Crossing into unchipped territory (6/?) 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:
Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk
The sun sets and Spike wakes up, deliciously warm, pressed up against a softly breathing bundle of blood and bones. This is the kind of waking up he likes. Breakfast in bed. The tremor of blood rushing under Buffy's silky skin is tantalizing, and his hard-on against her flannel-covered bum makes for a perfect combination. Spike decides that he's going to keep his prey alive a little longer in the future now and then, just for the pleasure of waking up like this. He buries his nose deeper in her fragrant hair and gives an experimental lick along the top of her spine. Buffy sighs softly but doesn't wake up. He starts to pull up the long nightgown, softly humping his cock between the cleft of her buttocks. He can hear her heart rate accelerate, she's going to wake up any moment now, he'd better be quick. The gown bunches around her middle and he slides in a finger first to test the waters. She's wet and shivers around his finger. With a start she wakes up.
"Wha?"
Fuzzy and sweet. He might just get lucky. Then a Slayer-powered elbow in his solar plexus disabuses him of that notion and he sits back laughing and coughing at the same time.
"Thought you wouldn't let me get this far, Slayer. You sleep pretty deeply. What were you dreaming of?"
She's beet-red and almost speechless with fury.
"How dare you? How dare you?"
He grins and leans back in the pillows, well aware of the picture he makes against the gingham sheets. He pushes down the comforter and takes his hard cock in his hand, pleasantly stimulated by the glare of the blushing Slayer, so angry she gives off waves of heat against his sensitive skin. She gapes at him.
"You're going to do that right next to me? Are you out of your mind?"
He thinks briefly and shakes his head. "Don't think so. Got to get my jollies some way, don't I, now that you're not obliging?"
"'You're the crassest, crudest, most insensitive thing ever!" she stammers out and flounces out of the bed angrily, flashing him some golden thigh and cheeks.
"You've known me for, what, six years, and you haven't come to that conclusion yet?
"I guess not!" she says with averted head and bangs off, in search of the bathroom he supposes.
It's easy to imagine the velvet heat he'd felt around his finger for a moment around his dick instead and he's shooting into his hand when the Slayer storms back in, shouting something and yanking on his arm.
"Stop playing with yourself, Spike, something's wrong. The lights don't work and there is no hot water or anything."
He glances up and blinks a few times to get his eyes to focus. The room is lit, but not by the fringed lamp overhead. The drapes aren't drawn, and outside all is black and grey whirling endlessly around itself. A glow seems to emanate from the walls and floors themselves. He just needs a moment to get back some control over his limbs and then he'll get up and kill somebody.
"Let's get dressed, Spike. I've got a feeling about this. How come we slept the day away? And us in one bed? That never would have happened if I'd been normally tired."
She's right about that. He gets out of bed and reaches for his borrowed clothes. He turns around to watch Buffy dress; Slayer's too distracted to care about showing off just about everything to him. Nothing he hasn't seen many times before, but it's different when it's a live body and can blush in shame or arousal.
She catches him looking and turns around angrily. Her bottom is just as edible as her tits and it's nice to get a good eyeful, but it's mightily strange that the idea of staking him never seems to cross her mind. After all, he never sleeps without a stake nearby in case one of his minions gets uppity, and her alter ego is the one he's most wary of. It's an odd sensation to be trusted so much. He doesn't think it's ever happened to him before. It's not a good thing, mind you, makes a bloke soft, makes him weak. The only person you can trust is yourself.
The Slayer comes up to him and thrusts her hand in his left pocket, an action so surprising he almost takes it for an attack and is whirling halfway across the room preparing for a kick when he sees her bemused face and her hand holding up his lighter.
"Geez, Spike, jumpy much? I thought we might need this in case the magic lighting fails."
"Right! Good thinking, Slayer," he says, a little embarrassed. Crazy bint. Knows what he keeps in his pocketses, even, if that doesn't mean they had a thing he'll eat his hat. "You'll be needing the light, while I will be able to see everything."
"Yeah," she says, distracted. She's staring down at her feet, where, now that she's alerted him to it, her own tracks can be seen crisscrossing each other in a thick layer of velvety dust. "Ew. How about the bed?" She steps over to it and slaps the comforter. Great clouds of dust billow up and a hole appears in the cover. It disintegrates under her hand. "And I slept under that? How come I didn't freeze to death?"
"That's because I was keeping you warm," he says quickly. "Foregoing my natural disgust at sleeping with a human being for the mission."
"Hah. Keeping me warm with the heat of your ice cold vampire feet? I don't think so."
They've started moving as they speak, and he holds the door for her automatically. She stops and crosses her arm across her chest.
"Just this once I'll allow you to go first, Spike. Be my guest."
Well, well, who's being all perky and witty here? A far cry from the tired woman who sat next to him, slumped and despondent. Adversity agrees with her. Which surprises Spike, because he got the distinct impression she was fed up with being a Slayer and all.
He concentrates on his awareness of the old house surrounding them. He senses no people close by, no animals, nothing living as far as his ears and nose can reach. The bare boards on the landing creak and they both freeze. But there is no reaction whatsoever, neither in the physical world nor in the blanket of magic he can feel covering the house.
The stairs bitch and moan like a whole batch of tortured souls but they've both stopped reacting to it by now. Downstairs the same glow lights the hallway and they split up to check the other rooms without needing to discuss it. You'd think she'd been guarding his back for six years, so seamless is their cooperation.
He finds a wrecked and empty sitting room, a windowless pantry and a small room without any furniture at all, the walls a pale yellow with bunnies cavorting all over them. He heads to the kitchen, where the Slayer is still poking around.
"Look, Spike," she says, without even checking if it's really him, she just knows, apparently, "it's all empty and dusty and old. Ancient."
He takes another look around. He wouldn't call it old, actually. It's not such a distinct style he can pinpoint the exact decade all this stuff belongs to, but it's not fifties or anything. He spots a green and brown stylized flower pattern; he guesses late seventies. That would be old to the Slayer, he supposes. In keeping with the age the Andersens seemed to be.
"Okay, what's left of the house? Attic? Cellar?" he asks.
He knows that she knows which one it'll most likely be, there's an inevitability about gigs like this, but he agrees to go up to the attic together first. As expected, it's a jumble of old furniture, rotted washing and sad-eyed lonely toys.
They each take an old brass curtain rod with them so they'll have some sort of weapon. The Slayer has left her stake in her own clothes, and who knows where they are now? Mrs. Anderson took them away to wash them. Maybe they'll find them in the basement; although why people would need a basement with all of Iowa available to build on, he can't guess.
"Ready, Slayer?"
"Ready, Spike," she says with a crooked grin. Enough nostalgia in that smile to make a bloke queasy. He doesn't want to know.
The door to the basement swings open without a sound. Nothing but utter darkness comes wafting out, and not a whiff of earth or dampness, which is suspicious in itself. He gives the Slayer a look. She nods. He puts a careful foot out for the first step down. The world slows down after that, or maybe he's speeding up. It's suddenly Technicolor brightness and he flinches in unreasoning fear of sunlight although he knows it isn't, all in the middle of falling down the stairs and landing with a loud thunk on the swirling concrete. The Slayer lands on top of him only a second later, forcing the last bit of air out of his lungs so he can't even make the appropriate lewd or sarcastic comment. The swirly concrete dissolves into magic symbols and when he looks up he sees the Andersens again. They don't register on his other senses so they're not really there or something. They're standing outside the pentagram he and the Slayer have fallen on and he suspects he won't be able to leave it, but punches the air anyway. His fist strikes up a shower of blue sparks. Magic barrier, just like he thought. The Slayer wants to try for herself, of course, and gets the same result.
Mrs. Andersen looks on with a woeful expression on her face, wringing her hands. "I'm so sorry, Buffy and Spike. We needed the sacrifice for our taxes, it's nothing personal."
"Don't talk to them, Nance. We agreed on that. They're drug addicts, and not even married," John Andersen says gruffly and doesn't look Spike in the eye. He's fiddling with something on a crude little altar which looks like it's made out of orange crates and prairie grass. The wall behind it is painted a shiny black, contrasting wildly with the colorful loops and squiggles of the pentagram underneath Spike's feet. He tries to scuff a line of it with his feet, but it's painted on the concrete and keeps right on shining. It's as if Keith Haring painted a pentagram in the style of Joan Miro, thick black lines outlining red and yellow patches. Or maybe the subway plan of a city that's not London. Whatever it is, it has them stuck.
The Slayer is standing back to back with him, which is as it should be. "See anything?" he asks her.
"Yeah," she says. "Look at what Mr. Andersen is doing. He's using an interdimensional thingy that looks just like the one that got me into this universe."
Mr. Anderson is using a number 2 pencil to poke at a shiny blue bracelet of light on the altar.
"Ready, Father?" Mrs. Andersen asks nervously.
She's picking at a hangnail. Spike still can't sense her. Maybe she's a ghost? No kind of demon he knows has this lack of presence on his people radar.
"Talk to her," he says to the Slayer in an undertone. "Find out why they're doing this."
The Slayer complies immediately. She makes a good minion. "Mrs. Anderson," she asks plaintively, in an 'I'm an innocent victim' voice, "why are you doing this to us? I don't use drugs, and we were getting married soon, honestly. As soon as we've saved up enough money for a nice ring and a dress."
Spike continues to watch Mr. Andersen, who's steadily and patiently fiddling away with his pencil. It looks like a precise operation, like using a PDA or something, as one of his minions likes to do.
"Oh, honey," Mrs. Andersen wails, "If it was up to me we wouldn't be doing this, but we have to. We were so wretched when our baby girl died, and John's brother-in-law said he knew someone who'd help, and he turned out to be a demon, and it didn't help at all, it backfired terribly. Gus died, and we never got Ingrid back, but we still have to pay a yearly tribute to the demon. A young man and woman, and he eats them and leaves the town in peace."
"Nancy…" Mr. Andersen implores, but his concentration is on the altar.
"The house looks so empty, Mrs. Andersen. What happened to you two?"
The Slayer is doing well at this. Spike strains but can't make out the details of what Mr. Andersen is doing.
"We died too, Buffy, we died too," Mrs. Andersen admits sorrowfully. "We went to hell, of course, and every year we have to do this, and…"
"Nance!" Mr. Andersen barks. "Don't talk to them. It's coming."
"Mrs. Andersen, please, I was someone's baby girl too, and you wouldn't do that to my mother, would you? Her name is Joyce."
The woman utters a wail of anguish. "We can't! It's gonna eat your souls! It needs two souls or it'll come out and eat everyone!"
Spike thinks it's time for a change of tack. "You're fucked anyway, you old twit. I haven't got one, I'm a vampire."
Mrs. Andersen walks around to him and gapes. "A… vampire? What's that? Father? Did you hear that?"
Spike vamps out to make his point and Mr. Andersen goes white as a sheet. Funny to see that on a ghost.
"Let us out, Mrs. Andersen, we can fight your monster, we're strong. Do you have weapons?" Buffy is saying behind him.
Spike grinds his teeth. Here he was going for threatening, dammit, and then the bloody Slayer goes in a completely different direction. Doesn't the woman know when to take her cue from him? He checks the altar again, and the black wall behind it is starting to bulge and sizzle. Right. Not much time for shilly-shallying around anymore.
"Gimme your wrist, Slayer."
"What?"
"Your wrist. We need something to paint out those concrete swirls. Don't think Mrs. Ghostly and Mr. Concerned Citizen are gonna be much help."
She stares at him with blank eyes and a frowny forehead. He throws another look over his shoulder, yanks her wrist to his mouth and bites.
TBC