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Angels and Demons by TalesofSpike
 
Chapter 1.03
 
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Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

SECTION 1 - HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO

I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light
He's gotta be sure
And it's gotta be soon
And he's gotta be larger than life

((Jim Steinman wrote it, I think, even though the site where I found the lyrics says it's Bonnie Tyler) - Bonnie Tyler




Chapter 1.03
Friday, May 24th, 2002


Almost entirely for the sake of appearances, Spike had parked the Harley so that there was at least one graveyard between it and Dawn's school. He and Buffy were undertaking what could be termed a patrol... if they happened to be patrolling for the very few vamps who might not recognise either one of them and who might just be attracted to Buffy's bright chatter, rather than scurrying off or melting into the shadows at the sound of her voice.

"There's nothing we can do about the dresses or the suits until Short Round says we're ready for the first fittings," Buffy announced, "so check on that... kinda."

"Check, so long as you don't call him Short Round to his face or your dress is like to end up shredded."

"We've got the flowers ordered."

"Check on the flowers."

"We've got the church and the minister and the reception hall."

"And amen to that," Spike replied in not particularly happy fashion.

Buffy pouted. "Special day," she reminded him.

"Funny... I recall it as two days that were special only in that I didn't know anything could be so mind-numbingly boring... trailing round every reception hall in the county, with you turning down several perfectly good venues before we finally found the one that 'looked how you remembered it'."

"It was your vision, too."

"Yeah, but I wasn't trying to memorise the wallpaper for later comparison. My attention was on you , not the soddin' room."

"I didn't either at the time. I got Giles to help me meditate so that I could try to remember the details."

"And we couldn't have let our fingers do the walking rather than taking the bike 'round all of them?"

"You didn't have to take me. I could have gone on my own."

"The hell you could. One dent in my baby's bumper was quite enough."

"It's tiny , you big wuss. You can barely see it. That car's built like a tank."

"That's not the point... And you're still going for those lessons."

Buffy scowled at him but it wasn't very convincing. "Isn't it kinda overkill, though? Most people do a couple of lessons a week, not nine till eleven, Monday to Friday, for four weeks solid."

"You want to get it out the way before the weddin' or not? Or maybe you'd prefer to be walkin' to college? Or maybe..." His tongue ran over his teeth. "...You want to have the Niblet dropping you off on her way to high school?"

Buffy dropped his hand to beat against his chest with her fists. "Bitch," she accused. Her blows, however, barely merited the name. Spike stepped in closer, his hands sliding around her waist and then settling rather lower as he closed the distance between them entirely. Her fists opened and her hands wound around his neck, pulling his head down in order to occupy that wicked mouth in another way.

Buffy was dimly aware that the hem of her knee-length skirt was creeping higher and the tiny part of her brain that could concentrate on anything other than how good he made her feel tried really hard to make her do something to stop him, to protest, for practical reasons if nothing else, not that Spike wasn't fully aware it was that time of the month. Her hands, however, had a mind of their own. A trailing finger teased the flesh where the marks of her teeth never seemed to fade. Spike flung his head back, gasping for air while her other hand slid between their bodies, loosening the heavy silver buckle that lay between her and paradise. She popped the button on his waistband, flipped the tab up on his zipper and let pressure do the rest, his zip sliding down of its own accord.

She hooked a booted leg behind his and pushed him back so that he fell in the soft grass, half hidden in the dappled shadow of a rhododendron bush.

Then, in the fraction of a second as their eyes locked before she sank down to join him, they heard the scream.








"Can you see him?" Brandon asked.

"Nope, I think we're clear... for now. This is so unfair. We get away from the psycho sister and her boyfriend for the night and then we get to have your dad watch us all night."

"He's-."

"Excuse me." Kirsty pushed through between the couple, followed by her entourage as if there hadn't been more than ample space for her to pass behind them, knocking Dawn backwards in the process.

"Jeez, guess you should stop kidding yourself that that butt is a size six," Dawn muttered under her breath.

The blonde in her scarlet satin dress and matching lipstick swivelled on her heel.

"What did you say?"

Dawn took a breath. She hadn't backed down in front of Sam. She sure as hell wasn't going to let Kirsty bully her any more. "I said that you should stop kidding yourself that your gargantuan butt is going to fit through spaces that are too small for it, especially when you're wearing a dress so tight that everybody can see exactly how big it really is."

There was a stunned intake of breath from Kirsty's court. "Coming from someone whose dress looks like her mother picked it... Oh wait, you don't have a mother... And your sister doesn't make enough flipping burgers to buy you a new T-shirt once in a blue moon, so I guess either you stole it or you found something in your size at the charity shop. I guess beggars can't be choosers." Kirsty's voice began to draw the attention of those outside her own little circle occupying that quadrant of the hall, aiming to turn the argument into a public humiliation.

"If you can't recognise this season's Paul Sternam," Dawn said, naming the small but up-and-coming designer in LA where Buffy had found her dress. "...Then you should keep your ignorance to yourself. But then, what can you expect from such a tacky, whorish, less than subtle tramp, who's only going to make prom queen because she's dated half the football team and Shelley has chicken pox? Other than a dress that looks like its own red-light zone, that is?"

"Since you couldn't win a popularity contest in a leper colony if you were giving it away, I don't think your opinion will count for much."

"You can talk about giving it away, when the slit on your dress goes so high everyone can tell you're not wearing underwear."

"Miss Summers! A word..." The rich baritone could only mean one thing... busted. As she looked up, the principal crooked his finger in her direction, beckoning her over. Brandon took her elbow and escorted her, refusing to be intimidated by the man's pointed glance.

The man shook his head at Dawn. "What are we going to do with you, Miss Summers? Much as Miss Walker would benefit from being taken down a peg or two, and granted her dress is somewhat unseemly on a girl of her age, I did feel obliged to intervene before things developed into a cat fight." The principal pulled a detention pad from his pocket, scribbled something on it, folded the top sheet and passed it to Dawn. "Perhaps you and your date could find some amusement at the other end of the hall while I speak to Miss Walker."

Dawn's mouth turned into a frown as she and Brandon moved off in the proposed direction. "She pushes into me and I get..." Dawn's complaint died away as she read the words on the slip of paper. Instead of saying when and for how many days she had detention, the slip simply said, "Enjoy the party."

To judge by Kirsty's body language at the far end of the hall, her slip didn't convey the same message. Brandon pulled the piece of paper from Dawn's fingers, reading what was written there before he pushed it into his jacket pocket and drew her toward the area of the floor where people were dancing. "Better do what the man says."








"Get it off me!" The cry came from somewhere between them and where they had left the motorcycle, but the sound of running footsteps was coming straight toward them.

"Balls!" Spike swore as their own version of double vision kicked in. Buffy took off in the direction the voice had come from, while he was left trying to rearrange his jeans without catching anything vital in his zipper. He was still doing up his belt and had just flipped to his feet as she was almost knocked over by some short-arse in a tux, wearing the panicked expression of someone fleeing for his life. Chivalry is dead. The thought echoed through both their minds as one.

Another couple of seconds and Spike was off in pursuit of his beloved, even if he was tempted to leave the rescue to Buffy and intercept the fleeing youth to give him a piece of his mind instead. Buffy slipped a stake from her coat pocket, able now to see the fledgling struggling with his intended victim in the circular rose garden at the centre of the graveyard, its border of evergreens intended to give visitors an illusion of privacy. A pair of high-heels lay on the path nearby, as if the girl had kicked them off to better run from her pursuer, but even as Buffy narrowed the gap, the demon used his grip on the girl's bare arm to pull her close. By the time she was within fifteen feet, Spike had joined her in the clearing.

"Now!" The call was followed by a series of clicks and hisses as several crossbows loosed their bolts into the clearing. The fledgling turned to dust... and, had Spike not grabbed the bolt aimed at his own chest from the air with millimetres to spare, he would have, too.

"What the-." Buffy spun around as half a dozen crossbow-wielding girls stepped from the cover of the trees. Spike's attention was focused solely on the teenager who had fired on him as she struggled to reload. He closed the distance between them in seconds.

"What the hell was that for? I was comin' to help."

He snatched the weapon from her hands before knocking her to the ground with a spinning kick. By the time he had both feet back on the ground he knew Buffy had his back.

"Liar. Vampire."

"So? I wasn't the one attacking anyone."

"I know who you are. You are the other one... with The Scourge."

"The other one?" Spike barely restrained the urge to kick the prone girl in the stomach hard enough to make her spit blood. Several of the other girls now pointed their weapons in both his and Buffy's directions, though none were yet ready to fire again. Spike spat in disgust when he realised that cerise hair peeked out from beneath the dark baseball cap one of them was wearing and he planted a booted foot firmly on the neck of the girl he had knocked to the ground, not yet exerting any pressure, but the threat there, nevertheless.

A man dressed in dark slacks and sweater stepped over to the girl the fledgling had attacked, helping her up and passing her her shoes. "If you'd care to wait, my dear, I'll be happy to escort you wherever you were going." The English accent was no surprise to anyone other than the girl to whom he spoke.

"Call off your bitches, watcher." Spike called out. "They're out of their league."

"Lower your weapons, girls. I don't think any of you are ready to take on William the Bloody, quite yet."

"Or ever," Buffy corrected.

"Miss Summers, I presume. I had been led to believe from the accounts in Mr Giles' diaries that your patrols were normally confined to Sunnydale and the UC campus... though perhaps this wasn't actually a patrol." His gaze lingered on where a corner of Spike's shirt poked through between his zip and his belt buckle. "Would you be so good as to call off your attack dog? This really is just a misunderstanding."

"Yes, you misunderstand what you can get away with. Spike is no one's attack dog. He's my future husband. Tell Travers that I want it made absolutely clear to all his people that Spike is not to be harmed. Tell him that if there are any more misunderstandings I will assume that he, personally , is responsible. I'm sure he'll understand me."

"I'm sure he will," the watcher assured her. "Now, perhaps you could ask your future husband to stop standing on my charge?"

"Ask him yourself... but I'd do it real nice because he gets kinda cranky when people assume he's at my beck and call." Buffy turned and walked over to where the young girl who had been attacked was sitting.

Spike gave an evil grin and lifted that scarred eyebrow. "Say please!"








In the end it wasn't the watcher and his band of potentials who escorted the girl home. She had been going to stay there, but Buffy convinced her that they would wait for her while she sponged a couple of marks out of her dress and put on some fresh hose, and that Buffy would be able to talk to Mr Michaels to make sure the girl was allowed into the gym, even though her date had absconded with both their tickets.

As soon as the girl disappeared into the house the slayer hissed at Spike. "Did you have to stand on her?"

Spike shrugged in response. "Probably not... but it was the easiest way to make sure she didn't stick one of those crossbow bolts in me when I wasn't looking."

"Spike, when you humiliate someone like that you make enemies."

"Uh-huh? An' before... when she was firing wooden bolts in the general area of my heart she was my bestest bud, I suppose? 'Course, I could have broke her neck or something instead.

Now, are we done with the inquisition?"

"S'pose."

"Okay." Spike slid his arms around her shoulders and rested his forehead against hers. "Invitations... Photographer... Cake... And of course, if you still want that chocolate cheesecake for dessert, then we have to fix that, too."

"Invitations, photographer, cake and cheesecake. What about the rehearsal dinner?"

"Not a clue, love. Other than the fact it's something you Yanks do, I know nothing about them. Never been to one, no idea what's meant to happen at one. What is the point by the way? Are our colonial friends so backward they need to have a practice run before they can eat or is it just a way of stiffing us with the bill for another meal?"

"Very funny. So what do you have?"

"Well, the minister goes through who should be where with the best man and the bridesmaids and what-not at some point beforehand, but no dinner. There's normally an afternoon reception for the family and the close friends with a sit down dinner and speeches an' stuff, and then all and sundry turn up for the evenin' do, but it's normally a buffet thing. Then again, mostly people aren't having the service at half past eight at night... And I'm kinda guessin' that it won't be too much of a push to invite everybody we want for a sit down meal and sort of combine the two, seein' as how there's not really that many as we want to invite.

But... if you've got your heart set on a rehearsal dinner as well... just so long as you don't wear that frilly orange spandex thing..."

"Pig."

"Uh-huh." Spike grunted his agreement. "So what is the point of this rehearsal dinner thing?"

"Why does there have to be a point? It's like everything else. It's tradition."

Spike snorted. "If it's so traditional, how come we weren't doing it back in my day?"








"Am I being paranoid or are people talking about us?" Dawn whispered in Brandon's ear.

"You're not paranoid and people are talking about you."

"Shit. You think maybe we could slip out for a bit? This is kinda freaksome."

"Relax. Dance. You're under orders to enjoy yourself."

"But everybody's watching."

"Just because you stood up to that bitch and they all wish it was them who'd done it... That and the guys have all realised that they've missed their chance now."

"More like all the girls are giving me the evil eye for being with the best looking guy in the room."

"Well, that bit went without saying," he teased, not believing for a second that she was serious. "Come on. You did the hard part standing up to her. Now, you need to hang in there or she'll think you've wussed out. And besides, you know if we disappear for longer than it takes to go to the loo and dad can't find us straight away that he'll ring your sister."

"Okay.... Alright already, we'll dance."








Cordy took advantage of her magical viewpoint to peer over people's shoulders as they filled in their voting slips. "And I said she wasn't in the running. Not that she'll get the tiara, though, but hey, considering her name isn't officially on the ballot... I remember when I was May Queen in my freshman year... Of course, there was some invisible psycho stalking me, but other than that . And I have so got to stop talking to myself, otherwise when Angel does finally get around to rescuing me I'm going to do something really embarrassing."
 
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