Title: The Soldiering Life
Author: Primadonna
Summary: summer between Season 2 and 3. Spike tracks down Buffy to a dive in L.A.
And here I thought nothing could take the fun out of killing Slayers.
It's sick, the way she scurries around this dive, pouring coffees and clearing tables. She does this for eight hours a day, more if she can get overtime. Not that it makes any difference whether she's at this dump or the dump she calls an apartment. At least here she's paid. Right now she's eating less than I am. I'm imagining her ribs one day soon just tearing right through her thin remnant-tan skin.
I'm tucked away in a corner, on my third cup of coffee. I'm not sitting in her section; a woman in her forties with a bad red dye-job is serving me, slipped me a piece of pie on the house with my first refill, winking as she slid it onto the table. She's a slayer so she must sense a vampire, but she doesn't even look up. I've only seen her kill a vampire in the two weeks I've been following her and that was a kill or be killed moment. Of course I should've killed her by now, should've done it the second I laid eyes on her stepping out of this place.
But this is truly pathetic.
Her arms are loaded with plates along each arm. She hits a wet spot, nearly goes sliding across the floor before she catches her balance. Too late though, an order of fries goes crashing against the linoleum. She stares at it, her mouth formed in a silent O, and spins guiltily on her heels as her boss calls her. Anne, he knows her as, the same name on the yellow and green uniform. He tells her to pick it up, and it goes without saying that it will come out her paycheck. He berates her from the kitchen, his arms resting on the order window sill between the kitchen and the diner counter, sloshing cheap red wine all over the aluminum from the plastic cup in his hand. He wipes at it ineffectually with his furry paw of a hand, calling her useless and a worthless bitch. He had been in better spirits with the Slayer until four nights prior, when he'd grabbed her breast and she firmly but politely removed it and went home- alone. Why in hell didn't she just flip him onto his back and pummel him? She could've emptied the register while she was at it. Even gotten the safe opened if she applied enough persuasion on him to tell her the combination.
Angel had did this to her, not Angelus. There'd been a moment that night where she had finally accepted her lover wasn't coming back. Maybe killing the demon would have been therapeutic. "To kill this girl, you have to love her," Angelus told me. He couldn't have planned a better demise for himself, with that last final mind-fuck that was his specialty. She was broken before, but the look on her face then... no one should have to kill a lover. If I was forced to kill Dru I'd take up sunbathing.
I saw the whole thing. I missed some of the swordplay, but that sort of nancy-ponce crap always pissed me off anyway. I put my girl in the car and drove around the block before I turned into the mansion again. My entire future rested on Peaches. I walked through the garden just as the two were in each other's arms. I noticed the portal opening behind them a fraction before she did. I stepped into the room, ready to finish the job if the Slayer couldn't. The way she looked at him made me stop where I was, made me move out of the room again to watch from the doorway. While I'm a fighter, that's one fight I'm glad I was on the sidelines for. Enough irony and romantic tragedy to keep William happy. The Bloody awful poet inside me was probably itching for pen and paper. She saw me, too, right after. She had sunk down to the ground, all quiet-like. Then she asked me to leave. She would have let me kill her, as a Slayer would have preferred me ripping her throat open in a battle than witnessing her defeated. I must have been confused by a request from a Slayer. I just turned around and piled into the car, speeding down the hill at a hundred miles an hour. As far away from Sunnyhell as I could get on half a tank of gas and no blood.
It took me four days to track her in L.A., a month after that fight in the mansion. Dru and me are leaving tonight, for South America. Some voices in her have told her about Belize, for God knows what reason. Which suits me fine, the sooner this is done and we're gone the better.
I wonder if she knows it's me. If she knows I've sat outside her window, leaning against the stairs of the fire escape, smoking dozens of cigarettes and letting the butts fall to the alley below. This is pathetic. Fighting a Slayer, killing a Slayer... no one but she and I know the state she's in. The blood would be just as sweet from any Slayer.
I motion at the redhead for my check and she sees me then. Yes, that look in her eyes, she knew it was me. I feel a surge, knowing that she could sense me specifically, could tell me apart from the thousands of other vampires in this city. Oh bloody hell, is she coming towards me? She starts a fight in the middle of the café and she's fired. Stupid girl. Try explaining a big cloud of dust that was a man to a dozen patrons. She raises an arm and I grab her wrists quickly, envelope her in a tight hug. I'm a mere inch from her throat. She doesn't struggle.
"Play along. Anne," I growl. I feel her nod against my chest. "I don't want a fight. Complete coincidence, I just came for coffee," I lie. She knows I'm lying but she nods again.
"We're going to pull apart and go our separate ways. All right?" I continue. She doesn't answer, just stumbles back a few steps and knocks into the end of an empty booth when I let go of her shoulders. I am about to turn and leave when I look at her boss, the grease ape, his eyes two angry slits, his blood pumping wildly. Too bad for saving her job, I figure. So instead I grab her by the back of the head, bringing her mouth to mine. She stiffens against me, her lips pressed together. I tease my tongue along her bottom lip. Her mouth opens slightly and I deepen the kiss. I am the first one to step back and I smirk at her. Her eyes stay closed for a moment, until they snap open, a look of absolute horror on her face. Then disgust, a veneer for the arousal coming in waves off of her. "Now there's my girl," I told her, wagging a finger at her. This was my Slayer, the one I'd danced with for a year. One quick flash in her eyes and it was unmistakable. She tasted exactly how I thought she would.
I feel a dozen set of eyes on me and her, bouncing back and forth as I move out the door and onto the busy sidewalk. I turn down the alley besides the diner. Leading me to a fork in the road. Left to Dru, right to the slayer's current residence. Go to Dru, guarantee myself some blood, a shag, and sleep. Right... trying to think, to create a picture of what would wait for me. I still wanted to kill her, or at least part of me did. The rest wouldn't answer.
The land lady let me in, extending an invitation that was good enough for the powers that be. I told her I was Anne's brother.
"I'm glad the girl has some family visiting. I was afraid she was all alone." I nod, wait for her to shut the door behind her. I take a few steps and survey the scene from the centre of the room.
It was nearly bare, save a few pieces of furniture. A double bed with ratty sheets faced the bay window. A small closet housed the few articles of clothing she had, mostly jeans and t-shirts, items hurriedly stuffed into a carry-all before leaving town. Did her family know she was here? Had her mother watched from the doorway when she'd packed her bag? Did her father know they were living in the same city?
The weapon selection, hidden underneath a loose floorboard by the bay window, was a little more extensive. Not exactly items that fit into an overnight bag. Bottles of holy water, stakes, a decent crossbow, an axe and a few other items. She would have acquired most of these items since arriving in Los Angeles. I know she carries a stake with her, as that's what she used on the bugger who jumped her on the way home from work one night. These pieces she probably put away as soon as she acquired them, hadn't looked at them since. Always be prepared, I suppose. Never know when some nasty wants to hunt you down just for pure sport, to say he bagged a Slayer.