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Double Bubble, Toil and.... by slaymesoftly
 
Two
 
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Chapter Two


Days later, when Willow had finally tired of the constant tears from Xander and Giles as they repeated over and over again how sorry they were to have ignored her, how much they cared about her and how badly they wanted to help her feel better, she waved her hand and said, “Okay, fine. Apology accepted. Giles, you can see again. Xander, you are no longer a demon magnet—“ As Anya recoiled from her boyfriend, Willow rolled her eyes and added, “except for ex-vengeance demons.”

When they had all had time to re-orient themselves to normality, and Willow had explained proudly how she had turned down D’Hoffryn’s offer to make her a vengeance demon, it suddenly occurred to everyone that they hadn’t seen Buffy or Spike since the night they left them in the cemetery.

All eyes turned to Willow and she shrugged. “I said they could do whatever they wanted. She might have staked him by now. That’s what she’s always wanted to do.”

“Any yet, never has,” the Watcher pointed out, dryly.

“Willow, what exactly did you say about them when you put the spell on us?”

“I just said if Buffy was so concerned about Spike, she might as well marry him. Or something like that.”

Giles frowned and took his glasses off. “So, you did not say that they were going to fall in love with each other?”

“Well, no, but wouldn’t that be a given if they were getting married? I mean, Buffy wouldn’t marry someone if she didn’t love him.” Willow couldn’t see the problem and was beginning to get bored with the interrogation.

“Not when it was a spell, it wouldn’t,” Anya offered. “They could hate each other and they’d still want to get married.”

“And you didn’t say anything that would make Buffy want to get all groiny with the undead, did you?” Xander’s horrified voice showed that he was slowly picking up on what the Watcher and his girlfriend had already figured out.

“Of course not!”

“Actually, Willow,” Anya’s voice was hesitant as she noticed the growing anger in the witch’s eyes. “You did say you hoped they screwed each other unconscious when we left them in the cemetery.”

“Whoops?” Willow began to automatically apologize to the two furious men glaring at her, then remembered her will-be-done spell was still in effect and they needed to be afraid of her, not vice-versa.

“Buffy was more interested in finding Spike than she was in being a good friend to me,” the witch insisted stubbornly. “If she wakes up and finds out she had sex with him, it serves her right!”

She glared defiantly at the other people in the room, more than a little surprised at how good it felt to see the new fear and respect on their faces. Although her innate nature would not allow her to torment her friends indefinitely, she couldn’t deny the surge of well-being that went through her.

She faced them with a new confidence, feeling the power flowing through her as she said, “I’m going to break the spell now. Not because I don’t want it anymore, but because I’m tired of having to think about every little thing I say before I say it. But, remember, I’ll always be able to re-do it anytime I want to.”

She muttered a few words and waved her hand. They all stared at her fearfully until she said, “Giles, you’re blind again.” The Watcher gasped, frightened until he realized what she was doing.

“No, no, I don’t appear to be. It seems that the spell has been broken and we are no longer obligated to do whatever you say.”

“Not unless I reinstate it,” she said warningly when she saw the angry expression on his face. Her cold eyes made it clear that retaliation would be in no one’s best interest and the man gradually relaxed, turning instead to his scotch bottle.

“What about Buffy?” Xander asked with a whine. “She’s still with Spike.”

Willow shrugged dismissively. “That’s her problem. If she had sex with him, she’ll just have to stake him and lie about it. We’ll probably never know for sure.”


Across town, in a seedy motel, a blond girl stirred and groaned as she opened her eyes and found them only inches from a vampire’s amber gaze. With an “eep!” she rolled away, noticing immediately that she was naked. As she watched, Spike’s equally startled expression softened and his eyes went back to their normal pretty shade of blue. He was also naked, Buffy noted, as she grabbed the sheet and wrapped it around her body. Which left his body completely uncovered and still uncomfortably close.

“What…what did we do?” she whispered, horror beginning to dawn on her face.

“We did what the witch told us to do,” he answered carefully, knowing that he could be seconds from a dusty ending. “We shagged each other unconscious.”

Buffy flashed back to Willow’s parting words to them, then back even further to the marriage spell that, even when cancelled, left them still in love and then in lust. She dropped back onto the bed and closed her eyes with a groan.

“Oh. My. God. This is awful.”

“I didn’t think it was so awful, Slayer.” She could hear what could only be interpreted as hurt in his voice and opened one eye to see his lower lip beginning to come out in a small pout.

“I didn’t say it WAS awful, Spike. I said it IS awful. Now. Now it’s awful. Before it was…okay.” She blushed furiously and closed her eyes again.

“Just okay?” he ventured, daring to lean closer and whisper into her ear, finishing with a small nibble on the lobe.

“Don’t.” Her voice was flat and left no room for doubt. The spell was over and they were back to being enemies.

“Fine,” he huffed, standing up and defiantly refusing to hide his nudity. “We’re back to hatin’ each other, is that it?”

“Of course, that’s it,” she grumbled back. “What else could it be?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all, Slayer. All is as it should be again. I hate you. You hate me.”

“Exactly. Vampire – Slayer. Natural enemies.” She refused to look at him as she hunted for her clothing, giving a small whimper of dismay when she found most of it in pieces.

“Oh, this is just terrific. Look at my shirt!” She forgot she was planning to not look at him and her eyes flew up to his as she waved the shirt around. The unguarded look of pure lust that she saw there took her breath away, but before she could tell him to stop looking at her like that, he caught himself, his expression changing as he snarled back, “Well, look at mine! Bloody animal, you are, Slayer!”

He waved his torn-in-half tee shirt at her, trying to ignore the way she looked, all pleasantly disheveled and clearly nude under the sheet she was clutching to her breasts as she fumbled with her clothes. Buffy averted her eyes again, not wanting him to catch her ogling his naked body. A body which, after two days of close inspection, she had to admit was extremely oglable.

She gave up on finding anything but her jeans, and quickly pulled them back on. While she was doing so, Spike had found his own pants and was trying to keep them up using just the zipper. The top button had been ripped off by the Slayer in her haste to let him free once they got into the motel room.

They stood, facing each other, each clad in the only clothing they had left, their eyes glaring even as their mouths began to twitch. Buffy caved first, the giggles escaping from her tightly clamped lips. Spike’s eyes twinkled as he joined her, laughing heartily at the two superbeings reduced to having to sneak home worn out and shirtless. In no time, the Slayer was holding on to a chair for support as she doubled over clutching her stomach and laughing.

The vampire shook his head, a deep chuckle erupting every few seconds as he went around the room picking up small pieces of ripped clothing.

“We’re a fine pair,” he growled, shaking his head again. He dropped the scraps of cloth in the wastebasket and turned to look at her once more.

“It wasn’t us,” Buffy replied primly, still holding the sheet across her chest. “It was a spell. It’s all gone now and we can go back to…to normal.”

“Yes, I suppose we can,” he said quietly. “Whatever it was that Red wished on us, is gone now.”

“Yes, gone. It’s totally gone. Not a—“she stopped when she realized what he’d said.

“You think it was Willow?” Her voice was shrill. “Why would she do that to me?”

“How the bloody hell would I know, Slayer?” The anger in his voice was out of proportion to the question and she blinked at him in confusion. “She’s your git of a friend. I guess she was really mad at you for something. Or else she thought it would be funny. ”

Buffy’s face was thoughtful as she sat on the bed. “She hasn’t been much with the fun, lately,” she mused. “Not since Oz left. In fact she was really upset when I said I had to leave to go look for you…Oh my god! That’s it! She was mad that I didn’t stay with her and she must have done some kind of spell to make me want to stay with you.”

“Remind me to thank her for that,” he said with a leer, wiggling his eyebrows at her.

Buffy blushed and said quickly, “No one knows what we did. If we don’t tell…”

“Why wouldn’t I tell?” he asked with real confusion. “Got your dimpled knees apart – multiple times, I might add. Even had you suckin’ on my---“

“You won’t tell, because there is such an easy way for me to make sure you don’t.”

Buffy’s expression left no doubt as to her meaning and he cocked his head at her while he studied her face.

“Would you really stake me, Buffy?” The use of her name threw her off and she couldn’t help the way her gaze softened. “Could you still do that to me? Now?”

Buffy cleared her throat and stood up again, still clutching her sheet. “Of course I would. You’d still kill me if you could. Wouldn’t you?”

They stared at each other for a long minute, hope, fear and something indefinable on both faces. Finally, they simultaneously looked away, neither one mentioning that the vampire never answered the question.

When they got to the door of the room, Spike gently tugged the sheet away from Buffy and silently handed her his coat to put on. She gave him a grateful look and opened the door saying firmly, “Let’s go. I have witchy, best friend butt to kick.”


Their arrival at the Watcher’s was somewhat anticlimactic as by that time they had gone to Buffy’s dorm room and picked up a sweatshirt for her and one of her larger tee shirts that she used for sleeping for the vampire. While he watched Buffy brushing her hair and applying make-up in an effort to not look like a girl who had just spent the previous two days in bed, he found himself deliberately inhaling her scent off the shirt she’d given him and remembering what it was like to be surrounded by that aroma. He hoped the long walk to the Watcher’s apartment would give his cock time to relax before he had to face Giles and the rest of the Scoobies.

By the time they got to the apartment, they had rehearsed what they would say should anyone ask where they’d been; they walked in confidently to be met with interested stares of varying intensity.

“I presume you have an explanation for this, Willow,” Buffy surprised everyone by taking the offensive. Her voice was pure Slayer, and her friend flinched back in spite of her newly discovered powers.

“I…I…” The memory of what she’d been able to do and the admiration D’Hoffren had for her strengthened her spine and she straightened up and met Buffy’s eyes firmly.

“I did a spell to have my will be done. Everything that happened is because I said it would or should. Nothing happened to anyone that wasn’t deserved. None of you could make time for me when I was in pain, so I made sure you got to suffer along with me.”

She shot a quick glance at the vampire growling softly behind the Slayer and added, “I could have willed you into dust, if I’d wanted to Spike. Instead of saying Buffy should marry you, I could have just said you were dust and she wouldn’t have had to leave me to look for you. You might want to think about that before you start growling at me.” She met his amber gaze defiantly, daring him to test her newly discovered powers. “Or, I could just wish for the chip to start firing and never stop. How does that work for you?”

The menace in her friend’s voice took Buffy by surprise and she glanced at her Watcher for support. His eyes contained a warning and a promise that they would address the issue at some other time when Willow was not present.

Curbing her own quick temper, and stepping on the vampire’s foot in warning, she did her best to smile and sound apologetic.

“I’m sorry, Will,” she said through gritted teeth. “You’re right. Your feelings should have taken precedence over the escape of a dangerous vampire. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“He’s not dangerous anymore,” Willow fired back angrily. “You said so yourself. He’s…impotent.” An outraged snarl from the vampire sent everyone’s eyes toward his shifting face, thus allowing Buffy’s embarrassed flush to come and go unobserved by anyone except Willow.

“Or, maybe not so impotent?” she asked slyly. “Exactly where have you two been for the past two days? And why are you still together now that the spell is over?”

Spike quickly launched into their agreed upon story about running into a pack of demons and being held prisoner until just a short while ago when the Slayer was able to break her chains and they escaped.

“Why didn’t you leave him there?” Willow inquired with false concern. “The spell was broken. There was no reason to bring him back.”

“Giles wasn’t finished interrogating him,” Buffy said without missing a beat. It had suddenly become much easier to lie to her best friend than ever before. “That is why I went looking for him in the first place, remember?”

“Oh that’s right. Recapturing the harmless, chipped vampire was more important than having ice cream with me. I remember perfectly.”

The two friends faced off across the room -the one so physically strong, the other with growing magical abilities. The atmosphere was tense for several minutes and the Watcher went so far as to begin muttering a small spell under his breath, only pausing when the witch shrugged and said dismissively, “Then I guess you’ll be chaining him back up in the tub, won’t you?”

“Oh for---“ Spike’s angry snort was cut short by Buffy’s hand on his arm. “I came back willingly,” he muttered. “Where else was I gonna go?”

“You’re going back in chains,” Willow said meaningfully. “Unless there is some reason Buffy no longer wants to keep us protected from you, that is…some reason why she thinks you won’t try to leave again.”

“Come on, Spike,” Buffy said grimly. “I wouldn’t want you to get loose and eat anybody. Willow, for instance.” She pulled the protesting vampire into the bathroom and gestured towards the tub. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m sure Giles will let you loose when she leaves.”

“Looks like Red’s gone a bit power-happy, pet,” he said quietly as he climbed into the tub.

“Yeah, it does. I know this is all about Oz leaving, but…”

“This isn’t all about wolf-boy, Slayer. This is about your little friend getting a taste of some power and liking it. You’re going to have to watch her from now on. Power’s addictive.”

He sat quietly while Buffy fastened the chains around his hands and feet, looping them through the pipes and closing the lock with a click.

“Buffy –“

The Slayer shook her head. “Don’t,” was all she said as she stood up, refusing to look at him. “Just don’t, ‘k?”

“Never happened, did it?” he asked quietly.

“Never,” she whispered, shaking her head as she went out and pulled the door shut behind her. She found herself smothering an urge to go back and climb into the tub with him and shuddered at the wrongness of it all.

The Slayer squared her shoulders and went out to talk to her watcher about what they were going to do with a power-hungry novice witch.



 
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