Previously on Post Blue: "I liked belonging to someone," he continued, self-consciously. "Liked planning the whole thing. Feeling all… complete. Happy." He paused again, wishing he could stop, but it was too late now. Might as well try and make it worth it. "So… what if we pretended we still were?"
Buffy's face was a picture of bewilderment. "You want to pretend we're getting married?"
Spike nodded.
Mad as that sounds…
xxx
"Roses?"
"Too cliché."
"...Tulips?"
"Not if the wedding's in February."
"Good point. Baby's breath?"
"I've no idea what that is but I'm not getting married in a room full of baby's anything."
"Okay, you are officially impossible," Buffy grouched, tossing the yellow legal pad aside. "Picking the flowers was supposed to be a stupid easy task to break in the whole of…this…thing… and you've turned it into an hour-long debate."
She scowled at Spike, which was difficult since he was rather too close to her face and slightly behind her from her position on his lap. For it to properly have an effect she had to lean back, an action not easily afforded in the recliner they were sharing.
It was the third time since she'd been summoned by Giles to babysit their prisoner for the evening that he'd pushed her patience over the breaking point. Her watcher's attendance at a series of short lectures at the local college might've given her and Spike the opportunity to kick start their fake engagement, but regardless of the ring glittering on her right hand, her fake-fiancé seemed intent on working her last very-non-fake nerve.
The fierce glower she was attempting to eviscerate him with didn't seem to be curbing his attitude at all.
In fact, he appeared to enjoy it.
"Are you gonna pout about it?" he asked, dropping the catalog for the local florist down on the coffee table with a loud slap.
"I… no," she bit back, tightening her jaw.
He glared back—playful and full of heat—and she felt her stomach fluttering treacherously. "Warned you about pouting at me."
"Spike, for God's sake," she complained but he'd already shifted in the chair so she slid out of his lap and down to his side.
His hand tangled at the back of her hair, tilting her head up as his lips met hers, waiting only the briefest of moments for her to catch up before widening the kiss.
The engagement was a complete fiction—just a farce intended to distract each other from the heartache and loneliness they'd both been burdened with—but it didn't stop his kisses from burning. A perfect duality of brutality and tenderness, bruising her lips even as he surrendered in turn. Buffy melted beneath it, slipping down further in the leather armchair until her legs became tangled with Spike's, his arm around her waist the only thing holding her up.
Aren't you getting carried away here? argued an inner voice that was all too squirmy over the fact it was Spike eliciting such reactions, and Buffy agreed.
Okay, enough. She pushed at his chest until he nipped her bottom lip and begrudgingly pulled back.
"This was so not the point of me coming over," she huffed, attempting to breathe casually so he wouldn't catch on to how feverish his mouth against hers made her, wriggling into more of a sitting position and less of a slump.
Spike grinned and ducked to pinch her earlobe between his teeth.
"Disagree," he purred, brushing a sensitive patch of skin beneath her ear with his lips. "I'm getting bored, do that thing with your tongue again."
"No. Make a decision," she insisted as his hand encroached onto her knee, squeezing enough to make the muscle twitch, but not so much as to set off a warning shot by the chip in his brain.
He left open-mouthed kisses down her neck as he hummed in thought. She'd flinched the first time he'd dipped his head to her jugular and had attempted to ban him from any artery-related areas but he was hopelessly, relentlessly fixated (unsurprisingly) and clearly relished seducing her into breaking her resolve. He'd remained unexpectedly gentle though, his mouth brushing over nerve endings and kissing over her pulse point until her back bowed.
"I like lilies," he said eventually as his teeth scraped across a tendon at the slope of her neck. Buffy jumped like she'd been brushed with a livewire, suppressing a gasp.
"Lilies?" she repeated, clearing her throat to get rid of the croak in her voice.
"Mmhmm."
"Maybe with chrysanthemums interspersed?" she asked, tilting her head obligingly so he could nuzzle deeper. She hated that she liked it, that she liked anything Spike did to her, but it made playing the game, acting the part, easier. More convincing. So effortless to play the role of besotted fiancé when her body was all too willing to read the lines for her.
"Perfect," Spike murmured (she wasn't sure if it was to her suggestion or the way her pulse was happily skyrocketing), and bit down in a hard suck that made her yelp in pleasant (and guilty) shock. He tongued the skin pinched between his teeth and she mewled pathetically, her heart rate climbing and she knew he could hear it. Could probably feel it in his mouth.
She pushed him back, unlatching him from her neck. "Stop, you're gonna leave a mark."
"Too late," he snickered, running a finger over the wet skin where neck became shoulder.
Buffy reached up to feel the mark he'd just sucked into a raise and the slight dimples from his incisors.
"Great." She glared at him. "Now I've got to wear a turtleneck until it fades. You're really complicating my wardrobe choices."
Spike grinned unapologetically. "Don't want your mates knowing a bit of teeth gets you hot?"
"It doesn't, you don't, you're just… convenient. Just like I am to you," she ended with less vigor than she'd started out with, faltering at the sinful way he was staring at her. "Except totally inconvenient if I have to cover up for my classes."
He raised an eyebrow as though her chastisement was entirely adorable before dipping his head to her ear, nipping the lobe. "Since you're gonna cover up anyway, no reason to stop now," he purred before working back down her neck with worshipful kisses and bites. "How's that all going, by the way?" he asked as his teeth fit back over the mark, his fingers squeezing her thigh as she let her head fall to the side.
"How's what going?" Buffy asked, sucking in a sharp breath when his tongue hit a spot that seemed to be connected to every nerve ending in her spine.
"...Your classes and such," Spike clarified, his lips still brushing up to her ear and making her shiver.
Buffy blinked in confusion, and pulled back to face him. "Why do you care?"
He huffed at having his affections interrupted but settled in next to her. "You're my girl, right? I'm supposed to care."
"Oh…right." Buffy nodded. That made sense. After all, wedding planning wasn't the only thing couples talked about, was it? There was the whole relationship aspect to incorporate into this charade.
Okay… talking to Spike. Talking to Spike like it's totally normal that I'm talking to Spike whilst sitting in his lap… this is new.
"It's good… I'm learning a lot," she said hesitantly and paused to see if that was enough. When he motioned her to keep going with a roll of his fingers she wet her lip and obliged. "I'm taking Psychology, Business Studies, Computer Sciences that Willow's taking with me—and is making me look like a caveman next to her—and an Introduction to Poetry," she listed in a rush, feeling unusually embarrassed. His unwavering attention was rather overwhelming.
Spike's mouth quirked up in a surprised smile.
"...You're taking poetry?"
"Yeah? Why?"
Spike smirked and shook his head, an emotion Buffy couldn't put a name to flitting across his face. "Just surprised."
"Uh huh…" she muttered, her eyes narrowing as she scrutinized him further.
He moved in closer, apparently enjoying her suspicious attitude as he softly cupped her face. He laid a kiss on the corner of her mouth. "Why don't you tell me what you like, luv?"
She snorted dismissively, about to drag herself out of his arms. "I told you, we're not going there—"
"In your poetry class, I meant." He chuckled, mocking her for jumping to the lewdest interpretation of his request.
"Oh…" Buffy softened, settling back down. She shrugged, self-consciously.
After a beat Spike resumed his concentrated attack on her neck kissing down her collarbone before brushing her shoulder with his teeth. Her eyes drifting closed.
"Go on," he encouraged.
She bit her lip as she struggled to remember what topics they'd covered recently, pushing through the unwanted fog of arousal that was threatening to blank out her mind completely.
"I like…" she started, as her hand curled into the red shirt over Spike's back, needing an anchor lest she drift off entirely into the ether. "I like… Dickinson. We did her last week."
"Did you, now?" he purred over her pulse point, his hand on her hip, squeezing encouragingly.
"We read the… the hope one…" Buffy stifled a moan as his teeth pinched her shoulder, worrying a fresh mark beneath the first. He pulled away after a moment of thought.
"Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul?" he asked, reciting lazily against her skin.
She nodded and felt him smile as he nuzzled deeper. "I liked that one," she answered. It came out as a hoarse whisper.
"Figures you would," he said. "You being the thing with feathers."
Her eyebrows creased, about to ask what he meant, but his lips were on hers before she could. She let him drag her under one last time, hooking a leg over his hip and wrapping her arms around his shoulders as she brushed her tongue over his. He shuddered under her hands, murmuring her name any time his lips were free from hers.
Time felt like it was slipping away too fast and she broke away from him to check her watch.
"I've gotta go," she mumbled, fighting off his hands as she heaved herself out of the armchair. "I have a paper to study for, so this whole make-believe thing is now to-be-continued. Giles'll be back in fifteen minutes, you'll chain yourself back up?"
"I never agreed to that," he growled as she shoved the flower catalog and the legal pad into her bookbag.
"Well if you don't agree to it, I'll chain you up myself and I'll be entirely way less generous about how comfortable I leave you." She shot him a warning look as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder.
"Remind me why I'm marrying you again," Spike bit back sourly, hauling himself out of the armchair after her.
"You're not," Buffy answered bluntly. "Okay, so, same time next week?"
"You know," he huffed, "when you say goodbye like that it makes me feel less like the man you're planning on spending the rest of your life with—"
"Fake rest of my life—"
"And more like a dentist appointment."
Buffy smirked. "I don't see the dentist every week."
She reached for the door, and he caught her hand, pulling it off the handle and delaying her exit.
"Say a proper goodbye," he insisted, his face stern. "Make it real again."
Buffy rolled her eyes and then slipped on the facade that was getting far too comfortable being in place. She cupped his face and kissed him. A slow, lingering kiss that had him chasing her lips as she made to pull away. He didn't give her the space to, pressing her back as one hand snaked around her waist and the other braced against the door.
She let him twine his tongue with hers. He usually turned the kisses lewd and hungry, full of gentle biting and brazen panting. She restrained him with a hand on his chest before she got swept up into it, and reluctantly broke the kiss.
"Bye, honey. See you later," she purred before catching his lips for a last swift kiss, before bouncing back off the balls of her feet. "Like that?"
"Yeah, like that," he replied and released her waist. "Would be better if you were in just your knickers, though," he added, leering with his tongue tucked behind his teeth.
"Dream on," Buffy retorted with a glare.
"Believe me, I will be," he said as she turned to leave.
He closed the door after her and waited, listening to her footsteps dwindling across the courtyard before turning back away.
From out of his coat pocket hanging up by the front door, he drew out a small notebook. In the kitchen, he fished out a blood pack from the fridge and tipped it into the watcher's favorite mug before setting it to heat in the microwave for a few minutes.
With the blood freshly warmed and drifting a salty aroma upwards, he reclined back into the armchair (still warm with Buffy's body heat), uncapped a pen with his teeth, and opened the notebook. The first few pages were filled with doodles and scrappy lines of poetry he hadn't done anything with. He flipped past them until he found his notes.
F: Soldier. B knows him. From where?
He chewed on the pen for a moment before attempting to answer the question of Finn; army brat who'd aided in de-fanging him.
School? He added.
Slaying?
Family friend?
He scratched that last one out. From her reaction when he'd described the crewcut's antics he was a new acquaintance. A 'too-good-to-be-true' romantic prospect, not someone she knew from the way back when.
Probably didn't know the boy from slaying either, if her perception had been of a nice, wholesome, monster-free boy to set her heart on.
He didn't scratch it out, though. Stranger things had happened.
Bronze? he added, but he liked that one even less. He frequented that bar more than her, and he'd never seen any of those military assholes lurking that far downtown.
School seemed the highest bidder so far.
Classes, he wrote, then; Psyche, Business, Computers, Poetry.
Poetry was unlikely, and for some reason that gave him a warm flush uncomfortably close to satisfaction. A strange sort of possessive feeling that their shared interest—unexpected though that was—could be something for just the two of them.
He shrugged it off with a shake of his head.
Psyche, probably. Or computers… Those are the top runners, he thought to himself and recapped the pen, downing the blood before it could congeal and slipping the notebook into his pocket.
He was on the right track, he was sure of it.
Finding the cretinous whelp who'd shoved a sparkly little handicap into his brain; that was step one. A low stakes (quite literally) bit of intel gathering.
Step two… that'd be a bit more hands-on.
AN: Crackedy crack, welcome back! Thank you to my wonderful commenters and followers who've been so supportive of this completely bonkers plot I've dug myself into. Beta'd as always by the one and only RavenLove12