Closet of Publicity
Spike squeezes my hand asking a multitude of silent questions. I do not look back to see his fury swathed face. I just yank harder on his hand, tramping us through the tipsy dancers, past the crowded tables, past the restrooms, and to-
He brutally jerks my body into his clutches. My jaw drops open in protest, and his rough hand clamps securely over it. Eyes wide, I spew out incoherent cries of anger through his palm. His grip upon me suddenly transforms into an unbearable taut one with each muffled word I expel. This would be how our first meeting would go, knowing my world record of un-luck. Swerved from sexy and heated to what is turning out to be a maniacal kidnaping . . . without the kid part.
As my attempts to talk and brutal wiggling to release myself turn up totally futile, I obediently and utterly allow him to drag my weary body into a janitor's closet. Ensnared once again, Buffy. Oh, but I have a trick up my sleeveless, barely breathable corset. Yeah, that's just how good I can be.
The closet is engulfed in thick blackness, which is momentarily blinding my sight. He flips me around so I face him in this cleaner-chemical intoxicated, lingering scent of old mop water, smelly pit of stagnant air. Odd dripping sounds (note: should inform Tara to get that fixed) flow around my ears, along with me and Spike's labored breathing, and a wall of steel shelves are burrowing into the back of my body. Ow-ness. No doubt producing ugly red lines and dents in my flesh.
I grope my way around; grazing over all there is Spike, more shelves behind him cluttered with a Shop Rite shelf amount of cleaner bottles, folded rags, a wooden mop shaft, and finally what I was presuming I would find- the light switch-which Spike already has his fingers wrapped around.
"Uh uh, darlin'." Spike harshly declares in this literal void where there is only Spike and I. "I do the gentlemanly 'onors."
"Yanking us both in a janitor's closet is not on my list of gentlemanly honors." I spit the words precisely in my best all together born and bred American accent, my exaggerated poke at his British upbringing. "More like an attempt at murder by sharp shelves," I gesture to the shelves making crude lower case l's in my back, "or rape with a kinky sharp shelve fetish. Either way you look at it . . . " My eyes search for his in the dark to glare needle point stakes, but alas it's just to dark. ". . . it files under not of the good."
With an infuriated growl he tugs at the beaded cord, causing it to sway and clang against the naked light bulb rhythmically. Light is back in session. Our eyes adjust to the brightness after a couple of zillion blinks. My knee positions itself under his groin and bam! he gets what he deserves right at the sweet spot.
Spike's eyes comically bulge and a tremendous groan escapes his lips. His hands crazily release me to cup his now-presumably throbbing-package as if to protect it from another onslaught. His groans gradually decline to pathetic whimpers. That strong face is flushed to a baby pink. My smirk donning my mouth is over abundantly flooding with joy. Go, Buff, standing tall for yourself. Women around the world, be proud.
Triumphant words spring loose. "Rude bastard."
He is now doubled over up against the other shelf. Oh yes, feel the burrowing! Time flies by, my smirk wavering as sweat busts out over his frame, and his whimpers become strained gasps. Did I hit that hard?
"Oh . . . balls." He rasps.
I take that as the indication he's somewhat lucid again.
"Hey Spikey, let us start anew." I tranquilly bend over him, eyes now encased with honesty instead of mirth. "I feel we got off on the wrong leg." My next words are whispered in kinder tones. "Come on, how about it? Let's forget about that pesky leg and move on with our hands? Legs are faulty, anyway."
Yes, yes, I cave. I need him. And can not lose him to this frivolous escapade. More fear seeps into my thought process like needle to a vein-rapid and dramatic. He has to help me. He has to. He just has to. He can't really focus on this one kneeing in the balls incident forever, resenting me with a truck load of mistrust and distaste.
Can he?
Salty tears bombard my eyes at his asshole self for in the first place shoving me in here, triggering me to knee him so hard that he is almost comatose, which places me carefully on the hop scotch box with the word FAILED chalked boldly in the middle.
I have failed before I have truly begun.
"Spike?" I plead, "Get up!" I wrench on his arm and lend my support of his weight as he oh so slowly comes to his on two feet again, while striking up my sarcastic voice, sounding a bit shaky by fear, though. "Why did you have to go and drag us in here, anyway? I swear, this is not a good start to a healthy partnership."
"Bugger, did I reasonably deserve that, you twat?" He hoarsely inquires.
Silence grows thick. All I seem to focus on is his gradually steadying breaths. Uh, hmm. That was a tidal wave of a mistake. It probably wiped out my chance . . . My eyes seek his, pleading with him to deduce how sorry I utterly am. He takes one glance at my watery hazel eyes, that are deeply expressing my apology, yanks his head back while releasing a sigh with a roll of his eyes, and whispers in the tiniest voice, almost if he doesn't want me to hear, "Not again . . ."
A jagged breath is drawn, and exhaled just as jaggedly, coaxing the tears to buckle, my eyes fruitfully lock on his, our faces centimeters away. "Promise me you will see this through, through to whatever fated end?" Abruptly, to further his rising puzzlement, I slump into his arm, my head nestling into his shoulder as if I am but a frightened child and he is my real mother with all the cures to my ever aliment I have contracted. "I am so scared, Spike. So mega-like scared that I will be Angel's Buffy for life." A feminine sob of desperation accompanies my next words. "Spike, I am trapped in this cycle labeled my life . . .
". . . and I hate it down to the S.T.D. checks I make myself get at least once a week, the constant achy-ness that lives between my thighs, and, and, and all the plastic pregnancy tests I have piled in my garbage." The current of my tears amplify to that of a colossal broken dam. "You will help kill this me, Spike? You will help kill this life of mine, too?" I repeatedly sniffle back the ominous wads of snot. "Spike . . ." My voice transports me into a little 5-year-old girl. "I am so scared of losing you, too. So scared that you will abandon this fragile women you have just met back to the dogs . . . and not help one bit."
I swallow before trudging back to my earlier words:
"Promise me."
He tenderly plucks my face from his shoulder, scrutinizing me with his electric azure eyes, soaking in every word and flipping it over, gazing sideways, cutting them in half, to piece together the exact meanings. My body quakes in regret of my heartfelt, but foolish words. How will he see me now? Some clingy bitch trying to weasel her way out of her wrought in life with baby tears and whiny pleas?
I surely have failed.
More tears ensue.
"I promise." He solemnly coos, swiping aside the new tears, head tilted in fierce concentration, and then he coos it again, forcing me to believe my ears weren't lying to stop the waterworks because of a message from my puffy eyes. "I promise."
The ocean of fear from before resides.
"My knight is sexy dead cow hide." I bubbly exclaim, eyes bright with immense satisfaction and comprehension of my willing debt, a wistful smile on my lips, hands cupping his face a little to tightly in the affectionate, but bothersome way old grandmothers do when first seeing you after a few years, and leisurely shaking it.
His hands seek mine that are lying over his cheeks and gently grasps them. "I'm not here to be your knight in," He fiddles with my recent words, "dead sexy cow hide." The words sound unsure and raring to be proven positively wrong.
Hey, I can rise to this bait. Looks tasty enough.
I softly sniffle, the second to last sign of my previous regretful-murderer-confessing-like crying episode, before cheekily stating, "But Bleach Boy, you sure are acting like one."
"Only 'cause if we beat these odds, and come out not too banjaxed, dead, or worse, it will feel like I'm rescuing you."
He skids my hands from off his face and coyly interlocks our fingers. Leaning upon me he crushes us together once more, our hands holding comfortably behind me, like a couple of swooning teenagers preparing for their first kiss.
I weakly giggle on behalf of his comments and the other half for the amusement of this wacked up situation. "You are rescuing me, silly."
Could it be that from this short experience with each other we are touched in a place we both thought gone cold and black? I haven't felt so high above my anvil life problems since that one drunken stupor when I compared it to a corpse . . . which doesn't even have a life, let alone problems, unless you count maggots. Enclosed in Spike I am a different Buffy. A Spike's Buffy that suits me beyond terrifically well.
This Buffy brought forth because of Spike feels as if the world has turned upside down, and night is day, south is north, frowns are smiles, death is life, all is equal, all is right, and specifically me. This me is only Spike's for it has never reared its carefree laughter and dazzling smiles without slight paranoia, suicidal whims, and veins full of depression until here and now. Alone with him I am the way I have yearned to be-strong, independent, cocky, brash without it being duty to the job. Outside of our private world I am aspiring to be what I seem to be accomplishing with Spike at this very moment.
Ironic, mainly. Evilly cruel, mostly. Kind of odd, a little. Scary, non.
"Buffy . . ." He begins out of the serene blue, gulping hard to make his Adam's apple bob, affecting a dreading knot in my stomach. "How do you know 'bout Silver Panther?" His eyes dart to and fro, sliding from one of my eyes to the next, searching, scrounging, sternly anxious. "Did, did Dru ever speak to you, cryptically babbling; and by some bleedin' miracle you frankly understood the chit?" Spike gulps once more. His stance is like he is walking on mental thin ice with cracks that have already been there and is making newer ones unintentionally, while trying to evade all the danger zones. And as if . . . he is conflicted on his own feelings, which are swerving his tone. First he sounds hurting, then mad, then straight back to hurting. "Did she, Buffy?
"Or do you know another way?"
I open my dry mouth to respond in an outraged voice. "I have never even met your brain dead," I fumble a bit on my word flow, knowing I have backed myself in a corner . . . awkwardly I continue, "dead Drusilla, so it was by another way I snagged this info. I have other people to get stuff from. I am not out of the loop. I, I, I am the loop!"
Spike's eyes are boyishly pleading, oceanic in its swirling color, unfazed by my heightened voice and piercing words. "How?"
With the sharp pinching nails of pity slashing into my flesh, bringing forth welts of urge, I bluntly speak in soothing styles. "Tara's girlfriend, my female best friend-Willow-had a horror flick of a dream. Something straight of VaRuka the Vampire Slayer. In this dream there was blood and tears, ensnaring shadows, a villain, and a sleek Silver Panther, the hero of it all.
"And this Silver Panther struck me as you incarnate, just lacking the duds i.e. silver fur. But you have the silver hair, sleek feline grace, same exact role of hero, and something that . . . .that, that screams the Silver Panther to all my senses." I end my lame speech with a closing of the distance of our lips.
Holy cow. I really just did that.
In a split-second he retaliates with equal lunatic devotion. Our mouths are plundered to their watery depths with critical thoroughness, tongues tasting and caressing with positive reactions, eyes closed fiercely to only focus on our senses. He frees my hands, promoting them to squeeze and rub over every piece of his flesh, and vice versa, as if mapping our bodily features. By two minutes later he has me pitching loud moans and grinding along side him.
Oh, Goddess-whoa, to much time spent with Willow-he is actually responding, knowing my sleazy job, my demanding job. Doesn't he realize that I'm chronically used, a filthy floozy, nothing but a barely tight, overly pawned, overly entered, disgrace of a woman? Spike, can't you realize? Can't you taste some of it in my mouth? The permanent taste of other's cum. Can you feel it with your hands? The engraved scars of other's hands. Can you smell it all around me? The scent of so many other sweaty men. Can you fucking see it with your own to eyes?
I AM A STUPID WHORE!
Author's Note: I got this chapter down so quick after reading all the reviews for the last one. Damn. Reviews literally speed up the writing process, and not just feed the ego. *hint, hint* ALSO! My attention is now divided between my writing class project, a Dracula short story, and my new BtVS fanfic (non AU called "Now Hero Anon"), so if this one doesn't get updated in the next two weeks, MORE REVIEWS, or me just busy. Hehe. Hope you liked this chapter's ending. I know I did.