Trick For Your Treats: A Maypole Dance Around Spike
October 31st, 1997
Part 9: What the Girl Wants
20
Buffy: I want you.
Spike: 'Xcuse me? Not sure I'm hearin' you right.
Buffy: Not like that! I don't mean want-want-
Spike: How then? Would that be 'uncontrollable lust' or 'unbridled passion' want? Cause, gotta say,
Buffy: Shut up, already!
Spike: I'm an old fashioned guy at heart.
Buffy: Will you quit!
Spike: Prefer to be romanced. Dinner and flowers.
Buffy: So not interested!
Spike: Maybe a box o' chocolates.
Buffy: In anything but that whole punch-spin combo-
Spike: You'll have to be gentle with me.
Buffy: -that you used to take me down.
Spike: I've been hurt.
Buffy wound up hitting him in the arm just to get him to shut up. Spike grinned and seemed to accept the physical reprimand as his due.
"So you're sayin' that you want me to hit you?" Spike drawled, adopting a lazy stance, arms crossed. He managed to appear both smug and puzzled at the same time.
"Yes, no, yes." Okay, Buffy tongue had gotten all twisty-turvy. Buffy shut up and glared at him. Irritating, infuriating twit! He had her cool so blown that it'd have taken an Icee machine to get it back.
Lucky for Buffy, slayers had to be Teflon coated. Nothing stuck. She concentrated, envisioning his irksome verbiage hitting an invisible wall and slithering in a smashed puddle to her feet.
"That combo you used when we fought- to win? I want for you to show me how you did it. Again," Buffy asserted, lifting her chin, righteous and perky in her determination to have her way.
"Can't say that I'm eager to throw down with you again, slayer," Spike said, reluctant and suspicious. However, his blue eyes flickered with unwilling curiosity.
Buffy's jaw set, lips compressing, a fine line forming in the furrow of her brow. She doesn't really care what Spike wants. This is about what she wants, and the slayer is determined to have her way. No matter what it takes.
"I could pay you," Buffy began, wincing as she envisioned Giles' reaction. "I'd have to talk to my Watcher."
"No!" The vehemence of his denial startled her. Instant rebellion sprung up on the blonde vampire's face. His stance is mutinous, and Buffy grasps immediately that she adopted the wrong tactic.
"Keep your money," he said, clearly insulted, turning away.
"Wait!" She won't allow him to leave.
Spike spins around, and Buffy realizes after the fact that she has grabbed hold on his arm. Bright blue eyes glare down into her face, and Spike comes toward her so that their weights offset, and they are spinning, slow and precisely counterbalanced.
"I need to learn how to counter it," Buffy persisted doggedly, refusing to release him. "I have to know." Her urgency communicates itself, and Spike appears to comprehend. She isn't making a trivial request. Her life hangs in the balance. Literally. Every gap in her combat skills leads to death.
"Are you sure that's all you want me for?" His tone, his look…insinuate. His hand is on her arm now, and he's taken her simple attempt to stop him from leaving, and turned it into a dance. Their bodies follow their feet, flowing together in synchronized precision. The maneuvers could be basic combat or the steps to the tango.
He murdered two slayers before he acquired a soul.
His intimate knowledge of her body & kinetics is easily explained.
For Buffy, the rationale fails, falling short of the gap between what her mind knows, and what her body feels…
"Winning's not about having the best moves, slayer," Spike said, still trying to talk her out of it.
He changes tactics again. "Are you feeling your mortality, slayer? Did Death come rappin' at your door?"
His words are like a chill wind, mockery that flays her to the bone, causing Buffy to shudder. Yes, yes, precisely. How did he know?
Because he is the one who almost killed her.
"Show me," she demands, expression set, stubborn and determined.
Spike laughs and acquiesces without words. His capitulation is sudden and surprising. Somehow, she expected him to be more of a challenge. She thought that he'd make her fight for the fight, but he rolls over beta to her alpha. For Buffy, who struggles with Angel for every single inch given and granted, it's a refreshing change.
Releasing her, Spike squared off, adopting an aggressive stance. "Alright, watch. I'll demonstrate once at half speed." He came at her using the coveted punch-spin combo, his movements swift even at reduced pace.
Buffy met his attack, countering all but one of the blows. Without being asked, Spike goes through the combo again, allowing Buffy to learn to defend against his attack.
"Again. Bring it," she commanded.
He is hell for leather fast. He is a blur as he comes at her full speed, launching the same attack as before. Buffy managed to counter every single punch, devising an effective defense, and then countering with a punch-kick combo of her own that penetrates his guard. Her foot hits his chest dead center, driving him back.
They continued to spar for a minute longer, dancing across asphalt and grass, leaping over obstacles as they boogie through the cityscape. His lithe grace, strength, and speed please her. Buffy had never had a sparring partner who is her equal in ability, and the competition thrills her.
Tension crackles between them. They have an undeniable connection, a rush of excitement, charged energy. Buffy has never experienced anything quite like an opponent who is her equal without fear of being killed. It grants her the freedom to be creative and to push her limits. The possibilities for innovation are endless.
"There, you've got it down. I'll be on my way now."
And just like that, the possibilities are zilch.
"Wait! What did you mean about winning not being about the moves?" Buffy shot around him and got in his way. This time she didn't yield when he tried to brush past.
Spike stopped. Stared. Hard. "What do you want from me, slayer?" The way he calls her that is weird. As if he's trying to create distance between them even though they share no real intimacy at all.
Buffy frowns. This annoying vampire is both confusing and crazy. "I-" What did she want? The question revolved on a point of ambiguity within her mind. "I'd like your help. Honing my technique."
"What's wrong with it? Hasn't Angel taught you how to use your tongue?"
"OH!" The Slayer huffed. She puffed. She smacked that insolent wolf on the back of his bleached blonde head.
Spike grinned and laughed, enjoying their banter far more than he should. It makes Buffy feel weird…because it is wrong and strange…and she feels guilty. Because his hand has risen to touch the place where she smacked him, and he smirks, blue eyes sparkling, as if it were a caress instead of a slap.
"Now who's the filthy-minded gutter person?" Buffy demanded.
"Guess that'd be me," Spike replied wryly. "Least I'm not a big ol' killjoy."
Buffy huffed. Puffed up. But no wolf-smackage this time. "I'm not! I'm all about having fun! Loads and loads of fun! Just ask- anyone!"
The vampire stared at her, smiled slyly, and shrugged. "That so?" Funster Buffy. He sounded intrigued, which does nothing to help Buffy's color return to its normal peachy hue. Her face remains bright red.
"Will you spar with me or not?" Through blind persistence, the slayer will prevail. It ought to be a Prophecy. Buffy believes that there is nothing that cannot be had through determination and effort. The slayer is confident that she can have her way. He must acquiescence to her will, just as he did before, if only she keeps after him.
Spike exhaled. Slow. Exasperated. "Can't you spar with Angel?"
"Angel and I aren't like that," Buffy retorted, almost sputtering to think of the awful awkwardness that such a request would provoke. Angel is so terribly sensitive about being a vampire. Asking him to spar with her…he might sulk, or brood, or – God Forbid - get his feelings hurt.
No, no, that won't do.
"Oh, no, of course, not. That might shatter the illusion that the great poof is a boyfriend, and not a two hundred year old demon, wouldn't it?" Spike's sneer, his intimacy, his startling insight… It leaves Buffy with an almost uncontrollable impulse to break his nose.
"Oooh! You're such an ass! Are you this obnoxious without a soul?" Buffy fumed, balling her fists. No hitting. No hitting. No hitting.
Spike grinned, wide and white. "Actually, I'm worse." He laughed, that sneer dissolving into mirth with mercurial swiftness, leaving Buffy baffled.
"You think Angel would hold back even if he agreed, don'tcha?" Spike asked, again with that disturbing insightfulness.
Buffy deliberately ignored the question. True or not, it's none of his business. "Will you spar with me or not?"
"What's in it for me?"
He had her with that one. Buffy fell silent, thinking hard as she tried to come up with any conceivable reason why he might agree. He has already rejected money, and it is obvious that he is reluctant to risk incurring Angel's jealousy.
He and Angel are friends. Angel and Buffy are air quotes dating /air quotes . A reluctance to avoid a compromising situation is something that Buffy both understands and wants as well.
But more than that she wants to learn, to grow stronger, better, in order to win. As a slayer, she can't afford to pass on any knowledge that might extend her notoriously short life expectancy.
"You okay?" Spike asked, looking concerned at Buffy's lengthening silence. He stared at her with an old soul shining out of his eternally youthful face, conveying the impression of a man being helplessly sucked into a vortex against his will. Of course, it is completely ridiculous because Buffy had no such power over him.
With Angel a Buffy pouty-face might've caused the vampire to get bendy to her will. Spike doesn't even know her.
His eyes are world weary, and the look he gives her is vulnerable. Buffy is once again overwhelmed with weirdness. His expression is one of submission and surrender, regret and resignation. Buffy is unable to reconcile the intensity and longing in his blue eyes, so she looks away. They are strangers.
"Fine," Spike spat out the word, then swiftly moderated his tone. "You win. I'll spar with you, but on my terms. Two things-"
"You will? Just like that?"
"My terms," he said. "No hittin' outside of practice, and I can call the whole thing off any time I think things are getting' out of hand. If I say we're quits, we're quits."
"Okay, deal!" Buffy nodded her head, sealing their agreement quickly before he can change his mind. She barely registers his stipulations. What's important is that she's won. He'll teach her what he knows, and in turn she'll become a better, tougher, harder-than-ever-to-defeat slayer. The girl got what she wants!
Buffy is puffed up proud of her own cleverness, her house of cards stacked a mile high, when Spike knocks it all out from under her.
"Oh, and you can be the one to explain this to Angel, Goldilocks."
End Part 9.