Chapter Text
Ringing. Something was ringing. Buffy groaned and squeezed her eyes shut as tight as she could. Pulling the quilt over her head, she burrowed further under the covers. It should be a crime for noise to happen right now.
The ringing was still going on.
Buffy growled, low and deep in the back of her throat. The mean noise was nearly enough to make her wish she was Cave-Buffy again. It had been good to be Cave-Buffy. She had just smashed things. But she was normal-Buffy again, and normal-Buffy shouldn’t smash the things that irritated her even if they were making noise way too early after she’d had some really long nights and had been dealing with Willow’s guilt, which wasn’t bad. Just. A lot.
Willow! Willow could stop the ringing. Willow had early classes and she was never late even if she was tired.
But the ringing hadn’t stopped. Was Willow in the bathroom? Oh, that would make sense. Friends had to pee and shower, that was allowed. She hadn’t been abandoned by an uncaring friend to endure a too-early call.
Then it stopped. Silence. Well, the birds were tweeting and she could hear some voices from the hallway, but no one was that loud in the morning. Buffy’s face relaxed and, tentatively, she emerged from her quilt-cocoon. Sunlight streamed in through the big windows of the dorm room, pretty sunbeams that caught the floating dust motes. She scanned the room, but Willow’s shower caddy was in its usual place. Which meant that Willow was out studying or in class or doing something with the Wicca group.
Basically, Willow was off doing Willow things, and that meant that Buffy could do Buffy things. Like stretch lazily and begin her grim acceptance of that horrible thing called morning. But she could do it on her own time and in her own way. With no sad little whimpers of guilt from the other side of the room.
She loved Willow. So very much. Willow was a better friend than she could have ever dreamed about back in LA. She was more like a sister than a friend. She just didn’t think Willow needed to feel guilty about it all anymore. It was done. No more wacky magic shenanigans, at least not for a couple of weeks. They should all move on with their lives and do their best to forget it all happened. To never ever think of kissing Spike ever, ever again. Just every time Willow apologized, Buffy had to think about it all over again. She remembered how he’d somehow managed to devour and savor her at the same time, how he’d left her breathless and feeling desired and precious and all the things she wanted to feel, but oh no, it was a cosmic joke that Spike had made her feel like that. And that hadn’t been the spell, the kissing. The spell had been to get married, but he’d kissed her like he wanted to drown in her and—
The ringing came back, jolting her out of her very bad no good thoughts. “Oh thank God,” she breathed, but then realized that without Willow she had to answer the phone.
Well, nothing was ever all good.
Groaning, she dragged herself out of her bed and shuffled to the phone. She picked up the receiver, grimacing, and said, “Buffy and Willow’s room—”
“Buffy, oh very good,” Giles’s voice came through the phone, and her stomach clenched. She knew that tone of voice. That tightly controlled tone that hid just the little bit frantic bit.
“What happened, Giles? Did Spike escape again, because I think we should just cut him loose. More trouble than he’s worth, really. He probably doesn’t know anything and is just stringing us along for free blood and—”
“He’s a duck.”
Buffy blinked. “Huh?”
“Spike has, somehow, been transformed into a duckling.”
Buffy let out a slow breath, put the receiver down, and scrubbed at her eyes with the heels of her palms. This had to be a dream. A really bad, weird dream. Not a Slayer dream, unless? Maybe Spike turning into a duck was a prophecy: her most annoying mortal enemy really had been rendered helpless and adorable and—
“Willow,” whispered said to herself. Then her face scrunched up again. “No, me. Shit, shit, shit, shit shit,” she muttered.
“Buffy? Buffy, are you still there?” Giles called out from the phone, receiver still on her desk. She picked it up.
Her mouth curled in distaste, and it was like her voice curdled in her throat. “You need me to come over, I guess?”
“Well, yes, that would be why I called.” There was the Giles she knew and, yeah, loved, with that classic English sarcasm.
“I need to get ready, then,” she said and then hung up before he could protest. If she was going to deal with Spike as a duckling, she was going to do so while showered, on a full stomach, and with a coffee in hand.
***
Spike was going to kill them all. He was going get his fucking body back, and kill the Slayer and her little Scooby gang slowly. Excruciatingly. And he’d start with the Watcher. He’d made a mistake two years ago. He should have let Angelus go at the bastard with the chainsaw. If he had, there’d be no world in which he had been turned into a bloody fucking duckling. Even better, the Watcher who had glared at him when seeing the bleeding tragedy of his body (like this was his sodding fault, he hated magic, thanks ever so) would be dead. Painfully, grotesquely dead.
The Watcher hung up the phone and sighed. “Buffy will be here, but as she said she needs to get ready, I believe we have anywhere between one and two hours to wait.”
Spike could hear all that the Watcher wasn’t saying. All of the things that Spike was thinking very loudly. Mostly along the lines of: bleeding buggering fuck fuck fuckfuckfuckfuck.
Kill them all. He was going to kill them all, and he was going to laugh and scream and burn this town to the ground. Raze the whole place. Blot it out from memory. Find every last mention of it and rip it out of books and history if at all possible.
Spike paced the coffee table, because the Watcher had scooped him up and put him there to keep from tripping over him. It was beyond indignity. It wasn’t even shame. It was perverse. And he couldn’t fucking remember the last time he’d thought of something as perverse. It was obscene. Just like the little fwap of his own God damned feet on the polished wood.
He screamed, and like before, it came out a strange, high little quack that only ratcheted his own rage even higher.
Could a body explode from sheer anger? He felt fucking close to finding out.
The Watcher sat down heavily on his deeply uncomfortable couch, his hand reaching for a tumbler of whiskey on the side table (Spike had tried to get into it after the Watcher had put it on the coffee table, an effort to see if a duck could get drunk, but the Watcher had taken possible oblivion away from him). There was one benefit to having woken up the Watcher early this morning with frantic quacking: he was driving the man to drink. Maybe, if he kept at it, he could kill the Watcher through the slow and painful method of cirrhosis of the liver. Nasty way to go, that, and once it started, there was damn little to stop it even with modern medicine. Was more on the slow and torturous end of killing as far as his own personal tastes went (reminded him a bit of Angelus, which almost made him disregard it), but Spike was currently a fucking duck. His options were limited.
Spike watched the Watcher drink for a minute, and then decided that was not how he was going to spend his time.
He started to peck out a tattoo on the table.
The Watcher winced. “Spike, could you not… hold on.”
Spike pecked it out again. The Watcher counted and listened. Spike was pretty sure the Watcher figured out what he was doing.
“Oh yes, very well, I suppose,” the Watcher sighed, and then turned on his horrifyingly antiquated telly. Spike turned about, flopped down and watched the marathon of inanity that was early morning talk shows. At least he didn’t have any of those people’s problems.
***
“Breathe Buffy,” she told herself facing Giles’s door. She could do this. She could deal with Spike as a duck. It was before nine in the morning (a personal crime against her now, to be functional this early—she’s a college girl now, and college girls don’t do nine am unless they want to, damn it), and she was being a good Slayer.
She knocked.
“One moment,” Giles called out. Buffy waited and sipped at her coffee. She had some pastries in her other hand—even had one for Giles because like, she wasn’t cruel, and maybe he’d be less irritable if he had some sugar. The door opened, and she knew it was bad when Giles already smelled like the campfire/paint thinner combo that was his whisky. He deflated a little bit at the sight of her.
“Ah, Buffy, of course, yes, thank you for coming over so early.” He stepped back for her, and she only dragged her feet a little bit. Though, she would freely admit that her smile was less than perky and more sickly and irritated.
“Well, I get a call like that, and how can I say no?” The perkiness was all of the false. Giles winced, as well he should! She shoved the brown paper bag of sugar at him. “Take one, the rest are for me.”
He opened the bag and frowned. “Buffy, there are five pastries in here.”
“One, Giles,” she warned, holding up a finger. “Or maybe I can go back to my nice dorm room and leave you with Spike? Because it’s not like he’s a threat at all now.”
“Oh very well, I suppose,” he allowed, with not much good British grace. Yeesh, she had the Slayer metabolism and walked everywhere. She could do four pastries. She deserved four pastries. Giles didn’t do anything but hang out at his apartment and sometimes break out his guitar to sing, which she tried to avoid witnessing. Then Giles gestured toward the living area. “He’s on the coffee table. I believe he is currently placated by morning programming.”
“Right, okay.” Her feet didn’t move. She could do this, she could handle what she was about to see. It wasn’t going to be weird.
Buffy squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and came around the couch to see… the cutest little fluffy yellow duckling with adorable little brown markings watching TV. Buffy’s eyes went wide and she pressed her lips together to stop from making that patented I’ve just seen something adorable noise she knew she made when she saw things like puppies, kittens, and apparently, ducklings. Even if that duckling happened to house one deeply annoying and vile vampire.
Then, like he could sense her presence, he turned around and oh my god was that his eyebrow scar as a marking?! Her fingers itched to just… pat his little fluffy head.
This was worse than the wedding/love spell. Neither of them had been in their right minds, which she could allow now that Spike was a duck, but oh, holy Jesus, he was the cutest god damned little duckling.
She gripped her coffee tightly in both hands and took a furious gulp.
Do not. Pet. Spike-the-duckling.
Even when he glared at her, which somehow made the whole thing cuter?! Like, here’s a grumpy animal, find it cute, her brain said. No matter how much she knew that it was Spike in there, she couldn’t help how she wanted to scoop him up and pat his head and do gushy baby talk at the fluffiness.
It was the fluffiness. The fluffiness called to her, and it was powerful.
Then he peeped. Peeped and fluttered his wings and she could see him then. See the Spike in there in the agitated constant movement and being loud and not stopping talking (quacking? Peeping? Wait, is that why those marshmallows are called Peeps? Questions for a later date). Fluffiness plus peeping? She was going to cry from trying not to pet him.
It wasn’t fair. There was a cute little duckling and inside of it was Spike.
She breathed out slowly and hoped that her face hadn’t given her away. Giles only now brought out the rest of the pastries on a plate for her, to which she offered up a thanks and that seemed to break the spell of cuteness that had been cast on her.
Back to some kind of control, she went to turn off the TV. Then she sat on the couch and regarded the angriest ball of fluff she’d seen in her whole life. Spike had stopped peeping and was glaring up at her with a really impressive amount of rage. How could so much rage be clear on a little duckling face, she had zero clue, but there it was. Enraged duckling.
“So,” she said.
Spike said nothing. Not even a peep.
No, no, don’t do that to yourself, she said in her own head. No jokes. If she laughed, she would lose it, and then she’d be under the sway of Fluffy Cuteness again.
“Giles, when did this happen?” she asked. Giles sat in his armchair and munched on a pastry. Buffy leaned back with her plate and took a bite. But then Spike waddled (No, oh god, no, cute little duckling waddle?! Kill her, just kill her now, this was too weird and too much.) forward and moved his little head toward the pastry.
“I woke up this morning to a very loud duckling at my door, and Spike’s clothes in disarray around his chair. While I gave some thought to the idea that he had escaped and placed the duckling here as a decoy, I do not believe he would have had such a presence of mind.” Buffy listened as she ate. Spike fluffed out his little wings indignantly.
Well. It was like feeding ducks at a pond, right? She broke off a bit of banana bread and put it on the table.
“Okay, that tracks,” she said. “Not like he had a duck stashed somewhere waiting for his opportunity. That means it happened…” she trailed off. Spike pecked at the crumbs, though halfway through he seemed to recoil and duckling-pace angrily up and down the coffee table.
“Sometime in the middle of the night, yes,” Giles finished the thought for her. “Perhaps one of Spike’s former enemies cursed him. Of course, I am of two minds about finding a way to return him to normal—”
Buffy tuned it out. She had a pretty good idea why this had happened, if not super clear on the how part. Magic never was going to make sense to her, no matter what Willow said it being like chemistry or physics. One class she’d barely passed, the other she hadn’t even tried. It had been an elective in senior year anyway. Question was, should she cover for Willow or not? They could just let Spike stay a duckling, but that felt… wrong. She wasn’t sure why it felt wrong, just that her tummy didn’t like it. And if anything, she new to follow her tummy in all important matters: both pastries and doing the right thing.
She didn’t like Spike. She generally hated him and wished he’d find a way to make himself a big pile of dust, but if she couldn’t kill him while he was helpless, then it also wasn’t right to let him stay a duckling.
“I think it was Willow,” she admitted, breaking into whatever Giles had been going on about. She took another bite of banana bread while Spike peeped with sheer indignant rage (how did he do that, actual question!) and Giles sputtered and cleaned his glasses. Buffy swallowed and did her best to put out the fire. She gave Spike the rest of the banana bread, which he gobbled down like the most adorable little guy, and said quickly to Giles, “She soooo did not mean to. I might have mentioned something and she was like super sleepy and just said Spike as a duckling, and maybe there was enough mojo left to, well.”
She made a helpless gesture toward Spike. The little fluffy yellow and brown ball of adorable. “But we can reverse it right? Get him back to normal, well. Normal for Spike?”
“Buffy, Willow ended the spell. Fully.”
“Okay, so what does that mean?”
“Honestly?” Giles took off his glasses, cleaned them about three times, and then put them back on before fixing her with a weary look. “I don’t know. It would require further research.”
Buffy whimpered, and Spike. Spike attempted to throw himself off the coffee table. She caught him by sheer reflex, just as his little wings weren’t doing any flaps. Trying to break his own poor ducky neck. She held him in her hands, all cute and fluffy and small and… so pathetic that she just couldn’t entirely hate him at that exact moment.
“No duck death on my watch, buster,” she told him, trying to sound stern, but it was more like the tone of voice people used with their pets.
Spike-the-duckling plopped down in her hands and, she would swear to god, sulked.
Yeah, this was going down as the weirdest week ever.
