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Bearing Gifts by Lilachigh
 
Chp 1
 
 
 
BEARING GIFTS


‘Look – just tell me why you did it!”
“It was a bloody joke, for god’s sake!”
“No, it was a party game – a Christmas party game for young teenagers!”
Spike looked sulky. The screaming had died down a little, although sometimes a sudden piercing cry from upstairs showed that one of the guests had remembered what had happened again.
“I didn’t choose the soddin’ game, Slayer. You were out patrolling. I was trying to be helpful. To be festive.”
Buffy rinsed out another wet cloth and patted the girl who’d fainted.
“Next Christmas – how about, so don’t bother?”
“They wanted to play ‘Operations’, not me,” the vampire continued self-righteously.
Buffy glared at him.
Anya asked, with interest, “What exactly were you playing, Spike? Is it a sex game? Xander and I often play doctors and nurses, but he won’t always wear the candy-striped uniform and so – ”
Buffy broke in, unable to stand the pictures forming in her brain. “You turn out all the lights and someone pretends to be a surgeon and hands round five things he has just taken out of a body and you guess what they are. It’s all in the imagination. A piece of rubber for a tongue, a bowl of jello for brains, a sponge for lungs, a bone for – ” She shot Spike a look that could have staked him where he sat when he lifted a suggestive eyebrow – “Well a bone! But you just pretend that they’re real.”
Anya shrugged. “So why all the screaming and fainting when I turned on the lights?”
Buffy glared at Spike again, daring him to laugh. “You’re supposed to use a peeled grape and say it’s an eyeball.”
“I couldn’t find any grapes,” Spike broke in indignantly.
“There was no need to use a real demon’s eye, though, was there? And if you did, you could have washed the blood off it first!”


ends