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Hearts Breaking Even by slaymesoftly
 
Four
 
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Chapter Four - almost a year later

Buffy was enjoying her night off – dancing with her friends in the Bronze, flirting with the boys, laughing with the girls and pretending she was a normal high school junior for one night. Just for a second, she thought she felt the tingling on her neck that signaled the presence of a vampire, but it faded and she quickly dismissed it, returning to her dancing and pretending for one night that vampires didn’t exist.

“Buffy, have you seen that blond guy in the leather coat? He is totally checking you out!”

Buffy tried to be casual as she danced around to face the way Willow was looking. She flushed from head to toe at the predatory look the obviously-not-natural-blond man was giving her. She could feel his eyes running over her body as she moved to the music and she unconsciously added a little more body movement to her dancing. She looked around the room idly, as though she might be searching for someone, allowing her eyes to slide across him briefly only to find herself caught in his gaze. The most brilliant blue eyes she’d ever seen fastened on hers and she felt her heart rate increase at the heat she saw there.

She faltered and lost the beat for a second as those eyes bored into hers, pinning her to the spot like a blond butterfly on a pin. When he broke into a smirking grin, she brought her chin up and glared, breaking the eye contact and tossing her hair as she turned away from him. She could still feel his eyes on her and she tried to control the blush that threatened to turn her entire body bright red even as she continued to move sensuously around the floor.

She could tell the minute he stopped watching her and tried to smother the disappointment, telling herself he was obviously too old for her and anyway, she had a boyfriend. Well, sort of. In a we-hardly-ever-see-each-other-unless-there’s-a-problem kind of way . When she overheard a boy frantically calling for help because someone was being attacked in the alley, she sighed, knowing her night off was at an end.

Buffy ran out the back door, yanking the vampire off the girl on which he’d been about to feed and sending the intended victim back inside to rethink her willingness to go for walks with strange men.

(I guess this is why I thought I felt a vamp in there. Stupid vampire. Ruining my night off.)

The vampire was actually a pretty good fighter. He was obviously not a fledgling and she was beginning to regret not having grabbed her stake before she came outside. As soon as Xander called her name and tossed it to her, she dusted the vamp and turned to rejoin her friends. She was facing away when she heard slow clapping and turned back to find the blond man (Vamp! He’s a vamp!) walking out of the shadows, his mocking applause ringing in her ears.

(Just my luck. I find a hottie and he’s a frickin’ vampire.)

He was in the middle of a threat to kill her Saturday night when Xander called her name again, asking if she needed help. She watched curiously as the blond vampire froze, frowning when Xander called her “Buffy.” He stared at her again, his frown deepening, then whirled in a swirl of leather and ran out of the alley.

(Hmmm. Just my name is enough to scare them off now. That’s pretty cool.)

She joined her friends, grimacing when Willow supportively commiserated with her on the man’s undead status.

“So, the hottie is a vamp, huh? That totally sucks.”

“Yeah it does, I’m completely onboard with the suckage. I’m suckable girl – no wait – he’s suckable –no, that’s not it either…” She shook her head and sighed heavily. “Oh well, one older man in my life is enough - even if he is a vampire and…Oh my god, Willow! You don’t think I attract vampires, do you? I mean do you think I put out some kind of vampire pher…fren…fomoho-“

“Pheromone?” her brainy friend asked with a smile.

“Yeah, that thing. I don’t, do I?” Her eyes were wide in horror as she anticipated having to fight hordes of lustful vampires every night.

“I’m sure you don’t, Buffy,” Xander put in quickly. “No more than your average beautiful girl, any way. I mean, I know if I was a vamp, I’d rather bite a pretty girl than an ugly one. Even if she was the Slayer. And I’m shutting up now…”

With both girls giving him a look of disgust, he trailed off mumbling and doing his best not to appear to be ogling Buffy the way the vampire clearly had been.



The following evening, when Giles had found a picture of William the Bloody that everyone tentatively identified as the vampire they’d seen in the alley, he shook his head and said seriously, “You must be carefully, Buffy. William the Bloody has already killed two Slayers.”

“But, Giles, I’m really not sure that’s who we saw. The other vamp called him—“

“Spike,” came Angel’s flat voice as the souled vampire entered the library and the discussion.

“You know of him?” The Watcher gave the old vampire an appraising stare.

“I don’t just know OF him. I know HIM. And if he says he’s going to do something, he won’t quit until he does it. The only way to stop him is to dust him.”

Buffy felt a small jolt of fear go through her before anger took over and she glared at her sometime boyfriend.

“Then I guess he’s going to be dusty sooner than he expected,” she huffed, not a little offended that Giles and Angel seemed so willing to assume she was in danger from the blond vamp.

“He’s a very good fighter, Buffy,” Angel began somewhat pompously. “He’s very…innovative and unpredictable.”

“I’M a very good fighter,” she growled angrily. “And I’m unpredictable and…whatever that other thing was. I’m that too.”

Her lower lip came out to add emphasis to the stubbornness in her voice. Her watcher fought the urge to roll his eyes in imitation of the teenagers he spent so much time with and he tried to soothe her ruffled feathers.

“Quite so, Buffy. No one doubts your abilities. We are simply saying that you need to exercise some caution until you have had a chance to evaluate your opponent as he was clearly doing with you last night.”

“Well,” she said, somewhat mollified, “he said he was going to kill me Saturday night, so I guess I’m safe till then. Now I’ve got to go work on Back to School Night stuff.”


When Back to School Night had gone from bad – Snyder and her mom indulging in quality Buffy bashing -- to worse with the arrival of Spike and his minions, Buffy’s first instinct was to take out her frustration on the vampire’s body before she staked him. When it turned out to be harder than she expected to beat him, she got even angrier and his snarky, “Did I spoil your doilies?” did nothing to calm her down.

And when she used one of her tried and true moves and found him anticipating and meeting it with one of his own, she began to feel the first prickles of concern. Suddenly the fight that she had to admit she’d been enjoying up to that point took on a whole new meaning. Where before she had been happy to have found a vamp that could give her a good workout before she dusted him, it now occurred to her that there was very real possibility that this one might be able to make good on his threat to kill her.

When she was pinned to the floor with the vampire’s lean muscular body pressing against hers, that possibility became frighteningly more real. Buffy struggled vigorously against both the vulnerable position in which she found herself and the wildly inappropriate reaction she found her body having to that position. The hard length she could feel pressing against her thigh made it clear that she was not the only one to be turned on by the preceding battle and she smiled to herself as an escape plan was born.

Staring into the lust-filled amber eyes of the demon, she shifted her hips subtly, allowing his erection to slip between her legs and press into her suddenly damp center. The sensations that move caused almost made her forget her intention, until the vampire’s involuntary groan reminded her that she had a plan. She quickly head-butted the distracted vamp, breaking his nose with a satisfying crunch and throwing him over her head.

She kipped to her feet and turned to face the blond demon, sure she would be looking at the face of an outraged monster. Instead, the vampire’s handsome human face was back and even as he held his bleeding nose and cursed, his eyes glinted with admiration and joy.

“Nice move, luv,” he drawled. “Got to say I didn’t see that one comin’.”

“Not gonna see the next one either,” she grunted, ripping a broken two by four out of the shattered wall and holding it in front of her. She had the broken end pointed at his chest, ready to turn him to dust.

“You don’ t really want to kill me yet. Do you, Buffy?” His sudden change in demeanor and tone startled her enough that she paused and blinked in surprise. The vampire was speaking almost as though he knew her. The moment’s hesitation was all he needed. With a leap, he kicked the board out of her hands and pinned her against the wall, once again putting his mouth much too close to her neck for comfort.

Surprisingly, he was still in his human face and the teeth he ran down her throat were small and blunt. Buffy shivered when his cool tongue slid up the side of her neck and she felt his lips twitch into a smile. He gave a little nip to the skin over her pounding pulse, then pulled back to look into her confused eyes.

“Not ready to kill you, pet,” he murmured. “I want to make this last. You’re the best I’ve ever come up against. But then, I should have expected that,” he added enigmatically, leaning in to sniff her and letting blood drip from his nose onto her collar.

“You’re getting blood on my good shirt,” she managed to gasp out, completely at a loss as to why she wasn’t already dead, but willing to go with his plan to put it off for awhile.

“Well, you’re the bitch who broke my nose.” he responded indignantly, ”And you cheated to do it!”

“It’s not cheating when someone’s trying to kill you!” she snapped back at him.

“The hell it isn—“ the vampire’s entire demeanor suddenly changed. “Bloody hell,” he breathed softly. “It IS you.”

Buffy frowned at the look on Spike’s face and answered with some asperity, “Of course, I’m me. Who else would I be?”

Ignoring her question, he raked his eyes over her again, then raised a shaking hand to her cheek.

“I cut you,” he said as though to himself, running his thumb lightly along her jaw line. He leaned into her and quickly ran his tongue over the small cut, stimulating it to stop bleeding and sending another shiver through the Slayer’s body.

Buffy did her best to appear disgusted as she flinched away and muttered, “Well, duh! You were trying to kill me.”

She did her best to get the conversation back to something she could understand and realized with a start that the vampire had completely relaxed his grip on her. He appeared to be so distracted that she might easily escape if she tried. Instead, she remained where she was, inches away from the most deadly vamp she’d every faced and feeling, quite suddenly, perfectly safe.

“No, I wasn’t. Not really. Not yet.” He spoke absently, his eyes continuing to search her face, almost as though he was trying to memorize her features.

“Well maybe if you’d let me in on that plan, your nose might not be broken,” she replied petulantly, angry that he wasn’t explaining himself or his bizarre behavior.

Her lower lip came out in a small pout even as a voice screamed internally that Slayers did not apologize to vampires for trying to escape with their lives.

“Why weren’t you trying to kill me?” she asked, almost angrily; trying to bring the conversation back to something remotely not weird and confusing.

“Was having too much fun,” he answered with a smirk.

“Fun? We weren’t having fun; we were fighting. To the death.”

“Admit it, luv. You were enjoying that just as much as I was. And it was having the same effect on you it did on me,” he added with a leer. “You just took advantage of it while I was…distracted.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she sniffed haughtily. “I was just trying to rid the world of another worthless, bloodsucking demon. That’s my job, you know.”

“Yeah,” he said softly, “I know. You slay the monsters.”

Something in the way he said it and his tone of voice sent a chill down Buffy’s spine and she tried frantically to place where she’d heard those words before. Before she could remember anything at all helpful, he threw his head up as though listening, then shocked her into complete silence when he brushed his lips over hers and whispered, “Got to go, luv. We’ll continue this later.”

With another dramatic swirl of his leather coat, he whirled and was gone just before Angel, Giles and Xander came rushing up the hallway. They paused when they got to Buffy, seeing the blood on her shirt from Spike’s nose and misunderstanding her bemused expression.

“Did he hurt you?” Angel was in full game face, snarling as he scented his grandchilde all over her. He quickly assessed the blood as belonging to Spike rather than Buffy and relaxed back into his usual brooding human face.

“Buffy? Are you quite all right?” Giles added his own concerned questions to Angel’s.

“I’m fine,” she answered without looking at either of them.

“Did you dust him?” Xander asked eagerly. “Did you slay William the Bloody?”

She shook her head slightly and tried to focus on the men in front of her.

“Uh, no. He…he got away. But I’ll get him next time.”

“So, you had no trouble with him then,” her watcher said with relief.

“Oh. Oh yeah, he was trouble.” Buffy’s quick response brought a frown to both Giles’ and Angel’s faces. “He’s really very good. Better than me, maybe. It was almost like he knew me…” Her attention wandered off again as she replayed the fight in her mind.

“If he’s so good, then how did you get away?”

“Hmmmm? Oh, I cheated.” Buffy’s absent-minded answer left her watcher, her vampire boy friend and her friend staring at each other as she wandered off to find her mother.







 
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