Change your shape, change your destiny (2/?), by dutchbuffy2305
Rating: R
Spoilers: S4
Author's note: This takes place just before the Season 5 opener.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Joss
Author's website:
Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk
Spike sauntered happily through the center of Sunnydale, taking in the sun and the sight of anxious, bewildered people shuffling about with relish. It wasn't as if he'd like to do this everyday, he was a vampire and happy to stay that way, thank you very much, but a bit of change now and then never did a bloke anything but good. He was tall and good-looking, in an earnest, boring kind of way, and he planned to make use of it as long as he could. It was pretty odd, considering, but he trusted the Slayer and her gang to make and end to this double-quick, so he'd better hurry.
Now where could the Slayer be? Whatever body she'd be in, she'd be sure to make her way as fast as she could to the Watcher's silly shop, so there must be something stopping her. He laughed out loud when a happy thought struck him. Perhaps she was stuck in a vampire body – wouldn't that be priceless?
Spike couldn't understand why her fuzzy pals hadn't seen through the deception – whoever was claiming to be the Slayer wasn't doing a particularly stellar job of it by any means. He shrugged. They'd find out in their own good time – no need to be too helpful, was there? Evil vampire after all.
He struck out towards his own cemetery. He'd try there first, and then check out Harm's lair. Scare a couple of decent citizens who were no doubt cowering there, wondering what the hell had happened to them. The cemetery was looking very nice in sunlight, what with the green grass and all the pretty flowers. The stone could use a scrubbing, though, all that mossy marble was a disgrace. A sudden, half-remembered urge came upon him, and to his surprise his body still knew exactly how to do it. He sprayed a marble angel thoroughly, see if the moss would survive a healthy dose of Iowa pee.
"Hullo!" he caroled sweetly into the open door of his crypt. "Anybody ho-ome?" There was no reaction. His guts clenched unpleasantly in sudden fear. What if some clueless human hadn't realized he or she was a vampire and had stepped out into the morning sun? He searched the threshold for traces of dust, but found none. Spike stood up and strode off, a new purpose in his steps. He needed to find his own body, keep it safe and sound against the return of his, um, personality. Never mind the Slayer or any of the other little friends. Spike himself was much more important.
"Harm? Harmony?"
The sounds of sobbing ceased. "Who's there?" Harmony's voice answered uncertainly.
"A friend," Spike improvised and advanced cautiously into the lair. The place was in a state, but that was normal for Harmony, who'd never adjusted to her maid-less vampire state in that way. She sat dejectedly on the frilly bed, un-made up and uncombed. Hmm. Spike guessed her present inhabitant might be male. He kind of liked Harmony in her natural state, so to speak, she looked very young and vulnerable that way. He might as well give it a little try. The odds were that the person in there wasn't another vampire and wouldn't know, or at least wouldn't realize what to do with a vampire bod.
"You look good enough to eat, Harm," he said with his most winning smile and sat down close to her.
"Riley!" she squeaked and scooted away from him a little.
"You know me?" Spike said, and inched closer again. "Than you also know also that I'm a good guy and would never harm you in any way…"
Harmony nodded, but nevertheless moved a bit more to her left, finally ending up against the headboard. Spike followed, so that she was effectively trapped between his body and the bed.
It was fun, Spike decided, being so big and all. He was absolutely looming over poor Harm, or whoever was in there, and he liked it. He put his big hand on Harmony's cool thigh.
"How about it, hon?" he said. "Why don't you tell me what has you all hot and bothered…"
Harmony pushed off Spike's hand several times, but Spike wasn't to be deterred so easily. Eventually she let the hand lie on her thigh, but started squirming and panting uneasily, apparently quite affected by Spike's hand and its actions. "Why do you have an English accent?"
Christ. Was the person in there also limited to Harm's brain size or was he or she simply just as dumb?
"Why not?" he murmured and gave Harm's left breast a firm squeeze. The, presumably male, person in there had obviously forgotten to put on a bra.
Harmony sighed and pushed her breast against his hand, but then changed her mind and tried to crawl away from him. Spike pushed her down on the bed and started unbuttoning her blouse. She tried to swat away his hands, but used no more power than a real girl might have if she didn't mean it.
"Please, don't!" Harmony begged. "I'm a boy, this is wrong! Please! Oh! Stop! Yes, right there…I mean, stop! I'm not gay!"
"Of course not," Spike rumbled into her stomach. "Nor am I! You're a girl now. A once-in-a lifetime chance. Enjoy it. Learn something. Think of how you can surprise your girlfriend…"
He slowly drew her pants' zipper down, and followed its trajectory with his now hot tongue, knowing the effect of that heat on a vampire. Harmony arched off the bed and moaned throatily.
A vampire's easy arousal was clearly affecting the person in there, and pretty soon Spike didn't give a damn who it was, and could only concentrate on the delightful contrast of cool vampire skin and tongue to his own warm body. He peeled Harmony's clothes off slowly, keeping her interested by licking and pinching. Making love to a body with someone else in it was an interesting experience, he thought, as he slid Riley's respectably proportioned cock inside. Riley's body started to sweat and pant, just like this morning with Buffy's body, and Spike felt a tingle of worry in the back of his mind. The body was human, and limited. How many times could he do it before the Scoobies changed everyone back? Maybe only four or five times. Damn, he'd have to be picky. Well, after he finished with Harm here.
God, this was so different from making love to a warm human being. The contrast the memory of Buffy's body made to Harm's cool and slowly warming body was huge. The coolness, combined with the slickness of her passage made for a really tantalizing experience. Too bad there wasn't a human girl available as well, so he could dip in hot and cold at turns. Damn Harm, who would only do it with one Charlize Theron, who would probably not be available. There had to be a girl somewhere who looked just enough like her to convince Harm, who wasn't that sharp.
He brought Harmony to a screaming climax a couple of times – he'd never known her to be so loud and easy–, and wasn't at all prepared for the teeth that sank into his neck at the last one, just as he was coming himself.
"Aaargh!" he screamed, completely surprised, but unable to move as an orgasm of triple intensity thundered through his body. The urge to give over and let go was impossibly hard to resist, and only his detailed knowledge of what a vampire was and did enabled him to push Harmony off in time. He slumped down on the bed and felt for the neck wounds gingerly. Perhaps he should have Riley vamped, as a nice surprise for the Slayer? Nah. He was having too much fun today, and being vamped would incapacitate him for days. And who knew what would happen with another demon into the mix? Better not. He shook off the human drowsiness was stealing over him and got up to get dressed. He had evil to do, and people to harass.
"Why are you leaving?" Harmony asked. "Aren't you going to help me?"
"No, why would I do that?" Spike said, puzzled.
"Because I thought you were strong and manly and a good guy!" Harmony said, deeply indignant, on the brink of tears again.
"Well, Harris, now that you've been able to live out your fantasies about big strong men from Iowa, it's time to realize that Riley's left the building. Everybody's changed bodies, you nit!" Spike snarled.
He shrugged on his duster and left. He turned and called out an afterthought to the stunned boy on the bed. "Tell Willow to keep an eye on the Slayer, she's not who she seems to be!"
Back on the streets again. It was still morning, and a peculiar feeling was starting to plague his stomach. He was probably going to have to eat, if he wanted to keep going all day. Being human was so labor-intensive. He spotted the Espresso Pump's sunny terrace, marked a place in his mind and ordered coffee and pie at the counter.
The waitress stared at him. "Small, medium, large?"
"Large," he said, speculating on the size of his stomach.
"With or without?" she continued, staring off into the distance.
"What? With or without what?" Spike said, baffled. How hard could it be to get coffee?
"Caffeine, sir."
"With!"
"With or without milk, low fat or not, extra milk, foam, cream, mocha, chocolate?"
"Shut up!" Spike roared. He lunged over the counter and grabbed the girl by her neck. "Just get me a nice, normal cup of coffee and bring it out there, okay?"
The girl nodded silently, her eyes huge. "Yes, sir!"
Spike stalked off to his chosen chair and with one bark chased away the woman that had dared sit down there in the meantime. The waitress brought his coffee within a minute.
"Hey!" Spike said when she walked off. "A piece of pie and something big and sweet with chocolate and cream, too!"
"Yes, sir!"
That was more like it. Spike took a sip of his coffee, and sighed deeply. Being human wasn't so bad, with the right attitude. Almost like having his own minions again. Sometimes he missed them. They were a pain in the ass, usually, but there was something satisfying in working out your anger on a subservient being. He missed that. Maybe he could make Harris his minion, now that he knew his weak spot. He grinned. Who'd have thought that Captain Cardboard made Harris' knees tremble? Must be all that manliness and decent living. Ha! There were endless blackmail possibilities. He sighed again. This was fun, all this mayhem and chaos, just like the old days.
His eyes roved idly over the passing crowds. They were very small crowds, even for Sunnydale. Only natural, everyone being all confused and scared. The real surprise was that there were some people who had actually gone to work as usual. Human beings could be pretty tough, Spike thought.
He spotted an ancient lady on the sidewalk, making her way to the crossing with agonizing slowness. Spike knew that in this day and age someone looking like that might be over eighty or even ninety, while in his time a woman would have looked like that a fifty or sixty. He was grateful for the little reminder of human mortality as he watched her shuffle along. Otherwise he might be in danger of becoming too fond of the pleasures of the human body. This was how the humans ended, feeble and ugly, and it was not what his planned future looked like. When Harris would be ending his days in an indigent old people's home, suffering the indignities of bedpans and such, he'd be chipless and free, slaughtering people all over the world, as beautiful as ever.
Feeling pleasantly filled up, Spike got up and walked off slowly, trying to think where he could possibly find his own body. He couldn't think of anything, except walking through all of Sunnydale and knocking on every door, a totally pointless exercise. He stood at the curb to let a nearly empty bus pass, and felt a faint tug at his sleeve. The ancient lady was looking up at him with a huge, loose-dentured smile.
"Riley!" she said in a creaking, trembling old-lady voice. "My Riley! I'm so happy to see you! I really need to get somewhere, but my legs won't work so well today. You can give me a hand!"
Spike looked down at her in stupefaction. From the tiny prunes of her weak eyes stared unmistakably the spirit of the Slayer.
"Slayer?" he stammered.
She swatted him playfully, her touch as insubstantial as a caress. "Silly! Call me Buffy, like always! Now give me your arm and help me cross the street. The light keeps changing on me."
In shock Spike extended his arm and waited for her to put her trembling arm, weighed down by a huge purse, in his. After she'd tried a few times to lift her arm that high, he picked hers up and deposited it in the crook of his elbow. The light was red again.
"You see?" she said, and pointed her crooked little claw at the light. "Red again."
Spike stared at the lights and back at her wrinkled, shrunken face and the scant bluish hair on her scalp. Okay, he got the body change, but why the hell was the Slayer acting like a demented old lady? Because she was in the body of one? That was a downright scary thought! If he had Riley's mental shortcomings to deal with as well as his body, he really needed to get out of there fast. He'd better get back to the Magic Box and help the Scoobies out in earnest. The thought that he might not be quite himself anymore was utterly terrifying.
He picked up Buffy under his arm and ran across the street. To the shop and quickly. Buffy squealed and giggled in her scratchy ancient voice and pinched his butt. It was deeply disturbing. Halfway to his destination he stood stock-still and set the old woman down with a thump. He already was mentally challenged! Here he was, with the Slayer in his arms, completely helpless, and the thought of killing her entered his mind only now. He looked at the dry, turkey-like folds of her thin neck and imagined squeezing it, or twisting it. It held no appeal. Sinking in his fangs? He didn't want to go there at all. The only way he wanted to kill the Slayer was in a rousing fight, blood and fangs and no holds barred. With a frustrated shake of his head he picked her up again and strode on.
"You're my stud! You're my goer! I'm gonna ride you all night!" she yelled playfully, and tried pinching him again. Spike almost thwapped her firmly, but he was too afraid to break her. He knew the Scoobies wouldn't like that.
Spike was deeply grateful that he was a) not in his own body, and b) everyone was too miserable themselves to be interested in somebody else's misfortune, like being sexually molested by someone your grandmother's age. He gritted his teeth and walked faster.
He kicked the door of the Magic Box open, and found everyone in the exact same positions he'd left them in, bent over crumbly tomes and probably bored to death.
"Honey, I'm back!" he called out, "and guess who I found?"
Triumphantly he held the old lady aloft. She squealed happily at being held up in the air so high, and gripped his arms with her feathery grey hands.
"Is that Xander?" Giles asked and tripped over to them in his Mary-Janes and little yellow skirt to peer into the old woman's eyes.
"Silly!" the old woman crowed merrily and tried to swat archly at Giles. She missed, and nearly tumbled out of Spike's arms. "Duh! I'm Buffy, of course. Riley helped me get here, because the lights were red all the time."
"Buffy?" Giles' voice echoed with surprise. They all turned their heads to where Buffy, or the person who'd pretended to be Buffy had been sitting, but she had disappeared. Willow gasped and pointed at the empty chair.
"She's gone, Giles!" she cried out.
"We should have tested everyone before we accepted who they were," Anya snapped. "Now I could have told you what Xander likes best in bed so you would have been sure I was who I said I was. How can we be sure you are Willow?"
"Are you sure this is Buffy?" Giles asked doubtfully, ignoring the tiff at the table.
Spike put the old woman on her feet and knelt down in front of her. He put his big finger under her fragile chin and looked at her seriously. "Why don't you tell the sweet little girl what your name is?"
"I'm Buffy. Buffy the Vampire Slayer! What's your name, sweetie?" she said to Giles, and pinched his cheek.
Giles clenched his teeth and moved his face out of her reach with a jerk. He said, "Buffy, this is Giles. We have all been magicked into different bodies. Do you remember what happened?"
Ancient Buffy stretched out a trembling hand and looked at it vaguely. "It looks fine to me?" she tried gamely, obviously trying to please.
"I'd say the Slayer is out for the game, Watcher," Spike said impatiently. "Doesn't remember a thing and has no inhibitions left. I knew the impostor wasn't the real article as soon as I heard him say a few words. That's our man, don't you think? The one who did all this bloody magic?"
Gils wrenched his attention away from Buffy, who'd started to sway a little and whose head was drooping.
"Yes, yes, you're right. We've got to find him, whoever he is." He scratched his head absent-mindedly and moved automatically to the research table,
"How old do you think she is?" Spike asked idly. "Let's hope she doesn't die on us!"
TBC