A/N : wouldn't let me upload this for a while, some weird error,so apologies for the delay! More Spuffy fun in this chapter...
(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)
Chapter 20 - To Be Part Of You
"Well, that wasn't quite what I expected" Buffy gasped, her breathing having yet to even out after the fight that had just ensued.
"Me either, pet" Spike told her, as he half sat, half fell back down onto the edge of his make-shift bed, wincing somewhat at the various pains that shot through him as he did so. He wasn't exactly up to full strength yet and this was the third fight he'd got into in the past week. It felt less than manly to have needed Buffy in all three of those scuffles but the way things were he'd have been dust there time ever by now without her at his side. She was an incredible young woman, there was no doubt about that, and as ridiculous as he knew it was, as twisted and wrong and insane as it was, he was as much in love with the Slayer now as ever.
"You know who those guys were?" Buffy asked as she sat down beside him, dusting the two vamps she'd just slain off her clothing that she'd chosen especially to look good for Spike. Still, from the way he was looking at her now, it didn't seem that it mattered all that much to him what she was wearing, he was just glad to have her there.
"Could've been anybody, luv" he shrugged, "Not bothered if I'm honest, just bloody glad you're here" he smiled, hand going to her cheek, "You got no idea how much I bloody miss you when you're not"
"I have an idea" she told him, leaning into his touch, "I hate that I can't see you everyday, and I hate that I can't even tell my friends you're here" she said tearfully, "They wouldn't understand"
"And so I remain your dirty little secret then" Spike rolled his eyes, "Charming title for William the Bloody" he muttered, taking his hand away and going right back to feeling sorry for himself, he did that so very well of late.
"Hey" Buffy frowned as she moved to crouch on the floor in front of him, determined to make him look at her, "You know it's not like that" she told him solemnly, "You know how I feel about you... I love you" she reminded him with a smile that he returned as he reached out for her, pulling her back up onto his lap and kissing her hard, his hands wandering over her body, making Buffy feel a million different things she couldn't even begin to describe. They fell back onto the bed together as things got more heated between them. Things had got this far just a couple of times before and as usual Buffy pulled away first, just when Spike's hand had almost made it past her thigh to it's preferred destination.
"That'll be a 'no thanks' then, will it?" he rolled his eyes as she got off the bed completely and left him lying there alone.
"It's a 'not yet' is all" she said awkwardly, knowing how much he wanted to be with her that way and how much she herself wanted to take the next step. The problem was kind of two-fold, though it all really stemmed from the fact that Buffy had never actually been down this road before. She wasn't ashamed to say she was a virgin, in fact she was proud of it in a weird way. She'd been waiting to find the guy she would love forever, should such a thing exist, the man who would love her unconditionally and for the rest of her life. Though she knew she must be crazy, Buffy actually believed Spike could be that guy, even though technically he was dead and a demon. The problems were that a, she wanted her first time to be perfect and she still had this innate fear that it could all go horribly wrong and spoil the beautiful thing she felt she and Spike had, and b, perhaps he would be disappointed by her since she wasn't an expert in the field like his ex must've been.
Taking a deep breath she walked around the room, trying to think straight and calm herself down if she was honest. Spike could do things to her she didn't even know existed and it took a lot of strength to say no when he tried to take things further between them, no matter how many rational explanations she could come up with as to why they shouldn't.
"Oh" she said suddenly noticing her bag on the other side of the room that she'd discarded so fast in her rush to help Spike defend himself from two cowboy type vampires - word was out that he was the Slayer's pet and a lot of the local demons were gunning for him.
Rushing to her bag, Buffy picked it up and rifled through the contents, sighing with relief when she found what she'd been looking for.
"What you got there, pet?" Spike frowned as he watched her. She herself was smiling as she approached him, opening her hand to show him what lie in her palm.
"This is Junior" she said brightly, smirking at his bemused expression as he stared at the egg in her hand, "It's a school project" she explained, "We take care of the egg as if it was a baby, to teach us to be responsible about, well, y'know" she said awkwardly, finding the actual word sex a little difficult to say in front of him.
"Oh, so your bleedin' teachers are to blame for me going without, eh?" Spike rolled his eyes, "'S not like I can get you... with egg" he gestured to the thing in her hand and smirked.
"That's not the issue" she said with a shake of her head, glossing over the topic quickly, "I'm thinking he should have a name, maybe Egbert or something" she said as she sat beside her boyfriend, and he casually put his arms around her shoulders.
"Egbert?" he echoed, looking unimpressed, "That's just gotta be child cruelty"
"You have a better idea?" she asked him seriously and he thought about it a second before replying.
"Could always call it Poached or Scrambled" he said seriously a smirk breaking through as her eyes widened. Of course she couldn't really be shocked or annoyed by his lack of seriousness on this topic, in all honesty she was glad to have some fun, besides the project was a little silly. Shaking her head but smiling nevertheless at his awful joke, Buffy put the unnamed egg back in her school bag and re-joined her man on the edge of the bed.
"Reckon those bleedin' cowboys buggered my shoulder again" he winced slightly as he put his left hand on the opposite shoulder and cracked it back into place. It still hurt like hell but it felt as if it moved a little better.
"Want me to kiss it better?" Buffy offered, doing just that, moving her lips up his neck until she reached his mouth and they got lost in each others embrace once again.
"You don't know what you do to me, Summers" Spike told her as they parted a moment later.
"It's pretty obvious" she told him, blushing slightly as she averted her eyes, wondering why she'd even mentioned it. She was yawning when she turned back to look at him and she apologised immediately.
"You look done in, pet" he told her gently, "It's late, you should head home, get some sleep"
"I wish I didn't have to" she sighed, snuggling up close to him, loving the feel of his arms around her as they flopped back on the bed, "I wish we could be together all the time. I can't even talk to my friends about you, they all think you're dead and if I told them the truth about that..."
"Then you'd have to tell them the whole truth, about you and me" Spike filled in for her, knowing she was not at all eager to be telling her friends about the two of them and what they felt for each other. Angel had been far less than impressed to know he was still in existence, Spike still wasn't certain how he'd got away with the great poof not tracking him down and staking him good and proper. He reckoned all that had saved him was the fact they were, in a sense, blood-related. Maybe his having a soul made a difference, but Spike doubted it, after all, here he was with Buffy, loving her so much it hurt, and yet he was supposedly lacking the one thing that made a person human and capable of such emotion.
"Why is everything so complicated?" Buffy sighed.
"That's life, baby" he told her, kissing the top of her head, "S'posed to be complicated and unfair"
"Yeah, well, it sucks" she said, pouting like a child, and making Spike chuckle as he gave her once last kiss before she finally admitted defeat and went home. She had no idea her mother was waiting, knowing by now that her excuse about going to see Willow was a fake. Buffy was in so much trouble, again.
The Next Day...
"Hey Buff" Xander greeted his friend with a smile, "Buffy!" he tried again, waving hand in front of her face when she blanked him, almost walking right on by without even acknowledging he existed.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Xand" she apologised as they walked together, "I was kind of otherwhere"
"Kinda noticed that" he nodded, "and not just today" he said pointedly. She looked away and he knew he'd hit the nail on the head without even saying what he thought her problem was.
"I can't help it, Xander" she sighed, "William means... meant a lot to me, no matter what he turned out to be"
"Buffy, sweetie, you have to move past this" he told her as they moved down the hall towards the library, "He wasn't William, he was Spike. A cold-blooded killer vampire who was playing you. Trust me, you're better off without him, and if I'm honest, without Angel too"
"Angel was okay" she defended the vampire with a soul, "He never hurt me, or any of us, and y'know even Spike never actually..."
"Hey guys!" Willow smiled brightly as she approached her two friends, completely interrupting their conversation, "Whatcha doin' out here?" she asked.
"Er, not much Will" Buffy looked at her friend strangely, confused by her weird behaviour, something just wasn't right about her, "Are you feeling okay?"
"Sure, never better" she grinned, "It's just, there's something we need to show you, in the Science lab. I left Cordelia guarding it"
"Cordelia?" Xander said quickly, "You and Cordelia have been hanging out? Why would you hang out with Cordelia? What have you two girls been talking about?" he laughed nervously, after all as yet he and Cordy had managed to keep their 'relationship' a secret, and he really didn't want to find out that Willow and/or Buffy now knew the truth. What he and Cordelia had been doing in the utility closet, the school basement, and various other secluded locations for the past few weeks was nobodys business but theirs.
"We found something" Willow said, looking at him strangely, "Something demony" she whispered and Buffy was immediately intrigued. She and Xander fell into step behind the red-head and followed her to the science lab where Cordelia was waiting. They had no idea that the cheerleader had a stool behind her back to hit Buffy over the head with, or that Willow was about to reach for a microscope and take out Xander too, and all because of a couple of mysterious creatures attached to the back of their necks.
"Oh this is so not of the good" Buffy said as she came to in the utility closet.
Putting on the light she found Xander semi-conscious at her feet and a couple of eggs lying next to him.
"Okay, that's weird" she said as her friend held his head and scrambled onto unsteady feet, "and that's a whole lot weirder" the Slayer added as the eggs by her feet rattled and shook as if they had minds of their own. As they finally cracked open, Xander screamed like a girl at the sight of the creatures that emerged, all pink and black and squirmy.
Buffy expertly kicked the door open and got herself and her friend outside before shutting the closet door from the outside and hoping the egg creatures were not any stronger than they appeared.
"What the hell is going on?" she gasped as she looked around and saw students and teachers walking around the halls like zombies.
"I'm gonna go out on a limb and say something not good" Xander guessed, "And maybe it has something to go with those eggs we got given to take care of?"
"And maybe it has something to do with something in the basement" Buffy said, pointing towards the door that led down there as a girl disappeared through it with an egg creature attached to the back of her neck.
The pair ran after the girl and followed her down to the basement where they were shocked to find even more zombified people all working on digging up the ground and transporting concrete and dirt away from the hole in the floor that had been made for who knows what purpose. As Buffy and Xander got closer they spotted what was down there, what appeared to be a much larger version of the creatures from the eggs.
"Oh my God" Buffy glanced away from the repulsive sight of the mother creature and watched the zombied people walking around, one of which, for some inexplicable reason, was her mother.
Suddenly a tentacle shot out of the hole in the ground, wrapping itself around Xander's ankle and dragging him in. He yelled in panic and scrambled to get away as the beast beneath the concrete moaned in protest. Several of the students who had been digging up the creature turned on Buffy as she attempted to save her friend. She expertly knocked them all out, careful not to seriously damage anybody before grabbing an abandoned pick axe and cutting the tentacle that had grabbed Xander. Instructing him to stand back, Buffy took a leap into the hole where she hacked and slashed at the large, slimy demon until she was sure it was dead. As it's one eerie yellow eye fell shut, it's hatchlings dropped from the necks and backs of everybody around, returning the students, teachers, and others, including Joyce, to normal. Of course they were all very uncertain of their surroundings, having no idea what had happened to them since the creatures became attached to them, taking over their bodies.
"I mean it this time, Buffy, you are not to leave this room except for school or to visit the bathroom!" Joyce said firmly, pointing a stern finger at her daughter from the doorway, "Am I making myself clear?"
"But Mom..." she tried to protest, after all it hadn't been her fault that she wasn't at the library where she was supposed to be after school. She'd been hit over the head by her possessed friend and then spent the next while saving everybody, including her mother, from a demon matriach and it's many off-spring in the school basement .
"No Buffy, I don't want to hear it" Joyce told her, "No more reasons or excuses, not now. First you disappear out of the house late at night without my knowing and come back with some ridiculous lie about seeing Willow who already called here asking where you were, and then after strict instructions to go straight to the library when school was over I find you wandering around somewhere else entirely getting into all kinds of trouble" she sighed, at the sight of her little girl's sad expression, "I'm sorry, sweetheart, but you have to learn some responsibility. You will not leave this room" she repeated as she finally left Buffy alone, closing the door firmly behind her.
With a sigh, the Slayer slumped down onto her bed and thought over her situation. The very worst part of being grounded had to be not seeing Spike. She'd taken a risk sneaking out to see him before and had got caught out in her 'I was with Willow' excuse, through no real fault of her friend. She couldn't take the same risk again, but maybe there was something she could do, she thought with a smirk, as she reached for the phone.
"Thank God I got you that emergency cellphone" Buffy whispered as she leaned in close to Spike once again and kissed his lips.
"If we get caught, I'm dust in the wind, luv" he reminded her, between kisses, "And you're likely to be grounded for the rest of your natural"
"It's dark, nobody's gonna see you, and aren't I worth the risk?" she asked him with a saucy smile, causing him to smirk and pull her head forward so he could kiss her deeply once again, a perfect answer to her question, they both agreed, "And hey, it's not like I'm breaking any rules" she said when they broke apart a moment later so she could breathe.
"Buffy!" Joyce's voice caught the attention of both of them, "Are you going to bed?"
"In just a minute, Mom!" the blonde called back, grinning as she leaned back out of the window to kiss her man, expertly balanced just outside.
To Be Continued...