Title: Fever
Pairing: Buffy and Spike
Rating: Another hard R. I have fiercely edited this one for content and, again, spelling errors. But Buffy and Spike ride again and there are some explicit scenes, one in an alley outside the Bronze. Reader discretion advised.
Disclaimer: Isn't Joss lucky? He owns all these lovely characters, and he's rich. I write about these characters and those ads for Profina debt solutions are looking more attractive than Spike's toned abs every day.
CHAPTER ONE
It's the after supper crowd at the Bronze. Light, a few couples gathered at tables here and there. Soon, it will be the thrashing hour. That time before midnight and after ten that throbs with dance beats and pulsating hormones. There is real life to the place then. Now it's slow, consistent, and predictable. It's almost easy to guess when the guy at table four has finally ingested all the beer he can before he has to excuse himself from his buzzing lady love in favor of a trip to the men's room. In Buffy's meter, she has clocked him in at three, then time to pee.
She is lingering a bit too long over the counter, watching the patrons and occasionally sighing deeply, dreamily, until the peevish bartender nudges her with the tall Guiness Stout he has pulled from the newly tapped keg. She holds the beer in her hand for a minute, watching the brown bottom devour the beige foam on top. She is soon prompted again to return to the floor.
This tray is easy. All of them are easy, actually. The bartender intentionally fills the tray with all manner of scooners, mugs, pitchers, and snifters to see how much she can handle. But she can handle anything, he has learned. She lifts everything over her head with equal ease. He wonders sometimes if she's a superhero.
She wanders out onto the floor. She forgets for a moment where she's supposed to go. Was it table number five or table number twelve? They both have that "v" and sound very similar when shouted out above the roar of the DJ's music. She looks around. Who looks the thirstiest? Well, the college-age students always look thirsty. Even if they have two full pitchers in front of them, it's as though they could have five more there and still want more.
Like vamps, she says to herself.
She begins to wind her way around the club, bending to everyone she sees who sports a nearly empty mug or glass. But no one has ordered the tall Guiness. She hasn't checked the upper tier. That's not her station anyway. Unless the disgruntled waitress she talked to last night made good on her promise to turn in her apron that day and Buffy's suddenly been assigned to both the upper and the lower. But surely the boss would have told her something…
"Did you say table five or table twelve?" she asks the bartender after she's finally given up.
"Five," he says as he dunks a plastic pitcher into a sink full of dark suds.
"Table five. OK. I'm on my way," she says, hoisting the tray once again. She feels silly. Table five is right by table four, where the girl sits all alone, waiting for her Beta Theta Eta chested boy to come back from the restroom.
But table five is empty. And it was empty when she checked there moments before. Undaunted, she puts the beer on the table. But she shouldn't have done that. The napkin first, the napkin first! Always the napkin first! Why can't I remember that?
"Are you sure it was table five?" she says, upon her return to the bar. "There's no one there."
The bartender leans his hands on the table. "Look, Buffy, I took the guy's drink order because you were wandering around looking for the folks who ordered the Pims and strawberry daiquiris. He said he was at that table right over there," he says, inclining an arched thumb towards the empty table beside the now cooing college students'.
"Are you sure?" she asks.
"Positive. He ordered cooking sherry. When I laughed at him, he said Guiness would do. And then I told him he's have to wait because I needed to bring in another keg."
Something strange comes over Buffy now. Actually, it's what she's been feeling since she first walked to the empty table and set the beer down. There had been someone there. And it was someone who didn't want her to see him just yet.
"Did you see him?" she asks.
"Nope. Had my back turned."
Damn.
"But he spoke with a British accent, if that helps."
Oh, that helps her a lot. Too much.
She spins around from the bar. The table is till empty. And the beer is gone. She strides toward number four. The college students are holding hands, gazing longingly into each others' glassy eyes.
"Excuse me," she says to the couple. They stare up at her as though she had just threatened their mothers' lives. "Did you see anyone at the table next to you? Anyone?"
They look at each other. Why this intrusion? How hard is it to keep up with a few dozen customers? Is she stupid or something?
"No," the boy replies. "Did you, hun?"
"Not a soul," she says.
Not a soul, Buffy thinks to herself. And then there's no question.
Spike is back.
Tara, Willow, Xander, and Anya enter the Bronze that night. It is a Thursday, an almost weekend night. And the club is beginning to fill up. There is a table by a two drunken college students, a boy and a girl, who are so into each other their beers remain untouched. But they are they only things at the table that remain untouched.
"Woah! PDA alert in effect!" Xander says, raising his hands in the air. "Haven't seen that much tongue since I used to hang out at the butcher's shop."
They settle down at the table, looking out for Buffy. They soon collectively spot her, tray in hand, searching for the folks who have just ordered three scooners of beer, four pitchers, and a dozen or so tequila shots.
"That can't be one order," Willow says.
"Not unless Dylan Thomas fell back to earth," Xander says.
"Aw, honey," Anya says. "Dylan didn't drink tequila. Whisky was his drink. I know. I drank with him the night he wrote 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.' I was the one who suggested 'curse, bless me now' instead of 'hide, taunt me now,' or something like that. He thought I was his friend Ioan. Damn drunk. I guess I could have killed him, but he was just so sweet."
"You knew Dylan Thomas?" Tara asks.
"Well," Anya muses. "No one ever truly knew him."
Buffy is now at their table after depositing her drink order at four different tables. Her tray is empty now, and she holds it at her side like a ready shield.
"Hi, guys," she says.
"Buffy!" Xander says. "Imagine seeing you here!"
"Where else have I been for the past six months?" she says.
Though Xander intends to keep the air light and lively, be cannot help but be stunned by the weight of her comment. And as he looks around, he sees that his friends share the same concern. All of a sudden the toll of the last six months seem frighteningly obvious on the seemingly unburdened shoulders of the Slayer who holds an empty tray. But she seems hunched, a bit tired. Her smile wants to match their giddiness of sharing a night out, but she is working. She is serving them. In her face is all the heartache of the time since February, since her mother died, since she had to sell the house, since she had to quit school, since she had to take this job…
The suddenness of their combined realization hushes them and they cannot speak for a while. It is Buffy who speaks next, spinning the tray around on her smallish hand
"So what'll it be?" she asks.
"Oh, I was thinking of something…" Anya says. "Something…oh, God! What was it called? Dylan used to order it all the time."
"Bob Dylan?" Buffy asks.
"No, Dylan Thomas," Xander says. "Turns out Anya knew him."
"Yeah, you missed it, Buffy. Anya was telling us all about how she was with him the night he wrote 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,'" Willow says.
I miss a lot of things these days, she thinks to herself. But she doesn't dare say it. She can tell they're already forming pity parties for her in their minds.
As she stands there drumming her tray, they do realize how much she has missed. There is an empty seat there. But she won't sit in it. She hasn't even looked at it.
She takes their drink order.
"I'll have a diet coke," Xander says. "And an order of spicy hot buffalo wings."
"Xander, we just ate!" Anya says.
"Two hours ago," Xander says.
"We went to that new Thai place that opened," Anya says, gripping Xander's hand. "Mmm mmm mmm."
"It was a show with everything but Yul Brynner," Xander says.
Everyone bursts into giggles as Buffy fixes them with a puzzled look.
Willow recovers enough to explain, "The whole time Xander kept quoting 'One Night in Bangkok.'"
"'Siam's going to be the witness to the ultimate test of cerebral fitness!'" Xander says.
"I've never even heard the song and I was in tears," Anya says. But she sobers at Buffy's nonplused glare. "But I guess you had to be there."
"Guess so," Buffy says.
The others quickly place their orders and Buffy saunters off for the bar. In the wake of her absence, there's a guilt that ricochets from one face to the other. The words "poor Buffy" are the ones that one to come to the surface. But they have said that so often among them it's totally meaningless now. They watch her at the bar, leaning over, her blond hair up in a mussed ponytail. She offers the bartender a charming smile, communicating with him in a way that she hasn't with them in a long time.
"Buffy…" Xander says, eliminating "poor" just because… "Following in the fine tradition of Florence Jean Castlebury, Rachel Green and," he takes a breath, "Jenny Gump."
"She's doing all right though," Tara says. "Or she will be."
"What do you mean?" Willow asks.
"There's something in the air." Tara feels something. It's so tangible she can almost skewer it with her finger. "There's something here. Some presence. It feels…protective towards her."
"I don't know, Tara. Could it be…us?" Xander says.
She shakes her head. "No, it's not us. It's something else. It's something that wants to help her…" Her eyes close involuntarily and there is a twinge of pain at her side. Or harm her, her mind says, though she does not.
Buffy is standing by the bar, one arm on her hip, waiting for her drink order. The bartender is pulling another Guiness stout.
Where is he? she wonders.
I suck as a waitress, Buffy thinks to herself as she sits perched on the roof of a mausoleum.
It's a little after two in the morning. Here lately combining her slayer duties with her 48-hour plus work schedule has been no easy task. She's lucky sometimes to climb into bed before five in the morning. This usually works because her shift doesn't begin until four in the afternoon. Sometimes she feels as though she hasn't seen Dawn in years, though. When she encounters her sister in the apartment they share, it's like, "Hello, stranger."
It's late summer now and even in this late hour the air hangs heavy with a dewy humidity and her skin is drenched in it. Occasionally there will be a stiff breeze, and she feels a chill, but it feels refreshing and cleansing to her, like a quick shower in the afternoon.
The night is silent, except for the sound of the leaves clapping together in the wind. Her hair blows in her face. She is aware that she still smells like the Bronze. That heady scent of curly fries, stale beer, and cigarette smoke. She's certain that the vamps in town have caught onto to this new scent she's wearing. They probably think it will make her a more delicious treat when she's eventually caught and killed.
Presently there is the sound emanating somewhere from the ground. It is the sound of earth being moved aside, torn away. The ripping and tearing of freshly made grave. She knows it well.
She springs from the roof of the mausoleum, her stake clutched in her hand just as the vamps's torso emerges from the ground. Oh, he's a heinous one, she notes. And angry. And for a moment, she understands. If her family buried her in such an obviously polyester knit 1970's suit with lapels as wide as the Colorado River, she'd be mad too.
Having fully extracted himself from the ground, he rises to his full height. He is twice her size and his arms are the size of fat, newly shorn sheep. In his life he probably never even heard of the Slayer. She feels compelled to introduce herself.
"Welcome back," she says. "I'm Buffy. And this is your last night on earth."
Her terse wording elicits a confused growl from the vamp. Apparently, he's unaware that newly acquired immortality comes with a small price to pay, in that, eventually, all undead can count on at least a meet and greet with the tiny blond girl who wields a stake and fights like a fiend.
She begins with a kick to the chest that doesn't land him on his back like she thought it would. Instead, he's sort of thrown off kilter. This one's going to require a little extra work, she quickly surmises. But it's nothing she can't handle.
She throws an upper-cut to his jaw. Still nothing. This is like fighting Chewbacca, she thinks to herself. She doesn't give him time to recover. She throws another, and another. Her knuckles are burning from the punishment against his jaw, his cheek, and then, when all else fails, her lower abdomen. Kidney punches are illegal in boxing, but Thank God they're fair game in slaying. The one she throws doubles him in half. She has him now. With one blow to his chin with the toe of her shoe, he is now on his back. In the pale moonlight, she sees his yellow eyes nearly rolling into the back of his head.
She bends near him. "I'm not normally this rude when I meet people for the first time, but, what can I say? I was raised by wolves." She raises the stake, readying to a deep plunge. "But it's been nice meeting you." And she sinks the stake into his heart.
She sits for a moment, watching the wind pick up the dust the vamp has just left in the wake of his demise.
Yeah, I may suck as a waitress, but I'm still the Slayer.
The wind shifts. Where it has been docile and barely perceptible before, all of a sudden, there is a blast of air and her hair flies around her face like thick cobwebs. She gets to her feet immediately, the wind nearly knocking her down. It seems there's going to be a storm, but the sky is cloudless and the moon in its fullness is surrounded by dozens and dozens of shining stars.
She hears something. A whisper. It sounds human. It sounds like her name.
"Slayer…" the voice says.
She whips her head around in the direction of the voice. She sees nothing. But she can feel something pressing down on her. A phantom, bearing down on her with a dark presence she has felt before. She spins completely around, looking for the source of the voice, waiting to hear it again. But there is nothing. There is nothing but the sound of the wind dying down.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees something dark, something moving in the shadows. Her heart leaps. Her feet can barely keep pace with the orders she's mentally giving herself to run and catch up with it, whatever it is that she saw, whatever it was that called her name. But clear paths are nearly impossible to find in this part of the cemetery where the population seems to be tripling everytime she enters. She hops over each headstone, landing each time with the grace of a gymnast but the frustration of a doomed Javert. Finally she is out of the thick of them. She is near the entrance of the cemetery now. There is no one around. She is completely alone as she stands at the gates.
So this is how he's going to play, Buffy thinks as she enters the apartment building and slams the door behind her.
Even with the late hour, people are still awake. In a nearby apartment a baby is testing his mother's instincts with a high-pitched wail and she hears a woman's voice give way to sobs. The boys in 1E are listening to techno and she can see can smell incense burning inside. She mounts the stairs, having noted that the elevator is out. Again.
She doesn't believe he has followed her home. The last place she felt his presence was after he called her name. And then it left. She thought she saw it…him…but it could have been another headstone, turned black in the shadow of the one standing before it. There's nothing trailing or haunting her now. The footsteps she hears on the staircase are all her own.
She undoes the locks on her door and notes that the super still hasn't put the peephole in as she has requested days before. Now there's just a hole. She clicks her tongue and pushes inside.
Once inside, she flops down on a chair, her tip money rattling in her pocket. She counts the bills, tiredly, carelessly. She heard the other waitress mention that she had made $250 that night. Buffy made…well, Buffy made considerably less than that.
She had been distracted that night while she was working. But her instincts had been keen in the cemetery. She thought sometimes that if she could incorporate some of her Slayer intuitiveness into her waitressing, she might just be able to anticipate when table number six needs another Heineken. But then she might get confused and start slaying, which, on some nights wouldn't be a bad thing. It would get her fired, but she'd be striking a blow for the tired, underpaid wait staff of the world.
She is alone in her apartment. Dawn has probably been asleep for hours. She could curl up and fall asleep right there, but…
There are footsteps in the hall.
She rises slightly from the chair, her ears curving around the noise of heavy, clunking steps on the carpeted floor outside. She gets up. She can't see anything from the peephole. Cautiously, she undoes the lock just so she can peep out through the space the chain lock permits. Still, she can see nothing. She slams the door, unfastening the chain lock, throwing the door open wide. She hears a door slam up the hall. It was a neighbor, she comforts herself. It wasn't him.
Once the door is shut, she leans against it, breathing in deeply, exhaling slowly. He doesn't know where she lives. Yet. There is the strangest thrill in her when she thinks about the day when he'll find out, when he might confront her here, catch her unaware.
But for now, she is alone.
In the days that follow, the feeling of being alone is as completely foreign to Buffy as Icelandic currency.
The next night at the Bronze, the bartender tells her casually, "Your friend was back again tonight."
Friend? She thinks. Or fiend?
"What did he look like?" she asks breathlessly.
"I actually did good look at him this time," the bartender said. "About yea high," he says, indicating a height just above his shoulders. "But that's all I can tell you."
"You didn't see his face?"
"That was the weird thing about him. He was wearing a hooded cloak, like a monk."
"Then how do you know it was him?"
"The voice. It was the same British accent. Sounded like in the same breath he was using to order his drink he could just as well be insulting or threatening me."
Bingo, she says to herself.
"Where did he go?" she asks.
"Table five. Just the same as last night."
She peers over at the table. There's no one there. The table is empty. And so is the pint glass.
A man wearing a hooded cloak shouldn't be too hard to find in this crowd, she says to herself. But something tells her also he wouldn't make himself that obvious. She's going to have to search for him.
But all night, no one matching that description comes into view. It's the same crowd as last night. It's the same crowd as always. Anya, Xander, Willow, and Tara even stop by to tell her what a good movie they saw and how much they missed her.
The next night, she is asked to go into the walk in refrigerator to get some limes for the bar. It's a busy Saturday night and the kitchen staff is rushing around, slapping things on plates without looking and screaming orders. She is not acknowledged when she slips in the refrigerator door.
The inside is completely sealed off from any outside noise. She doesn't know where the limes are immediately. Nothing is ever in the same place twice. She notices a pan full of ground beef sitting right on the floor. Health violation, she thinks. She needs this job, so she stoops to pick it up and put it on one of the shelves. As she's doing this, she notices that the door handle is turning, very slowly.
Her hands are still gripping the pan. When the door suddenly swings open, she, drops the meat to the floor.
In from the fluorescent light of the kitchen, she can see it's the head cook. She scrambles for an explanation. "I'm sorry. I…I've been a little on edge lately," she says.
"You can take that out of my paycheck."
The cook studies her carefully for a minute, hands on hips. Then be bends and begins scooping up the meat by the fistful, cramming it back into the pan. "I wouldn't worry about it. The pan's probably no cleaner than the floor."
She notes to herself, I guess the threat of Mad Cow disease isn't the only reason to avoid the meat here.
The next night she goes down to the store room in the basement to get a can of bloody mary mix. This is something she's done literally hundreds of times alone, without thinking. But this night, she feels someone is tagging along, trailing her.
She's been scouting around all week for the hooded figure. And if such a person exists, he's blending better than one would think. Sometimes she thinks he would be easier to spot if the whole club turned out for "Dress Like A Monk" night.
But still, the presence is undeniable. Threatening. Exciting.
There are no footsteps behind her, just the semblance of a being, stalking her with a beastly shadow. As she descends the stairs, her heart begins to pound, not so much out of fear, but anticipation. If he's going to confront her now, it'll probably be here. And part of her hopes that this is where it all does come to a head. She's tired of waiting, tired of being viewed through the long-lens longing of this presence, tired of being played.
The basement is cold, tomb-like. Overhead the ceiling booms with the bass beats of the music being played on the floor above. Aside from that, she can hear her own breath, coming out in pants.
She is in the middle of the storeroom. She feels the air grab her bare arms. She allows herself to feel the presence. She wants it. She's calling to it by being alone, bating it. She's vulnerable now. She's JFK in the back of the limo in Dealy Plaza, moving slowly.
She calls his name. "Spike?" It comes out a lot softer than she has anticipated. She feels sort of foolish, like she's recalling the name of an imaginary friend she had when she was a child.
She licks her lips and is embarrassed to find they are trembling. Not with fright. She is not afraid. She has never been afraid of him.
"Spike?" she calls, louder this time.
A door opens somewhere upstairs. It is not the one to the basement, though. She hears footsteps, but they are en masse. It is the sound of a conglomeration of tracks being made as the DJ plays a record that summons everyone to the dance floor.
She is alone after all. The only other people are the ones upstairs, dancing.
Releasing a long-held breath, she grabs the bloody mary mix and heads upstairs.
But then comes Thursday.
Buffy was called in on her day off. This is enough to put her in a black mood, but it is made more intense by the fact that for almost a solid week she has been tracked by something she can't see. This soldier in the jungle pursued by the lurking Viet Cong routine is growing old and tonight she's ready to Napalm the place.
As she's loading up the tray for another walk-about through the bar, there is a break in the music.
"All right, all you Bronzers," the DJ says. His voice sounds strained, as though he has recently strangled on something and is trying to recover his breath. "I have just received a very special request. This is going out from S to B. Southside, by Moby with Gwen Stefani."
The beginning beats of the track fill the room, fill every inch of floor space, every molecule of air. In a short time, she is breathing the music. It is the only thing that is sustaining her and she feels a sudden light-headedness as she begins to sway as the light begins to fade in front of her eyes.
That memories of that night come rushing back to her with such intensity she feels she's right there again, in his arms. He wasn't taking no for an answer that night. He just took her. She remembers the sound the door made when it came open, the look in his eyes as he stood there, knowing that she would be his that night. And he knew this because the look she was giving him told him, yes, I will be yours.
They had experienced just one night. This song had played over and over while he touched her, while he explored the taste and feel of her skin. While he kissed her all over. While he entered her with the precision of a heat-seeking missile.
Without saying a word to the bartender, she abandons her tray and runs. She doesn't know where she's going and doesn't pay much heed to the bartender's increasingly hollow threats. She's got to find him. He's got to be there. This is his clue. He's ready to see her and he's ready to be seen.
But if this is the case, he is not being entirely forthright. Face after face turns to her in a gallery of looks that go from blank stares to frank peevishness. She is calling his name now. She doesn't feel so foolish now. She knows he's there. She knows it.
Show yourself, you bastard. Show me you're really here! Why are you doing this to me? Her mind screams as she races now, up the stairs, to the upper tier of the dance floor. It's darker up there, harder to see faces, place names to faces. She doesn't know a soul, though. Not a soul.
Where are you, you soulless bastard! You left me and now you've come back. Do you think I'll be mad at you? Do you think I'm going to stake you for leaving me and not even calling me to tell me where you were? I was expecting that.
She reaches for the stake concealed in the front pocket of her apron, jostling her tip money. Dollar bills rain at her feet as she tears down the second staircase, leading down to the lower floor.
People fly past her. She can't even see them anymore. The music blares. It is almost over. It's the last chorus. There will be no repeats on this one.
Buffy pushes her way through the fire exit and finds herself out in the cool night, in the shadows of the alleyway. Her heart is racing and she can't catch her breath. She backs up against the wall and slides all the way down to the pavement. She closes her eyes, dropping her head into her hands. There are a million thoughts coursing through her bewildered head. She is sick. Her stomach is in knots and she feels at any minute she's going to retch.
But suddenly, the shadow she has been feeling all week is right over her. It is right before her. She opens her eyes. Yes, he is there, right in front of her. He is no longer a shadow. He is real. His features are obscured by the darkness of the alleyway, but when he speaks, there is no doubt in her mind who the shadow is and for whom the shadow has come.
"Daddy's home," he says in a deep, teasing growl.
She gets to her feet slowly, scraping her back against the wall as she does. She doesn't know why she is so stunned. She has known all along that it had to be him, stalking her, crouching over her, making her doubt her sanity.
He opens his arms. She wants to be in his arms, so badly. She wants him to touch her, to hold her, to take her right there. But before she loses her head, before she lets desire take her down one more time, she feels her hand curl into a fist and connect with his nose.
He is cursing her now, holding his nose and stumbling in the dark. But he soon shakes it off, the pain, the humiliation. All with a smile.
"Not the welcome I was hoping for," he says.
"You told me you loved me," she says, punching him again. "So you had to leave me!" Her fist connects again with his nose. "Because you knew it wouldn't work out." And the second punch to the nose felt so good, there has to be a third in there somewhere. And there is. "You didn't write. You didn't call. You treated me just like you treated Harmony…" She stops to consider what she has just said and rage fills her to bursting. "And the fact that I just put myself in the same category as Harmony…" This one deserves a kick…where it hurts most. "Just exactly what were you expecting, Spike?"
"Oh," he says, still smiling through the hurt. "A little peck on the cheek. A little understanding. A little tenderness."
"You want tenderness? I'll tenderize you," she says, throwing another punch, this time across his back.
As he struggles to recapture the wind that has just left his lungs, he rises slowly from his crouched position. When he is finally able to speak, he says, "I didn't want to have to do this, but…"
She doesn't see his fist coming. But she feels it, all across her face, down deep beneath the bones. She's so shocked, she cannot speak; she cannot even begin to form any words except, "What the hell?"
She views him over her hands as she fans her fingers across her bruising flesh. He is smiling in his victory, loving the sight of her awareness that he's back in the game again.
"Guess what's not a problem anymore?" he asks teasingly.