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Barb
When Hank Summers
peered through the peephole in the apartment door, Buffy was standing in the
hall, just about to ring the bell a second time and caught in the act of
shooting Spike a big-eyed, pleading look of the sort common to people begging
their significant others not to embarrass them. She spun at the sound of
the opening door and fixed the close-relative version of the big-eyed look on
Hank. Standing there trying to keep her garment bag from slipping down her
arm to drag on the floor, she looked far more like a girl primed to run
interference between the Unsuitable Young Man and her father than the
ultra-confident Slayer of Large Spiny Things he'd been introduced to at their
last meeting. A tentative smile ventured across her face.
"Dad?"
Buffy's back. An
unlooked-for and almost painful happiness leapt up in him, and he reached
forward to pull her her into a hug. Awkward; he didn’t know quite what to
do with his hands and hers were full of luggage, but definite father-daughter
contact. "Come on in, honey. You look--you look like you’ve been
sleeping better."
He stepped back to let her
maneuver through the doorway with her bags--not the little childhood suitcase
set she used to bring for the summer; he recognized them as part of an old set
he’d given Joyce the Christmas before the divorce, and it gave him a peculiar
twinge to see that his daughter had adopted this small token of maturity.
He was about to shut the door when Spike cleared his throat sharply. He
was still standing on the threshold, carrying a much smaller bag and a styrofoam
cooler. "I can doss down in the hall, mate," Spike said, "but I think the
tenants' association would disapprove."
For a second Hank had no idea what he was talking about. "You have to
invite him in, Dad," Buffy said, matter-of-fact. "I can't do it, I don't
live here."
Ah, yes. The vampire
thing. Hank allowed himself to savor the thought of Spike camping out in
the hallway for the duration of Buffy's visit. Buffy did him something of
an injustice when she claimed that Hank had yet to accept that there was a
vampire thing; Hank was aware that strange things went on in Sunnydale and that
Buffy was up to her ears in them. When in Sunnydale he was willing to go
along. But Los Angeles was the real world, his world, and he resented the
intrusion of Sunnydale's dangerous weirdness.
Linda came bustling up full of happy-homemaker cheer, welcoming smile in
place. "Hello, Buffy. I’m Linda--Linda Gutierrez.” Buffy took
Linda’s hand with tepid politeness. “And you must be Spike. Please
come in. I've heard so much about you."
Spike's half-lidded eyes raked her up and down appraisingly, and he gave
her a slow smile. "Mutual." He tossed his duster in the general
direction of the coat rack, ambled into the living room and set the cooler down
in the middle of the floor, standing hipshot beside it, thumbs hooked into the
belt loops of his jeans. His sardonic blue gaze roved over the decor:
tasteful cream-colored living room set, plexiglass-and-aluminum tables, bare
pale walls adorned with scattered Miro prints in Art Deco frames, all
resplendent in the discrete glow of track lighting--looking for something worth
stealing, Hank had no doubt. "Nice place you've got here, Summers.
Monotone. Suits you."
Buffy stood in
the sea of white plush carpet, clutching the strap of her overnight bag like a
safety line, her wide sea-colored eyes alight with nervous curiosity. Too
close to Spike for Hank's comfort. In the muted pastel room the two of
them were a slash of dark, vibrant color, irresistible draws to the eye.
"It is nice," she said, her voice faltering a little. She hadn't seen the
place since he'd redecorated, Hank realized--had it been two years? No,
almost three. Perhaps she'd been expecting the comfortable (but old)
furniture and bachelor clutter of her first few summer visits.
Hank closed the door. “I thought it was time for a
change.”
Buffy nodded and set her bags down
gingerly. “It’s just so different.” Spike slid an arm around her
waist, his hand resting on the curve of her hip, an utterly natural and
absent-minded gesture far more disturbing than any deliberate attempt to get
Hank's goat could have been, and she leaned into his side. The air of
general and second-in-command was still in evidence, but complicated by another,
more visceral connection. The air between them crackled with
it.
Linda laced her fingers together,
seeming as nervous as Buffy. "I was so sorry to hear about your mother,"
she said. "I thought about going to the funeral, since Hank wasn't able to
make it, but then I thought... not such a good idea." If she wanted to
bring up the subject of Buffy’s purported death and mysterious re-appearance,
she concealed it well--one of the things Hank admired about Linda. She
knew when to avoid asking awkward questions. "I made up the couch as well
as the guest bedroom. I wasn't sure if you'd, um, need both of
them."
Buffy arched a brow at the couch,
fitted up with sheets and several folded blankets at one end. "I told Dad
that Spike and I are seeing each other."
"I
decided to take that as 'we make eye contact occasionally.'" Hank sat down in
the nearest armchair and picked up his half-finished glass of Scotch. He’d
decided that he deserved a drink tonight. "Leave an old man his
illusions."
"You're not old, Dad."
Buffy moved the pile of folded blankets aside and perched uneasily on the edge
of the couch, as if afraid of her slight weight leaving an impression on the
pristine cushions. "Besides, I--I sleep better when I'm not
alone."
"The guest bed is a double, so
there's no problem if you'd both like to stay there," Linda assured her.
Hank clenched his teeth and held his tongue; Linda was desperate to establish
friendly relations with his children. The prospect of being a potential
stepmother to someone only four or five years her junior was daunting, and
arguing with her in front of Buffy wouldn't endear him to either of them.
Buffy gave Linda a startled, grateful look and a tiny, microsecond smile, so
perhaps it was worth it for long-term peace in the family. "Would either
of you like anything?" Linda asked. She eyed the cooler
uncertainly.
“We ate on the way,”
Buffy said.
"Special diet."
Nonchalant, Spike bent over, pried the top off the cooler and pulled a gallon
milk jug full of something red and viscous out of the slightly melted mass of
ice cubes within. He straightened and smiled at Linda, charisma turned up
to eleven. "Though I wouldn’t say no to some of that Scotch.
Fridge?"
"Through here," she said.
Spike followed her out to the kitchen, and Linda threw a surreptitious glance at
him over her shoulder. Surely she wasn’t falling for Spike’s line of
bull? Linda had more sense than to be swayed by a pretty face and a
probably-phoney English accent.
Buffy
glanced at the archway leading to the kitchen. "So that's Linda. She
seems... nothing like Mom. Exactly how old is she again?"
Hank took a fortifying sip of Scotch. "I never ask a
woman what she weighs or how old she is. What does Spike do for a living
again?"
Buffy grimaced. "Point
taken. I'll leave yours alone if you leave mine alone."
They sat there for a minute, neither quite sure what
to say next. Linda and Spike emerged from the kitchen, Spike having been
supplied with a far-too-generous glass of Hank’s Glenlivet, neat. "...high
in protein, iron and B vitamins," Spike was saying, straight-faced. "Swear
by it. I practically live on the stuff."
Linda nodded, equally serious. "Oh, I totally understand.
It's alfalfa-carrot protein shakes for me. The body is a temple. I
can tell you really work on yours, but--" she shook an accusing finger at the
half-empty pack of Marlboros poking out of his shirt pocket, "you do need to
give up the cigarettes."
Spike dropped onto
the couch beside Buffy and slid down into a boneless sprawl, one arm draped over
her shoulders. "You'll get my ciggies when you pry them from my cold, dead
fingers. Every man needs at least one vice to his name."
Buffy snorted, but snuggled up to him
nonetheless. Hank tried not to feel ill. "Uh huh. Give
up smoking and all you’ve got left is drinking, gambling--”
“My point exactly. Hardly enough to keep me busy all
day.”
Linda shared a conspiratorial look
with Buffy and glanced fondly Hank. "I guess men are all the same.
I'm always trying to get your father to eat healthier and exercise, but he won't
listen."
Spike slapped his stomach and
regarded Hank, eyes a-glitter with cheerful malice. There was no way in
hell he didn't deliberately pick his t-shirts a size too small; the damned thing
looked as if it had been spray-painted on. "Two hundred sit-ups a day,
mate. Or three hundred. Do you a world of good."
Hank resisted the urge to suck in his
gut. He was in pretty good shape for a guy on the wrong side of forty, and
he wasn’t going to be baited by someone on the wrong side of a hundred and
forty. “It’s hard to make time for that sort of thing when you’re busy
earning a living. I suppose if I had nothing to do besides watch
‘Passions’ all day...”
Two days, he
reminded himself. It was only for two days. Fortunately for his
temper, Buffy begged off any lengthy conversation, saying they had to get up
early for tomorrow’s meeting--‘early’ for either of them apparently encompassing
any time before eleven in the morning. Hank finished his Scotch while
Linda showed his daughter and Spike down the short hall to the guest
bedroom. Spike quietly snagged all of the luggage before Buffy could,
which irritated Hank more than anything else he’d done all
evening.
“Your daughter’s a very confident
girl,” Linda said as they undressed for bed shortly thereafter. She sat at
her vanity mirror, brushing her short glossy black hair and gazing thoughtfully
at her reflection.
Hank smiled wryly.
“As the biological parent, I get to use the term ‘stubborn.’”
Linda set her hairbrush down and began
applying face cream, looking pensive. At last she completed her
mysterious evening rituals, got up from the vanity and climbed into her side of
the bed. “Her boyfriend’s... unusual.”
“As the biological parent, I get to use the term ‘weird.’ Not to mention
rude, lazy, violence-prone and penniless.” Hank buttoned his pajama top and
climbed in after her. He had good reason to distrust Spike. He had a
gift for sizing people up. It had stood him in good stead in many a
cutthroat board meeting and tricky client negotiation. It had even gotten
him out of a few tight places outside the world of business, times when he'd
been alone in a strange city with minimal command of the local language.
From their first meeting that intuition had told him Spike was dangerous, not
good enough for his girl--though at the time, he'd been mistaken about which
girl of his Spike wasn't good enough for--and a poser. So far he'd seen no
reason to change the assessment. Unfortunately that same intuition told
him that the rude, lazy, violence-prone, penniless poser was also ferociously
devoted to both his daughters, and better equipped to aid Buffy in dealing with
Sunnydale’s dangerous weirdness than he was--and that, if he were honest with
himself, was the main thing fueling his dislike of the
vampire.
“Buffy asked you to invite him
in. I didn’t think about it earlier, but that’s a little strange, isn’t
it?”
Hank sighed. “Hon, Spike wrote
the book on strange. He’s got...” How was he going to put
this? “...a lot of quirks. I haven’t got the first idea why Buffy
puts up with him, but she does, and I just don’t want to alienate her any
further by arguing about it--I know I haven’t done as well by her and Dawn as I
should have, and she’s making it difficult enough for me to make up for it as it
is. At least he’s not living with her.”
Linda’s brow furrowed, but she nodded and said no
more.
There were times when
Anya suspected that the love of her life was not entirely onboard with the whole
wedding experience.
Perhaps it was
the fact that Xander could make any tuxedo collapse into wrinkles just by trying
on the jacket. Perhaps it was the fact that he’d conveniently forgotten to
mail the invitations for two weeks running, and after she’d bulldogged him into
a trip to the post office, she’d found the ones addressed to his family stuffed
behind the laundry hamper, where they’d accidentally (he assured her) fallen out
of his pocket. Perhaps it was the way he cringed every time she mentioned
the possibility of putting D’Hoffryn up for the night--an entirely reasonable
suggestion, to her mind. It was not, after all, as if Sunnydale had any
decent hotels which catered to demons. She made a mental note to check
into the possibility of starting one--a nice bed and breakfast perhaps, with a
view of the Hellmouth. She’d made a tidy sum selling short during the
dot-com crash, and, as a patriotic resident, was looking for something close to
home to invest it in. Property values in the neighborhood of the burnt
hull of Sunnydale High were at rock bottom...
“Anya, can you hand me the volume of Theminius there behind the
counter?” Giles asked. He was pacing by on another of his
circumnavigations of the store, book in hand and glasses sliding down his
nose. As he passed the counter he set the tome he’d been paging through
down and picked up the new one without missing a beat. “Thank
you.”
The Watcher’s lanky form circled round
the store, through Charms and Amulets where Tara was sorting through a box of
half-off gewgaws trying to find a suitable focus for her spell, past Incense and
Ceremonial Candles, Herbs and Potions (Pre-Mixed) and come to a halt in front of
a display of athames, frowning down at Theminius. “There is simply no
connection,” he muttered. “None whatsoever. We can’t even be certain
that the appearance of the loa is part of the overall pattern of
manifestations--if there is a pattern--since it was, after all, summoned,
however unconventionally. Blast it all.”
Anya considered her options. Giles sounded severely vexed.
Now was probably the time for a remark indicating that she was actively engaged
in the research process. Fortunately she was relieved of the necessity
when the shop bell rang and Mrs. Dalgliesh’s blue-rinsed head bobbed
inside. She was a fairly regular customer, a birdlike little woman
invariably dressed in flowered chintz. She tottered up to the counter and
smiled at Anya. “I’m here to pick up that pixie repellant, dear.”
Anya reached down and retrieved the dark
brown bottle with squirt attachment labeled “Dalgleish, twice daily, shake well
before spraying” from beneath the counter and set it down with a beaming return
smile. The oily liquid within sloshed against the sides. “Here you
are, Mrs. Dalgliesh. Remember to store it in a dark place. You have
the payment ready in full, of course?”
“Why,
of course. Don’t I always?” Mrs. Dalgliesh opened her ancient
carpetbag purse, extracted an equally ancient wallet, and began carefully
counting out bills one by one, followed by exact change in pennies. Anya
approved of Mrs. Dalgliesh’s protective attitude towards her cash. Be good
to your money and your money would be good to you was her motto. Or one of
her mottoes, anyway; Anya had never been able to see how some people got by with
just one. “My Social Security check came in today, and none too
soon. The nasty little things are all over the gardenias.” She
picked up the bottle and held it up to the light, clucking her tongue. “I
hope this is enough for the big one.”
Giles
looked up, peering at the two of them over the rims of his glasses. “Big
one?”
Mrs. Dalgliesh nodded as Anya wrapped
up the pixie repellant and slid it into a brown paper bag. “I saw him last
night. Much bigger than the others, though I suppose the antlers made him
look taller. He blew some kind of horn at me. It gave me quite a
start. And the dogs made such a mess of the flowerbeds, too.”
“Dogs?”
“A dozen,
at least. White with red ears, I don’t know the breed. Looking for
bones, I suspect; I doubt he keeps them fed. Well, I must be off.
Thank you, Anya.” She tucked her package into the capacious purse and
tottered out the door to the renewed jingle of the bell. Giles watched her
departing back, stroking his chin with one hand.
“Some sort of avatar of Herne the Hunter, perhaps?” He heaved a
discouraged sigh and returned Theminius to his place on the shelves. “Just
what’s wanted, more random demonic activity...”
“But it’s not,” Anya said.
Giles
adjusted his glasses. “Perhaps not random, but if there is a
pattern--”
“No, no,” Anya interrupted.
“It’s not demonic. Not a single demon involved.”
For a moment Giles stood there, thunderstruck.
“You’re quite correct,” he said slowly. “All the manifestations have been
minor divinities of one sort or another--Spike and Xander said that the dragon
they saw had five claws, correct?” Anya nodded. “An Imperial dragon,
associated with the god-emperors of ancient China. Haitian loas, Chumash
sacred bears, the leader of the Wild Hunt--specifically, human deities, from
many times and cultures--” He was pacing again, excited. “But still, what
does it mean? If these beings are gathering here there must be a reason
for it. I’ve checked and double-checked all the usual texts, and while
there’s an extremely dicey mystical convergence coming up later this winter all
signs point to its occurring further south. Whatever’s causing this, it
was nothing foretold in any prophecy the Council has access to, and I find that
extremely disturbing.”
Anya sniffed.
“I don’t. Exactly what good has a prophecy ever done us? It’s always
‘The green cloud obscures the desert’ and you never know if it refers to a
plague of grasshoppers or if someone’s started irrigating. Or how about
the classic, ‘A mighty army will be destroyed?’ We know something’s
happening, and we know it’s big enough to make gods sit up and take
notice. I’d rather not know how it’s going to turn out, thank you; that
way I can assume that we figure out what’s happening and beat
it.”
Giles’s lips quirked slightly.
“That’s a novel way of looking at it. But we’re so short of real
information I’d settle for an encouraging fortune cookie.”
Anya checked off Mrs. Dalgleish’s purchase on her list of
special orders to be picked up. “Why don’t we just ask them why they’re
here?”
“Because--” Giles stoped. “You
know, that just might work.”
Buffy woke
confused, sure she was in the wrong place. The mattress was not shaped to
her body, the sheets smelled of some heathen brand of fabric softener, and the
light was coming from the wrong direction, seeping through curtains of the wrong
shade. She lay still, animal wariness taking over while she absorbed the
unfamiliar sensations of someone else’s bed. Finally she relaxed.
She was in the wrong place, but she was supposed to be. The comfortable
weight of the arm around her middle was right, and the cool firm body curving
around her own. At times like this it seemed to her that the silence that
was Spike’s lack of heartbeat was of a different quality from all other
silences, a unique quiet that she could distinguish in an instant from any
common cessation of noise. She felt his breath against her ear and the
brush of his lips against her throat as he sensed her wakening. Her own
breath escaped in a soft yearning moan.
“Mornin’, love.” His voice was just as low, rough with restrained
passion. He touched her lips with a finger, forestalling her reply.
“No--no noise. Not a peep. They’ll hear, and we can’t give your old
Dad an aneurysm.” She bit her lip and nodded, mystified but willing to go
along. Spike glanced at the window, gauging the angle of the sun and the
likelihood that its beams would strike the bed any time soon. Satisfied,
he bent his tousled platinum head to her neck again, nuzzling her ear, nibbling
slowly down the length of her neck from ear to collarbone and back
again.
His hand drifted to her shoulder,
fingers stroking feather-light along her upper arm, but he touched her nowhere
else. When she started to reach blindly out for more contact his fingers
tightened on her biceps, holding her still while he continued to seek out the
tenderest flesh, the most sensitive skin to torment. A languid heat began
to build within her, lapping outwards from her center like a wave of warm honey,
making her skin tingle all over and rendering Spike’s ministrations all the more
exquisite. It was not long before she was writhing against the sheets,
digging her heels into the mattress and biting her lips to keep from crying
aloud, a willing accomplice in her own sweet torture.
Spike’s breathing grew quick and harsh, deepening to a
purring rasp of a growl, quickly silenced as his teeth grazed her
collarbone. His lips played upwards along the long swan-curve of her
throat to the angle of her jaw, agile tongue flicking against the old bite scars
as if by accident. Now and again his fangs emerged for a quick
playful nip, the delicate pinpricks sending sharper bolts of pleasure through
the voluptuous haze enveloping her senses. She was dimly aware of his
growing arousal, hard and eager against her, but the cords of her limbs were
undone, all her strings cut, and all she could manage to assuage it was to grind
her hips back against his. Desperate little grunts forced their way out of
her, and when a hand thrust a pillow in front of her face she grabbed it and bit
down on the corner as flares of light blossomed behind her eyelids, and her body
dissolved a long-drawn-out upwelling of bliss.
She heard the sigh as Spike exhaled, ridding his lungs
of every scrap of air. He shifted position, rolling her onto her back and
covering her body with his, and then he was sinking into her with a force that
made the bed shudder. They both froze for a guilty second--this was a
piece of furniture they had to be careful of.
Buffy reached up and put a finger to his lips, just as
he’d done to her earlier--Be still. He was still in game face,
butting his head against hers like a cat demanding caresses; his eyes slitted in
bliss as her hands moved up to stroke his brow ridges, then shot open as she put
another set of Slayer muscles to good use stroking something else. As she
drew him deep and closed around him exaltation washed over his face, and human
features replaced demonic ones, blue chasing the gold from his eyes. It
was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen, and she felt her own body gather for a
second assault on the heights. With a breathless, noiseless roar, he
exploded within her, and Buffy mashed her face into his shoulder to muffle her
answering shout as they clawed for the summit together.
Spike twined his fingers in her hair, pulled back and
gazed into her eyes, caressing her cheeks with his thumbs. Buffy made a
happy little ‘mm’ noise and gazed back. Bed intact. Wonderful
news for furniture budget. Spike not nearly as heavy as previous
boyfriends. Also very good. Could get used to waking up like
this. Lost personal pronouns again. Who needs them? “What’s the
occasion?”
“Happy anniversary, love.
One week today.”
“Love you,” she whispered,
because there were no other words.
He
broke out in that sweet, glorious smile, the one she’d never seen him give
anyone else--as if she were the only one worthy of it, despite being the
remarkably self-centered and occasionally dense Buffy Anne Summers who was
desperately trying to armor herself for the upcoming meeting with her former
vampire lover by having as much fantastic sex with her current vampire lover as
possible. Were there expressions of hers he treasured as much? She
hoped so; it would be beyond unfair otherwise. He caught his lower lip in
his teeth, full of small-boy anticipation. “Got you
something.”
Buffy sat up, clutching the
sheet to her breasts. “Spike, you didn’t need to--it isn’t, um--”
Slayers intent on instilling virtue in morally deficient vampires should not
be bouncing up and down in anticipation of probably stolen prezzies from said
vampires. “You got something? For me?”
Spike rolled over and reached over the side of the
bed, rummaging around underneath for a moment. He sat back up with a small
flat package wrapped up in butcher’s paper and tied with string--not exactly
festive, but Buffy felt her hand shaking as she undid the neat double bow.
She peeled back the layers of paper while Spike sat cross-legged on the bed and
watched her.
It was a book--a slim volume
bound in brown leather. For a second she had a weird flash of deja vu, and
half expected it to be Browning’s Sonnets From The Portugese. But it
wasn’t; it was the book Spike had been reading that night on the sofa in the
crypt, the one she hadn’t been able to make out the title of. Now, tracing
the faded gilt letters on the spine, she could just decipher The Rubaiyat of
Omar Khayyam. It was old, old enough to be printed on rag paper that
had been made to last. There were two inscriptions on the flyleaf.
The first was in unfamiliar spidery script, the ink faded and brown with age,
and read To William, from Mother, with love: May you know the joy you
deserve. May 21st, 1877. The second one was in Spike’s
handwriting, his old-fashioned copperplate script at odds with the ordinary
ballpoint it was written in--To Buffy: Seize the day. Love,
William. Dec. 7th, 2001. It looked as if he’d been undecided as to
which way to sign it; ‘Spike’ and ‘William’ had both been written in and crossed
out at least once. A queer lump rose up in her throat and for a second she
couldn’t breathe at all.
“Was gonna let you
borrow it anyway, like I said, but then I thought you might like one of your
own,” Spike said, studiously examining his toes. “Sorry it’s not a new
copy, but I thought you’d rather have one that wasn’t nicked.”
Oh, God, she was crying. Or laughing. Not
sure which. Tears were pouring down her cheeks as if her personal
sprinkler system had broken. “It’s--it’s--” She laid the book reverently
down on the pillow and flung her arms around him. “Thank you. It’s
perfect.”
Spike, a little startled at the
intensity of her reaction, pulled her close and stroked her hair. “Shh,
Buffy, love, it’s all right.” His thumb smudged the tear-tracks across her
cheek. “Your Dad’ll be convinced I’m beating you now.”
She sniffled. “Right. I can whip your pansy
English ass.”
He gave her his wickedest
smile. “Promise?”
“Pig.” She
snuggled into his shoulder and looked up at him, an innocent little smile
tugging at the corners of her mouth. “If you ask very nicely, I’ll
think about it.”
He laughed, and Buffy
glanced towards the window, doing her own check on the progress of the
sun. It must be close to eight o’clock, an ungodly hour to be awake in her
line of work, but she felt surprisingly good. In the corner of her eye she
saw herself in the mirror over the dresser, leaning cozily into thin air, long
blonde hair apparently moving of its own volition as Spike’s hand played with
the sleep-tangled locks. With puffy eyes and a snuffly nose, which were
absolutely not what she wanted to be displaying when Angel showed up.
Which was bound to be soon--it was at least an hour’s drive from Los Angeles to
Corona, where the California Institute for Women was located, and there was no
telling how long the wait to get in to see Faith would be once they got
there. How exactly they were going to manage the matter of getting Angel
from the car to the prison without combusting she wasn’t sure; she couldn’t
imagine Angel galloping around under a ratty blanket, but he must have managed
it somehow on previous visits. The California Department of Corrections
wasn’t about to change its visiting hours to accommodate vampires. Maybe
they’d have covered parking.
Spike was still
lazing around on the bed with the book he’d brought with him when she got out of
the shower; he’d gotten as far as pulling on his jeans but had only buttoned
them up halfway. Of course, he could afford to put off getting dressed;
Spike’s idea of packing light (razor, toothbrush, Penguin edition of
Typee, change of socks) limited his sartorial options. Manfully
abjuring temptation, Buffy marched over to the closet and stood with hands on
hips, surveying the clothes she’d brought along with the air of a general
looking for volunteers for a suicide mission. There was the claret-red
skirt and top ensemble which had been part of the Dawn-induced Dad-guilt haul
last month. Worn last night to make Dad feel better, check. The
little black dress--just in case they happened to end up at a gala L.A. cocktail
party, she supposed; she really wasn’t sure why she’d felt the need to bring it
along. Several pairs of sensible slacks and blouses from the Office Drag
Collection, for the prison visit and the ride home. She pulled the
cowl-necked camel pullover out (the coffee stain had come out nicely) and held
the hanger up to her chest. “Does this say ‘I’ve moved on and am mature
enough to see you as a beloved friend but if seeing me makes you rue the day you
walked out on me, so much the better?’ Or should I go with the
blue?”
Spike leaned back against the
headboard and laced his hands behind his head. “That might be a bit much
for any one article of clothing to convey, pet, but I’d go for the one that
doesn’t conceal the massive hickey.”
Buffy’s
eyes went wide and she dropped the pullover on a chair and darted over to the
mirror, hand to her neck. Sure enough, there was a straggling line of
livid rosettes winding all down the left side of her throat. They were
already beginning to fade, thanks to Slayer healing, but it was going to be very
visible for at least the rest of the morning. She groaned. “Why does
everything that feels that good leave marks?” she grumbled.
Something brushed sensually along her
shoulder, sending a wave of gooseflesh up and down her arms--Spike had slipped
up behind her, invisible in the mirror, and was going in for the kill on the
other side. “Suits you, pet. Sends the message that someone
doesn’t need to puncture your jugular to get you off.”
Buffy smacked him away. “Down! I have to look
virginal for Dad and irresistible but unavailable for Angel and unlike a
potential hacksaw-smuggler for the warden. Instead I look like Miss
December in the Skank of the Month calen--oooh... STOP THAT!”
Spike beat a strategic retreat down the
hall towards the bathroom, grinning like a loon, and Buffy turned back to the
mirror with a silly little smile of her own and opened her makeup case.
Foundation was her friend. Not like she didn’t have plenty of experience
concealing suspicious bruises, scrapes, and compound fractures; Slayer healing
was good, but not instantaneous. She took the blue blouse out and held
both of them up critically, then hung the blue one back in the closet. The
camel one would cover up the marks without recourse to cosmetics. She
pulled it on and tugged the collar up around her neck. On the other hand,
maybe she wanted someone to see them. Collar down. Or not.
Collar up. Angel-feelings currently way more confusing than
Spike-feelings. A first in the Summers’ cavalcade of romantic
neuroses! She stepped into the rust slacks and pulled her hair
back. French braid? Chignon?
Last night hadn’t gone too badly. Sure, Spike and her father had
sniped at each other for awhile, but no one had taken any mortal conversational
wounds. Linda wasn’t the rapacious bimbo she’d been expecting. Buffy
wasn’t certain how she felt about that yet, but as Linda had circumvented the
not-in-my-house-you-don’t argument about her sharing a bed with Spike, Buffy was
tentatively inclined to move her from the ‘Homewrecking Fiend From Hell’
category to the ‘Probably Human’ category. Maybe she could even handle the
one-two punch of seeing Angel and Faith in one day...
There was a hesitant knock on the door. French
braid, definitely. “Yes?”
“It’s
me.” It was Linda, sounding worried. “Are you all right?”
“As the proverbial rain,” Buffy replied. “I
might go so far as to say perky, which is downright unnatural at this time of
day. Is something wrong?”
“Can I talk
to you for a moment?”
“Just a minute--let me get
decent.” After a nervous glance at the bed and a few quick corrective
measures--fluff one slightly toothmarked pillow, yank the blanket over the wet
spot, arrange collar of pullover to cover massive hickey--Buffy opened the
door. “What’s up? Dad have a change in plans for tonight?” She
tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice; they’d planned to go out to
L’Orangerie after they got back from Corona, but it wouldn’t be the first time
her father had decided working late was more important than spending time with
her.
“No, nothing like that.” Linda was
fingering her necklace, turning the little gold cross over and over till the
chain tangled. She was already dressed for work, purse clutched in one
hand and professional veneer lacquered securely into place. “Nothing to do
with your father.” The sound of running water kicked in down the
hall. Buffy hoped her father had gotten his shower in earlier, as she’d
recently discovered that Spike would happily loiter in a hot shower until he
grew gills. Linda relaxed slightly, but her voice remained low.
“Spike left the bathroom door open while he was brushing his teeth, and I
happened to look in going past, and I--I saw something that worried me.”
That was unexpected. Unexpected was
usually bad. Buffy’s smile became a trifle fixed. “Saw
something?” All Spike parts property Buffy Anne Summers, individually
and in toto. Flutter one wheat-grass-nourished eyelash in his direction
and I’ll remove your appendix through your nose, you homewrecking fiend from
hell.
Linda, luckily, didn’t appear to
be telepathic. “It was more like I didn’t see something. Something
that should have been there.” She bent closer and whispered, “How long
have you known Spike?”
“About four
years. Why?”
“Has he seemed...
different to you lately? Had any personality changes?”
Buffy looked at her, brows knit. She didn’t like the
way this was going; she could practically hear the ominous music rising in the
background. “He’s gone through a lot of... I guess you’d call it
self-evaluation in the last couple of years, but he’s always been this annoying,
if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Linda took
a deep breath, her dark liquid eyes darting back towards the hall once
more. “This is going to sound really stupid, but... have you seen him go
outside in the daytime lately?”
Uh
oh. “Sure. Yesterday.” Hiding under a blanket to get to the
car counts. “Though he’s, um, kind of a night person. Which is OK,
because I’m a night owl myself, always burning that midnight
oil--”
The other woman looked
exceedingly unhappy. “You’re going to think I’m insane,” she whispered,
“but there’s a chance we could all be in terrible danger.” She wrung her
hands. “I think your Spike might be... part of a gang.”
“Uh?” Buffy sat down on the edge of the
bed. Was there any point at all in having a secret identity these
days? “A gang. Of the PCP-taking, disappearing into thin air when
the police arrive variety?”
“Would you take
this?” Linda reached into her pocket and pulled out another small cross on
a chain. “I know your father isn’t religious and I don’t know if you are,
but it would make me feel better if I knew you had...
protection.”
Buffy took the cross and closed
her hand around it. This was going to be awkward. “Wow. I had
no idea you were familiar with the, uh, initiation signs.” Not that Spike
bothered to hide it much; Angel had always gone to great pains to appear human
in the company of humans, but Spike, as far as she could tell, just didn’t care
all that much if he were outed. Which was pretty stupid in light of the
fact that he was currently helpless against any human vampire hunters who took
exception to his existence. They were going to have to have a little
discussion about that.
Linda’s café au lait
complexion paled. “Then you know--but you don’t realize what he could
do! He looks like the man you used to know, but he’s not. You’ve got
to get away. All of us do. He’s a different person now, and he
could--”
“Spike can’t hurt you,” Buffy
interrupted hurriedly. “He can’t hurt anyone. Not won’t,
can’t. If he tries he gets an electric shock strong enough to knock him
flat. And anyway, he’s reformed. I swear, none of you are in any
danger from him.”
Down the hall the sound of
the shower running cut off abruptly, but neither of them noticed. There
was pity alongside the fear in Linda’s eyes. “You love him,” she said, her
words coming quick and urgent. “You think you’ve found some way of keeping
him under control. You’re fooling yourself, chica. He’ll last
forever. It won’t. You won’t. How many people did he kill
before you found your fix? How many do you think he’ll kill after it
breaks?”
Out in the living room, someone
knocked on the door, and Buffy heard the faint scrape of chair legs and
footsteps crossing from the kitchen as her father left his morning coffee to
answer it. Down the hall, behind Linda, Spike emerged from the bathroom
with a damp towel slung over his bare shoulders, giving his hair a few last
touches with one hand. He paused to listen for a second, his dark brows
angled together. Then he ghosted down the hall towards them and popped up
behind Linda, crooking his fingers into claws and making exaggerated biting
motions. Buffy aimed a steely glare at him over Linda’s shoulder.
Something was putting her nerves on edge, but with Linda talking and Spike
acting more than usually like an idiot...
“Look, my grandmother is a bruja down in East L.A., and she knows all
about...gangs. She knows a guy who does... deprogramming.” Linda
produced a small, dog-eared rectangle of cardstock from her purse and held it
out to Buffy. “You should look him up, fast. It’s not your Spike in
there anymore.”
“Now there’s where you’re
wrong, pet,” Spike said conversationally. “It’s always been her Spike in
here.” He reached over her shoulder with striking-snake speed and nabbed
the business card from Linda’s hand. Linda shrieked and jumped about a
foot and a half in the air. Spike’s lazy grin was pure predator,
reminiscent of a well-fed cat unable to resist a chance to step on a mouse’s
tail. He held the card out and squinted at it, lounging in the doorway in
such a manner as to block Linda's escape. “What the bloody hell is that, a
lobster? Bet he drew the sodding logo himself rather than shell out for a
graphics designer.”
“Knock off the attitude,
Spike,” Buffy said, in the tone of offhand authority which brought him to heel
far more effectively than irritation would have. “You’re scaring
her.”
He looked down at Linda with an
absurdly pleased expression. “Am I really?”
“You heard her,” a familiar voice said. “Knock it off. Or I
will.”
Angel loomed in the doorway behind
Spike, filling most of it, flexing the fingers of his right hand as if he’d like
nothing better than to make a fist of it. Spike’s every muscle went
piano-wire tense. Topaz sparking and dying in his eyes, he turned, very
deliberately, to face the maker of his maker. Buffy took the business card
from his inattentive fingers. “As a matter of fact,” she said with a weak
smile as she handed the card for Angel Investigations back to Linda, “We’ve
already got an appointment.”
Spike and
Angel faced one another, winter-blue eyes locked upon chocolate brown, and the
silence in the room was so deep and pure that Buffy was surprised that the sound
of her heart pounding against her ribs didn’t shatter it like glass, into shards
sharp enough to cut with. Her Slayer senses were keening dissonant
warning; she was strongly attuned to Spike’s presence these days, even moreso
now than she had been a week ago, but Angel’s tug on her persisted still, tiny
hooks set into all her bones. The conflict was like tinfoil on a filling,
and without thought she rose from the bed and laid a hand on Spike’s
shoulder. The physical contact soothed the jangle along her nerves almost
at once, and the boiling fury in Spike’s eyes cooled to a simmer. He
relaxed imperceptibly. “Hullo, Peaches.”
“Spike.” Angel’s voice was neutral. “Buffy. Your father
let me in. Are we ready to--”
He stopped, nostrils flaring, and unbelief washed over his face, transforming
slowly into something approaching horror as the pieces came together. His
eyes flicked around the room, taking in the two sets of clothing, the rumpled
sheets on both sides of the bed, Buffy’s hand resting on Spike’s shoulder--and
what must have been, to his enhanced senses, the unmistakable and overwhelming
musk of their recent lovemaking. There was a blur of motion too fast for human
eyes to follow and Spike was torn from her side, slammed into the doorjamb with
wall-rattling force, and pinned there with Angel’s hands about his throat.
A raw snarl barely recognizable as words tore out of the older vampire: “What
have you done to her?”
“Put him down!”
Buffy shouted. Angel ignored her.
Spike’s eyes blazed with triumph, and his smile was as vicious a thing as
Buffy’d ever seen on a human face. “Nothing she didn’t beg me to, mate,”
he gasped--Angel’s cutting off his air couldn’t hurt him, but it made it
difficult for him to talk. “Not that she had to beg long. My
pleasure. Each and every night, all night long--agh!” His face
convulsed in agony and Buffy realized with a cold shock of terror that in
another second Angel was simply going to rip Spike’s head off his
shoulders. She lunged towards them, but Spike had already brought one knee
up like a pile-driver into Angel’s groin. Angel howled and staggered
backwards, his grip breaking, and Spike twisted free and dove after him with
fangs bared, screaming, “How does it feel, Angelus? How does it bloody
feel when it happens to you?” The two of them disintegrated into a snarling,
roaring tangle of fists and fangs in the middle of the carpet.
Linda screamed and ran for the living room. Change
of plans. Buffy diverted her lunge towards the window, and in one
swift motion her hand was on the curtain-pull. “If you two don’t stop it
RIGHT NOW you’ll be vampire flambe in two seconds and I’ll shovel your ashes
into the same urn for eternity!”
Even that
threat didn’t penetrate. Buffy yanked the cord down and the curtains flew
open. Sunlight flooded into the room, striking the combatants in
mid-grapple. Both Spike and Angel froze, blinking into the sunlight with
identical expressions of shock before pain galvanized them into motion.
“Fuck!” Spike screamed, and leaped for the closet as wisps of smoke started to
rise from his exposed flesh. Angel, with less flesh exposed and less
familiarity with the layout of the room, scrambled to his feet and dove behind
the bed after a second’s panicked reconnaissance.
Buffy stood there for a moment, backlit dramatically by the
morning sun, her lips pressed into a hard angry line. “Can you both move
beyond being the poster boys for Neanderthal Nation for five minutes, or is that
too much to ask?” she hissed.
Angel poked a
wary head up over the side of the bed. “Buffy,” he said in the tone that
meant he was trying very, very hard to sound reasonable, “I think you have some
explaining to do.”
Spike inched out from
behind the closet door, all glowery, sexy pout, and jerked his chin in Angel’s
direction. “He started it.” He looked uneasily at the window and made a
little curtain-closing wave with one hand. “Uh...pet, could you...?”
How was it possible that one man could make
her so sublimely happy and so completely furious in the space of an hour?
She stalked over to the closet and gave him a look which would have stopped a
glacier in its tracks, her chest heaving. “Is that what this is? Get
back at Angel week?”
His eyes fell away and
his head dropped. “Don’t you think we bloody well deserve it? Both of
us?”
She looked across the room at Angel’s
dark handsome face, agonized. “It wasn’t his fault. Any of
it.” She believed that. She had to. Angel, whose eyes never
quite lost the haunted knowlege of what he had done, was not Angelus, any more
than Spike was William...
“Then
whose fault was it? Tell me who stole Dru’s mind from her, and her heart
from me? Who took your heart and froze it so cold even my hands can warm
it?” The ridged brow and broadened nose of his demon-face melted back into
the aquiline purity of his human one, and staring into those lucent blue eyes,
Buffy realized that she no longer had any idea which of his faces was the
mask. “Tell me who I can hate, Buffy! There’s got to be
someone.”
And she couldn’t do the right
thing, tell him he didn’t have to hate anyone, because she knew too well that
there were times when you did. “It’s--it’s over, all that.
Past. This is now.” She reached up and took his face in her hands,
reading the planes of his cheek and jaw like a Braille of the heart.
“We’re now.”
Right there in her
father’s guest room closet Spike fell to his knees, supplicant at her feet for a
heartbreaking moment before wrapping his arms around her hips and burying his
face in her crotch. “Buffy,” he moaned.
Whoa. Stella Kowalski moment. For the second time that
morning she found herself unable to breathe, unable to move, but for all the
physical intimacy of their pose it was not lust that raced through her
now--OK, not much lust--and for the first time she realized, like
a mule-kick to the gut, that he feared losing her as deeply and terribly as she
feared losing him. Doesn’t he know? Haven’t I told him?
Her hands moved blindly over his head, fingers twining through his still-damp
curls. “Get up,” she whispered. “Get up.” Spike obeyed, rising
to his feet in one lithe surge, his hands and his eyes never letting go of
her. They were the only people in the room, the building, the
universe.
“Buffy.” Angel’s dark warm
voice, which had once been the one to which she compared all others, full of
concern now. “Buffy, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on
here.”
The tug was still there. Once
those hooks were set into bone they could never truly be removed. But it
had never once occurred to her to go to him first.
“Buffy!” Linda’s fearful voice cried. “Are you all
right?”
Buffy took a shaky breath.
“I’m fine. Could you close the curtains, please? We’re coming
out.” As the room darkened once more, she took Spike’s hand, and led him
out of the closet.
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