Lost Memories

With his hands gripping her back and his tongue doing wonderful things to her mouth she wondered how she had ever let this man go. She started to slip into that daze that he had always seemed to be able to create for her. Then she remembered that she still hadn’t said anything that she needed to say. This was good, great even, she most certainly wanted to do more of this, but she had to clear the air first. She didn’t want another taste of what he could offer only to have him jerk it back. She pulled away from him and his disappointment was vocalized in the form of a growl. The kind of growl that shot straight to her center, almost causing her to dive back in for more. But no this couldn’t wait.

“Spike, just slow down for a minute, remember the talking thing?” he interrupted her with what was promising to been a very convincing argument - who could say no to Spike lips? - but she was determined.

“Look, we can continue this, and I promise if you don’t kick me out when we’re done talking, we will continue this. We’ll do this and so much more, for as long as you want. But, I need to do the talking thing first, ok?”

“Bloody hell, Willow, I’ve already told you that nothing could make me turn you away. I’ve wanted this for so long, needed you for so long, can’t we do this first? Then we’ll talk, once we’ve gotten reacquainted with each other, once we’re both good and satisfied. I can tell you want me, can smell it, and I sure as hell want you, so, shagging first, talking second.” He started to kiss her again, but found himself unable to move, couldn’t even twitch a soddin’ finger.

“Now you’re wondering why you can’t move, right? Well, mainly it’s because I don’t want you to move. Pretty impressive, huh? See, I told you we needed to talk. Here’s the thing, if you kiss me again, I’ll give in. We’ll fall in that bed over there and I imagine it’ll be a few days before we come up for air. Why am I telling you this? Because I’m going to give you a choice, in just a minute I’m going to let you go and you can do whatever you want, ok?”

She took a step back from him and almost laughed at the picture he made. He was standing in the middle of the room holding an invisible body that he was all puckered up to kiss. She didn’t laugh though, because she was still fighting the urge to fill that space in front of him again, release her hold on him, and allow him to have his wicked way with her. So not a good idea.

“But, before I let you go, you should know what I what and what I need. What I want is for you to throw me on that bed and for us to spend the next few hours ravishing each other. What I need however, is for you to take a step back and listen to what I have to say. Then you can decide where we should go from there.”

She ran a finger down his spine, then stepped back again just as his arms fell to his sides. He took an almost endless breath, then made his way to the chair beside the dresser. Slowly, he sank into it and held his head in his hands.

“Point made, Red. Now talk, but do it fast or so help me………….”

“Hey, Willow Rosenberg here, babble extraordinaire, just sit back and try to keep up. Oh, and if you have any questions, jump in at any time.” He nodded his assent so she began.

“Ok, so I did that spell right, and I lost my memories of you, of us, one at a time. I fell asleep just as I was wondering why I’d even cast a spell to begin with. When I woke up, it was all gone, but I felt different, of course I didn’t realize it at the time, then I thought I was just missing Tara more than normal. She came back the next night, but I still didn’t feel whole. There was this whole part of me that was just gone. I was missing you, but I didn’t know that I was. Did you know that after you came back I used to come to the door of the basement almost every night?”

He nodded, but didn’t elaborate, so she continued.

“I’d just stand there, trying to build up the courage to knock. We were both so hurt and I thought that was why I kept wanting to run to you. I thought we might be able to understand each other better than anyone else could, and I was right, but not only for the reasons I thought. Obviously I never did come down there, but I wanted to so badly. Then, the day you died? Goddess I wanted to rip the world apart again to find you, bring you back. But something in me had shifted as I did that spell and I was able to control my urges. The pain of losing you was so much worse than it had been to lose Tara, but I still wasn’t sure why.”

It hurt to know he’d caused her so much agony, even if he had done it to save her, to save them all. Her voice was cracking and the pain she’d felt was evident in every word. He wanted to hold her. He leaned back in the chair a little more and motioned for her to sit on his lap. She gave him a small smile and shook her head.

“In a few minutes ok? I need to get this all out and I might get distracted if I’m touching you. So anyway, after that everything came back. Not all at once, it started with dreams that I had to fight to recall when I woke up. I knew right from the start that it wasn’t just my grief, every time I slept, you were there and it was always so real. So I knew what I’d done before I ever even remembered exactly what had happened. I woke up one night and everything just fell into place and I was finally able to make sense of everything I’d felt before and after your death. It hurt Spike, it hurt so much. Losing you was bad, but the worst part was knowing that I’d pushed you away, knowing that I’d wasted all that time we could’ve had together. The next day I got up and finally had the talk with Kennedy. I had been putting it off for a while, but then I knew that I just couldn’t keep pretending with her.”

Missing him while she was with Tara, pretending with Kennedy, surely she couldn’t be implying that she felt more for him than she had either of them? No, that couldn’t be it, no one that he’d felt this way about felt the same way about him.

“She was great about it, said she understood, said she’d been feeling the same way. So she packed up and left. It was just a couple weeks after that when Andrew slipped up and told me you were back. You know pretty much everything from there. OH, except how I found you. That’s important too, or at least a little. Do you remember the rose from that last night? Well I saved it, wrapped it in a sandwich bag and slipped it inside a spell book before I fell asleep. I came across it several times afterward, but I could never quite place where I’d gotten it. I knew it meant something to me, else I’d have thrown it out instead of saving it. And lo and behold, when I needed something connected to you in order to find you, TA-DA, there it was.”

Ok, so she’d brought him up to date, but there’d been nothing in there that was bad, nothing that even she could think would make him not want her. So, there had to be more.

“That’s not all is it, Red? Come on, let’s have it.”

She’d been pretty calm through all of that, but that had been the easy part. Now she had to tell him the parts that would probably piss him off and scare the hell out of him.

“Yeah there’s more, I’m just not sure which to tell you first. I mean, I need to tell you why I did this to us in the first place, but I’m not sure if that should come before or after I tell you what’s going to make you hate me.”

“I could never hate you, pet.” She looked into his eyes and saw the truth there, she also saw other things. Things that resembled certain things that she was feeling. So she threw caution to the wind and let everything pour out.