Becoming Me
folder
BtVS AU/AR › Het - Male/Female › Buffy/Spike(William)
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
26
Views:
7,424
Reviews:
62
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Category:
BtVS AU/AR › Het - Male/Female › Buffy/Spike(William)
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
26
Views:
7,424
Reviews:
62
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS), nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Demonic Retribution
Disclaimer: see chapter 1.
Finally I have updated. Enjoy! ^ ^
22: DEMONIC RETRIBUTION
The rain poured down hard, splashing into Buffy’s face. Briefly, ridiculously, she wondered if the garish eyeliner Spike had been using while in her body was running. But of course it wasn’t important.
Armies of cars waited, engines running, as they crept up to the very edge of the limit lines and waited for lights to turn. Windshield wipers wiped furiously at the wet streams dripping down the glass. The comforting, orangy light from open windows stood out painfully as Buffy ran down the slick sidewalks, bright beacons amidst the rain.
“Spike!” she called. Every person in a long dark coat drew her attention, before she realized that they didn’t have his hair or his face or, occasionally, weren’t even male. She tried not to think anything that would distract her from her search, because finding him was the most important thing.
Far more important than why.
“Spike!” Where is he? she thought furiously. Had he even gone this way?
He would answer if he heard her. Of course he would…wouldn’t he?
Was he that upset? He probably wasn’t hurt, probably more angry, or offended, or maybe, thought Buffy, He was planning to leave the second we switched back, all along.
I’ll bet I was stupid. Yet another stupid Buffy moment, where things mean more to me than they should…
All around tires splashed in puddles and gutters rattled and shot gallons of water out on the cement. “Spike! C’mon, I’m sorry, ok?” Buffy shouted, hoping the entire town could hear her. “SPIKE!”
She hadn’t even realized she was crying until her voice broke. She tried to keep shouting but ended up uttering strangled shouts that degenerated into sobs. Tears obscured her vision, making the filthy buildings and streets dance. I can’t see anything... Buffy kept running, she had to; every second was another step Spike took away from her.
Buffy stumbled as her foot connected with a soggy newspaper and muddy splash soaked her already dripping body. Choking and coughing, Buffy dragged herself away from the street and sat with her back up against a brick building. She was probably dreaming, because things like this didn’t happen in real life. People didn’t have so many unbelievable terrible things happen and end up crying and lost in the sopping streets of Los Angeles. Buffy closed her eyes and imagined waking up in between the warm crisp sheets of the bed in the hotel.
A siren screeched somewhere near by, the pitch changing as the source drew nearer. Someone had been in an accident. Hardly surprising in this weather. Water splashed over Buffy as an ambulance passed. Then, fewer than ten seconds later, more water splashed and yet another siren passed.
Blearily, Buffy opened her eyes and watched as red and bright lights bled together into the darkness, as a red and white ambulance followed the other two down the street, back the way Buffy had come.
Mainly because she was protective of her friends, Buffy fleetingly imagined that the flashing lights were driving to Mr. Browns, where Willow and the kind old shopkeeper were distorting and dripping amid unbearably hot flames.
The lights were moving in that direction.
No, of course not.
Curious, Buffy got to her feet and followed the sirens. After a block of increasingly speedy walking, she broke into a run. At each street she carelessly ran across she expected the ambulances to turn and go somewhere else. But each time she recognized their route as the way back to Mr. Brown’s. With a terrible sinking, nauseous feeling in her stomach, Buffy turned the last corner.
It was red, everything was red. Red trucks, red lights, red hazard tape. Heavily armed policemen hopped out of black cars and climbed in through Mr. Brown’s windows as paramedics rushed in through the door, which had been knocked off its hinges. All three ambulances were parked in the middle of the road in front of the shop. Buffy didn’t even acknowledge her feet pounding the sidewalk as she drew closer.
“’Scuse me, Miss, you can’t go in there. It’s a crime scene.”
Buffy tried to find her wavering voice. “My friends…”
“I’m sorry. It’s a crime scene.”
“I DON’T CARE! I NEED TO GET IN THERE – ”
A static-filled voice began speaking over someone’s walky-talky. “Attackers still inside…Dangerous…No, they’re not armed, but…Some sort of gang, possibly using illegal substances…” the breath of the speaker suddenly caught in his voice. “No…she just – bit one of my men…their faces…”
Buffy shoved past the officers and jumped over the red tape, ignoring the cacophony of voices behind her, and darted through the door.
The first thing she saw was the wreckage of the room, which she and Spike had actually caused. It was hard to imagine that, probably less than an hour ago, she had caused so much destruction. Buffy didn’t immediately see any police officers – they must be upstairs or in the storeroom, she decided.
“Get your hands in the air, miss – IN THE AIR!” Buffy turned to see an officer emerge from behind a bookcase, holding a rifle aimed in her direction. Buffy slowly raised her hands, and noticed that the officer looked relieved at her compliance. “Listen…You should get out of here…It’s dangerous, they aren’t –“
“Human, yeah I know. And I’m not leaving my friends. I know they’re in here somewhere – an old guy…black…and a teenage girl with red hair? Have you…”
The officer smiled sympathetically and lowered his gun. “The girl’s outside with the paramedics. Some lacerations and bleeding, but no…well, her neck’s ok. Maybe your other friend’s upstairs…No one’s been able to get up there yet.”
Buffy shot a worried glance at where the stairway disappeared into its alcove. “I don’t suppose you’d let me try…”
The officer shook his head. “Sorry.”
The Vampire Slayer shifted her eyes from the officer and surveyed the room, and then looked back at the man in front of her. Suddenly she lunged forward and slammed her fist into the officer’s jaw, and watched as he fell to the floor unconscious. “Sorry,” told the unconscious man with a wince and started off toward the stairs.
Buffy noticed a rather unsavory dark smudge across the wall behind the landing. For some reason the thought which she tried to dispel – that the smudge was wet and dripping – seemed to belong to a different time, as if everything before the past 24 hours had belonged to an entirely different era. As her feet softly padded up the last few steps, Buffy inhaled the familiar and nauseating scent of blood. Her heartbeat picked up to adjust to her increasing sense of panic, and Buffy entered Mr. Brown’s study.
As the Slayer took in the scene in front of her, she wasn’t immediately aware of what caused the wrongness to pervade the feeling that everything was okay because it had to be. Because Mr. Brown had to be fine…
The room was dark. That had to be the problem, because it made Buffy imagine things were bad and that she felt tinglies down the back of her neck warning her of impending vampires –
Buffy’s head whipped around as she heard the door creak. She squinted through the blanket of blackness but couldn’t see anyone else. Maybe no one else was…
The door clicked shut. Buffy patted her body in attempts to locate a stake, but realized she hadn’t taken one. Mr. Brown had a table somewhere in the middle of the room; if she could find that, she could break it and use the splintered pieces for weapons.
“Scared?” said someone from only a few feet away. The voice sounded young and cruel as a result of hours of practice.
“You wish.” Buffy thought, I know that voice. I’ve heard that girl before…
“Where’d your little girlfriend go, Spike? She run away?”
Buffy grunted as she aimed a sudden and fierce kick at where she assumed the vampire kept her stomach, only her foot connected roughly with a bony pelvis and a body even smaller than her own crashed into the door only moments afterwards. Suddenly, a realization…With surprise, Buffy asked, “Amber? Is that…?”
Amber, she realized, had what would be a cute, tinkling laugh if only it sounded less malevolent. “No need to sound so surprised, Willy. I am evil, after all.”
“I…don’t…” Weird, she thinks I’m Spike…
Buffy could hear Amber’s heavy boots walking somewhere, to the other side of the room. “A little light might help you see what I’m talking about.” The lights clicked on.
“Oh…” Blood was everywhere. It stained the upholstery and the carpet and only a few inches from Buffy’s shoes lay the red outstretched arm of a police officer. Worse, there was a body, tossed over the back of the sofa, the limbs twisted in what had to be an unnatural, out-of-the-sockets kind of way. The eyes, which were wide open, were a glassy sort of indigo and several crimson ridges had emerged on the cheeks, marring the wrinkled face of Mr. Brown.
“Oh my god,” Buffy gasped.
“Yeah, getting his blood down was a bitch. You know how shitty demons taste.”
Buffy nodded despite the feeling that her stomach was trying to squeeze its way out her throat and spill into her mouth. “Yeah.”
“Anyhow. So I’m sorta pissed that you didn’t bring your Slayer here with you, cos I really wanted her to see all this. But whatever, guess you can just tell her. Just be sure not to leave out the crap on the wall.” Amber gestured vaguely in the direction of the staircase. “And let her know I’ll see her around. I guess that’s sorta the point. Slayer’s only last for a year or two, but we vamps stick around without growing outta anything, eh Spike?” Before Buffy could respond, Amber grinned and disappeared out the window.
Buffy’s gaze accidentally drifted back to the…couch, and moaning she dug her palms into her eyes. This always happens to me, she realized. The people I care about…The second I just look away, some baddie comes in and has some fun…Fuck! What is wrong with me? Not sure whether she’d rather wake up sweating with hotel sheets stuck to her skin or vomit the last day down the toilet, Buffy stepped over the corpse of the police officer and onto the landing at the top of the stairs. She didn’t see anything right away, because of the contrast of the light spilling out of Mr. Brown’s study and the darkness of the store, but the edge of the hallway leading in the opposite direction from the study was illuminated. Curling on a wall she hadn’t seen from the actual staircase, Buffy noticed part of a symbol. It sort of resembled a hybrid of a Celtic rune and a graffiti tag, red and wet and sinisterly artistic. Buffy drew closer to the wall and, squinting into the shadows, managed to read a message that was clearly written in somebody’s blood.
2 THE WORST SLAYER IN HISTORY: HERE’S WHAT U GET 4 NOT PROTECTING UR OWN. 2 BAD U DON’T LEARN FROM UR MISTAKES.
Smeared below, next to what Buffy realized must be the gang insignia, was the name “Amber.” Buffy squeezed her eyes shut and allowed herself to collapse at the base of the opposite wall, hugging her knees back to her chest.
* * * * *
“It’s ok, Buff. I promise I’ll be fine.”
Buffy smeared her already smudgy makeup with the heel of her palm. “No Wil…I’m so sorry…It’s completely my fault…”
Willow sighed. “Really. It’s fine, and I’m not mad or anything,” she told her friend, acting as if being mad would be preposterous. “Honestly, just go calm down and have fun. Where’s Spike?”
Buffy had become very quiet. The whole room seemed thick with taught silence.
“Buff? You said you were a few blocks away when the vamps attacked…Were you…?”
“I was…following him,” Buffy said wetly, and each word seemed like a struggle. “He…left. We fought and he left.”
Willow frowned. “You fought? Aren’t you always fighting?” Buffy nodded. “Well…um, ok, what did you fight about?”
Buffy stared at the blankets for a moment and then covered her reddening face with her hands. “Oh my god, Wil…There’s so much, I…”
“Did you sleep together?”
“What?” Buffy snapped defensively.
Willow began using her hands to gesture. “Not that…I don’t think…I just wondered, is all. I didn’t really think, just…wondered.”
Buffy’s head was back in her hands. “Yes,” she moaned after a long pause.
“What?! Okay, I sort of thought maybe…Well, just once? Or…”
“Lots of times,” muttered a very pink-cheeked Buffy. “Five or six, and then just before…” Buffy peeked at her friend through her fingers, and slowly put her hands back in her lap. “I’m not even sure, I don’t remember, what we fought about. Sort of, about wanting sex, like…with each other, I mean.” Still nervous, Buffy’s breathing was erratic and came in long silences and sudden gasps. “But it wasn’t really about that, I don’t think. More like he thought I didn’t like him – “
Willow looked Buffy right in the eyes. “And do you? Like him?”
“Yeah. Well, like as in the-antithesis-of-hate-like, but I don’t know about, y’know, like-like. Ok, maybe. But I don’t think I, like…love him. I know I don’t love him.”
Buffy’s expression portrayed apprehension, so Willow grinned playfully, but the expression looked arguably forced.
“I think…even though this sounds horrible…I think I was just trying to be more, I dunno, grown-up. I was all on my own, except for Spike, and there was no Mom to realize I hadn’t come home that night or yell at me for having unprotected sex with a man who can neither impregnate me nor give me any diseases, and…I don’t know, I just think I’m going insane or something. I am really screwed up.”
Willow laughed. “No, you’re not. You’re not crazy or horrible. You just went through some…pretty hard stuff, all crammed into a couple of weeks, and then you kill this guy who…looks like your boyfriend, and drive off with a vampire who isn’t trying to eat you – “
“Least not in a bad…never mind,” finished Buffy hurriedly. “But yeah, I don’t know. But I definitely…” Buffy trailed off, unsure of what she’d been planning to say. She didn’t really want to keep talking to Willow about everything she was afraid was wrong with her, because as much as she loved her friend, the witch just wasn’t getting the point. Buffy herself wasn’t quite sure what the point was, but it was something…about being better, about being more responsible or careful or doing the right thing…
To the worst Slayer in history…
…not protecting your own…
Somehow these deaths…Mr. Brown, Ms. Callendar, the people from Amber’s LA massacre…and Angel…somehow they were all her fault. Not because she meant to, but because she was careless.
Spike…that whole thing had been really careless. Really spur-of-the-moment. Really immature and ill-advised and basically stupid. Basically wrong, because he wasn’t like Angel with a soul, he was evil like Angelus and Amber and she didn’t know him or trust him. She had just thrown herself into the whole wild-horny-sex-with-Spike thing without thinking ahead or backwards or any kind of rational thought at all.
Spike exemplified everything that was wrong about the way she did things. Everything that made her a bad Slayer, everything that made Kendra a much better one and had led to Buffy getting Kendra killed. Amber’s message was the grossest, meanest, most vampire-like slap in the face Buffy could imagine, but it had pretty much been accurate, and Buffy was disgusted with herself and her choices.
Time for a change of plan and a change of plan-making policy. “Wil?” the Slayer asked brightly, shocking the redhead and surprising even herself a bit.
“Buff?”
“Do you think we could…I mean, I think I’m ready to go home now.”
Willow smiled the brightest smile Buffy had seen in the past month or two, and this time her smile felt genuine.
For those who were worrying, this is NOT the end of the Buffy-Spike sex scenes...In fact, it's barely the beginning [insert dramatic "dun dun dun" music]. So stay tuned and review, and there will be exciting (and smutty) chapters that are new!
Finally I have updated. Enjoy! ^ ^
22: DEMONIC RETRIBUTION
The rain poured down hard, splashing into Buffy’s face. Briefly, ridiculously, she wondered if the garish eyeliner Spike had been using while in her body was running. But of course it wasn’t important.
Armies of cars waited, engines running, as they crept up to the very edge of the limit lines and waited for lights to turn. Windshield wipers wiped furiously at the wet streams dripping down the glass. The comforting, orangy light from open windows stood out painfully as Buffy ran down the slick sidewalks, bright beacons amidst the rain.
“Spike!” she called. Every person in a long dark coat drew her attention, before she realized that they didn’t have his hair or his face or, occasionally, weren’t even male. She tried not to think anything that would distract her from her search, because finding him was the most important thing.
Far more important than why.
“Spike!” Where is he? she thought furiously. Had he even gone this way?
He would answer if he heard her. Of course he would…wouldn’t he?
Was he that upset? He probably wasn’t hurt, probably more angry, or offended, or maybe, thought Buffy, He was planning to leave the second we switched back, all along.
I’ll bet I was stupid. Yet another stupid Buffy moment, where things mean more to me than they should…
All around tires splashed in puddles and gutters rattled and shot gallons of water out on the cement. “Spike! C’mon, I’m sorry, ok?” Buffy shouted, hoping the entire town could hear her. “SPIKE!”
She hadn’t even realized she was crying until her voice broke. She tried to keep shouting but ended up uttering strangled shouts that degenerated into sobs. Tears obscured her vision, making the filthy buildings and streets dance. I can’t see anything... Buffy kept running, she had to; every second was another step Spike took away from her.
Buffy stumbled as her foot connected with a soggy newspaper and muddy splash soaked her already dripping body. Choking and coughing, Buffy dragged herself away from the street and sat with her back up against a brick building. She was probably dreaming, because things like this didn’t happen in real life. People didn’t have so many unbelievable terrible things happen and end up crying and lost in the sopping streets of Los Angeles. Buffy closed her eyes and imagined waking up in between the warm crisp sheets of the bed in the hotel.
A siren screeched somewhere near by, the pitch changing as the source drew nearer. Someone had been in an accident. Hardly surprising in this weather. Water splashed over Buffy as an ambulance passed. Then, fewer than ten seconds later, more water splashed and yet another siren passed.
Blearily, Buffy opened her eyes and watched as red and bright lights bled together into the darkness, as a red and white ambulance followed the other two down the street, back the way Buffy had come.
Mainly because she was protective of her friends, Buffy fleetingly imagined that the flashing lights were driving to Mr. Browns, where Willow and the kind old shopkeeper were distorting and dripping amid unbearably hot flames.
The lights were moving in that direction.
No, of course not.
Curious, Buffy got to her feet and followed the sirens. After a block of increasingly speedy walking, she broke into a run. At each street she carelessly ran across she expected the ambulances to turn and go somewhere else. But each time she recognized their route as the way back to Mr. Brown’s. With a terrible sinking, nauseous feeling in her stomach, Buffy turned the last corner.
It was red, everything was red. Red trucks, red lights, red hazard tape. Heavily armed policemen hopped out of black cars and climbed in through Mr. Brown’s windows as paramedics rushed in through the door, which had been knocked off its hinges. All three ambulances were parked in the middle of the road in front of the shop. Buffy didn’t even acknowledge her feet pounding the sidewalk as she drew closer.
“’Scuse me, Miss, you can’t go in there. It’s a crime scene.”
Buffy tried to find her wavering voice. “My friends…”
“I’m sorry. It’s a crime scene.”
“I DON’T CARE! I NEED TO GET IN THERE – ”
A static-filled voice began speaking over someone’s walky-talky. “Attackers still inside…Dangerous…No, they’re not armed, but…Some sort of gang, possibly using illegal substances…” the breath of the speaker suddenly caught in his voice. “No…she just – bit one of my men…their faces…”
Buffy shoved past the officers and jumped over the red tape, ignoring the cacophony of voices behind her, and darted through the door.
The first thing she saw was the wreckage of the room, which she and Spike had actually caused. It was hard to imagine that, probably less than an hour ago, she had caused so much destruction. Buffy didn’t immediately see any police officers – they must be upstairs or in the storeroom, she decided.
“Get your hands in the air, miss – IN THE AIR!” Buffy turned to see an officer emerge from behind a bookcase, holding a rifle aimed in her direction. Buffy slowly raised her hands, and noticed that the officer looked relieved at her compliance. “Listen…You should get out of here…It’s dangerous, they aren’t –“
“Human, yeah I know. And I’m not leaving my friends. I know they’re in here somewhere – an old guy…black…and a teenage girl with red hair? Have you…”
The officer smiled sympathetically and lowered his gun. “The girl’s outside with the paramedics. Some lacerations and bleeding, but no…well, her neck’s ok. Maybe your other friend’s upstairs…No one’s been able to get up there yet.”
Buffy shot a worried glance at where the stairway disappeared into its alcove. “I don’t suppose you’d let me try…”
The officer shook his head. “Sorry.”
The Vampire Slayer shifted her eyes from the officer and surveyed the room, and then looked back at the man in front of her. Suddenly she lunged forward and slammed her fist into the officer’s jaw, and watched as he fell to the floor unconscious. “Sorry,” told the unconscious man with a wince and started off toward the stairs.
Buffy noticed a rather unsavory dark smudge across the wall behind the landing. For some reason the thought which she tried to dispel – that the smudge was wet and dripping – seemed to belong to a different time, as if everything before the past 24 hours had belonged to an entirely different era. As her feet softly padded up the last few steps, Buffy inhaled the familiar and nauseating scent of blood. Her heartbeat picked up to adjust to her increasing sense of panic, and Buffy entered Mr. Brown’s study.
As the Slayer took in the scene in front of her, she wasn’t immediately aware of what caused the wrongness to pervade the feeling that everything was okay because it had to be. Because Mr. Brown had to be fine…
The room was dark. That had to be the problem, because it made Buffy imagine things were bad and that she felt tinglies down the back of her neck warning her of impending vampires –
Buffy’s head whipped around as she heard the door creak. She squinted through the blanket of blackness but couldn’t see anyone else. Maybe no one else was…
The door clicked shut. Buffy patted her body in attempts to locate a stake, but realized she hadn’t taken one. Mr. Brown had a table somewhere in the middle of the room; if she could find that, she could break it and use the splintered pieces for weapons.
“Scared?” said someone from only a few feet away. The voice sounded young and cruel as a result of hours of practice.
“You wish.” Buffy thought, I know that voice. I’ve heard that girl before…
“Where’d your little girlfriend go, Spike? She run away?”
Buffy grunted as she aimed a sudden and fierce kick at where she assumed the vampire kept her stomach, only her foot connected roughly with a bony pelvis and a body even smaller than her own crashed into the door only moments afterwards. Suddenly, a realization…With surprise, Buffy asked, “Amber? Is that…?”
Amber, she realized, had what would be a cute, tinkling laugh if only it sounded less malevolent. “No need to sound so surprised, Willy. I am evil, after all.”
“I…don’t…” Weird, she thinks I’m Spike…
Buffy could hear Amber’s heavy boots walking somewhere, to the other side of the room. “A little light might help you see what I’m talking about.” The lights clicked on.
“Oh…” Blood was everywhere. It stained the upholstery and the carpet and only a few inches from Buffy’s shoes lay the red outstretched arm of a police officer. Worse, there was a body, tossed over the back of the sofa, the limbs twisted in what had to be an unnatural, out-of-the-sockets kind of way. The eyes, which were wide open, were a glassy sort of indigo and several crimson ridges had emerged on the cheeks, marring the wrinkled face of Mr. Brown.
“Oh my god,” Buffy gasped.
“Yeah, getting his blood down was a bitch. You know how shitty demons taste.”
Buffy nodded despite the feeling that her stomach was trying to squeeze its way out her throat and spill into her mouth. “Yeah.”
“Anyhow. So I’m sorta pissed that you didn’t bring your Slayer here with you, cos I really wanted her to see all this. But whatever, guess you can just tell her. Just be sure not to leave out the crap on the wall.” Amber gestured vaguely in the direction of the staircase. “And let her know I’ll see her around. I guess that’s sorta the point. Slayer’s only last for a year or two, but we vamps stick around without growing outta anything, eh Spike?” Before Buffy could respond, Amber grinned and disappeared out the window.
Buffy’s gaze accidentally drifted back to the…couch, and moaning she dug her palms into her eyes. This always happens to me, she realized. The people I care about…The second I just look away, some baddie comes in and has some fun…Fuck! What is wrong with me? Not sure whether she’d rather wake up sweating with hotel sheets stuck to her skin or vomit the last day down the toilet, Buffy stepped over the corpse of the police officer and onto the landing at the top of the stairs. She didn’t see anything right away, because of the contrast of the light spilling out of Mr. Brown’s study and the darkness of the store, but the edge of the hallway leading in the opposite direction from the study was illuminated. Curling on a wall she hadn’t seen from the actual staircase, Buffy noticed part of a symbol. It sort of resembled a hybrid of a Celtic rune and a graffiti tag, red and wet and sinisterly artistic. Buffy drew closer to the wall and, squinting into the shadows, managed to read a message that was clearly written in somebody’s blood.
2 THE WORST SLAYER IN HISTORY: HERE’S WHAT U GET 4 NOT PROTECTING UR OWN. 2 BAD U DON’T LEARN FROM UR MISTAKES.
Smeared below, next to what Buffy realized must be the gang insignia, was the name “Amber.” Buffy squeezed her eyes shut and allowed herself to collapse at the base of the opposite wall, hugging her knees back to her chest.
* * * * *
“It’s ok, Buff. I promise I’ll be fine.”
Buffy smeared her already smudgy makeup with the heel of her palm. “No Wil…I’m so sorry…It’s completely my fault…”
Willow sighed. “Really. It’s fine, and I’m not mad or anything,” she told her friend, acting as if being mad would be preposterous. “Honestly, just go calm down and have fun. Where’s Spike?”
Buffy had become very quiet. The whole room seemed thick with taught silence.
“Buff? You said you were a few blocks away when the vamps attacked…Were you…?”
“I was…following him,” Buffy said wetly, and each word seemed like a struggle. “He…left. We fought and he left.”
Willow frowned. “You fought? Aren’t you always fighting?” Buffy nodded. “Well…um, ok, what did you fight about?”
Buffy stared at the blankets for a moment and then covered her reddening face with her hands. “Oh my god, Wil…There’s so much, I…”
“Did you sleep together?”
“What?” Buffy snapped defensively.
Willow began using her hands to gesture. “Not that…I don’t think…I just wondered, is all. I didn’t really think, just…wondered.”
Buffy’s head was back in her hands. “Yes,” she moaned after a long pause.
“What?! Okay, I sort of thought maybe…Well, just once? Or…”
“Lots of times,” muttered a very pink-cheeked Buffy. “Five or six, and then just before…” Buffy peeked at her friend through her fingers, and slowly put her hands back in her lap. “I’m not even sure, I don’t remember, what we fought about. Sort of, about wanting sex, like…with each other, I mean.” Still nervous, Buffy’s breathing was erratic and came in long silences and sudden gasps. “But it wasn’t really about that, I don’t think. More like he thought I didn’t like him – “
Willow looked Buffy right in the eyes. “And do you? Like him?”
“Yeah. Well, like as in the-antithesis-of-hate-like, but I don’t know about, y’know, like-like. Ok, maybe. But I don’t think I, like…love him. I know I don’t love him.”
Buffy’s expression portrayed apprehension, so Willow grinned playfully, but the expression looked arguably forced.
“I think…even though this sounds horrible…I think I was just trying to be more, I dunno, grown-up. I was all on my own, except for Spike, and there was no Mom to realize I hadn’t come home that night or yell at me for having unprotected sex with a man who can neither impregnate me nor give me any diseases, and…I don’t know, I just think I’m going insane or something. I am really screwed up.”
Willow laughed. “No, you’re not. You’re not crazy or horrible. You just went through some…pretty hard stuff, all crammed into a couple of weeks, and then you kill this guy who…looks like your boyfriend, and drive off with a vampire who isn’t trying to eat you – “
“Least not in a bad…never mind,” finished Buffy hurriedly. “But yeah, I don’t know. But I definitely…” Buffy trailed off, unsure of what she’d been planning to say. She didn’t really want to keep talking to Willow about everything she was afraid was wrong with her, because as much as she loved her friend, the witch just wasn’t getting the point. Buffy herself wasn’t quite sure what the point was, but it was something…about being better, about being more responsible or careful or doing the right thing…
To the worst Slayer in history…
…not protecting your own…
Somehow these deaths…Mr. Brown, Ms. Callendar, the people from Amber’s LA massacre…and Angel…somehow they were all her fault. Not because she meant to, but because she was careless.
Spike…that whole thing had been really careless. Really spur-of-the-moment. Really immature and ill-advised and basically stupid. Basically wrong, because he wasn’t like Angel with a soul, he was evil like Angelus and Amber and she didn’t know him or trust him. She had just thrown herself into the whole wild-horny-sex-with-Spike thing without thinking ahead or backwards or any kind of rational thought at all.
Spike exemplified everything that was wrong about the way she did things. Everything that made her a bad Slayer, everything that made Kendra a much better one and had led to Buffy getting Kendra killed. Amber’s message was the grossest, meanest, most vampire-like slap in the face Buffy could imagine, but it had pretty much been accurate, and Buffy was disgusted with herself and her choices.
Time for a change of plan and a change of plan-making policy. “Wil?” the Slayer asked brightly, shocking the redhead and surprising even herself a bit.
“Buff?”
“Do you think we could…I mean, I think I’m ready to go home now.”
Willow smiled the brightest smile Buffy had seen in the past month or two, and this time her smile felt genuine.
For those who were worrying, this is NOT the end of the Buffy-Spike sex scenes...In fact, it's barely the beginning [insert dramatic "dun dun dun" music]. So stay tuned and review, and there will be exciting (and smutty) chapters that are new!