A/N: Thank you, thank you for all your wonderful support! I'm so happy and grateful to you for showing it!

Much love - Annie.



Stranger Things



“Buffy!” Spike exclaimed; the sight of her paling away behind a hue of gray, disappearing just as he reached it and leaving him standing alone in the middle of the street. “Jesus, Mary and all the bloody saints!”

He calmed himself, forcing him to stand still and concentrate. Whatever No Face was, he had to be an intruder. No mere memory would be powerful enough to tear her away from him like that. So, they had a glitch. A bug. All he had to do now was find them.

Buffy’s strong, he told himself. Fiercely sodding strong, don’t worry about her.

But he did.

¤

She was in the living room of her own house. No Face had one arm across her throat and the other was fumbling for something that it couldn’t seem to quite reach. She waited a long second and then saw her opening, kicking one leg up and hitting him in the crotch. He barely flinched. She rolled her eyes at the typicality; she would run into a supernatural being inside a supernatural being, wouldn’t she? But something told her Spike had nothing to do with it, and she couldn’t make sense of why she should think that.

No time to mull it over, she had to get out of the current situation.

As if on cue No Face unfolded the arm pinning her to him, spinning her out and grabbing her by the throat instead.

“Are we... really back to this?” she got out.

He raised his other arm, holding something which glinted menacingly in the subdued lighting. Her hands went to his wrist, trying to pry his hand off her throat, her eyes fixed on the object being brought slowly closer. She could see it clearly. It was a dagger, colored copper and bearing intricate carvings across the blade. It was quite pretty, looked at out of context. As the point drew nearer she decided she’d had enough.

She tightened her abdomen and then delivered a high kick to the side of No Face’s head, making him loosen his grip in pure surprise and stumble to the side. The dagger fell out of his hand and she went for it, but stopped mid-step as he was getting to his feet. She stood indecisive for only an instant, and then she turned and ran for the front door. She could only pray she’d bump into Spike, or that he’d sense her and find her.

Now, there was a thought she’d never believed could find a place in her mind.

She didn’t look behind her as she sprinted across the lawn and out into the street. They had just been here; perhaps he was still there somewhere. She was about to round the curb when the ground disappeared from under her feet and she hung suspended in the air, feeling her heart pound its way into her throat as she looked down and understood that she was about to fall into the brightness of light below her. Then a hand grabbed her wrist and jerked her to her left, bringing earth under the soles of her shoes once more. She only had time to think “Oh, thank...” before she was turned around and pushed up against a tombstone, one of her arms above her head and a hand linking its fingers with hers.

Blue eyes pierced their way into her and she felt a swirl in the pit of her stomach, assigning it to relief.

“Sp-...” she began, but he stopped her by nearly growling:

“Think it’s time we finished this.”

“Wha-...” she tried again, only the hand of his holding hers yanked her to the side and sent her tumbling to the ground; turning onto her back she stared at him. “What the hell?!”

He moved forward, about to deliver a kick when she rolled away from him, getting to her feet and ducking when he tried to punch her, putting a hook in his side, a kick on his shin and straightening herself up.

He wasn’t him. It was another memory.

“Come on,” he smirked. “I know you can do better?”

“Yeah, you do,” she agreed, jumping up and kicking him in the chest, making him stumble backwards and into the headstone she had just left behind.

She was on him the next moment, pressing him tightly against the jagged rock and making him meet her gaze as she brought out a stake.

Whoa, where’d that come from? she thought, only her arm moved on its own, placing it against the spot of his heart.

“Careful with that,” he murmured, eyes not leaving hers.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Might be curious to see what sort of damage this’d produce in a master vampire, for a change.”

She furrowed her brow.

Where’d that come from?

“Yeah?” he asked.

He put an arm up, bringing the stake to the side as he moved her around, making her take the place he had vacated before leaning into her and she drew a small breath at the hunger in his gaze, the desire to possess, to own. Her.

“This is a fantasy,” she mumbled. “Your fantasy...”

His eyes showed something not far from gentleness before be brought his lips to her jaw line, softly sliding them along it. Her heart began to quicken, her legs to weaken, and an ache started which was all the more surprising. She didn’t know what she wanted or what she felt or how she should react. She was part of his mind, and in this particular part of his mind she relented, let him take over. She closed her eyes, hearing the shift of muscle and tissue as he vamped out.

His mouth traveled to the side of her throat and she felt her pulse escalating in anticipation.

“Hey!”

The weight of him disappeared at the sound of his voice as he turned to face himself. She opened her eyes and met the other Spike’s gaze, concluding it was the Spike she knew and that he had finally managed to track her down.

“Hey,” the imaginary Spike said before his shape was pulled to join with his creator.

Buffy pushed away from the tomb, smoothing out her clothes as she faced him.

“Well, there you are,” she said.

He was staring at her.

“You were about to let him bite you,” he said, sounding truly astonished.

“Don’t talk about yourself in third person, it creeps me out.”

“Alright. You were about to let me bite you!”

She blinked.

“Where have you been?! I was looking for you, after hitting No Face over the head and escaping the evil, evil... well, and all that after he tried to skewer me with some strange thingamabob, and can I help it if I thought you’d found me?”

“And as thanks, you...?”

“Hey, I should be the one pointing fingers at you. You just tried to bite me, and don’t you even start denying that the thought’s been in your head for a really long time, because you are not that good a liar.”

“I won’t deny it,” he said. “Why the bleeding hell should I? I’m a vampire. ‘Course I’ll wanna bite you.”

“Well, yeah.”

She trailed off. She had been making a point and now she was loosing it.

“But what was with the kissing down my neck?” she found her track. “I thought you’d be all grr-argh and chew on me a little, but there you were being all oh-what-soft-skin-you-have and I’ll-just-have-a-little-nibble and there was leaning. And why did you bring that shotgun if you weren’t gonna use it? What could possibly have changed your mind?”

“It wasn’t...”

“It didn’t have anything to do with me, did it?”

“I bloody...”

“I mean, it couldn’t have anything to do with me, ‘cause that’d totally shake the foundation on which we’ve built this splendid hatred filled relationship.”

He was half a second from giving a different response, but then agreed:

“No. Nothing to do with you.”

The graveyard around them morphed slowly, bringing them into a bedroom; which immediately produced a positive flood of memories for him. He had stayed in it for the first three years when it had only been him and Dru.

At the moment it was empty save for him and Buffy. He looked at her, raising his eyebrows.

She turned her gaze out of his, beginning to explore the room, fighting to keep her thoughts from being revealed on her face, or spoken aloud in the dusty vacuum which was this memory. Thoughts of his mouth on her skin. Thoughts of his teeth through her flesh. She felt herself grow warm at the sheer blasphemy she was committing against everything she believed in, in thinking of what it might be like... to be such a part of him.

Wow. She truly was appalled and shocked and quickly got her mind off its previous and so devastating track by beginning to pay attention to the details of what surrounded her. Her eyes caught on a fantastic velvet robe in soft red and she admired it freely. It had been thrown over the back of a chair standing before a low desk. She picked the piece of clothing up, stroking its soft fabric and wondering about its history.

“That’s Drusilla’s,” Spike commented.

She dropped the garment instantly.

He smirked.

Suddenly the door was thrown open and two giggling vampires came through it, Drusilla jumping up and wrapping her legs around him before kissing him deeply. Buffy’s eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets when they began to quickly undress. Then she covered her line of sight with one hand, putting the other one out as a provisory shield.

“If you wanna walk down memory lane that’s none of my business, but let me get out of the way.”

He looked at her, unable to keep down another small smile before he was beside her in the blink of an eye; leaning close, murmuring in her ear:

“Say please.”

She jerked, moving her hand away to glare at him, trying not to try desperately to calm away the goose bumps spreading over her arms and shoulders at his face being so close to hers. The way he affected her nearly frightened her with its unfamiliarity, and her glare darkened.

“You can’t seriously wanna make me watch,” she gestured to the bed, “that.”

“Can make you listen to it,” he remarked.

“Spike, I will strap you to a chair and whip you raw when we’re inside my head if you don’t stop this right this minute,” she stated and now he turned fully to look at her, tilting his head slightly to the side.

“You promise?” he asked.

“You’re one sick pup,” she grumbled, placing her hands over her ears.

He smiled, wishing he didn’t find her so damn adorable, but he did. And, yeah, sometimes she was such a buggering pain in the ass that he really did want to kill her rather than deal with her. But times like these...

“Spike!” she gritted out, bringing her arms down and fixing him with her green eyes. “If you don’t...”

But then she halted; a look of incredulity coming over her features, which was followed by a frown, a deep, incredulous furrowing of her brow, and suddenly he realized why. They turned their heads to the bed at the same time.

Buffy felt her eyes grow wide again.

Her image was under him on that bed, writhing slowly with every movement he made, her eyes in his. She saw the muscles of his back work as he softly thrust into her. There was a swirl somewhere hidden inside her at the sight of the two bodies so entangled, before the actuality of it all came back to rear its ugly, ugly face.

“Where...” she asked the vampire at her side, “where have you heard me make those noises?”

She suddenly remembered cigarette stumps underneath the tree outside her window and just like that she spun to face him, hitting him across the jaw so hard it brought him off-balance, making him take a few steps back.

“You listened?! To me and Riley?! You... you... inconceivable... I...”

She couldn’t get anything else out, she was so angry and so shaken that the words completely froze in her throat and she lowered her arm again, watching him regain his balance.

“What are you doing?” she finally murmured. “Why am I here? In here? What am I doing inside your head, Spike? Beneath you... like that?”

He stared at her. She contemplated him for another moment; then walked past him and through the door of the room, stepping onto the deck of a ship. It was wooden and massive. Sailors were doing what they were supposed to all around her. The sky showed the beginning of a storm as its frock was gray bordering on black. A bolt of lightning split the horizon and there were yells from the sailors, encouraging each other to hurry up. The sea was beginning to rage, as though objecting to the warmth of the sun having been stolen from its waves.

She spun around when she realized Spike had followed, that he was standing behind her.

“You need to stop,” she said, the wind picking up its howl around them. “Whatever it is you’re doing, you need to stop.”

He looked at her, at how deathly afraid she seemed, and he needed to find out what had gotten her so spooked, because in her eyes he could see something else, and her words weren’t convincing him.

“I don’t wanna stop,” he replied.

Her brow creased, as though she couldn’t comprehend. Of course she couldn’t. She couldn’t understand what she did to him, how this craving for her resided not only within him, but throughout him. How he wanted her with everything he was, ever had been, ever would be. And how he wanted her to want him in the same way.

“Spike,” she said, but what was to follow was lost as he stepped into her, a drop of rain hitting the top of her head as she put her hands up against his chest, trying to keep him away. “Stop,” she protested as his arms moved around her, pulling her even closer. Another drop of rain, this one hitting the tip of her nose right before more followed, and more. “What’re you doing?” she grumbled as he moved his face toward hers, but his lips caught hers and silenced her.

Softness, her mind registered.

But she was struggling against him, her hands sliding over the wet leather of his duster as the rain began to positively pour down on them. She felt her body scream for release, to get away from him. She had to get away from him. And then his tongue roughly made her open her mouth and the kiss deepened as her hands began to relax, sliding to his neck. It wasn’t until many moments later that she realized she was kissing him back, and that she was responding to his hands caressing her back, shoulder blades, neck line. He was producing a throb, a soft need for more, and when she began to get out of the daze she was in, and felt it, it pushed her into action.

“No,” she said, mouth still to his. “No,” she repeated, bringing her head away though his lips touched on her cheek, her jaw, her throat and her heart started pumping at the feel of it. “No. No!” she exclaimed, finally pushing him off her. “What...? What was that?” she breathed. “Don’t say anything,” she stopped him. “It wasn’t anything. It was nothing.”

She was trembling oddly all over, and she pushed a few soaked strands of hair out of her face, straightening herself up and drawing a breath to steady herself. It had been nothing. It was her being in his head. Nothing more.

He took in her expression and knew that it was a battle lost.

She was like an imprint in his arms, he could still feel her near, and he couldn’t believe it was already gone. Even though it was so evident that to her, it was.

But I’ve fallen in love with you, he thought, pausing as her face suddenly froze, her eyes going to his.

The sea calmed itself in less than a second, the clouds evaporating to leave way for a sky painted with the glory of sunset. The rim of the ocean was stroked with gold as the glowing sun was slowly sinking behind it.

The deck was empty save for them and the serenity was complete.

Except inside the Slayer.

“What?” she said.

Did she hear me? he wondered.

Her eyes filling with astonishment told him that she had.

She felt her insides fall into a pit she hadn’t known she possessed. The sensation wouldn’t stop, her heart beginning to grow heavy. She didn’t want to know, but now that the words were echoing around her she couldn’t ignore them. If she tried, she had a feeling they would grow louder and louder in sheer persistence. She was looking at him; waiting for him to make some sort of move, make the air vibrate with a different statement. But he didn’t, he simply looked back at her, seemingly as astounded as she was.

What could he say?

“I’m in love with you,” he murmured.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Right,” he nodded, “’cause I can’t love.”

“No, you can’t. You can’t love if you don’t have a soul.”

Annoyance and indignation bubbled up inside him as though it had been at the ready for a moment just as this.

“Hmh,” he said. “And if Giles didn’t teach you that, then who did?”

“I told you...”

“Couldn’t ‘ve been Angel, could it?”

Her eyes sharpened themselves in an instant.

“You don’t wanna go there,” she warned.

“Where? How he loved you with a soul, but how his demon couldn’t bloody stand you? Don’t wanna go there?”

She clenched her jaws together, feeling anger push away confusion and she welcomed it with open arms.

“You live in a safe little cube with your safe little beliefs and it’s a sad, sad sight, love.”

“Don’t call me love.”

“This is reality and it’s brutal and it’s there and all you can do is embrace it.”

“I’ll never embrace you,” she bit, glowering at him. “I’m done. I want out of here. Right now.”

With that she twirled on her heel and began walking away from him, heading for the opposite side of the ship. Hell, she’d swim away from him if she had to. Just so long as she didn’t have to look at him anymore.

“Why did you almost let me taste you?!” he called after her and she halted, turning back to him.

“The bite has nothing to do with feelings,” she replied coldly.

He stared at her and in the next blink he was before her, bringing her hair away to expose the right side of her throat.

“It doesn’t?” he asked.

She swiped at his hand, aggravated.

“Just stop,” she said. “Give it up.”

“Yes, because I haven’t tried. Think I wanted this to happen to me?”

“What am I, a disease?”

“Yeah, you are. Some kind of a flesh-eating virus.”

She gave him a look, but a slight smile curled her lips despite her best effort to hold it back and she glanced to the side, growing self-conscious. What was she doing?

He noticed it, though; couldn’t do anything but; and it placed a smirk on his mouth.

“Look,” she began, not knowing what she wanted to continue with, or why she had even spoken.

She rested her eyes in his and was caught by the mixture of emotions he managed to stir in her. How he tapped into her because she was linked to him by strolling through his subconscious. That had to be the explanation – it wasn’t her feeling this tremor of a need to listen to him, it was him putting it in her breast, just as easily as he had read her mind before.

“It isn’t real,” she mumbled. “Whatever you think is there – it isn’t real.”

“It’s so easy, innit?” he wondered silently, the ship spinning slowly around them and turning into a room they had been in before, where a violin was still playing. “To write it off as something I got into my head one day?”

She wanted to say something, but there was no time as they were hurled into the memory playing out around them.

Buffy watched as William had his poetry ripped from his hands, and how it was ridiculed before the guests, who laughed heartily at what the reader saw fit to add as comment.

“I’d rather have a rail road spike through my head...”

And she noticed the girl, who made William almost blush. Cecily. The man who had read the poem made a jibe that it was about her and the girl blushed as well, rushing out of sight. William grabbed the piece of paper from the culprit with subdued anger in his gaze, and then he hurried after Cecily.

There was a time jump and Buffy was outside. She frowned, looking around and halting when she saw William coming hastening down the street, ripping the paper into shreds. She wanted to stop him, talk to him, but he didn’t see her and she couldn’t move.

Another jump brought her into an alley, where he was facing Drusilla. Her blood seemed to run cold at the presence of the vampiress and the meaning of it for William. Spike stepped out of the shadows to the left of the two other forms, eyeing them distantly before fastening his gaze in Buffy’s.

All of a sudden she was William, seeing the scene from his point of view and a myriad of new emotions attacked her. Fear, suspicion, curiosity, awakening desire. Drusilla was seducing him, efficiently. Buffy sensed other convictions within William, of unworthiness which could be turned around, of the wanting to make something more of him; something better, something grand. And Drusilla was feeding this need with whispers, all of them hitting exactly where she aimed them. She was making him believe, making him leave everything else behind. A world where he would always be inferior, ridiculed, less.

There had been no choice; he had to walk with her.

Buffy heard him say yes, oh, God, yes, and his fate was sealed.

The next moment she was back in the house, she was on a sofa, and William was facing her.

“William, your poems... they’re not all about me, are they?”

I’m Cecily, Buffy thought.

Deep discomfort was stirring within her, aversion to what she was suspecting to hear from him, and once he answered, utter dejection.

His face turned very close to enraptured, and he said:

“Every syllable.”

There was so much hope in him, so much conviction that he could win this young lady over.

But she would have none of it. Her indignation was growing as he spoke – at his nerve. She pitied him, but there was no compassion in her, only the need to get away from him and his association as quickly as possible, and so she rose and ended their exchange with:

“You’re beneath me.”

Only in the middle of the sentence she wasn’t Cecily anymore, she was lying on the asphalt in the alley outside the Bronze, looking up at herself right before having a wad of bills thrown at her. She was Spike, and it took less than a second for her to be overcome by what was moving in his chest, as her image walked away.

The pain, the humiliation, the longing and underneath all of it a need and want and love as the tears began falling.

Buffy struggled to separate herself from him, to get away from this drowning in him. He was everywhere. And then there was darkness. There was an overwhelming craving to destroy, to rip and to burn her out of him. And with that feeling she was spat out and was standing looking down at him once again, only he was drying his tears with harsh movements, getting to his feet. She was absolutely speechless, staring at him.

It couldn’t be the truth; he had to have manufactured it somehow. She couldn’t trust him, she knew that. But he lingered within her, moved through her, and she couldn’t discard him. She couldn’t focus; the impressions she was under were racing away with every shred of reason, and practicality. She wanted to deny him this soft benefit of a doubt rising within her, but couldn’t. She felt what he felt. He couldn’t have manufactured that, couldn’t have made it up.

He could tell that she was trying to wrap her mind around this, but she was seeing him for the very first time, and it was a start.

Suddenly they were falling, faster and faster, light surrounding them in flashes that grew closer and closer together until they combined into a shimmering cascade of bright glittering.

And through this, they woke.

Buffy drew a breath, easing her eyes open and meeting Willow’s worried gaze.

“Buffy?” Her voice was far, far away. “Are you okay?”

“Do the How-Many-Fingers thing.”

“She wasn’t knocked out, Xander.”

The following moment Buffy was fully conscious and began to sit up.

“Easy,” Giles said, “drink this.”

“Don’t I get the special treatment?” Spike’s voice muttered at her side and she felt herself tense.

“No, see, to us, you’re pretty much always of little to no consequence,” Xander remarked.

“Oh, yeah, even when I’m inconsequently saving your sorry ass, Monkey Boy?”

“Hey, I’d go easy on the insults there, pal, considering you’re about to go under again and just might wake up with a permanent marker mustache, or even a beard.”

“And you might find yourself in a sticky bloody situation with some sort of kitchen appliance.”

“You can’t hurt me.”

“I wouldn’t,” Spike replied, making a meaningful rotating motion with both of his forefingers and Xander’s eyes grew.

“You can’t,” he then said. “He can’t, right?” he added, looking at Willow, who rolled her eyes at him and reached for a mug, handing it to the vampire.

“Here,” she said. “Nothing special,” she added.

He sniffed the blood, then gave her a grateful look and began to drink.

Buffy swallowed her water, putting the glass down and getting to her feet, promptly pushing any confusion, and whatever else there was to deal with concerning the bleached-vampire-menace, out of her head. It would simply have to wait; they had more urgent things to sort through.

“Alright. Anything to report?” she asked Giles.

“I believe that’s my question.”

“Well, we’ve traveled back in time,” she said, feeling like her voice was bordering on cheerful and trying to tone it down a little as she continued: “There were pretty dresses. Oh, and there was some sort of demon that tried to kill me with a dagger.”

“Buffy almost got killed inside Spike’s head,” Xander recapped. “Shocker.”

“No, I don’t think...” she trailed off, meeting Spike’s gaze for the first time and growing tentative, but then she finished: “I mean, we didn’t really discuss it, but he seemed off... like he didn’t belong. He couldn’t have been some long lost brain-freeze, could he?”

“No,” Spike replied, noting the close to guarded state she seemed to have slipped into. “But was it our poet? Didn’t seem keen on showing his face, did he?” he added, wanting to find some way of breaking through the façade she was so quickly rebuilding.

“No,” she agreed. “So, assuming it was our poet, was the poem a rouse? To get into our heads? Does that make sense?”

“Are we weaker or stronger in there?” he retorted.

She considered it.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen half the time, but I say welcome to the daily playing field in Sunnydale, so I don’t think we’re weaker. But if he knows how to move from thought to thought, he might be stronger.”

“Sounds like we should cancel the next session,” Willow said.

“No,” Buffy replied. “For all we know he really does have someone he’ll kill if we’re not there to stop him... No, we’ll have to get inside my head too, we stick to the plan.”

“You sure?” Xander asked and she kept herself from glancing at Spike as she nodded.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Okay,” Willow said. “You need to eat something and we should wait a few hours. We should map out what you can remember, so that there’s no confusion when you wake up next time.”

“Alright,” Buffy said.

“I’ll get a pad and a pen.”

“There are some supplies in the study,” Giles said and Willow disappeared from view. “I’ll make you some scrambled eggs,” he then added, looking at Buffy. “With cheese?”

She smiled her agreement.

“Well, then,” she sighed, meeting Spike’s gaze once again.

“Well, then,” he said.