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Summer Session by LunaMystik
 
Those Lazy, Hazy Days
 
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AN: This is my first attempt at BtSV fanfiction, although I’ve been reading quite a lot of it for some time now. Constructive criticism and pointers are more then welcome, as is pointing out any canon/continuity errors I may have made. I know there are many other fics out there that take place during the summer after Season 4, but I truly hope this one has an original spin to it. Chapter 1’s title is inspired by Gilmore Girls.


Chapter 1 – Those Lazy, Hazy Days


Summer. The time for tiny halter tops, iced lattés with Willow at the ‘Pump, and boring, boring, boring patrols.


What was it about the Hellmouth that made evil feel the need to take a couple of months off, Buffy wondered. Apocalypse attempts should – in theory – be just as attractive to demons when it was ninety degrees outside, right?


And there were no vampires. Technically, professionally, and ethically, that was a good thing. No vamps equaled no people dying from mysterious neck wounds, no brawls at the Bronze to break up, and no need to listen to Xander whine as he spent hours whittling stakes into finely pointed tools of dusty death.


But it also meant that Buffy was bored. She was the Slayer – her job, hell, her life was all about hunting and killing vampires. How could she expect to do just that with any sense of accomplishment if there were no vampires in town to kill?


Rumor had it that even Harmony had left Sunnydale for the summer – apparently she’d hopped a bus to LAX with every intention of finally seeing France. Buffy certainly hoped the fanged airhead got tempted into topless sunbathing on the shore of the Riviera. She giggled aloud a bit at the thought.


But Harmony’s absence meant that the steady stream of hapless minions had all but trickled to a halt. And since Buffy was currently roaming through Restfield, her fifth cemetery of the night, in search of even a shred of evidence to suggest a potential rising was in the works, she was just a smidge upset that her former classmate hadn’t had the decency to plan ahead for her return. After all, what was Harmony Kendall without a hoard of braindead followers at her beck and call?


Buffy giggled again at her admittedly weak pun and had to admit that the lack of demon activity wasn’t the only thing affecting her. Riley had gone back to Iowa three days ago, and would only return at the beginning of August. His obvious happiness at returning to his childhood home had done nothing to dull Buffy’s disappointment that he wouldn’t be around to fight the good fight with her. That he was ecstatic to see his family again should have made her pleased for him, but at this point she just didn’t want to appreciate all the warm weather had to offer without her significant other. This was her first summer since being called that she wasn’t stuck in L.A. with her dad, mourning her dead lover, or miserable because her formerly dead (but still very much of the undead) lover had left her so she could ‘have a better life.’ And she wanted to party, damn it!


Well, at least she had Willow and Xander and, to a lesser extent, Tara and Anya. As long as she didn’t dwell too hard on the fact that her two best friends got to spend time with their respective loves while she was making with the major fifth-wheelyness, she was ok. And Giles was being particularly effective at filling up her days with training and, ugh, research. Also, her Mom was keeping her well funded by letting her earn some much needed cash by helping out at the gallery three afternoons a week.


Really, she was just feeling sorry for herself. She had friends, family, her health, and money for new shoes. She was just being ridiculous. She should be grateful that evil was taking a sabbatical.


Or...


Maybe it wasn’t, if the sudden tinglies on the back of her neck were anything to go by.


She smiled. Time to party.


--*--*--


Summer. He bleeding hated it.


As Spike stomped through Restfield Cemetery, chain smoking up a storm and aching for a fight he knew he wouldn’t find, he mentally ran through his ‘why summer royally sucked’ checklist.


Reason the first: the sheer amount of daylight hours put a serious crimp on his outdoor activities. As a self-diagnosed hyperactive creature, the days leading up to and exceeding the summer solstice were a source of never ending misery for him. The pitiful few hours between dusk and dawn left him frustrated and antsy, and he was never quite able to spend all his excess energy before it was time to hide out once again from the sun. Rare were the mornings when he could simply return to his crypt and collapse into a deep restorative slumber. At this time of the year, he relied more heavily than ever on the artificial rest he achieved after imbibing massive quantities of alcohol, which put a serious strain on his meager finances, no matter how ill-begotten. And the hangovers upon waking were a bitch.


Reason the second: demon activity was notoriously quiet in the June to August pages of the calendar. As a vampire that felt no reason to limit his evil undertakings to a particular stretch of time, he couldn’t understand those of his kind who felt the need to get away from it all. Like that bint Harmony. She’d nagged him for weeks again about visiting sodding France “this time for real, not like last summer” before finally buggering off to make her own way there, leaving him all by his lonesome in good ol’ Sunnyhell. Not that he minded, considering what a right pain in the arse she was, but he hadn’t had a decent shag in weeks. Which was not helping him in the ‘frustrated and antsy’ department.


Reason the third: because of the aforementioned lack of demon activity, he was bored. He was a fighter, and the only thing he could fight these days was demons. Therefore, no demons meant no action. Ergo, bored.


Really, at this point, the only things he appreciated about summer were high-heeled sandals, short skirts, and skimpy tops. Which was irritating, in a voyeuristically pathetic way. For William the Bloody, master vampire, slayer of Slayers, to be reduced to ogling pretty girls he couldn’t snack on as his only real pleasure in unlife, was sad.


No, worse than sad. It was bleeding tragic.


It was a known fact in the demon community that the vampire suicide rate skyrocketed between May and September. Of course, extended daylight hours and the general stupidity of his species could factor into the equation, but loneliness, inactivity, and bugger all to do also weighed heavily into the balance.


It was quite depressing, really.


He wanted a fight. He craved a good tussle. Fledglings, not that there were many of those around, were good for a quick rough and tumble, a temporary high. But since there was almost no one in town to sire new vamps and the Hellmouth’s resident Slayer was around for the summer, he was shit out of luck.


It was a bleeding shame he couldn’t fight the Slayer. It pained him to admit it, even to himself, but she was the only one who had ever managed to even come close to exhausting him in a fight. If he didn’t have to worry about the chip in his head scrambling his brain, he’d happily spend the whole summer going rounds with her, holding off on the kill in order to gain a repeat performance every night. Not only was she a brilliant fighter, a credit to all in her lineage, but she was a right pleasure to watch, all smooth moves and passion and fire. Made his pants tight in all the right places, she did.


Just as his traitorous thoughts were on the cusp of shifting from using fist and fang to pound the Slayer into the nearest mausoleum to, well, pounding into the Slayer against the nearest mausoleum – and why would his mind even go there? – his nose caught a whiff of her sent.


She was near.


If he was relegated to the sidelines when it came to killing humans, at least he could hone his hunting skills.


Time to stalk.


TBC...
 
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