Chapter 10
Author's Notes: I get the idea that you guys wanted Spike.
Well, you can't say I never gave you anything.
Thank you guys SO MUCH for the reviews and support. And to my betas for their suggestions, encouragement, and input. You all are completely awesome. *hugs*
Sunnydale, California, 1997 There was absolutely nothing worth watching on television. And he should know; he’d spent the past two and a half hours flipping through the same fifty-five channels with nothing to show for it. There was news, sitcoms, home-shopping channels, late-night television; nothing which particularly grabbed his interest or did anything to take his mind off his growling stomach. He hadn’t eaten tonight. The hunting grounds were flooded with an arse-load of fledglings, most of whom had been privy to his earlier humiliation, and he didn’t particularly fancy showing his face among a lot of two-day old soon-to-be dust clouds just so they could poke a laugh at the proverbially red-faced Big Bad.
No, Spike didn’t feel like doing much of anything; it didn’t help that the things which sounded appealing were currently off-limits. Things like killing whoever looked at him funny. Or bugger it—anyone who looked at him full stop.
This self-imposed restraint nonsense wasn’t going to last long, especially with his temper being as it was. When he was particularly enraged, Spike had the habit of taking his mood out on whatever was convenient. Tonight, the most convenient recipient had been the desk-clerk at the dingy motel where he was parked for the night. The kid wasn’t dead; a death would bring about the incompetent human police force, and that just paved the way for attention he didn’t need or want.
Being shacked up in a motel room was humiliating enough. Toss in the bit where his sire had kicked him to the curb in front of the lackeys which were technically under his control…
There was only so much degradation a bloke could take.
Spike heaved a long-suffering sigh, raising the beer-bottle he’d been nursing all night to his lips as his fingers manipulated the telly-clicker. There was absolutely nothing on. And for a man who enjoyed his spot of television, that was saying something.
He didn’t need much. He wasn’t asking for anything beyond a distraction from the waste he’d managed to turn his life into in just thirty-six hours. Anything beyond forgetting the taste of the Slayer’s kiss and the feel of her hot, silky pussy around his fingers. The way she’d looked at him like he was worth something. The way she’d sobbed against him and begged his forgiveness for some unknown offense. The way he’d felt, in those few minutes, more valued, more cherished, more
loved than he ever had in the whole of his existence.
There was nothing in the world which made a lick of sense anymore.
Spike heaved a sigh, took another hearty swig of beer, and flicked the channel again. A rerun of
Seinfeld. Fantastic.
This was the way vampires spent their Sunday nights. Lounging on beds in rented rooms, drinking piss-poor American liquor, and listening to television characters talk about women with man-hands.
All the while wishing he was with a certain slayer. Spike honestly had no bleeding clue what he was going to do when he got his hands on her again. His visitations from his night angel had taken the expected turn on the increase since their impromptu tryst, fueled now with the knowledge of her taste and the warmth of her body. His sleep was often interrupted by the ring of his own pleasured moans, and while he wished to deny it, he was always disappointed to discover the hand pulling on his dick was his own. That Buffy hadn’t found him with her special slayer-powers and invited herself into his bed.
Just two nights away from Dru and he was already going out of his mind. It figured he’d spend over a century with a certified loony and only begin to lose his own marbles the bloody second he got away from her.
Spike snickered and shook his head, turning the channel again.
Now that’s what you call ironic. So lost in his musings and the badness that was late-night television was he that Spike did little more than offer a bored blink when the door to his motel room exploded open, rattling with the aftershock of a particularly brutal kick. He didn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused when he met the glowering eyes of Angelus, and thus settled for indifferent.
“’Lo Pap,” he said, nodding without sitting up. “What brings you to these parts?”
Typically, the appearance of his so-called sire did little more than infuriate him. It was what had made going along with Angel’s skit at Parent-Teacher night so bloody entertaining. If the great sod knew him at all, he would have immediately recognized that Spike was calling his bluff from the start. Even when they had been tentative allies, they had never been the hugging sort. Nor would they ever consider sharing a drink. No, Angelus had never been one for sharing anything. Drusilla was testament enough to that.
“I want you to stop,” the other vampire said by way of greeting as he stormed across the threshold.
“All right. I’ll stop.” Spike smirked and waved at the door with his beer-hand before tossing the rest of the bottle’s contents down his throat. “Though if you’re planning on stayin’, you’ll need to fork over some cash. I only booked a single.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Y’know how hard it was to find a bloke with a healthy bank account in these parts? I’m gonna have old-man taste in my mouth for weeks.” Spike shuddered, flicking the television off and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Do I honestly need to ask you what the bugger you’re doin’ here, or are you plannin’ on sharing?”
Angel was quiet for a long minute, his attention focused on the cracked walls and the numerous stains littering the carpet. “What the hell are you doing, Spike?”
“Well, before you showed up, I was debating between Italian an’ Chinese.” He paused for emphasis. “Chinese was winning.”
“No,
what are you doing?”
Spike blinked, fighting back a chuckle. “What’s it you wanna hear, mate? Plottin’ the apocalypse? Tryin’ to figure jus’ how priceless the look on your face will be when I finally decide to put you out of your soul-havin’ misery?” He grinned. “Fantasizin’ about how glorious your slayer tastes?”
The other vampire twisted around, his eyes shining with victory. It was quite obviously the set-up he’d been waiting for. “Stay away from her.”
“She threw herself at
me, mate. What’s a bloke to do?”
“I mean it, Spike. Stay
away from her.”
Spike’s hands came up. “Can’t help it if she needs a bit more monster than you have to offer, now can I? How else do you figure she came around huntin’ me down an’ leapin’ into my arms like I was—”
“It was a spell.”
He rolled his eyes. “Really. An’ here I was thinking there’s somethin’ wonky in the water.”
“Buffy’s really confused right now—”
Spike gasped dramatically, slapping a hand across his chest. “An’ you want me to cut the poor twig a break? Not kill her so thoroughly when her head’s all in a tumble?” He snorted, even if the words fell short of intent. Even if the thought of harming the Slayer made his stomach clench and his demon roar in fury. “’m evil, Angelus. Somethin’ you know more than your fair share about, if memory serves.”
Angel leveled a useless glare at him. “I could kill you now.”
“Yeah.” He faked a shudder. “Scary. Come on, Peaches. We all know how you feel about family.”
“Didn’t stop me from killing Darla last year.”
“Word has it you only did it so she wouldn’t pump your delicious slayer full of lead.”
The rage in Angel’s eyes was strangely comforting. “Are you really so arrogant to think I
won’t kill you?”
“Are you really so arrogant to think that you could?” Spike countered, dipping a hand into his pocket to fish out his fags. No fags to be found. He’d have to make a run to the nearest Kwikee-Mart. “Y’don’ know me like you used to, Angelus.”
“I know you enough to know you haven’t changed. You
don’t change.”
“An’ because you have the clarity of a handy dandy soul, you—”
“You said it, not me. Remember?” Angel took a step forward; one which Spike refused to recover. “Demons are non-changing.”
He fought an eye-roll. Bloody figured that much would resurface to bite him in the arse. It was a philosophy he’d held near and dear to him such a short while ago. How was it that so much had changed in just two or three days that he felt
himself changing along with the circumstances?
Fuck if he ever confessed as much.
“Is that it, then?” Spike demanded, tossing a pointed glare to the door. “You hunt me down jus’ to tell me it’s all right to wanna kill your girl, but fantasizing about shagging her’s outta the question?”
“So you are, then? What I saw wasn’t just the spell…it was you, too.”
He groaned and threw his arms up in the air, twisting around and marching intently to the cooler he’d swiped from the local wannabe Wal-Mart. If he couldn’t smoke, he might as well keep drinking. “Whaddya want from me? She’s a walking, talking masterpiece, an’ I’m a vampire. Vamps appreciate beauty. So yeah, I’ve thought of fucking her into the ground. Doesn’ rightly help when she throws that luscious thing she calls a body at me.” He popped the cap off his beer-bottle and took a healthy swig. “So the Slayer has a few loose screws, an’ you’re afraid I’m gonna worm my way into her knickers on the road to snappin’ her neck? Not that the idea doesn’ hold its fair share of appeal—”
“I swear, Spike—”
“—but that tactic reeks of your M.O, mate. Not mine. I’m not one to screw with my food. Seems a certain sire of mine learned that particular lesson the hard way.”
Angel held his glare for a few endless seconds before breaking away with a sigh, his massive shoulders slumping in a manner which almost imitated defeat. A few uncomfortable seconds of silence spread between them. They seemed at an impassable standstill.
It was, therefore, not much of a surprise when Angel switched topics with casual nonchalance.
“What the hell are you doing here, Spike?” he asked softly.
“I thought I already told you…debatin’ what to grab for dinner.”
“No, what are you…” Angel paused and broke off, holding up a hand as he reconfigured his thoughts. “Why aren’t you with Dru?”
Spike perked a brow. “You found me here. You’re tellin’ me you haven’t heard?”
“Believe it or not, I’m not that interested in your life.”
“Yeah, you’re here because you’re diseased with apathy.” He snorted and waved a hand at the particularly nasty glare the elder vampire shot him. “Dru gave me the boot.”
Angel blinked. Hard. “She what?”
“Came home the other night smellin’ like ripe slayer musk, an’ she tossed me out on my arse. It’s almost funny.” Spike paused thoughtfully but he couldn’t bring himself to laugh. “All the foolin’ around she’s done an’ I’ve always turned a blind eye. Knew she’d come back to me in the end, an’ she always has. I get mauled by a dizzy blonde an’ Dru’s suddenly—”
“That doesn’t sound like Dru.”
“Well, by all bloody means—”
“No. No. It
really doesn’t sound like Dru.”
“She’s a woman, mate, an’ outta her sodding mind, thanks to you. Do you really wanna try to make sense of anythin’ she—”
Angel tossed him an irritated glance. “I think I know Dru well enough to—”
“Yeah. You know me. You know Dru. You know your slayer…you jus’ know everythin’, don’t you, Peaches? Wanna read me off tomorrow’s lotto numbers while you’re at it?” Spike shook his head, crashing onto the bed again and ignoring the undeniable sound of a spring crunching beneath his weight. “Look, you came here to tell me to lay off your girl. You know, ‘course, that she’s the one who needs to keep her hands to herself. I haven’t—”
“Buffy’s confused.”
Spike snorted. “So you said.”
“She thinks…” Angel fell silent for a long beat, wrestling privately with himself. It was a look Spike knew well, though admittedly one he’d never seen his grandsire wear in anything outside antagonism. “She thinks you two…she thinks you knew each other.”
“Yeah, I worked that much out from the way she kept pawing at me an’ calling me
William.” “You’re saying you didn’t do anything to encourage her?”
Spike huffed at that. “Much as I’d love to take credit for the girl’s breakdown, I’ve barely had time to work out what actually happened.” He held his arms out demonstratively, indicating his surroundings. “One second I’m thinkin’ about how great a mouthful of the Slayer’s blood’ll taste, an’ the next she’s kissing my lips off. An’ before I can make a lick of sense outta what happened, Dru’s showin’ me the door. I’m parked in this bloody awful hellhole—”
“Why?”
He blinked. “Huss’at?”
“Why are you
here? Above ground? Why aren’t you lurking in a crypt or…” Angel sighed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, a thoughtful frown marring his face. “Why are you living among them? Like…”
“Like you, you mean?”
“Well, now that you mention it…”
Spike snickered and shook his head. “You really think I’d be emulatin’ you on purpose? You’re a housebroken ninny who trails after the Slayer, waitin’ for her to give you tasty treats. Jus’ so happens I don’ plan on bein’ in this piss-poor excuse for a town long enough to find a crypt with running water an’ a workin’ cable-box.”
“She thinks she knew you back in the eighteenth century.”
The comment came without any sense of preamble, thus Spike felt he was perfectly justifiable in his numb stare.
“Buffy,” Angel clarified, even if such clarification was far from needed. “She thinks she knew you—”
“I heard you.”
“Yeah.”
Spike’s eyes found a spot on the wall and focused. There was nothing about this which made any sense. His life was getting wonkier by the minute, and it was entirely the Slayer’s fault. “She thinks she knew me…”
“1701 is the date she gave Willow.”
“The girl
is aware I wasn’t even alive around that time, right? Oh, an’ yeah, neither was she.”
“She says she did a spell which summoned a demon…which planted the two of you into this century…and into each other’s paths.”
Well, that would certainly explain why the girl had rushed up to him, whimpering his name and attacking him with that lethal weapon she called a mouth. Why she’d bathed him in her tears, all the while babbling apologies for some wrong she was certain she’d committed.
It would explain a lot.
It
wouldn’t explain her role as his night angel. It wouldn’t explain his reaction to her; why he hadn’t twisted her pretty little head right off her neck the second she threw herself into his arms. Why he’d whimpered against her kiss and pried her thighs apart. Why it had seemed so bloody important to explore the virgin softness of her plump, molten pussy. Why he’d wanted, in those wonderfully confusing minutes, to sink his cock inside her rather than his fangs. Why he wanted her more than he’d wanted any woman.
In a blink, Buffy had eradicated his desire for any woman who wasn’t her.
He wanted to kill her for it.
He wanted to fuck her for it.
He wanted to…
He didn’t know what he wanted, nor did he know why Angel was entrusting him with any of this revolutionary information. Perhaps Angel believed Spike was as smitten as he was—which was beyond ridiculous, as there was a fine line between wanting-to-shag and wanting-to-love.
Suppose, though, if he
did shag the Slayer. Suppose he got her out of his system…
Angel likely thought of Buffy as invincible. Either that, or he was planning on lurking over her shoulder even more than he did already to ensure she remained very much alive. He probably didn’t think Spike could do Buffy any harm, no matter how much knowledge he was fed.
Or perhaps—just perhaps—he’d sought Spike out to ensure the girl’s story wasn’t true. That they weren’t old lovers whom had been torn apart by circumstances beyond their control. That she hadn’t summoned a demon to insert their lifelines into some wonky version of the future so that they might cross paths again.
Spike’s life was very much real. It wasn’t pretty and never had been, but there was nothing falsified about his past.
Nothing a demon could forge and pass for the truth.
It was a nice thought…the idea that someone would truly care enough for him to bargain with a demon and leap into the future.
Too bad the Slayer was clearly out of her head.
Too bad he intended to kill her.
Spike snorted at that, refusing to meet Angel’s suspicious gaze.
Intend being the operative word. He’d do it. Eventually, he’d do it. Once his demon stopped snarling at the thought of bruising her dainty skin, he’d rip out her lungs and be on his merry way. Once the idea of snogging the Slayer became something that didn’t make his cock twitch in anticipation. Once everything was back to the way it should be.
Until then, he’d wait.
It was only time.
A/N Cont’d: Oh…were you guys wanting Spike and Buffy in a chapter together? Umm…whoops? *bats eyes innocently*
And I know I’m being a little mean to Angel—he’s genuinely trying to help Buffy. I guess when I write him, “genuine” comes off as being annoying and imposing. I’m going to redeem him later. Promise.
Until later…