

"And your point is?" Buffy murmured, shifting and straddling his thighs, a small smile on her lips.

"Um..."

"You don´t need to move," she said, lightly trailing her fingertips down his now-bare chest and making him shiver.

"Are...are you sure about..." his words trailed off into silence as she leaned in and kissed his throat, his head rocking back against the headboard of the bed, eyes going wide then closing. His hands on her back drew her closer. "Oh..."

"Mmm," Buffy agreed bringing her lips back to his.

Not much was left to be said after that.