Author: Zyrya; zyryafic@arcadiae.net
Rating: NC-17; adult themes, adult language, sex scenes, character death.
Summary: An escapist reworking of Crush (Season 5).
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon and assorted companies. Some dialogue and scenes in Part I are taken from Crush, written by David Fury and directed by Daniel Attias.
Notes:This is a first person, present tense, Buffy POV narrative, so the writing style is intentionally rambling. Expect tormented grammar, run-on sentences galore and a criminal abuse of punctuation. I've invented a lower level bedroom in Spike's crypt that wasn't there until Season 6, sent Harmony packing, and cast the most dreadful aspersions on Riley's sexual prowess.
Sunday morning.
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"You're squashing me," I murmur.
He rolls us over and stretches luxuriously with a satisfied grunt. I lie draped on top, and can't stop looking at him and touching him. Spike makes little humming noises as I trace circles on his skin with my fingertips, and he strokes my back and we nearly fall asleep.
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"I'm cold," I whisper.
He pulls the quilt over us and we lazily play with each other's hair and speckle each other with kisses. I'm getting a crick in my neck, so I slither off him and he cradles me against his chest and we do fall asleep.
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"I'm starving," I complain.
"Are you always this high maintenance?"
I disentangle our arms and legs. "Says the man who lived with Harmony? You can't tell me I'm even a hundredth of the work."
"She had her charms," he leers, wrestling to re-entangle us.
What's worse ... impersonating Harmony, or passing up an opportunity to tease Spike?
"Oh, Blondie Bear, take me to France!"
Spike tickles me until I really really have to pee.
"How's the walking going now?" he laughs as I wobble to the makeshift bathroom in my sheet sarong, half asleep and barely able to co-ordinate my limbs.
"Don't watch."
"Like I'd want to!"
Would he? Oh god, probably. I know he's doing either the thing with his eyebrows or the thing with his tongue, but I'm concentrating on walking without falling over, and I succeed until I'm back in the bedroom. I trip over his damn boot and land on the edge of the bed and sprawl awkwardly to the floor. He looks down at me and does both the eyebrows thing and the tongue thing simultaneously.
"I'm glad you find me so amusing," I huff as I climb onto the bed and sink back into his arms.
Spike unwraps me from the sheet. "I find you all sorts of things."
"Like what?"
"Buffy," he says like he's going to change the subject.
"No, you have to tell me. You have to make a list of every single thing you 'find' about me and I get to argue your points and you have to defend me against me."
"What did I do to deserve this?'' he whines.
"I endured the Spike Sex Survey nightmare!"
"And, if you recall correctly, you were amply rewarded!" He captures my face and kisses me soundly.
I look up at him and smile blearily. "You're amazing."
"Too bloody right," he says, with the inevitable smirk, and kisses me again.
"But you have to feed me. Do you have anything other than blood and booze? It must be morning and I want breakfast."
"That's what I've been trying to tell you. Sun's up. You need to get home."
"You want me to go?"
Spike holds me very tightly. "No, of course not. But you should," he says with regret.
"But, unfortunately, I can't keep my hands off you, so you're stuck with me." I demonstrate the magnetised hands problem. Also the magnetised lips problem.
"Joyce will be worried."
"Do we have to talk about my mother right now? There's a name for that, you know. I learned it in Psych." I nose in his armpit to tickle him. "And since when are you Responsible Guy? Oh, my god! You're turning into Giles!" I gasp in mock horror and make a hex warding gesture.
Spike snares my hands and kisses my knuckles. "Buffy."
I rest my chin on his chest and blink rapidly at him. "That's Morse code for 'shut up and kiss me'."
"Is not."
"Do you even know Morse code?"
"Course."
"Show me. Do 'shut up and kiss me'."
So he does, and I kiss him all over and decide to learn Morse code so I won't have to answer out loud next time he asks an embarrassing sex question.
"You're making this very difficult," he says fiercely.
He's trying to do the right thing, like when he didn't bite me. And I'm testing him. Again. How much control does he have? What will happen when the limit is reached? Poke poke poke.
"If you want to kick me out, I'm going to make it as difficult as I can. I'm aiming for impossible."
"You're already at impossible," he mutters, threading his fingers through my hair and rolling on top of me.
I hook my ankles around his waist. "Good. I get to stay."
"They'll be mustering a search party by now. And stop pretending I want you to go, because you bloody know how much I want you to stay with me!"
I've been toying with him because I want to punish him for chaining me up last night and for stealing my stuff, and because teasing Spike is just too much fun, but he looks like he's going to throw me out if I don't move things along. I lower my feet to the bed and stroke his shoulders.
"It really is okay. I left Mom a note. And I made a copy for you as a present."
He smacks my ass as I stand up to get his copy of the letter from my jeans pocket. He holds out his hand to take it, but I keep it away from him and pull the sheet around myself and sit cross-legged at the bottom of the bed.
"No, I'm gonna read it to you. And don't sulk, because it's a good note and you'll like it."
He lies back on the bed, all tangled up in the quilt with his arms folded on his chest, and power-sulks. He probably won't concentrate as much as he should if I keep stroking his legs and feet, but I can't be this near and not touch him. Even his toes are pretty.
"Dear Mom, I went to Spike's last night to discuss things with him like you and Willow told me to." I look at Spike and pat his knee. "They said I had to make sure you knew I wasn't interested in you. Mom thought I must have been unconsciously leading you on."
He makes his left hand into a fist and sticks out his little finger. "Your grammar is for shit and how you pass any subject at that university is a mystery."
Oh, really. I lift my chin in defiance and stare him down. But he doesn't stay down, because he started with 'one' which means there's more coming, and ... ooh maybe he's going to do his Five Words Or Less routine which makes my pulse race.
The ring finger shoots out. "I can't believe you discussed me with the witch, she's been prejudiced against me for years."
"Because you so endearingly kidnapped her and held a broken bottle to her face, and tried to kill her at least twice, and threatened to turn her, and she has some issues with you. Willow offered to come with me last night and do back-up scowling."
"Scowling's the least of her arsenal," he grumbles. "Bloody witches."
"My plan was to avoid you and my second plan was to stake you, so really you owe them a big favour."
Spike's middle finger stabs the air accusingly. "You didn't come here last night to discuss things, you came here to yell at me and stomp out again without listening to me at all."
"That's true," I nod.
He sticks out his index finger. "You've been leading me on since the night we met!"
"I think that might be true, too, but you can hardly complain about it now that it's been so gloriously consummated," I point out mildly.
He glowers at me, which only makes me laugh so he glowers some more.
"What's five?"
He pokes his thumb in my leg. "Bitch."
I fall on him, careful to keep the letter out of his reach, and kiss his legs deliriously. "That was the coolest thing ever!"
"You're deranged."
"You made me this way, you have to suffer the consequences. Want to hear the rest of the note?"
"No."
"Sure you do." I wrestle the quilt off him and wrap it around myself.
"Hey!"
"You don't feel the cold. Lie there naked and let me look at your sublime body."
He reclines smugly, rubbing his feet against my legs and forgetting to sulk. I almost forget about the note because I'm ogling Spike and dementedly making a list of adjectives to embellish 'sublime' as he flaunts and flexes, but the rustle of paper between my fingers brings me back to my purpose. I swallow a few times to compose my voice, and restrict my field of vision to my handwriting.
"He and I talked for a long time .... See, I left out the parts with the chains and the cattle-prod in case Mom gets all 'prejudiced' about you."
Spike grumbles inarticulately.
"He and I talked for a long time, and now I know I was wrong when I said it's just a weird Spike thing and it'll blow over. You'll like the next bit," I say quickly because he's not at all happy about that last one. "And that's foreshadowing, so shut up about my academic achievements. He really is in love with me." I smile, and bend over to kiss his toes.
"Yes, I really am." Spike's face and voice are carefully neutral, but his body is taut.
"I'm going there again tonight because Spike and I need to talk more, and I know you won't be pleased but I think I'll be there all day tomorrow, too. But I'll come home and face the music soon, and you can fetch me earlier if there's an emergency. You see? I can stay today."
"Joyce will be here in five minutes to decapitate me."
"Please don't come over to the crypt with an axe," I read, laughing.
He covers a smile with more frowning. "'Face the music' is a terrible cliche."
"I tell you we can have all day alone together and I get an English report card? I wrote it in a hurry so I could be with you."
"Why?"
"Do you want to hear the rest of the note?"
"There's more?"
"That's what 'rest of the note' means. Want me to continue?"
"Does it improve any?" he asks acidly.
Maybe I've exacted enough revenge for the chains now, and maybe I don't care so much for vengeance when Spike's body telegraphs 'I don't care what she wrote one way or the other' but his eyes are more than half waiting for me to say something horrible. That's the thing about revenge ... it's not enough until it's too much.
"Also, please don't tell anyone else about this, especially Dawn, because I want to tell them myself and I don't know exactly what to tell them yet because Spike and I need to talk about our relationship."
Spike relaxes a little. "We have a relationship? What sort of relationship?"
"I'll explain everything when I get home. All I know right now is that I'm falling in love with him. The end," I add, as his cue to take me in his arms and shower me with romance novel hero type kisses.
Spike snatches the paper from me, reads it, and stalks across the room to put it in his coat pocket. He takes out his cigarettes and looks at them for a moment, but changes his mind and saunters back again. He tumbles me up the bed and lies on top of me, mashing me into the mattress.
"Tell me," he commands.
"I'm in love with you." And it would be very romantic if it didn't come out in a squashed wheeze.
"Why didn't you just say it in the beginning? Why the fucking torture?" he howls.
I push him back a bit so I can breathe. Also so I can fondle his chest. "At least I didn't electrocute you! Besides, I gave you a choice. We could be playing Things I Find About Buffy, but no, you had to be all responsible and try to make me go home, and ... "
Spike is finally kissing me, possibly just to make me shut up, but it's a fabulous kiss all the same and I moan into his mouth and try to get the quilt out from between us.
"It's the sex," he says flatly, eyes glittering and dark. "Five hours straight is too much for you. Have to cut down."
"The sex is unbelievable and there will be no cutting down! I wrote the note when I was at home last night. After some kissing, but before the sex. Although the kissing helped me sort things out in my head. Do you secrete a hypnotic drug in your mouth?"
Spike smothers a smile. "It's a spell. Red did a spell." He sits up and does his impersonation of Dracula's thrall gesture.
"A spell to make me fall in love with you? That's so last year. Red needs to get her act together."
"Something in the tunnel got at you while you weren't paying attention." Spike nibbles my ankle.
I stand on the bed and unfurl the quilt and sheet, and turn around so he can inspect every naked inch of me. "Where did it get me? And you really should have warned me about that orgasm, because I almost fell in the water."
"It's a game. You know Miss Sibling Rivalry has a thing for me."
He's grinning now, and these absurd theories are his playful revenge for my revenge for the chains. I'm not sure if I mind this spiral of vengeance, though. It seems to involve a lot of kissing.
I straddle his waist and hold both his hands. "I'm going to have some fun breaking the news to the Scoobies, but it isn't a game and it isn't a spell. I love you."
"I love you, too," he replies, and I revel in his words and his smile and his blue, blue eyes ... until he starts complaining again. "Hey! You told your mum before you told me."
"She won't have read it yet. Sunday is her morning for sleeping in, no daughters before nine o'clock on pain of extreme crankyness. And even then, we have to provide waffles. Speaking of waffles ... "
"You're going to tell people? Your friends?"
"Not today, but yeah. Soon. Otherwise our relationship will be like some dirty secret and I don't want that."
Spike nearly crushes me in his arms. "What sort of relationship?"
One with constant talking, apparently. "I don't know," I say honestly, loosening his grip a little. "Relationships don't just arrive in the mail. So far ours consists of being mortal enemies for quite a long time, and then a confusing part, and now this. You're asking the wrong person, you know. My track record sucks."
"What do you want?"
"For breakfast?"
Spike knees me in the back. "For us, you cow!"
I'm so not going to be interrogated again about what I want, even if it did end well the first time.
"You know something? My whole life is planning for the future ... for school and slaying, the Scoobies, the next apocalypse ... and I'm not so hot with the plans lately. I don't have a strategy. Let's just love each other and make it up as we go along."
"You like this? What we have right now, this morning?" Spike hesitates a fraction. "Together?"
"I love this. I love together."
"Then we'll start with this."
"And here," I interrupt the kiss blizzard and lean back on his thighs, ignoring his erection to lick his belly, "is still my favourite part of you." I raise my face to look at him, worried. "I hope all the sex isn't going to work off your fat."
"We have a lot of talking to do. Starting with your hallucination of fat and your obsession with my stomach. You're worse than Harris's piece of fluff, I'll have you know. At least she gets body parts in the right order."
I slide into his arms. "We have all day to talk, if that's what you really want to do." I experiment with a leer of my own. "But first I want food and you have to play the Things I Find About Buffy game."
"Bloody well won't."
"So it's straight to the shagging, pet?" I ask in the most atrocious imitation of his accent, and he lightly pulls my hair.
"You're insatiable."
"Make me scream, make me sore. Make me swoon!"
Spike sighs dramatically, already nibbling my earlobe and running his hands along my sides. "What's behind door number three?"
"There is no door number three," I mumble woozily into his chest. "You only get two choices."
"There's always a door number three. It's in the constitution."
"Make love to me and I'll tell you." I stroke the back of his neck and pull his face to mine.
"Tell me, or I'll stop." And he does.
I try to pull his arms around me again. "You bastard! What happened to drowning in me?"
"What's behind door number three?" he laughs, reaching down to tickle behind my knees, and I writhe on top of him.
"We go to Xander's house and give him a nervous breakdown."
"You're a useful sort to have around," he muses. "Train you up a bit, show you the right moves. Could be fun having you as a minion."
"A wha ... a min .... A minion! Where did you put those chains?"
"Sidekick?" Spike fends off my blows.
"Partner!"
The END