Author note
Written as a very special birthday present for the one and only, the extraordinary Claire [CD85]. Summary of the request was to have Spike and Buffy dancing. But *not* romantic dancing. Sniping, snarking, and generally having a horrible time… until they start having a not-such-a-horrible-time of it [wink wink]. Secondly, including Nights In White Satin by the Moody Blues, all the better. I seriously couldn't fit it all into a one shot. The duo demanded multiple chapters, so welcome to my Love In The Sixties song fic!
An enormous, heartfelt thank you to my two wonder-betas Ravenlove12, who's been my go to when the plot starts to thin-en for two years! And Em_Kayelle, for your fine tooth comb and the hilarious summary! You guys put in so much time and effort to polish my words and I am incredibly grateful.
Claire (of course) made the banner, even though it's her present, and quite frankly it was the cause of this fic ratcheting up from a two shot to a mini fic. Just glorious!
Happy Birthday Claire! Get your groove on xxx
The setting
Post-Doomed, Pre-A New Man; Buffy and Riley together and Spike chained in Giles' bathtub.
"It's an impending disaster," Buffy moaned, and the room at large nodded in agreement.
"It's certainly a conundrum," said Willow, biting her nails down to the quick in second-hand nervousness.
"People could get hurt," said Giles sternly, removing his entirely dust-free glasses to polish them.
"Riley definitely will," added Anya, bluntly. "Broken bones. Blood everywhere. It has the makings of a full-blown catastrophe."
"I know," Buffy whimpered, eyes raised to the ceiling in exasperation.
"What did you tell him?" Xander asked, naively hopeful that the situation might resolve itself. "I've heard honesty is the best policy. Maybe you could try that?"
"I told him I could. I said 'no problem. Easy. Totally my wheelhouse'," Buffy replied, sighing extravagantly.
This is so not my wheelhouse. This is a house with no wheels. It's a house-house.
"Oh yeah, you probably shouldn't have done that," said Willow, half wincing
"I'm doomed." Buffy slumped down onto the coffee table, burying her head in her hands. "Doomed, guys. I mean seriously, a Pride and Prejudice themed wedding?! The dancing will go on for hours! It's the main event! Riley won't have any feet left!"
"Did you read the book?" Willow inquired, and Buffy's head rose in horror.
"I have to do homework for it?!"
"Can't you just tell him you can't dance?" Xander asked after Buffy's whine of misery had died back enough for conversation to flow again.
"You could ask him for lessons!" added Anya, nodding enthusiastically. "Which can be both fun and sexy. Last Valentine's Day, Xander and I learned to dance together, and anytime one of us stood on the other's foot they had to lose—"
"He's out of town until next week," Buffy grouched, cutting off what promised to be a mortifying end to Anya's anecdote, much to the relief of the rest of the room. "Flying back in for one day only."
A brief silence stretched as Buffy let go another drawn-out groan.
"And you really can't dance at all?" Willow probed, leaning forward on her knees. "I mean like outside of Bronze jiggy-grindy-ness?"
"Nuh-uh," Buffy grunted from behind her fingers.
"Didn't you dance with Angel?" Anya asked, causing a minute cringe in the congregation.
"Yeah, but that was just swaying side to side."
"How close is he with his cousin?" Xander pressed. "Will they definitely notice Riley's absence on the dance floor or…?"
"He's the best man," Buffy huffed.
"Well, you have three days," Giles reminded her, taking a sip of his freshly brewed tea, his newly sparkling glasses resituated on his nose. "It's do-able. All you need is a tutor."
Heads turned towards him.
"To make it clear, I am not volunteering," he stated with inarguable finality.
Buffy pouted. And then very cautiously swung her eyes up towards Xander.
"Keep moving, eyeballs," warned Anya, and Buffy slumped back into a sulk over her knees.
"Hey!" Willow exclaimed, too jovial for the grimness of the moment in Buffy's opinion. "You know who's from the era of slow waltzy dances and has been super loud about wanting to be let out of his chains lately?"
All eyes in the room stared at her in a spectrum of shock or horror. Before slowly turning towards the alcove leading to Giles' bathroom.
"Yeah, this I'll want to see," said Xander, pulling a bowl of popcorn off the coffee table into his lap, and settling in.
xXx
"Oh, Antonio!"
Camilla's wavy locks tumbled over her shoulders as Antonio drew her close. His arm cinched tight around her waist as he dipped her low, brushed his lips across hers, eyes turning heavy lidded as violins surged.
"Mi amor—"
The picture snapped to black as Buffy flicked the switch on the TV roped to Giles' bathroom cabinet.
"Hey!" Spike snarled, blinking back into reality and stubbing out his cigarette against the bathtub's porcelain.
"I've got a job for you," she stated, hands on her hips, a vision of despotic aggravation.
Spike huffed, rolling his eyes as though he couldn't believe her audacity as he slumped further down into the tub. "Do you now? This the part where I say 'how high?' Because I'm rather hindered, currently." He rattled his chains to make a point.
Buffy's lips tightened.
"Can you dance?"
"I… yeah?" he answered, cursing his tongue almost immediately that his initial response had been so bleeding honest, and had likely dumped him right in it.
"Like… round and round in a ballroom type dance?" she persisted, the hands on her hips twitching in nervous agitation.
"...Yeah," he confirmed with caution, eyes narrowing. Despite the abhorrence that the Slayer should know even a single solitary fact about the human he once was, this interaction was unwinding itself into 'intriguing'.
What the bloody hell is she plotting?
She bit her lip, nostrils flaring in that typical way he'd come to read as the Slayer Almighty having her back up against a wall, ready to fight but not knowing in what direction.
Her jaw hardened as she swallowed.
"Can you teach me?" she mumbled.
A snort of derision broke loose from him, sharp and unrestrained. "Bugger off."
"Spike—"
"Not a chance, luv."
"I just need to learn how to waltz without inflicting injury," she persisted.
"Oh, is that all? Get some other schmuck to My Fair Lady you, because I'm not playing."
Her brow furrowed momentarily—obviously not understanding the reference—but she scowled nonetheless, assuming it was insulting from context.
"That is so not what this is about," she hedged. "There's this… stupid wedding and—"
"Christ. My most heartfelt sympathies to the groom. Go away."
"It's not my wedding! Look, all I'm asking for is—"
"I'm not your puppet, Slayer," he interrupted. "I might be shackled to a bleeding bathtub but I still have some dignity. Now turn the telly back on, the Count was just about to get his rocks off."
A withering pause stretched between them and he settled in, crossing his legs as she crossed her arms, each intending to wait out the other.
She glared.
He glared back, gritting his jaw hard, feeling his patience wearing all the more thin. The bloody nerve of the chit, storming in here like she owned the place, trying to talk him into further humiliation as if being trussed up beneath a leaky showerhead wasn't bad enough.
First chance I get I'm gonna rip the sodding plumbing right out of the Watcher's walls…
Spike raised an eyebrow when she still didn't budge. "Well? Push off then."
Buffy leveled one last glower at him before smiling wide.
"Okay," she said brightly—suddenly and suspiciously full of bounce—and turned to the TV.
But rather than turn it back on she unplugged it from the extension cord running to the socket in the hallway.
"Oi, what're you—?"
"No dance lessons, no TV."
"Slayer!"
She already had the ropes off.
"You can't leave me in here with sod all to watch, I'll go mad!"
"Boo-hoo," she said, supporting the weight of the set with one hand, about to roll it onto her shoulder to take it down.
"FINE!" he yelled. "Bloody fine."
She smiled, and the sight made him sick. He scowled as she smugly set the TV back in place, one-handed and reckless.
"But I want paying," he snarled in a warning tone laced with the bite he could no longer deliver. "Plus the old boy's Jim Beam, a four-pack of blood, another carton of smokes—"
"Absolutely not!" Giles bellowed from the living room.
"You'll do it for an hour out of your shackles and continued TV privileges, and like it," Buffy retorted.
"Oh, a whole hour in the yard, warden? Mighty benevolent of you."
She turned towards the TV again, hands raised.
"Alright!" he shouted. "God's sake."
"Do we have a deal?" she asked sweetly as though he wasn't chained to her Watcher's bathtub with nowhere better to go.
Vindictive little bitch.
"Deal. Though I don't know what you think you'll get out of an hour."
"I'm sure an hour will be plenty," she said.
He rolled his eyes, and hoisted himself up into a sitting position. "Get me out of these things, then, I'm starting to chafe."
With a last glare, Buffy disappeared briefly to grab the key to the shackles, unlocking his feet before his hands, and he rubbed the skin around his wrists in relief.
"Don't pout," she said, smirking, and he grit his teeth before leveling himself out of the bath and stalking after her.
"Oh bloody hell," he groaned on the threshold of the living room, meeting her entire troop's barely contained smiles of smug anticipation, the lot of them waiting for the show to start. Red's face was a picture of glee, mirrored by Anya's look of unbridled curiosity as she snuggled deeper into Xander's side, getting comfortable. The whelp was honest-to-God chewing on a bowl of popcorn.
Choke on it, he thought loudly.
"Okay." Buffy bent and pushed the coffee table all the way to the wall, then turned and pushed the sofa with all three of its occupants still seated on it, until it bumped against Giles' desk. "Right. Let's go," she demanded, as though gearing up for a boxing match.
He scoffed. "Think you're forgetting something, pet," he said as he joined her on the living room rug that comprised her new dance floor. She raised an eyebrow. "Music?" he prompted.
"Oh. Uh… Giles?"
Giles took a deliberately slow sip of tea before getting out of his armchair. "Though my collection is eclectic, Buffy, I might be hard pressed to find you something to waltz to."
"Well, just not anything too prog-rocky droneyness?" she requested, shifting restlessly from foot to foot. "No offense."
"Some taken," he muttered from the floor by his music collection.
"And something slow?" she added. "Kinda get the feeling this isn't gonna be a whirlwind tango event." Her eyes snapped to Willow's, suddenly full of apprehension. "Right?"
The witch shook her head soothingly as Giles sifted through his albums, mumbling suggestions.
"Rush—"
"No," dismissed Buffy.
"Jethro Tull—"
"No," Spike chimed in.
"Cream—"
"Nuh-uh," muttered Buffy.
"I'm going to assume Yes isn't going to cut it."
"What about Bette Midler?" suggested Willow, holding in a chuckle.
"No!" Spike growled in unintentional unison with Buffy, causing a surge of irritation to cinch his gut that she should be as touchy about Willow's jibe as he was.
It wasn't her that was down on one sodding knee!
They reached the end of the records, forcing Giles into his CD collection. After what felt like an age of suggestions and refusals, they finally hit the last album in the stack.
"Unfortunately, that leaves you with my 'Love in the Sixties' compilation," said Giles, rising off his knees with a two disc album in his hand.
Spike groaned. "Kill me."
"Is that a sincere request?" Buffy sneered, before turning to Giles. "Just put it on."
"How about Unchained Melody to begin with?" quipped Giles, holding down a smirk with nothing but the lightest touch as Spike grit his jaw.
"My sides ache."
Spike straightened his back—getting a crick out of his spine after being hunched in a tub for the better part of a week—while Giles walked the album to the CD player.
"Woah, my love, my darling, I've hungered for your touch—!" The Righteous Brothers warbled out of the speakers.
"Right," Spike said, snapping his fingers. "Hand."
Buffy pursed her lips with pure, unfiltered disdain, before slapping her palm against his.
"Real ladylike," he muttered under his breath, and unceremoniously yanked her close, smirking at the stumble it caused her.
She tensed as he flattened his hand over the curve of her back, obviously not having thought this heroically stupid idea through as she glared a warning for him not to even think about moving lower.
Like I'd bloody want to, he scowled in silent response.
Her nose wrinkled in revulsion as he pulled her into position with his hand at her hip.
"You smell like an ashtray," she griped.
Spike smirked.
And leaned in close.
Closer.
Buffy stiffened in his arms as he leaned in closer still.
And breathed in her face.
"Ew!" she screeched, shoving him back as he chortled. "Gross!"
"Good start," Xander commented around a mouthful of popcorn, and Spike smirked in triumph at having worsened the situation, before offering his hand a second time.
Buffy sighed heavily and forced herself to take position again.
"So," he instructed, his hand curling around hers, but his clipped tone very much not meshing with the song's bleeding heart overture at all. "Step one, move your foot back."
She looked down, and he sharply tilted his head to avoid being clocked on the chin.
"Which one?" she asked, oblivious to her cronies' smirks from the sofa.
"Right one," he said and moved to walk his foot forward. "Your right," he growled when their shins collided. Bloody hell... "Left foot joins it. Two, sweep your foot out. Left foot!" He winced as he trod on her still stationary toes, a dose of electricity sparking his frontal lobe as she yelped.
"Ow!" she snapped.
"Yeah, I damn well concur!" He tightened his fist around her hand, pushing away the pain.
"Woah, my love, my darling, I've hungered for your touch—!" mocked the second verse of Unchained Melody, and Spike seriously considered putting his fist through the speakers.
"Right foot joins your left," he instructed as the lead singer's voice soprano'd higher. "Step forward—Watch it!"
"You're going too fast!"
Spike cursed as they collided again, taking a pained breath in to steady himself. Counting to ten as slowly as he could. "Okay. Sweep your right foot…right! And agai—what are you doing?"
"You're dragging me around," she accused, struggling out of his grip.
"Leading," he corrected.
"Drag-ging," she repeated, enunciating louder, crossing her arms defensively. "Giles, he's doing it wrong on purpose!"
"I'm not getting involved," Giles responded, comfortably re-seated in his armchair with a book on his lap, his mug of tea clasped lightly in his fingers. "Though I feel compelled to inform you, Buffy, that traditionally it's the man who leads on the dance floor," he added, traitorously.
"Well, I don't think Spike counts as one," Buffy grouched.
"That right?" A goading smirk stretched across Spike's face as he hooked a thumb into the waistband of his jeans in a way that could've read as innocent until his fingers splayed across his crotch. "Need visual confirmation, pet?"
Her cheeks burned a furious shade of cherry-red. "Hardest of passes."
Spike grinned. "You're blushing."
"You're disgusting," she bit back. "And you are so not getting out of this by being a pervert. Put your arms back up."
"Fine," he sneered, his hand wrapping around her waist and settling obnoxiously low on her back. "Keep your feet out from under my boots this time, then. Being around you is enough of a headache without the Christmas lights bursting in my brain."
He pulled his foot back sharply as she attempted to stomp on it.
"Aw, you guys make such a cute couple," Willow chuckled ironically from her seat on the sofa and took a handful of popcorn from the bowl.
"Will!" Buffy shouted in outrage.
"There's certainly a lot of unresolved sexual tension," remarked Anya, nodding sagely as Xander choked on a popcorn kernel.
"Between who? The Watcher and his cup of tea?!" Spike bit out with fury. "For the love of Christ, Slayer, just call it hopeless and chain me back in the tub."
"NO!" Buffy snapped as the song's violin section gently swelled. "Look, just… start again."
"Maybe you need a new song choice," Willow suggested, and stretched to reach the CD case, inspecting the track list. "Ooh, what about Silence Is Golden?"
"Couldn't agree more," Spike growled under his breath as Willow leaned across to change the track.
With a sour glare, Buffy joined her hand with his—less gently than the first time, if that was even possible—and let his arm re-circle her waist.
He pulled her in tight, and felt microscopically better as her cheeks threatened to blush again. She looked about to object, pursing her lips tight as he smirked.
"Don't pout, luv," he mocked, low enough that only she heard it over the lilting guitar intro. "Right foot back—"
This time she managed to move seamlessly as he walked forwards, only just anticipating the step of his boot.
"Left joins it," he said, refusing to pay her even half a compliment as she managed a wobbly step to the side. She attempted the third step forward without prompting and he chuckled as she collided with his hip. "Oh, Bambi's pulling out the moves, huh?" he goaded, sarcasm dripping.
"You know, you're very mouthy considering I could break all your fingers just so easily right now," she huffed, but was concentrating too hard on her movements to put the usual dose of venom into her threat.
"Yeah, they're a match made in heaven," croaked Xander.
"If they were playing our Valentine's Day game they'd be naked by now," Anya commented as she extracted a handful of popcorn from the bowl.
Buffy shot her a warning look, losing track of Spike's foot and accidentally stepping on it.
"Slayer," he growled. "Would you stop looking at your feet and your mates, I'm bloody bruised enough."
"How am I supposed to stop you from stepping on my feet if I can't see yours?!" she argued back.
"This isn't a fight! I'm not on the sodding attack, you don't need to block!"
She snorted out a pfft of disbelief, but her hand eased microscopically in his.
"Straighten your back," he instructed, and after a last rebellious look to his boots to make sure they weren't on the offense, she brought her shoulders up.
They managed a full circuit of the album from the first track to the last with fewer bruises and only medium-excessive swearing. Each song brought with it fresh aggravation. By the time Unchained Melody came around a second time both sets of shins and ankles were black and blue.
"Woah, my love, my darling, I've—"
"Keep your head up!" Spike commanded as she almost lost her footing.
"Enough with the pulling!" Buffy growled.
"This endless sniping is immeasurably tiring," Giles said, pinching the bridge of his nose and moving up to rub his eyes.
"At least you don't have a clod-footed Slayer attacking your toes," muttered Spike.
"It is getting late," Willow interjected, casting a glance at Xander and Anya, asleep and slumped against each other.
"Oh," Buffy acquiesced, catching sight of the clock in the kitchen. "Yeah, it is." She dropped Spike's hand and stretched her shoulders out with a relieved sigh. "We'll… we'll try again tomorrow."
Spike's eyebrows furrowed. "We'll what now?"
"This," she said, gesturing at the rug where they'd been stepping on each other's feet for the last hour and a half. "Again tomorrow."
"No-no-no, here endeth the lesson. All lessons. No more 'this'!" he snapped back. "I didn't volunteer for recurring torture."
"Who would volunteer for that?" Willow mumbled in the background, shaking Xander and Anya awake.
Spike ignored her, not taking his eyes off Buffy. "You're off your rocker if you think I'm subjecting myself to this torment a second time."
"You want your soap operas and your bags of blood, they come at a price," she countered, unconcerned.
"And we agreed an hour! I've more than paid!"
"Well then it sucks to be you, because the price just went up," she replied flippantly. "Come on. If you don't struggle you might catch a rerun of Melrose Place." She started walking off towards the bathroom without waiting to see if he would follow.
Spike snarled at her retreating back, raised hands clawed as though he could rip her head off through telekinesis, curling into useless fists as he struggled to swallow down a surge of violent intentions.
Instead of the desired decapitation, he leveled a kick at the bookcase the CD player stood on, causing the track to skip.
"Hu-uh-uh-ungered for your touch—!"
"Hungered for your bloody neck," he muttered under his breath.
Willow smirked at Spike's retreating figure as she settled the strap of her bag over her shoulders. "Is it weird that I feel kind of sorry for him?"
Giles snorted. "It's certainly a triumph of sympathy," he muttered, closing his book with an exhausted sigh.
"There's no way they're gonna manage three days," said Xander, tugging on his coat.
"I agree," agreed Anya. "They'll be having orgasms by day tw—"
"Anya!" shouted the room in unison.