Mangled Spells and Manly Bits

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The smell of bacon threaded its way through her dreams, and her dream lover’s hand once more caressed her gently. Moaning softly, she turned over, and found herself falling to the concrete floor as she rolled off the bed. Spike leaned against the wall and smirked. She almost didn’t notice the direction of his gaze, but then with a shriek, she pulled down her skirt from where it had twisted around her waist. Now that she was awake, she could see a breakfast tray on the dresser, and she noticed a light switch that she really could have used the night before.

“Hurry up then, got chores to run the minute the sun goes down.”

“Spike, I know this is Europe and all, but I really think I need to bathe. It’s been a few days. A few hard days,” Xander said with a not-so-discrete sniff to her armpits. She didn’t really expect him to respond; in fact, she couldn’t really say for certain why she brought up a subject that would give the vampire more verbal torment material. As usual though, Spike surprised her.

“I’ll bring water,” Spike said, and before she could argue, the door had closed with vampiric speed.

“Shit,” she complained to the closed door. She walked over to the dresser and began to pick food off the plate, a piece of croissant here, a piece of bacon there. By the time Spike returned, she had eaten over half the plate and felt both bloated from having to pee and full. Bad combination. The door opened, and she could have blessed the vampire when she saw two buckets, one still steaming with hot water and the other empty.

“Okay, out. Gotta pee, like right now.” She grabbed the buckets and put them on the floor before pushing a surprised Spike out of the room.

“Oi, ya don’t…” he got to before she closed the door and squatted over the empty bucket, sighing in pleasure as she emptied out her bladder. And now the day’s comedy has begun she realized when she didn’t have anything to dry herself off with. Inconvenient damn girl parts he cursed to himself as his thighs started to tremble.

“Spike!” she shouted.

“Thought you wanted me out, pet. What? Ya inviting me in for the show now?” Spike opened the door and started laughing when he spotted her predicament. “Oi, ya have a problem then?” And oh yes, this is the vampire Xander had learned to know and hate.

“I need toilet paper,” she pointed out, her thighs starting to shake.

“What ya got ta trade?” Spike asked as he reached into his duster and took out a large crumpled ball of the blessed stuff.

“Spike, please?”

“Evil, pet. ‘Please’ don’t generally work on the evil.”

“I promise not to throw the contents of this pail at you?” Xander offered with an innocent smile. Hell would freeze over before she would give Spike a free show, not that she could stop him if he insisted, but she’d read those diaries Giles so carefully hid in the most obvious hiding place in the world. Please, who really thought the old ‘on top of the bookcase’ trick worked? After reading enough to trigger nightmares and require therapy for the foreseeable future, she wasn’t about to give Spike any confusing ‘just might find your lithe muscles and tight body slightly sexy’ signals. Nope, she was reserving all the confusion for herself; just call her greedy.

“Ya soddin’ well better not anyway. Ruin the leather and my hand and your bare butt are going to have a meetin’.”

“God, Spike, just give it here,” she demanded, and with a laugh, Spike tossed the paper so that it unraveled and turned into a streamer in the air.

“Okay, you can leave now,” she said as her legs began to burn.

“Or I can stay,” Spike said pleasantly as he leaned back against the wall and watched. Xander froze, caught between desperately wanting to finish and stand up and really not wanting to touch herself there with Spike in the room. Spike had kept his hands in the safe-to-moderately naughty zones the whole trip over without ever coping a true feel, but she still remembered that quick grope when he’d shown her how a woman’s body worked.

“Spike,” Xander tried to keep some patience, but her composure was weakening as fast as her leg muscles. “Get out.” She enunciated each word sharply and clearly.

“Make me,” Spike retorted with a grin, clearly enjoying the interaction.

“God you suck,” Xander swore as she tried to worm a hand under her dress to wipe herself without providing a peepshow.

“For the right people, luv, I can suck with the best,” Spike shot back with an eyebrow wiggle and a pursing of the lips that made Xander pause. She continued to curse Spike in whispered tones as she wiped herself off and dropped the tissue into the bucket. When she stood, she smoothed down the dress without trying to pull the panties back up, yes she felt vulnerable with nothing protecting her naughty bits, but it was better than hiking up her dress in front of the vampire.

“And I so want to say something, but I think I’ll just show enough self-preservation to keep my mouth shut,” Xander said as thoughts of Spike and Angel and sucking crossed her mind.

“That’s a new approach for you, innit?”

“Oh yeah, but kinda trying to avoid ending up vamp food.”

“I’m not goin’ ta eat ya, ninny.” Spike leaned down and unzipped one of the bags and pulled out a light green dress.

“You’re doing horrible things to my psyche here,” Xander complained as she caught the dress as it came flying at her.

“Better than doin’ horrible things ta your guts, so get dressed so we can leave.” With that, Spike turned and left, the heavy lock sliding into place a second later. She realized that she just had to trust Spike to not walk in unannounced, which was actually a lot less disturbing that realizing that she had to trust Spike not to eat her. Xander took the world’s fastest sponge bath and slipped into the new dress, wondering what the future would bring.


The future, it turned out, was even more bizarre than a date on the hell mouth, and considering her dating record, she considered that pretty dang bizarre. But when Spike led her to a tall building and then introduced her to a real estate agent and explained that they’d be looking at a couple of possible homes, Xander was struck speechless.

“Ms. Blache, this is Xander; Xander, Ms. Blanche,” Spike announced as he lit a cigarette.

“Xander? An unusual name.” The real estate agent pronounced the name Zan-DARE, and she suddenly realized that her name did have a bit of a girly accent when said in a French accent. Of course everything sounded a little girly in French—romance language and all.

“Yeah, old Latin for ‘she who can’t keep her arse out a trouble’,” Spike offered with a wink, and Xander placed her elbow in Spike’s stomach hard enough to drop a man; however Spike wasn’t a man so he simply laughed.

“We are going to look at a beautiful place on the ninth floor,” the woman offered in her thick French accent, a sing-songy voice that reminded Xander of Pepe Le Peu, which was funny because when Buffy practiced French, Xander tended to think more of influenza patients hacking up phlegm.

With her heels clicking on the marble hallways, the woman showed them to an ornate elevator where they rode up in silence, Spike’s arm wrapped tightly around her waist, and Xander couldn’t have felt any more trapped if the vampire had put a chain around her neck because every time she shifted, that rock solid arm just tightened more until she finally sighed and allowed herself to lean into Spike. Not like she had a lot of choice, really.

The apartment tour went rather quickly, it was an apartment after all. One bedroom with a fireplace, one living room with a fireplace, one raised dining room, a balcony, a hall closet, and a newly remodeled kitchen and bathroom that the agent raved about.

“Well, pet. What do ya think of the place?” Spike asked once the tour ended.

Okay, this was unexpected.

“Um, fine. I guess,” she responded. Hardwood floors, check; fireplaces, check; nice big closet with a solid door for Spike to lock her up, check. Yep perfect place all around. The only question was why the vamp was being so nice. Well, nice for him anyway because the whole bathroom bucket incident, so not nice in a general sense, but still much nicer than she’d expected.

“Might go see a place out in the country. That sound all right?” Xander looked over at Spike incredulously. He came closer and slipped an arm around her waist, giving her one of his patented confused expression when she didn’t answer, but that’s okay because his confusion couldn’t be greater than her own. “Don’t ya want ta see it? We can look at another place in the city if ya want.”

Okay, Xander had now officially achieved wiggins land. If *she* liked? If she *liked*? Since when did the bleached menace asked what she *liked*? She didn’t really want to endanger any potential witnesses to her imminent murder, so she smiled sweetly and put on her most casual tone of voice.

“I hear California’s pleasant this time of year—maybe a little place somewhere around L.A.” Xander realized she had gone too far the minute she watched Spike’s face freeze over in a mask of neutrality. Uh oh, major vamp hissy fit on the tarmac and ready to take off. She found Spike’s anger disturbingly reassuring since it put her back on familiar territory.

“’Scuse us,” Spike nodded to the agent, and Xander felt herself pulled into that newly upgraded bathroom by her elbow.

“Bloody hell, Do ya have brain damage or are ya tryin’ ta get yourself killed?” Spike hissed from between elongated fangs the minute he had closed the door.

“Not trying, it just kinda comes natural,” Xander said as she backed away from the fully vamped out Spike. Of course, in an apartment bathroom that got her all of 12 inches away and she thanked god for each inch. Spike continued to stare at her furiously until she started to squirm.

“You’re mine now, pet. This init gonna change so either ya stop this soddin’ nonsense and show some appreciation for that fact I haven’t ripped your guts out or you’re goin’ ta find out how bad a temper I ‘ave, Got it?” Spike’s accent had thickened and his eyes gleamed a demonic yellow because, hey, demon. Xander found herself without enough spit in her mouth to speak, so she nodded slowly. Spike’s face dropped back into his human features.

“What in the bloody hell are you tryin’ ta prove?”

“Prove?” Xander thought about that for a minute because she really did know that aggravating Spike was stupid in a suicidal sort of way. She finally took a deep breath and decided to go for honest, not that honesty ever worked for her, but she couldn’t come up with a convincing lie, so honesty it was. “I’m just freaking out on the whole lack of freaking out here. I’m being held captive by a homicidal vampire who has on more than one occasion shown an interest in having me dead, and I’m not freaking out, which is worth freaking out over.”

“Oi, never wanted ya dead, pet.”

“Really?” Xander asked disbelievingly. “Okay, how about when I helped Buffy stop you from killing Angel? Or what about a couple of days ago when you bashed my head in with a microscope.”

“Didn’t kill ya,” Spike complained.

“Okay, what about just now when you threatened to show me your temper? Huh? What was that about?” Xander asked triumphantly and then briefly wondered what idiot pill she’d taken to try and convince Spike that he hated her. Oh yeah, she’d definitely had one too many hits to the head in the last week. Or maybe it was some sort of progressive trauma since she really had an impressive record of unconsciousness over the past few years.

“Wouldn’t a really hurt ya, pet, but ya talked about leavin’ and I got a mite angry.” Spike shrugged.

“Why?” Xander looked at Spike, trying to understand the vampire’s motives, but Spike seemed just as confused as she was. “Why do you care?”

“Dunno, just do,” Spike announced in a that’s-that tone of voice that clearly indicated that he considered the conversation over.

“Don’t you think that maybe something hell-mouthy is going on here?” Xander demanded, the long missing panic finally poking up its head. Xander looked to Spike for some sort of sign that the vampire understood just how out of control everything was starting to spin. Without saying a word, Spike pulled her into an embrace, and she could feel him rest his cheek against the top of her head. Spike’s intimacy left her utterly defenseless.

“Please, Spike. Please just let me go home,” she found herself begging, and oh wasn’t this just charming? Cry in front of the vampire because that just proved her manliness.

“Pet, ya can ask me anythin’ ya want except that.” Xander felt a hand drawing comforting circles on her back, and that very fact she used the word comforting proved that she had lost her mind. Mind lossage would explain a lot or maybe an alternate reality or maybe she was still unconscious and dreaming all this, and oh god why did she have to think of that. If she was dreaming, that meant that somewhere down in her subconscious she wanted and created this world and getting drained would be less painful. She reached down and pinched herself, but nothing happened.

“Ya all right then?” Spike asked after a minute of just standing and holding her.

“No,” Xander replied in a nearly normal tone of voice.

“Good cause it’s about time ta get out there before that bint starts thinkin’ we’ve got ta shaggin’ in her shiny new bathroom.”

“And even less okay now. Euuuwww.” Xander pushed herself out of Spike’s embrace and could tell from the amused expression that Spike had intended that as a taunt.

“As you Yanks say, ‘Don’t knock it ‘til ya tried it,’” Spike smirked.

“And the okayness levels just keep right on dropping,” Xander said with a shudder.

“Oi, 120 years of experience here.”

“Hey, not gay here,”

“One man,” Spike pointed to himself, “plus one woman,” Spike pointed to Xander, “does not make for gay sex.” Spike continued after the space of a heartbeat, “Course, some still might consider it necrophilia.”

“And the okayness has reached new lows. We are stopping there before that toilet is no longer new and shiny.” Xander held up a hand as if to hold off any comeback, but Spike simply took that hand and wrapped his own around it before leading her out of the bathroom and back to the now suspicious agent.
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