full 3/4 1/2   skin light dark       
 
Double Bubble, Toil and.... by slaymesoftly
 
Three
 
<<     >>
 
Chapter Three

As Buffy had said he would, Giles reluctantly released Spike from the chains after Willow had left with a still-apologetic Xander and his seething, but quiet, girlfriend. The two British men and the young American woman sat in the living room trying to decide how they were going to deal with Willow’s newly discovered abilities and her obvious willingness to use those abilities against her friends.

Buffy’s anger had cooled to the point that she was struggling to defend Willow’s behavior, insisting that she had made her comments about all of them without knowing that her will-be-done spell had worked.

“The name of the bloody spell tells you all you need to know about her, Slayer,” Spike growled. “MY will be done. She went into it wanting to be in control and she got what she wanted. There’ll be no stopping her now.”

“As much as I hate to say it, I’m afraid I must agree with Spike,” Giles sighed. “It would appear that Willow may not be a good candidate for more magical training. It might be best if she did not become any more powerful and skilled than she already is.”

“She’s just upset about Oz leaving,” Buffy insisted stubbornly. “She would never have done that if she wasn’t so unhappy.”

“Perhaps not, but now that she has tasted that kind of power, it is very unlikely that she will be uninterested in exploring it more fully.”

“Watcher’s right, pet. Magic can be addictive and if she liked that little taste of control…”

“But she didn’t really hurt anybody! I mean, Giles was blind and that has to suck,” she gave her Watcher a sympathetic look before continuing, ”but it wasn’t permanent. And the demons weren’t trying to kill Xander exactly.” She paused to shudder at what they apparently were trying to do. “And it didn’t hurt us. So we were engaged for a few hours. No biggie. It’s not like we actually got married and had to go get a divorce or one of those anal things.”

Both men stared at her with their mouths open until the Watcher managed to choke out, “You mean an annulment?”

“Yeah, one of those. We don’t need one. Because nothing happened. Nothing weddingish.”

“For which Spike should be extremely grateful,” Giles said, indicating the frowning vampire. “When Xander pointed out that you may have had…relations… with Spike, Willow disregarded his concerns saying that you would just stake him and no one would ever know.”

“She said I would stake him? Because we had sex? IF we’d had sex. Which we didn’t, of course.” She turned to the vampire and asked, “Did you –do you think I would have staked you for something like that?”

She sounded so offended that anyone could think she would do such a thing that he wisely refrained from pointed out that she had threatened that very thing only a few hours ago.

“No, of course not, Slayer. You wouldn’t dust a bloke for doing something he did because of a spell. That’d be like getting brassed off at your watcher because he couldn’t see anything, wouldn’t it?”

Buffy narrowed her eyes, trying to decide if he was mocking her, but his blue eyes were looking at her innocently, showing nothing but faith in her inherent goodness.

“Well…yes, exactly. I wouldn’t do anything like that. Even if there was a reason for it. Which there isn’t. Because we didn’t.”

It was the Watcher’s turn to study her suspiciously.

“I believe we already established that, Buffy.” he said dryly, before turning to look hard at the vampire.

Spike did his best to appear simultaneously both innocent and evil, leering at Buffy as he said, “You’ve got to admit we were sort of hot and heavy for a while there, weren’t we, Slayer?”

His ploy worked, the Watcher attributing Buffy’s anger flush to the vampire’s reminder of how they had behaved while engaged and taking Spike’s implication that it had never gone beyond that at face value. He settled back, suspicions that his Slayer had indulged in intercourse with William the Bloody allayed for the time being.

Buffy stood up and stretched, saying, “I guess I’d better do a quick patrol and get back to the dorm. Maybe I can talk to Willow and get her to back off the magic for a while.”

Spike jumped to his feet eagerly, “Want some back-up, Slayer?” he asked, bouncing on his toes. “I could use a spot of violence – even if it’s just watching you pummel some poor demon -- before I come back here to be bored to tears by—“ Sudden recollection that he was about to insult the man in whose house he was being permitted to hide from daylight, as well as receiving regular meals of warm pigs’ blood, made him uncharacteristically careful of his words. “Unless the watcher is going to be home, that is,” he amended quickly. “Nothing like a good chat with a fellow Brit to make a bloke’s day.”

“I have no desire to ‘chat’ with you, Spike,” Giles said tiredly. “I am going to bed shortly. You may sleep on the couch if you like. I do not believe the sun reaches quite that far into the room during the day.”

“I don’t need any help, Spike,” Buffy said quickly. “Least of all from someone who can’t hurt anybody.”

“I could yell, ‘watch out!’, “ he grumbled. “Come on, pet. We might run into more of those demons and I could at least trip them or something.”

Before Buffy could snap at him that she wasn’t worried about the imaginary “demons “, Giles spoke up and said, “That’s really not a bad idea, Buffy. As much as it pains me to admit it, Spike could be of some use if you should encounter them again. If nothing else, he could run for help.”

Spike’s good humor vanished at the reminder that he would probably not be of any use in an actual fight and he growled under his breath at the man’s words.

“Fine,” she huffed. “I’ll take him along in case I have to yell for help. Satisfied?”

Doing her best to ignore the vampire’s smirk, she strode out the door waving her ‘good-night’ to her Watcher and heading for the nearest cemetery at a good clip, Spike following her with long, ground-eating strides.

They made a quick pass through Restfield Cemetery, finding only one fledgling looking for his first meal. Spike leaned against a crypt while the Slayer toyed with the newly-risen vamp for a few minutes, practicing some new kicks and allowing him to think he was going to be able to taste the blood he could smell pounding through her veins. When she tired of the game, she staked the unfortunate vampire before he even registered that he was in trouble and turned to see Spike watching her with admiration.

“Got to say, pet,” he drawled looking her up and down, “you are one amazing Slayer. All that strength and violence in such a pretty package.”

She colored briefly before she remembered who was talking.

“That’s what Slayers are, Spike. You ought to know, you’ve fought two of them.”

“Actually, pet, I’ve fought four or five. Only killed two of them.” He spoke almost absently as he pushed open the door of the crypt and peered inside. He stepped in, disappearing from Buffy’s sight and she followed him to the door curiously.

“What are you doing? And what do you mean you’ve fought four or five? Why aren’t you dust?”

“I’m looking for a place to live,” he replied, coming back towards the door to stand in front of her. “And I’m not dust because they couldn’t kill me.”

“But you didn’t kill them?”

He growled before answering. “Bloody Watcher of one of the bints shot me in the back with a crossbow – missed my heart, but not by much. One of them just ran when she saw I was winning – I don’t think she lived very long. No confidence at all. The third one…” He stopped talking and moved back into the crypt again, shifting into game face so as to be able to see everything. “This would do me nicely,” he said cheerfully.

“What about the third one?” In her eagerness to learn more about his past experience with Slayers, Buffy stepped inside the tomb and tried to see what he was doing.

“Don’t know about her. I know I hurt her, but she managed to get away from me and into a crowd. Somebody called an ambulance and that was the last I saw of her. Had to leave the city because Dru had one of her visions so I never got to follow up.”

“So, you’re saying you might have killed three Slayers?” Buffy could not believe he was speaking so casually about murdering her sister slayers.

“Might have. Don’t know.” He shrugged then turned to smirk at her. “None of ‘em were as good as you, though. Nor as pretty,” he added, moving closer to her. “Nor as passionate, I’d wager.” His voice became deeper and he stepped close enough to hear her heart rate go up.

“You think I’m pretty?” She cursed herself for the stupid question, as well as the tremor in her voice. Memories of the night and day spent together while under the spell insisted on filling her brain with inappropriate thoughts about the lips so close to hers.

“You know I do, luv.” His voice was a deep rumble and he ran one hand down her arm softly. “Think you’re beautiful…and sexy…and delicious…”

“Don’t,” she said weakly. “The spell is over. We can’t—“

“Yes, we can, Buffy.” The use of her name lent a seriousness to his words for which she wasn’t prepared. She briefly leaned into him, allowing him to ghost his lips over hers before pushing him away abruptly.

“Stop it, Spike.”

“ Come on, Slayer. You know you want to.”

“My body wants to, Spike. That’s not good enough.”

“It’s good enough for me,” he said hoarsely, once again running his hand down her arm.

Buffy shivered and tried to ignore the sensations his cool touch created. “Not for me, it isn’t,” she said softly.

“I could make it be good enough,” he whispered as he ran his lips from her ear down to her shoulder. “You know I could.”

She closed her eyes and shuddered as she fought the desire to forget who she was and fall into those lips. She forced herself to remember that this was a vampire who had killed at least two, if not three, of her sister slayers and was proud of it.

“You could – for a while. Then I’d have to go home and face myself in the mirror. And I won’t like what I see there.” She raised her eyes to his face. “I want to like myself, Spike. I don’t want to feel dirty.”

Something inside his chest twisted into a painful knot and he suddenly craved to repay her carelessly cruel words.

“Little late for that, isn’t it, Slayer?” He struck back the only way he could. “We pretty much covered dirty last night. Or have you forgotten already, whipping me like a racehorse while you rode me home?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Buffy recoiled from his reaching hand and her face went cold and hard.

“That was an aberration. A spell. I was weak and let you influence me,” she hissed at him. “It won’t happen again!”

(Bollocks! Could I have fucked that up any more?)

Even while he was mentally chastising himself for what he’d said, his mouth was digging the hole deeper.

“Whoa! Slayer using multi-syllable words. Is that a fancy way of saying ‘I was horny and you were convenient’?”

Buffy’s fist met his nose with enough force to knock him down. She glared at him for a second – then whirled and ran out of the crypt, tears of humiliation and anger prickling her eyes.

 
<<     >>