AN: Many thanks to all who reviewed that last chapter. If I take the time to answer each one individually, I won't get to the posting, so I apologize, but I'm doing a blanket "thank you". *hugs*



Chapter Five

When Ripper came back downstairs in the morning, he found the two blonds sound asleep on his couch, the vampire slouched in the corner with the slayer curled on his lap. He sneered at the tender scene, one part of him glad that it didn’t appear that Spike had taken advantage of the spell; the other, less civilized side, contemptuous of the vampire’s self-control in the face of temptation.

Leaving them to sleep, he stepped outside and headed for the campus of Sunnydale University, whistling as he walked through the early morning sunshine. He could feel the power from the spells he had absorbed last night thrumming through his body. He had almost forgotten the adrenaline rush that came with knowing you had powers at your fingertips that most people only dreamed about.

He almost felt sorry for Willow as he contemplated how alive he felt for the first time in years. Only his years of study with the coven, learning to control his power and concentrate on the good that magic could do kept him from wreaking havoc on the buildings and people he passed. The responsible, adult Watcher still inside him carried enough weight to keep the Ripper from running amok and spreading chaos.

He smiled briefly, wondering where Ethan was and if his old friend and lover would ever come back to Sunnydale for another visit. A visit that, under normal circumstances, he would not welcome but that now seemed an appealing idea.

His good mood was spoiled when he got to Buffy and Willow’s room only to find it empty. Evidence of the spells Willow had worked was obvious, scattered haphazardly on the witch’s bed and he had no trouble picking out the one she’d used on Buffy. It took him only a second to undo the spell; his superior skill allowing him to wipe it out without having to resort to the candles and herbs that Willow had used to set it up.

Without having any idea where the novice witch might have gone, Ripper headed back to his apartment to see if Buffy would have any idea where he might find her. He idly hoped she hadn’t staked the chipped vampire when she awoke on his lap. Something about the hyperactive vamp appealed to his love for destruction and he suspected they could have a good time together one evening.

On the couch in his apartment, Buffy was stirring, not really willing to wake up yet, but bothered by the sunlight filling the room. She burrowed into the soft fabric upon which her face was resting, trying to hide her eyes from the sun and steal a few more minutes of sleep. When the soft fabric shifted beneath her head and she felt herself pulled into it by very strong arms, she woke up very quickly, raising her head and looking around warily.

As the events of the previous night came back to her and she realized in whose arms she was resting so peacefully she gave a groan and dropped her head back down onto Spike’s chest. A deep chuckle told her the vampire was also awake and she kept her head buried in his chest as she remembered her behavior during the night and Spike’s attempts to prevent her from doing anything she would regret when the spell wore off.

“I take it from your excitement at finding yourself on my lap that the Watcher has managed to break the spell?” His voice was gently teasing and he gave her a little squeeze before letting go so that she could get off. To his surprise, she stayed where she was, mumbling into his shirt, “I’m going to kill her. I am seriously going to kill her.”

“It’s not that bad, pet,” he soothed, rubbing her back gently and trying ignore what her warm breath on his chest was doing to him. “Nothing happened – well except for when you were feeling me up in front of your Watcher – but nothing else. I was a perfect gentleman.”

“You were, weren’t you?” She raised her head to look at him. “What was that all about?”

“Didn’t want to wake up in the Watcher’s vacuum cleaner,” he said quickly.

“I wouldn’t have staked you for something I made you do,” she said indignantly. “I don’t care what Willow and Xander think. I’m not that unfair!” When he didn’t respond immediately, she added, “Am I?”

“Just as soon not find out, pet,” he said, gently trying to move her off his lap. Her warm breath on his nipples had awakened all his body parts and he was anxious to move her away before she noticed.

“So, that’s the only reason you didn’t…didn’t…” She waved her hand in the air helplessly. “because you were afraid I’d stake you for it? And stop trying to push me off. I know what I’m sitting on and I’m not ready to get off yet.”

“Buffy, I spent a very long night trying to convince myself I didn’t want to take what you were offerin’ so vigorously. I don’t think I should have to deal with that kind of frustration when you’re not under a spell.”

The edge in his voice surprised them both and she flinched a little as he growled in her ear.

“I didn’t get much sleep and I’m not in the mood for your bloody dick-teasing.”

“I’m not—not--doing that thing. What you said.” She looked hurt and he could see anger beginning to spark behind the big eyes focused on his.

He heaved a sigh. “Then what the bloody hell are you doing, Slayer? Spell’s over. Nobody’s making you wanna crawl all over the disgusting vampire. Just give me some peace, luv. Please.”

He let his head drop against the back of the couch and closed his eyes against the confusion and anger he could see in hers. Spike wanted nothing more than to put his arms around her again and bury his face in her neck, but the memory of her cruel words would not allow him to risk it.

Without a sound, she slid off his lap and walked to the bathroom biting her lip in confusion.

Was I teasing? Is that what I was doing? I just wanted to stay there for a minute. I liked being—oh my god! I liked being cuddled by Spike!

She stared at her reflection in the mirror, making a vain attempt to comb out her hair with her fingers and splashing cool water on her flaming face. After using her forefinger to scrub at her front teeth and rinsing her mouth out, she stomped back into the living room full of righteous indignation.

“Listen, you big dope!” she began when she stopped in front of the vampire. “I wasn’t trying to tease you. I just liked being held and I wanted to cuddle for a few more minutes. But, I should have known a vampire wouldn’t want—“

Her tirade was cut off by Spike’s mouth which somehow had become attached to hers when he grabbed her and pulled her back onto his lap. He kissed her until she opened her mouth with a little moan, allowing his tongue to sweep in and tangle with hers. They kissed until Buffy broke it off breathlessly to say with some embarrassment, ”I have to back to the bathroom.”

She struggled weakly against the arms that once again held her tightly against his chest, mumbling between kisses, “Come on, Spike, I mean it. I have to go back to the bathroom.”

“You were just in there,” he muttered, running his mouth down the side of her neck and causing her breath to hitch in her throat. “What do you need to go back for?”

“I forgot to pee,” she admitted, flushing a bright red. “I was so mad at you, I just came back out here and didn’t—“

“Don’t care,” he said stubbornly, trying to kiss her again.

“Well, you should care!”

“Why should I?”

“Because I’m sitting on your lap?”

“Oh.” He stopped kissing her and frowned. “So you are. Okay, pet – go do what you have to do, but try not to forget anything this time, yeah? Not letting you up again.”

Telling herself there was no way that having Spike sound so proprietary should be making her so happy, Buffy jumped up and ran to the bathroom, quickly using the toilet and washing her hands. She was just running back towards the eager vampire when the door burst open by itself and Willow stood framed in the open space, her hair blowing wildly around her head.

“Whoa, Red. Having a bad hair day, are you?” Spike tried to make light of the magic visibly crackling around the young woman.

“Shut up, Spike,” she said without looking at him. Her gaze was focused on the blond girl just entering the room with a glare on her face.

“You put another spell on me,” Buffy growled, sounding much like the creatures she hunted and moving towards her roommate.

“Yes, I did,” Willow said proudly. “I’m surprised to see you two on opposite sides of the room, actually. And dressed. Why aren’t you naked? And together? You should be humping each other silly by now. I know that spell worked. I felt it!” She stamped her feet in irritation at the lack of respect being shown by the two blonds.

“As usual,” Spike drawled, “you screwed something up. You forgot to put the spell on me.”

Willow was taken aback for a second, then recovered quickly.

“So? You’re a vampire! You know, evil? Willing Slayer. Evil vampire. I can do the math. You should be off looking for someplace to shack up for the rest of the week.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Spike said coldly.

“What kind of vampire are you?” Willow was getting more indignant by the minute. She had really been looking forward to catching them in a compromising position and to see them gazing back at her calmly from several feet apart was disconcerting.

“One who knows how to be a gentleman, apparently,” Buffy spoke again, moving closer to Spike as she did so. She hadn’t forgotten Willow’s threats to turn him to dust or make the chip fire continuously.

“So, he’s a gentleman,” Willow rolled her eyes in disbelief. “I can take care of that.” She began to mumble under her breath and Buffy pushed Spike towards the kitchen. “I know you want him. Why aren’t you all over him?”

“I guess your spell isn’t as good as you think it is,” Buffy said haughtily. “I have more self-control than you give me credit for.”

She appeared to ignore Spike’s sudden coughing fit, although behind her back she made a rude gesture in his direction.

“Well I can fix that too!” Willow’s eyes darkened and she began to chant aloud, making swirling motions with her hands. She finished her spell with a flourish and waited for them to respond. When they just stood there, staring back at her with grins on their faces she screamed at them, “What is wrong with you? Why isn’t my magic working?”

“I believe I can answer that,” came an almost familiar voice from behind her. She whirled to see Giles glaring at her, his own eyes darkened with the power he was pulling from the air.

“What are you…?” Willow pointed her hand at him and tried to throw a magical bolt of lightning, but it got no further than the end of her finger before it disappeared. Her eyes darkened more and she raised her hands over her head, pulling more energy from the atmosphere. “You can’t stop me,” she snarled. “I’ll send you back to your cradle…”


There was no trace of the sweet, shy redhead they were so used to seeing. In her place was an angry witch who was furious at being humiliated and thwarted. She pulled her arms forward and threw every bit of power she had accumulated in her body at the man in the doorway. Energy shot out from her hands and she heard Buffy gasp behind her as it flew toward the waiting watcher. At the last second, he raised a hand almost casually and absorbed all the energy without flinching. He continued to hold his hand up until all the energy had been pulled from the rapidly tiring witch into his own capable hands.

When Willow collapsed to the floor, sobbing with frustration and exhaustion, he dropped his hand and came to stand over her.

“As I believe I pointed out some time ago, you have a long way to go before you are ready to handle large amounts of magic, Willow.”

He walked away from the crying girl and over to Spike and Buffy. He studied their faces carefully for any sign of guilt and then turned to the vampire, saying simply, “Thank you.”

Spike nodded silently. It was obvious that the Ripper was gone and Buffy’s Watcher was firmly back in place. He decided there was no good reason to let the man know that the only reason Willow hadn’t caught him having sex with Buffy was due to a basic human need for elimination rather than any self-control on his part. He just said quietly, “Thought for a minute there I was going to be testing how long the chip could fire before it wore out.”

Buffy flinched at his calm acceptance of just how much he was at the mercy of anyone who would choose to activate his chip. Pushing that uncomfortable thought to the back of her mind, she looked sympathetically at her sobbing friend and asked softly, “What are you going to do with her?”

“She’ll be quite safe for a while. I drained all of her magic. It would take even a trained and powerful witch to bounce back from that very quickly. I intend to ask the coven to send someone to train her. I’m afraid she is harboring too much hostility for me to be effective at this point. At the same time, they will be able to track her aura and determine if she is even stable enough to be permitted to learn more.”

“Giles! This is Willow! Straight A, straight arrow, nerdy little Willow.”

The Watcher just made a face and went into the kitchen asking, “Would anyone besides myself care for a cup of tea?”

“You do understand that your nerdy little friend just went on a pretty impressive power trip, don’t you, Slayer?”

Buffy nodded reluctantly, wondering if she should be trying to comfort her friend, then deciding she was still too angry at her to be very convincing. She followed Giles into the kitchen and without comment took out a carton of pigs’ blood and poured it into a mug. She put the mug in the microwave and set it warm up to body temperature.

The microwave dinged while Giles was still puttering around with his teapot and she took the mug out carefully and carried it over to the astonished vampire.

“Pet?”

She met his confused eyes as firmly as she could while she stumbled and stuttered, “You were…you were right, about Willow. I should have listened to you. And you were a complete gentleman while I was all ho-bag-Slayer. I’m…I’m…” she bit her lip and chewed on it, her whole face scrunching up in concentration. “I’m…”

“Sorry?” he teased gently. “Is it really so hard to say?”

“To a vampire? To you? Of course it’s hard to say. Anyway, I was going more for ‘grateful’, “ she huffed, but with a smile on her face.

“Either way, I’ll take it,” he smirked. “Not as if I’m likely to be getting more of either one.”

“No,” she answered in a more subdued tone. “I suppose not.”

A sound from the doorway had them all turning quickly to see Willow standing there, swaying on her feet as she stared at Giles.

“What did you do to me?” Her voice was hoarse and weak from all the crying.

“I did nothing. You did it to yourself. You misused your talent in a fit of petulance and then you attempted to use it against another practitioner without having any knowledge of what you were facing. Novice mistakes, both of them. Mistakes that show a tremendous about of hubris, I might add.”

Willow looked at Buffy, then shifted her eyes to the quiet, watchful vampire. Her words were addressed to Buffy, but she never took her eyes off the blond man with the mug of blood in his hands.

“Why didn’t my spell work on you?”

“It did,” Buffy said shortly. “Turns out Spike wasn’t as interested as you expected him to be.”

“Technically not true, luv,” he whispered in her ear.

Buffy smacked him away, trying her best not let the blush she could feel emerging reach her face.

Willow frowned at them for a minute then reluctantly turned back to the Watcher.

“So, now what? I can never do magic again?” The desolation on her face would have been heartbreaking had they not all been her victims twice within the same few days.

“Not necessarily,” he explained carefully. “I will be speaking to the leaders of a coven in England. One that helped m- one with which I am quite familiar. If they are willing, we will get a mentor for you – someone with whom you are less…with whom you have no prior history. Assuming that your aura does not indicate any inherent evilness to your nature, your mentor will take over your training. The expectation would be that as you gradually regain your power you would also be learning the underlying principles of using magic safely and responsibly.”

“I wasn’t trying to really hurt anybody,” she said stubbornly. “Not really.”

“Forgetting for a moment that I was totally blind for some time, and that the younger man you brought back into my life was more than capable of hurting anyone who interfered with his wishes,” Giles paused to allow her to digest what he was saying and to be grateful that when her magic was gone, so was the Ripper, “what you did do to Spike and Buffy, not once, but twice, was reprehensible.”

“Oh, come on, Giles.” Willow still refused to admit she’d done anything wrong. “All I did was try to get them to have sex. What’s the big deal? I mean, ok, Spike’s a vampire and maybe there’s kind of a yuck factor—“ The vampire’s “Hey!” went unanswered as she went on with her defense, “but it’s not like Buffy hasn’t had sex with a vampire before. And Spike’s a piggy-wiggy, so I can’t believe he would complain!”

As the two blonds sputtered and struggled to be the first to let the newly-drained witch have it, Giles held up a hand for silence and waited for Willow to look him in the eye before responding.

“There is another name for forcing others to have sex, Willow. Whether it is with yourself or with another person. Do you know what it is?”

She shook her head “no”, casting a quick glance at Buffy and Spike, but they seemed as puzzled as she was.

“Rape,” the Watcher said quietly. “The word you are looking for is ‘rape’. Had they not been captured by those demons when you sent them running off to ‘screw each other unconscious’, or, had Spike not had more self-control than I would ever have expected from a vampire, you would have been raping them just as surely as if you had done it yourself.”

“No! No, that’s not so. All I said the first time was that they should get married. I wasn’t responsible for all that kissage and sticking hands down pants that they were doing! They must have wanted to do it anyway.”

“Are you seriously suggesting that these two mortal enemies – the vampire who wanted to make Buffy his third slayer kill and the Slayer herself, had any interest in each other before your spell?”

He was watching Willow intently and missed the speculative looks that Spike and Buffy shot each other before turning back to the conversation in front of them.

With a trembling sigh, Willow gave up the argument. “You’re right. I’m sorry, guys.” She sent an apologetic look toward the two blonds who struggled to look suitably angry. “I never looked at it like that. I just wanted to keep you busy for a while so that I could work on my spells.”

The vampire just nodded his acceptance of her apology, sure that if he tried to speak he would give away exactly HOW not sorry he was that she had worked her spell on them. Buffy glared briefly, then allowed her expression to soften as she remembered how pleasantly satiated she’d been when she woke up next to Spike. She carefully suppressed the memory of how recently she had been willing to experience the vampire’s inarguable talents again, without benefit of a spell to blame it on.

“It’s all right, Will,” she said carefully. “No harm done.”

Giles stood and indicated that Willow should follow him into the living room, suggesting that she be nearby when he phoned the coven in case they needed to speak with her. She nodded and with another apologetic smile towards Buffy and Spike, she obediently followed the Watcher into the other room, as glad as Buffy was that the Watcher was unaware of just how far things had gone between the vampire and his Slayer.

Spike stood beside Buffy, unwilling to move away until she gave him some idea what she was thinking. When she shivered and wrapped her arms around herself protectively he mentally cringed and ventured, “Slayer? Pet?”

“I just never thought of it that way. Not until Giles said it. I mean, I wasn’t thrilled to know we’d…but I…it was a spell, you know? Now, I don’t know how to—“

“It wasn’t rape, Buffy.” His voice was firm and sure. “Whatever we did, we did it because we both wanted it. I would never…never force myself on you, Slayer. You have to believe me. If you weren’t willing, I would—“

“He wasn’t saying you raped me, Spike. I don’t blame you. I just…It wasn’t really us, was it? She MADE us do it. We didn’t really want to, and that makes it—“

“Speak for yourself, pet,” he said roughly, daring to touch the side of her face. “I wouldn’t give up the last few nights for anything—well, maybe getting my chip out,” he admitted with a small shrug, “but nothing else.”

Buffy shivered again, this time from the thrill that went through her at the light touch of his hand. She closed her eyes briefly, enjoying his caress, then opened them and fixed them firmly on his as she stepped away.

“You’re about to tell me it’s never going to happen again, aren’t you, Slayer?”

“The spell’s over, Spike,” she said almost sadly. “We can go back to what we were a few days ago. Mortal enemies.”

“I don’t think I can do that, pet. Got too many memories.”

“Don’t make this harder than it is,” she said angrily. “We’ve already had this conversation.”

To her surprise, instead of arguing he stepped away from her and said quietly, “Alright, luv. I won’t push you. But if you ever change your mind, you’ll know where to find me.”

Relieved that he was letting it go so easily, she snarked, “On my Watcher’s couch?”

“I’ll be sure you get my forwarding address, Slayer,” he answered as he followed her into the other room. The smile she sent back over her shoulder was enough to make him vow to follow up his promise, no matter where he went when he finally left the Watcher’s home.

The End