a/n – Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who stuck with me through the dry spell.  All your wonderful reviews have been, well, wonderful!  LOL.

And, here, we come to the fun stuff!  Hope you enjoy.  I’ll be posting two chappies today, 1) because I HAVE two **snicker**, and 2) cause they really belong together and you guys would KILL me if I left it hanging here.  **evil laugh**

Again, many thanks to Gail, my beta for this chapter.  And warm and fuzzy thoughts to Megan, who’s swamped in RL.   **kiss, kiss** hon.

hugs, sfg

Who am I?
 
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Chapter 12 – Front row, center

Buffy rolled her eyes when Spike’s mouth dropped open and he stuck a finger in his ear, wiggled it around a bit and said, “I’m sorry, luv, did you just say you needed my help?  My help?”

Giles stood stiffly beside her.  “Buffy—”

“No, Giles.  We’ve already been through this.  You need to clear out the party.  You’re the only one who can get them moving.”

“Ah, right,” he said, obviously unhappy with that. “Because I’m ‘older than dirt and, therefore, an authority figure’.”

Buffy ignored the snicker from Spike and the appalled look on Willow ’s face.  Turning angry eyes on Giles, she challenged him. 

“Tell me that Willow and her friend, there, are going to have better luck convincing fifty half-drunk—”

At this point, a college boy stumbled down the walk and crashed through their group, tripping on his feet and landing face first in the shrubs lining the lawn, where he didn’t move.  She quickly amended what she was saying.

“— completely drunk college guys to vacate the building.” 

He didn’t say anything, just looked at the unconscious guy and shook his head slightly, sighing. 

“Look, I’m sorry if I’m a little bit with the tactless Buffy tonight, but Faith is in there, doing God knows what with Riley and I can’t be everywhere at once.”

“What about Spike?  He can handle—”

“Hello, Giles!  This is the Initiative’s Frat house.  You know?  The one built over a humongous government installation that no one in this freaky town seems to even have been aware of for some crazy reason and is stocked with government enhanced freaks that, while, almost entirely lacking in personality, are, technically, human.  Spike’s chip is a handicap that these people know about.  He can’t fake it.  You have to do it, Giles.  Spike can do the other.”

“Buffy—”

“And, what exactly is the ‘other’, pet,” Spike asked.

Her voice was steel as she turned toward the door of the house.  “You get to carry the body.”

~~~*~~~

Oh, HO!  Front row, center, indeed!  This was smashing.

Vamp speed had him at her side in seconds with no one being any the wiser about his little impulsive skipping.

Well, almost no one.

When she raised an eyebrow at him, he gave a casual shrug.  “Wha’?  Since you asked so nicely.”

At the door, she paused.  “Crap.”

“Wha’?”

“Invite.  You need one—”

“Not a problem,” he interrupted.  He moved past her, opened the door and stepped over the threshold, making a show of holding the door open for her.  “Gotta love these college kids.  Throw an ‘open house’ every other day, they do.”  As she stepped through, he winked.  “Usually have free beer, too.”

She rolled her eyes again and shook her head, then once again turned her attention to the group that had followed them in. 

“Willow, Tara, you back up Giles.  Spike and I’ll head upstairs and—”

“Um, Buffy, do you really think that’s such a good idea?” Willow asked, eyeing Spike and turning an alarming shade of red.

Damn it, Red, don’t bollocks this up for me.

Buffy just groaned.  “Not you, too?  Look, I need you guys to back me up.  I can deal with Faith and Riley.  You just need to keep the rest of his buddies out of the way.  In case you missed it, I could really use a Calgon moment right about now, which is totally not going to happen in this body.  So, can we please just get this over with?”

“But Faith...and Riley...a-and Spike...” Noting the Slayer’s expression, the witch quit.  “If you’re sure.”

“Thank you, Wills.”  She gave her a brief – and painful looking – hug.  “I’ll deal.  Trust me.”

“It’s not you, Buffy.  I-it’s just, Faith...” She sighed.  “O-okay.”

The Slayer gave the Watcher a nod, which he returned, then he turned to the crowd and began yelling over the noise to get everyone’s attention – something about the noise level and the neighbors – that went completely ignored. 

But Spike wasn’t paying attention.  He was following the Slayer up the stairs.

She didn’t hesitate or drag her feet, just barreled on until Spike could make out the obvious sounds of a male working up to his satisfaction.

Bugger.  The bloody pillock did it!  Took the cheap imitation.  What a wanker!

He wanted to rub his hands together in glee for the chaos that would ensue as soon as they burst through that door—bloody hell!

He caught her hand just as it was reaching for the doorknob, trying to ignore the tiny tremor he saw.

“Luv.  Problem.”

She turned on him, anger clear in the clenching of her jaw and he rushed on so she wouldn’t think he was joining his voice with those from downstairs.

“Invite doesn’t extend to dorm rooms.  Common areas, yeah.  But private spaces?  Well, they need their own ‘come along’.”

She extracted her hand from his and nodded.  “I’ll work around it.”

She reached out her hand toward the knob again and, again, he saw the quivering of her hand.  That nasty little twinge from earlier in the night was back with a vengeance and he raged against the words that wanted to come.

The battle was quickly lost.

He, once again, called on his vamp speed and gripped her hand, settling his over hers on the knob, pressing his chest flush against her back.  Ghosting his lips against her ear, he murmured, “Brace yourself, pet.  I can already hear this isn’t going to be pretty.”

She hissed a breath in, tensing, and he thought he was going to get an elbow to the solar plexus for his effort.  Instead, she just froze, drew in a fortifying breath and gave a tiny, singular nod.

They turned the knob together, quietly swinging the door open.

Spike’s sensitive nose was assaulted by scents to such an extent that it nearly made his eyes water.  The scent of sex, of Iowa in all his laughable glory, with an undertone of Buffy Summers’ musk was so strong that he even caught Buffy’s nose crinkling against it. 

Too bad she couldn’t quit breathing.  Like him.  Would help that gag reflex. 

And wasn’t it a hoot and a half to know that he’d scented the Slayer more aroused during sparring sessions then her body was right now as the great hunk of meat finished his business? 

Spike had a genuine moment of gratitude to a deity he had long ago abandoned for the fact that White Bread was, well, so white bread.  Because of Cardboard’s lack of imagination, they were spared any graphic visuals that might take up residence in his nightmares by the sheet that was modestly covering both bodies.

A couple of grunts later and Farm-boy collapsed on a notably, at least to Spike, silent Buffy-shaped Slayer.

The real Buffy ground her teeth but remained silent, gauging the situation.  A moment passed and then Riley picked his enormous head up off the other girl’s shoulder and said, “I love you.”

Spike bit his lip but the snort still came out.

Three heads whipped toward the sound but Spike only addressed the Slayer that was still pressed back against his chest.  He grimaced.  “Sorry, luv.”

“Spike!”  If Spike hadn’t just bollocks-ed everything up, he might have let loose the laugh that wanted out when he saw the mix of rage, humiliation and panic that flashed across the farm boy’s face.  Boy didn’t know whether to jump to his feet or stay where he was and protect his ‘love’s’ dignity. 

But it was nothing to the expression that ran over his features when the girl beneath him spoke.

“Hey, B.  Was just takin’ Studly, here, for a test drive.  Tell me something and be honest, now.  Do those pretty words really make up for the lack of orgasms?”

The words and tone of voice were chilling, a much more crass version of women from his human days, but Spike’s demon silently howled with glee at the crushed look on Soldier boy’s face. 

“Buffy?” he whispered pathetically.

The real Buffy spoke without a hint of emotion in her voice.  “I see you met Faith, Riley.”

“Faith?”  The stupid git looked between the two girls, once, twice.  On the third pass, Faith, in Buffy’s body, lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers.

“Hi,” she said with a wink and a saucy grin.

tbc