Crossing into unchipped territory (4/?) by dutchbuffy2305
Rating: R
Timeline: Around AtS 5.09 or 5.10
Author's note: Big hugs to my wonderful betas, mommanerd, meko00, LadyAnne and Ayinhara.
Author's website: http://home.planet.nl/~dutchbuffy2305
Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk
"I loved you, you say," Spike says pensively and licks a drop of milkshake from his lips. "And you never loved me back, but you still kept me around all these years and didn't stake me?"
"Uh, yeah. Basically."
Spike watches the Slayer slurp hard to get the last dregs of her milkshake out of the cup. She glows from the shower and all that food she gobbled up, and she's looking very attractive and edible. He won't eat her, though. He's gonna kill her in a fair fight, and leave her dead. There's a Drusilla in her world, and he owes her for that. Still, he doesn't quite believe her story. It's too farfetched to be completely fabricated, but he's betting she's leaving a lot of stuff out.
She flicks him one of those absentminded but assessing looks. He thinks she's comparing him to the other Spike, and she keeps on doing it, probably without knowing it. Didn't love Spike back, huh? He knows she was hot for Angelus before he turned her, so it's not that far off the mark for this Slayer to go for a vampire, but still. Odd.
"So, what do you do all day? What does a Master Vampire occupy his time with?"
The Slayer is looking at him with a little devil in her eyes, taunting him a bit. It's almost like flirting. He likes it, even if she is the Slayer. Always her way, it is, getting in a quip rather than a kick. Although she was mighty fond of the kicking and the killing, too.
"Oh, you know, what does a man do? Hunt and feed at night, make up tasks for the minions, keep them good and scared."
"And by day?"
"Sleep, watch telly, fool around with the girls."
"How about making evil plans, ending the world?"
"What? I'm in it for the fun, love, not serving on someone's evil agenda." Christ. Who does she think he is, Hitler? What gave her such a skewed idea of what a vamp wants? His milksop alter ego he supposes. Can't imagine what got him into rooting for apocalypses, though.
"So you just kill for the thrill of the hunt and to feed?"
'Yeah. What other reasons are there?"
She shrugs. "I thought you might have dreams of killing and terrorizing whole cities…"
"Terrorizing sounds just dandy, pet, but no point in killing off the whole population, is there? The idea is to keep the humans oblivious, fat and happy, and then cull the herd."
"Cull? Ew. Thanks for making me feel like a cow. But I get it. The Happy Meals on Legs thing."
Nice turn of phrase, he admits. She sighs and tosses her hair. The light catches the vampire bite on her neck. He reaches over the table and touches the mark.
"That looks like one of Angelus's. Did you enjoy it?"
She freezes and looks at him like a frightened rabbit. He traces his thumb over her jaw and turns her head the other way. His finger finds another raised pair of bite marks.
"Turn a bit more into the light, love."
To his surprise, she does. He gets up so he can see and feel the mark better. He bends over and gives it a lick before she knows what's happening to her.
He sits back, greatly surprised. "Drac? You do get around, Slayer. Are there any famous vampires who didn't get a piece of you?"
A lovely flush, hot blood flooding to her cheeks, she looks utterly bitable at that moment.
"Just you," she says between clenched teeth.
"Ah."
Curiouser and curiouser. She rallies quickly though and gets back at him with an unerring stab at the wrinklies.
"Do you have a regular girlfriend?"
"None of your business."
"Do you still miss her? Drusilla?"
"What's this? Twenty questions? And a fine thing it is, you asking about her, when you were the one who killed her!"
He subsides and rubs his eyes. No, she wasn't. Still can't get his head around that bit. Or his heart, rather.
"So," she continues, "the Buffy in this world and you are not an item?"
"Christ, no. She's my minion. Won't say we haven't fucked occasionally, but she's not my type. Straight-laced little black and white bitch, she is."
The Slayer flushes again at that. Ha. He looks down at his hands to hide his smirk and sees he's been shredding the straw in to a little daisy shape. He crumples it and stuffs it in his paper cup.
"Do you make a lot of minions?"
"No," he says curtly. "Never liked doing that. Lot of bother, they are."
He needs to get back on topic. Hellmouths and whole towns sliding into a big hole, was it?
She nods understandingly and goes on, oblivious of his sudden fidgets. "Because of what happened with your mom. I get that."
He almost rips her head off right then and there. The paper cup crumples under his fists and he needs to get out of here now before he smashes the whole place. "You know nothing about me and my mother. Shut up."
He stalks out of the diner, Slayer irritatingly close on his heels, still yapping away.
"She loved you, you know. That was just the demon talking."
He throws himself behind the wheel and tears out of the parking lot, although the slippery bits of snow almost make them spin against a row of cars. The Slayer barely has time to close the door behind her. He can't believe she knows all that. He'd never so much as mentioned his mother to Drusilla again, who probably thought that was a good thing. His other self must have bared his soul to her, the git, laid it belly up and quivering below her feet. And he just knew she'd kicked it, taken a pleasure in grinding her heels into his soft underbelly. She's like that. And it wasn't true what she'd said. People are the same after they'd been vamped, just minus the inhibitions; she's a prime example herself. Righteous little Slayer, righteous little vamp.
Although here she is, looking cold and disapproving, but not so righteous that she isn't prepared to go gray by traveling with him for days. He shakes his head and stares at the road. If she opens her mouth he doesn't know what he'll do. Kill her probably. Bitch.
It's starting to snow again, and visibility gets worse and worse. The Slayer doesn't pay the roiling snowflakes much attention and starts yawning. After a bit of that she crawls over to the backseat. He eyes her curvy bum so close to his face and contemplates fucking it, sliding in and out that hot little cunt, but it's hard to imagine doing that without thinking of feeding. The Slayer removes the bum from his field of vision. She starts tossing and turning to find a comfortable spot and he hopes she drops off quick.
The snow is turning into a snowstorm now and driving slows to a crawl. They won't make Cleveland tomorrow at this rate. Sodding snow. Slayer almost made him feel like a domesticated idiot staying in California for so along, but there's good reason not to spend winters in Middle America. Iowa, hurry on up and slide by faster. Adair, Stuart, DeSoto. Hey.
At about five o'clock in the morning, when he hasn't covered more than 200 miles in seven hours, the engine gives up. He's an idiot, hanging on to an old car like that. He should have let the minions steal a new one, a SUV or something. Bugger. He's in the middle of nowhere, the last town twenty miles or so back. Not a car in sight, not a farm, nothing but roiling white closing in around the car, making the world small and confined. The Slayer snores on, oblivious. He lets her sleep. Fat lot of help she'll be in a bind like this.
He gets out of the car and roots around in the trunk. He thinks he remembers seeing a road map there a couple of years back. He does find it, but it's dated 1979 and has almost disintegrated. The only other things in the boot are an old burgundy velvet dress of Drusilla's that gives him a painful pang in the region where his heart used to be, and a blood spattered axe. He can't remember whom he killed with it.
He trudges back to the car. His short extravehicular activity has rendered him stone cold and covered in snow. The map is useless, not enough fine detail to make a guess at small towns or outlying farms nearby. He checks out the Slayer, who's curling up into a tight ball and shivering in her sleep. He tosses the dress over her shoulders, but knows it won't do much good in the long run. It must be below zero out there and she'll die if they don't get somewhere warm, because there's no telling how long the storm is going to last.
An hour till sunrise. He'll be safe from the sun as long as the snowfall continues, and he can always burrow into the snow if the sun decides to make an appearance. They have to strike out now, before the cold starts to get to the Slayer and renders her unable to walk.
He bends over to the back seat and shakes her awake. She gives him that unnerving sweet smile again before she's completely awake, then starts frowning and withdraws from his hands.
"Is it time already? It's still dark."
"The car broke down," he says. "We have to get walking before you freeze to death."
She's slow to take this in. "What?"
She looks outside and sees the white wall of snow and wind bearing down on them. "Shit. Can't you fix the car? We can't go out in this, we'll die."
"You'll die for sure if you stay in the car. If we walk you have a chance."
"Can't we wait for help? Can't you phone in or something?"
He just raises his eyebrows and looks at her. She sighs. "No cell phone, I guess. Mr. Technologically Challenged."
He fishes the cell phone out of his pocket and holds it up to her. Its battery is empty. He never had the car loader installed like he meant to.
She grimaces and rubs her face. Finally, she nods. "Okay."
She dons the stolen jacket, hat and mittens without another word on their being looted from a person he just killed. Very sensible of her. He gets back around the car and roots in the trunk for the piece of rope he noticed but didn't have any use for five minutes ago. He ties it around his waist and the Slayer's, despite her protests at being treated like a dog or a toddler.
Spike sets off on the road. He's betting on seeing a signpost for a town or a farm within a few miles. The map makes it seem as if this part of Iowa is scattered with small towns, and he hopes scattered doesn't mean fifty miles apart. It doesn't matter. Sitting in that car growing colder by the minute is sure death for the Slayer and he hasn't given up hope of reaching Cleveland sometime this week.
After a minute or so of leaning into the howling wall of the blizzard he turns around to see how far they've got. He can't see the car anymore. The Slayer bumps into him and sputters a bit about it, but he's concentrating too hard to pay attention to her. They have to stay on the road or perish.
There is no time anymore. There is just a faint rhythmic strengthening and abating to the onslaught of snow in his face, as if the wind is a frosty giant's breath, a giant who needs to inhale every now and then. Hundreds of these polar breaths have gone by when he bumps into something. He can't see a thing; it's either still night or he is snow-blind, but his hands feel the shape of a mailbox. A strip of skin tears off, he shouldn't have touched the metal thing, but he doesn't feel it. He takes a sharp right and strides south into the white maw of nothingness, hoping the farmer has put his drive at a perfect straight angle to the road. The Slayer trips and falls when the rope tangles with the mailbox post. They are both slow and stupid and it takes a while before they're straightened out again.
Spike's set his mind far ahead, expecting a long traipse, so the sudden appearance of a screened porch about six feet from his face is a surprise.
He raps sharply on the door. Only then do the Slayer's mitts land on his back.
"Why are we stopping?"
He can hardly understand what she's saying, her teeth are rattling so hard. She must be seeing even less than he is.
"There's a farm here. We're going to ask for shelter."
The Slayer, who he thought was practically comatose, yanks on his duster lapels and brings his face close to hers. He can't see much of her except the lilac tip of her nose, but she's probably directing a stern, forbidding expression at him.
"One thing, Spike! You're not eating these people, understood? I want your word of honor on this. And let me do the talking."
"You think I didn't learn some tricks to get in a house in the past hundred-odd years?"
She snorts. "Do you have any idea what you look like right now? Bela Lugosi looked healthy next to you."
"Hey! You check the color of that Barbra Streisand thing on your face lately? It's probably frozen and it's gonna turn black and drop off!"
For a moment he thinks she's gonna cry, and it would be interesting to see what would happen with tears in this temperature. She shakes her head and lifts her nose higher. She'd be almost cute if she didn't remind him so much a certain vampire named Buffy. Spike, we need to concentrate on doing serious evil. Spike, we're not in it for fun and games. He is his own man, evil to the core, and no little chit is going to tell him otherwise.
"And you'd accept my word, Slayer? How come?"
"I've seen you keep it," she says levelly.
How strange that she'd trust him. He really ought to disabuse her of trusting vampires, for her own good, but he nods and holds up his hand, which is an interesting shade of blue gray.
In spite of her fighting words the Slayer is so weary that he's practically propping her up. Her threats don't pack much punch now. Still she insists on pretending to take charge.
"Is there anything else about this world I need to know? Is America still America? Not invaded by demons or anything?"
"Bit late with that, aren't you? No, I defeated and killed everything that might have ended the world, and I think I would have noticed if it had."
The inner door is opened and securely closed behind a thickset man in pajamas, a robe and a down jacket. He opens the screen door and looks down at them.
"What have we here?"
"Sir?" the Slayer says politely, although the effect is a bit ruined by her stiff cheeks and chattering teeth. "Our car broke down. Could we please use your phone and wait inside for the tow truck?"
"Tow truck?" The farmer looks at them as if they're insane. "Ain't no truck gonna come out and rescue you in this weather. Come on in, I wouldn't leave a dog outside in this." He hands them a sturdy brush. "Here. Get that snow off you so you don't ruin the carpet."
"Does this mean you can get in the whole house now?" the Slayer hisses at him in an undertone. Single-minded, that's what she is. Thinking like the Slayer even in a situation like this, although you could call them rescued by now, he reckoned.
"Mother!" the man calls out. "We've got visitors!"
The clock in the hall strikes eight o'clock. It's a scary thought that he hasn't even been able to tell that the sun has long since risen. A stout woman, comfortably bundled up in trousers and a thick home-knit sweater pads down to them. Her beady eyes rake him over critically. He looks away from her inquisitive gaze, not caring to reveal his predatory eye, and surreptitiously inhales the musty lived-in smell of the house. Doesn't seem to be more than two people living here, middle-aged people, cough drops, liniments, yesterday's cooking, and a faint trace of incense.
"I'm Nancy Andersen, and that fool man over there, because I bet he hasn't introduced himself yet, is John." She waits for a few seconds and then asks, with a hint of asperity, "And what are your names?"
"I'm Buffy Summers and this is…Spike," the Slayer says quickly.
"Hi, Mr. Summers, hi, Buffy."
This trick seldom fails, and the presence of the Slayer only makes it more believable. People always let stranded travelers in their houses, especially if there is bad weather, and many were the farmers who'd regretted letting him and Dru in. Andersen looks at him sharply and distrustfully, no doubt because bleached hair and black leather aren't exactly acceptable outside of New York, but he can distrust all he want, there's nothing the man can do now, he's in. Too bad he's so old. Doesn't seem like there are any nubile daughters, and him a veal kind of man. Not that the Slayer will let him, and he promised. He still can't believe that she accepted his word, but the worst is that he knows he'll keep it.
TBC