Crossing into unchipped country (15/22) by dutchbuffy2305
Rating: R
Timeline: At the start, around AtS 5.09 or 5.10
Author's note: Thanks to my dear betas.
Author's website:
Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk
Spike catches her scent while he's sitting in front of his dinky TV, moodily surfing across the boring stuff that's on all the channels. Fate's way of flipping him the bird, providing no distractions from the maelstrom of his emotions. There is nothing in the whole apartment to deflect his attention away from the evil Buffy thoughts, which grab him by the balls time and time again and suck him down into the abyss of unrequited loves and bleak futures.
He can't really believe it. This must be some kind of episode, his nose playing tricks on him, like other people see pink elephants or bugs crawling out of their navels. Which he's actually seen, so maybe his brain needs other venues to vent hallucinations. But no, it's real, it's really real, and then the doorbell rings, confirming the realness. He totally freezes, and the TV blares on about the great abdominal stimulator band that will give you washboard abs while sitting on the couch and eating doughnuts wholesale or some such rot. Plastic people smile with too white teeth and show off their toned airbrushed bodies.
It's Buffy. She's come after him, all the way from Cleveland. He waits for the rush of ecstasy that he expects to follow this realization but to his surprise feels only anger fountain up from deep below. He's never allowed himself to feel anger like this at the years of cavalier treatment from Buffy and all of a sudden it comes close to choking him. She's been such a bitch, and he thought he'd forgiven her, and he'll still maintain that he did, but he can't forgive the last two slights so easily. Being ignored and cheated on may not have been such major blips on his usual radar but they loom pretty big now.
He swallows a few times, tries to cool down the anger, but it won't go away. He turns off the TV and walks slowly to his front door, wondering a little about his state of mind and utterly unable to think of what he's going to say to Buffy.
He says very little. Buffy plunges straight in with the apologies and clearly expects them to make up on the spot and live happily ever after. He sees her face fall and despises himself for the satisfaction this gives. Yes, he's been here for months and he didn't call her. Yes, the apartment is pretty bare. Did she never realize all the rugs and candles in the crypt were for her? His anger and frustration mount with every ill-chosen word that comes out of her pouty mouth. Look at her, all dolled up and pretty, if a little wilted after her journey, too dim to understand that he's not gonna fall at her knees ever again. Like she's God's gift. Bitch.
She saves the worst insult for last. She says she loves him. She says it like it's great news, thereby proving that she didn't mean it when she said it on the Hellmouth, just as he's been fearing ever since. If he'd gone to her the minute he was recorporealized she wouldn't have known what to do with him. And now she's met some other Spike and suddenly she loves him for real? Yeah, great, just what he always wanted, not only coming second after to Angel, because there's not much he can do about that, but being third best after his own unsouled self. It's just too much.
Spike gets dressed, ignoring Buffy's eager little body and her delectable scent as best as he can, and gets out. Up and away. He needs to think, he needs to kill something. Or fuck something. Maybe if he has his dick up another pussy he will be able to shake off that love he still feels, maybe he will realize it's just not getting laid for two years that's been bothering him, but not love, please, not love.
The moment he's out of the door he jumps up on the roof, thinking it'll give him a few minutes head start. Not that he's sure she'll come after him. She might go to her motel and sulk, which he gives about a seventy percent chance, or lie in wait for him in his bed, all warm and soft, ten percent, although it's the one he'd find hardest to resist. His antennae are receiving on maximum, so he knows the second she decides to come after him. He can hear her land on the roof with a thump and the clacking of her heels. Not big on the subtlety, his girl. The Slayer, he means.
He speeds up, knowing that she'll catch up eventually, but wanting to let her work for it. And bugger, if this isn't a hell of a lot more fun than just going out hunting on his own. Being chased adds spice, and besides, he wants to racket up a few kills without her help. Just like he always does, but it counts more if she knows, that's all.
His ears catch faint moans and the tell-tale rattle of garbage cans. Could be tonight's first. The usual, of course. LA girl, no better than she should be, thinking she'll give her customer undisturbed service in a quiet alley, finds herself in for more than she bargained for. Most of the time he just rips off the offending vampires' heads, or dusts them in the act, as it were, but a perverse impulse makes him want to play a little first. Give Buffy time to catch up so she can admire his fighting skills.
He wrests the vampire's fangs away from the girl's neck, where they've started making inroads in the soft flesh.
"Hey," he says. "Bit selfish, innit, starting on your own. Give a bloke a share, there's a good boy."
The vampire gives an inarticulate cry of rage and swipes wildly at Spike with his claws. Claws? Only very old vampires tend to get claws, at least in his experience. He thought he knew most of the old ones, Darla schlepped them around enough vampire courts back in the days, paying homage, and as far as he knows few of the American ones are still alive.
This one turns out to be young and inexperienced for all his fancy claws and Spike tires of the game of punching him pretty quickly. He stakes him with minimal effort and turns to the girl to see how badly she's hurt. Not too bad, for although she has one hand clamped against her neck, and her shirt glints with a wet black spot, she's walking towards him with a swing in her hips and a gleam in her eye.
She halts before him, weight cocked on one hip, and with her own red tipped claw draws a tantalizing line from his neck to the top of his jeans. "That was weird, pretty boy, weird but cool. I think I owe you one," she drawls out slowly in a Southern accent. Little import hooker, you've gotta admire her cool, propositioning him just seconds after almost being killed.
Spike feels the Slayer's eyes pricking in his neck and bends over to the girl to lay a hand on her skinny hip.
"I just might," he says, equally slowly, appraising her from top to toe, making her preen and toss her hair.
He vamps out. "But I don't think I could control myself. Better run!" He adds a growl for good measure and sends her stumbling and cursing away to the better lighted thoroughfare.
He should have drawn that out a bit longer if he hoped to get Buffy riled up, but it just wasn't enough of a challenge. He resists the temptation the check behind him. Doesn't need his eyes for that anyway. His spirits dampen unaccountably and now that he's no longer flying over the rooftops, the reasons why he didn't want to stay at the apartment and hash things out with Buffy are putting themselves forward again. He turns to the right and walks off. He needs time to think things over. Decide why exactly he's so intent on staying angry with Buffy, when he could just as well have been lying in her sweet arms by now.
Faint panting and the sound of skin slapping the pavement approach from behind, and Buffy falls into step with him. He looks with astonishment at her bare feet until he catches sight of the mutilated shoes she's carrying. How inconsiderate of him to take to the rooftops when's she's wearing stilettos. Hah.
Buffy doesn't seem particularly bothered or riled up by his half minute of playacting, because she coolly links her arm through his. Spike stiffens but doesn't pull away. Actually this is kind of nice, strolling arm in arm with his Slayer through the night. Perhaps if she'll keep her mouth shut he can calm down a bit, let go of his anger.
"Spike, why exactly are you mad at me? What did I do?" Buffy goes on, oblivious of his mood as always.
Spike sighs. Shut up, Buffy.
"Is it because I didn't fall in love with you in time? I should have gotten a move on sooner? Oh, right we were in the middle of a battle, the perfect fluffy moment. Or because I thought the other Spike looked just like you? Or because I freaked and was afraid to trust my instincts, when it really was you?"
It's edifying to hear the litany of things she feels guilty about.
"Doesn't matter, Buffy. Let's not talk about it."
"It matters to me, Spike. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want you to feel hurt."
He knows that. All he can hear, though, is that she's not mentioning she slept with the other Spike, which he's ninety-nine percent sure she did, even if it's Xander who said it. He also knows she regrets it, and would undo it if she could. She didn't know he was alive, did she? So why can't he forgive her for it? It's not unlike what happened between him and the Anya. He should be bigger than this. Instead he walks on silently, gruffly, but secretly basking in the warm presence at his side. It's only a matter of time before his ridiculous desire to be hers becomes stronger than his anger, after all.
They stroll on silently along a deserted avenue and pass an unexpected little park. Spike herds Buffy in there and sits down on a bench. He's sure the park would be a mess by daylight, but the hazy backlit purple of the sky and the distant streetlights make it a temporary idyll, scraggly bushes casting interesting inky black shadows on the sparse grass, hiding the syringes and empty bottles.
Buffy sits looking down at her hands every time Spike casts a surreptitious glance her way. The half-light makes hollows on her face where they normally aren't and he thinks she looks like Titania. Just hoping he's not Bottom, is all.
She heaves a deep sigh and her right hand grasps his, which was lying limply on his leg. There she goes again.
"Those last nights in Sunnydale were wonderful, Spike. I've thought about them a lot and it seemed…We'd put our differences and memories aside, I thought, and we trusted each other. It was beautiful. Where has that gone?"
He doesn't know either. Maybe skulking around Wolfram and Hart during all these months of intangibility made him forget about it. The nights in the basement seemed different when he looked back on them, his awe and reverence at the moments themselves now feel like gullibility and blindness. When he should have pressed on, he hung back, just like the mistakes he always used to make but in reverse.
"Can't we at least have that back? If you can't be my lover, won't you at least be my friend?"
For God's sake, she'll have him crying next. He doesn't want to be her friend; he wants to be her…Um, yeah. What was the reason again he's been hanging back? He still can't make himself move or speak, but Buffy doesn't let go of his hand, or his arm, and puts her head on his shoulder. Persistent. She always was.
Every time his emotions form the same circle. He starts at the place where he loves her and never wavers from that. Then everything they went through together, or he put her through, or she made him do. And then he runs into the recent past and the little mistakes she made, accepting the other and not recognizing him and it's like a wall he runs into, he can't get past it or over it or through it. So he retraces his steps, back to the love, to being unable to imagine not loving her, seeing a future together and he's back at the slippery wall. Why can't he get past this? It should be so easy to forgive her. He always forgives everyone their trespasses against him. He accepts people how they are, that's his job, to go on from that. But he can't. So he picks up his tired emotions again and runs the circuit one more time. Repetition doesn't change anything.
He stares unseeing at the semblance of nature around him. It's not the real thing, not by a long stretch. Maybe, if humanity abandoned the city and you checked back in after a hundred years the stunted bushes and sickly grass would have come into their own and be like their realer cousins in actual countryside. He'd have the time to wait it out, but she doesn't. She's only got a few short years to learn, or unlearn, what life shortchanged her of.
He's weary. Sitting out the night won't break the circuit.
The haze above him thins for a moment and a lone start shines through. It makes him think of Dru. He wishes her luck with her new beau, and hopes they'll be together for another hundred years. And stay far away from him and Buffy.
He rises, pulling Buffy up with him. She gives a small cry when she stands up again. Right. Her feet must hurt, although actually walking on the pink contraptions she holds in her hand seems worse to him.
He hesitates. It would be churlish to let her walk back, and there's very little chance of a taxi out here.
"D'you want me to carry you?"
Buffy looks up gratefully. "Please."
Well, he's not going to be all romantic and play white horse, just so she knows. He slings her up in a fireman's carry and starts running. Buffy squeaks once in protest but then meekly allows herself to be carried home upside down. He realizes his hand is on her ass, and maybe this wasn't such a clever idea after all. Warm little hands pull his T-shirt out of his jeans and hot lips press a kiss on his back.
"Cut it out!" he says sharply, but she only giggles.
"As long as your hand is where it is, mister, I'm allowed a little kiss," she says.
He slaps her curvy jeaned bum with his other hand and her squeal goes straight to his groin. Brilliant, Spike. Next time just let her walk on her tender little feet. With every step he takes he senses the faint jiggling next to his cheek and the scent of her this close is overpowering. At last she's stopped her wriggling and her attempts at loveplay.
"Spike, you can put me down now. I can walk."
Spike ignores this. He's not in the mood to give in to her whims.
"Spike. Put me down."
Spike doesn't hesitate and sets Buffy down immediately; the tone of her voice indicates trouble. He swings around and the source of her urgency is clear. He must have been so deep in the blanket of Buffy's scents and sounds that he didn't hear the thundering behind him. A demon the size of a bus is storming their way on its thick legs, and as it resembles a hippo most of all, if hippos were purple and had a few more horns, he knows mere violence won't do. They run away from it together at first, but then Buffy veers off to the right. The demon swerves, oddly graceful and light on its feet, and goes after Buffy, leaving Spike in the clear.
"Bad girl!" it grunts from a mouth wider than a dumpster and as fragrant.
Buffy avoids the lumbering thing like a seasoned toreador, jumps up onto a balcony and holds out her hand to Spike. He throws her his extra knife and hastily dances out of the way himself.
"Aim for the third eye, Buffy!"
The oversize hippo demon needs some time to turn in the narrow alley, cutting back and forth like a big car. Spike uses the opportunity to run up and jump onto the creature's neck. It's too thick for him to encircle and break, but he pulls himself up by one of the horns on its forehead and yanks its thick greasy mane away from its eyes. The third eye shines forth with a golden glow. Buffy comes through as he knew she would and the knife lands perfectly in the middle of the eye.
The demon bellows out its indignation and stumbles to its knees. The abrupt fall pitches Spike over its head and against the alley wall, where he oozes down like a stain. When he scrabbles upright, Buffy's holding out her hand to him. He takes it.
Together they inspect the enormous recumbent form. "Big and ugly," Buffy observes. "Never seen one in Sunnydale. You know about them?"
Spike grins at her. "Yeah. They're called unicorns. Too bad were not qualified anymore to go for the peaceful solution."
"I thought unicorns could only be tamed by…oh. I imagined them a little differently."
"I know. Girly fantasies, pretty white horsies with only one pointy horn, eh?"
"Ew," Buffy says. "This one has tons of horns. Why is it still called unicorn?"
"If you help me heave it over, I'm completely willing to show you to which horny appendage the name refers to," Spike says with a straight face.
"No, thanks," Buffy says.
There could have been quips, or smirks and innuendo, but Buffy seems to shy away from the topic just like he does.
They leave the unicorn where it's fallen and walk off.
"Why can't pretty fairytales ever be true?" Buffy complains.
"Because you've only been fed the cleaned up version," Spike says with a shrug. "The original stories were a bit more direct about the ugly realities."
"Huh."
She waits patiently and with a sigh he swings her over his shoulder again. They're not too far from his alley, and he sees Mr. Park from the Korean all-night store turn his head in surprise as he strides past the bright beacon of its lit windows. He nods to Joe, the bouncer from "Bare Naked Ladies", having a last smoke outside before closing up. Into his alley and down the stairs.
He sets Buffy down, none too gently, afraid of succumbing to temptation if he touches her one second longer. There's no point in denying he wants her, not even to himself, but as long a she hasn't figured out what he wants from her, and how he wants it and when, there's gotta be no touching whatsoever. He's not a strong enough man to hold fast to his principles if his dick is engaged.
He thinks of not letting her back in at all. He can see that Buffy knows he's thinking it. To her credit she doesn't try to pull tricks like tears or wobbly lips. She's really trying hard to please him, he might even get to like that if he's not careful. He hesitates such a long time that Buffy begins to turn away with a pitiful slump to her shoulders.
It's the shoes that clinch it. She'd have to come in to get fresh ones from her bag, anyway. He relents.
"You can stay on the couch," he says. Gruffly, he hopes.
Buffy's heart rate slows down a little in relief. It's been way up since she arrived here.
There follows awkward shuffling around each other. The apartment seems very cramped and when Buffy showers her scent immediately creeps to the farthest corners. He refuses to pretend they're strangers and has his own shower like always, striding bare assed though the room, clothes strewn everywhere. Buffy sits on the couch with her knees drawn up to her chest and watches him openly. He works hard not to notice all that softly gleaming pale skin when he walks past her and then the bathroom hits him hard with the accumulated steam and Buffy scent. Underlying the artificial components of the shampoo is the hot strong womanly smell he adores, sweat and musk and pussy.
He just showers. It's so difficult not to touch himself, when he's aching and hard from seeing her. He can still feel her body draped over his shoulder, bouncing against his through the soft dark of the night. He's not going to succumb, he's not. After he's brushed his teeth and taken twenty deep breaths with his forehead pressed against the cool foggy mirror he ventures out. He's had to resort to wearing a towel after all.
"Night, Buffy."
Buffy is still sitting on the couch and smiles at him widely, tossing her loose hair behind her shoulder. He can still remember the times when he only saw that big smile directed at others, and even at the end there wasn't a lot of smiling between them. Here it's like beacon on a lighthouse, its beam sweeping him every few seconds. Makes him nervous, he's not used to having that much light shine on him.
"Good night, Spike," she answers softly. Her breasts shudder with her slight movements and he can see her nipples prick through the thin shirt. He looks back up hastily and her flush comes and goes deliciously. He shuts his mouth and flicks off the lights before crawling into bed.
He's extremely uncomfortable. He can't even lie on his sodding back without making a ridiculous tent in the thin blanket. Buffy's twisting and turning on his couch. He should have had that wank in the shower after all. Hopefully she'll fall asleep soon. Buffy's still smiling at him when he closes his eyes, standing golden and almost overexposed in bright sunlight amidst waving poppies. She holds out her arms and twirls for him. Her white skirts billow up and he sees she's not wearing knickers. He runs for her joyfully but he's forgotten about the sun and bursts into agonizing flame. Buffy stretches out her hand, and he tries to reach her. He just manages to touch her fingertip with his before he falls apart into glowing cinders.
He wakes up from this dream when Buffy slides into bed with him. He's lying on his side and she's arranging herself silently and carefully against his back. Spike lies rigid, caught in the dream's despair. If she makes any move that is overtly sexual he'll toss her out on her bare ass.
Buffy's too smart for that, thank God. She does seem to be picking up some cues, like finally shutting up as they were preparing for bed. He feels her arm fold around herself, her knuckles lightly touching the skin of his back. The other hand alights hesitantly on his shoulder blade. She shuffles a bit with her feet and draws up her knees within an inch of his, and than she carefully rests her cheek against his other shoulder. If she stays like that it's okay, he reckons. No funny moves though.
He's wound tighter than a clock, not that he owns one, he hasn't even bothered to set the microwave clock to the right time. Buffy seems to have no such problem. Spike can feel her heart slow down, followed by her breathing. Her skin cools slightly and she jerks a few times with involuntary muscle spasms. A tiny snort and her hand falls slackly off him.
He's not gonna get any sleep at all. Her breath wafts tantalizingly over his back, setting off waves of goosebumps with every repetition. He can monitor the rise and fall of her rib cage by the intermittent touch of her breasts against him, and it's so incredibly alluring, this sleeping package lying trustingly against him, he can't imagine how he ever did this with not the least thought of sex. In the basement at Revello Drive he was always conscious of dozens of people living close by, listening in maybe, judging them. Buffy must have felt that too, he supposes. And then of course there were the threats hanging over them, death and mutilation. Not so strange, maybe, that they were just sleeping and comforting each other. Maybe he will forgive her for not making use of those opportunities.
It's funny that he's never been truly alone with her like this. They're free. There are people living above him, but he doesn't know them, he only knows night dwellers like the people from the all-night store and the pole dancing club, not ordinary citizens with day jobs. Nobody would know or comment, whatever they would get up to, no curious Scoobies or sneering Potentials, derisive demons. And yet they don't get up to anything.
He sighs and wants to turn over but can't because of the sleeping Slayer at his back. He just wishes she could have chosen him first for a change, that's all. He wishes she hadn't gotten tangled up with other Spikes, making what she does have to offer less, somehow. Sullied. These thoughts revolt him, but he can't help thinking them.
TBC