CrossingShadowRiver 9, by dutchbuffy2305

Rating: R

Timeline: About ten years after season 5 of AtS; sequel of sorts to Crossing into UnchippedTerritory. You should read that if you want to know everything about how to cross dimensions, and how Buffy and Spike got to be together. If you insist in reading this first, this is the recap: Buffy met evil Spike when she accidentally fell in another dimension. Hijinks ensue. He returns souled Spike to her (I'm not telling how) and they lived happily ever after. I still think you should go read it first, my summary doesn't quite do it justice…

Author's note: Thanks to my dear betas, meko00, ayinhara, LadyAnne & mommanerd.

Author's website: http:home.planet.nl/dutchbuffy2305

Feedback: Yes, please, to

Spike forces himself out of his hangover and spruces himself up, eager to leave Dawn to her strange thoughts and Council folders. Too bad her favorite dark blue shirt is still in its closet at home, but he'll make it a proper reunion, buy flowers and everything. Shag her brains out, shake the kid up a bit, suck on those big hard melony breasts until she squeals. He hardens at the thought but keeps his hands off himself. It should all be for Buffy.

There is a light shining upstairs when he gets home, so he lets himself into the downstairs hall silently. The first thing he notices is that the scent of the house has changed. Of course, he's been away for a while, so it should, but he'd have expected more Buffy and less, yeah, less what? A dead scent, rotted wood, kelp, rust. It makes him twitchy. What has she been doing? Not patrolling and killing stinky briny Thames demons, he hopes. Not in her condition. He imagines her reclining on their bed, big and curvy like a fertility goddess in her crimson and peach silk kimono, eating oranges and shrimp, things she's been craving lately.

A hum starts up in the house, a deep rhythmic thrumming sound that makes his hackles rise, a sound he knows well. What the hell? He takes the stairs up to their flat three at a time, sodding pointless roses forgotten in his hand, puts his key in the lock and tries to turn it. Bugger. It won't work. Buffy must have changed the lock on him. But what for? She hasn't got any particular reason to be angry with him. Okay, he has been away for a couple of weeks, but that wasn't his fault, was it? He was slipped a demonic Mickey Finn of some kind. He didn't mean to leave her all pregnant and alone this long. Christ. She could have had the baby and he wouldn't even have known about it. He promises himself he's going to eviscerate Bert at the earliest opportunity and gives the door a mighty kick.

The door is unimpressed, solid oak and at least a century old. Right. And besides, it's his own door, and a pesky lot of bother it would be if he'd succeeded. There's no other option than to ring the bell. The rhythmic thrumming continues unabated. He's getting a really nasty feeling about it. Sounds like….

He rings the bell again, longer and harder this time. The thrumming halts. He hears shuffling sounds and low voices, but he can't make out who's talking. Who is it with Buffy? He already knows he won't like the answer, but he stays put in front of the door. He needs to know.

The lock clicks and the door swings open. He sees Buffy standing there in her kimono, unbelted and loose over her naked body. Her belly has grown even more and a dark stripe runs from her pubic hair to her navel. Her face is wan and tired, with dark circles beneath her eyes. Spike halts for a moment, powerfully touched to see her again, pregnant, his. His breath burns in his lungs and he could shout out his love for her, returned stronger than ever.

He dashes forward to take her in his arms and runs smash into an invisible barrier. What the hell? Buffy just stands there and looks at him. The expression on her face doesn't change. He can't read it at all. He tries to put his hand through the barrier but it's still impassable. What is this? Has he been disinvited? What for? Why would Buffy react like that?

"Buffy, please, invite me in," he says. "I'm sorry I stayed away for so long, I didn't mean to. Please, sweetheart?"

She doesn't move, but he thinks he sees her eyebrows twitch.

"Buffy? What's the matter with you, baby? Are you feeling all right? Do you need help? Buffy?"

Still no reaction. Spike loses his fragile patience and throws himself against the barrier. He knows it won't help but he can't stop himself from ramming into it again and again, battering his own shoulder to a pulp. The barrier is harder than a stone wall.

"Buffy!" he roars. "Open up, for God's sake! Buffy!"

He sinks down on his knees and rests his forehead against the magical force field. He's going to beg. What does he care about dignity and all that rot when it's Buffy and their child he wants to be with?

"Buffy, please, darling, let me in. Tell me why you're so angry."

His voice is thick and he puts the palms of his hand flat against the barrier. The tendons and veins stand out thickly, straining for patience. He'd claw his way in if he could. "Buffy….stop fucking about and let me in!"

From the bedroom, a figure appears in the hallway. It's another Spike, naked and revealed in all his lack of glory. His skin is patchy and discolored; Spike sees missing fingers and he moves as if something's broken inside. He shuffles over to Buffy and embraces her from behind, laying his hands possessively on her swollen stomach.

"They're mine now," the apparition says. "My child, my woman. Go away. Betrayer."

His own eyes stare back at him from a distorted mottled face. Discolored lips draw back from the brownish teeth and the other Spike vamps out and growls at him. Buffy seems oblivious; her eyes stare past him. The scene slithers away from his comprehension. The other Spike, here, and looking like someone left him in a dumpster too long? What possible set of circumstances occurred to make him into this? Spike can't even feel anger; the surprise and disappointment are too big to leave room for any other emotion. Buffy with the other Spike again? And he's not completely right, somehow. He smells as if he's discomposing, he's missing fingers and his skin is so pale it's almost green, mottled with bluish and purplish bruises. The vamp growls at Spike again. Can he even speak? Then he proves that things can get even worse. The Spike changes into game face with a growl and loud creaking and squishing sounds. He bends over Buffy's neck, lifts up her limp hair and fastens his fangs onto her throat. The popping sound of skin tearing fills Spike's ears and he fights off the impulse to clap his hands over them.

The sound that comes out of his mouth hurts his own ears. "Buffy! Noo!"

Buffy stands still, apparently unmoved. She bends her neck a little in acquiescence and tucks her hair behind her ear. Spike watches in fascinated horror as the misshapen blotchy hand moves up from her belly to her big taut breast and tweaks the nipple hard. Buffy doesn't even flinch.

"Buffy! Get away from him! Buffy, invite me in and I'll kill him for you!"

The creature Spike turns his ugly game face in his direction and smirks at him with bloody teeth. "She won't. Will you, my poppet? She's mine now. I deserve her. I'm a Champion, I earned the Shanshu while you didn't. She's rightfully mine. Go away and leave us before I kill you."

Spike roars in frustration. Champion, Shanshu, those are words that don't mean anything real, sops for the disenchanted. It's fine for Angel and his brood of little werewolves, but he never regretted passing on it.

The other Spike very sensibly doesn't come out to fight; he certainly doesn't look as if he could hold his own in a proper tussle. Coward. Instead, he pushes Buffy to her knees, slides off the peignoir and kneels behind her. The vamp draws out his huge darkened cock, shakes it at Spike in a show of machismo or bravado or God knows what and thrusts back into Buffy, hard and rough, making her shudder silently. Spike stands motionless in disbelief and horror. He watches Buffy's face for any sign of distress or resistance and just sees blankness.

"Buffy!" Spike says. "Throw him off! Fight him! You're the Slayer, for fuck's sake!"

"Buffy darling," the creature says, grins his brown teeth bare, "tell your ex how you feel about me."

"I love you," Buffy says.

"Whose child is it?"

"Yours."

"What should happen to your ex-lover?"

"Go away," she says dully.

He can't believe what he's seeing. This can't be happening. Buffy would never allow herself to be used like that. She wouldn't suddenly fall in love with a zombie Spike. The Spike thrusts a few times into Buffy and then changes his mind. He gets up, his shiny lubricated cock bobbing, and kicks the door shut in Spike's face, leaving him chilled and dumbstruck in the white, brightly lit outer hall. How? What? His hands sting. They are resting on the bunch of fallen roses, the slow drops of blood that well from the tiny wounds as dark red as the roses themselves.  He tears off the velvety heads and flings them against the door. So much for love, for years of happiness.

Spike falls prey to another senseless attack of anger and actually manages to crack the door a little bit, and his own head. He gathers his scattered wits and stumbles down the stairs. Buffy doesn't love him anymore. How did this happen?

He really needs to kill something right now. Seeing as that he's so unlucky in love, the fates will be with him tonight. He runs head first into a clot of snarling vamps before he's even started looking. He charges into them with an earsplitting battle yell and rips heads off the first two before they can react. Sodding fledgling idiots. He slams his game face on and mows down all who come near. There's a red haze of bloody rage in front of his eyes, and blood keeps pouring down in his face in streams and streams of salt.

In the darkest coldest part of the night he finds himself again at Dawn's door. His hands leave bloody streaks on the plaster where he's leaning against it in exhausted grief. Dawn opens the door in her robe, clearly just awakened. Spike just wants to hide anonymously under some thick bed covers until the world goes away, but of course he'll have to say something to her, give some explanation.

He just stands there in Dawn's tiny living room, opening and closing his mouth like a dying fish. No sound comes out.

"Spike?"

A warm, concerned hand on his shoulder. "Did things not go well with Buffy?"

Spike takes a breath but his ribs hurt. He shakes his head and tries to get away from the sympathy in her eyes, which makes it worse. Dawn's eyes are trying to draw words out of him and he just wants to run and hide.

Dawn comes around to his front and stands close, her sleep warm body pressing into his, crowding him. Her hands land on his cheeks and she tries to force him to look at her. Spike twists his head, the only way out is to rest it on her shoulders.

"Oh, Spike, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you guys have broken up. Let's sit down here, let me hold you."

It's too hard to say no or disentangle himself from her insistent pity. She pulls him down on the sofa next to her and strokes his back, talking and talking.

"It must be so hard, especially now. Things do get better eventually, and then you'll be able to move on. And anyway, it was never your child, was it?"

Spike can't believe his ears.

"Shut the fuck up, Dawn," he says. His voice is back and it's only a little hoarse. "We're not talking about that. We're talking about getting into my house and talking some sense into Buffy."

"But Spike," Dawn says, still in that gentle, meant-to-be-calming voice, "if you just talked to Buffy and it didn't help, why would things be different if you tried again so soon?"

Spike doesn't want to tell Dawn about his utter humiliation outside his own front door at all, but he has to say something. "Buffy's changed the lock and disinvited me. There's another Spike in there with her, a crazy zombie Spike who…" Fuck it, he's crying. He tries to suppress the heaving and the sobbing but it won't stop. There is no time for this rubbish, he needs to plan.

Dawn strokes his hair and his neck, which reminds him too much of Buffy doing that. "What do you mean? How can there be another Spike?"

Spike attempts to explain it clearly and patiently. "You saw the other Spike in Cleveland, didn't you, ten years ago? The one Buffy drove up with from Sunnydale? He's back, or some other Spike is, I dunno."

"Yeah, I remember. So, Buffy's back with him? I always thought there was something pretty powerful there. Did Dru dump him again?"

Spike resists the temptation to wring Dawn's neck while shrieking hysterically like an old-fashioned tea kettle. "I don't know! It doesn't matter! I can't let him do that to her. We have to save her and the baby!"

Dawn gazes deep into his eyes and kisses his nose. "Shh, Spike, shh. I know this is hard. Really, I do. I know rejection hurts. Let me make it better for you."

Spike wrenches loose and ejects himself from the clingy grip of soft couch. He misjudges his take-off and almost bounces off the wall. He has to stay calm and make her understand it's not like that.

"Dawn. I want you to go to Buffy's and talk to her about re-issuing my invite. And be careful, really careful. We can't know what this Spike is thinking, or what he will do to you."

Dawn rises too and is advancing on him again. Her robe has fallen open and shows a tiny gauzy baby doll, a weird choice of nightwear in March, or maybe it is April by now. Her breasts sway softly and her eyes are dark and inviting.

"I don't think it would be a good idea to barge in on them in the middle of the night, don't you think, Spike? They'd either be asleep or, you know…."

Her hands on his waist are so warm and her thumbs stroke up and down on his hipbones. This is so wrong. Spike backs off from the insanity. He can't deal with it now.

"That's a good idea, Dawn, you go by daylight. Buffy will be awake and the vampire might be sleeping, or less active. We can ask Willow about the invite stuff. Good plan. Good night."

He bolts into the guestroom, closes the door behind him and throws himself on the bed. He hopes she won't follow. It's silent outside the door and gradually he relaxes a little. Is Dawn right? Should he just accept that Buffy has moved on and get on with his own life? The face and breasts of the young Slayer he met last night rise unbidden in his mind, closely followed by Dawn's lilac gauze nightie. There would be plenty of opportunities for moving on, so much is clear. But he doesn't want to. He wants Buffy, and their baby, he wants to take them back to Florence and never meet another Scooby again. There's always trouble when Buffy's old friends or family are in the picture. Always.

Willow's the one who gave Buffy the opportunity to shop around in other dimensions. He could just about kill her for meddling in his relationship, again. Well, not exactly again. It's just that last time when they were living in London, after the disaster that was Syria, Buffy seemed to spend more time with Willow, gossiping and shopping, than she did with him. Buffy had had a hard time of it in a country where a Western woman could still not walk around safely by day. Not that Buffy would have been in any danger, but kicking Syrian butt left and right would have sort of blown their cover. She compensated for this lack of freedom with frenzied hunting and killing by night. Frenzied killing led to frantic post-killing sex, of course, but there was always this edge of desperation about it that reminded him of bad times. Buffy's not good with limitations, with ordinary life, but she always rises to the occasion in a crisis.

He's back to the present all right. A crisis would be now, wouldn't it? Why would she act like that? He can't get over it. His mind keeps doing replays of the scene in the hallway until the tape turns gray. The thick purple cock sliding in and out of Buffy, Buffy's frighteningly blank face. Does he look like that while he has sex with her? Buffy bloody well used to look different, ecstatic, even.

Bloody Dawn with her insinuations, bloody Willow with her magical meddling. They should have stayed in Florence. Okay, gossiping and buying unnecessary dresses isn't exactly meddling, and he'd been half out of his mind himself during that particular London sojourn. Spike turns over and pushes his face into the pillow, cringing at the memory of going crazy over a younger student Dawn, who'd been temporarily living with them at the time. Dawn had been going through a period of intense discovering of her sexuality. She'd been on the pull all the time and going through boyfriends at a rate of two or three a week. She'd be out all nights, barely clad, painted and perfumed, glittering when she left, sweaty, tousled, and smelling of sex when she returned.

It must have been a vampire kind of midlife crisis, he supposed, his mad lusting after Dawn, his endless lonely wanking over his mental picture of her. Christ, he doesn't need to remember this now. It's in the past. Still. What if he'd tried to get it on with Dawn then, instead of hiding himself away from everybody? Everything would be different. Not necessarily better, though. Funny how two people can be attracted to each other but never at the same time. Thankfully all that went away when they went off to Tibet, never to be remembered again until now.

He likes the life he and Buffy have made, traveling, slaying, teaching and researching. He thought Buffy did, too, but now she's locked him out of her life. Does she even know how to do a disinvite spell herself? She has no magic. Willow might have a solution to that problem. If Dawn won't cooperate, he'll go ask her himself.

TBC