Summary: This story was the brain-child of me and a challenge I saw on the Spuffyarchives.com website. This is my second BtVS fic (I only write Spuffy fic, thank you very much) and my very first fantasy fic ever. The details of the challenge were as follows:
** Write a story for Spike and Buffy based on the movie "When Harry Met Sally".
** Extra points for: NC-17 rating (gotta love smut), most original/surprising ending, going as far away from the original movie as possible, but still staying with the basic plot line, original not-in-the-movie scenes, Angel and/or Riley bashing (soooo not enough of that seen in fanfic today).
Disclaimer: Joss and ME are gods. Do you hear that? I own NADA! Squat. Zilch. But gods, I wish I owned JM… Someone send him to me for Christmas/Yule? Naked, preferably…evil grin
Chapter 1
A man and his wife, both elderly, sat on a couch smiling at each other. The man had brown hair and wore glasses. He looked to be in his late 50's. The woman had blonde, wavy hair, with a touch of gray, around the same age. They held hands and offered a smile to the interviewer. When the man spoke, his voice gave away his British accent.
"I was sitting in a coffee shop in Sunnydale, California, with my friend Wesley Wyndham-Price. It was the Espresso Pump, yes… Now I remember. How could I forget?" He smiled briefly at his wife before continuing. "Yes, you see it was before the Starbucks craze hit our small town. Anyway, this beautiful lady walked in…" His voice trailed off.
"Oh, Rupert," his wife blushed, playfully batting his forearm.
"I turned to Wesley," he recovered, continuing his story, "and said, 'Wesley, you see that woman? I'm going to marry her.' Two years later, we were married. Fifteen years later, we're still married."
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Standing outside the steps leading up to a California high school, a young man embraced his girlfriend in a passionate kiss. His bleached hair was slicked back, drastically offsetting her wavy black hair. He wore a black graduation gown, as did she. Pulling back from the kiss, he stared deeply into her eyes.
"I love you," he murmured to her.
"I love you," she sighed back to him.
They resumed their passionate embrace, neither one noticing the car that idled in the street next to the curb. Inside the car was a blonde girl, also recently graduated, at the wheel. She sat there, not wanting to be rude, but also not wanting to see the mushy display any longer than necessary. Finally, she honked the horn.
Drusilla pulled back from the kiss and peered into the car as the window rolled down. "Oh, hello, Buffy!" She led her boyfriend over to the passenger side of the car. "Buffy, this is Spike… er, William Benton. Spike, this is Elizabeth Summers. But, call her Buffy, or she'll get all in a snit," she added cheekily.
Reaching through the open window of the car, Spike took Buffy's hand and shook it. "Nice to meet you," he said politely in his clipped, Cockney accent.
Smiling back at Spike, politely, Buffy gestured to the wheel. "You want to drive the first shift?"
"No, you're already settled, there. It's all right," he said.
"Boy, you're taking your life in your hands, you know that?" Buffy quipped lightly.
After a lingering look into Drusilla's eyes, Spike opened the back passenger door of the car and started loading his bags into it, making room for them by carefully moving aside the television set, books, bags, and other belongings the blonde driver already had stored in the back.
As he closed the door and opened the passenger door to get in, Drusilla blew him a kiss. "Call me," she said in her lilting British voice.
He looked back at her longingly. "I'll call as soon as I get there, luv."
"Call me from the road."
"I'll call you before that."
They kissed and he closed the car door as they said their final "I love you"s.
Buffy pulled away from the curb and headed towards the nearest interstate onramp. They rode in silence for a while, allowing Buffy half an hour of thought. Finally, as Spike reached into his backpack and pulled out some grapes, she half-turned to him. "I've got this all figured out. It's a ten-hour trip, which means we could do five shifts of two hours each. Or, we could, like, do it by mileage. There's a map above your visor there, I've highlighted the places where we'd stop to change shifts. You can do two hours?"
He nodded, holding out the bunch he was snacking from. "Grape?"
She shook her head lightly, her hair bouncing around her shoulders. "No thanks. I don't like snacking between meals."
He nodded again, then turned and spit a grape seed out the window… which didn't happen to be open. Hoping she didn't notice, he sheepishly muttered, "I'll just roll down the window then, shall I?"
They drove in silence for a long time afterward. He fidgeted a bit before saying, "I hope this isn't going t' be one of those eighteen hour trips with a lot of long awkward quiet times, y'know?"
"Me too."
Another lengthy silence.
"So," he said briskly, rubbing his palms together. "Right then. So, tell me all about yourself."
"Me?"
"Yeah, sure, why not. I mean, we've got ten hours before we get to Las Vegas. Lay it on me."
She glanced at him skeptically. "The story of my life isn't even going to get us past Los Angeles. I mean, nothing's happened to me. That's why I'm going to Las Vegas."
He looked at her. "So something can happen to you?"
"Yes."
"Like what, pet?"
She shrugged. "I want to sing, you know? Maybe dance a bit. I'm going to Las Vegas and get myself a stage act set up."
He smirked. "So you can sing about things that happen to other people."
She paused. "That's one way to look at it."
He folded his hands behind his head and propped his booted feet up on the dashboard. "Suppose nothin' happens to you while you're there? I mean, suppose you live your whole life there in good ol' Vegas and never do anythin' excitin', never meet anyone, and finally die of old age? Only, it's one of those Las Vegas deaths where nobody notices until two weeks later when the smell finally drifts down to the Strip."
Buffy wrinkled her delicate nose as she stared at him. Who the hell did Dru stick me with? "You, Spike, are a certified freak. You know that?" She shook her head and turned back to the road.
He laughed.
"I've been called worse, pet."
She nodded as she turned onto
a different freeway. "Dru told me you had a dark side."
"That's what drew her to me."
"Your dark side?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah, why? Don't you have a dark side?" He smacked himself in the forehead with the palm of his hand as if the notion was so ridiculous. "No, of course you don't. You're probably one of those chits that dots her i's with little hearts."
She felt her ire rise as she defensively retorted, "I have just as much of a dark side as the next person!"
"Oh really?" he responded, pleased with himself. "When I rent a movie I fast forward to the end and watch the last scene first. That way if I die before I get to watch the rest of it, I know how it all turns out. That, luv, is a dark side."
Buffy snorted. "That doesn't make you a deep person or anything. I mean, I'm basically a happy person."
"So am I," Spike interjected cheerfully.
"…And I don't see that there's anything wrong with that."
"Of course you don't. You're too busy being happy." He half-turned in the seat to face her, staring at her intently. "Do you ever think about death, pet?"
"Yes," she lied smoothly.
"Sure you do," he laughed. "A fleeting thought that drifts through the back of your mind. I spend hours, days…"
"And you think that makes you a better person?" Buffy bit back at him.
Spike held his hands palm-up in supplication. "Look, when the shit comes down, I'm going to be prepared, and you're not. That's all I'm bloody saying."
"And in the meantime, you're going to ruin your whole life waiting for it to happen," she sniped. She waited a beat, then, "What are you going to do in Las Vegas?"
"Dunno. Hadn't given it much thought. I just graduated high school, don't know what I want to do yet."
She smiled sweetly, never taking her eyes off the road. "You should be a hit man for the mafia. The kind that carries messages from 'the boss'. I think you'd be perfect at explaining to your victims that they're going to die."
She was too busy looking innocently at the road that she missed the priceless expression that was Spike dumbfounded.
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TBC