Chapter 4

The cheap, college-issue bed frame creaked beneath them, the only audible evidence of their lovemaking. Soundless cries of passion died in their throats, the joining of their bodies muted. Buffy squeezed her eyes shut, digging her nails into Spike’s shoulders and her heels into his back. His chest vibrated against hers with silent moans, and she felt the tremors run through her and coalesce at her center.

Her breathing grew faster, more erratic, sawing through the silence with ragged gasps. A trickle of sweat slid down between her breasts, and Spike lowered his head to catch it with his tongue. His mouth closed on her nipple, rolling the pebbled flesh between his teeth, causing her to inhale sharply.

With the loss of their voices, and the unnatural quiet it created, Buffy felt a heightened awareness of everything else. The pungent smell of leather and sex that surrounded her, the chafing of her cheap cotton sheets against her back, the way Spike’s lips parted ever so slightly with pleasure, his tongue barely visible as it skated across his lower teeth. Every touch felt like it was reaching her most sensitive nerve endings, and whenever his pelvic bone struck her clit, it caused an explosion of sensation within her.

Spike quickened his pace, thrusting harder and deeper, the rhythmic slap of flesh on flesh like a primal drumbeat. Buffy’s inner walls trembled around him, wringing his cock with every stroke. She couldn’t help but cry out when she came, suddenly and without warning, though it amounted to nothing but expelled air.

Spike’s orgasm followed moments after, gasping his own release with his forehead pressed to hers. As he collapsed on top of her, she pulled his head down to rest pillowed against her shoulder.

It was then that she saw the Gentleman hovering just beyond Spike’s exhausted form, applauding politely at their performance. Gaping at the figure in terror, she let out a silent scream…

…and shot up out of bed to find herself alone, Willow’s still-sleeping form in the next bed the only other person in the room. Sweaty and trembling, Buffy lay back down, but it was a long time before she fell asleep again.

*****

The next day, the gang gathered in Buffy and Willow’s psychology classroom, and Giles began to set up the overhead projector for his presentation. Buffy and Willow took seats in the front row, and Anya, bag of popcorn in hand, filed in behind them. Spike made a move to sit near Buffy, but her deadly warning glare forced him to reconsider, and he took a place next to Anya in the second row.

Xander closed the blinds and then perched on the lecture hall steps, as Giles played the Danse Macabre on his tape player and began his presentation. As the Watcher went through the overheads, telling the story of the fairy tale monsters who came to steal hearts and could not be killed, Spike took the opportunity to study Buffy from behind, wondering if she was thinking at all about their kiss from last night. For his own part, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. He hadn’t planned to kiss her, but there’d been so many emotions bubbling up inside him, begging for expression, and it just… happened. He wanted to write it off as just a stupid impulse, nothing to be concerned about, but he knew it wasn’t. Things hadn’t been right since the witch did her bloody spell.

He was starting to understand what Dru had meant when she’d said the Slayer was floating all around him, when she’d left him in South America. He felt it now, felt her seeping into his skin, flowing through his veins. Part of him was repulsed, appalled that he could let his Slayer obsession be perverted into this… this mockery of everything a vampire should be. He should want to kill her, not kiss her.

But somehow, it felt inevitable. The way they’d danced, the way his body had ached with the need to fight her. Even when he was hunting her, she had consumed him in a way her predecessors never had. It only seemed fitting, then, that his lust for her blood should lead to a deeper, all-encompassing desire for her. He craved her, yearned for the intimacy of the engagement spell, longed for her to return the feelings he had laid bare with his kiss.

When Giles displayed a particularly gruesome drawing of the Gentlemen harvesting hearts, Buffy and Willow squirmed in their seats, exchanging uncomfortable looks. Behind them, Anya and Spike glanced at each other and shrugged, unimpressed. Spike reached over to steal some of Anya’s popcorn, only to have his hand slapped away by an ex-demon unwilling to share.

As Giles put up the last transparency, which read, “Buffy will patrol tonight,” Spike raised his hand, snapping his fingers. Buffy was making a fuss over the size of her hips in Giles’ drawing, but he managed to get their attention.

Spike pointed to himself, then started to mimic Buffy’s staking gesture, but quickly stopped when he remembered what it looked like. Waving his hands to show that he was starting over, he pointed at Buffy, then himself again, then threw a few mock punches.

Buffy stared at him. You wanna fight? she challenged him, though she had to admit to a fair measure of relief at the idea. Everything had been so much simpler when he was just trying to kill her. That was comforting, familiar. This new Spike, who saved her life and kissed her and haunted her dreams – this Spike terrified her.

Spike shook his head and, with exasperation, pointed to the overhead, then waved his finger back and forth to indicate himself and Buffy.

Buffy, hoping to avoid a repeat of the previous night at all costs, was appalled at the idea. She looked to Giles to shoot down Spike’s suggestion, but to her consternation, he was nodding vigorously. She gave him her best “Are you crazy?” face, and he gestured for a message board.

“He’s strong,” Giles wrote, “and he can fight demons.”

He can help you, he mouthed.

Buffy rolled her eyes before turning around to shoot a glare at Spike. Don’t think you’ve earned my trust, she said to herself, wondering if she thought it hard enough, she could make Spike hear it. One life-saving and a fake engagement didn’t even begin to make up for the multiple times he’d tried to kill her and her friends, no matter how good in bed her subconscious seemed to think he was. She wasn’t going down that road. Not again.

*****

At first, Tara didn’t mind the silence. She was never good at expressing herself out loud anyway. She always clammed up, had to force the words out in a stuttering, stumbling jumble. Usually, by the time she finished her sentence, they were laughing at her, so she ended up trailing off with a shy, embarrassed shake of her head. The thoughts were always there, bouncing around in her brain, but they never wanted to come out. They never sounded as good or as clever as they did in her head, so they hid, took refuge in the safety of her mind, where no one mocked or ridiculed them.

So, it was okay, at first, the not talking. But it made everyone else uncomfortable, and the longer it went on, the more everyone seemed on edge, and the more Tara realized that something had to be done about it. She had a few ideas, a whole chapter on spells of speech and silence in one of her magic books, but nothing she would be able to pull off on her own. The helplessness and the loneliness hit her with an acute sorrow; she hadn’t missed her mother this much since right after she had died. No one else had ever understood her, and even the promised liberalism of college hadn’t offered her a place to fit in. She’d hoped the Wicca group on campus would introduce her to others with an interest in magic, but there was no one… no one she could possibly count on to do something real.

“Well, there's the wacky notion of spells…”

Willow. The new girl, the one who’d stood out from the others. The one who’d spoken up and managed to say what Tara had been wanting to say all semester. The one girl out of all of them that might care about more than bake sales and newsletters.

She had power. Tara could sense it; her whole body quivered with it. But she didn’t know how to approach her, to ask her about magic. She was terrified to face the rejection, to open herself up to one more person laughing in her face.

But someone had come into their dorm last night, had murdered a fellow student in his bed. There was no room for timidity, no time for hesitation. A glance out the window told Tara that nightfall was approaching, and she didn’t think she could live with herself if she let another night go by without trying to do something, without finding a way to bring their voices back and stop the killing.

Gathering up some books and notepads, and the post-it with Willow Rosenberg’s address on it, Tara hurried out the door.

*****

They walked in silence, naturally, but it was a deeper, more absolute silence than just the forced absence of speech. Buffy kept her gaze directed straight in front of her, casting only occasional sideways glances at Spike. She refused to meet his eyes, afraid of what she would find, and resisted all of his attempts to communicate with her. She shut him out completely, would not let him see what she was feeling. She was afraid of what her own eyes would reveal, afraid to give in to the emotions that gripped her.

Focus on the bad guys. That, she could do. After an hour or so of wandering around town and finding nothing to fight, Buffy finally risked a glance at Spike. I think we should split up, she mouthed, gesturing in opposite directions to emphasize her point.

Spike looked resistant at first, but nodded reluctantly when confronted with Buffy’s resolve face. They started to turn away from each other, but Spike grabbed her by the arm, spinning her back around. He met her eyes with a look that said, “Be careful,” and possibly “I love you,” but she didn’t want to think about that. Shaking her head, she slung her crossbow over her shoulder and headed off toward the center of town. After a moment, Spike started following Main Street up the other way, but a movement out of the corner of his eye made him pause.

Looking up, Spike saw several long shadows gliding across the upper windows of the clock tower in the town square, and headed off to investigate. He eased the door open slowly, so as not to startle whatever might be lurking inside. But whatever was there, it was waiting for him, and it pounced as soon as he stepped through the door. Spike rolled across the floor, limbs tangled with the straitjacketed lackey that had jumped him. He managed to escape from its grasp and kicked it across the room before kipping to his feet. He brought his elbow down hard on its back, and then snapped its neck.

A second minion came at him from behind, and he threw himself backward against the wall, letting his attacker absorb the brunt of the force. He elbowed it in the throat and then flipped it over his shoulder and onto the ground. As he straightened, he saw two more loping toward him, and he shook on his game face with a growl.

*****

Meanwhile, Buffy was grappling with her own minion out on the street. She managed to free herself from the chokehold and spun around, delivering a swift right hook that set her attacker off-balance. She took a step back, setting herself up for a roundhouse kick to its ugly bandaged head, only to see its body shudder and jerk with the force of an electric charge before dropping to the ground. Slinging her crossbow off her shoulder, she spun around, taking aim in one fluid motion, and came face to face – or crossbow to military-grade stun gun – with Riley Finn.

They lowered their weapons simultaneously, Riley gaping at her in shock. Buffy’s panicked expression at her secret identity being discovered slowly dissipated as she took in his military fatigues, the advanced weaponry, the high-tech gadgets.

“Professor Walsh called him Hostile Seventeen, you know, like the commandos did. Isn’t that strange?”

Everything clicked into place. Riley… Professor Walsh… Hostile Seventeen. Her dream had been trying to tell her something else. She would bet anything that her psychology professor was involved in this whole covert ops business, too.

Buffy rolled her eyes and thought, Figures. The one guy who'd shown an interest in her, and he turned out to be one of the secret commandos.

Then, an unexpected wave of relief went through her. Riley wasn't normal after all. She knew this should be disheartening, realizing that her streak of attracting mysterious, dangerous men was still unbroken, but all she felt was relieved that she wouldn’t have to try to impress him anymore. It all seemed so silly, her obsession with “normal.” Unable to contain her mirth, she started to laugh silently, marveling at how fixated she'd been on making a good impression, getting Riley to like her… and now, it turned out he was one of them, the mysterious commandos that might possibly be her enemy.

Riley stared at her, puzzled by her reaction. He looked down at himself, then back up at her. Breaking into a smile as though he knew what she was thinking, he nodded and mouthed, Costume.

Buffy briefly closed her eyes and gave him a patronizing shake of her head. Commando, she mouthed back. Demons. She tapped on her temple with one finger, then gripped her head with both hands and made a face like she was in pain. Chip, she said.

His mouth dropped open, and he glanced down at his gun reluctantly, as though he was contemplating whether or not to taser her. Buffy just raised her eyebrows, daring him to even try.

She didn’t really want to hurt him, but she still had to figure out how to stop the Gentlemen, and she couldn’t risk Riley following her. Before he knew what hit him, she’d sucker-punched him in the face, knocking him unconscious before she broke out into a run.