Something to Sing About by Lilachigh


Chapter 4 “I’ll tear it down!”



In the darkness, Buffy felt rather than saw Spike vamp into game face. Every muscle in his body tightened, ready for action, to kill, maim, destroy.

“No!” he hissed. “Forget it. You’ll not sacrifice yourself again for another world. I won’t let you, Slayer.”

‘Ssh. Ssh! You’ll wake Willow and the others,” Buffy said, reaching up to stroke his bumpy face, feeling it soften and return to human under her exploring fingertips. “That’s just the problem, Spike. I am still the Slayer. Here, there, wherever I go. I’ll never be anyone else. You know that.”

He pulled her so tight that his arms seemed to crush her. Even with Slayer strength she thought she could hear her ribs creak in protest. But she kept silent. She could feel his anguish and was beginning, she realised, to know exactly how much he loved her.

Long minutes passed, then his grip eased and she wriggled free. “Look, Spike, I’m not going looking for death!” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “Far from it. Been there, had the coffin, all pretty white satin and hey, here I am again! Can’t keep bobbing backwards and forwards into the after life. I’ll get dizzy.”

“OK, just remember that I’m going to be watching your back the whole time, Slayer and this time you’re my wife, don’t forget. So if I see you near any poxy tower, I’ll tear it down before I let you climb it!” She could feel tremors running through his body. “I couldn’t bear it again, Buffy.You’ve no idea what it was like. If I lost you again, then I’d dust myself as well.”

Buffy shivered in the dark at the passion in his voice. She was remembering clearly now so much of her time in this universe. Marrying Spike, finding Xan, watching Angel die. In the other Sunnydale it had seemed like a dream, something that had happened to someone else. But now it was only too real.

She felt the walls she’d constructed so carefully against Spike falling away, brick by brick. Here she could be herself, show him exactly how she felt about him. Here, there was no one to be shocked or surprised at her love for the vampire and that realisation flowed over her like a raging tide.

Buffy lifted herself up, climbing over him to straddle his hips. Her mouth searched for his and took possession, demanding, cajoling, insisting on the response that flared beneath her lips.

She felt him reach up and pull her hair free from its ties. it cascaded down across his face, then they were slipping and sliding off the sofa onto the floor in a welter of cushions and discarded clothes as they fought to feel skin against skin, warm against cold, steely hardness against silky softness.

And Willow, tossing and turning restlessly, unhappily, in her bed, was unaware of the tears of loss that trickled down her face as her body tuned in to the overpowering ripples of desire and love that surged throughout the house as Slayer and Vampire consummated a love they would never ever be able to deny.

Buffy woke the next morning to find herself still held tight in Spike’s arms, as if he’d been scared that while he slept she would somehow escape.

She wriggled free and pulled on her clothes, wrinkling her nose at the grimy state of yesterday’s jeans and T-shirt. She pushed her panties into a pocket. They hadn’t survived Spike’s onslaught from the night before.

She sighed and wished she’d bought shares in some underwear company. She got through more thongs and panties than anyone else she knew.

“Good job we’re not together in the same world back home,” she grumbled to herself. “I’d never be able to explain to Dawn why I bought so many!”

She padded across the room and peered out round the edge of the tightly drawn curtains. But she needn’t have worried about bright sunlight. The street outside lay grey and sullen under a heavy grey sky. She pulled the curtain back and heard Spike stretching as he woke. “Buffy?” His voice was tight with sudden anxiety.

“Over here,” she said, resuming her inspection of Sunnydale. Reassured that nothing was moving outside, she turned and grinned at him raising her eyebrows at the naked vampire. “Far be it for me to sound like a wife and nag, Spike, but I think it might be a good idea if you put your jeans on! If Willow comes down and catches you like that - ”

A wolfish smile iced across the room at her. “Take it you had a good look while I was asleep, pet.”

Buffy tossed her head. “No big deal, mister. Seen it all before!”

The smile grew lazier and sexier and she felt her legs begin to tremble. “Well, if you don’t think this is a ‘big’ deal, come over here and I’ll show you in greater detail, Slayer!”

“Later!” she hissed as footsteps sounded on the stairs and Will appeared, wearing jeans and what had probably been one of Oz’s sweaters. She looked pale and washed out, her red hair scragged back from her face into a severe knot, her collar bones showing harshly through the pale skin where the sweater fell away from her thin body.

Buffy frowned. Her best friend looked ill, exhausted, as if she couldn’t have cared less if she lived or died.

‘Buffy. Spike. Hope you got some sleep. There’s water coming out of the taps this morning. It tastes OK. There’s still no power, so no hot water and no coffee, I’m afraid. I think there might be a carton of orange juice left, if Xander and Tara didn’t drink it yesterday.”

“Willow, come and sit down,” Buffy urged. “We’ve got to discuss what we’re going to do.”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it,” It was Xan speaking as he came into the room, shrugging into his shirt. “Now you’re back, you can do the Slayer thingy and kill this Ben guy. Then everything will go back to normal.”

Tara followed him into the room, her long honey-blonde hair braided around her head like a crown, a dark green skirt sweeping the floor. “Sweetie, I don’t see that it can be that simple. Buffy, how did you defeat the god person in the other Sunnydale?”

“Well, I - ”

“There was a bloody big battle,” broke in Spike, determined that his wife was not going to announce that her death had been the only way to get rid of Glory. “Loads of blood and bodies and death.”

“Yes, you said last night that you died and came back. But you got rid of her?” Xan insisted. “Otherwise you wouldn’t both be here, I suppose.”

Buffy’s mind raced back to that dreadful night on the tower. Dawn with blood dripping from her body, the heavens opening into Hell, knowing that by jumping she could stop it all - and, what was even more important - she could finally rest.

And now she was faced with the prospect of dealing with an unbeatable god all over again. ‘But you don’t have to,’ a little voice mocked in her brain. “The portal is there - open and waiting. All you have to do is tell Spike and jump through it. You’ll be home - your proper home, where you truly belong.’

She realised Xan was still waiting for her reply, his dark eyes shadowed in a face that was thin and pale, so unlike the Xander Harris she’d left behind only yesterday.

“It was - complicated,” she said slowly. “I don’t expect things to be exactly the same here as they were there.”

“Can you kill this Ben creature or not?” Xan snapped, and to Buffy’s astonishment, he crossed to a shelf on the far side of the room and poured himself a hefty shot of whisky.

“Sweetie, it’s very early - ” Tara started to say, but then stopped, shrugging wearily as if she’d given up trying to stop him a long time ago.

So Xan is still drinking, Buffy thought bitterly. Rescuing him from Angel didn’t bring him to his senses after all.

“Back off, Xander,” Spike said. “Buffy will do what’s right. You can rely on that.”

“What’s right for her or what’s right for us?”

“I’ll do what’s right for everyone in this Sunnydale, in this world,” Buffy said firmly, scooping up a piece of ribbon from the floor where she’d thrown in last night and tying her hair back in a pony-tail.

Xan looked as if he was going to argue some more, but took a long swallow of Scotch and flung himself down on the sofa next to Will who was just sitting, gazing into space.

“Willow, did your magic have no effect on Ben at all?” Buffy asked, hoping to nudge her friend out of her depression.

“What?” The red-headed witch looked up, her eyes dark and dull. “Oh, well, some, Buffy. I’ve been trying really hard to control the water coming into Sunnydale. I think that’s probably why we’ve got some this morning. I magic the reservoir gates open and Ben magics them shut again. At the moment, I’m winning so we can all drink. But then I get tired and he turns the water off again until I built up my reserves. But I can’t do the water and the power at the same time. That’s beyond me.”

“But it’s interesting that you can make some difference. He isn’t all powerful, then, is he?“

“No, but Buffy, he’s getting stronger every day. Soon Sunnydale will be a ghost town. We can’t stay here much longer,” Tara said softly. “We would have left ages ago, but Willow felt Oz would have died for nothing if she gave in to Ben and ran away.”

“We need more information, pet,” Spike said, pulling on his leather duster. “How many of those sodding ugly minions he has? And if he’s searching for a Key in this dimension, too.”

“And if he is, who is it?” Buffy agreed quietly. For that was one of the odd things about this universe. There was no Dawn and it was as if part of her was missing, even though her sister had never existed here.

They moved away from the others and Buffy lowered her voice even more so they couldn’t hear. “Right. First things first. Where are we going to get the low down on this Ben and his gang? Who in the whole of Sunnydale will know what’s going on?”

She stared up into the brilliant blue eyes she loved so much and wondered fleetingly why she could think that in this world and not admit it in the other.

Then, simultaneously, they said, “Willie!”


to be continued