Chapter Text
This story begins with two little girls. Like most little girls, they were weird. They made up their own languages and civilizations on the playground. They skipped rope and used horrifying rhymes to keep time. They tried calling lightning down on their foes. They played Power Girl and civilian, with Power Girl needing to rescue the civilian from some truly gruesome potential deaths. They pretended they were witches and cursed the Puritans who wanted them hanged. They played “light as a feather, stiff as a board” and chanted for Bloody Mary in mirrors.
In all, normal things for girls between the ages of eight and thirteen.
Unlike other girls, though, one night during a slumber party, they summoned a demon.
Maybe this story actually begins about nine years later, with a man named Ethan Rayne. Ethan Rayne was a chaos mage, and one Buffy Summers—Slayer, bleach blonde, and perpetual foiler of plans—had just prevented him from sowing chaos in the town currently the abode of his ex, Rupert Giles.
Again.
Ethan was one to take his lumps whether they be literal or metaphorical ones—chaos, being what it was, tended to go his way only about fifty percent of the time, and he had discovered he had a rather sturdy skull. This, however, was the second time she had interfered with him. Third, technically, except he was willing to let the one time with Eyghon go, seeing as how he got out of it with only some self-inflicted acid wounds.
He, unlike some self-righteous blondes he could name who were quick to punch people over any little thing, was generous like that.
But this time she had gone too far. His band candy plan had been perfect, bringing out the Ripper he knew and loved. It wasn’t bad enough that she had interfered and put an end to his work; her mother had also been the one to take advantage of Ripper, rather than his industrious self, busy at the factory at the time. He’d even wore a shirt in a color Ripper had fancied and with the sleeves rolled up to show off his wrists and forearms—Ripper had a fondness for wrists; he had always enjoyed putting Ethan in handcuffs—and all he had to show for his work were some bruises from a super-powered teenager.
He hoped Ripper and the mother were now too uncomfortable to even look each other in the eye after what they’d done. It would serve them right for ruining his plan like that.
If Ethan ever wanted another crack at Ripper and a pair of handcuffs, he knew he had to do something that would put a stop to the Slayer’s meddling ways. But there were rules. He couldn’t do anything to touch the Slayer directly; the gods he served and whose power he channeled were not interested in pain and agony of the physical sort. Their magic couldn’t be used for assassinations or beat downs. This had been attractive to him after his youthful discretions with Eyghon, but right now, desperate either for a shag or for someone else to play the buffoon, Ethan could see the downsides of chaos centered on causing mischief rather than chaos bent toward destruction. More annoyingly, his magic couldn’t single out the active Slayer; his gods strictly avoided the Power’s playthings. He hadn’t even been able to use magic to convince her to buy the Halloween dress, just his own salesman charm. Charm which he had in spades, but his magical impotence when it came to a California teenybopper still galled.
He couldn’t hurt her. He couldn’t even stop her from becoming the Slayer, moving to Sunnydale, or having Ripper as her Watcher. Waiting until she was no longer the Slayer was useless to him.
Ethan paced, his mind racing as he looked at his limited options in every which way. He couldn’t touch her now. He couldn’t touch her in the future. But—Ethan paused in his pacing as an idea started to click together—he could interfere with her before she became the Slayer. There was no guarantee this would solve his immediate problem of getting her out of the way so he could have a weekend fling with someone that actually knew what they were doing, but it might do something. It might even change her entire fate . . .
In the questionable motel outside of Sunnydale where he had gone to lick his wounds after his latest scheme had gone awry, Ethan assembled the tools and magic he would need. He scryed through her past, learning about his meddlesome foe and searching for a moment he could slip in. A moment that could change everything.
Ethan’s grin was sharp when he noticed it, two little girls rummaging through a box labeled “Free Kid’s Books, Take and Read!!!” while adults stood around talking at some kind of horrid suburban yard sale. His grin was even sharper when he slipped a book, title slightly modified to draw attention to it, into the box: A Beginner’s Smart Girl’s Guide to Summoning Demons.
His grin was sharpest when one girl, the girl who wasn’t Buffy, loudly announced, “We found a book,” before flashing it briefly in the direction of some adults and quickly stuffing it in Buffy’s backpack, disturbing a plush pig in the process.
In the magic that hummed in his fingertips as the world, beginning in his hotel room and rippling out away from it, shifted to the left by one degree, Ethan could tell that for one Buffy Summers, everything was about to change.
Or maybe this story actually begins with vampire dust in an alley. The Slayer looked up at the sardonic clapping coming not from her friends behind her but from somewhere in the alley in front of her.
“Nice work, luv.” The man who stepped out of the alley’s darkness complimented her in a way that made it feel like it wasn’t a compliment. Not really. It was more a lazy assessment as he eyed her up and down. He was in black—pants, boots, T-shirt, leather duster—relieved by bright blue eyes, hints of a red button down between the layers of his T-shirt and duster, and bleached hair. And, the Slayer noted, the black was also relieved by something colorful wrapped around his wrist, something that she never would have noticed if his sleeves hadn’t slipped down his forearms while he clapped at her.
“Who are you?” she asked, curious as to how he would respond.
He smirked at her. “You’ll find out on Saturday.”
“What happens Saturday?”
The grin faded. His face projected his seriousness, even as his eyes danced with personal enjoyment at the moment. “I kill you.” He then faded into the alleyway, gone almost as quickly as he had arrived.
Once she could no longer feel the tinglies of vampire on her neck, the Slayer grinned, something sharp and delighted and a bit wicked. “I don’t think so, Spike,” Buffy whispered, before hurriedly soothing her panicked friends with rote words.
She totally had this vampire in the bag, but she needed to call Celia, and like now, because while Spike wasn’t going to kill her, Aunt Arlene totally would if she called her cousin after midnight on a school night again.
Notes:
Prompt: Fic must include the character(s) Ethan Rayne and/or Marcie Ross.
Fulfilled: "Maybe this story actually begins about nine years later, with a man named Ethan Rayne."
Chapter Text
In an attic in an LA neighborhood, a circle of salt had been carefully laid down over the carpet with as few squiggles as possible. The super cool book Buffy and Celia had found then said they were supposed to put a candle at each of the four corners of the circle, but (1) circles don’t have corners, that’s why they’re circles, and (2) Buffy and Celia were eight and weren’t allowed anywhere near candles or matches or even the lighters Celia’s dad used to smoke his cigarettes. So they put down really sparkly rocks that Celia thought caught the light in pretty ways and moved onto the next step.
Which was impossible.
“Those aren’t real letters!” Buffy accused the book. They had read through the part at the beginning telling them how to set up the demon-summoning circle. Then it told them to read aloud whatever spell was listed for the demon they wanted to summon. Which should have been easy as Buffy and Celia were great readers, but none of the letters in the rest of the book were what Miss Jessica taught them in kindergarten. And while their first grade teacher, Ms. Zimpfer, might have been a meanie-head who told on Buffy’s running in the hallways even more times than Buffy actually ran in them, Miss Jessica would never tell a fib. Especially not about letters.
“That one kind of looks like an O,” Celia offered after a close study of the fake letters in the book.
Buffy looked the letter Celia pointed at. “You’re right,” she chewed on her lip in thought. “But how are we gonna read the rest of the words if we can’t even sound them out? What does a ‘kind of looks like an O’ sound like?”
“We could ask my mom?” Celia doubtfully suggested. The girls looked at the book. On the page facing the one with all the fake letters was a black and white drawing of something that looked a bit like a cat but with too many teeth and legs. It was eating a guy with a mustache like Snidely Whiplash, and Celia wanted to pet it since her parents wouldn’t let her have a real cat.
Parents were unreasonable about things like cats.
They would also be unreasonable about this book, Buffy and Celia instinctively knew. Aunt Arlene would take it away and demand to know why they weren’t asleep yet and where they got it and what they were doing with it. That would be the end of the sleepover in the attic away from the adults. They’d be back in the living room while Uncle Ray watched hockey and Aunt Arlene tried to get them to snack on carrot sticks instead of the candy Buffy had smuggled up to the attic in her sleeping bag.
And if Aunt Arlene looked at all the pictures in the book, they might even have to go to church on Sunday.
“Or,” Celia offered instead after visions of hockey and boring church services had danced through her head, “we could make up our own chant! It can’t be hard.”
Buffy’s face lit up with her excitement. “Yeah!”
Twenty minutes of spooky babble later, Celia picked up her pillow and threw it at the wall. “Nothing’s happening!”
Buffy pouted in frustration. “Stupid adults writing stupid books that don’t work.”
“Wait!” Celia turned to Buffy so fast her braid whipped her in the face. “Is that what’s wrong? Adults wrote this, so they probably wrote adult things in the weird language?”
“What do you mean, Celia?”
“Well, maybe we just need to say adult things in our language, and then it’ll work.”
“Like ‘eat your vegetables, Buffy’ and ‘I can’t believe they’re raising property taxes again’?” Something about that didn’t seem right to Buffy.
“No,” her cousin announced, “it would have to be fun adult stuff. Stuff that they don’t want us to know about.”
Buffy’s eyes went big in delight. “Oooh, like bad words?”
Celia giggled. “And maybe Dad’s music he’s not allowed to listen to when I’m in the car.”
“Or what our moms talk about when our dads aren’t around?”
In one corner of the attic was an arts and crafts corner for the girls. Celia raced over to it grabbed a piece of orange construction paper and a dark green crayon. “So Buffy,” she grinned, “wanna write a spell?”
Spell writing, it turned out, was harder than it seemed.
After much debate, scribbling out, a few new crayons and pieces of construction paper, and two breaks in which they pretended to be asleep while Aunt Arlene checked on them, Buffy and Celia wrote a spell that included fun adult secrets and also made clear they wanted to summon the cat-thing from the book. Or something similar to the cat-thing. They carefully made two copies of the spell—pink paper with blue crayon for Buffy and yellow paper with red crayon for Celia—and stood on opposite sides of the circle. The rocks they had placed outside the circle still caught the light, and the circle had only been messed up a little bit when Buffy had jumped excitedly over being able to use a bad word in the spell. They had fixed it, but it was a bit bulgy on one side. It looked way better than the circles they had drawn in art class when they had to make pumpkins last Halloween though, so they decided it would be fine.
Then, they carefully began, exchanging lines as they went.
“In the dark of the night,” Buffy intoned to set a spooky mood.
“We call for the big bad,” Celia read. They wanted a demon, but “we call for the demon” sounded kind of scary, so “big bad” was Celia’s solution.
“Pain in the ass.” Aunt Arlene liked to call people that when she was really, really mad. Buffy couldn’t restrain her grin and one joyful bounce over getting to say a bad word.
“Purrs with sharp claws.” Celia called excitedly, eager to see her cat demon.
“Anarchy in the UK.” Uncle Ray got in trouble every time he got caught playing this song around the girls. Buffy and Celia adored it when he took them to school and played it the entire time.
“And Billy Idol’s hair!” They gleefully announced together. It was something Buffy’s mom would sometimes exclaim while drinking wine with Aunt Arlene; Buffy had no idea what it meant, but it was better than the fake letters in the book.
With the last line read, they waited breathlessly for their spell to work.
Nothing happened. Their rocks still glittered; the house stayed quiet; light from the lamps they turned on five minutes after Aunt Arlene had told them it was time for lights out flickered against the wall. Buffy and Celia looked in dismay at each other and then at their stuffed friends waiting patiently on their sleeping bags—Buffy’s Mr. Gordo and Celia’s Señor Podgy.
It was while they were both looking away, that the thump happened.
“What the buggering—”
Something had landed in their circle.
“Who are you?” Buffy demanded, immediately taking charge. She was thrilled that their spell had worked, but there was a strange black blob on their floor saying things that sounded funny even if she could understand most of the words, and the blob would have to go through her to get to Celia, Mr. Gordo, Señor Podgy, or their careful hoard of Pixy Stix.
“Who the bloody hell am I?” The blob demanded. Buffy’s mom would have washed the blob’s mouth out with soap for both the words and the tone. “Who the bloody hell are you?” Buffy, being a very different person from her mom, thought both the tone of voice and the words were awesome. Once their blob realized she was the boss, Buffy would have to try and convince Celia to let them keep it.
Then the blob moved. It had a bright white spot with some paler white spots, and Buffy quickly realized their blob wasn’t actually a blob but a person, a boy, an adult, and it was on its knees now and going to stand and then it would call for Aunt Arlene and they were going to get in so much trouble and—
“Ow!” The man had just stood, hitting his head on the sloped ceiling of the attic. “What the sodding hell is going on here?”
Buffy glared up at the man, who was very rude and much less delightful now that he wasn’t a blob. “We summoned you. Except you were supposed to be a demon cat.” Buffy eyed the man skeptically. “Are you a demon cat?”
The man glared at her as he rubbed his head. “No, I’m not a sodding demon cat.” He took a menacing step forward, and his face did something weird. His eyes, which had been blue, turned yellow. Some of his teeth got super long. Other parts of his face got all squished together and hard. He kind of looked like the neighbor lady’s mean cat, the cat everyone said once killed a car after it tried to run the cat over and instead only squashed its face in. It was probably because of this cat that Celia couldn’t have a cat of her own; Uncle Ray seemed afraid of it.
Buffy, however, wasn’t afraid of the neighbor’s cat, and she wasn’t afraid of this man and his weird face either.
“I’m a vampire,” the man said, “and I eat little girls like you for breakfast.” Buffy balled her hands into fists. There was no way this vampire was going to take her down and maybe hurt Celia. She wouldn’t let him.
He went to take another step forward, and Buffy prepared to punch him in his stupid nose, when all of a sudden—
“What the hell?”
The man came to an abrupt stop. He looked to the left, then the right, and then he looked down. “Oh bollocks.” His boots ended right at the circle of salt Buffy and Celia had put down. He turned around in a circle, following the salt with his eyes. “It goes all the way around even. Someone did their reading.” He looked up and spotted Celia. “There’s another one of you?” The vampire huffed in frustration, and Buffy and Celia exchanged concerned glances. This was not at all what they were expecting. “Right. Course there is. Explains why Dru’s been nattering on about me havin’ tea with two of her dollies. Don’t expect you know why she started singing about the pig and the penguin—ahh, there they are.” The vampire had gone from menacing to chatty as he looked around, and now he was ignoring Buffy and Celia to stare at Mr. Gordo and Señor Podgy.
Vampires, Buffy decided, were very confusing.
“Well then, bits,” the vampire leaned back against the air above their salt circle. Buffy realized that he couldn’t get out of it and decided it was probably safe for her to relax her fist; she probably wouldn’t have to punch him in the nose any time soon. “Why’d you bring me here?”
Buffy and Celia exchanged looks again. Celia looked lost. Buffy felt lost, but she wasn’t going to let some vampire know that. “You didn’t answer my question. Who are you?” she asked him.
“Right. Sorry, pet. Name’s Spike. William the Bloody. The Big Bad. Whichever you prefer.”
“Okay, Mr. Spike William the Bloody the Big Bad,” Buffy started.
The vampire chuckled. Buffy was pretty sure he was laughing at her, and she didn’t like it. “Not all one name. That’s three names.”
“You have three names?” Celia was incredulous. “Are you some kind of charlatan?” Uncle Ray complained a lot about charlatans. And politicians. Usually at the same time. Buffy had never understood why; she assumed it was another one of those weird adult things.
“Nah, pet. Just a vampire. When you get as old as I am, you get a lot of names.”
Buffy thought that over before deciding it made sense. Apparently, Aunt Arlene and Mom used to have the same last name, then they got old and got new ones. Maybe getting new names was just another weird thing adults did. “So what is your name?”
“Spike. Just call me Spike.”
“Like that jerk Harlan’s dog?” Celia asked doubtfully. Harlan lived three houses down from Celia. He tried stealing Celia’s ice cream when they were five and he was eleven. Buffy had kicked him in the shins until he swore he would leave Celia alone. Buffy would sometimes pet his dog when he wasn’t around though; she was a sweetheart, even if she had a dumb name.
Spike raised an eyebrow. Buffy would have to try and do that later; it made him look very cool. “‘Don’t know this Harlan bloke, but I ’spose so, sweets.”
“Well, I’m Celia, and this is Buffy,” her cousin announced, introducing them now that they had the pesky problem of the vampire’s name taken care of.
“Celia, Buffy.” Spike nodded at each of them in turn. “Now that we’re acquainted and all cozy-like, would you mind getting rid of all the salt?”
Buffy was suspicious. “What’ll you do if we do that?”
Spike grinned. “Bit hungry, pet. Might grab a bite to eat.”
Buffy was eight, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d heard enough kids dressed as vampires on Halloween saying things like “I want to suck your blood” to know what the regular vampire’s diet was.
Also, he’d just said he ate little girls for breakfast. For all she knew, vampires ate breakfast in the middle of the night. Even if they didn’t, Spike seemed like the type to not care about reasonable breakfast times.
“No,” she responded, crossing her arms and glaring defiantly at the vampire. Celia, on his other side, mimicked her. Celia also wasn’t stupid.
“Clever bints, aren’t you?” Spike almost sounded admiring, but then he shrugged. “It was worth a shot. So then, ’f you’re not gonna let me out of here and I’m not the demon cat you were hopin’ for, what are you going to do with me?”
Buffy chewed on her lip. She had no idea what to do with their demon now that they’d summoned it. What did you even do with a vampire?
Luckily, Celia was with her, and when Buffy was stumped, Celia always knew what to do. “Do you know any stories, Mr. Spike?” her cousin asked.
The vampire grinned, something sharp and delighted, full of wickedness and terror. “Pet, I know stories that will make you scream.”
Spike felt the familiar tug and groaned. It came from within him, somewhere north of his belly button and south of his unbeating heart, and past experience told him it would pull him to two little girls who had an unexpected delight in his most bloodthirsty stories.
He’d thought he’d been done with this demon summoning nonsense. After the first time, he’d been called whenever they had a slumber party, which seemed to be a weekly occurrence, at least. For all that they didn’t let him out of the circle, he’d gotten to know the girls and their stuffed animals well. Not that he had a soft spot for them. Right annoying chits they were, what with asking him questions and demanding to see his vamp face and always needing new stories. They didn’t even know how to send him back that first time until he had translated a counter spell from that book of theirs that they couldn’t even read, bloody American education system being the joke that it was.
Then they had summoned him right before he’d been about to give Dru a good seeing to. His trousers had been halfway to his ankles when he felt the yank; he’d barely gotten them back up before he was in that same attic again, slamming his head against the roof and growling bloody murder at being interrupted while Buffy screeched about seeing his butt. They’d sent him home right quick, but the mood had been ruined, what with Dru laughing at him for scaring the dollies and him a confused bundle of shame at the girls almost catching him starkers and annoyance at them playing with him like he was a rubber ball they could bounce whichever which way.
All in all, it was a good thing they hadn’t called him in months, but he still hadn’t decided whether he wanted to rip their heads off for that last time or tease them for seeing his admittedly scrumptious behind, and it was too late to decide now as suddenly he was there.
Only there wasn’t the attic he was so used to. There was a room that smelled like sickness, tears, and antiseptic. There was Celia, screaming about getting something off her. There was Buffy looking scared and fierce next to a hospital bed, babbling about not knowing what to do and could he fix it.
And then, of course, there was the monster, a chap in a bowler hat with greasy hair and protruding lower fangs. And he was leaning over Celia with a glint in his blind eyes that any predator could recognize.
“Buffy, listen to me, pet.” Spike flexed his fists as he glanced between Buffy and the monster over Celia. “Need you to let me out of the circle, okay? Won’t hurt you or Celia or anyone else here; just need you to trust me, okay?”
Big green eyes blinked up at him, fighting against tears and panic. “You have to help Celia.”
“’Course, pet,” Spike frantically swore. “No one touches you chits, not even me.”
Buffy nodded, firmly, then wiped away a quarter of the circle with the side of her foot.
Spike leaped out of the circle and onto the demon bugger, knocking it to the ground and away from his girls. The thing struggled, but if it was what Spike thought it was, then its prey was sickly children. Spike’s was Slayers. No matter how strong it was, Spike was stronger. He rained a few punches down on the thing’s face then grasped its skull and twisted until he heard the sharp crack of its neck breaking.
Compared to his fights with Slayers or even other demons, it was a quick, easy kill. Spike kneeled over its corpse and had no idea why he was panting like it had been his hardest fight to date.
“He killed it,” Celia whispered. Spike turned from facing the demon underneath him to look at the bed behind him. Celia lay on her bed, looking sick but calmer now. Buffy stood in front of her, fiercely glaring at the space in front of Spike.
“Yeah, pet.” Spike stood up and swaggered up to the bed. “Killed it but good, I did. No more beasties trying to take a nibble out of you; you can rest and get better now so you can focus on raising hell later.”
Celia smiled at him and leaned back against her pillows. Her heart was still racing—fear and adrenalin working their way through her system—but she was going to be okay.
Spike turned to his other girl. “I gotta go take care of the monster’s body. Don’t want that wanker smellin’ the place up. Keep an eye on your cousin while I’m gone?”
Buffy bit her lower lip. “Promise you won’t bite anyone?”
Spike nodded at her solemnly. “Scout’s honor.” He’d eaten a Boy Scout once; it probably counted.
Buffy nodded back with equal solemnity. “Okay, but come right back,” the bossy chit demanded.
Spike nodded again, then tossled her hair for good measure before walking back to the demon’s corpse. It was the middle of the day, so he wouldn’t be able to drag it far without someone noticing him, but he could at least get it out of Celia’s room.
One fireman’s carry and awkward flirting with a nurse while holding onto a corpse later—not the strangest thing he’d ever done, but he’d lived for a century with a mad seer, which tended to change a bloke’s definition of strange—Spike had found a supply closet to drop off his rank burden. He then slipped back into Celia’s hospital room, where the two girls were waiting for him.
Nobody seemed to have been by to check up on them despite Celia’s screams and the scuffle, and if Spike ever got his hands on the parents of these chits, he was going to give them a good throttling. It was one thing when the girls were just summoning demons—a parent couldn’t be expected to be on top of every one of their progeny’s hobbies—but they shouldn’t have to be in a bloody hospital without any adults around.
“Right, you cheeky bints,” Spike greeted them. “’M back, our monster’s been taken care of, and you can put me back in my circle before I start getting peckish.”
That should have ended the long faces he was faced with. It should have gotten Buffy telling him that eating people was bad and Celia nodding along in emphasis with everything she said. Instead, both girls still looked worried and sad.
It was probably poncy of him to care, but he’d already saved their lives, and Spike wasn’t about to go without cheering them up.
“What’s with the faces?”
Buffy looked at Celia, then back at Spike. “You killed the monster?”
“Yeah,” Spike drawled, confused. “Believe Celia here witnessed the whole thing.”
“But how come you and Celia saw it, and I couldn’t? What am I going to do if another one comes?”
Spike knelt to look her in the eyes. “’Spect you couldn’t see it since you weren’t sick or a beastie like myself. Nothin’ you could have done against it, pet. That’s why you had to call the Big Bad, yeah? If you could have fought it, you would’ve taken it down before it could even think of gettin’ near your cousin. No shame, though, in callin’ for backup when you need it,” Spike assured her. “And that monster? It’s called Der Kindestod. It always travels alone, so there won’t be any more of them coming after you or your cousin. Celia’s safe now. Just needs to focus on gettin’ better. And any other wankers that try to get near her, you can punch right in their dumb noses.”
Buffy nodded seriously at this, fire kindling in her eyes in contrast to the fear that was there earlier. The chit was probably going to take over the world someday with Celia as her second-in-command, and Spike was going to look back at this moment as when he was irrevocably buggered, what with encouraging the girl power bit rather than squashing it when he had the chance.
Good thing he’d never minded powerful women.
“Now that you bits are all set, mind sendin’ me back? Got some evil to do tonight, and thanks to a promise I made to a certain someone”—he sent a mock-glare at Buffy at that—“I can’t do any of it here.”
Celia giggled at him while Buffy pulled a Morton Salt container out from a backpack that also appeared to contain the pig and the penguin, the girls’ trusty sidekicks. He stood still while Buffy poured the salt around him and waited while she searched the floor for the rocks that must have been kicked away during the fight. When everything was set up, Buffy smiled at him. “Thanks, Spike,” she said, a sentiment which her companion quietly echoed, before she chanted the words to send him back.
A little over a week later, he was tugged back again. To his immense relief, he was back in the attic. Celia had lost the pallor and fever flush he had last seen her with; Buffy had lost the fear that sat so poorly on her features, replacing it with her usual determination and spunk.
“Well,” Spike drawled, unwilling to let his relief show. “See you’re back to your usual tricks and haunts. What’ll it be this time: tales from William the Bloody’s wicked past or the twenty-seven ways a zombie howler monkey will try and munch on your grey matter?”
Buffy’s eyes sparked with interest at that last one, but it was Celia who spoke: “No, we called you here to give you something. Will you be good if we let you out of the circle?”
“Oi. Big bad here. ’M never good,” Spike protested. When Celia’s face fell at that, he hurried on: “Meant what I told Buffy last week though. No one touches you chits, not even me.”
“What about Uncle Ray and Aunt Arlene?” Buffy asked curiously.
Spike rolled his eyes, an unfortunate habit he’d picked up from the girls. “Fine. No one touches you or yours, not even me.”
“Promise?” Celia asked, more nervous than her cousin.
“Promise.”
Buffy nodded once. “Good,” she announced, then she walked up to him and scattered the circle.
Spike strolled out. “Now, what have you ladies got to give me?”
Buffy reached out and dropped something in his hand—threads of pink, blue, red, and yellow all knotted and woven together.
“It’s a friendship bracelet,” she explained. “It was Celia’s idea. See?” She held out her wrist, where a similar chaos of color was now snuggly wrapped. “We have them too.”
Celia showed hers off. “It’s to say thank you for saving me and telling us stories.”
“And, well, we know you hate being summoned here,” Buffy and Celia exchanged sheepish glances at that, “so we wanted to let you know that we’ll only call you again if it’s an emergency. So you can get your bitey evil on and see your girlfriend and not have to entertain us.”
Spike stared at the bracelet in his hand while Buffy rattled on. No one had ever thanked him before, not like this. Poncy William had never had friends, and while he now had his dark princess, Spike didn’t have friends either.
Except now he did. Two, even. The two bossiest little chits on the planet, who had somehow stumbled into a world they were never supposed to be part of.
“Spike?” A voice broke into his musings. “Are you okay?”
Spike looked up at Celia. “’Course I am, pet. Why?”
“You’re making a funny noise,” she said. “Kind of like . . . purring?”
Sod it all, he was. Happy, poncy little purrs that were rumbling right out of his chest. “Not purring,” Spike quickly denied. “Growling. All manly like. Tryin’ to figure out how to get this on.”
“Oh!” Buffy spoke up. “I can help!” She dashed forward and plucked the bracelet out of his hand. “Give me your arm,” she commanded. He stretched his right arm out, and she pushed his sleeve up impatiently before wrapping it around his wrist. Then, with a look of fierce concentration highlighted by the tongue peeking out one corner of her mouth, Buffy carefully knotted the two ends together. Celia came close to study the knot, then gave her nod of approval to Buffy.
Spike held out his arm to study the bit of color wrapped around it. “Ta, loves. It looks brilliant.”
“You have to keep wearing it,” Buffy earnestly informed him.
“That’s how you know we’ll always be friends,” Celia explained.
“Well, then,” Spike was a bit bemused and a lot touched by these girls and their strange rituals. “Guess I can’t take it off then.”
Celia smiled up at him. “Now that you have that, we can send you back,” she offered. “So you can do your evil.”
“Or show your butt to your girlfriend,” Buffy giggled.
“Think I’ll do that in a bit, pets.” Spike shot a wicked grin at the girls, one that was completely lost on them. “Let me tell you about those zombie howler monkeys.”
The girls clamored in eager delight for his story, and Spike felt his grin soften from something wicked to genuine. He wasn’t too worried about never seeing them again. His girls were right terrors; they’d be in trouble again in a few months, tops, and until then, he’d use the extra time he had to pamper Dru.
In a warehouse in Sunnydale, California, Spike was distracted. He had met the Slayer last night. She was good, not better than him, though, and he couldn’t decide whether he should go after her now or wait until this nonsense vampire holiday was over with. The Annoying One and his ilk were all hard for the holiday and demanding his attention to prepare for it. Spike had half a mind to dust them all so he could stop hearing about it, but then there wouldn’t be anyone around to keep an eye on Dru and make sure she didn’t wander off while he fought his Slayer.
Then, of course, there was Dru herself. She’d started nattering on about the dollies coming for him when she woke up this afternoon. For the unlife of him, he couldn’t figure out if he was supposed to play with her dolls, get new ones for her, or wait for her dolls to come to him so he could bring them to her. It didn’t help that in Dru’s mind, dollies could be either made of porcelain or people, and she never bothered to say which she meant.
Then he felt the tug of a summoning for the first time in eight years, and he knew exactly what dollies Dru had meant.
Spike landed in an unfamiliar room in a heap, hurt and furious that it had been so long since they had last called him, elated to see them again, eager to learn just what hell they had raised in the past few years, annoyed that they were calling him now when he had so much else to do, and curious as to where he was now.
It was a confusing mess of emotions he didn’t have time to puzzle out, so Spike responded to the summoning with anger.
“Look, you bloody bints,” he snarled as he stood, dusted himself off, and turned to face the two heartbeats behind him. “I thought we had an agreement. Emergencies only. This doesn’t look like—”
Spike broke off his rant as he faced the two girls. One of them, the girl on the left, had short, dark hair framing a soft face full of concern and a sparkle of mischief. She held the book used to summon him and a piece of yellow construction paper that matched his bracelet to her chest. The other girl had blonde hair and a fierce look on her face. Her arms were crossed across her chest, and like she had when he first met them, she looked prepared to punch him in the face if needed.
It had been eight years, but Spike knew immediately that the girl on the left holding the book was Celia, while the girl on the right was Buffy.
But, of course, it hadn’t been eight years since he’d last seen Buffy. It hadn’t even been a day.
“Oh bollocks,” Spike looked her up and down in obvious dismay. “You’re the Slayer?”
Notes:
Prompt: Fic must include the location of an attic.
Fulfilled: "In an attic in an LA neighborhood, a circle of salt had been carefully laid down over the carpet with as few squiggles as possible."
Celia's stuffed penguin, Señor Podgy, comes from HCB's fantastic "Bitty Buffy and Mr Gordo Go to the Park": https://dark-solace.org/elysian/viewstory.php?sid=5484&chapter=1
Chapter Text
In a kitchen in a house in the Chicago suburbs, a sixteen-year-old Celia had just gotten off the phone with her cousin and now faced her mother.
“No,” her mother informed her, “it’s a school night. You’re not going to see Buffy, no matter how upset she seems.”
“But Mom,” Celia protested. “She was really upset.” She looked up at her mom, eyes wide and innocent, and pulled out the big guns. “I think it’s about the divorce.”
“What?”
“Buffy said how weird it was to be shuffled back and forth between Uncle Hank and Aunt Joyce, that she felt like she wasn’t wanted anywhere. That she was just something they had to pretend to want like they used to pretend to want each other. Then she started crying . . .” Celia trailed off, hoping her mom would swallow the story she and Buffy had cooked up to get Celia on a plane out to California.
Her mom took the bait. “I told Joyce not to let Hank have her for the entire summer! I told her that it wouldn’t be good for Buffy, but did she listen to me? She never does. Just because I’m the younger sister, she thinks I don’t know anything. I’ll call Joyce in the morning. We’ll get your flight figured out. Or should you fly out this weekend . . .”
“Flights will be cheaper on a weekday,” Celia’s dad called out from the other room.
“Right,” her mom agreed. “We’ll call the airport tomorrow, and get you on a flight to LA. They have that little airport in Sunnydale; maybe we can find you a nice, easy connecting flight. Either way, we’ll get you there tomorrow. I’ll tell your principal it’s a family emergency. Not like you’ll miss anything anyway, what with them taking you on that unnecessary annual zoo field trip again on Friday.”
Celia wrapped her mom in a hug. “Thanks, Mom; you’re the best.”
“Of course I am,” her mom agreed. “Make sure you mention that to your aunt when you see her. Now, if you’re going to fly out tomorrow, you need to get your rest. Go to bed; you can pack in the morning.”
Buffy bounced on her toes, trying to expel some excited energy even as she eagerly glanced around the arrival area of Sunnydale’s small but surprisingly busy airport. Yesterday she had seen Spike. Ten minutes ago, Celia’s plane had landed, and any second now, her best friend would be back with her.
“Buffy!”
Buffy looked to her right. “Celia!” she screeched as she raced to get to her cousin.
As soon as Buffy got to her, they were a tangle of limbs, best friends who hadn’t seen each other in more than a year, connected only by long-distance calls and email accounts approved of by parents desperate to get their phone bills down. Other arrivals edged around them as Buffy gushed over Celia’s pixie cut and Celia demanded to know if Buffy had gotten more piercings.
“Where’s Aunt Joyce?” Celia finally asked, as she looked around, confused, for the person who had to have driven Buffy to the airport. She knew Buffy had originally been signed up to take driver’s ed over the summer, but with Uncle Hank demanding to see Buffy for the summer, Buffy learning how to drive had been put off for another year.
“In the car,” Buffy explained as they walked to the luggage carousel. “The gallery is opening a new exhibit this weekend, so she’s going over some paperwork for it right now.”
“Does that mean we’ll have the house to ourselves?”
Buffy grinned. “Yep. Mom’s taking time away from the gallery tomorrow for stupid parent-teacher conferences, so that means she’ll be extra busy tonight and Friday night to get ready for the opening on Saturday.”
Celia pointed at her suitcase, and Buffy hauled it off the carousel with ease. “Good. That’ll give us plenty of time to deal with Spike. I can’t believe he threatened to kill you.”
“That’s pretty standard issue with vamps,” Buffy shrugged. “Well, the threatening to kill me. He’s weird in that he’s waiting to do it and didn’t go all ‘grr, argh’ immediately.”
“No, I mean, it’s you. Why didn’t he recognize you?”
They walked out in the California sunshine, and Buffy squinted, trying to see where her mom had parked the Jeep. “I didn’t have you, Mr. Gordo, or Señor Podgy with me. Also, it’s been eight years. How would he recognize me?”
“Still super rude of him to get all with the threatening and not first verifying who you are.”
“He made sure I was the Slayer first. At least that’s something. Oh look, there’s Mom.”
Once Mom had dropped them off at home and they had ordered and devoured most of a pizza, the girls got to work.
Circle of salt? Check.
Shiny rocks? Check.
Mr. Gordo and Señor Podgy watching from her bed for old time’s sake? Check.
They chanted the words, and the familiar, anticlimactic nothing set in before—
Thump.
—he was here.
He looked exactly as Buffy had remembered from eight years ago and yesterday, ranting and insulting them as he stood to his feet and looked them over. When his eyes reached her, though, the ranting stopped.
“Oh bollocks,” Spike looked her up and down in obvious dismay. “You’re the Slayer?”
Buffy sent a little wave in his direction, a sassy wiggle of her fingers. This was exactly the reaction she was hoping for, but she didn’t let her unimpressed expression break in the face of her delight as she stared him down.
Spike snorted. “’Course you’re the Slayer. Just my soddin’ luck, the bossiest chit in the bloody universe is the bloody Slayer.” He leaned back against the air and stuck his thumbs in his belt loops. Yesterday, as Spike had stepped out of the shadows, Buffy had a brief realization of oh no, he’s hot. She had quickly shoved it away to focus on his death threat. She had the same thought again as he sneered at her in a way that should not be attractive but oh my god totally was.
Like yesterday, Buffy shoved the thought away again. She had work to do, and there was a carton of Rocky Road in the fridge that she and Celia could use as fuel as they dissected Buffy’s unsanctioned lusty thoughts for a probably still taken vampire.
“So what,” Spike asked. “You decided you didn’t want to take the Big Bad on mano a mano, Slayer? Had to pull me into a magic circle and stake me here?”
Buffy rolled her eyes, grateful for the distraction from her lusty thoughts. “You’re an idiot.”
“She doesn’t even have a stake,” Celia pointed out.
“Yeah? Then why’m I here? Convenient to remember me now that you’re the Slayer? Gonna put a whammy on me, make me do your work for you?”
“Oh my god, Spike!” Buffy threw her arms up in the air in exasperation. “First off, my name is Buffy and you know it, so stop with this ‘Slayer this’ and ‘Slayer that’ nonsense. Secondly, I did not call you here to ‘whammy’ you, whatever that means.”
“Then why did you call me here, Slayer? Doesn’t seem like it’s for a chummy chat, what with how we haven’t had any of those these past few years.”
“I moved,” Celia spoke up, which was good, because Buffy was about one more mulish comment away from punching him in the nose. “Shortly after we called you last, my dad got a new job in Chicago, and we had to move from LA. And then whenever we were together, it was always at holidays or something, and there were too many other people around to summon you and not get in major trouble for it.” Celia looked at Spike with her big, pleading eyes, and Buffy watched Spike melt. While Buffy had perfected her pout to get what she wanted, Celia had perfected her innocent look; they had yet to meet anyone who could withstand them, including, apparently, vampires.
“We missed you and really wanted to summon you,” Celia continued, “but we just couldn’t.”
“Our moms get really cranky when strange men are around us,” Buffy confirmed. “We didn’t want you to get hit with an ax or something.”
“But we totally still thought and talked about you. See?” Celia held out her wrist, showing off her bracelet. “I wear mine all the time.”
Buffy followed suit, flashing the worn and a bit raggedy friendship bracelet that lived there as well as the sliding beads rather than a knot that now kept it together. “I have to take mine off when I patrol. A vamp ripped it off me once, and it almost got dusted along with her. But it’s part of the daytime Buffy look.”
“That what you were doin’ last night when I saw you, Slayer?” Spike asked, suspicious. “‘Patrolling’?”
“No, I was getting my boogie on. Except also yes, because you totally saw me stake that vamp. But after that, I was going patrolling. Tuesday nights are for stopping by St. Vincent’s, Restfield, and Our Lady of Peace cemeteries, if nothing else comes up. Like, you know, vampires threatening to kill me on Saturday.”
Spike sighed, all the belligerence leaving him in a rush. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve been a right wanker, haven’t I, pets?”
“Yep,” Buffy agreed.
“But totally understandable,” Celia noted. She got her chill sweetness from her dad. Buffy, who still kind of wanted to punch Spike for being a jerk, was jealous of it. “We did kind of abandon you with no notice.”
“But if you’re not going to be a jerk about it anymore, we can let you out of there and give you some pizza.”
Spike perked up at that. “What kind?”
Celia frowned. “Just pepperoni.”
“Oh forgive me, Miss ‘I now live near Chicago and have high standards for my pizza,’” Buffy teased. “But you are back in California now, and you will accept the limited choices given to us by Tony’s Pizz-a-rama. Just be glad I didn’t get the one with spinach on it.”
“Spinach on pizza?” Spike was incredulous. “What kind of soddin’ backwater is this place?”
“The kind with a hellmouth on it. C’mon, stop your whining, and let’s get you some subpar pizza.” Buffy strode forward and wiped away part of their circle, ignoring the way getting close to him had a couple butterflies going in her stomach to match the tingles going up her neck.
She also ignored how Celia leaned in to whisper—loudly—to Spike as they left her room, “I think there’s something in the water here. That’s the only explanation for why people don’t notice what’s going on in this town. And for what they do to their pizza.”
“Does that also explain why Buffy started to get a bit bitchy?” Spike whispered loudly back.
“Nah, I blame that on her being a cheerleader.”
“I heard that!”
It’d been an odd night. Sometime in the last eight years, he’d given up on seeing his girls again. Ol’ Spike, he figured, good for some muscle or entertainment, left behind again as soon as something more interesting comes along.
He was bitter, but as that was how every woman in his life had ever treated him, he wasn’t surprised.
Except now it turned out that the girls hadn’t abandoned him, things had just been out of their control. Which only made sense, for all that they were each a force to be reckoned with; the forces were still wrapped up in the bodies of kids.
They weren’t kids any more, though. His bits had grown up, were practically flirting with being women in their own rights. Celia had taken her spark and her thoughtfulness and become a bit of a witch—albeit one who told her mother that her weekly magic lessons were actually flute lessons. Spike appreciated the joke of it. Buffy had taken her bossiness and her fearlessness and had become the Slayer, and a gorgeous, brilliant one at that.
Spike shook his head as he swallowed some of the juice Buffy had poured for him. It was a funny world.
The girls had chattered on about what they’d been up to while he ate. Celia and Buffy both griped about what a pain moving and new schools were before conceding that the new friends they had made were cool. Celia talked about realizing that she had actual mojo when she stumbled into a magic shop and the proprietor—a lady anywhere between forty and eighty years old with the decidedly unwitchy name of Judith—took immediate note of her. Buffy shared how her first Watcher convinced her that he wasn’t just a crazy old man perving on a teen girl by throwing a knife at her face.
Buffy caught the growl that escaped him at that story and flashed a smile at him. “I thought he was a crazy old man who might be a serial killer then. But Merrick was a good guy.”
Spike didn’t like the sadness that crossed her face at that. “‘Was,’ pet?”
“I was facing this vamp at the time. Lothos. I almost wish I had met him first because that was a pervy dude; Merrick creeping around my high school gym would have seemed tame in comparison. Although, really, the Watcher’s Council needs to train their people that stranger danger is a thing and that maybe accosting their new girls in empty parts of their school is super with the creepy,” Buffy babbled. “Anyway, ummm, we were facing Lothos. And, well, we were fighting, and I wasn’t doing so hot, and Merrick killed himself so he couldn’t be used against me.”
“Bet you staked Lothos right good for that.”
Buffy perked up a bit at that. “Yeah. First I set him on fire though. That was fun. Then I had to set my gym on fire too; it was full of vampires.”
Spike raised an eyebrow. “Noticin’ a theme here.”
Celia nodded solemnly. “There’s a reason we have to use shiny rocks to summon you. Buffy can’t be trusted with fire.”
“Hey!” Buffy protested. “I can too! Besides, we were eight. You weren’t trusted with candles then either.”
“But who’s allowed to have them in her room now? And who has to use those reed diffuser things?”
Buffy scowled at her cousin. “I no longer like you.”
Spike laughed at that, and the conversation continued on, this time to what he had been up to in the last few years. Which led to him sharing about Prague and Dru and why they were on the hellmouth and shacking up with the Annoying One in the first place.
When he mentioned how weak Dru was, Buffy and Celia exchanged a long look.
“We might be able to help you,” Celia offered.
“Really?” Spike sat up straighter. This was the best news he had heard since coming to this godforsaken town.
“Really,” Buffy confirmed. “Celia is, like, a super great witch, and my watcher has a ton of books.”
“Thought your watcher died, pet.”
“This is the new one. Giles. He accosted me in the library on my first day of school because, again, the Watcher’s Council does not train their people in how to not seem like creepy weirdos.”
Spike snorted at that. “Doubt they trained their people to help vampires, either.”
“We don’t have to tell him that’s what we’re looking for,” Buffy argued.
“And he’ll, what? Not have any questions about why his Slayer and her witchy cousin he’s never met before are lookin’ for vampire cures?” Spike rolled his eyes. “That’s not suspicious at all.”
“Well, you’re our friend,” Buffy pouted. “And you saved Celia’s life before. This is just a squid prop quote, nothing suspicious about it.”
“Think you mean ‘quid pro quo,’” Spike offered. “And I doubt he’ll be all that keen to help even if you do regale him with my heroics.”
“What if you helped Buffy with something else?” Celia asked, eyes alight with an idea.
“Like what?”
“This St. Vigeous, ‘I kill you on Saturday’ thing,” Celia paused to give Spike a stern look. “You’re not still planning on killing her on Saturday, right?”
“Don’t hurt you chits or anyone who belongs to you; you know this.”
“You do know that everyone in this town is mine,” Buffy pointed out, voice mild but eyes fierce. “Right?”
Spike glared at her mutinously for a moment before sighing. He’d been wondering when that would be brought up ever since he realized Buffy was the Slayer; it was almost a relief to get the elephant in the room out of the way. “Me an’ Dru, we’ll bag it or catch and release while we’re here. No harm to the good little walking blood banks of Sunnyhell, all right?”
Buffy looked at him seriously. “You know what I’ll have to do if you kill anyone, right, Spike? I won’t want to stake you, but I will.”
Spike looked at her, sitting next to the hot sauce she had dug out of the pantry just for him, serious and somber and so bloody glorious in her duty. Slayers died too young, he knew, from the world demanding so much of them, making them lose themselves in their duty. He wouldn’t be one of those things her duty demanded of her. “Know that, kitten. Promise I won’t give you any reason to stake me.”
They stared into each other’s eyes for a minute until Celia interrupted the moment. “Glad we got that settled. Anyway, my idea. You could tell her Buffy about it and help her stop it for the eensie-weensie fee of Giles letting us figure out how to heal your girlfriend.”
Buffy slowly nodded, looking away from Spike, a loss he refused to admit made the room seem a few degrees colder. “That should work. We’re gonna have to do it in front of him though; otherwise, he’ll never believe it.” Buffy looked back at Spike; he felt his spine getting a little straighter at her attention. “What are you doing tomorrow evening?”
Spike returned to the factory with his head in a whirl to find Drusilla dancing in circles and staring at the ceiling while she dreamily clutched two dolls—one with blonde hair, the other with brown—to her breast.
“Did the dollies play with you, my Spike?” she called.
Spike hurried over to her side. “Could have warned a bloke that it would have been those dollies,” he grumbled.
Drusilla giggled, an innocent, lighthearted sound the made his heart soar. “Now, where would the fun be in that? I had to let the dollies have their surprise; it made them giggle and scheme.”
Spike tried to join in her dance, but she skittered away. “Drusilla, my sweet, they’re going to help me make you better.”
“I know. The pixies told me they’d help Mummy. Have to get Mummy all ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“Have you been to square dance? They tell you exactly what to do. Promenade. Circle left. Change partners. Do-si-do.”
Spike was confused. Which was normal, around her, but after a night of having conversations between people he could see, he had less patience for it than normal. “We’re going to a square dance, pet?”
“Not yet. It’s not her time yet.”
“Whose time?”
Drusilla cuddled her dolls closer, danced a little more dreamily. “Sunshine’s. She's not ready to dance yet. Still learning the steps.”
Giles was charmed to meet Buffy’s cousin, but frankly, he felt the visit couldn’t have come at a worse time. Celia seemed like a sweet girl, but Buffy was distracted around her, even more so than she usually was, which she just couldn’t afford right now. They still didn’t know much about what the Anointed One had planned for this Night of St. Vigeous, and Buffy was letting her preoccupation with her cousin and her focus on tonight’s unnecessary parent-teacher conference take her focus away from her calling.
The worst part was, she didn’t seem all that concerned. The other children had come in to his office yesterday morning, panicked about a vampire that had accosted them yesterday and threatened Buffy herself. When he had asked her about it, though, Buffy had simply said it was all covered. She refused to tell him more than that. Then she had left school immediately after the final bell rang, apparently to go pick up her cousin.
While he respected the knowledge she had about demons and the demon world—it was a surprising amount considering how she had never been identified and trained as a potential—her blasé attitude toward the threats she had received this week were troublesome. Really, he hadn’t seen her so reckless in weeks. It was getting quite worrisome.
“Wait, so you mean you’re a witch? Like, a real witch?” Willow asked Celia.
“Witch-in-training, I think. But the way Judith talks, we’re all always witches in training. We’re supposed to always keep learning and growing, and we must recognize that we never know everything there is to know about ourselves, our craft, or the world around us.”
“So forever school? Oh joy, where can I sign up?” Xander’s sarcasm cut through the room.
“Right. We have banners and snacks and drinks. Am I forgetting anything?” Buffy asked the room at large.
“Did you ever add sugar to the lemonade?” Celia asked.
Buffy’s eyes got big. “Sugar. No. I need that? Of course I need that. How much?”
Willow looked critically at the punch bowl. “At least a cup. Maybe two.”
As Buffy scurried to care for the sugar calamity, Giles cleared his throat. “I thought we could perhaps discuss what is to be done about the Night of St. Vigeous? The vampires, after all, should be your primary concern.”
“Don’t worry about it!” Buffy called out to him as she searched through her supplies for a bag of sugar. “Celia and I have a plan,” she continued.
“You do?” Giles queried. He found himself not very comforted at the thought. In fact, if he were asked exactly what he was feeling at hearing this, it would be that he was now more worried than he had been just thirty seconds prior.
Buffy pulled out the bag of sugar and walked over to the lemonade. “Yep!” she dumped a generous cup into the beverage and stirred it with the ladle using just a touch too much enthusiasm. “We totally have it covered. Right, Celia?”
Her cousin grinned at her, something sharp that spoke of secrets and a long association. Giles wasn’t very comforted by that look. Nor by Celia’s “Right, Buffy.”
Maybe this time, the world was doomed.
Joyce Summers had a perfectly pleasant time at Buffy’s parent-teacher conferences. Buffy was apparently hosting the conference, and it was lovely seeing her daughter in a role of such practical responsibility. The principal, she decided, must really like and respect Buffy to have her take on such important work.
Joyce was able to talk to all her daughter’s teachers; the consensus seemed to be that her daughter was smart and capable but a bit prone to daydreaming.
“Not that that’s unusual in teenage girls,” Buffy’s English teacher had confided in her with a wry smile. “When fighting against cute boys, parties, and shoe sales, Beowulf is always going to lose.”
Joyce pulled a face. “They’re still teaching that?”
“See? Exactly. I can’t even blame the kids. I’d also rather think about anything else than hanging up a monster’s arm in a mead hall. Although, Buffy did have some surprisingly insightful comments about the weapons the poem describes.”
Before she went back to the gallery to finish painting a wall so she could hang art on it the next day, Joyce had hoped to speak to the principal. Every time she spotted him, though, something would keep her from speaking to him—another parent would walk up to him, something would fall, or he would be lecturing a student. Finally, she gave up and ducked out to get back to work, saying goodbye to Buffy and Celia at the refreshments table before she left.
After starting fires and picking fights at Hemery, Joyce was glad for a daughter who was now responsible, if a bit prone to daydreaming. She could work with that.
Buffy sighed in relief. Her mom had left. All the teachers, students, and other parents had left. Even Mr. Snyder had gone home to whatever bog he crawled out of to torture students every morning, kept away from her mom by Celia’s sneaky witchy mojo. Now it was just her, her friends, Giles, and Celia in the library.
Which meant it was time to explain their plan.
Buffy was chewing on her lower lip, trying to determine where to start her story—With Spike in the alley two days ago? With the first time they summoned Spike? With him saving Celia? With some long-winded metaphor about having friends in low places?—when all of her worry became moot as the doors to the library flew open and Spike swaggered in.
Which so was not the plan. The jerk.
“Oi, Slayer,” he called, “you ready to rumble?”
“That’s him!” Xander stood up and shouted, pointing his finger at Spike like he wasn’t the only person to come into the library just now. “That’s the vampire! Stake him, Buffy!”
“Slayer’s not a soddin’ attack dog, you nit,” Spike growled.
“I’m not going to stake him,” Buffy said. “He’s part of the plan for taking down the Anointed One, which I was going to tell you except someone,” she glared at Spike, “got here early.”
Spike shrugged, unashamed. “What can I say? Got bored. Put Dru up in a hotel, sent the two minions I want to keep off on errands, had nothing else to do.”
“Those errands better not be killing anyone.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “Know the rules, don’t I, Slayer? Dalton doesn’t eat people anyway—gets all his blood from Willy—and Jeff’s dumber than a post and will do anythin’ I tell him to. Right now he’s keepin’ an eye on Dru for me.”
“Good.” Buffy clapped her hands together. “Okay, then, Cliff’s Notes version. Spike here is a friend of Celia and mine. Yes, I know, vampires bad, but he saved Celia’s life once and has promised to not hurt me or mine, which includes all of Sunnydale, so he’s safe.”
“But, Saturday!” Willow protested. “I kill you!”
“Didn’t realize the Slayer was Buffy then,” Spike explained from where he was leaning against the checkout counter.
Xander was incredulous. “How could you not know Buffy was the Slayer? The Buffster’s pretty much . . .” he waved his hands at her like Vana White showing off the new convertible that could be your prize if you were lucky and smart. Buffy made a note to herself to try and do more to squash his crush on her. Like maybe kick him in the shins whenever he looked at her like that.
Spike raised his eyebrow when nothing came to finish Xander’s sentence. “Haven’t seen the chit in a few years, and I’d never seen her before without Celia here. Took me a mo’ to get caught back up.”
“And now that he has,” Buffy forcibly took back the conversation, “he’s going to help us take down the Anointed One and his minions. Tonight. In exchange, we’re going to help him fix his girlfriend.”
“Ta, pet.”
“Now, Buffy, just wait a minute,” Giles spluttered. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this, this partnership you seem to have developed. We don’t even know anything about this vampire.” He looked keenly at Spike. “Does he have a soul?”
“I bloody well hope not!” Spike exploded away from the checkout counter to start pacing the floor. “Fuck knows they don’t stop anyone from bein’ evil—would think you’d know that, with your Hitlers and your Stalins and your Andrew bloody Jacksons—just turn you into a broody mess, second guessin’ yourself and all mournful but still you with your habits an’ inclinations. Slayer says that ol’ Gramps is in town; if his soul made him good, Slayer wouldn’t have had to come to me. He could have told her all about St. Vigeous and where to find the Annoyin’ One, but he didn’t. Bet he likes to pop in with just enough info to make you listen to him and seek him out but not enough to actually help, so you’re always aware of him but never know when he’s gonna show up next. Just like he did with his victims before the soul, only none of you are dead yet. ’Sides, not like it matters if you’re comfortable with it.” Spike stopped his pacing to pin Giles with a look. “She’s the Slayer, so she’s the one making decisions.”
Giles spluttered as Spike wrapped up his impressive rant, and Buffy stepped in quickly before they could start debating who was in charge here or discussing what exactly a soul was good for. It was so not the time for those kinds of conversations. “Anyway. The plan. Here’s what’s happening. Spike, Giles, and I are going to go to the factory where the stupid Anointed One and his minions have been staying. Spike and I make with the dusty, Giles makes with the supervising so he knows he can trust Spike and he lets us use his books to help Spike’s girlfriend, then we call it a night so Celia and I can watch some Dirty Dancing before Mom gets home.”
“What about the rest of us, Buffy?” Willow asked.
“You’re all going home. Spike and I will be more than enough to handle . . .” she trailed off and turned to look at Spike.
“Seventeen vamps. Not countin’ the poncy annoyin’ twit.”
“Yep. Especially since Spike’s gonna go in first and thin the herd a bit before they realize he’s no longer with them.”
Not to brag, but her plan had been totally amazing. Spike had gotten them to the factory—Giles grumbling the entire way and Spike sniping back at him in response. He had then smuggled them in at the second level so they could keep an eye on things and Buffy could jump in when their targets realized they had a turncoat.
Before they had gone in, Spike had looked her over before sighing like the drama queen he definitely was and foisting his coat on her.
He was already answering her confused “what?” before she could fully get the word out: “Not goin’ to get much thinnin’ done if you walk in there smellin’ like you do. Even the thickest of that lot will know the Slayer’s there. The coat should mask you long enough.”
“And what do I smell like?” Buffy had demanded.
“Like power and sunshine and a right nummy treat.” Giles had made some kind of noise at that, and Spike had rolled his eyes. “Get your tweedy brain out of the gutter, Watcher. Don’t mean it like that.”
Like what? Buffy had wanted to ask, but Spike had continued. “Slayer’s blood’s the soddin’ Holy Grail to vamps—heals anything, makes us strong, makes us powerful. Perfect for drawin’ her prey in, but makes her right noticeable for any kind of recon or Trojan horse maneuver. Which, in case you haven’t noticed, is what we’re trying to pull here.”
That had been that. And, gotta say, jumping down from the catwalk onto an unsuspecting vamp with the coat’s wings flapping behind her? Made Buffy feel pretty badass. Almost as badass as staking the vamp before he knew what had happened to him. But then she had been caught up in the exhilaration of the fight with a really good partner at her side, trading quips and blows and opponents with casual competence, and even the awesomeness of the coat had faded.
Because it was good, great even, taking out these vampires who had haunted her since she had first moved to Sunnydale, since she had first learned about the Master. If smashing the Master’s bones had been like closing the book on him, this was donating the book to a thrift store along with all the other things you had bought and that had disappointed you. But, like, the violent version of that, getting her blood racing and her muscles working in the best way.
They had taken out most of the vampires. Spike had staked the Anointed One right away—which, rude, she had wanted to do the little creep in, but at least this way he couldn’t get away again—and they were now down to just one vampire each, with Giles unfortunately unconscious in the corner and missing just how awesome a team she and Spike made. Buffy’s vampire was refusing to die though. Unlike most of the other vamps, he also seemed like a half-decent fighter, if the way he was able to knock her stake away from her was any indication.
Her stake gone, Buffy searched the area around her for some kind of weapon. She saw something long and metal off to the side, and she grabbed it up, only briefly distracted that instead of a crowbar or bit of lead pipe or anything else that would make sense to having lying on a factory floor, it was a barbecue fork. Which, did this factory used to make barbecue forks? Do vampires use them to torture people? Did squatters used to come here before the vamps took over and have campfires here?
Then the vampire leaned in toward her, and Buffy forgot all her questions about the barbecue fork to thrust it up into the vamp.
Buffy . . . wasn’t sure exactly what happened. It was like she was hovering outside her body, watching it all in slow-motion scenes her brain couldn’t keep up with. There was the scene of her thrusting her weapon into the vamp. Except before her thrust could strike true, the vamp dusted. Instead, one tine of the fork got caught in the belt buckle that appeared behind the dusted vamp. A belt buckle that belonged to Spike. Buffy wrenched it away, adrenaline adding to her Slayer strength and causing her to break the buckle and rip it away as well. The wrenching also must have taken out the button on the jeans too, because next thing she knew they were falling.
Then it was just impressions. Of brown hair. Of paleness. Of pink. Of length. The kaleidoscope of impressions sluggishly clicked together in Buffy’s mind, telling her this is Spike’s dick and his hair color is very not natural and so that’s what a happy trail leads to. And then there was a swirl of motion, and there it was again. Spike’s butt. Only she wasn’t Spike’s girlfriend and she’d seen it twice now and it was so much nicer this second time, she didn’t feel at all like screaming, and so that’s what they mean by the full Monty—
Then Spike yanked his jeans back up, and everything was back to normal. No more out-of-body-Buffy seeing the very nice body of Spike. Just Buffy. Lying on the ground. Having had a reminder and then some of just what Spike’s butt looked like. In a factory. With no more vampires, so Spike must have dusted his and hers.
“Buffy,” Spike’s voice broke through her racing thoughts and dragged her eyes from the dangerous area of his waistline to the still-dangerous area of his face because oh no, he’s still hot, and now I’ve seen his butt. Again. “Want to give me my coat back so we can get the Watcher home?” His blue eyes twinkled at her. “Or do I need to give you and your thoughts a few moments to get settled?”
Oh god, she needed to talk to Celia.
Notes:
Prompt: Your fic must feature the use of a BBQ fork.
Fulfilled: "She saw something long and metal off to the side, and she grabbed it up, only briefly distracted that instead of a crowbar or bit of lead pipe or anything else that would make sense to having lying on a factory floor, it was a barbecue fork. Which, did this factory used to make barbecue forks? Do vampires use them to torture people? Did squatters used to come here before the vamps took over and have campfires here?
Then the vampire leaned in toward her, and Buffy forgot all her questions about the barbecue fork to thrust it up into the vamp."
Chapter Text
Celia had talked to Buffy after she had come in from slaying before. Sometimes Buffy talked about her night like the jocks in Celia’s school did about a weightlifting session—all “it was a good workout” and “you should see the other guy” and “my shoulder’s gonna be sore in the morning.” Sometimes Buffy talked about jerk demons that got goo all over her cute shoes. Sometimes Buffy was quiet, mentioning the person she had saved or the people she hadn’t saved, the guilt she felt over staking vampires when she knew they could perhaps be like Spike and the guilt she felt if she didn’t stake them and they went on to harm people.
Celia was expecting tonight to be one of the weightlifting nights, full of joy and tiredness and bragging. Maybe also a discussion of whether Spike was actually as good of a fighter as he had always claimed to be and some comments on what Mr. Giles thought of Spike. What Celia wasn’t expecting was for Buffy to be blushing and looking somewhere between giddy and guilty while she marched right past Celia and into the kitchen.
“I thought we were going to watch some Swayze goodness,” Celia said as she left the living room. Buffy’s head was in the refrigerator. Celia watched, puzzled, as her cousin rooted around in it. “Or are you having some super freaky early menopause? Should I leave you and Mr. Freezer alone?”
“No,” Celia could hear the scowl in Buffy’s voice, and she grinned. “I am looking for—aha!” Buffy crowed victoriously as she held up a carton of Rocky Road. “Ice cream goodness, just what the doctor ordered. Grab the spoons.”
Celia walked over to the utensil drawer. “So if it isn’t early menopause, what’s the crisis?” Spoons acquired, she looked at Buffy, whose face had shifted from victory over excavating the ice cream out of the freezer to that same mix of guilty giddiness.
“Well, I might have, you know, been fighting, like I do. And this one vamp had me cornered and knocked over and without a weapon, which was totally of the fine, because I found some kind of barbecue fork and was planning on shish kebobing him long enough to get my stake back.”
Celia eyed her cousin. Buffy was acting weird and jumpy, but she didn’t seem injured.
“So I go to shish kebob him,” Buffy continued, “and then, poof!, vamp is no longer there. Spike had dusted him. But my arm hasn’t gotten the message yet and . . .”
“And?” Celia demanded.
“I shish kebobed Spike’s pants,” Buffy confessed, covering her face with her hands.
Celia spent one second imagining how Spike probably reacted to being stabbed in the pants before dissolving into laughter.
“Right?” Buffy asked, dropping her hands to look at Celia. “Should be super funny. Except, umm, well, that’s not all I did,” she trailed off in a mumble.
Celia controlled her laughter long enough to ask, “What else did you do? Flambé his hair?”
“Ha ha. No. I ummm, I might have panicked a little bit. And jerked my arm back. And I might have taken some of his pants with me.”
Celia sobered. “Buffy, did you . . . ?”
“Celia,” Buffy said very seriously, “I saw everything.”
“Everything everything?”
Buffy nodded. “He was facing me when his pants fell and I saw,” she made a vague gesture toward her crotch, “you know, and then he turned around to pull his pants back up and I saw,” Buffy waved her hand at her butt, “you know.”
“And how was his butt on the second viewing?” Celia asked, trying to control the grin spreading across her face and losing the battle.
Buffy sighed. “So much better than the first time. I mean, you know how your mom once explained that we needed to make a bed so firmly that a quarter could be bounced off it?”
Celia nodded. That had been a long week of “maybe Buffy and Celia will get in less trouble if we exhaust them by making them do all of the chores perfectly.” It hadn’t worked, but Buffy and Celia had been convinced they were going to die before their moms gave up on it.
“Celia,” Buffy leaned over the kitchen island to stare earnestly into her eyes, “you could bounce a quarter off his butt, that’s how firm and yummy it looked.”
And while Celia didn’t have any real interest in Spike’s bits, she could appreciate and laugh at Buffy’s flustered confusion. “Tell me everything.”
Spike was many things. Impatient. Always ready to brawl. A football fan. A romantic. Evil.
That last one covered a multitude of sins. Cutting the line at the theater to see Star Wars Episode VI for the third time and using the bloody boring mushy sibling bonding moment between Luke and Leia to get a snack from the chit on his left? Evil. Nicking a carton of cigarettes from the corner store? Evil. Eavesdropping on a girl gush about his exceptionally firm and well-formed arse to her cousin? Completely accidental as he had walked to the Summers’ house to see if the girls wanted to chat about things that weren’t his arse, but still, evil.
Spike left the Summers’ house whistling when the girls finally moved on from talking about Buffy’s evening to what girly flick they were going to watch. Tomorrow, for Buffy’s sake, he would pretend that it wasn’t a big deal that she had gotten a good ogle in of his bits. But tonight he would glory in being appreciated and being evil enough to know about that appreciation.
“So G-man, what’s the verdict on our friendly neighborhood bleached and fanged wonder?” Xander waved at Spike, who had taken over a corner table in the library at some point during the school day—glaring at any teenagers who came to close to him with the exception of Celia, who showed up after Giles called her in a panic—thus beating the Scoobies to their own research party.
Giles removed his glasses from his face. “Well, Spike here was most useful last night in, ah—”
“Stakin’ the Annoying One and savin’ your tweedy arse from being a vamp’s chew toy?” Spike suggested.
“Yes, that.” Giles cleaned his glasses a bit more vigorously at how he had just agreed with a vampire. “And since he has kept his word to us, it seems only right that we, well, keep Buffy’s word to him and help with his, err, situation.”
Giles still didn’t want to help with the research. For all that even he could admit that Spike had been an asset the night before, an asset that had furthermore given him a lot to consider when it came to his trust in a certain souled vampire, it went against all his training to help any vampire, let alone helping the Slayer of Slayers heal his sick paramour, Drusilla the Mad. Except Buffy had accosted him in the library before Spike had shown up, informing him that he was going to help and that, if he refused to, she and Celia were going to help Spike on their own. The thought of what these two girls could get into with only a vampire for guidance had horrified him, so Giles had found himself acquiescing to Buffy’s demands, with the caveat that he could tell her “I told you so” if it all went to hell.
“Darn, I was hoping we could get Buffy to stake him and we could hit the Bronze instead.”
“Xander!” Willow, Celia, and Buffy admonished the boy in unison.
“Hey! Not because I have anything against the guy so long as he keeps his fangs to himself. It’s just that the Xan-man and books on a Friday is not a good look.”
“Read something poorly in Latin in front of the right one of these,” the vampire spoke up, “and it’ll catch on fire. ’S a booby trap to keep the magically incompetent away from anything beyond their ken. Could try and light this whole place up that way; see if you can beat Buffy at her arson game.”
Giles put his glasses back on so that he could send the vampire a pained look. He was already regretting not leaving Buffy and Celia to help Spike on their own. “Don’t give the children ideas, I beg you.”
The problem with seeing Spike’s everything the night before was that Buffy didn’t know what to do now. She was sitting next to Spike, doing the research, and trying to act normal, but she couldn’t keep her mind from replaying The Ten Seconds That Changed Everything.
Because, yeah! She totally knew Spike was hot. Had been fully planning on chatting with Celia about the hotness that was Spike after they first summoned him in her bedroom, but she had other things going on, what with making a plan and figuring out how to introduce everyone. And then she had seen everything, and all of a sudden it wasn’t just Spike’s cheekbones and eyes and the biceps hidden under his coat. It was also his butt. And his thighs, because while the ’80s should so not come back, Spike should definitely start wearing those short shorts like Tom Selleck did on Magnum, P.I.
And also, of course, she saw his dick.
Buffy turned a page in her book.
Because Buffy didn’t know what to think about his dick. She had only seen it quickly, and other than anatomical photos put up on the overhead projector during sex ed, she had nothing to compare it to. Butts she could judge, even if they were usually in pants when she judged them, and thighs she could judge, but dicks were a brand new territory. It was probably a nice dick? But what did you even do with a dick besides, you know, what you did with a dick? And while she really wanted to, Buffy couldn’t just ask Spike about it—either what you did with a dick or for another look at his so she could get a better sense for if it was nice or not. Putting aside the issues of he was dating someone else and oh god, does lusting after a taken man make her a big ho?, Buffy would actually die of embarrassment before she could mention anything dick-related to Spike.
Buffy flipped another page.
Xander had given up on research a long time ago and was now reading a comic book that he had slipped into the pages of his tome. Giles had taken a shining to the minion Spike had brought with him—a tweedy guy named Dalton—and they were having their own research party in a corner. Buffy couldn’t tell if they were actually speaking another language or simply nerding so hard she couldn’t follow their conversation, not that she was really trying. Celia and Willow were discussing witchy stuff in another corner. Normally Buffy would have joined them—even if it was about stuff she didn’t understand, girl talk was still girl talk and miles better than browsing through this stuffy book—but keeping her focus on helping Drusilla seemed like a fair punishment for lusting after Drusilla’s boyfriend.
And, well, she got to keep sitting next to Spike if she kept researching, and he smelled really nice.
St. Buffy, she was not.
Luckily, the only person in a position to call her out on not being St. Buffy was Celia, who was an actual saint who ignored her while discussing how dumb it was that spells always use the grossest ingredients.
Buffy turned another page and started in on her eighth review of The Ten Seconds That Changed Everything when her vampire tinglies kicked into a higher gear. After spending so much time with Dalton and Spike this evening, they had subsided to a low hum, which could only mean that someone new had arrived. It could be some vampires who weren’t part of last night’s factory sweep, but knowing her luck, it probably was—
“Buffy, get away from that man immediately; he’s dangerous.”
—Angel.
He stood at the doorway, his face the picture of a concerned friend. It was the most expression Buffy had ever seen on his usually stoic face. His concern would be sweet if Buffy didn’t know what she knew about Angel.
“Do you always talk like you’re in a low budget action flick?” Mocking Angel was apparently interesting enough to pull Xander’s attention away from his comic book. “You know all, ‘Aliens have invaded Zimbabwe. There’s no time for rational solutions.’” Xander dropped his voice for that, and he did sound remarkably like the low budget action flick version of Samuel L. Jackson.
“Or what about, ‘We will ford this river and make it to Oregon with our five hundred bullets and three spare wagon wheels or die trying’?” Willow offered in an accent Buffy couldn’t parse.
“Nah, those are both too serious for him,” Spike disagreed. “Peaches is more, ‘Don’t worry, citizens. I, Captain Forehead, will save you with the power of my hair gel and broody glare.’”
Xander grinned at Spike. “I think Bleach Boy’s onto something. What do you say, Buff; can you picture Angel here in a cape and tights?”
Buffy wrinkled her nose. “I’m getting very ’80s workout mom visuals with that. It isn’t pretty.”
Angel gaped at them. “You’re all mad. There must be a spell. Do you know who he is?”
Buffy shrugged. “Spike. William the Bloody. The Big Bad. Take your pick.”
Angel clenched and unclenched his hands at he stared at her. “If you know all that, you must also know that he’s—”
“The Slayer of Slayers?” Giles broke in. “Yes, we are well aware. And while I, myself, am not thrilled with this development, Spike and Buffy have made sure I am well informed as to whom he is. Which is more than I can say about other vampires we have befriended in the past,” he finished with a pointed look at Angel.
Celia called Buffy’s attention away from the shocked look Angel was sporting. “Buffy, is this . . .?”
“Oh gosh, sorry, I forgot you’ve never met. Celia, this is Angel. Angel, Celia. If you touch her, I’ll break every bone in your body.”
Celia got up from her corner and walked over to Angel. He looked down at her and tried to smile. It looked more like a grimace; Buffy couldn’t tell if he was just out of practice in the smiling department or if he was still in too much shock at seeing his grandchilde with them. Then Celia slammed her knee into Angel’s groin, and the wannabe smile vanished as the vampire doubled over in pain.
“Vampires talk, dumbass,” Celia announced to his prone form.
“What?” Angel gasped out and sent a weak but still dirty look at Spike.
“Ugh, not like that, you idiot,” Celia explained, catching the look. “I meant that you talk. Which means you have to breath to make with the talking. So you could totally have saved Buffy, but you didn’t because you’re an asshole.”
Angel was now sending Buffy disbelieving looks, although whether it was over what Celia had just said or the entire situation, she was unsure. Buffy just shrugged in response. She had gotten Xander to explain why he seemed to dislike Angel so much more now than he had even when they were in some weird competition for her attention, and Buffy had pretty much had the same reaction as Celia did when she learned how unhelpful Angel had been when she had gone to face the Master. Only less with the crushing of the family jewels and more of the gladness that she had immediately stopped flirting with Angel once she realized that he was a vampire, that “Angel” was short for “Angelus,” and that Angel was therefore the hated grandsire Spike had told them so many stories about.
“She makes a good point,” Buffy said mildly. “You are kind of a dumbass.”
Buffy was so focused on the scene in front of her, that Spike speaking on her left startled her: “What does she mean by ‘could have saved Buffy but didn’t,’ Slayer?” Spike had gone still, except for his eyes, which darted between Angel, Celia, and Buffy. Buffy had only seen Spike still like this once before, but at that time, his eyes had darted between Buffy, Celia, and the space where a monster Buffy couldn’t see had been hovering, waiting to kill her cousin.
And crap, while she wasn’t necessarily Angel’s number one fan, he did try to help in his half-assed kind of way, and Buffy didn’t necessarily want to see what happened to Der Kindestod happen to him.
“Ummmm,” she hesitated, “well, you see . . .”
“Buffy died facing the Master last summer,” Xander said, stomping across all of Buffy’s hesitations. “We found her face down in a puddle, and Captain Forehead over here refused to give mouth-to-mouth to try and save Buffy. Luckily for all, my lips were more than willing to step up to the plate.”
Before Buffy could even think about glaring at Xander for spilling the beans in the worst possible way, Spike exploded out of the chair and was across the room with his hand around Angel’s throat.
“That true, wanker?” Spike lisped around his fangs. “Then tell me, why shouldn’t I pop your head off like a grape right here?”
Buffy thought quickly as Angel struggled futilely to get out of Spike’s hold and everyone around her gasped like the chorus in a Greek tragedy. “No dustage in the library!” she called out. Spike turned to her. “Sorry, it’s just Giles, you know, he’s super picky about vampire dust near his collection.”
Spike turned back to Angel. “Well then, out of respect for the Watcher, who isn’t completely useless in a fight, you can unlive another day.” Spike dropped Angel, and he fell to the ground like a broody sack of potatoes. “But if you ever hurt or are less than enthusiastic about helping one of my girls in the future? I’ll rip you apart.”
Spike kicked Angel once in the ribs for good measure, ruffled Celia’s hair, and then sat back in his seat, leaving one arm around the back of Buffy’s chair. It made a pretty effective announcement as to who Spike’s girls were.
“Yeah?” Angel responded as he struggled to his feet. “You and what army, Willy?”
“Won’t need an army,” Spike promised, finally shaking off his demon face.
“And you’re not going to do anything about this?” Angel turned his attention to Buffy. “He’s clearly volatile! You see what he did.”
“Spike gets a bit testy when Celia or I are in trouble. It’s part of his charm, but I can scold him for it later, if it’d make you feel better,” Buffy offered in her perkiest voice, totally unwilling to get in the middle of a fight between these two.
“Can’t wait, kitten,” Spike leered at her. Buffy rolled her eyes to cover the jolt that leer sent up and down her spine.
“Yes, well, now that we’ve confirmed which is the more helpful vampire to have on hand,” Giles noted, “perhaps you would like to tell us why you’re here, Angel?”
Angel straightened his spine and slipped into his most stoic expression. “I heard that the Anointed One and his minions had been dusted. I wanted to make sure Buffy was okay.”
“She’s the Slayer, mate. Would take more than the Annoying One to do her in,” Spike pointed out.
“Like the Slayer of Slayers?” Angel demanded.
“Not goin’ to kill the chit, pops, so you can stop lookin’ all disapproving.”
“If you aren’t going to kill her, then why are you here? How do you know Buffy?”
“We’re actually helping him find a way to heal his girlfriend,” Celia offered mildly from where she was sitting again next to Willow.
For a moment, real emotion flashed across Angel’s face. “What’s wrong with Drusilla?”
Buffy raised an eyebrow at his concern—it was more than he ever seemed to show for her, which only solidified her gladness that she had stopped with the flirting long before they could become a thing. She stayed quiet, though, as Spike told him about the mob in Prague and fended off Angel’s demands about why Spike hadn’t kept her from getting injured in the first place by pointing out that he wasn’t the one who had made her mad, just the one tasked with keeping the mad woman, and in case Angel didn’t know, it was bloody hard to stop a mad woman from doing whatever the hell she got it into her mind to do.
Buffy was preparing to step in between the two vampires if they started fighting when Xander, bless his big mouth, cut through the tension. “Wait, be kind and rewind for the people not up to date on the history of all these vampires we’re not staking: How do you make a vampire mad?”
Spike laughed a humorless chuckle. “You want to take that one, Peaches?” he asked.
Except when everyone turned back to where Angel had been seconds before, he was gone.
“We have got to put a bell on that guy,” Xander griped.
“It wouldn’t help,” Dalton said. Buffy jumped a little in her seat because, what with all the drama, she had forgotten he was there, which was so not a good thing for the Slayer to be doing. “Very old and accomplished vampires such as Angelus can muffle their sound as well as move quickly and draw shadow. You would be more valuably served by rigging an alarm system to go off whenever anyone entered the room via the means Angelus uses.”
Buffy nodded approvingly at the vamp. “Look at you, all with the brains and good ideas. We’ll make a Watcher out of you yet.”
“While Angel’s manner was crude at best, he did remind me of a question I’ve been wanting to ask,” Giles said. “How did you and your cousin meet Spike in the first place?”
Buffy looked over at Celia, who shrugged as if to say he’s your Watcher; you decide what we tell him. She then glanced at Spike, who had a thin layer of tension running down him under his devil-may-care attitude.
“If I tell you, you can’t put it in the Watcher’s Diaries,” she decided. It seemed to be the right thing to say, as the tension bled out of Spike, leaving him, once again, lazy and insouciant in the chair next to her.
“Buffy, they’re a record of your time as a Slayer, and you never know what might be important to a future Slayer.”
“Right, except this happened way before I was the Slayer. Like, years before. And this isn’t going to help any future Slayer; Celia and I were lucky we found a demon more interested in bragging to us than eating us.”
“What can I say, kitten; I love to brag. And you chits were a good audience,” Spike smiled at her fondly, a smile complete with twinkling blue eyes that sent warmth flooding through Buffy’s veins.
Buffy looked away from the dangerousness that was Spike and back to the safe, dull, zero butterfly-inducing face of her Watcher. “So, if you want me to make with the spillage, no notes. Got it?”
Giles sighed. “Yes, well, I suppose that this is one thing that can remain out of my accounts, as it happened, as you say, prior to your time as the Slayer. If anyone from the Council asks about your, er, association with William the Bloody, I’ll let them know that it was your winning personality that got him to work with you.”
“Oi!” Spike protested. “Tell ’em that she tortured me, forced me to do her bidding. Bad enough you lot know I care for the chits; don’t need the entire bloody Council thinkin’ I’ve gone soft.”
Giles sent Spike a dry look. “Trust me, after killing two Slayers, I doubt the Council will ever believe that you willingly helped one or that one was foolish enough to solicit your help.”
Spike bristled, probably at the implication that Giles thought she was foolish, and Buffy quickly spoke up again before they had another argument. “Anyway, what happened was that Celia and I found this book and accidentally summoned Spike. Then we kept doing it not so accidentally because he told the coolest stories.” Buffy wrinkled her nose. “Which, you know, in retrospect, the stories were really gross and totally not kid appropriate, but whatever.”
“A book?” Giles interrupted Buffy before she could get to the killing the monster bit. Which was probably good, because if Spike didn’t want the Council knowing he cared for her and Celia, telling Giles how he rescued Celia was definitely out. “What book was it?”
“Just some book on demon summoning,” Buffy shrugged.
Celia rooted around in her backpack and then pulled out the battered book. “Here you go, Mr. Giles,” she said while offering him the book. “This told us how to summon a demon. We couldn’t read any of the actual spells, though, so we wrote our own.”
“Which you wankers definitely aren’t seeing,” Spike hurriedly put in.
“Fascinating,” Giles said, looking over the book. “You said you found this? Where at?”
“It was in a box of free books at a yard sale,” Celia told him. “It was this or a bunch of boring books.”
“And you said you wrote your own spell?” Giles opened the cover of the book, and he immediately paled. “Oh good lord.”
“What is it, Giles?”
“Who was having this yard sale?”
Buffy and Celia exchanged looks again. Buffy had no idea what had her Watcher so worried, but his concern was getting weird. “The Johnsons,” Buffy told him, unsure what that had to do with anything.
Giles nodded distractedly. “But the name written here is ‘Ethan Rayne.’”
“Mrs. Johnson was a librarian.” Celia shrugged. “It was probably a book they couldn’t sell in a library book sale. Even if you don’t believe in spells and magic, it’s a pretty weird-looking book. And if you do believe in spells and magic, Judith says it’s a dark magic book.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “Well, yeah, pet. Not goin’ to summon any demons like that soddin’ demon cat you wanted with healin’, nature, Mother Earth, woo woo magic.”
Buffy kicked Spike for that. “It’s not ‘woo woo’ magic.”
“Well, it sure as hell isn’t the kind of magic you use for cursin’ blokes or summonin’ demons, whatever you want to call it.”
“You haven’t tried summoning any demons from this book, have you?” Giles peered at Celia in his most serious, adult-like manner.
“Uhh no. Duh. I’m not stupid,” Celia sassed at him. “I can read the spells and demon descriptions now, and there are some super creepy things in there. Like, my demon cat? Twenty feet tall and likes to eat people. I don’t care how snuggly he looks, I’m not unleashing kitten King Kong on Chicago. Or there’s this demon named Eyghon in there who can only inhabit unconscious or dead bodies. Judith says that some idiots like to summon him to get a high off of him being in their bodies, which is really dangerous anyway, but if the magic users don’t close the circle properly, Eyghon can escape and people can die. Only a reckless idiot would summon these demons.”
“Too right, pet.” Spike nodded at her approvingly, which pulled Buffy’s attention away from Giles and how he was looking carefully through the book. “There’s easier ways to get a buzz goin’ than demon summoning.”
Celia looked askance at him. “No, thank you. My mom would have a literal heart attack if she thought I was doing drugs. And if my dad found out . . .”
“Yeah, Uncle Ray is super chill, but when he lays the hammer down . . .” Buffy trailed off as both girls shuddered in unison over the memory of the time they tried using the lawn mower to give the neighbor lady’s mean cat a haircut.
“He the bloke who played the Sex Pistols for you?” Spike asked.
Later, Buffy would think about how Giles, Mr. Man of a Thousand Questions, never really had any follow up questions for them. He let them all get distracted by Spike lecturing them on the pure genius of the Sex Pistols, and he let Buffy leave on patrol with Spike and Celia, who had her book safely tucked back into her backpack.
Giles was quiet the rest of the weekend as they researched more on Drusilla’s cure. Quiet as Celia left and promised she would be back at Thanksgiving to help research more or give witchy assistance if they had found something. Quiet as life continued on in the Hellmouth, only now with Xander becoming antagonistic friends with Spike and Willow emailing Celia about witchy things and Buffy fielding a lot of concerned inquiries and looks from her mom because of the excuse they used to get Celia to Sunnydale.
Buffy didn’t connect the dots between Giles’s quietness and a costume shop named Ethan’s that popped up at Halloween. People turned into their costumes, and Buffy spent a weird evening as Wonder Woman, convinced someone had stolen her invisible jet, before everything was fixed.
She did connect the dots when Eyghon started killing all of Giles’s old friends, and she grumbled over idiot men who were too snobby to get high the normal way when she scheduled the removal of the tattoo Ethan had forced on her. Luckily for Ethan, Spike had promised he wouldn’t kill anyone in her town, because otherwise a totally different demon than the one he was afraid of would have been the death of him.
Through it all, they searched for a cure for Drusilla, and Buffy desperately tried to forget about The Ten Seconds That Changed Everything. Or at least to not think about it every night. One effort went much better than the other. Unfortunately for Buffy’s sanity, it was not the forgetting of Spike’s goodies. Nope, those were still seared into her memory.
“So how did you get Angel to agree to this?” Celia asked her the day before Thanksgiving as they walked with Xander and Willow to the deconsecrated church where they would be getting their ritual on. “They” being Giles, Spike, and Dalton. This ritual was apparently also dark magic, and Giles wouldn’t let either Celia or Willow take part, only witness it. Which was of the good, as Buffy did not want one of her friends turning into a dark magic addict. Buffy was showing up in case any muscle was needed. Xander was showing up in solidarity and bringing popcorn.
“Oh, you know,” Buffy shrugged, “little bit of this, little bit of that.”
“Unh hunh. And what exactly makes up the this and the that?”
“You know the Buffster,” Xander said, “she has her ways.”
“I might have pointed out that he made the broken, crazy vampire, and it was his job as a guilt-ridden souled vampire to atone for his crimes against an innocent, human Drusilla by helping heal the person she was now and who still suffered from what he did to her.”
“Wow, that’s good.”
“I channeled Mom and her disappointed lectures on how we needed to apologize to Billy Madison for kicking him off our kickball team.”
Celia nodded. “That’ll do it.”
“Wasn’t there also a bit of ‘once Drusilla is healed, she and Spike but especially Spike will be leaving Sunnydale’?” Willow asked. “You know, to sweeten the deal.”
“He’s not still making mushy eyes at you, is he?” Celia demanded.
“The mushy eyes have somehow gotten worse,” Buffy groaned. “He keeps trying to Romeo in my direction, only he hasn’t realized that I’m so not Juliet material, more of a Rosalind.” She and Willow had rented Romeo + Juliet a few weeks ago for Leonardo DiCaprio dreaminess, and boy, did that movie make Buffy realize just how messed up that story was.
“No wonder she joined a nunnery; I would too if Romeo stalked her like Angel does you, and I’m not even Catholic.” Willow was also now firmly on the anti-Romeo and anti-Angel train, which was also very much of the good.
“Is that where all the girls are hiding?” Xander reached into the bowl he had filled with fresh popcorn before the girls picked him up and tossed a handful of butter kernels into his mouth. “They’re all converting and becoming nuns to get away from guys?” He asked through his mouthful of food.
“We are if it means getting away from teenage boys and their eating habits. Say it, don’t spray it, buddy,” Celia protested as soggy popcorn chunks flew her way.
They continued to banter as they made their way to the church and as they sat through the ritual. (“Is this a porn ritual?” Xander whispered to Buffy. His voice carried to everyone else in the church as he eyed Angel and Drusilla, who were tied together, with Drusilla writhing in ecstasy as strength flowed into her through the dagger stabbed through her and Angel’s hands. “This looks like a porn ritual. I think I brought the wrong snack. My popcorn is too innocent to witness this kind of debauchery. I should have brought some Whoppers.”) When it was done—Angel almost unconscious, Drusilla purring with joy and strength at Angel—Spike called her and Celia to him.
“Gonna leave with Dru now, let you chits have your Thanksgiving without worryin’ ’bout what she might get up to. Dalton’s gonna stay here and help the Watcher, and I’ll send my other minion to LA or somewhere now that he doesn’t need to keep an eye on Dru for me anymore.”
“We’ll miss you, Spike,” Celia said. Buffy stayed quiet, torn between not wanting him to go and knowing that he had to because while he might be willing to bag it or catch and release for her, Drusilla probably wasn’t.
“I’ll miss you chits too. You’re firecrackers, both of you, and you’re gonna boss around the whole world some day.” Spike smiled at them, something misty and proud in his eyes. “Can’t wait to see it.”
“Too bad you’ll be in Timbuktu or Siberia or someplace else dumb where you’ll miss the whole show.” Buffy winced internally as the Buffy mouth went off, doing its usual work of covering for sadness with bitchiness.
Spike grinned at her, seemingly unfazed by the bitchiness. “Thought you’d say that, kitten, so I got you and Celia here some presents.” He reached one hand into his duster pocket. Buffy lit up at the idea of gifts, only to be confused when he pulled out two pens.
“Ahh, none of that,” Spike admonished, catching the disappointment on her face. “The pens are filled with a special ink you can get more of at any magic store. You write my name on a letter or postcard, draw a little summoning circle next to my name, and put it in your mailbox, and the demon post office will pick it up and get it to me, no matter where I am.”
“Demons have their own post office?” Buffy asked, staring at him in disbelief.
“’Course we do, and it’s a sight better than anything you human wankers have thought up. Can find anyone and get anything to ’em.”
“You’ll send us letters too, right?” Celia demanded.
“’Course, pet. Gotta let you know about the sites in Timbuktu and Siberia.”
“Good,” Celia said, grabbing the pens out of Spike’s hand and tossing one to Buffy.
Buffy managed a small smile at that. “We’ll definitely write.”
“Good,” Spike repeated Celia as he stepped back and ran his hand through his hair. “Well, then, guess I’d better grab Dru an—” Buffy and Celia exchanged glances while he talked, and he broke off what he was saying when they grabbed him in a hug. “Christ, but you two are hell on a bloke’s heartstrings,” Spike grumbled as he wrapped his arms around them.
“That’s why you like us,” Buffy pointed out, and Spike laughed his agreement.
When the group hug moment ended, Spike said goodbye to everyone else before picking up Drusilla from the floor, still woozy and giddy from the rush of power and, if her dreamy words were to be believed, being so close to her Angel. Buffy felt a hot rush of annoyance that she had spent so much time feeling bad for lusting after Spike when his girlfriend was a big ho who couldn’t stop cooing over another man while the yum that was Spike was around. Before he could leave the church with his crazy girlfriend, or Buffy could turn to Celia and start ranting about how dumb Drusilla had to be to want Angel of all vampires, Spike stopped one more time.
“Oh, and Slayer?” he called. “Around your eighteenth birthday, you start feeling sick or weak or tired, anythin’ like that, you write me immediately, got it?” Spike glanced off to the side as he said that, and Buffy turned enough to see Giles rapidly turn pale. Which made no sense.
“I will, but—”
“Not good enough,” Spike interrupted her. “Gotta promise me.”
“Okay, fine, I promise,” Buffy huffed, “but what is this about?”
“If people know what’s good for them, it’ll be nothing. So long, Slayer, Celia, the rest of you.”
And with that, Spike walked out of the church and into the dark.
Notes:
Prompt: Your fic must include the following line spoken by a character: “Aliens have invaded Zimbabwe. There’s no time for rational solutions.”
Fulfilled: “Do you always talk like you’re in a low budget action flick?” Mocking Angel was apparently interesting enough to pull Xander’s attention away from his comic book. “You know all, ‘Aliens have invaded Zimbabwe. There’s no time for rational solutions.’” Xander dropped his voice for that, and he did sound remarkably like the low budget action flick version of Samuel L. Jackson.
Chapter Text
This story doesn’t end when a cult of Acathla worshippers tried to use the demon to end the world. Or when they killed the other Slayer, Kendra, who showed up in Sunnydale at what was apparently the worst possible time for her. It doesn’t end with Giles explaining what Spike meant about her eighteenth birthday and brainstorming plans with her to get her out of the dumb “let’s kill Buffy dead” test, plans that Spike demanded constant updates on, despite being on another continent. It also doesn’t end when she and Faith, the Slayer Kendra’s death called, blew up the now-a-snake-demon Mayor and Sunnydale High to boot, before Faith left Sunnydale for another Hellmouth. It doesn’t end with Willow finding a guy to make smoochies with or Xander finding an ex-demon (not a current demon who secretly wants to kill him or Cordelia, so a win as far as Buffy was concerned) to date. It doesn’t end even with Ethan Rayne appearing in town again with some absurd band candy scheme and disappearing before he could be interrogated as to why he kept coming back and how Buffy and Celia ended up with one of this books.
The world kept spinning. Buffy staked Billy Fordham when he came back to Sunnydale a vamp a few months after Spike basically threw him out of town for trying to betray Buffy to him. She dated a guy named Scott Hope, who didn’t understand why she was always so distracted and broke up with her. Celia accidentally set Judith’s workshop on fire; when she wrote to Spike to tell him the story, she swore she’d stake him if he told Buffy. Angel stopped making determined puppy eyes at Buffy and eventually moved to LA to brood there. Willow emailed Celia to talk to about witchy things. Celia dated a guy from the basketball team; when they broke up, she held hands with a girl from her geometry class during pep rallies. Spike sent her letters telling her what batting for both teams meant and reminding her she could “look this up on the bleedin’ internet.” Buffy sent her a flurry of emails trying to figure out Celia’s type based on famous actresses. Xander occasionally had Buffy pass along new insults for Angel to Spike. Celia and Spike encouraged Buffy to reach out more to Faith while she was in Sunnydale and demand that Giles figure out better accommodations for her than a sleazy motel. Dalton had Buffy send Celia spells he thought she would enjoy. Joyce and Arlene made sure that the girls were able to get together more regularly than they had since Celia’s family moved. The girls sometimes sent Spike pictures from their adventures.
Buffy and Celia graduated high school and went to UC Sunnydale together, still wearing ratty friendship bracelets and thick as thieves with a demon they demanded visit them soon, otherwise they were gonna summon his butt from wherever in South America he had ended up.
Maybe this story ends on a Tuesday as Buffy walked across the sunny quad at the heart of UC Sunnydale’s campus, eager to get back to the dorm room she shared with Celia, only to stop short at a sight that shouldn’t be possible: Spike, standing in the sunlight, face clearly projecting his delight in himself and everything around him.
Buffy blinked. That didn’t help make what she was seeing make more sense, so she blinked a few more times. That still didn’t help, so she walked up to the person who was obviously Spike but couldn’t be because (A) vampires can’t be in sunlight, (B) Spike was still in South America with his ho of a girlfriend, and (C) whoever this was didn’t say anything while she walked up to him, and Spike was incapable of keeping his mouth shut. Once next to him, Buffy poked him hard in the arm. Just in case she was hallucinating. Maybe Giles had passed along some of his symptoms from his most recent concussion.
“Oi! Buffy, what the hell was that for?” The hallucination that had a physical presence protested.
“Interesting.” Buffy murmured. “Spike?”
“Were you expectin’ someone else?” Probably Spike smirked at her.
Buffy felt her fist twitch. If probably Spike didn’t make with the explaining soon, probably Spike was getting punched in the nose.
“No,” she responded, “but I sure wasn’t expecting you. You know, it’s polite to send a postcard before you show up all unexpectedly. In the sun. And not on fire.”
“You lookin’ to correct that? See if demons are as pretty on fire as school gyms?”
“You think you’re really funny, don’t you?” she hissed.
Either the hissing or the twitching fist finally seemed to get the idea through Spike’s thick skull that she was way less enamored with whatever secret he had that let him walk under the sun acting like a dick than he was. Instantly, his face lost about twenty percent of its annoying glee, replaced with something that flirted with contrition. “Nah, just forgot you don’t like surprises. You’re right; I shoulda wrote,” he said as he walked to her side to throw an arm around her. “Promise I’ll tell you everything, once we find your partner in crime. Where’s Celia?”
“She should be back in our room.”
“In your room, eh?” Spike waggled his eyebrows at her. “We’d best get there then.”
Before she could respond to that by pointing out he was a pig, a voice broke through their bubble. “Hey! Is that guy bothering you?” Buffy turned away from Spike’s face to see Riley, her psych TA she had met the other day when she dropped a book on his head. Since then, he had seemed to make it his mission to herd her around and make sure she was okay, like a mama duck with a particularly bumbling duckling. Willow, who was in the psych class with her, thought it was sweet; Celia, not in their psych class, thought it was weird, especially since he didn’t seem to do it with any other freshmen, many of whom bumbled far more than Buffy did. Since Willow initially thought Angel was a dreamy hunk of potential love, Buffy tended to trust Celia’s judgment more.
“Only in the best way,” Spike replied to Riley’s question. Buffy smacked him in the stomach at the leer she could hear in his voice. That move would have effectively shut up Xander, but seeing as how the move had felt more like casually backhanding a wrestling mat in a gym rather than smacking a guy in the stomach, she doubted it would do anything but egg Spike on.
“He’s not. Bothering me, that is,” Buffy said with the chilly smile she had perfected at Hemery to keep boys who weren’t football or basketball stars from thinking they could ask her to homecoming. “And even if he was, I can handle Spike.”
Riley grinned at her. Buffy wasn’t sure how she felt about it. It seemed earnest, but did it have a hint of “of course you can, little lady” lurking within it? Did she need to get Willow over here to give him a Feminism 101 lecture?
“Of course you can,” Riley said, unknowingly sealing his need for the lecture. “I’ll see you in class then, Buffy.”
“See ya,” Buffy responded with very little cheer for the thought of seeing Riley or attending psych.
“Well he’s a right git,” Spike pronounced after Riley had rejoined his friends.
“Probably,” Buffy agreed, “but he’s my TA, so try and keep that opinion quiet if you ever see him again.”
“I’ll do my best, kitten, but you’d think he’d never heard of a woman taking care of her own problems before.”
Buffy turned to smile at Spike. For a moment—just a moment!—she got lost in the hotness that was Spike. Those blue eyes scowling at someone who had doubted her. That dip under his cheekbones that Buffy just wanted to stroke with her finger, to feel the contrast of soft skin and sharp bone. Those lips that just really, really looked like they’d be good for ki—
“So!” Buffy stepped away from Spike and told herself she did not regret the loss of his arm across her shoulder. “You said something about finding Celia and getting the story behind why you aren’t on another continent right now? Or, you know, suffering from a severe sun burn, emphasis on the severe, double emphasis on the burn?”
The story tumbled out of Spike once they got back to Buffy’s room and Spike had first hugged Celia and then, looking between Mr. Gordo on Buffy’s bed and Señor Podgy on Celia’s, made a crack about how he didn’t realize they allowed blokes in the dorm rooms in these fancy coeducational schools; if he’d known, he’d have made sure to apply with them. Buffy called him a pig, Spike sat on her bed and said she seemed to like pigs, and Celia had to remind them both that Spike had a story to tell.
Which was, simply, that Dru had thrown him off for good at a square dance of all things, pairing up with a chaos demon and refusing to go back to Spike, saying he now belonged to the sunshine and she hoped to see him again some day, but as far as she was concerned, he was now ashes. He had returned to their hotel room, convinced she would be back soon, only to discover that she had packed up all her dolls, dresses, and other frilly bits.
That had been four months ago. After he had trashed the hotel room, Spike had gotten very drunk for a very long time, started a lot of fights, and woke up one day with his hand on fire from falling asleep sometime before dawn while still outside. Once he had put out his hand and sobered up more, he had remembered a letter Dalton had sent him sometime before he left Dru about the Amara treasure possibly being in Sunnydale. Spike had nothing better to do, so he got into the DeSoto and drove. He and Dalton had figured out where the treasure was, dug it up, and found the piece in it that made vampires invulnerable.
Celia, at the end of that recitation and the subsequent insulting of the ugly ring of vampire invulnerability, demanded to know how long Spike had been in Sunnydale and why he hadn’t come to visit them before now.
Buffy, in contrast, didn’t say anything, too afraid that if she opened her mouth she would fumble out some incredibly lame line that would convince Spike he never wanted to date a loser like her.
Of course, once Spike left their room to go check in on Dalton and the treasure, Celia turned to Buffy with a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. “So,” she drawled out, “Spike’s single now.”
At some point while Spike was still around, Buffy had pulled Mr. Gordo into her lap. Now, she clutched him to her stomach. “Yep. Poor guy.”
Celia hummed her agreement. “He was with Drusilla for a long time. It sounds like he did a lot of grieving over the summer, but you know these things take time. It’ll probably be three, four more months before he’s ready to start dating again.”
“Unh-hunh.”
“As your roommate and favorite cousin, I want to remind you now that the tie goes on the doorknob as a warning for me to stay away when you’re ready to see his butt again.”
Buffy threw Mr. Gordo at her, and Celia ran laughing out into the hallway.
It only took two months for Spike to ask Buffy out. The day before their date, Buffy went to the thrift store and bought the ugliest tie she could fine. It had a howling wolf on it. It seemed appropriate, although not as appropriate as it would have been for Willow if she had still been dating Oz. Buffy didn’t think their movie and slaying date would end in Buffy getting to see the view again, this time with less out-of-body-ness and more intentional ogling of the goods, but a good Slayer was always prepared.
Or maybe this story ends when Ethan Rayne wasn’t surprised when the room to his motel came flying open shortly after he had turned Ripper into a Fyarl. He was surprised that it wasn’t the Slayer behind the door. Instead, it was a man who had clearly taken fashion tips from Billy Idol and whose face seemed vaguely familiar, probably from a previous visit to Sunnydale.
Then the man’s face rippled into the mien of a vampire, and Ethan reassessed who had perhaps inspired whom fashion-wise as he was pinned to the wall.
“Ethan Rayne,” the vampire growled as his amber eyes glared up at Ethan.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Ethan responded in a desperate bid for enough time to escape before his exsanguination.
“Name’s Spike,” the vampire replied. “What matters to you is that my girl’s the Slayer.”
Ethan gaped as much as he could from his position. “I never thought she had it in her to do something so deviant, dating the undead. Did she send you to kill me? You’ll never get Ripper back if you do.”
The demon looked amused. Ethan couldn’t tell whether that boded well or ill for his ability to get out of this mess. “Look, Rayne,” Spike lisped around his fangs. “Here’s how this is going to go: we’re gonna take a nice walk back to Rupert’s, and you’re gonna take the mojo off him. Then I’ll leave you two in the flat so you can work out your differences because this annual attempt to get the bloke to bat his eyelashes at you is gettin’ right annoyin’ for all of us, and I wasn’t even in town the last time. ’Sides, not like Rupes has had anything sparkin’ for him since that teacher bird transferred schools last year, way Buffy tells it; the man could use something besides the Scotch to loosen up. While you’re doin’ that, I’ll go talk to my girl. I can probably convince her to give you some leeway, what with your book bein’ how we were introduced in the first place.”
Ethan was startled, both by the generous offer and the implication that he had had anything to do with the Slayer meeting this vampire. He settled on learning about the second thing. “Book?”
“Beginner’s Guide to Summoning Demons. Somethin’ like that. Only fancied up with glitter and frilly bits.”
“Ahh, yes, that one.” Ethan winced. He had vague memories of a very frustrated and eventually drunken night after he was last in town. Ripper had once again not paid him any more mind than one would pay a yappy dog annoying you from down the street, leaving the work of dealing with Ethan to the Slayer. The book had been gone the next day, so he knew he must have done something with it, but between the excellent Scotch, a few nibbles of his band candy wares, and the euphoric rush of doing something especially dramatic and chaotic with his magic, Ethan wasn’t entirely sure what he had done. He only knew that he had woken with a hell of a headache and an absurd amount of glitter in his room, even for chaos magic.
Apparently, he had sent it to Buffy. Which allowed her to meet the vampire pinning him to a dingy hotel wall.
It was better than if the vampire were pinning him to the carpet—Janus only knew what caused the stains on it—but still, whatever he had done that night had clearly not been one of Ethan’s better plans.
The vampire’s face contorted back into his human features—an interesting process, mostly because it assured Ethan he had slightly longer to live but also because, despite everything else he had witnessed, he had never seen that process before—and he continued: “If you can get Rupes on board with the two of you bein’ an item, I can talk Buffy into lettin’ you off with no more than a punch in the nose for the tattoo thing. Should warn you: the punch’ll smart like a bitch, but it’s the least you deserve.”
“And what happens if Rupert isn’t, as you say, on board with continuing our relations?”
The vampire sighed. “Mate, I’m counsellin’ a human bloke on datin’ an ex-vengeance bird and what feels like an entire coven of bitty witches learnin’ they’re friends or acquaintances of Sappho. You and Rupert will have to figure it out on your own.”
Ethan perked up at that. “An entire coven you say?”
Spike scowled, looking somehow more dangerous now than when his fangs were at the ready to kill him. “There’s only three, and if you even think about doin’ anything to any of those birds, I’ll make you wish Eyghon had had his way with you.”
“I won’t be offering to train with them then; thank you for the warning. Shall we be on our way back to Ripper?”
The vampire sent him a look like he didn’t fully believe that was all Ethan’s question had pertained to. Which was fair as it hadn’t, but while having an orgy with a number of magical users was well worth most prices, getting brutalized by a vampire who had the support of a Slayer was not a price Ethan was willing to pay. Once satisfied that Ethan understood his threat, Spike dropped him to the floor. “Right. Better get back before Buffy checks in and goes on a rampage.”
“You left him alone where the Slayer could get him?” Ethan asked, horrified, as he hurried out the broken door. That had initially been part of his plan when turning Rupert into a Fyarl, that the Slayer would find him and give Rupert a rather unpleasant evening, but that had been before he had been offered a way to get to Rupert in a way that might yield positive results for them both, if not whatever furniture Rupert kept in his bedroom.
“Oi!” the vampire protested. “Left a note on the door sayin’ the Fyarl was Rupes! Should be fine.”
Ethan wasn’t consoled. He had caught the “so long as the bleedin’ stubborn chit doesn’t barge in like she owns the place and actually stops to read for once in her life” that Spike had muttered underneath his breath.
Luckily for Ethan and the newly burgeoning hope he could feel for his sex life, when they arrived at Rupert’s place, Ethan found Rupert and Buffy sitting in the living room. Things looked a bit trashed, but Ethan assumed that was simply from having a Fyarl in residence.
Then Spike looked around. “Buffy, thought we talked about not just bargin’ into places.”
The Slayer looked up, face a bit guilt-stricken. “I was totally going to knock! But then I heard growls and my Slayer senses went all with the tingling, and what if something was attacking Giles?”
It was hard to tell on the face of a Fyarl demon, but Rupert seemed to be both reluctantly amused and exasperated by her prattling. Which was a pleasant diversion from the look that had been on his face when he first saw Ethan walk into his home.
“So you came in, stakes ablazin’, and . . . ?” The vampire prompted.
Buffy winced. “Attacked Giles. I just beat him up a little, though, before I realized it was him! I didn’t even get to stake him to the ground to keep him in one place while I looked for something silver and stabby.”
“And I’m sure ol’ Rupes appreciates your restraint.” Rupert growled something that caused Spike to snort. “So, after trashin’ the place, you decided to have a nice sit down?”
“No, then Giles showed me the note on the door. Then I called Xander to say we might need him to come by later with the wood glue. Don’t put anything heavy on the coffee table. Or, you know, breathe too hard at it. Then we sat down to wait for you to bring Ethan here.” The Slayer perked up as she looked at Ethan directly for the first time since he had arrived. It was a look that promised death under the veneer of cheer; it was somehow far more terrifying than anything the vampire had offered. “Which hey!” she continued. “Look at you! Can I beat him up now, or do I have to wait until he fixes Giles?”
“Right, ’bout that, kitten. We’re gonna have a little talk while Rayne here brings Rupes back to his normal, sunshine self.”
“How will we know he’s doing it right if we don’t watch him?” Buffy pouted.
“Slayer, you an’ I won’t know if he’s doin’ it right even if we watched him. But if it’ll make you feel better, I promise I’ll eat him if Rupes isn’t back to normal soon. Sound good?” Rupert growled something. “Rupes says that plan is acceptable to him,” the vampire translated.
Buffy shrugged. “That works for me then. Spell ingredients are over there,” she pointed to a pile next to a partially collapsed bookshelf. “We’ll be back.”
Ten minutes later, Rupert was Rupert again, fussing over his books and loudly muttering about how he should have Spike eat Ethan anyway; after all, what was the point of his Slayer dating a vampire if he couldn’t have the vampire take care of nuisances like—
The loud mutterings were cut off with a bang, as the Slayer threw open Rupert’s front door, marched right up to Ethan, and punched him in the nose.
Ethan had been punched in the nose quite a few times over the course of his life—people, for some silly reason, were never quite happy to realize chaos magic had been at work on them and their loved ones—and he could say with confidence that this punch hurt quite a bit more than a simple “smarts like a bitch.” He glared over at the vampire, whose smug smile showed he didn’t at all feel for what Ethan was going through right now.
“I don’t like you,” the Slayer announced, and Ethan turned his attention back to the more violent of the two unreasonable blondes in the flat. “I really wish I could just run you out of town, but Spike makes a good point that you’ll just come back, so you two—” her glare shifted between Ethan and Rupert “—are going to work out whatever relationship issues you have to work out.”
“What! Buffy,” Rupert spluttered, “I really don’t think—”
“Giles,” she interrupted, “have I ever dragged you into the middle of my dating issues?”
“You’ve certainly told me enough about them, and I really don’t see—”
“If Scott Hope ever comes back to Sunnydale and makes it rain meatballs on everyone or makes me a slug and you get stuck dealing with it, I’ll apologize then. Until then, you two need to figure this out.” With that pronouncement, she turned on her heel in a swirl of blonde hair and stormed back out of the flat.
“She’s a right firecracker, isn’t she?” Spike observed admiringly as he stared after his girlfriend. “Well then, Rayne, Rupes, have fun workin’ it out. Don’t kill each other before you both realize that you could each use a good shag and that you still care for each other. We’ll be back tomorrow with Harris and the wood glue.”
Spike left then, closing the door behind him, and Ethan was left facing his ex, the words “good shag” and “still care for each other” and “wood glue” echoing awkwardly in the space between them.
Rupert pulled off his glasses and tiredly rubbed the bridge of his nose. The move reminded Ethan of a schoolmaster dealing with a particularly unruly pupil, which didn’t bode well for any kind of conversation they were about to have ending up with Ethan not being kicked out on his arse. Best go with an offence then, he decided; deny everything, and hope to leave Sunnydale with his heart as unscathed as it possibly could be.
“Your Slayer is a real live one. Her vampire too,” he started. “Not sure how they started dating or where they got their ideas from about you and me and working things out, but—”
“Do shut up, Ethan,” Rupert said, before taking a few strides across the room, grabbing the back of Ethan’s head, and pulling him into a kiss. After a few hot minutes that somehow ended up with Ethan’s back against a wall, which was exactly where he wanted it to be, Rupert pulled away. “If you ever do something like turn me into a Fyarl demon again, Spike eating you will be the least of your concerns. Got it?” he growled.
“Got it,” Ethan breathlessly agreed. He tried to pull Rupert back into a kiss, only for the other man to evade his lips.
“And tomorrow you’ll be buying a new lock for the front door. Buffy broke it to get in.”
Ethan waved a hand, and the dining room table slid across the floor to block the front door. “Will that do for now?”
Ripper didn’t answer, too busy kissing Ethan hard and making him glad he had returned to Sunnydale for once.
Or maybe this story doesn’t end. Maybe it just keeps on and on and on.
Which, coincidentally, is roughly what Celia said one afternoon when she purposely ignored the tie’s warning to storm into the dorm room she shared with Buffy. She then demanded of the two people naked and frantically covering themselves up with Buffy’s comforter whether she would ever be able to spend more than ten minutes in her room again before stating that, unlike other people, seeing Spike’s butt once had been more than enough for her.
Spike used some of the Amara treasure to get himself his own place the next day. In his experience, it was never a good idea to piss off a demon summoner. Especially one who shared her cousin’s inclination toward setting things on fire.
Notes:
Prompt: Your fic must conclude with a HEA/HFN.
Fulfilled: "It only took two months for Spike to ask Buffy out. The day before their date, Buffy went to the thrift store and bought the ugliest tie she could fine. . . . Buffy didn’t think their movie and slaying date would end in Buffy getting to see the view again, this time with less out-of-body-ness and more intentional ogling of the goods, but a good Slayer was always prepared." and "“Do shut up, Ethan,” Rupert said, before taking a few strides across the room, grabbing the back of Ethan’s head, and pulling him into a kiss."
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