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Barb
Buffy burrowed deeper
into the covers, hugging her pillow, the sensations of waking muddled up with
the fading dream... memory? Arms tightening convulsively around her,
strong enough for her to feel it, strong enough that the pressure of her
own embrace elicited a growl of pleasure instead of a wince of pain. A
stir of realization: I don't have to hold back. Cool moist velvet
of his tongue against hers, deft nervous hands roving along her sides, her back,
pulling her closer, never close enough. Scenting her desire, his growl
going from contented purr to something savage, primal, dangerous. Deep in
her belly a molten internal pulse ignited in response...
She woke with a gasp.
Morning sun slanted through her windows, drawing trails of light across the
bedspread. She heard voices downstairs, smelled coffee brewing--or
reconstituting, or whatever you called it when hot water hit Folger's
Instant. Maybe someday she'd get up the nerve to experiment with the
coffee maker again. Surely it couldn't be too hard to make it do the
drippy thing instead of the running dry and catching fire thing. Coffee,
coffee, coffee, think about--Spike.
Buffy rolled over with a
groan. She shouldn't be feeling all warm and tingly. Triple plus
ungood. She flung the covers aside with a shiver that had nothing to do
with the nippy fall air, pulled her robe off the bedpost and struggled into
it. Shower. Cold shower. Very cold shower. That worked
for guys, right? Into the bathroom. Brush teeth, stare blearily at
un-made-up morning Buffy-face in mirror. Remember to take off robe before
entering shower.
She almost
leaped right through the closed shower door when the icy spray hit her.
Abandoning her pursuit of asceticism, she frantically twisted the hot water
on. There, that was bearable. Cool, not cold, just like--okay, hot
shower. Very hot shower.
In the unforgiving light of
morning the events of the previous night were surreal. One minute she was
giving a really impressive speech on valuing honesty over kissy-face, and the
next she was scarring Dawn permanently with Slayer Porno Theatre. Not that
Dawn hadn't spied on her and Angel, or her and Riley for that matter, half a
million times, the little perv. But they'd been boyfriends, and Spike
was--Spike. And oh, God, Tara'd seen the whole thing. Both
times. Tara probably doesn't even have baser urges. She's
like a Platonic solid. Or something Greek, anyway. Please let them
all have been eaten by Zagros demons before I come down...
One advantage of waking up
late was that Dawn had already left for school. Maybe if she was lucky
everyone else would be gone, too. An hour later, having determined that
showers of any temperature were not much good for anything besides the removal
of dirt, and after pulling out everything in her closet at least twice in a
futile hunt for something that didn't scream 'I'm having wet dreams about
Spike,' Buffy trotted downstairs in jeans and a peach-colored cowl-necked
sweater, hair wrapped up in a towel and stomach inhabited by a large flock of
butterflies.
Much to her
chagrin, though it was almost ten, Willow and Tara were still in the
kitchen. Didn't they have classes anymore? Her feet slowed, then stopped,
and she stood wavering on tip-toe on the third stair from the bottom, hand on
the railing and ears straining to catch Tara's low, concerned voice.
"...another vampire? No
matter how much help he's been lately, it's only been a year since he was trying
to kill us. Hard to believe it's not some kind of--of vampire fetish."
Willow didn't sound quite
as dire. "Maybe--love the thing you kill, and all? That would be
deeply psychological. But, benefit of the doubt--she told me she
just likes him. And he's saved her life almost as many times as he's tried
to kill her now, which, big plus. Besides, he is wicked cute."
"If you say so." Tara
sounded dubious. "I'm more worried about him being plain wicked. I
know he’s pretty much non-practicing evil at the moment--" A thoughtful
pause. "Cute, really? He's always seemed a little funny-looking to
me. His head's too big for the rest of him. And he's kind of
scrawny."
On the staircase,
Buffy's eyes went green with outrage. Jeez, Tara, I thought you were
gay, not blind. Just because Spike wasn't the poster boy for steroid
abuse... And I do not have a thing for vampires. I'm dogged by
vampires with a thing for me.
Willow snickered.
“Hey, ‘compact yet muscular,’ remember? Just ask Xander.” She went
on, almost regretfully, "I don't think we need to worry. Not like it isn't
doomed anyway, with the ghost of Angel past still looming over her love
life. It messed things up with Riley, it'll mess things up with
Spike. I really feel sorry for the poor guy."
Buffy's fingers tightened
on the bannister; Willow couldn't have come up with a better one-two punch if
she'd practiced for a week. Not going to break it. Can't afford
the carpenter bills. She stomped on the last two steps as loudly as
she could and walked into the kitchen. Willow and Tara were both sitting
at the kitchen table, solemn as a pair of owls, all trace of speculation
vanished. They looked up in unison as she came in. There was a
platter of croissants on the table into which severe incursions had been made,
which hinted that they'd been waiting for her for some time. She flashed
them a jittery little smile. "Hey, guys."
No reply. They'd been
chatty enough when she wasn't there. With an uneasy glance at her
housemates, Buffy went to the refrigerator. She dithered over cherry or
blueberry yogurt for a minute before going for the cherry. She rescued her
favorite coffee mug from the sink and rinsed it off before dumping a generous
teaspoonful of instant coffee into it. She filled it with water and stuck
it in the microwave. "Hola? Wilkommen? Bienvenue?
Willow, how are you feeling?"
Willow's face was shadowed
for a moment and she seemed to shrink in on herself. "I kinda know how you
felt during that Cruciamentum test."
"Well, I'm sure you'll..."
Buffy trailed off. "It's not permanent, right? You just wore
yourself out blowing doors open?"
Willow forced a
smile. "Yeah. All better in no time. But enough about me."
Buffy tried her best to
look blank. She's been doing that so much lately, why couldn't she pull it
up now when she needed it? She felt as if Spike had peeled off a couple of
layers of skin with that kiss, leaving her painfully tender to the touch.
The witches exchanged uncomfy looks. "Buffy," Tara said, "Last night--"
Buffy dropped into a free
chair and buried her face in her hands, peeking out at the two of them between
her fingers. "Isn't it a little too early for last night?" She essayed
another feeble smile. "Guess not. Silly me. First thing we
need to do is like you said, Will, see if we can track down this Tanner guy--who
he was, and how he's doing this, and where he is now. Second thing--"
"We didn't mean that part
of last night," Willow broke in. "More the last part. With the, you
know..."
Buffy sat back and
folded her arms. "Spit-swapping? Block it from your minds. I
have. Stress. It was stress over Willow. Also possibly a side
effect of the inhalation of bourbon fumes."
Tara went as red as
Willow's hair. "Why you did it isn't any of our business," she said.
Willow nodded vigorously in
agreement. "We won't even think about thinking about asking."
The microwave beeped.
Buffy ignored it. "Glad you feel that way. Really not ready to dish
at this precise moment." Lost use of personal pronouns. Very bad
sign.
Tara clasped her
hands on the table in front of her and kept her eyes firmly fixed upon her left
thumbnail. "We just needed--we thought--Buffy, I know you've been, um, I-I
said last year I'd be there if you ever needed to talk about anything, so if you
do, I still am. And Willow too, of course! We--we just want you to
be sure you know what you're getting into."
The silence stretched from
seconds into minutes, until broken by the scrape of Buffy's chair as she got up
to get her now-lukewarm coffee. She sat back down and dunked a croissant
in the mug. "Let's see." She bit the coffee-sodden end off the croissant
and began ticking off points with the remaining pastry. "Spike is a
soulless vampire restrained from killing people only by a piece of government
hardware with an uncertain expiration date, and because he has the hots for
me. If the chip fails, I may have to kill him. If the chip doesn't
fail but he decides he doesn't love me after all, I may have to kill him." She
turned a wide-eyed look on the other two. "That about cover it?"
Willow and Tara did another
synchronized squirm. "Um..."
"It's just..." Willow gave
Tara an agonized look. "Buffy. You know I like Spike as much as
anyone--well, except you of course, since me? so not with the
kissing--but someone's got to say it. How long did it take you to work up
to killing Angelus? How many people died in the meantime?"
Buffy flinched.
Oh, dirty pool, Rosenberg... "It's different," she said. Her throat
had gone dry. "I loved Angel."
Tara looked
skeptical. "And you don't love Spike."
Buffy became deeply
absorbed in unwinding the layers of her croissant. She shrugged.
"No." Not yet. Maybe never. Maybe five minutes from
now. We're running a pool; who wants three PM Friday?
There were things Tara
obviously wanted to say; Buffy could see them bubbling inside her, but Tara
didn't say them. Didn't have to; a small self-critical voice in the back
of her own head had them on repeating loop already. Spike only wants
you because A) he wants to get back at Angel for stealing Dru B) He's obsessed
with Slayers C) There's nothing better on telly D) All of the above. You
only want Spike because A) You've got some sick vampire fetish B) You're an
enormous slut C) The famous Slayer death wish D) All of the above. If by
some outside chance he really does love you, you'll mess it up anyway, just like
you messed up with every single other man you've ever loved. Lather,
rinse, repeat. "Look guys, if I go off the rails and you shove me back
on, I'll thank you later. But right now I'm not even on the train
yet." She pulled the tab off the top of her yogurt and plopped a spoonful
onto the last bite of croissant. "It's just one kiss."
Willow made an apologetic
grimace. "When in one day you go from all 'This can never be!' to wild
passionate vampire kissage on the driveway... I worry, you know? And
not just about you, about Spike too." She leaned forward,
conspiratorial. "So, was he any good? I mean, from the moaning and
slurpy noises I’m guessing yes, but--" Tara cleared her throat and Willow
clapped a hand over her mouth, looking guilty. "Just asking." She
mouthed 'Talk later!' behind Tara's back.
Tara still didn't look
happy. "If you don't have any feelings for Spike, should you be...
encouraging him?"
"I didn't
say no feelings!" Buffy smacked her mug down on the table, sloshing coffee
onto the newspaper. "There are feelings! Lots of feelings!
With Spike there is nothing but feelings! Ow!" She grabbed a
napkin and mopped hot coffee off her front. Now she'd have to change
shirts. "I just don't know which feelings they are." She sighed.
"Look--what I had with Angel... I can never do that again. I've
tried, right? It doesn't work. I don't have that kind of love in me
any more. Trust me, outside of the fact that they're both the same sex and
species, Spike and Angel are as different as night and day, and I could never
feel the same way about Spike."
She stabbed her spoon into
the heart of the yogurt. It was true. As far as it went.
Late Friday afternoon at the
Magic Box. The DeSoto skidded to a stop in front of the shop, and Spike
leaped out of the car, flung a blanket over his head, and dashed across the
sunlit expanse of sidewalk. He yanked the door open so fast he almost
twisted the handle off, and dove inside to the accompaniment of the shop
bell. There was a perfectly good tunnel leading into the Magic Box's
basement, but it meandered, and he'd been in a hurry. He had people--well,
person--well, Buffy--to see, and damned if he was going to let a little sunshine
take him out of his way, at least for the approximately thirty seconds a vampire
his age could take it before starting to smoulder.
Anya was behind the counter
breaking out a few more rolls of quarters for the change drawer of the cash
register, taking the opportunity to fondle the shiny coins while no one was
paying attention. She looked up, took in the arrival of the sun-scorched
vampire, murmured, "If you catch the greeting cards on fire, Spike, you're
paying for them," and went back to her receipts.
"Love you too, pet," Spike
growled, pulling the slightly charred army blanket off his head. He
slouched over to the back of the store, where Rupert Giles sat at the circular
table in the book section of the store, going through the pile of neat,
color-coordinated folders filled with neat, indexed notes in front of him.
He tossed the blanket under the table, and sat down opposite the Watcher.
Neither spoke for a moment. At last Spike said, "You heard?"
Giles took off his
glasses. "It was on the radio this morning. I hardly consider myself
a sentimentalist, but I confess I spent the whole morning listening to Rubber
Soul."
"Bloody
waste." Spike produced a flask from the interior pocket of his duster, and
unscrewed the top. "To George." He tossed back a swallow and handed it to
Giles, who followed suit.
"To George."
"Who?" Anya
asked. "Is this some English ritual I'm not aware of?"
Vampire and Watcher turned
twin gazes of laser death on her, and then Giles shook his head. "Never
mind, Anya. I believe he was before your time. Well." He
glanced at the two cassette tapes beside the pile of folders, and sighed.
"I'd been hoping to go over the last few sessions and clarify a few points, but
it appears that the last few sessions have yet to be transcribed."
Spike made a mock-sorrowful
noise. "Pity, that. Guess we'll be forced to do something
interesting instead."
"Which would naturally preclude your participation," Giles said with champagne
dryness. Spike smirked at him and tucked his flask away again. Move
it along, nothing to see here. Giles adjusted his glasses and gave the
cassettes a severe look. "I must speak to Willow about this. If
she's unable to make time for this project due to her schoolwork, I'll ask the
Council to assign us a secretary." He slid a fresh cassette into the recorder,
hit the play button, and said into the microphone, "Interview with the--I'm
sorry, I can't say it--William the Bloody, a.k.a Spike, conducted by Rupert
Giles on November 30, 2001. Session six." He clicked the pause
button. "I don't suppose I can convince you to give your real surname this
time?"
Spike lazed back in
the chair and folded his arms across his chest, obstinacy in every line of his
body. "You suppose correctly. I told you when we started this, none
of your Council's bloody business who my family was. I'll spill my guts
about whatever you care to hear after 1880, but anything prior to my turning's
off limits. Take it or leave it. And speaking of taking it, I'm not
doing this out of the goodness of my heart." He held out a hand. "Where's
my honorarium?"
Giles
sighed and pulled out his wallet, and counted out five twenties into the
vampire's palm. "Mm. One can but try. Since one of the
purposes of this study is to document the survival of aspects of the host
personality in the post-turning vampire, it would be immensely helpful if we had
some idea of what the human William the Bloody was like."
Spike rolled his
eyes. It had been a little galling to discover just how patchy,
incomplete, and downright inaccurate the Council's dossier on him was--not that
he hadn't started a lot of the contradictory stories himself in the early years
of the twentieth century, when he'd been trying to establish a reputation for
himself apart from Angelus and Darla, but weren't these Council chaps supposed
to be vampire boffins? "All present and accounted for, minus the annoying
consciency bits. If you're all that keen to find out, exercise your
massive brain and--"
"Actually, presuming you gave the correct date for your death, I can have the
Council access Scotland Yard's records for persons discovered dead by violence
on and immediately after that day," Giles said with a wintry smile at Spike's
discomfited look. He began the recording again. "If I recall correctly, we
left off in...?"
Spike gave
up. He never should have agreed to cooperate, but cash was cash, and it
wasn't that often that he had a chance to acquire some in a completely
legitimate fashion. The downside was that eventually Giles was going to
pick up enough clues to discover his real name, and... well, what if he
did? Not as if he'd been important enough in life to merit more than a two-line
obituary tucked away in some obscure corner of the Times. William
the not so Bloody, born 1852, died 1880, accomplished bugger all in
between. Finally, some good came of being a complete non-entity.
"New York. Dru and I were hunting the Battery that year, though we could
have gone anywhere, done anything--you wouldn't sodding well believe the number
of drifters there were about. We hadn't eaten so well since the influenza
epidemic during the Great War--God's truth, we could kill two or three people a
day for weeks and no one'd notice. It was like that everywhere.
Whole bloody country on the move, hoping things'd be better in the next town
over, and the locals more relieved than not when some hobo turned up stiff and
minus a few pints, 'cause there's one less stranger to be knocking at their door
looking for handouts and work that wasn't to be had. We had this
cold-water flat in--"
His
mind started drifting almost immediately. There were few things that
pleased Spike so much as the sound of his own voice, but today his attention was
elsewhere, on the memory of warm hands and warm lips and grey-green eyes gone
hazy with passion, and recollections of seventy-year-old kills couldn't
compete. He hadn't expected her to...any of it.
He had no romantic
illusions about what it all meant--it was all heat and desire on her part, the
painful prickling of a numb body and soul coming back to life. It would
burn wild and bright and hot and then be gone, leaving him--one way or
another--in ashes. So much more than he'd hoped for, so very, very much
less than he wanted... but he'd take it. Oh, yes, he'd take it,
because who knew when that flame would be snuffed out again? Better burned than
left in the dark. He glanced at the clock on the shop wall again.
Three-thirty-seven. Twenty-three minutes and fifteen seconds until Buffy
walked in the door. He licked his lips and realized that Giles was staring
at him strangely. He had absolutely no idea what he'd just said. Oh,
well. He always had more fun with these interviews when Dawn was around to
play suitably horrified audience, anyway; Giles lacked an appreciation for Grand
Guignol. "So I killed 'em and I ate 'em, the end. Rupert, what are
you doing about the Slayer's salary?"
Giles turned off the
cassette player. "Not that it's any of your business, but I am working on
it." He took off his glasses and began to polish them.
Spike jogged one foot
against the nearest chair leg. "What's the holdup? Just put her on
the bloody payroll."
Giles
shrugged, though the set of his shoulders gave more than a little hint that he
was as annoyed about the situation as Spike was. "The Council's still
considering the matter. There's no precedent for an adult Slayer living
independently of her Watcher. Little enough precedent for an adult
Slayer. Few last as long as Buffy has."
"Yeh, takes a licking
and..." Buffy. Licking. Rrrrowr. Giles was
staring at him again. Twenty-one minutes and forty-two seconds. "Never
mind. They're making her sweat because she had them by the short and
curlies last year, aren't they?"
"The thought has crossed my
mind," Giles admitted. "I doubt we'd be seeing quite this much red tape
and paperwork had Buffy been slightly, er, more tactful in her dealings with
them. Once I return to England and can deal with the matter in person I
expect things will clear up." He left unsaid the Or Ripper will have a
talk with someone part, but Spike didn't need to hear it. Giles would
have made one hell of a vampire. The Watcher gave the untranscribed
cassettes an irritated glance. "Assuming this project ever ends and allows
me to leave for England, of course."
Spike shrugged. The
thought of seeing London again was appealing--he hadn't been home for
decades--but if Giles couldn't manage to live an interesting life in California,
Spike doubted he'd have much better luck in Bath. And if he hadn't figured
out that Willow was dawdling in order to keep him in the States as long as
possible, Spike didn't feel obliged to enlighten him. "Cheer up, Rupes,
I've only got so much life to narrate. Though if you'll keep paying me
I'll be happy to start making things up."
The bell on the front door
jangled, and Xander bounced in, sporting an impressive collection of bandages on
both hands. "Hey, guys," he said, leaning over the counter and kissing
Anya on the top of her head. He came over and flopped down at the
table. "Hey, G-Man. Where's the Buffster?"
Spike smirked and waved a
completely healed hand at him. Giles transferred the irritated glance from
the cassettes to Xander. "She and Willow and Tara should be here
shortly. And don't call me that."
Seventeen minutes,
thirty-one seconds. Spike fidgeted in his chair. Giles, having
learned the hard way that quizzing Spike on anything when he was in the throes
of one of his hyperactive fits was worse than useless, shoved the tape recorder
to one side and began going through the folders again. Spike got up and
started pacing, back and forth from the table to the ladder leading to the loft
where the restricted grimoires were kept. He needed a cigarette. The
alley out back was in shadow at this time of day, but if he left he might miss
her arrival, and he didn't want to miss one more minute of Buffy if he could
help it. Of course he wasn't certain how she was going to react.
Since Dawn and Tara had been witness to their interrupted snogging session, she
couldn't get cold feet and pretend the whole thing had never happened. Or
could she? The Niblet didn't exactly count, and Tara was the Black Hole of
Calcutta of discretion. She probably wouldn't breathe a word of the
incident without Buffy's permission. Bloody hell.
The doorbell jangled again
and Buffy walked in (twelve minutes and fifty-two seconds early, thank God he
hadn't gone for that cigarette!) followed by Willow and Tara, the former looking
tired and the latter uncomfortable. Buffy was wearing that red halter top
that made him want to bite through the straps. She'd done something to her
hair, too, lightened it up a little, and it curled softly around her shoulders
and the smooth creamy column of her neck. He grinned at her.
Couldn't help it.
She
brushed right by him. Cut him cold, wouldn't meet his eyes. Buffy
skirted the table and sat down between Giles and Xander, eyes still downcast,
white teeth nibbling on her lower lip. Sod it all. She was going to
back out on him; he could feel it in his bones--going to insist that the whole
thing was an aberration and leave him to the cold comfort of Pearly Palm and her
five sisters again. God knows what he'd been expecting; not hearts and
flowers, surely, but some kind of acknowledgment. She was having second
thoughts, and she expected him to wag his tail and slink back to his doghouse
until called for. Well, bugger that. He'd tasted blood and he wasn't
going to give up this easily.
Willow and Tara took their
seats, relegating him, as usual, to the background of the bookshelves.
Willow flipped her laptop open and began to finger-dance across the
keyboard. Spike hitched himself up on the railing of the stairs and
glowered. Honesty, is it? Do as I say, not as I do, eh, Slayer?
We'll see about that.
Safely ensconced behind a
wall of Scoobies, Buffy kept her eyes attentively on Xander as he finished
narrating his and Spike's adventures of the previous night. In her
peripheral vision, Spike favored her with an insolent raising of one brow.
He was mad. What right did he have to be mad? Not like she'd signed
a pre-nup with him or anything. It was just one stupid (glorious,
mind-melting) kiss. Xander finished his story and Tara and Willow launched
into theirs. Don't look at Spike. Look at table, not at gorgeous
pouting vampire. She folded her hands. "So--in short,
we've got a crew of Glory's left-over crazies running around sucking brains
right and left."
"It's not
just that," Xander said. "If this Tanner guy creates a new crazy every
time he does this mind-suck thing for the whole crew, then when do the crazies
reach critical mass? One person won't be enough, and he'll have to start
grabbing two or three at a time. This could get out of control."
Tara was doodling on a
legal pad, making a little sketch of the ritual as Xander had described it, her
fair brows dipping together. "It sounds like they were using a really
weirded-out version of the spell Willow used to cure me--they're taking mental
energy from one person and transferring it to another." She tapped the pen on
one of the curlicues. "I wish you remembered more of the details."
"Well, sor-ree," Xander
grumbled. "Next time I'm being sacrificed I'll ask them to untie my hands
so I can take notes."
Willow produced another folder, this one full of printed web documents and
photos, laid it in the center of the table and flipped it open. Buffy
leaned forward and picked one of them up. It was definitely a younger
version of the man she'd confronted in the cemetery, a graduation photo,
maybe. He looked bright and hopeful. "Daniel Evelyn Tanner," Willow
said. "Born May 22, 1956, right here in Sunnydale. Attended
Sunnydale High, graduated near the top of his class, left for Yale in
1974. Nothing more about him until 1992, when he came back to Sunnydale to
live a completely uneventful life. He's in the phone book and the voting
records, but he seems to be retired. Until Glory captured him and turned
him into one of her brain-dead minions. He was admitted to Sunnydale
General Hospital on April 16, 2001 for observation for schizoid behavior, and
disappeared with the rest of the crazies in May. And that's the last
official word on Mr. Tanner--missing and presumed dead."
Xander snorted. "But
actually alive and confirmed nuts."
Tara bit meditatively at
her thumbnail. "I don't understand where the loa fits in. Most of
the traditional practitioners in Southern California are into Santeria, not
Voudoun."
“Is it of the
bad? This loa thing?” Xander asked. “Some kind of demon?”
Giles looked up. “Not
precisely. Loa or Lwa are Haitian ancestral spirits or gods, New World
versions of the Orisha of Western Africa, which are primarily Yoruban or
Dahomeyan in origin, and while there are some unsavory aspects--”
“They’re a mixed bag, good
and bad wise,” Tara finished.
“Quite. Ritual
possession plays a large role in their worship, so this was not necessarily an
inimical move.”
"We'd have
known if this Tanner was a practicing houngan," Anya said. "Every witch,
wizard, and sorcerer in Sunnydale orders supplies through the Magic Box."
"Right," Tara agreed.
"I looked some stuff up today too. What he did last night wasn't a real
Voudoun ritual--no drums, no offerings, no invocation, no nothing. Ghede
normally wouldn't come if he was called like that--no self-respecting loa
would. So either Daniel Tanner is an incredibly powerful wizard, strong
enough to summon what amounts to a minor god without the proper ritual--or Ghede
came because he wanted to. Because he had something important to tell us."
She looked at Buffy. "What exactly did he say to you?"
Buffy shrugged. "He
gave me three questions--I asked what was wrong with Willow and how to fix her,
mainly--and he gave me the kind of totally useless answers I usually get from
random mythical creatures and then told me that I was asking the wrong questions
anyway." Buffy began picking the eraser of the nearest pencil to
shreds. "Since Willow's fine now, it was a pretty pointless encounter all
around. If there were any shining beacons of answers in there, I'd be
shouting them from the rooftops, promise."
"You should try to remember
exactly what he said," Tara persisted. "Ghede's advice sounds pointless or
strange sometimes, but it's always accurate."
Buffy stuck out her lower
lip. "Right. For an advice-giving god, he was a complete pig."
Tara shrugged. "It's
a Trickster figure thing. He's dead. The dead are beyond
punishment.”
“Don’t I
wish,” Spike muttered.
Tara
continued, “They can do and say what the living don't dare. But the advice
is good, and whatever he said could be vital, so if you can remember the exact
wording--"
"I'll try.
But right now we have to figure out what to do about the brain-eating
non-zombies. We can't just kill them. This isn't really their
fault."
"It's ours," Tara
said. "It never even occurred to me to wonder what happened to all the
others...and it should have."
She was really upset, Buffy
noted. Had she ever felt like that? Spike's soup kitchen jibe still
bothered her. She took her duties as Slayer seriously, but had she ever
really felt that kind of personal concern for the people she was
protecting? She saved lives because it was the right thing to do, but she
couldn't say she got much personal satisfaction out of it anymore, if she ever
had. Was this how Spike felt, going through the motions of goodness
because he couldn't do anything else?
He was still there, still
looking, pale eyes calling to hers. Do not look back--
Xander stirred uneasily,
his hand grasping Anya's. "We were all pretty thrashed that night."
"I know--but all the rest
of the summer?" Tara shook her head. "They've been living like that for
months, trying to take care of themselves--I know what it's like, being like
that! I should have--we should have--"
Guilty silence reigned for
a moment, to be broken by Spike's impatient, "Should've. Didn't. Cry
me a river. What do we do about it now?"
Buffy shot him a daggery
look. Did he have to rub her nose in the fact that he didn't give a flying
flip? "We try to fix them. Will--what about the spell? Is the one
they're using defective? You don't have to go out and turn someone into a
drooling idiot every two weeks to keep Tara going."
"I'm pretty sure this
Tanner guy's using an inefficient version of the spell. Maybe he overheard
me doing it and didn't catch all the words or something. My version's a
permanent fix, but the energy's still gotta come from somewhere.
Someone. I'm working on it." Willow's tone was a trifle defensive still;
she hunched over the laptop, all her attention on the screen. "But like I
said before, the original mental energy's gone, with Glory.
Unless... maybe I could draw on some other kind of energy..." Her
eyes went distant, then sparked with renewed enthusiasm. "Ooooh.
That's a thought." She snatched Tara's pen and started scribbling,
oblivious to Tara's sudden air of worry.
Buffy sat back,
relieved. "Coolness. The big gun fires again."
Spike raised an eyebrow,
slid off the bannister and sauntered over to the table, hands in pockets.
"Forgetting something, aren't we? While Will plays Albert Schweitzer this
Tanner bloke's out rounding up more brain food."
"Not forgetting,
Spike." She began tapping the mangled pencil on the table. "I just
haven't decided what the best course of action is yet. We can't just take
him out. He's human."
"I dunno, Slayer, quite a few other things seem to have slipped your mind
lately."
The acid in his voice snapped her head up to meet his eyes at
last. Buffy shoved her chair back, jumped to her feet and advanced on
him. Spike stood his ground in that hipshot slouch that she thought of as
his hunting pose. She glared up into his half-lidded eyes, three-inch
heels ensuring that she met him only a few inches shy of nose to nose. She
could beat him black and blue if she wanted to and he couldn't lift a finger to
stop her; where the hell did he get off looking so intimidating? "I haven't
forgotten anything."
"Really... love?"
That insolent drawl went
straight to the beast in the back of her brain that was responsible for fighting
and... other stuff, caught it by the scruff of the neck and made it hiss in
rage. She hadn't given in to the urge to hit him for a long time, but she
was itching to do so now; there were times when the only thing that could sum up
the tangled mess of emotions he roused in her was a good swift punch in the
nose. Everyone else was watching them with uneasy confusion. She
bared her teeth in something an uninformed observer might have taken for a
smile. "Excuse me," she said, piling on the sugar, "I need to talk with
Spike in private."
She
grabbed his arm, feeling his muscles tense under her fingers, and dragged him
behind the counter, out the back door of the shop, into the alley. Too
familiar, the scraps of paper, the dirty concrete, the crunch of grit and broken
glass beneath the soles of her feet, the faint nauseating smell of spoiled food
from the dumpster behind the Espresso Pump down the block. Why did she end
up having so many conversations with Spike in alleys? "What is with
you?"
Spike had
straightened, weight shifted forward on his toes, watching her like a cat with a
mouse. The faint bitter smirk on his lips was insufficient mask for the
hurt in his eyes. "Gonna hit me, love?" he purred. "Just like old
times? Been awhile, hasn't it? You go right ahead. Give it to
me good. You know you want to."
She didn't stop to think
why the words were familiar, just lashed out in blind fury. Spike dodged,
but she was just a hair faster than he was, and her fist clipped his jaw; she
felt his teeth graze her knuckles. Spike fell back with that mad grin,
licking his own blood from his lips, feral yellow flickering in his eyes.
A useless, toothless threat; he couldn't bite--or yes, he could, just not with
his fangs, bite deeper than she wanted to think about. Buffy stood there
in the lee of the dumpster, fists clenched, chest heaving, on the verge of tears
for no reason she could name. "What's wrong with you, Spike?"
He shook himself, rolling
his shoulders. "With me? Take a sodding guess."
"This is what it's been all
along, isn't it? You really do get off on me beating you up!" She
was going to be sick, she was sure of it. And she was not, not, not going
to hit him again, not going to give him what he wanted.
Spike began circling
her. "I get off on fighting you, you stupid bint. You and
this lovely piece of silicon in my brain won't let me get off any other
way. And you get off fighting me--don't deny it, I can smell you getting
all hot and bothered. You like whaling on a bloke who can't hit
back? You like it better than what we did last night?" His voice was
a dead-serious snarl. "If I could hit back I dunno as I could choose one
dance over the other either. But you're going to have to. I know
you'll never love me. I'm going to love you till I'm dust, but I'm damned
if I'm going to sit for this. I'll take the touch any way I can get it,
but I get this much say--kiss me or kick me, but it's one or the other.
You can't have both, not till I can have both too."
With a sob she lunged at
him. Spike ducked the blow, feinted left and dodged behind her.
Buffy spun to follow him. "Make your mind up, Slayer." He blocked
her incoming fist, dodged her kick and caught her by the heel, using her
momentum to flip her over--all defensive moves, skating on the narrow edge of
what the chip classified an attack. She twisted in mid-air, landing in a
crouch, kicking out from it and knocking Spike's feet out from under him.
He was rolling even as he hit the ground, and bounced to his feet breathing hard
and fast, but far too shallowly for someone who really needed the oxygen.
"What's it going to be, Slayer? This? Or the other?"
Buffy squeezed her eyes
shut and took a deep breath. She'd died--twice now, for crying out
loud! Was her life going to be like this forever, slipping back into the
same old patterns like falling into quicksand, jumping back on the same endless
merry-go-round? God knew she she hadn't asked to come back, but she was
here--did it have to be the same thing all over again? Couldn't she make
it different this time, somehow? I don't love him. He can't love
me, or-- No, she couldn't even think about that, couldn't pull up those
three-year-old memories that still throbbed and ached at certain words, certain
glances, like shrapnel healed into an old wound. I can't, because it would be
wrong...
The dead
are beyond punishment.
No, they weren't. Not hardly. But she was on her third life
now. Her life, no one else's. Not Tara's, not Willow's,
certainly not Angel's. Hers, to make of what she would--what she dared.
Spike was still there when
she opened her eyes; giving her a long, anything but expressionless stare.
He was always going to be there, watching her back, irritating the hell out of
her, making her life... a life. If she let him.
Wrong was a world, a
life, without Spike in it. "This, Spike. It's going to be
this." She lunged for him again, and he didn't make a move to stop her.
Truth to tell, he'd expected
another punch, and didn't have the heart to block it. But her hands were
open, and her fingers warm on the back of his neck as she grasped him, pulled
him down, and his hands were tangled in the tawny silk of her hair and her sweet
vicious mouth was savaging his, lips tongue teeth devouring one another, she
blood to him, he air and food and water to her. Their bodies spoke to one
another, pressed up against the brickwork, old tensions giving way to new
ones--now that they had this it was impossible not to want more.
Soon. Now. How did this cris-cross thing go? In about
ten seconds he would bite through the damn straps. Her hands left his
shoulders and he growled in protest until he realized that they were tearing at
his belt buckle and why in hell had he been such a git as to wear
button-fly jeans today--
Grrrrrrrrrrrraaaaarrr.
Buffy gasped into his
chest, "Ah! Yeah! Do that!"
Spike froze, fingers
tightening on her shoulders. "Love..." He was having trouble getting
enough breath to form the words. "That wasn't me."
She turned in his arms,
just in time to see the wall of cinnamon-gold fur rolling by. Bear.
Big bear. Fucking enormous bear. The bear looked at the two of them
and shook its massive head, rubbery black lips peeling away from a set of fangs
that put Spike's to shame. The loading dock of the store across the alley
was faintly visible through its sides. It rumbled at them again, then
lurched into motion with a contemptuous grunt. A minute later it was gone.
Spike collapsed back
against the wall, shivering. Buffy stared at him. "Spike.
Spike! You're hyperventilating! Stop breathing!" She looked up
at him, perplexed. "I've seen you take on fire-breathing, spine-covered,
acid-dripping Things five times your size with a song in your heart.
What's the deal with Winnie the Pooh?"
"I don't like bears, all
right?" He straightened up and peered cautiously around the
dumpster. There was no sign of the bear. "It's a bloody childhood
trauma."
Buffy bit her lip,
trying to hide a smile. "You didn't have a childhood."
Spike opened his mouth,
decided that the argument about whether he was or wasn't William wasn't worth
getting into at this point, and prowled round to the other side of the dumpster,
checking for bear tracks. "Well, if it's not mine, I wish to hell that
ponce William had taken it with him when he left. Just be glad it's not
sodding bunnies." He took a deep breath. "I think that's killed the
mood."
Buffy wrinkled her
nose, taking in their surroundings. "Just as well. I guess we should
go back in." She stuck out her hand, as much a challenge as a peace
offering. "Come on. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it all
the way."
Did that mean
what he thought it meant? He must have let the astonished hope leaping up
within him show in his face, for Buffy's eyes grew suspiciously bright.
She took a deep breath of her own, and he could tell she was shakier than she
was letting on. "I--I told you I'd never been ashamed to know you.
So... I shouldn't be ashamed about... wanting to know you better."
He took her hand, feeling
it tremble in his until he gave it a squeeze. She pressed close to him for
a moment, holding him with fierce strength while he buried his nose in the crook
of her neck and breathed her in. He wasn't fool enough to think this meant
smooth sailing ever after, but he was fool enough that, for this moment, he
didn't care. She broke away reluctantly, General Buffy again, and hand in
hand they went back into the shop to face the enemy. Buffy dropped his
hand as the entered, walked to the center of the floor, put both hands on her
hips and cocked her head at the others.
"Small announcement," she
said. "You know how we aren't sure how the loa fits in? Well, make
more fitting room--there's now a Chumash bear spirit in the alley." She
paused, forefinger pressed to her lips as if remembering something. "Also, I was
gonna do the whole secret doomed star-crossed affair thing, but you know
what? I've given this a lot of thought, and I just don't have the energy
for one of those right now."
Everyone except Willow and
Tara looked at her in puzzlement. With an expression of grim
determination, Buffy turned, marched back over to Spike, wrapped both arms
around his neck, pulled his head down and picked up where they'd left off.
Now this he hadn't
expected. Spike broke into an amazed grin as her small warm body pressed
against him and his arms went round her--reflex, almost; could you develop a
reflex in less than twenty-four hours? Apparently so. Their mouths
met with less urgency this time, both of them knowing now for certain that it
wasn't the first-last-only, that they had all the time in the world to nip and
taste and nibble and explore the really interesting effects you could get with a
thirty-four degree difference in body temperature.
"Willow!" Xander and Giles
yelled in outraged unison. Tara looked distressed. Anya looked up,
shrugged, and went back to counting receipts.
“It's not my fault, it's
not my fault!" Willow squeaked, hiding behind the screen of the laptop. "I
didn't do anything this time! I promise!"
Buffy pulled back for air,
cheeks pink, eyes bright, her heart going at trip-hammer speed; the sound was
music. She glared defiantly around the room. "In orderNo
spell. In my right mind. If he misbehaves, I dust him." Her
eyes came home to his, And that would kill me writ so plain in her gaze
that his heart wrenched within him in startled pain; did she know what her eyes
were saying? "Anything else is nobody's business but ours. Deal. Now
that that's out of the way, bear-analyzing time."
Spike looked down at her, a
smile lurking about the corners of his mouth. "My, Slayer, you certainly
do know how to romance a fellow."
"Wait, wait, wait, you
can't just say 'Deal' and leave it at that!" Xander objected. "Is there
straddling involved here? Because I absolutely draw the line at straddling."
He'd expected this from
Harris. He really had. They'd gotten to tolerate each other over the
summer, but Harris could never quite get over the vampire thing, and after
Buffy's return Spike had been the recipient of all the frustrated anger he
couldn't take out on Willow. One night of chasing through a park wasn't
going to bridge that gap. So why was he surprised at how much it stung?
"Ah, here it comes." Spike slipped a proprietary arm around Buffy's waist and
went for the counter-attack. "Is that a bit of the green-eyed monster I
hear? The vampire's good enough to cheat at pool with, but I don't want him
shagging my Slayer?"
Under
other circumstances the shade of purple Xander was turning would have been
exceptionally entertaining. "Damn straight! How are we supposed to handle
this? Do we say 'Hi, Buffy, congratulations on your new demon lover, and by the
way, have you seen a psychiatrist lately?' Or do we do the awkward pretending
not to notice what's going on, and try to lure her to the psychiatrist with a
trail of jelly doughnuts?" Xander rounded on Giles, who was polishing his
glasses so violently it was a wonder he hadn't worn through the lenses.
"Giles! Tell her she can't do this!"
The Watcher's face might
have been carved from granite. "At what point in this conversation has
Buffy been replaced by someone who takes my orders?” He put the glasses
back on, studying the two of them. “Buffy--I made it my policy to keep out
of your personal life when you were a girl, as long as it didn’t interfere with
your calling. I see no reason to change that policy now. I won’t
deny that I find this... most inadvisable. I fear it will end in
tragedy--again. But if this is your choice--"
"It is." The two
words held every ounce of Summers determination in her, and they were the
sweetest things Spike could remember hearing in over a century.
“Then I accept it. As
for you--” He looked Spike up and down. “For better or worse, you are not
the vampire Angel was. See to it that you remain so. You know to
exactly what lengths I’m willing to go to protect her.”
Spike nodded slowly.
He wasn’t positive, but he thought the odds were better than even that he’d just
been given a compliment as well as a warning. “Wouldn’t expect any less.”
Buffy strode over to the
table, tugging him along in her wake. "Now. Are we going to discuss
demony stuff or argue about my love life?"
Willow waved one hand
apologetically. "Um, Buff, your love life is demony stuff."
Buffy considered for a
moment, then slipped her arm around Spike in turn and smiled up at him
impishly. "So it is. End of argument."
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