Chapter 4
“If I was a fire-breathing puss-monster, you’d be dead by now.”
Spike grumbled and flopped onto his back on the couch. “That’s different from bein’ a teenager how again, Bit?”
Dawn scowled down at him. “Fine. See if I ever help you get laid again,” she huffed, tossing her hair over her shoulder in supreme annoyance.
He quirked a skeptical eyebrow at her.
“Well, I was about to help you,” she insisted, expression smug now.
“Oh, how’s that?” They said curiosity killed the cat. But, then, they also said daylight killed the vampire, and Spike was overly fond of running about during the day.
“Nothing,” she insisted innocently, arms crossed over her chest, smiling to herself in amusement. “I’m not helping you, remember?”
“C’mon now, Princess,” he soothed.
She rolled her eyes. He had to be really desperate if he started using normal nicknames on her instead of weird, food-related ones. “Just something about Buffy,” she couldn’t help but tease.
His expression fell at that. “Oh. Big Sis told you ‘bout my li’l misadventure, then?”
He looked so very gloomy sitting there on the couch, head drooping forward in misery, lower lip jutted out like a pouting six-year-old. Dawn decided to take pity on him and forgive him. Just this once.
“More like ranting about how you’re a total dork and need to stop hiding your cute little ass and talk to her,” she retorted.
His eyes narrowed at her. “Yeah, right.”
“She’s been, like, spazzing all day,” she informed him confidently. “She totally wants you. She even told me to try to trick you into stopping by the house by saying she was dying from the plague or something.”
“Sounds more like you feel like playin’ matchmaker with me again. I’m not falling for it.”
Dawn rolled her eyes. “First of all: Matchmaker? Hello, you practically broadcasted you were in love with Buffy on live TV. Second…” She fluttered her eyelashes at him innocent. “Would I lie to you?”
He smirked at that, before his expression turned sober again. “Look, Morsel, not that I don’t appreciate the effort, but me and Big Sis… ‘S just not meant to be.”
“Uh-huh.” It was physically impossible to sound less convinced.
Spike sighed. “What’s that wanker’s name in your algebra class again?”
“Kyle. And he is sooo not a wanker!” she exclaimed, horrified.
“Know how you turn into a simpering idiot every time he talks to you? And then you beat yourself up for days afterwards?” He grabbed a beer from the stand by the TV.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a total dork, too,” she brushed his concerns aside. “Trust me, Buffy knows by now. She’s used to it. Besides, you’re hot enough that she doesn’t care.”
“’m not worried about humiliatin’ myself,” he corrected, taking a deep drink. “’s just too painful.” He almost mumbled the last part. Bleeding ridiculous, 120-year-old vampire girl-talking with a human teenager. Like he was trapped in some bad made-for-TV movie.
Dawn rolled her eyes. “God, you are such a retard. I can see why Buffy likes you. You two can go off and be, like, retards together.”
“Watch it, Bit,” he growled.
“Or you’ll what? Pour Weetabix in my hair?”
He just sulked. “’ll find something …”
“OK, that’s it. Enough with the moping.” She bounded around to the front of the couch with the energy only a teenager could have and caught him by the wrists, yanking hard. “Up,” she ordered.
He sighed. “Y’know, there was a time when girls like you would run screamin’ in horror just at the sight of me… Good years, those…”
“Oh great. Buffy angst to Ex-Big Bad angst in five seconds flat. Yup, you definitely need to get laid. Too much brooding is no good for—”
“I. Do. Not . Brood!”
“Yeah, right. Like I haven’t heard that enough times.” His little explosive fit of temper had gotten him off the couch, though, something even her mightiest tugs had failed at. “Now, go,” she ordered sternly. “Buffy awaits.”
“She has no clue you’re here, does she?” he asked suspiciously.
Dawn just batted her eyelashes at him innocently.
He muttered under his breath and let her lead him out of his crypt. “Damn Summers eyes. Always gotta use those damn eyes…”
She just grinned and pretended she hadn’t heard a word. With any luck in twenty-four hours she’d have a lot less moping on her hands…
* * *
“Well, it was your stupid show in the first place!”
“But you’re the one who wanted to watch! Suggested the whole thing, if I remember right.”
“Only because you were looking at the clock and making little whimpering noises!”
“I bloody well was not !”
“Yeah, right. Sure , you weren’t. Who’s the evil, lying vampire of the two of us again?”
“If you wanted me gone, you coulda just told me to bugger off. Not like you haven’t done it enough in the past.”
With that, Spike growled and turned his back on her, headed firmly for Anywhere But Here. Yeah, this little reunion had gone about as well as he’d thought it would. Next time he saw his Bit, he’d have to give her a good talking to. Preferably about some Post-Colonial literary analysis, because any other lecture he gave she promptly ignored; the old textbooks she shrank away from in horrified boredom…
“Spike…” Buffy’s word was barely a whisper, but it was enough to cause him a second’s pause at the door.
“Look, Slayer,” he said with a resigned sigh. “You’ve got your world, and ‘ve got mine. Silly of me to think it’d ever work out differently. So you go back to your mates and have a nice life, and call on me if there’s any trouble you need help with. All right?” Fuck. Stupid chivalrous William instincts always came back to bite him on the ass when he least wanted them to.
“But what if I didn’t want you to?”
Her voice still sounded uncharacteristically soft, almost un-Buffy-like. He wasn’t used to her not yelling at him and ordering him about, he realized. It was enough for him to turn back to look at her.
She bit her lip and looked around the room nervously, refusing to meet his eyes. “Maybe I wanted to watch that stupid show because I wanted to…y’know…” She flapped her hands in a frustrated manner.
He raised one quizzical eyebrow.
“Don’t make me say it,” she finally requested, blushing.
“Kinda hard to get your message across without words,” he pointed out.
She cast a pointed glance in his crotch’s direction. “Yet somehow you manage to do it,” she retorted wryly.
He couldn’t help but wince at that. “Right.”
She took a deep breath. “Look, I suck at this sort of thing, okay? Or, at least I do when I’m not doped up on flu medications…”
“Want me to drug you?” he teased.
She smiled and met his eyes for the first time. “Or I could just chain you up in the basement…”
He was torn between embarrassment and amusement at that. Eventually settled on the latter, since she seemed to think that was a joke between them now. “All you ever had to do was ask, luv,” he couldn’t help but tease her.
Her eyes widened in response before her hand came up to cover her mouth, and she giggled.
He cocked his head to one side in disbelief. Slayers simply didn’t giggle in the presence of vampires. It was a fundamental law of the universe itself. Chaos and disorder were bound to follow. Perhaps even the apocalypse itself. In other words, she better have a damn good reason for laughing. “Buffy?” he asked pointedly.
She shook her head. “Sorry. You’re just so cute when you make innuendoes.”
One scarred eyebrow shot up. “‘Cute’?” he repeated in disbelief…and more than a little indignation.
Her face turned red, but she plowed right through. “You get this…” her hands flailed about as she searched for the right word, “sexy little pose and this hopeful look in your eyes and it’s just…cute.” Her voice dropped almost to whimper at that last word.
He sighed. “Was hopin’ for maybe ‘seductive’.”
She considered that for a moment. “More cute,” she insisted.
He let out a frustrated sigh. “So glad to amuse,” he retorted sarcastically. “Look, I should—”
“Cute is good,” she hastily cut him off. “Cute means that you’re kind of a hopeless dork—”
“Oh, thank you so very much for that!”
“—But you’re fun to be around and kind of adorable,” she continued over his objection.
“‘Adorable’?” he repeated, not quite sure whether or not to be offended. He thought about it for a moment. “OK, ‘adorable’s a step up from ‘cute’…”
“Fun to be around is also good,” she pointed out, looking up at him from under lowered lashes. “That was kind of why I wanted to watch your stupid show with you in the first place…”
He frowned. She’d somehow moved closer to him in the course of their little conversation, and that and her body language seemed to indicate that she was flirting with him. He was usually spot on about noticing these things. With Buffy, though, he seemed doomed to be endlessly second-guessing himself. “Are you… flirting with me?” he finally came straight out and asked it. After all, he’d never been good with subtlety.
Her face turned bright red. “Sort of…”
“Sort of?”
“OK, yes!” she exclaimed, eyes flashing angrily from having to make that admission. “Is there anything so wrong with that? You’re cute and funny and sweet when you want to be, and I know you like me so… Why not?”
He cocked his head to one side and looked her up and down hungrily. “Why not, indeed…”
She gulped as he took one predatory step toward her but held her ground. “I-I just meant that…well, you’ve been here for me when I was still depressed about the whole heaven thing, and then you took care of me when I was sick, and I had just been sort of noticing how helpful you could be when you wanted to before I di…er, left . And…oh god, Willow was right; babbling and nervousness are horribly, horribly unmixy things, and—” The words died in her throat when he came to a stop right before her, their mouths less than a foot apart. She looked up at him but couldn’t quite meet his eyes, so she looked at his lower lip instead.
“A bloke might get the impression,” he began carefully, “from the way you’ve been goin’ on that you’re interested.”
“Mmm?” She appeared to be somewhat dazed from her contemplation of his mouth, but then shook her head at looked at him in outraged disbelief. “You’re just figuring this out now ? What, do I have to beat you over the head with an encyclopedia every time I want to tell you something?”
He grinned, feeling very confident of himself all of a sudden. “Words can be such naughty things, luv. Seems a shame not to use them.” He reached out in an instant and caught her by the waist, pulling her body up against his. Damn, she was soft and warm, and that little gasp she made was music to his ears.
“And sometimes they go on and on when you should be kissing me instead,” she countered huffily.
“Was just tryin’ to set up a nice mood!” he protested.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, shut up.” And caught his head in her hands, forcing his lips to meet hers in a brief but passionate kiss.
A purr rumbled through Spike’s chest at the feel of wet Buffy lips against his. The kiss was almost chaste, close-mouthed, but they force they both used, as if desperate to meld their mouths together, was nice and fiery.
Buffy broke away with a gasp after a few moments, her cheeks bright red. “See? If you had just quit talking, I wouldn’t have had to start that, and it would have been nice and romantic and—”
His lips caught her mid-syllable, and this time he didn’t give her the chance to keep it chaste. His tongue hungrily, greedily, explored her mouth, savoring the taste of Buffy like a fine connoisseur. She whimpered against his lips, and then her arms wrapped around him, and she was kissing him back with every bit of fervor in her tiny little body. Her tongue met his tentatively, stroking him cautiously at first and then more bravely until their tongues were wrapped up in an intricate dance, every bit as challenging and fulfilling as the old dance they’d shared back when they’d still been fighting.
“Mmf!” she ordered into his mouth.
“Mmm?” He was reluctant to pull away even for a second but did so nonetheless.
“Couch,” she repeated.
He blinked at her in confusion for a second. “Oh…right…”
Their lips met again, and somehow their entangled limbs managed to find their way back to the sofa. The couch arm hit Spike in the backs of his knees, and he let himself fall back onto the cushions, taking Buffy with him.
“Nice,” she whispered against his cheek contentedly as their bodies pressed together in every way imaginable.
His lips began slowly trailing down her throat, and his body tightened and hardened as she squirmed above him for better position, eventually coming to straddle his waist. He winced inwardly when he realized what she was about to discover, and sure enough as soon as she came into contact with Junior she froze.
Eyes wide in disbelief, she looked down at him. “Er…doesn’t it ever…?” Her face turned beet red.
“Not when you’re around,” he admitted sheepishly. “Vampire thing, yeah?”
“But Angel never—” she began before she realized what she was saying and instantly cut herself off.
He snorted with distaste. “Angel’s a bloody poofter,” he retorted.
She opened her mouth to object, but then thought better of it. He appreciated the gesture because Angel really wasn’t something he wanted to discuss right now. There were few things on earth that could cause Junior to droop into a depressed state, but the notion that his grandsire had had his Slayer before he’d ever gotten the chance was one of them. Maybe after he’d shagged her senseless for a few months straight, they could have the Angel talk. Assuming she would let him shag her at all, that is. She seemed more than a bit concerned by his body’s… exuberance at their little make-out session.
She bit her lip and considered. “OK, then. I can work around it,” and her body lowered itself onto his again, her lips nipping at his jaw line.
He’d always known he’d loved this girl for a reason. If he had any common sense whatsoever, he would’ve just lay back, enjoyed the feel of Buffy’s hot little body wrapping around his in all sorts of delicious, sinful ways and moaned to his heart’s content at the way her lips caressed every inch of his exposed skin that she could find. After all, it wasn’t every day that a vamp found himself being worshipped bodily by the Slayer of his dreams. Unfortunately, Spike had never been overly blessed with common sense. That, and he couldn’t let anything lie.
“Just one question,” he murmured between nuzzles to her throat.
“This had better be important,” she grumbled. Her hands had just found the buttons of his shirt, and she was enjoying popping them open one at time.
He nodded against the curve of her throat. “If you wanted me all this time, then why’d you wig when I—?” He stopped in mid-sentence, pulled back, and frowned. “Did I just say ‘wig’?” he asked himself, horrified.
Buffy ignored the last. “Wig? Who said I wigged?” she demanded.
That brought his attention back to the topic at hand. “You most certainly did,” he insisted huffily.
“No, I didn’t. You’re the one who totally freaked out. Vamps don’t run away from me that fast even when I’ve brought out Mister Pointy for the evening…”
“I did not run away!”
“Did so!”
“Did not!”
“Did—Oh god , you’re insufferable!” She tackled him back onto the couch and ravished his lips with newfound passion. “I think I’m – gasp – warped because – oh, god! – ‘insufferable’ should not be a – yes, Spike! – turn-on,” she exclaimed between kisses.
“I win,” he retorted cheekily, grinding himself up between her thighs again in that way that had made her cry out his name so deliciously. Aw, yeah. He could get used to this. And to think that he hadn’t believed Dawn. He figured he’d owe her a free full vamp-on scare tactic for the next twerp that bugged her in school.
“You so do not,” she insisted stubbornly, despite her gasp. “And, like that was my fault, anyway.”
“Mmm? What?”
“The wigging.”
“So you admit that you panicked now?” he asked triumphantly.
She humphed. “It was… startling !” she insisted. “I was just lounging around, minding my own business, and then suddenly ‘sproing!’” She made cute little sproinging gestures with her hands.
“Right. ‘S all my fault. ‘Cause who was rubbin’ whose face in whose lap again?”
“Sproinging is not supposed to happen prior to the nice smoochies,” she informed him sternly, continuing to enjoy the aforementioned smoochies as she continued her complaint. “Pre-smoochies, I should be able to enjoy all the lap time I want without being subjected to the latest game of ‘Buffy’s face? Meet humungous Spike bulge!’”
“Humungous?” he repeated, feeling right chuffed. His ego was having a happy, happy day. Junior was rather enjoying himself, too. Hell, all of Spike felt like it was on Cloud Nine right about now…
She brushed and ignored his question. “Bad sproinging,” she insisted and bit her lip as she looked down at him.
“Right,” he finally agreed reluctantly. “Junior’s a naughty, naughty boy. He’ll have to be punished.”
Her eyes lit up mischievously. “Can I do it?” she asked with the most delightfully schoolgirlish faux-innocence he’d even seen.
He frowned. “Thought you objected to…” His words ended with a strained gasp when her hand slipped between their bodies and stroked him slowly through his jeans.
“That was pre-smoochies,” she reminded him. “Post-smoochies sproinging, I approve of.”
“That’s my girl,” he practically purred, sinking back into the couch cushions as she reached into his pants and…
“Oh, jeez! Ew! Eww! Get a room, guys!”
Buffy leapt back in sudden horror at the sound of her sister’s screeches. She barely had enough sense to toss a throw blanket over where she’d just pulled Spike out of his jeans. That was one trauma Dawn definitely didn’t need.
Spike really couldn’t bring himself to do much but lie back in a blissful daze. The world could end right now, and he’d just watch it with an ecstatic smile on his face.
“I think you broke Spike.” Dawn had finally taken her hand off of her face and was looked at his apparently stoned state skeptically.
“Yeah, well, if you’d go over to Janice’s or Claire’s or anyone’s, I could fix him,” Buffy snapped back.
Spike purred. He approved of that idea.
Dawn scrunched her face up in disgust. “Ew, ew, eww ! Words cannot describe my trauma. You so owe me,” she insisted and stalked into the kitchen.
Buffy sighed and looked down at the happy vampire beneath her.
“Oh,” Dawn’s head popped back into the living room, causing Buffy to start. “I told you so!” She stuck her tongue out at them both and retreated into the kitchen with a smug smile on her face.
“Mmm… She’s got us there,” Spike sighed, stretching languidly beneath Buffy and giving her a good look at his lean, muscled body as he preened before her.
She gulped. “Oh yeah,” she agreed.