Fic: The Soul Lies Down [15/?]
Title: The Soul Lies Down (15/?)
Pairing(s): Buffy/Spike, (Anya/Xander, Willow/Tara)
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~6,600 (~71,000 total)
Timeline: AU S5, S6, S7 and post-series
Warnings: character death, violence and gore
Summary: As a child, I used to dream of a man in black and white, spinning in the desert like a dervish, sword flashing in the moonlight as he danced with death. (A sequel/companion to angearia's Fin Amour).
Notes: Ha, well, I just noticed I never posted this chapter to LJ before I popped, so here you go LJ peeps! Many beta thanks to rahirah and bewilde. With apologies to Barb for keeping all the plot-less smut ;)
15
Vessels
The door slams and Spike hears the ubiquitous cry of, “Pizza! Get your pizza!” followed by the herd-of-elephant stomping of little girl feet across the upstairs hallway.
“Yummy, yummy, yummy!” Dawn’s voice practically dopplers with how fast she’s going. He doesn’t even get a chance to tell her not to run on the stairs before she’s down in the foyer and hanging off of Xander’s leg. The boy does a cute little routine of looking around to see what monster’s got him, before clomping, child and all, through to the kitchen.
“Hey, man, no tip for the delivery boy?” he asks Spike good naturedly, setting the boxes down on the counter top before disentangling himself from Dawn.
“You started paying rent yet?” Spike tosses back.
Xander just rolls his eyes and takes down a stack of plates from the cupboard while Spike finishes up the salad. What with the fixing up of the basement, the buying of the weekly groceries, and the unofficial childcare that their supposedly temporary roommate does, neither Buffy nor Joyce will let him pay a dime. Not Spike’s preference, with them still paying off Buffy’s tuition and Joyce’s medical bills, and of course the niblet shooting up like a weed - because he’s never had to worry about this stuff before, money came cheap when he didn’t care about snapping necks to get it - but he got overruled.
No, Captain Gormless isn’t a strain on resources, just on Spike’s nerves. He gets on well enough with Buffy’s friends these days, but living under the same roof is another matter, and honestly, he’d have rather gotten Anya out of the separation. She got to keep the apartment, though, smart, mercenary little chit that she is.
“Daddy, hurry up,” Dawn hollers from the dining room. “I’m so hungry my tummy is going to eat me from inside!”
So dramatic, he thinks with a reluctant half-smile. Wonder where she gets that from? Tossing the chopped tomatoes into the salad bowl and grabbing his mug of blood, he carries them both through, flashing his game face at his daughter as he does so.
“Not if I eat you first!”
He lunges for her, but, once captured, puts his fangs away and blows a raspberry on her neck. Squeals of laughter and outrage greet Buffy’s entrance to the room, her hair still smelling strongly of shampoo from her shower, dressed sleek and black, ready for patrol.
“Oh, good,” she says, “food,” and practically dives for the Veggie Supreme.
They settle down quickly, being a house full of eaters. Xander and Buffy exchange stories about their work days between (and sometimes during, in the former’s typically uncivilised case) mouthfuls, while Spike offers his own commentary between cutting up Dawn’s food into little-person sized portions and sipping at his blood. Once she’s sated the beast that is her appetite, Dawn gets chatty, too, and effortlessly holds court to the three adults who’re wrapped entirely around her grubby little fingers. She’s in the midst of showing off her spelling prowess (dee-oh-gee-ess spells dogs - the joy of plurals! Ess-pee-oh-en spells spoon - well, double vowels are tricky) when the doorbell goes.
“Mom’s back early,” Buffy says with a slight frown at the clock on the sideboard as Spike rises to go answer it, but it’s not Joyce returned from her date with the latest flavour.
“Huh,” Spike says as he surveys their visitor. He leans one shoulder against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest, and plasters on his most insincere smile. “Aren’t you dead yet?”
“Spike, do shut up,” Giles says irritably, and pushes past him. Petty annoyance accomplished and curiosity piqued, Spike lets him by. It’s been several years, after all. Trailing in his wake like ducklings is a trio of teenage girls. They give Spike a nice variety of looks, ranging from polite but nervy smiles to outright suspicion.
“Giles!” Buffy jumps up as her old watcher and his strange brood troop into the dining room. “What are you doing here?”
When he speaks, all traces of earlier exasperation are gone. His voice is grave, and very serious.
“Buffy,” he says, “these girls are potential slayers. Their watchers were slaughtered. It’s started.”
*
Spike purposely hangs back in the doorway, watching, while everyone else mills around the kitchen. Giles is boiling a pan of water on the stove for tea, having refused to microwave it. Spike hasn’t told him yet that there’s no English Breakfast in the house, waiting for the inevitable meltdown with gleeful anticipation. The others are making awkward small talk, waiting for Buffy to come back down from putting Dawn to bed. It’s early, still, but they can’t exactly have this conversation in front of the platelet. Euphemisms only go so far and generally he prefers to be truthful, anyway, but explaining things in a way that fits into a five-and-a-half year old’s worldview without giving her nightmares is a skill he highly doubts the stuffy old watcher has put a moment’s thought to. Who talks about massacres in front of a child? He shakes his head disgustedly. If anyone’s going to fill his kid’s head with ghoulish horrors, it’s going to be him.
The three girls are huddled together looking wan and occasionally exchanging the kind of stilted whispering that implies they don’t know each other very well. Linnea, the stringy little Swede with the bottle-bottom glasses, keeps shooting him the kind of nervous glances that make him want to flash his fangs, just for giggles, and he wonders idly if Xander could be drawn into a bet on how high the girl would jump. The other two - snooty, public school Elly and sweet, Scottish Harpreet - either don’t know what he is, or are feeling complacent in the home of the slayer. Hard to know what Giles has told them, beyond that they’ll be safe here. Whether they really will be… well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?
“So…” Xander says with that grating cheer of his, rubbing his hands together with equally grating enthusiasm. “You girls are gonna be slayers one day! How’s that for a cosmic winning lottery ticket?”
Spike raises an eyebrow at that. The last few years Buffy has really come to, if not exactly enjoy her calling, then at least take some pleasure in it, but even Xander can’t be blind to the risks and other downsides.
“It’s hardly a prize, is it?” Elly says, an almost shrill note entering her voice, and Spike nods to himself approvingly. Irritating snob she may be, but at least she’s not stupid.
“What, superpowers and kickass moves? What teenage girl wouldn’t kill for that?”
“The type with a dead watcher and the sword of Damocles hanging over her own head,” the girl says tersely, and Spike can’t help but smirk because Pinky over there clearly doesn’t know his Cicero, even if the reminder of blood shed has chastened him.
“How does that work, anyway?” Xander asks, valiantly trying to change the subject. He turns to Giles for help. “I thought it was One Born into Each Generation, and they all look about the same age to me.”
“Standing right here,” Elly mutters, but not loud enough to force anyone to acknowledge her.
“There are many more potentials than are ever called to full slayer status,” Giles says distractedly, opening a cupboard and frowning at the lack of tea. Spike’s smirk deepens. “Often the Council is able to identify them by magical means, to provide training in the event of their calling, though not always.”
“Like Buffy wasn’t, you mean.”
“Indeed.” He starts working his way methodically down the line of cabinets, opening and shutting with increasing carelessness.
“Oi,” Spike says, straightening a little. “Easy on the hardware, Rupes. Niblet’s trying to get to sleep.”
“Ah, yes. Sorry.” He is momentarily side-tracked, before continuing. “Potentials and their watchers have been disappearing for some time now, many turning up dead. Elly, Linnea and Harpreet are the only ones we know of to have-Spike, where is the sodding tea?”
Spike gives him a sharp smile and a lazy shrug. “Isn’t any. No one who comes by here anymore drinks it.”
Rupert just stares at him in silence for several seconds, like the words don’t compute. “And you couldn’t have mentioned this earlier?” he says finally, voice heavy with exasperation and eyes alight with the slightly crazed gleam of the chronic insomniac.
“Well, if you’d asked…”
He’s already realised he’s not going to get his explosion, though, since Buffy is coming up behind him.
“What’s going on, guys?” Her voice is overly bright and she touches his bare elbow as she steps around him, just a swipe of skin on skin, an unconscious gesture she has picked up somewhere along the line to reassure herself, and one of a hundred-thousand little things she does that still makes Spike’s heart fill with love.
The room quiets as she steps forward. Not that it was noisy before, but her presence has a way of settling people into a wary focus. The potentials straighten up and turn towards her out of their huddle. Giles finally abandons his tea-making attempt. Xander’s thrumming, jouncing energy at so many strangers to impress ebbs away. Spike feels it come over him as well, dropping his arms to his sides as he takes half a step closer to his girl, standing at her shoulder.
“Giles?” she prompts. “I think it’s explanation time.”
He launches into it without further delay. “The First’s influence on this plane is increasing, which we’ve known for some time thanks to, well…” he casts a quick glance at the potentials, and Spike can’t help but be amused at his hesitation.
“A time-travelling adult version of our daughter,” he tells them.
“Um, what?”
“The, the kid we just…?”
“Long story.” Buffy waves them off without looking away from Giles.
“Yes, well, we knew it was coming, but we didn’t know exactly when or how or, perhaps more importantly, why. Since we decided to bring the Council in on this, I’ve been able to make use of their resources and contacts, and it seems that the slayer line itself may be the cause. Or, rather - you, Buffy.”
“Pardon?” Buffy’s voice is calm, though confused, but Spike hears her heart judder, blood and adrenaline starting to pump. She died fighting this thing the first time around - they all know that part of the tale - but this is strange and unwelcome news. Buffy sways into him minutely and he places his hand on the small of her back, fingers spread, a light touch for connection more than support, although he’ll give that too.
“How can she have caused it?” he asks. “She’s just been doing her job all these years.”
“Perhaps caused is the wrong word,” Rupert concedes. “But her existence is the reason.”
He breaks off then with a significant look that Spike can’t decipher, though after a moment Buffy seems to get it. Weirdly, her eyes fly to Xander.
“The Master. I should be dead.” Her voice is flat, tightly controlled, and Spike presses his hand a little more firmly into her back, the warmth of her skin, because no, she really, really shouldn’t be. The girls murmur their confusion. Spike looks to Xander, too. He’s heard this story, of course, and has mentally thanked the boy for doing his part - once, drunkenly, even thanked him to his face, not that either of them would ever admit to it. Isn’t this just the bloody way of the world, though? Do something good, save a life, only to be told that’s the reason a world-ending evil is rising. Sodding typical. Xander meets his eyes briefly with a grimace that shows he’s having the same kinds of thoughts, and they share a moment of mutual antipathy for the universe before moving on.
“The split in the slayer line that your death and subsequent resuscitation caused,” Giles explains, voice slipping into something surprisingly gentle that Spike has only ever heard him use with Buffy, “it, well, it created a slight instability, a crack that the First has been slowly widening ever since.”
“And now it’s killing off potential slayers? Why?”
“We think…” his eyes turn shiftily to the three silent teenagers in their midst.
“This concerns them, Giles,” Buffy tells him. “They deserve to know.”
White-faced, they look at her as one, and Spike sees something in each of their eyes - something dangerous and familiar. The hope that she will be their light in the dark, their saviour.
“Yes, quite.” Giles takes his glasses off, starts to polish them. “We think… that the First is attempting to, to eradicate the slayer line in its entirety, starting with the potentials, and then Faith, and then-”
“Me.”
There isn’t time to take in the implications of that statement. A dark and once well-loved laugh sounds right behind him, and Spike jolts around, instinctively seeking the source well before dread or confusion can set in. When those feelings do come, they are only amplified by the absence of the laugh’s owner.
“Spike?”
Buffy’s hand is on his arm, and when he turns back to the room, they’re all looking at him.
“Thought I heard something,” he mutters. “Was nothing.”
But it wasn’t nothing. He’s sure of that. Because he lived and loved a hundred years with her, and the sound of her laughter is imprinted in his blood.
Drusilla.
*
He hears her again in the early hours of the following morning, walking back from his latest attempt at paid employment, a voice in the shadows, whispering such seductive nasties. For the first time in his existence, he feels fear at the sound of it.
“What do you want?” he is eventually forced to ask. It’s not like he hasn’t had his bad moments over the past few years, confronted ghosts and the sins attached to them. Nikki’s son had tried to kill him, and he’d nearly let him, but Dru? The wrongs done to her were never on his shoulders.
And yet, when she steps out of the clinging dark, she still has the ability to take his breath away.
“Lovely Spike,” she says mournfully, weaving slowly closer. “Remember Prague? You slew a whole mob for laying fingers on me, turned them all to pretty ribbons.” He had, and he does remember - vividly, if not pleasurably. “You used to be my knight, so shiny in your armour, and then you put your lance right through my heart.”
Ah, well there is that. Not that he really considers dusting her a wrong, not for Dawn’s sake, but he has sometimes regretted the necessity of it.
“That what this is, sweet?” he asks the apparition. “Come back to shake your chains and groan under my window?”
She gives him an indulgent smile. “No, silly boy. The chains are for you.”
And then he’s standing on the porch at home, staring at the door, unable to remember how he got there. Something important happened, he thinks, something he needs to tell Buffy and the others. If only he could… it slips through his fingers like sand.
Ten minutes later, he finishes his smoke, enjoying the last few moments of quiet night time and scattered stars before turning in for his warm bed and even warmer slayer.
***
Buffy dropped her purse and Dawn’s school bag by the coat stand and sighed at the bombsite that had once been their living room. Her mom had made it clear to the girls that they had to keep their space tidy, and you could kinda see where they’d tried to roll things up and tuck things away, but between their belongings, Dawn’s ever-expanding kingdom of toys and Giles’s research materials, the house was getting way overcrowded.
And then there was Spike. She had the distinct impression that something was going on with him - had been going on ever since their guests’ arrival - something he didn’t seem to want to talk about, but between work and everything else, there hadn’t been enough time to beat it out of him, figuratively or otherwise.
Joyce was in the kitchen when Buffy went through, as she always seemed to be these days. In front of her the potentials were lined up like a little culinary army, utensils in hand. The Swedish girl had an apron on. There were pans and baking sheets out on the counter, and a haphazard pile of cookbooks that could probably rival some of Giles’s tomes for length of time since last seeing daylight. Seemed like the girls were getting another lesson in pulling their weight around the house, and Buffy smiled to herself, realizing with sudden insight how much worse things would’ve been without her mom there.
“Hey everyone.”
“Hi sweetheart, good day?”
Buffy went to the fridge and started pulling together a snack each for Dawn and herself. “Same old,” she said. “Bullying, romantic intrigue, crushing existential angst, and that’s just the staffroom. Oh, but I did get Principal Lopez to sign off on the girls.”
“What does that mean?” It was the pretty Scottish one who’d asked - what did the others call her? Hari.
“It means we’re starting American high school next week,” Elly, the one who sounded like a watcher-in-training, said. “Joy.”
“But at least we don’t have to wear uniforms, right, Buffy?” Hari asked.
Xander, who had just walked in behind them, froze mid-step with a slightly glazed expression in his eyes, and Buffy almost choked on her OJ at the bad, bad premonition of what was running through his mind. “Uh, no, no school uniforms in California,” she hurried to say.
“Unless you want to,” Xander blurted. Buffy rolled her eyes. Her mom fixed him with a frigid stare. Xander covered his mouth and looked wildly at Joyce. “Oh god, don’t say it! I know! Oh god.” He backed up again. “I’m just going to go… play with Dawn. Nice and innocently.”
“So anyway,” Buffy said, pasting on her best moving-on smile. “I just wanted to remind you that today’s Friday.”
“I hadn’t forgotten,” Joyce said wryly. “In fact, the girls are going to take care of dinner for me so I can spend more time with Dawnie.”
“Great,” Buffy said, relieved. Between their schedules, she and Spike didn’t get a whole lot of together time, and that niggling feeling was telling her that right now they really, really needed it.
“What’s special about Friday?” Hari asked.
“I’ve got a slay-date with my vamp,” she said with a grin. “You know what they say, those who slay together, stay together. Oh, and Mom? See if you can get Giles involved. I think some Dawnie time would do him good.”
*
“Wakey wakey, sleepy head,” Buffy said as she entered their bedroom, mug of steaming blood in hand. “Sweet dreams?”
Spike rolled over and gave her an adorably sleep-befuddled look. “What time is it?”
“Nearly four. Dawn’s asking for you.”
He blinked slowly, rubbing one eye. “She home already?”
“Yeah,” Buffy said, amused, “because it’s nearly four.”
“Right,” he said around a gargantuan yawn that brought his fangs out for a moment. She passed him the blood, watching with one eyebrow raised as it disappeared, before trying again.
“Better?”
He licked his lips, chasing the taste and looking mildly perturbed. Buffy had long ago stopped finding the blood thing gross. Sure, she’d rather he didn’t kiss her immediately after, but she felt the same about his ongoing love affair with various fried onion-based dishes. But there was something about his expression just then that somehow didn’t sit right with her. And what was with the sleeping beauty routine? The reluctant wake up was really not his style, especially when she wasn’t even in bed with him, plus, he’d been sleeping later than usual. Probably because he’d been coming home later, but she couldn’t tell if it was part of the generalized Spike weirdness she’d been picking up on this week or if he’d just been getting all the best fights on patrol. With the way they split things up these days, Buffy would do an early sweep after putting Dawn to bed, and he’d take the late shift coming back from the bar, but even so, he’d been pushing sunrise the last couple of mornings, and that wasn’t normal.
“Yeah,” he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Thanks.”
He was naked from the waist up, of course. Given the choice she knew he’d sleep completely naked, but there’d been one too many run ins with her mom over the years, not to mention the various and sundry parental duties that got either or both of them out of bed, and so these days he’d conceded to wearing soft cotton pajama pants that, frankly, made his ass look amazing, and had the added benefit of riding about as low on his hips as was possible while still maintaining an admittedly minimal amount of decency. Sleep-rumpled and gorgeous, she never got tired of looking at him. Mmm, chest of Spike.
“Slayer,” he said, mockingly. “Eyes up top, love.”
“Goodies down below,” she retorted.
He rose and got all up in her space in that way she liked, but, “Ah ah, blood breath. No smoochy for you until you’ve rinsed and spat.”
“Unfair,” he said, giving her his best pout, and yeah, okay, she was being kinda grabby with the abs and the butt, but hey, it wasn’t her fault her boyfriend looked like that, and, well, maybe blood breath wasn’t so bad. It was only blood, after all. Not like she’d never bitten her tongue before, or licked a split lip…
They were interrupted a couple of minutes later, and thankfully before any vital clothing had come off, by three-and-a-half feet of adorableness who had nonetheless yet to grasp the concept of knocking.
“Daddy, get dressed,” she said imperiously, crashing through the door.
Spike slipped deftly behind Buffy to save innocent eyes from what was going on beneath his waistband and sighed. “What do you know? Bitty Buffy.”
“Huh,” Buffy said, with a flash of pride. That entrance had been kind of slayer-like.
“Woopert wants to ask you something.”
“Who?” Buffy said to Dawn, as Spike oh-so-casually slipped his arms around her waist and pressed his erection up against her ass. Bastard.
“Woopert.”
“Who?”
“Woo-” Dawn’s whole face scrunched up in concentration. “Rooo-pert.”
Buffy didn’t really get why her mom insisted on Dawn using Giles’s first name. Something to do with manners, probably. To her it was just weird and icky, but whatever. Giles seemed oddly charmed by it.
“Good girl. You can tell him we’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“Okay.” She gave them a considering look. “Are you going to practice wrestling?”
“Um…” Buffy floundered, half-distracted by the feel of Spike’s cool breath on her neck. “Not sure what you mean, sweetie. We’re going patrolling, but that’s later.”
“Franny in school says that when her parents practice wrestling she gets to eat a whole bowl of ice cream and watch whatever movie she wants.”
“Oh my god,” Buffy said faintly, realization landing with a thunk. Against her back, she could actually feel Spike trying not to laugh.
“So is patrolling like wrestling? Because I want ice cream.”
“What do you think, Slayer?” Spike asked, giving a surreptitious little thrust of his hips. “Any wrestling on the cards tonight?”
“Shut up, Spike,” she said, stepping away from him in panicked retaliation.
“Mommy!” Dawn looked delighted. “That was rude.”
Spike met Buffy’s look over her shoulder with the kind of innocent expression that made her instinctively want to punch him. Then again, given that punching was pretty much foreplay for them, that was probably what he was angling for.
“You know I don’t mind that, love,” he said after a beat, turning back to Dawn. “Go on now, don’t keep old Rupes waiting.” He dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “And if you want ice cream, there’s your mark. Complete soft touch for Summers women, he is.”
“Takes one to know one,” Buffy muttered. Dawn sighed explosively, like manipulating treats out of adults was actually hard for her or something, and flapped her arms as she spun around and trotted off back downstairs. Buffy turned on Spike the moment she’d cleared the top of the stairs and smacked him square in the chest.
“I’ve told you before, no innuendos in front of the kid,” she hissed.
“Hey!” he said, hopping back, laughing. “She started it.”
“Right. Great. Five-year-old logic from the hundred-and-twenty-five-year-old vamp.” Buffy huffed. “I think I need to have a word with Franny’s mom.”
He shot her a grin as he headed for the bathroom. “Now that is a conversation I’d like to see.”
*
Once they finally made it out of the house, Buffy found she was in no rush to start an interrogation. She figured she’d get her chance to get him talking before the night was over. Instead, she took Spike’s hand as they walked through Maple View cemetery, stealing wordless glances and coy smiles at each other like they were teenagers. This was good, the smell of the night air, the anticipation of a good fight with whatever was prowling around, the feel of Spike’s skin against her own. Whatever else was going on in their crazy lives, so long as they could have this, they were doing okay.
“So,” Spike said eventually, leading her over to a tree on the edge of the graveyard and pushing her gently up against the trunk. “About this wrestling.”
Buffy laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Where does she get this stuff?”
“Franny, apparently. Smart girl,” Spike said, voice low as he leaned in, nosing at her temple, her cheek. “Think we should encourage that friendship.”
“You are so-” her voice cut off in a gasp as he bit down on her earlobe.
“Yeah,” Spike agreed huskily. “And you love it.”
“Kinda do.”
Her hands clenched in the lapels of his leather jacket as she pulled him up for a kiss, earlier arousal roaring back. Friday nights weren’t just for slayage - this was pretty much the only prolonged, guaranteed privacy they could get nowadays. Usually they managed to make it to a crypt or some such before they got too distracted, because getting caught half-naked and doing the dirty by the forces of evil could end up kind of embarrassing, but tonight Buffy felt an urgency rising up in her, almost like foreboding, unable once they’d started to pry herself away from him long enough to find somewhere less exposed.
And yowza, could her vamp kiss. Four and a half years of necking with the same guy and it was still so good, so completely consuming. He kissed with his whole body, gave himself over to it entirely, and it made her respond in kind every freaking time. He was a vessel she could pour herself into, all her love, all her passion, all her urges dark and light, he took them all and loved them and did the same to her. It was a feeling like safety, to just be who she was - strange, because Spike appeared to be anything but safe - but more powerful than that, and far more intoxicating. Freedom, maybe. And besides all that, he was just plain hot. The way he looked, the way he moved, the way he knew just how to rev her up. She could never get enough of him.
“Mmph, off, now,” she grunted, pushing at his jacket.
“Someone’s impatient tonight,” he murmured against her lips, voice low and deep and enticing.
“Yeah, well, someone’s been teasing me since he deigned to roll out of bed.”
“Poor thing,” he said, shrugging the jacket off sinuously before returning his hands to her body, one on her breast, groping and thumbing her nipple through her clothing, the other a tease at her waistband. “So hot for me. Can’t have you all exposed out here, though, can we? Not where any old demon could get an eyeful of what’s mine.” God, why hadn’t she worn a skirt? At her waistband, his hand skated lower until suddenly, wonderfully, he was rubbing her hard between her legs and she was moaning, clutching at his shoulders so hard he’d probably have marks for a couple of days - just how he liked it. “My poor, needy, girl,” he crooned, leaning close again to nibble at her neck with blunt teeth. “I’ve got you, don’t worry. Gonna take good care of you, love.”
She practically whimpered in loss when he removed his hand again, but then it was at her fly, opening slowly, another tease, before night-cooled fingers slipped in under her panties and started to stroke. God, yeah, that was good. He knew her body so well he could bring her off a couple of times at least just from this - making out in the dark while his fingers strummed her clit. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry, though, his touch not quite hard enough, not quite fast enough to bring her relief.
“Spike,” she groaned, “I need - god! - harder.”
He didn’t oblige, not even when she palmed his dick through his jeans, rubbing him roughly the way he liked it.
“No rush, love,” he murmured. “S’a quiet night, empty graveyard.” Which, yeah, okay, it really wasn’t gonna take much tonight to convince her to give him his way. He obviously had plans, and unlike the other kind, Spike’s sex plans were usually pretty good.
“Okay,” she panted. “But if I don’t come soon I cannot be held responsible for my actions.”
His laugh was a low, delicious rumble. Buffy out of control was just how he liked it, too.
Finally, slowly, he started pushing her slacks down her hips, only to stop again when they were barely mid-thigh, enough to expose her to the air and feel the tree bark on her butt, but still too high to open her legs properly.
“What-?” she tried, groaning in frustration when he stilled her hands as she tried to shove them further down. He just clucked his tongue and held her wrists back against the tree trunk as he kissed his way down her neck, her chest, biting lightly at her nipples as he made his way down to his knees.
“Be a good girl, now,” he said, looking up at her with a wicked gleam in his eye, “and stop fussing.” And then he let go of her wrists and parted her labia with his thumbs. She was very wet, and the air hitting her sensitive skin was excruciating. She clenched her fists in his hair to keep from taking matters into her own hands, not even realizing she was trying to bring his head forward until he nipped her on the top of the thigh in warning. Slowly, slowly, he leant forward and pressed a kiss to her lower belly, and another, marking a trail down through her hair and over her mound, then, so lightly it was almost painful, he brushed his lips against her clit. She cried out, eyes screwed shut in agony-ecstasy, and again when he kissed her more firmly this time, and again when, finally, he used his tongue, short, light little flicks that gradually became firmer. Long, slow swipes that left her shaking and clenching and burning and aching, until, with an almost slow-motion grandeur, her orgasm reared up and rolled over her in wave after delicious wave.
Dreamily, slightly dazed, and still throbbing with want, she let Spike turn her around until she had to brace her hands against the tree or hug it. He pushed her pants down further at last, but only to her knees, she was still constrained, and then there was the faint tinkling sound of his belt buckle, the whisper of his fly, and he was swiping the head of his cock in her juices before pushing in with a long, guttural sigh. It was tight, gloriously so - not the right position for a deep fuck but she was so sensitive now that his shallow thrusts felt amazing. Spike slapped her on her bare ass, hard enough to sting, and she felt the muscles in her pussy jolt and flutter.
“Oh god, oh yeah,” she chanted in rhythm with their movement. “Oh god.”
“My beautiful girl,” he whispered to her. “My sweet slayer. Fuck, Buffy, I’m going to…”
She slid her fingers between her legs and starting rubbing in time, feeling the heat rise sharply again. “Yeah, me too.”
With an incoherent growl he started fucking her hard, fingers biting into her hips, skin slapping on skin. Buffy’s cheek got jammed up against the tree. She didn’t care. All she cared about was Spike, and what he was making her feel right now, which was wild and wonderful and hot as the sun. He came with a roar, and subsided into pants and soft little sounds, and she loved it all, got off on it all, and clenched hard around him, and let herself go.
They slid to the ground together, heaving for breath and still mostly clothed, Spike thankfully pulling her on top of him so that she didn’t get grass and dirt on her butt to go with his hand prints.
“That was…”
“Yeah…” he breathed appreciatively.
“I really needed that.”
“Mmm.” He tucked one hand behind his head, threading the other through her hair. “Nice little appetizer, that was.”
“Appetizer?” She lifted her head from his chest to give him an incredulous look. “We do have to get some patrolling done tonight, you know.”
“Yeah,” he said, giving her a slow, sexy grin. “Some.”
“Lots! Lots of patrolling! There’s the First to investigate and demons to beat up and, and…”
He very deliberately placed his hand on her exposed ass, massaging for a moment before raking her with his nails just so, and she completely lost her train of thought.
***
Spike watches quietly as his girl gets all buttoned up again. The moon has come out, a full, round disc, slightly yellowed as it hangs low in the sky casting a silvery light that is more than enough for both of them to see by. It’s getting late, past midnight and then some, but nothing’s dared interrupt them until now - he’s sensed a few creepy crawlies out on the periphery, but none have been so stupid as to come close enough to draw Buffy’s attention while they were occupied. Now, though… well, fledges are like babies in that regard, always waking up when it’s least convenient.
“This one?” Buffy asks, gesturing at the nearby grave marker.
ARIANA VANESSA GARCIA
7.23.1986 - 11.11.2005
AT REST IN THE ARMS OF THE LORD
Spike nods. “Can hear her scrabbling away down there. Won’t be long n...” A hand bursts through the dirt before he can finish. Buffy turns to him with a dry smirk.
“And you’re not going to bother with clothes.”
A statement, not a question. Spike is still lying where she left him, reclining on the ground with his jeans around his ankles trapped by his boots, and not a stitch else,
“You likely to need my help?” he asks. Her look is demonstrative. “Well then,” he makes a show of getting comfortable, curls one hand loosely around his spent cock. “Think I’ll just lie back and enjoy the view.”
Buffy snorts and tosses her hair over her shoulder as she turns back to their grave crasher, and Spike feels himself hardening already just from the sight of her. Christ, even the pretence of pissed-off-ness is hot - like Pavlov’s bloody dog, he is, and not a single regret to show for it.
Impatient, Buffy reaches down and grabs the floundering arm like a particularly violent farmer, yanking Ariana out of the ground and dumping her on the grass. Plentiful harvest indeed.
“Hey,” she says with a sharp smile, twirling her stake, and okay, a particularly violent but really, really hot farmer. He gives himself a squeeze. “Sorry to skimp you on the full Slayer Experience Package, but I’m on a clock tonight, so…” she lunges. Amazingly, the fledge seems to have the brains she was turned with, and rolls out of the way just in time.
“Whoa, whoa! Who stuffed bees in your bra, lady?” she growls, stumbling back to put the grave marker between them.
“Oh, she’s not wearing one,” Spike chips in helpfully.
“Spike!”
The fledge’s eyes land on him, lazily jacking off as the two of them start to circle, and she grins ferally. “Never mind, I think I got it.”
Buffy glances back over her shoulder at him and rolls her eyes. “Perv,” she says, but fondly. The fledge, stupid creature, takes Buffy’s apparent distraction as an opportunity to attack, and finds herself with a face full of slayer fist. And then the beat down begins.
His girl would never admit to it, but she’s got a jealous streak running as deep as the hellmouth, possessive as all get out when provoked. Needless to say, he’s always gotten a kick out of provoking her (sometimes literally) but it usually goes better for him when it comes from someone else; that little leer from dear old Ariana is going to be good for at least one more shag before they have to get on with business tonight. But first, Buffy’s going to show her who’s boss. Slayer dominance displays - better than porn.
“Yeah,” he mutters to himself as Buffy lands a spinning kick across the unfortunate fledge’s jaw. “That’s it, kitten.” Her hair is shining in the moonlight, bouncing around her like a slightly sex-roughened shampoo commercial, and her tits are all perky in the cool air. She’s so very much stronger than her opponent, a lithe, beautiful apex predator playing with her food, and it’s an incredible turn on. He can see it in the fledge’s eyes, now, that blustering hope that comes with not yet being dust coupled with the creeping suspicion that she’s somehow already lost. She lands a kick to Buffy’s middle and takes a moment to be far too pleased with herself - his girl leans into her recovery and launches the fledge across the grass with a thunderous uppercut. She lands a few feet from Spike, dazed, tonguing her own fangs as though confused about what they’re for, and looks over at him in entreaty.
“Aren’t you gonna… hey.” She frowns, squinting. “I know you.”
And suddenly, he remembers her as human, sees it like a flash of film reel, removed somehow, as though just watching, except… he also remembers the scent of her, all warm and alluring and… she was wearing glasses?
He shakes his head to clear the image and it flitters away obligingly, but a heavy, cold feeling is blanketing him now, and that he can’t budge.
“Don’t you remember?” she asks, looking genuinely hurt. “I knew it! Fucking men. I knew I was just a one bite stand to you.”
The world comes to a screeching halt.
“What?” he and Buffy say in unison.
Somehow, Spike is on his feet, backing away as he fumbles with his belt. Buffy stands frozen with her stake raised over the supine vamp.
“Oh yeah,” she says, getting up on her elbows to sneer at him. “What, your freakishly strong girlfriend here doesn’t know? Big surprise.” She turns to Buffy. “Hon, when he’s not spending quality time getting grass stains on your cute little blouse, he’s picking up girls after work and turning them into… what the hell am I, anyway? I mean, generally it feels pretty good, but my teeth are all-”
She crumbles into dust.
Buffy straightens, panting, and stares at him with huge eyes. He realises he’s shaking. And he doesn’t have a single answer for her.
Chapter Index | Next
Pairing(s): Buffy/Spike, (Anya/Xander, Willow/Tara)
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~6,600 (~71,000 total)
Timeline: AU S5, S6, S7 and post-series
Warnings: character death, violence and gore
Summary: As a child, I used to dream of a man in black and white, spinning in the desert like a dervish, sword flashing in the moonlight as he danced with death. (A sequel/companion to angearia's Fin Amour).
Notes: Ha, well, I just noticed I never posted this chapter to LJ before I popped, so here you go LJ peeps! Many beta thanks to rahirah and bewilde. With apologies to Barb for keeping all the plot-less smut ;)
15
Vessels
The door slams and Spike hears the ubiquitous cry of, “Pizza! Get your pizza!” followed by the herd-of-elephant stomping of little girl feet across the upstairs hallway.
“Yummy, yummy, yummy!” Dawn’s voice practically dopplers with how fast she’s going. He doesn’t even get a chance to tell her not to run on the stairs before she’s down in the foyer and hanging off of Xander’s leg. The boy does a cute little routine of looking around to see what monster’s got him, before clomping, child and all, through to the kitchen.
“Hey, man, no tip for the delivery boy?” he asks Spike good naturedly, setting the boxes down on the counter top before disentangling himself from Dawn.
“You started paying rent yet?” Spike tosses back.
Xander just rolls his eyes and takes down a stack of plates from the cupboard while Spike finishes up the salad. What with the fixing up of the basement, the buying of the weekly groceries, and the unofficial childcare that their supposedly temporary roommate does, neither Buffy nor Joyce will let him pay a dime. Not Spike’s preference, with them still paying off Buffy’s tuition and Joyce’s medical bills, and of course the niblet shooting up like a weed - because he’s never had to worry about this stuff before, money came cheap when he didn’t care about snapping necks to get it - but he got overruled.
No, Captain Gormless isn’t a strain on resources, just on Spike’s nerves. He gets on well enough with Buffy’s friends these days, but living under the same roof is another matter, and honestly, he’d have rather gotten Anya out of the separation. She got to keep the apartment, though, smart, mercenary little chit that she is.
“Daddy, hurry up,” Dawn hollers from the dining room. “I’m so hungry my tummy is going to eat me from inside!”
So dramatic, he thinks with a reluctant half-smile. Wonder where she gets that from? Tossing the chopped tomatoes into the salad bowl and grabbing his mug of blood, he carries them both through, flashing his game face at his daughter as he does so.
“Not if I eat you first!”
He lunges for her, but, once captured, puts his fangs away and blows a raspberry on her neck. Squeals of laughter and outrage greet Buffy’s entrance to the room, her hair still smelling strongly of shampoo from her shower, dressed sleek and black, ready for patrol.
“Oh, good,” she says, “food,” and practically dives for the Veggie Supreme.
They settle down quickly, being a house full of eaters. Xander and Buffy exchange stories about their work days between (and sometimes during, in the former’s typically uncivilised case) mouthfuls, while Spike offers his own commentary between cutting up Dawn’s food into little-person sized portions and sipping at his blood. Once she’s sated the beast that is her appetite, Dawn gets chatty, too, and effortlessly holds court to the three adults who’re wrapped entirely around her grubby little fingers. She’s in the midst of showing off her spelling prowess (dee-oh-gee-ess spells dogs - the joy of plurals! Ess-pee-oh-en spells spoon - well, double vowels are tricky) when the doorbell goes.
“Mom’s back early,” Buffy says with a slight frown at the clock on the sideboard as Spike rises to go answer it, but it’s not Joyce returned from her date with the latest flavour.
“Huh,” Spike says as he surveys their visitor. He leans one shoulder against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest, and plasters on his most insincere smile. “Aren’t you dead yet?”
“Spike, do shut up,” Giles says irritably, and pushes past him. Petty annoyance accomplished and curiosity piqued, Spike lets him by. It’s been several years, after all. Trailing in his wake like ducklings is a trio of teenage girls. They give Spike a nice variety of looks, ranging from polite but nervy smiles to outright suspicion.
“Giles!” Buffy jumps up as her old watcher and his strange brood troop into the dining room. “What are you doing here?”
When he speaks, all traces of earlier exasperation are gone. His voice is grave, and very serious.
“Buffy,” he says, “these girls are potential slayers. Their watchers were slaughtered. It’s started.”
*
Spike purposely hangs back in the doorway, watching, while everyone else mills around the kitchen. Giles is boiling a pan of water on the stove for tea, having refused to microwave it. Spike hasn’t told him yet that there’s no English Breakfast in the house, waiting for the inevitable meltdown with gleeful anticipation. The others are making awkward small talk, waiting for Buffy to come back down from putting Dawn to bed. It’s early, still, but they can’t exactly have this conversation in front of the platelet. Euphemisms only go so far and generally he prefers to be truthful, anyway, but explaining things in a way that fits into a five-and-a-half year old’s worldview without giving her nightmares is a skill he highly doubts the stuffy old watcher has put a moment’s thought to. Who talks about massacres in front of a child? He shakes his head disgustedly. If anyone’s going to fill his kid’s head with ghoulish horrors, it’s going to be him.
The three girls are huddled together looking wan and occasionally exchanging the kind of stilted whispering that implies they don’t know each other very well. Linnea, the stringy little Swede with the bottle-bottom glasses, keeps shooting him the kind of nervous glances that make him want to flash his fangs, just for giggles, and he wonders idly if Xander could be drawn into a bet on how high the girl would jump. The other two - snooty, public school Elly and sweet, Scottish Harpreet - either don’t know what he is, or are feeling complacent in the home of the slayer. Hard to know what Giles has told them, beyond that they’ll be safe here. Whether they really will be… well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?
“So…” Xander says with that grating cheer of his, rubbing his hands together with equally grating enthusiasm. “You girls are gonna be slayers one day! How’s that for a cosmic winning lottery ticket?”
Spike raises an eyebrow at that. The last few years Buffy has really come to, if not exactly enjoy her calling, then at least take some pleasure in it, but even Xander can’t be blind to the risks and other downsides.
“It’s hardly a prize, is it?” Elly says, an almost shrill note entering her voice, and Spike nods to himself approvingly. Irritating snob she may be, but at least she’s not stupid.
“What, superpowers and kickass moves? What teenage girl wouldn’t kill for that?”
“The type with a dead watcher and the sword of Damocles hanging over her own head,” the girl says tersely, and Spike can’t help but smirk because Pinky over there clearly doesn’t know his Cicero, even if the reminder of blood shed has chastened him.
“How does that work, anyway?” Xander asks, valiantly trying to change the subject. He turns to Giles for help. “I thought it was One Born into Each Generation, and they all look about the same age to me.”
“Standing right here,” Elly mutters, but not loud enough to force anyone to acknowledge her.
“There are many more potentials than are ever called to full slayer status,” Giles says distractedly, opening a cupboard and frowning at the lack of tea. Spike’s smirk deepens. “Often the Council is able to identify them by magical means, to provide training in the event of their calling, though not always.”
“Like Buffy wasn’t, you mean.”
“Indeed.” He starts working his way methodically down the line of cabinets, opening and shutting with increasing carelessness.
“Oi,” Spike says, straightening a little. “Easy on the hardware, Rupes. Niblet’s trying to get to sleep.”
“Ah, yes. Sorry.” He is momentarily side-tracked, before continuing. “Potentials and their watchers have been disappearing for some time now, many turning up dead. Elly, Linnea and Harpreet are the only ones we know of to have-Spike, where is the sodding tea?”
Spike gives him a sharp smile and a lazy shrug. “Isn’t any. No one who comes by here anymore drinks it.”
Rupert just stares at him in silence for several seconds, like the words don’t compute. “And you couldn’t have mentioned this earlier?” he says finally, voice heavy with exasperation and eyes alight with the slightly crazed gleam of the chronic insomniac.
“Well, if you’d asked…”
He’s already realised he’s not going to get his explosion, though, since Buffy is coming up behind him.
“What’s going on, guys?” Her voice is overly bright and she touches his bare elbow as she steps around him, just a swipe of skin on skin, an unconscious gesture she has picked up somewhere along the line to reassure herself, and one of a hundred-thousand little things she does that still makes Spike’s heart fill with love.
The room quiets as she steps forward. Not that it was noisy before, but her presence has a way of settling people into a wary focus. The potentials straighten up and turn towards her out of their huddle. Giles finally abandons his tea-making attempt. Xander’s thrumming, jouncing energy at so many strangers to impress ebbs away. Spike feels it come over him as well, dropping his arms to his sides as he takes half a step closer to his girl, standing at her shoulder.
“Giles?” she prompts. “I think it’s explanation time.”
He launches into it without further delay. “The First’s influence on this plane is increasing, which we’ve known for some time thanks to, well…” he casts a quick glance at the potentials, and Spike can’t help but be amused at his hesitation.
“A time-travelling adult version of our daughter,” he tells them.
“Um, what?”
“The, the kid we just…?”
“Long story.” Buffy waves them off without looking away from Giles.
“Yes, well, we knew it was coming, but we didn’t know exactly when or how or, perhaps more importantly, why. Since we decided to bring the Council in on this, I’ve been able to make use of their resources and contacts, and it seems that the slayer line itself may be the cause. Or, rather - you, Buffy.”
“Pardon?” Buffy’s voice is calm, though confused, but Spike hears her heart judder, blood and adrenaline starting to pump. She died fighting this thing the first time around - they all know that part of the tale - but this is strange and unwelcome news. Buffy sways into him minutely and he places his hand on the small of her back, fingers spread, a light touch for connection more than support, although he’ll give that too.
“How can she have caused it?” he asks. “She’s just been doing her job all these years.”
“Perhaps caused is the wrong word,” Rupert concedes. “But her existence is the reason.”
He breaks off then with a significant look that Spike can’t decipher, though after a moment Buffy seems to get it. Weirdly, her eyes fly to Xander.
“The Master. I should be dead.” Her voice is flat, tightly controlled, and Spike presses his hand a little more firmly into her back, the warmth of her skin, because no, she really, really shouldn’t be. The girls murmur their confusion. Spike looks to Xander, too. He’s heard this story, of course, and has mentally thanked the boy for doing his part - once, drunkenly, even thanked him to his face, not that either of them would ever admit to it. Isn’t this just the bloody way of the world, though? Do something good, save a life, only to be told that’s the reason a world-ending evil is rising. Sodding typical. Xander meets his eyes briefly with a grimace that shows he’s having the same kinds of thoughts, and they share a moment of mutual antipathy for the universe before moving on.
“The split in the slayer line that your death and subsequent resuscitation caused,” Giles explains, voice slipping into something surprisingly gentle that Spike has only ever heard him use with Buffy, “it, well, it created a slight instability, a crack that the First has been slowly widening ever since.”
“And now it’s killing off potential slayers? Why?”
“We think…” his eyes turn shiftily to the three silent teenagers in their midst.
“This concerns them, Giles,” Buffy tells him. “They deserve to know.”
White-faced, they look at her as one, and Spike sees something in each of their eyes - something dangerous and familiar. The hope that she will be their light in the dark, their saviour.
“Yes, quite.” Giles takes his glasses off, starts to polish them. “We think… that the First is attempting to, to eradicate the slayer line in its entirety, starting with the potentials, and then Faith, and then-”
“Me.”
There isn’t time to take in the implications of that statement. A dark and once well-loved laugh sounds right behind him, and Spike jolts around, instinctively seeking the source well before dread or confusion can set in. When those feelings do come, they are only amplified by the absence of the laugh’s owner.
“Spike?”
Buffy’s hand is on his arm, and when he turns back to the room, they’re all looking at him.
“Thought I heard something,” he mutters. “Was nothing.”
But it wasn’t nothing. He’s sure of that. Because he lived and loved a hundred years with her, and the sound of her laughter is imprinted in his blood.
Drusilla.
*
He hears her again in the early hours of the following morning, walking back from his latest attempt at paid employment, a voice in the shadows, whispering such seductive nasties. For the first time in his existence, he feels fear at the sound of it.
“What do you want?” he is eventually forced to ask. It’s not like he hasn’t had his bad moments over the past few years, confronted ghosts and the sins attached to them. Nikki’s son had tried to kill him, and he’d nearly let him, but Dru? The wrongs done to her were never on his shoulders.
And yet, when she steps out of the clinging dark, she still has the ability to take his breath away.
“Lovely Spike,” she says mournfully, weaving slowly closer. “Remember Prague? You slew a whole mob for laying fingers on me, turned them all to pretty ribbons.” He had, and he does remember - vividly, if not pleasurably. “You used to be my knight, so shiny in your armour, and then you put your lance right through my heart.”
Ah, well there is that. Not that he really considers dusting her a wrong, not for Dawn’s sake, but he has sometimes regretted the necessity of it.
“That what this is, sweet?” he asks the apparition. “Come back to shake your chains and groan under my window?”
She gives him an indulgent smile. “No, silly boy. The chains are for you.”
And then he’s standing on the porch at home, staring at the door, unable to remember how he got there. Something important happened, he thinks, something he needs to tell Buffy and the others. If only he could… it slips through his fingers like sand.
Ten minutes later, he finishes his smoke, enjoying the last few moments of quiet night time and scattered stars before turning in for his warm bed and even warmer slayer.
***
Buffy dropped her purse and Dawn’s school bag by the coat stand and sighed at the bombsite that had once been their living room. Her mom had made it clear to the girls that they had to keep their space tidy, and you could kinda see where they’d tried to roll things up and tuck things away, but between their belongings, Dawn’s ever-expanding kingdom of toys and Giles’s research materials, the house was getting way overcrowded.
And then there was Spike. She had the distinct impression that something was going on with him - had been going on ever since their guests’ arrival - something he didn’t seem to want to talk about, but between work and everything else, there hadn’t been enough time to beat it out of him, figuratively or otherwise.
Joyce was in the kitchen when Buffy went through, as she always seemed to be these days. In front of her the potentials were lined up like a little culinary army, utensils in hand. The Swedish girl had an apron on. There were pans and baking sheets out on the counter, and a haphazard pile of cookbooks that could probably rival some of Giles’s tomes for length of time since last seeing daylight. Seemed like the girls were getting another lesson in pulling their weight around the house, and Buffy smiled to herself, realizing with sudden insight how much worse things would’ve been without her mom there.
“Hey everyone.”
“Hi sweetheart, good day?”
Buffy went to the fridge and started pulling together a snack each for Dawn and herself. “Same old,” she said. “Bullying, romantic intrigue, crushing existential angst, and that’s just the staffroom. Oh, but I did get Principal Lopez to sign off on the girls.”
“What does that mean?” It was the pretty Scottish one who’d asked - what did the others call her? Hari.
“It means we’re starting American high school next week,” Elly, the one who sounded like a watcher-in-training, said. “Joy.”
“But at least we don’t have to wear uniforms, right, Buffy?” Hari asked.
Xander, who had just walked in behind them, froze mid-step with a slightly glazed expression in his eyes, and Buffy almost choked on her OJ at the bad, bad premonition of what was running through his mind. “Uh, no, no school uniforms in California,” she hurried to say.
“Unless you want to,” Xander blurted. Buffy rolled her eyes. Her mom fixed him with a frigid stare. Xander covered his mouth and looked wildly at Joyce. “Oh god, don’t say it! I know! Oh god.” He backed up again. “I’m just going to go… play with Dawn. Nice and innocently.”
“So anyway,” Buffy said, pasting on her best moving-on smile. “I just wanted to remind you that today’s Friday.”
“I hadn’t forgotten,” Joyce said wryly. “In fact, the girls are going to take care of dinner for me so I can spend more time with Dawnie.”
“Great,” Buffy said, relieved. Between their schedules, she and Spike didn’t get a whole lot of together time, and that niggling feeling was telling her that right now they really, really needed it.
“What’s special about Friday?” Hari asked.
“I’ve got a slay-date with my vamp,” she said with a grin. “You know what they say, those who slay together, stay together. Oh, and Mom? See if you can get Giles involved. I think some Dawnie time would do him good.”
*
“Wakey wakey, sleepy head,” Buffy said as she entered their bedroom, mug of steaming blood in hand. “Sweet dreams?”
Spike rolled over and gave her an adorably sleep-befuddled look. “What time is it?”
“Nearly four. Dawn’s asking for you.”
He blinked slowly, rubbing one eye. “She home already?”
“Yeah,” Buffy said, amused, “because it’s nearly four.”
“Right,” he said around a gargantuan yawn that brought his fangs out for a moment. She passed him the blood, watching with one eyebrow raised as it disappeared, before trying again.
“Better?”
He licked his lips, chasing the taste and looking mildly perturbed. Buffy had long ago stopped finding the blood thing gross. Sure, she’d rather he didn’t kiss her immediately after, but she felt the same about his ongoing love affair with various fried onion-based dishes. But there was something about his expression just then that somehow didn’t sit right with her. And what was with the sleeping beauty routine? The reluctant wake up was really not his style, especially when she wasn’t even in bed with him, plus, he’d been sleeping later than usual. Probably because he’d been coming home later, but she couldn’t tell if it was part of the generalized Spike weirdness she’d been picking up on this week or if he’d just been getting all the best fights on patrol. With the way they split things up these days, Buffy would do an early sweep after putting Dawn to bed, and he’d take the late shift coming back from the bar, but even so, he’d been pushing sunrise the last couple of mornings, and that wasn’t normal.
“Yeah,” he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Thanks.”
He was naked from the waist up, of course. Given the choice she knew he’d sleep completely naked, but there’d been one too many run ins with her mom over the years, not to mention the various and sundry parental duties that got either or both of them out of bed, and so these days he’d conceded to wearing soft cotton pajama pants that, frankly, made his ass look amazing, and had the added benefit of riding about as low on his hips as was possible while still maintaining an admittedly minimal amount of decency. Sleep-rumpled and gorgeous, she never got tired of looking at him. Mmm, chest of Spike.
“Slayer,” he said, mockingly. “Eyes up top, love.”
“Goodies down below,” she retorted.
He rose and got all up in her space in that way she liked, but, “Ah ah, blood breath. No smoochy for you until you’ve rinsed and spat.”
“Unfair,” he said, giving her his best pout, and yeah, okay, she was being kinda grabby with the abs and the butt, but hey, it wasn’t her fault her boyfriend looked like that, and, well, maybe blood breath wasn’t so bad. It was only blood, after all. Not like she’d never bitten her tongue before, or licked a split lip…
They were interrupted a couple of minutes later, and thankfully before any vital clothing had come off, by three-and-a-half feet of adorableness who had nonetheless yet to grasp the concept of knocking.
“Daddy, get dressed,” she said imperiously, crashing through the door.
Spike slipped deftly behind Buffy to save innocent eyes from what was going on beneath his waistband and sighed. “What do you know? Bitty Buffy.”
“Huh,” Buffy said, with a flash of pride. That entrance had been kind of slayer-like.
“Woopert wants to ask you something.”
“Who?” Buffy said to Dawn, as Spike oh-so-casually slipped his arms around her waist and pressed his erection up against her ass. Bastard.
“Woopert.”
“Who?”
“Woo-” Dawn’s whole face scrunched up in concentration. “Rooo-pert.”
Buffy didn’t really get why her mom insisted on Dawn using Giles’s first name. Something to do with manners, probably. To her it was just weird and icky, but whatever. Giles seemed oddly charmed by it.
“Good girl. You can tell him we’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“Okay.” She gave them a considering look. “Are you going to practice wrestling?”
“Um…” Buffy floundered, half-distracted by the feel of Spike’s cool breath on her neck. “Not sure what you mean, sweetie. We’re going patrolling, but that’s later.”
“Franny in school says that when her parents practice wrestling she gets to eat a whole bowl of ice cream and watch whatever movie she wants.”
“Oh my god,” Buffy said faintly, realization landing with a thunk. Against her back, she could actually feel Spike trying not to laugh.
“So is patrolling like wrestling? Because I want ice cream.”
“What do you think, Slayer?” Spike asked, giving a surreptitious little thrust of his hips. “Any wrestling on the cards tonight?”
“Shut up, Spike,” she said, stepping away from him in panicked retaliation.
“Mommy!” Dawn looked delighted. “That was rude.”
Spike met Buffy’s look over her shoulder with the kind of innocent expression that made her instinctively want to punch him. Then again, given that punching was pretty much foreplay for them, that was probably what he was angling for.
“You know I don’t mind that, love,” he said after a beat, turning back to Dawn. “Go on now, don’t keep old Rupes waiting.” He dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “And if you want ice cream, there’s your mark. Complete soft touch for Summers women, he is.”
“Takes one to know one,” Buffy muttered. Dawn sighed explosively, like manipulating treats out of adults was actually hard for her or something, and flapped her arms as she spun around and trotted off back downstairs. Buffy turned on Spike the moment she’d cleared the top of the stairs and smacked him square in the chest.
“I’ve told you before, no innuendos in front of the kid,” she hissed.
“Hey!” he said, hopping back, laughing. “She started it.”
“Right. Great. Five-year-old logic from the hundred-and-twenty-five-year-old vamp.” Buffy huffed. “I think I need to have a word with Franny’s mom.”
He shot her a grin as he headed for the bathroom. “Now that is a conversation I’d like to see.”
*
Once they finally made it out of the house, Buffy found she was in no rush to start an interrogation. She figured she’d get her chance to get him talking before the night was over. Instead, she took Spike’s hand as they walked through Maple View cemetery, stealing wordless glances and coy smiles at each other like they were teenagers. This was good, the smell of the night air, the anticipation of a good fight with whatever was prowling around, the feel of Spike’s skin against her own. Whatever else was going on in their crazy lives, so long as they could have this, they were doing okay.
“So,” Spike said eventually, leading her over to a tree on the edge of the graveyard and pushing her gently up against the trunk. “About this wrestling.”
Buffy laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Where does she get this stuff?”
“Franny, apparently. Smart girl,” Spike said, voice low as he leaned in, nosing at her temple, her cheek. “Think we should encourage that friendship.”
“You are so-” her voice cut off in a gasp as he bit down on her earlobe.
“Yeah,” Spike agreed huskily. “And you love it.”
“Kinda do.”
Her hands clenched in the lapels of his leather jacket as she pulled him up for a kiss, earlier arousal roaring back. Friday nights weren’t just for slayage - this was pretty much the only prolonged, guaranteed privacy they could get nowadays. Usually they managed to make it to a crypt or some such before they got too distracted, because getting caught half-naked and doing the dirty by the forces of evil could end up kind of embarrassing, but tonight Buffy felt an urgency rising up in her, almost like foreboding, unable once they’d started to pry herself away from him long enough to find somewhere less exposed.
And yowza, could her vamp kiss. Four and a half years of necking with the same guy and it was still so good, so completely consuming. He kissed with his whole body, gave himself over to it entirely, and it made her respond in kind every freaking time. He was a vessel she could pour herself into, all her love, all her passion, all her urges dark and light, he took them all and loved them and did the same to her. It was a feeling like safety, to just be who she was - strange, because Spike appeared to be anything but safe - but more powerful than that, and far more intoxicating. Freedom, maybe. And besides all that, he was just plain hot. The way he looked, the way he moved, the way he knew just how to rev her up. She could never get enough of him.
“Mmph, off, now,” she grunted, pushing at his jacket.
“Someone’s impatient tonight,” he murmured against her lips, voice low and deep and enticing.
“Yeah, well, someone’s been teasing me since he deigned to roll out of bed.”
“Poor thing,” he said, shrugging the jacket off sinuously before returning his hands to her body, one on her breast, groping and thumbing her nipple through her clothing, the other a tease at her waistband. “So hot for me. Can’t have you all exposed out here, though, can we? Not where any old demon could get an eyeful of what’s mine.” God, why hadn’t she worn a skirt? At her waistband, his hand skated lower until suddenly, wonderfully, he was rubbing her hard between her legs and she was moaning, clutching at his shoulders so hard he’d probably have marks for a couple of days - just how he liked it. “My poor, needy, girl,” he crooned, leaning close again to nibble at her neck with blunt teeth. “I’ve got you, don’t worry. Gonna take good care of you, love.”
She practically whimpered in loss when he removed his hand again, but then it was at her fly, opening slowly, another tease, before night-cooled fingers slipped in under her panties and started to stroke. God, yeah, that was good. He knew her body so well he could bring her off a couple of times at least just from this - making out in the dark while his fingers strummed her clit. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry, though, his touch not quite hard enough, not quite fast enough to bring her relief.
“Spike,” she groaned, “I need - god! - harder.”
He didn’t oblige, not even when she palmed his dick through his jeans, rubbing him roughly the way he liked it.
“No rush, love,” he murmured. “S’a quiet night, empty graveyard.” Which, yeah, okay, it really wasn’t gonna take much tonight to convince her to give him his way. He obviously had plans, and unlike the other kind, Spike’s sex plans were usually pretty good.
“Okay,” she panted. “But if I don’t come soon I cannot be held responsible for my actions.”
His laugh was a low, delicious rumble. Buffy out of control was just how he liked it, too.
Finally, slowly, he started pushing her slacks down her hips, only to stop again when they were barely mid-thigh, enough to expose her to the air and feel the tree bark on her butt, but still too high to open her legs properly.
“What-?” she tried, groaning in frustration when he stilled her hands as she tried to shove them further down. He just clucked his tongue and held her wrists back against the tree trunk as he kissed his way down her neck, her chest, biting lightly at her nipples as he made his way down to his knees.
“Be a good girl, now,” he said, looking up at her with a wicked gleam in his eye, “and stop fussing.” And then he let go of her wrists and parted her labia with his thumbs. She was very wet, and the air hitting her sensitive skin was excruciating. She clenched her fists in his hair to keep from taking matters into her own hands, not even realizing she was trying to bring his head forward until he nipped her on the top of the thigh in warning. Slowly, slowly, he leant forward and pressed a kiss to her lower belly, and another, marking a trail down through her hair and over her mound, then, so lightly it was almost painful, he brushed his lips against her clit. She cried out, eyes screwed shut in agony-ecstasy, and again when he kissed her more firmly this time, and again when, finally, he used his tongue, short, light little flicks that gradually became firmer. Long, slow swipes that left her shaking and clenching and burning and aching, until, with an almost slow-motion grandeur, her orgasm reared up and rolled over her in wave after delicious wave.
Dreamily, slightly dazed, and still throbbing with want, she let Spike turn her around until she had to brace her hands against the tree or hug it. He pushed her pants down further at last, but only to her knees, she was still constrained, and then there was the faint tinkling sound of his belt buckle, the whisper of his fly, and he was swiping the head of his cock in her juices before pushing in with a long, guttural sigh. It was tight, gloriously so - not the right position for a deep fuck but she was so sensitive now that his shallow thrusts felt amazing. Spike slapped her on her bare ass, hard enough to sting, and she felt the muscles in her pussy jolt and flutter.
“Oh god, oh yeah,” she chanted in rhythm with their movement. “Oh god.”
“My beautiful girl,” he whispered to her. “My sweet slayer. Fuck, Buffy, I’m going to…”
She slid her fingers between her legs and starting rubbing in time, feeling the heat rise sharply again. “Yeah, me too.”
With an incoherent growl he started fucking her hard, fingers biting into her hips, skin slapping on skin. Buffy’s cheek got jammed up against the tree. She didn’t care. All she cared about was Spike, and what he was making her feel right now, which was wild and wonderful and hot as the sun. He came with a roar, and subsided into pants and soft little sounds, and she loved it all, got off on it all, and clenched hard around him, and let herself go.
They slid to the ground together, heaving for breath and still mostly clothed, Spike thankfully pulling her on top of him so that she didn’t get grass and dirt on her butt to go with his hand prints.
“That was…”
“Yeah…” he breathed appreciatively.
“I really needed that.”
“Mmm.” He tucked one hand behind his head, threading the other through her hair. “Nice little appetizer, that was.”
“Appetizer?” She lifted her head from his chest to give him an incredulous look. “We do have to get some patrolling done tonight, you know.”
“Yeah,” he said, giving her a slow, sexy grin. “Some.”
“Lots! Lots of patrolling! There’s the First to investigate and demons to beat up and, and…”
He very deliberately placed his hand on her exposed ass, massaging for a moment before raking her with his nails just so, and she completely lost her train of thought.
***
Spike watches quietly as his girl gets all buttoned up again. The moon has come out, a full, round disc, slightly yellowed as it hangs low in the sky casting a silvery light that is more than enough for both of them to see by. It’s getting late, past midnight and then some, but nothing’s dared interrupt them until now - he’s sensed a few creepy crawlies out on the periphery, but none have been so stupid as to come close enough to draw Buffy’s attention while they were occupied. Now, though… well, fledges are like babies in that regard, always waking up when it’s least convenient.
“This one?” Buffy asks, gesturing at the nearby grave marker.
ARIANA VANESSA GARCIA
7.23.1986 - 11.11.2005
AT REST IN THE ARMS OF THE LORD
Spike nods. “Can hear her scrabbling away down there. Won’t be long n...” A hand bursts through the dirt before he can finish. Buffy turns to him with a dry smirk.
“And you’re not going to bother with clothes.”
A statement, not a question. Spike is still lying where she left him, reclining on the ground with his jeans around his ankles trapped by his boots, and not a stitch else,
“You likely to need my help?” he asks. Her look is demonstrative. “Well then,” he makes a show of getting comfortable, curls one hand loosely around his spent cock. “Think I’ll just lie back and enjoy the view.”
Buffy snorts and tosses her hair over her shoulder as she turns back to their grave crasher, and Spike feels himself hardening already just from the sight of her. Christ, even the pretence of pissed-off-ness is hot - like Pavlov’s bloody dog, he is, and not a single regret to show for it.
Impatient, Buffy reaches down and grabs the floundering arm like a particularly violent farmer, yanking Ariana out of the ground and dumping her on the grass. Plentiful harvest indeed.
“Hey,” she says with a sharp smile, twirling her stake, and okay, a particularly violent but really, really hot farmer. He gives himself a squeeze. “Sorry to skimp you on the full Slayer Experience Package, but I’m on a clock tonight, so…” she lunges. Amazingly, the fledge seems to have the brains she was turned with, and rolls out of the way just in time.
“Whoa, whoa! Who stuffed bees in your bra, lady?” she growls, stumbling back to put the grave marker between them.
“Oh, she’s not wearing one,” Spike chips in helpfully.
“Spike!”
The fledge’s eyes land on him, lazily jacking off as the two of them start to circle, and she grins ferally. “Never mind, I think I got it.”
Buffy glances back over her shoulder at him and rolls her eyes. “Perv,” she says, but fondly. The fledge, stupid creature, takes Buffy’s apparent distraction as an opportunity to attack, and finds herself with a face full of slayer fist. And then the beat down begins.
His girl would never admit to it, but she’s got a jealous streak running as deep as the hellmouth, possessive as all get out when provoked. Needless to say, he’s always gotten a kick out of provoking her (sometimes literally) but it usually goes better for him when it comes from someone else; that little leer from dear old Ariana is going to be good for at least one more shag before they have to get on with business tonight. But first, Buffy’s going to show her who’s boss. Slayer dominance displays - better than porn.
“Yeah,” he mutters to himself as Buffy lands a spinning kick across the unfortunate fledge’s jaw. “That’s it, kitten.” Her hair is shining in the moonlight, bouncing around her like a slightly sex-roughened shampoo commercial, and her tits are all perky in the cool air. She’s so very much stronger than her opponent, a lithe, beautiful apex predator playing with her food, and it’s an incredible turn on. He can see it in the fledge’s eyes, now, that blustering hope that comes with not yet being dust coupled with the creeping suspicion that she’s somehow already lost. She lands a kick to Buffy’s middle and takes a moment to be far too pleased with herself - his girl leans into her recovery and launches the fledge across the grass with a thunderous uppercut. She lands a few feet from Spike, dazed, tonguing her own fangs as though confused about what they’re for, and looks over at him in entreaty.
“Aren’t you gonna… hey.” She frowns, squinting. “I know you.”
And suddenly, he remembers her as human, sees it like a flash of film reel, removed somehow, as though just watching, except… he also remembers the scent of her, all warm and alluring and… she was wearing glasses?
He shakes his head to clear the image and it flitters away obligingly, but a heavy, cold feeling is blanketing him now, and that he can’t budge.
“Don’t you remember?” she asks, looking genuinely hurt. “I knew it! Fucking men. I knew I was just a one bite stand to you.”
The world comes to a screeching halt.
“What?” he and Buffy say in unison.
Somehow, Spike is on his feet, backing away as he fumbles with his belt. Buffy stands frozen with her stake raised over the supine vamp.
“Oh yeah,” she says, getting up on her elbows to sneer at him. “What, your freakishly strong girlfriend here doesn’t know? Big surprise.” She turns to Buffy. “Hon, when he’s not spending quality time getting grass stains on your cute little blouse, he’s picking up girls after work and turning them into… what the hell am I, anyway? I mean, generally it feels pretty good, but my teeth are all-”
She crumbles into dust.
Buffy straightens, panting, and stares at him with huge eyes. He realises he’s shaking. And he doesn’t have a single answer for her.
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