Title: Tainted Love
Author: Frawley
Date: 15th January 2002

Category: Script-format, Season Six standalone fic.
Spoilers: Minor, everything up to "Bargaining" and "After Life", lets say to "All the Way" is fair game, though most of it was written prior to season six.

Summary: Drusilla returns to Sunnydale and gives Spike a terrifying gift, one that threatens to rip apart the lives of the Scoobies.

Comments: This is the third of three script-format fics I started in the Summer of 2001. The other two, Schism and Maleficium, I managed to "publish" before the sixth season premiere. Unfortunately, a lack of time saw Tainted Love sit unfinished until now. The other two fics seem a little AU at this point, but Tained Love might be seen as fitting in sometime between "After Life" and "Tabula Rasa", though it really has little to do with either of those - the mood of that period just seems best suited to this work.

The ending B/S stuff in this might seem a little fluffy. Not my fault. Well only totally.

Some numerology/prophecy stuff from the show has been included, specifically Faith's words to Buffy during their shared coma/mind trip in Graduation Day Part II. Which went roughly as follows:

FAITH
Miles to go
Little Miss Muffet
Counting down from 7-3-0

I've played with things enough to suit my own ends, but the truth behind the riddle remains intact (couldn't really change that, now could I?).

Disclaimer: Joss owns most of it, I lay claim to the scraps. FOX can sod off.

TAINTED LOVE - by Frawley

TEASER

EXT. GRAVEYARD - NIGHT

We open on SPIKE. Vamped up. He glances from side to side, with a deliberateness that could only mean he's hunting. Or being hunted.

It's the latter.

From the distance, the SNAPPING OF TWIGS. Footsteps. Spike is off in a flash - heading AWAY from the sound.

TRACKING Spike as he runs. Not an all out panicked run, but purposeful, at top speed. He LEAPS up onto a headstone, bounds off, and keeps on going - all in a single motion. We follow him as he twists, turns, and winds his way through the graveyard in this fashion - cutting a corner, hurdling another tombstone.

After a minute, he comes to a rest in the doorway to his crypt.

ON SPIKE - glancing from side to side again. Satisfied that all is well - or, at least, that he's bought some time - he heads inside.

INT. SPIKE'S CRYPT - NIGHT - CONTINUING

Once inside, the vampire slams the door, and changes back to his HUMAN FACE. With grim determination (cliché, cliché), he heads for the trap door to the tomb below. Crouches down to open it, then - THWUMP. The sound of someone landing from a jump. Spike WHIRLS around. His coat splays out like a fan as he does this. Cool.

SWING AROUND to his casket. There, in a crouching stance, is BUFFY. Looking like she's ready to spring.

BUFFY
(admonishing)
Spike… you weren't thinking
of hightailing it out of here
through the sewers, were you?

OFF SPIKE who has no reaction. Poker face all the way.

BUFFY
That would be… most unfortunate.
We only just started the game.

Spike finally has a reaction - looks at her as if he's lost her for good.

ANGLE ON Buffy, who MORPHS INTO A VAMPIRE FACE. Fangs gleaming. Something is seriously wrong here. This is NOT a dream sequence, not some perverted fantasy of Spike's.

BUFFY
And I want to play.

CLOSE ON VAMPIRE BUFFY.

BLACK OUT

END OF TEASER

The remaining acts will be posted tommorow...