All three of them froze there in the gloom, as though waiting for some magical curtain to descend and end the show.  The lass on the platform just looked and looked at them, not saying anything, anymore.

He felt Buffy’s body jerk and shiver beneath him, the legs unlocked and set down like a pair of trees, like she might make a run for it.  Mop Girl stiffened on the stairs, perhaps thinking the same thing.  But Spike was still planted deep, so he gave his hips a vicious twist, steering them all back to reality.

“Shhhh,” he whispered.  “Too late, love.  It’s already happening.  It’s already done.”

Buffy made a mournful sound that died halfway up her throat.  She still had one cheek pinned flat, facing back towards the restaurant and at the lass on the stairs, and when she lifted it he knew she was going to try to escape this bright moment, to close her eyes and drift away.  He knotted his fist in her hair, wrenched her head down tight.

“No, don’t do that.  Look at her.”

She did.  She gave their interloper one of her damp, faraway stares.  And the grim guard stared back, her eyes cooling to a certain temperature of hooded detachment.

“You know her, yeah?”

“Uhhh,” she said.  “Uh huunnh.”

He drove the thumb deeper into her ass, and was rewarded with a gasp. “What’s her name?”

“Juh, juh, jehhn, knee, juh…”

Jenny looked like she might’ve heard this little exchange, shifting her feet upon the stage.  The dock lights behind her framed her with a gauzy yellow halo, and made her features seem purple and bruised by contrast.

“Look at your Jenny up there.  Watch her face… the way her body moves.”

He lit into her again, gave her little rump three plopping thrusts that sounded like rude kisses.

Jenny did and said nothing.  She just swayed up there at her post, as though hypnotized.

“See that, Goldie?” he hissed.  “See what I see?”

The Slayer only panted and gasped.

But you have her attention, now.

“She’s lookin’ at us,” he explained.  “But she don’t know what she’s lookin’ at.  She thinks the snake has found the mouse out here, love.  Thinks this game of ours has only one player.  You follow me?”

He stroked slow and deep again, and the motion coaxed another long, sweet sigh.

(in still marshes, legs like long sighs)

“And she doesn’t care,” he continued, hating each word.  “She likes it.  She’s walked in on your plight, and all she can do is like it.  All she can do is watch.”

“Nuh, nuh…”

“Oh, yeah,” he purred.  “It’s true.  You help them and you save them, and this is all you get.  Your glorious reward.”

Her legs had gone back to doing their strange, slow dance down there, the miniature toes picking and wiggling on wet nasties.  The night around them seemed suddenly hotter, a sweltering swamp, and she was bathed in sweat now, fucking swimming in it.  Because it was hard work, after all.  Being in the world, being her.

So, Spike started up the motor in his hips again, shifting into a new gear this time, a firm but playful bop, bop, bop, like he was milking a cow.

“You see,” he started, feeling philosophical, “that look of bewitched horror sometimes, at roadside wrecks, in war zones, at graves.”

He let this sink in for a moment.  The song in the alley was delicious now; nothing but Jenny the Mop Maid’s silence and Buffy’s mewling little groans and a wet clapping where their bodies met.

Bop, bop, clap, plop…

“Jenny’s a good girl most of the time, I’d wager.  Minds her mum.   Pays the rent on time.  Works this job like she’s moppin’ up Buckingham.  Pure and true…”

He gave Jenny another long look just to make sure of this, licking the image of her up and down with his eyes.   He could sense the girl’s full presence in the game now; her heat and her heartbeat rising, little strangled breaths poking through the round O of her mouth.  She was a plain thing, neither ugly nor pretty.   Just plain and solid and normal.  The sort of girl who’d whisper past without much of a fuss, who’d vanish easily in crowds.

Their eyes connected for a crystalline second.  And, via some mysterious shard of magic, Spike could see her whole life in them, right up to this very moment.  They were cruel little eyes; the kind of eyes that quietly longed for a special rapture she could only get at someone else’s cost.  He watched Jenny’s free hand slowly sink towards the rim of her grease-spattered pants…

“A real Sunnydale legend,” he murmured.  “Pure and true.  But not yet.  Not tonight.”

He shoved and twisted and slashed, feeling that wall and wanting to break it down, to pulverize that stone hardness inside her.  And Buffy Summers grunted, and her little bare legs danced, and she looked and looked at their hapless Jenny on the dock.  But the point still seemed to elude her.  He needed to clear things up.

He drew himself out slowly, enjoying the ticklish sensation as her pussy seamed closed behind him.  But he kept her head stuck down there on the lid, and kept the joint locked in Her Highness’ naughty little hole.  That’s the one he worked, now, using her sopping wet thighs to help along the chore.

“No more plaintive cries from yonder balcony,” he whispered.  “Tonight, she wants to watch you get yours.”

When he was satisfied about the state of things in her nethers, he started the endgame.  He had to let go of her hair for this part, and he did so gently, chary that she might dash off like a doe into the fields.  When she didn’t, he pressed the soft, wet clay of her buttocks and parted them wide.  The flared remnant of the seam there was like an arrow pointing the way to Hell.

“And she doesn’t even know why,” he spat.  “Maybe it’s ‘cause she hates you.  Or maybe she hates herself, and the world, an’ everyone in it.”

“Uhhnn… uhhnnn…” Buffy whimpered.

Call it off, love.  Call it off.  Stop this.

Stop me.

SHUT IT, TOSSER!

Jenny.  Jenny on the dock was still swaying, eyes heavy and glassy.  They were eyes of a beast in the meadow, watching the red horror of a predator’s meal.

“But it doesn’t matter, pet…”

He steered his cock to the goal.  It pecked and prodded, quivering like an archer’s bow.  Buffy went slack again, dead again, and he hoisted her body forward for a better slant on matters.  There was dirt all over her now, everywhere, the cheap blouse coated in brown stains, the skin of her bare arms patchy with soot.  Only the backs of her legs seemed to be chaste.  She dangled them like limp rags, such that the toes just barely scraped the macadam.  The soles there were dyed indigo with tar.

She was still staring at Jenny, gasping at her, the tears pooling in the cups of her green eyes and then spilling over, racing towards her chin.  When she expelled a long, deep breath, Spike found his purchase.

It was just the tip, at first; just the head disappearing inside, but she let out a yelp that sounded like someone stomped on a doggy’s tail.

You can feel THAT, can’t you…

He began to push.

Motorbike… Horsey…

“Because it ain’t her down here,” he whispered, all the time surging deeper and deeper, the walls of her forbidden entrance slowly yielding. “Because there's a blackness in hearts.  Even in beating ones.”

Tell me to stop, tell me to stop, say something!

But it was too late.  School was in session now, and wouldn’t quit until the bell.  She spread her thighs a few inches apart, making low pig noises, snorting and snarling.  He pumped his hips, half-in and half-not, gradually fucking and reaming his way into Little Queenie’s prim, puckering ass.

Shivers ran down her frame like rippling waves.  He grabbed the back of the blouse and yanked it up, unveiling a pristine swathe of her back.

This was just more skin, but Miss Jenny seemed to like it.  In the corner of his eye, he glimpsed her fingers slithering down into the front of her pants, and squeezing and rubbing and tweaking there.

The sound Buffy made when he drove his blade home would follow him for weeks and months later, into dreams and quiet moments.

And it did feel like a knifing.  He stabbed and drove and reamed and fanged, bit her deep and hard, and the flapping applause of her ravaged bottom filled the night with electric murder.

Spike abandoned Jenny to her silent perversions, and focused on his pupil’s face instead.  Or maybe she was the teacher.  It no longer seemed to matter.  Her red lips wormed and twisted, roared out hot syllables, but her eyes were still glued to the Mop Maid.

Watching it all go down.  Seeing the world the way it was.

Buffy made a gulping, tormented sound, and then she shoved one of her arms underneath her own body, groping for the wetness between her legs.  He helped her, curling his hand around a thigh.  Together they found her clit, luring a million nerve endings to life as they galloped to the finish line. 

Up on the dock, Jenny’s silhouette looked like it might make it there with them.  Her mop was gone, and she was pressed flat up against the guardrail. She went at it like a cat in heat, nearly riding the bloody bars, her panties hiked down to mid-thigh.  She was rubbing and rubbing like a nest of bees stung her quim.

With them, but not… 

Swimming in the same black broth…

( free, the naiads swear on torn knickers)

As another hot wave exploded through Buffy, he let it all go.   He started fucking her like this was the End of Days, like he wanted to break her, like he was breaking her.

And she was saying something.   It wasn’t words, exactly.   But it was the right sort of nonsense; the sound of shameful, wicked bliss.  The song of the whole wounded world was just like this; someone getting fucked raw in a dirty back lane, while the crowd looks on and rubs and rubs.

And she knew it, too.  She knew what this was, knew what it was like to get done dirty.

He came in four parts, each spurt more grand and insistent and final than the last.  Buffy seized onto him with every ounce of her strength when he did; her filthy little feet belting around him again, mashing her bottom backwards to drink every drop.

Her teeth were a savage grid of pearls, and as the last shot of cum fired into her, she seemed to go a tiny bit bonkers.  The moan that fled her mouth was terrifying, like a sharp death in the woods.  Her eyes bobbled in their sockets, and another wave flittered through her, from tip to toes. As it left, her face and thighs blushed hot and neon pink.

This was pleasure, of course.  An Ending, though not the storybook kind.

For about ten seconds, none of them budged. The only movement seemed to come from Buffy's poor backside; a sort of motorized twitching and tugging, like a broken wind-up toy. There were echoes and aftershocks, and a few dainty thrusts. Then everything became very still.

Dear, sweet Jenny the Janitor went first. She made a strained, lonesome little noise, then she buttoned up quickly and left, leaving the mop and bucket where they were.  Abandoning this night, perhaps, and every damned thing in it.

Spike was still rock-hard, so he stood there, waiting for all the heat to cool and the pressure to drop.  Somewhere beneath him, Buffy fought for breath.  It felt like her skin was on fire.

When he finally pulled out of her, she stayed propped there on the bin for awhile, gasping and jiggling her lovely legs.  It was like she wasn’t ready to land quite yet.

After she did, her feet gingerly found the blighted earth.  She pulled down her blouse with both hands, as far as it would go, aware again of the world and its decencies.

He tossed his head, trying to shake something out of it.  Zipped up.  She didn’t look at him.  Instead, she roved in a small, quiet circle, picking up her shoes and castoff garments.  Without thinking about it, he took off his jacket.

“Here,” he said, shaking it like a flag of surrender.

“Huh?”  She shot him a puzzled look, like he’d gone mad.  “No… no, it’s okay.”

“They’re torn,” he said, even as she slid into them.  Those muddied white pants.  “Take it.”

“I don’t want it.”

The words were small and low and final.  She slipped on her shoes.

“Listen,” she said.  “I gotta get home.  Dawn…”

“Yeah.  Sure.  I know.”

“Okay.  Good.”  She swayed towards him a little, then drifted away like a balloon in wind.  “So, I’ll, uh, see you around.  I guess.”

“Yeah.  See you.”

She wobbled back into the restaurant, limping a little.  He did not know what she needed to face in there, but it didn’t seem to matter much anymore.  Whatever wounds needed to be licked would be licked.  And then they would steer clear for a while.  And then they would meet up again.  Do this all over.

Because they weren’t students or teachers or any of that rot.  Because they would never learn.

Spike stared up into a black, starless sky.  It was deader than anything he’d ever seen, so dead a wolf wouldn’t waste a howl.  So he didn’t either.

He turned and tramped off into the shadows and the filth instead.

Feeling it.