The Cost of Butterfly Kisses

[lit_gal]

The  Cost of Butterfly Kisses, Part 45
Fandom/Pairing: BtVS, Spike/Xander
Rated: ADULT

Yep, still spurting!  Fourth chapter in 4 days, so get the order right.

Are you ready to start with the bad guys getting dead?

( Chapter One... )  ( Chapter Two... ) ( Chapter 14 . )

"So, I'm standing there at the top of the stairs, and Caleb has this look on his face like someone just peed in his cornflakes. The panic sort of passes, and then he threatens to kill me, and I point out that he has to catch me first."

"Oh goddess."

"No goddess needed. Just me. I was jumping and somersaulting and leaping over barrels of wine. And the First is still sitting on a barrel at the side of the room wearing my face as he told Caleb how embarrassing it is to watch him get his ass kicked."

"Wait, the First looked like you? Okay, disturbo."

"Yeah, Caleb thought so, too. He told the First that it was confusing to have both of us in one room, and can I just say that I'm really, really glad the First is not big with the touching because the idea of someone running around with my body touching Caleb, that's therapy inducing."

"Nice, Buff. Way to give us all nightmares."

"What happened then?"

"The First went 'poof' and that's when the fight was really on. He kept taking swings, and I kept ducking. Fast. Really fast. I am really tired of getting hit, so we are definitely going to be doing more ducking in the future."

"Go team Buffy. We can get t-shirts. Ducking good."

"Yeah, and once I learned to duck fast, things went way better. Anyway, I saw this trapdoor, so I did a running slide right through it into an underground cave. And that's where I found this baby." Buffy held up her new toy, an ax-like weapon that made Spike feel uncomfortable whenever he looked at it too long. Clearly Xander, Red, and Tara didn't feel the same way because they were all huddled up in one of their little puppy piles. Spike sat on the arm of the couch and watched them settle into roles they'd all abandoned a long time ago. Giles and Riley sat at the kitchen table and watched through the arch, but Buffy had refused to let Vovka come in, and Xander had backed her, so the mage was at the army's main base with the rest of the potentials. If fifty men with machine guns and tanks couldn't protect them, no one could, but Spike was happy to have them out of the house.

"It came right out of the rock."

"Long live King Buffy." Xander's wide smile immediately faltered. "Queen Buffy. Definitely Queen Buffy, only I was thinking King Arthur, and King Arthur and Queen Buffy sort of met in the middle."

Tara and Red both smiled, and Spike leaned back. It was unsettling to watch Xander slip back into the group, particularly when Spike felt like he had no place in it. He'd slept with half of them, and still, he just didn't quite fit. And that hurt because he still bloody loved them both.

"Okay, finish the story," Willow said. Buffy's audience all leaned close, like children wanting to hear a bedtime story, but then after all the loss and pain, they deserved some time celebrating this victory.

"So, Caleb follows me, and he looks at me and says, 'I'm still not impressed, girly. Can you pry that out of solid rock before I come over there--' and right in the middle of his whole speech about how I can't pull it out, I reach over and pull it out. You should have seen his face. And then all he can say is 'darn.'"

"We get the politest serial killers around here," Xander pointed out.

"We do, don't we?" Buffy wrinkled her nose. "The mayor, Ted, Caleb. I suggest a new rule. When polite people come to town we just... I guess killing them would be too much, huh?"

"Probably," Willow agreed.

"You shouldn't worry. This whole town is dreadfully short of any sort of manners," Giles said softly. Then he went to back to eating his Jaffa cakes. Riley looked amused at that.

Spike started when Xander suddenly crab-walked back several feet so he could lean against Spike's leg. "So, finish the story, Buff." Xander's heat soaked into Spike, and Spike reached down to finger a loose curl. Buffy watched them both, her eyes focusing on Spike's fingers and Xander's curl for a second before she looked up at Spike and gave him a soft smile--it was the sort of expression he'd always wanted from her back when they'd been lovers. The sort of expression he'd never gotten. She blinked, and the expression vanished. Instead, she gave Willow a bright and cheerful grin.

"Oh, this is where it gets good. He looks right at me, and says that I should just 'do myself a courtesy' and hand the weapon over. I mean, what kind of idiot falls for that sort of line?"

"An idiotic one?"

"Yeah, well I clearly passed that IQ test. I suggested he come and take it from me, and he starts backing away like I had my finger on the button for a nuclear bomb."

"Do nuclear bombs have buttons?" Xander asked. He looked over at Finn.

"Not usually. Most soldiers try to avoid blowing themselves up," Finn offered. Xander clearly didn't recognize the indulgent tone that bordered on impertinence. At one point Spike had been equally as dismissive of these strange little rituals, but they pulled some sort of strength from each other when they all curled up together like this.

Buffy laughed. "Well, this really put fear into a bad guy who didn't blink at nuclear fusion, so I'm calling it good." She held up her newest acquisition.

"It is an ingenious design," Giles agreed. He seemed much more comfortable now that they were talking about the weapon.

"Kills strong bodies three ways," Buffy agreed.

Willow reached over and ran a finger along the ax. "And you say you sense something when you hold it?"

"Not much, but it's strong. And I knew it belonged to me. I just knew it."

Giles got a thoughtful look on his face. "In addition to being ancient, it's clearly mystical."

"Yeah, I figured that one out when I King Arthured it out of the stone." Buffy gave the other Scoobies a conspiratorial smile. It was like they were all kids again, sharing their secret contempt for the adults.

"So maybe it's like some kind of traditional slayer weapon," Willow suggested.

And Giles had fallen back into his role, too. Before Willow stopped, he was already shaking his head, dismissing her idea. "I can't imagine how something like this could exist without my having heard of it."

"I don't know about that. The good guys are not traditionally known for their communication skills," Buffy pointed out.

"That's sadly true," Finn agreed.

Giles had a flash of something that looked like genuine anger, but then it just sort of faded, and he sagged in his chair. The bloody truth of it was that the Watchers had buggered themselves with their games and their lies, and Rupert had to know that.

"I want to hear the end of the story," Xander said, leaning forward, taking his warmth away.

Buffy smiled. "Okay, so now we're really getting into it. I swing, but it turns out that he knows the whole 'ducking good' rule, too. I get in a punch, but I can't seem to get my ax in his neck, and then the next thing I know, he grabs me by the lapels and throws me into a cask of wine so hard that the barrel splits open, and that is one stain that is never coming out. And I am blaming the slipperiness of merlot for the fact that I dropped the ax."

Willow gasped and grabbed Tara's hand so hard that she flinched. Spike just rolled his eyes. Obviously it had all turned out okay or she wouldn't be sitting on the floor around the coffee table eating popcorn.

"So, I climb out of the splinters, dripping wine and smelling like one of those guys who drinks out of a paper bag, and before I can even get my bearings, Caleb points the sharp end at me and charges. Well, I dart to the side, and he stakes the rock."

Xander whistled. "Okay, as the construction worker I feel a need to point out that stone trumps wood. Are you saying that the wood cut through the stone?"

"Does the word mystical mean anything to you?" Giles muttered, but he did so softly enough that Spike suspected no one else had heard it.

"That would be why this is my new favorite toy. This is the gift that just keeps giving, because once he got it stuck, he couldn't get it out again. It was like playing a round robin version of King Arthur, so I got to pull it out a second time. This time, I swing, and catch him in the stomach, a pretty shallow cut. I figure it's not fatal, and he does too because he starts to laugh and he wags his finger at me like some sort of teacher who caught me cheating, and then, without warning, he just collapses. The fight is just… over. Bam… one little paper cut and he's out." Buffy's hands fly up to show how suddenly the fight ended, and Spike instinctively jerked back from the ax.

"Achilles' stomach," Willow says with the sort of grim pleasure that sometimes worried Spike. She had darkness, but she also had a strength in her to fight it. He could only hope that the strength kept winning over the darkness.

Buffy just smiled wider. "Yeah, well this play needs a third act. Act one, Caleb kicks my ass. Act two, I kick Caleb's ass."

"Act three?" Tara asks with wide eyes.

"So, I'm ready to climb up the ladder and here Caleb comes again. He looks like an Ebola patient with blood dripping out of his eyes and nose."

"Ew." Willow made a face.

"I was a little too worried about the big, brass candlestick he was swinging at my head to really get too grossed out," Buffy answered. She was in her element, describing the fight with a sort of wild energy that made her hands fly as she mimicked each punch and each throw. It killed Spike that he hadn't been there for her, but her gut and Xander's soothsaying had been right; she was the lone wolf, and she had to fight this battle on her own.

"So, I ask him for a ballpark figure on how many times I have to kill him before he stays dead, and he gets all up in my face with the insults… and calling me a girl, which now that I think about it, is not really feeling very insulty."

"He should know the girls I know," Xander agreed as he looked around the room. The women might have the more obvious powers, but Spike figured Xander could hold his own. Xander, however, wasn't mentioning his new-found ability. Actually, since the conversation with Vovka, he wasn't talking about soothsaying at all. If it weren't for his sudden habit of shutting up in the middle of conversations, Spike would assume he'd dismissed the whole business as gibberish. However, the fact he was watching what he said, editing himself, well, that did suggest Xander believed a mite bit more than he was willing to admit.

"Yeah, well all the cracks about girls gave me an idea." Buffy wiggled her eyebrows as she glanced down at her lap. Spike noticed that she had the attention of all the men now. "He slammed me back against the wall, and I swung the ax right up between his legs. It slices, it dices, it makes julienne preacher." All the men cringed, and Xander actually cupped his genitals as if they needed protecting. Spike just gave a grim smile. He'd always known Buffy was a ball-buster; he just hadn't expected her to be quite so literal. "And then I just kept pushing it up and up and he just split like an overripe watermelon."

"Okay, now I'm officially grossed out," Xander complained.

Spike was a little more concerned about the practical matters. "Right then, did that end the fight?"

"He was in pieces, Spike," Buffy said in a contemptuous tone. Spike sighed and tried very hard to not point out that plenty of baddies could get up from a wound like that.

"And it's Buffy for the win!" Willow said happily.

"It's a significant victory," Finn offered, but he wasn't ready to throw the victory party yet.

"Heck, yes. Way significant," Xander agreed. "This calls for root beer floats all around. I would say beer, only I've seen Buffy with beer, and Buffy, beer, and big-ass weapons are not sympatico if you know what I mean. So, as the host of tonight's victory celebration, I am offering beer of the root kind."

"I can go for the root kind," Buffy said as Xander used a hand on Spike's knee to push himself up.

"Will? Tara?" Both witches nodded.

Giles seemed to pull himself up a little straighter. "Yes, perhaps we can focus on the weapon. We need to find out whatever we can. Who made it? What is its source of power?"

"What's its credit score?" Buffy asked. The second she did, Giles just wilted a bit, and Spike could practically see the guilt clinging to her.

It wasn't her bloody fault that everyone and everything Rupert had ever known had gotten blown to bits, but he was so soddin' busy feeling sorry for himself that he never did notice how the others reacted. That was the one thing that made Spike hate the man. Yeah, he'd tried to kill Spike, but at least Spike could respect that. Hell, he was downright complimented that Rupert still respected him enough to consider him dangerous, but this self-pity was about more than Spike could take.

"Sorry, Giles," Buffy offered. "You're probably right that we should have some sort of intel, but you know me; I'm not really big with the research."

"I could search through some old books on ancient weaponry." Giles almost looked hopeful.

"I could help," Willow offered brightly. "Since I'm trying to break my habit of using magic for the not-so-magical parts of life, it'd be good for me to crack some books."

Tara smiled at Willow. "I could help, too," she said.

"Well, count me out," Xander shouted from the kitchen. "No more paper cuts or drooling on pages or getting incantations tattooed on my cheek from falling asleep on ink printing. Nope. I will be spending the night trying to fix all the things the potentials broke."

"I think I'll help Xander," Riley said.

"Suit yourselves." Giles didn't even bother feigning disappointment. "I should get some books from my room." He got up and hurried toward his bedroom with a bit of fire in his eye.

Buffy sighed. "I don't actually care where it came from as long as it kills bad guys. Is that wrong of me?"

Finn shrugged. "A Kalashnikov assault rifle kills as well as the M-4 combat rifle."

Buffy blinked at him. "And I think I'm not alone in saying 'huh?'"

"Even if it's an enemy's weapon, it'll still work for you," Xander offered as he walked in, carefully balancing four root beer floats. "Spike, I have your blood in the microwave, but I ran out of hands along the way."

Standing up, Riley helped him get the floats on the table. "Should you be doing that with your ribs?" he asked.

"Ah, the advantages of knowing a really good witch. Or a good witch who's really good at witching. Tara managed to get the bones to start their knitting a little quicker. I hurt, but I'm not in the sort of pain that makes me wish I could just stay unconscious for a month or so."

"You know, something occurs to me," Buffy got up from the floor and headed for the table to claim her float. "We're going to win."

"We always do," Xander agreed.

"Yeah, and this bad guy can't even touch us. That's not all that scary," Willow added.

Buffy nodded. "He's like the giant taunter. He just says really crappy stuff to make you feel crappy."

It was Tara who pointed out the obvious. "If he can make us not trust ourselves, not believe in ourselves, then he's won."

"Psychological warfare," Finn agreed.

"Warfare shmorefare. We're the Scoobies," Xander said before taking an obnoxiously loud slurp from his root beer float. Spike rolled his eyes and got up to go fetch his blood. "Snyder spent three years trying to destroy all our self-confidence and joy in life, and he failed. Snyder was way creepier than the First."

All four of them were gathered around the table now, and Finn sort of backed himself up to the wall. Spike was guessing that he'd be a lot more comfortable back at the army setup north of town, but Spike had to give him some credit for sticking it out. He definitely wanted to help.

"You know what might be helpful?" Buffy asked. Her tone was still light and airy, but it had a sour note just under the surface, and Spike turned and leaned against the counter as he studied her. "Wouldn't it be great if we could activate all the slayers? Then we'd have thousands of slayers to go to battle against the First's army."

Finn's spine straightened up so fast that Spike was surprised a vertebrae didn't pop.

"What do you think?" Buffy asked the group.

Xander blinked like a deer caught in headlights. "That depends. Are you in any way… I don't know… kidding?"

"You don't think it's a good idea?" Buffy asked. Immediately, Xander snapped his mouth closed.

"Could it even be done?" Tara asked softly, looking to Willow. Magic that manipulative would have to come out of Red.

She wrinkled her nose. "Not to poop on the party here, but I'm thinking that would be pretty much impossible. It would go way beyond anything I've ever touched, and face it, I've touched stuff way bigger and way darker than I ever should have."

Buffy made her own face at that news. "I'm not saying we should do it. It's just nice to think about, you know, like we used to make up vacations in all the really great places we were never going to go." She was saying the right words, but Spike wasn't so sure she was just bringing this up on a lark.

"Disneyland," Xander said in a wistful tone. "But seriously, it's probably good that we can't do it. No offense, but the potentials pretty much drive me crazy with just their potentialness. If they were all actual slayers, I might have to change sides."

That forced a snort out of Spike. "Bloody hell, Kennedy alone would be enough to make me go after my third slayer," he agreed.

"Halleluiah!" Xander raised his root beer float and waved it in Spike's direction as if making a toast. "But honestly, Buff, using CPR to bring you back from the almost-dead opened a crack for the First to slither through. Dragging you out of heaven opened a door. I'm pretty sure that turning all the potentials into slayers would… I don't know… blow up the universe or something."

"Or trigger more prophesies," Finn added. "The number of mystical events has been rising exponentially in the last five years. This is highly classified, so it does not leave this room, but certain members of the government are busily working to find an alternative dimension in case all this escalation turns out to herald the end. One side increasing weaponry always causes a response in the enemy. I'm not sure that using what would be, in essence, a magical 'nuclear option' would be the best solution. I would rather roll in here with a thousand tanks and blast Sunnydale to rubble."

"It pretty much is turning to rubble," Xander pointed out. "Although I could do a heck of a business flipping houses. I would just have to make sure I sold them over the internet so the buyers wouldn't realize that big chunks of the city are becoming wastelands of the Mad Max variety."

"Xander, that would be like cheating people," Willow said with horror in her voice.

Xander gave her a disgusted look. "Which is why I'm not doing it, Will. Although technically perfectly legal, it wouldn't be nice. So, short of destroying the world by turning Kennedy into a slayer, what's our next step?"

Buffy stretched her neck. "I was going to say sleep, only now Giles is going to be all 'mystical this' and 'magical doo-hicky that.' I see a future of sleeping on open books in my future."

"Look at the bright side," Xander offered. "Most of his books burned."

Right on cue, Rupert came into the living room and waddled toward the table with a stack of books that reached nearly up to his nose. "I found a few tomes that might shed light on a mystical weapon. If we can find the name, we should be able to cross reference easily, but I fear finding the name may prove the difficult portion." He put the stack of books on the edge of the table.

"Did anyone hear that?" Xander asked with great seriousness. The others looked around in concern, but Spike didn't bother. His boy was playing with them; Spike knew that tone. "I think I hear a hole in the drywall calling my name. You guys have fun now." With a bright smile, he grabbed his root beer float and headed for the basement door with a little more speed than strictly dignified.

Finn seemed to study the size of the stack with some dismay. "I can take a book if you tell me what I'm looking for," he offered unhappily. Giles smiled and then turned toward Spike.

"Leave me out of it, Rupert. I don't give a flying fuck what the weapon is called as long as it kills things dead. You lot can play Nancy Drew. I'm going to drink my blood and then go shag my boy." Spike enjoyed the sight of Rupert turning vivid red before he headed into the kitchen to grab his dinner. The slayer was hiding something for sure, but he wasn't going to get it out of her in the middle of a research session. He'd just have to bide his time, and meanwhile, he had an empty basement and a lover with mostly healed ribs. Spike could definitely think of something better to do than fixing walls or researching bloody weapons.