full 3/4 1/2   skin light dark       
 
I Would Still Have Loved You by slaymesoftly
 
Chapter Twenty
 
<<     >>
 
CHAPTER TWENTY
 
Forty-five minutes later, Buffy was outside, her arms weighted down with plastic bags of frozen dinners, canned goods, and box store versions of tableware. She looked around, but there was no sign of Spike. With a sigh, she debated whether to look for him or just start walking toward the apartment so she could get the food put away before the frozen items thawed.  Deciding to opt for saving the food, she began the trudge home, muttering to herself about irresponsible, lazy vampires.
 
She’d only gone a block when Spike’s old Desoto pulled up beside her. He leaned over to say, “Can I give you a ride, miss?” He wriggled his eyebrows as he ogled her.
 
Laughing, she pulled open the rear door and put the bags in the car.  “I don’t know. You look a little dangerous to me,” she said, sliding into the passenger seat while Spike made a rude gesture at a honking car stopped behind him. Without looking to see if his gesture had been reciprocated, he pulled away from the curb and made a U-turn in the middle of the street.
 
“Oh my God! And you were going to teach Dawn to drive?”
 
“Hey. She was doing fine… I mean, she would have done fine if I’d actually done that when she was so young….”
 
“I don’t want to know.”
 
“Good.” 
 
He pulled into the alley near their apartment and hopped out to help her with the bags. He added his own bag of clearly-labeled blood from various animals. They  placed the bags  on the counter while Buffy opened the freezer and frowned into it.
 
“It isn’t very big, is it?”
 
“The blood doesn’t need to go there, pet. Not much of it, anyway. That butcher must have a lot of demon customers. He didn’t even blink when I asked for blood, just wanted to know what kind I wanted. We’ve set it up so he’ll keep some on hand for me all the time, meaning it’ll be fresh and I won’t have to worry about storing more than an emergency supply here and in the crypt.”
 
Buffy nodded as she took two small containers of blood from him and placed them in the back of the freezer.  She stacked her frozen food in front of them, closed the door, and moved on to put the rest of the food away.
 
Spike held on to the remaining containers of blood. “I’ll put them away, love. Need to have some of it first.”
 
“Okay. I guess I should eat something too. I still want to do a short patrol tonight.”
 
“Think we’ve earned ourselves a break, haven’t we? Saved the world again already and nothing else to worry about for a while.”
 
“Bite your tongue! You know you just jinxed us, you moron.”
 
“Why don’t you bite it for me?” he purred as he leaned in to nibble on her lower lip. “Hmmmmm?”
 
“Because that will lead to… other… things…. And we… have to… patrol….” In spite of herself, she was kissing him while she argued, ending by grabbing his tongue and biting it just hard enough to earn a growl from him before she slipped away to grab a yogurt from the fridge.  Giggling at his disgruntled expression, she dug through the remaining bags until she found something to eat it with. Waving her spoon at him, she retreated to the couch and sat down to eat.
 
Muttering about teasing bints, he found a mug and poured blood into it, then realized they hadn’t even unpacked the microwave yet, and growled again. He eyed the big cardboard box and then shrugged. “Fuck it,” he muttered as he tipped the container up and gulped it down. He shook himself when he’d finished and made a face. “Blergh!”
 
He snorted at Buffy’s laughter and put the mug in the sink to soak. Glancing around he said, “Reckon we should add rubbish bin to the list of things we need.”  He shook his head. “William the bloody, worrying about where to put the trash. Oh how the might have fallen…”
 
Buffy’s eyes narrowed as she crushed her empty yogurt container in her fist. She threw the mangled cup into the sink and glared at him. “My mother has a perfectly good house, you know. Where I have my own room and… stuff. Not to mention the dorm room I’m not using that is costing my mom money. If you’d like to go back to living in a damp crypt… by yourself… go for it. Now. Before we spend any more money on furniture we aren’t going to need.  Like a double bed, for instance!”
 
Without waiting for an answer, or acknowledging his stricken expression, she shoved a stake in her waistband and walked out the door.
 
“Fuck,” Spike whispered as he watched her stiff back until it was out of sight. Shaking himself and muttering threats to rip out his tongue for getting him into so much trouble, he set out after her, barely remembering to grab a key and shut the door behind him.
 
 
 
Rather than catching up right away, he followed her from a distance until she entered the gates of the closest cemetery. He sped up, but still didn’t approach her as she marched up to a clearly recent grave around which loitered several dirt-covered vamps. Skipping her usual quipping, Buffy walked right up to the biggest of what appeared to be former high school or college athletes and pushed her stake through his chest. As his dust settled to the ground, she turned her gaze on the other vamps, who had now realized there was a human girl with blood pumping through her veins standing right in front of them. Too hungry to wonder where their companion had gone, they pushed and shoved each other in an effort to get to her neck first. The winner found himself the recipient of a roundhouse kick that sent him flying back into his friends.
 
Before they could regroup, Buffy waded into the pile and, muttering about useless, bloodsucking, good for nothing vampires, she began staking and punching until there was nothing left but dust scattered around the grave. She turned a baleful eye on the erupting soil, waiting only until the new vampire was only halfway out before clocking him on the chin with her foot. As he lay, semi-conscious and moaning on the dirt, she leaned down and drove the stake into his back, hard enough to hit the heart.  She turned her back on the now-harmless pile of dirt and dust to glare at Spike, who was still a safe distance away.
 
They stared at each other, Buffy’s anger fading away slowly as he began to approach.
 
“Feeling better now, love?”
 
“You know I was pretending everyone one of those jerks was you, right?”
 
He nodded. “Think I got that message, pet. And a well-deserved one it was.” He fell into step beside her as she began walking deeper into the cemetery. “I’m sorry,” he said, hands in his pockets and head down. “I never thought how that might sound to you.”
 
“It sounded like you think I’m turning you into something you don’t want to be,” she admitted. “Like now that you’ve got me, you’re not sure you wan—”
 
She got no farther than that before he had her engulfed in a powerful embrace that lifted her off the ground. “Please promise me, no matter how many stupid things might fall out of my mouth, you will never, never allow yourself to think anything that daft.” He buried his face in the side of her neck and whispered against her skin, “I’ll be thanking the Powers that Be—wankers though they usually are—every single day for the second chance they’ve given me... given us. Every. Bloody. Day. If it all ends by the time we finish what we came here to do, I know I’ll still be grateful to them. Even if I can’t remember why I’m grateful, I’ll still know I should be. That I had something precious.”
 
He continued to keep his lips on her neck, sucking on the skin there in between telling her how much he loved her and how sorry he was to have implied anything else.
 
Buffy allowed herself to enjoy his heated murmurs and the feel of his lips on her throat, relaxing against him and paying no attention to what was going on around them. Voices eventually penetrated the lustful haze Spike was creating, and she sighed and pushed against his chest until he let her drop to the ground.  He still had his arms around her when she turned to face a small group of vampires flanking a bewildered Harmony Kendall.
 
“Blondie Bear, I thought you couldn’t bite anymore?  Are you all better now? Is that why you were biting Buffy? Why isn’t she bleeding? Do you need me to help you?”
 
Buffy rolled her eyes and leaned back against Spike. She tipped her head up to look at him. “I thought she kicked you out when you got your chip?”
 
“She did,” he snarled, glaring at Harmony.
 
“After you staked me when I found your stupid gem!” Harmony glared back, hands on hips.
 
“You staked her?”
 
“Yes, Buffy. He staked me. That’s the kind of low-life you’re … doing whatever you’re doing with. And why are you doing it?  Shouldn’t you two be trying to kill each other?”
 
“Tried that. Didn’t work. Decided I’d rather love the girl than kill her,” Spike said.
 
“Well that’s just pathetic, Spike. You can’t kill the slayer, so you decide to use her to replace me.  It’s almost sad,” Harmony sniffed. “Isn’t it, boys?”
 
The less-than-bright-looking vamps behind her nodded uncertainly, keeping their eyes on the Slayer and the much older vampire standing behind her. Something about the couple’s complete unconcern about being outnumbered had even the dumbest of them suspecting they should be leaving the area. They began edging away from Harmony, who was oblivious as she continued to berate Spike for trying to substitute Buffy for her.
 
Buffy stepped away from Spike and said, “I’ll just let you two work this out while I go to work.” As she finished speaking, she ran past Harmony and dusted the first two vamps before they could run. The remaining three took off running at a speed even Buffy probably couldn’t have matched, so she settled for throwing a stake into one’s back. She pulled another stake out and stared after the fleeing vamps, snorting in disgust.
 
When she turned around, Harmony had transferred her ire from Spike to Buffy. Still seemingly oblivious to her status as Slayer-prey, Harmony whined, “Those are my minions, Buffy! You can’t stake them.”
 
“Um… I just did. Or were you too busy yelling at Spike to notice?”
 
“Blondie Bear – you need to prove you still love me.  Kill her!”
 
Buffy stared at Spike who rolled his eyes and shrugged. “She’s really not as stupid as she sounds,” he said.
 
“Spike, I went to high school with her. She’s every bit as stupid as she sounds. I’m very disappointed in you.”
 
“What can I say, love? I was just back in town, newly single, and she’s got a great se— um a great sense of humor?”
 
“Nice save,” Buffy said, glaring at him. “Almost. We’ll talk about this later.”
 
“Lookin’ forward to it,” he sighed. “What do you want to do with her?”
 
Finally catching on that Spike was not planning to save her from Buffy’s stake, Harmony turned and began to run – somewhat awkwardly in the high heels she was wearing.
 
Buffy watched her run off and shook her head. “I should stake her I guess. She’s out there making minions for God’s sake!”
 
“Look at it this way, love. Anybody stupid enough to be killed by Harmony and become her minion probably needed to be taken out of the gene pool anyway.”
 
“I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in the Slayer Handbook that says if vamps only eat stupid people I don’t have to slay them,” Buffy said as she walked back to him. “But between the ones I beat up on earlier and the three I just got now, I think we’re good. Let’s go home.”
 
“Am I forgiven for being a wanker then?” He fell into step beside her.
 
“Depends,” she said, remembering what had distracted her before Harmony’s voice got her attention and looking at him from the corner of her eye. “Are you going to make it up to me?”
 
“All night long if needs be,” he purred, pulling her into his side.
 
“Might take that long,” she said, even as she leaned into him.
 
“We should walk faster then.” 
 
He took her hand and began tugging her down the street, ignoring her giggles that were interspersed with threats to his body parts if he didn’t slow down. She was still giggling as they rounded the corner and approached their door, only to find a big shadow standing up and looming over them.
 
“Angel?”
 
“Bloody fuckin’ hell.”
 
 
 
 
<<     >>