“So… you saw their faces but you can't describe them,” Buffy sighed in exasperation.
“Well, they were human. Two eyes each, kind of in the middle,” Spike clarified.
Great. The crap was getting thick in here, time for waders. “Uh-huh. And the lab, where’s that at?”
“Must be underground. I came out through an air vent. I don't know exactly where. I'm done. Put the telly on.” He looked away and clammed up.
The vampire smelled the blood before Giles reached the bathroom, mug in hand. His salivary glands went into overtime.
“It's about time! Hope you got it warm enough,” he grumbled.
Instead of handing the mug to Spike, Giles handed it to Buffy without saying a word.
She looked in the mug and made a face at the stench that wafted up from the Kiss the Librarian cup. “God, this stuff is disgusting, not to mention the gag factor involved with me feeding it to you,” she said as she shoved the mug towards Spike with the straw dangling over the edge.
“I don't know why you're so dainty all of a sudden. You've done this for Angel - you must have,” he said between huge slurps, hoping to gross her out even more.
She pulled the mug away suddenly, leaving Spike with the straw dangling from between his lips, blood dripping into the bathtub.
“Hey! Give it!” he yelled in outrage.
“Okay, that's it! The invalid amnesiac routine is over. The kitchen is closed until you can tell me something useful about the Commandos,” she threatened. She was tired of this situation with Spike and it was time to get the victim to talk.
His bleached head tilted to the side, an expression of thoughtfulness on his face. “I'm tryin' to remember… it was very traumatic.” He topped it off with his best sad puppy dog eyes and feigned a pout.
She rolled her eyes in disgust. “How long are you going to pull this crap?”
He stared hard at the Slayer. “How long am I going to live once I tell you?” He held no illusions that once he told them everything he was as good as dust.
Giles, who’d been standing idly by, finally piped into the conversation. “Look, look, Spike, we have no intention of killing a harmless… uh, creature… but we have to know what's been done to you. We can't let you go until we're sure that you're… i-impotent,” he stuttered, showing how uncomfortable the whole conversation was making him feel.
“Hey!” The vampire’s indignation was palpable.
“Good Lord, sorry, poor choice of words. Until we're sure you're, you're…”
“Flaccid?” Buffy offered.
Righteous outrage flared across Spike’s face as he started to struggle with the bonds that were holding him. “Oh, you are one step away, missy!”
“Oh, help, help! He's going to scold me to death!” she mocked sarcastically.
That was it; the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. Spike growled and pulled on the chains that bound him to the tub. The cuffs bit into his wrists as he lunged at the Slayer, forgetting the little piece of hardware the goons had shoved in his head to hinder his enjoyment of torturing the evil wench!
Because he was ‘planning’ to hurt the Slayer in the most delicious of ways once he reached her, blinding pain raced through his skull and paralyzed him, stiffening his body to the point of corpse-like rigor mortis. The chains pulled taunt against his body then he went limp with a whimper as his head lulled to the side, blood trickling down from his nose onto his lip.
Noticing he didn’t move for quite some time, she frowned and looked back at Giles. “Is that normal when he gets zapped?”
He bent down and looked into Spike’s gaunt, paler than normal face. “I’ve not seen the device work before, I have no reference.” He pulled the vamp’s eyelid up to see if his pupils were dilated. “I do believe he’s passed out from the pain.”
The Watcher then began fishing around in his pockets for the key to Spike’s cuffs and started unlocking them, but was abruptly stopped by Buffy as she grabbed his hands to keep him from releasing the seemingly unconscious vamp.
“Wait! Are you serious? This is Spike! As in gonna kill my third Slayer Spike! You can’t just let him go, even if he does resemble The English Patient, she warned.
Said topic of discussion began moaning and rolling his head around the edge of the bathtub just as Giles finished re-locking the restraints.
“Bloody fucking hell! I feel like a seasick fish!” Spike moaned, clutching his head.
She snorted in amusement. “Fish don’t get seasick, Bleached Wonder.”
“Do so, Slayer… and frogs drink through their skin,” he shot back, the pain receding. He wiped at the blood on his upper lip and sucked it off his thumb.
She winced in revulsion. “Ugh, you’re disgusting! That’s from your nose Spike!”
“And give the nasty blonde bitch a kewpie doll for pointing out the obvious,” he sneered. “Oh, and by the way… only one out of every fourteen women in America is a natural blonde.” Leering at Buffy’s crotch while waggling his eyebrows, he continued. “Makes me wonder what color your tight and curlies are, luv.”
Her eyes widened as she huffed. He was so gonna pay for that one! She leaned towards the tub, but just out of reach, pulling her hair to one side and stroking the throbbing jugular. “Oh, look at my… poor neck? All bare and tender and exposed… all that blood just … pumping away,” she teased seductively.
Spike was all but licking his lips, nostrils flaring to catch even a hint of the Slayer’s blood. “You know, pet, you can lose up to a third of your blood and still survive… give a bloke a nip, yeah?”
“Oh, please,” Giles intoned wearily as he walked out of the bathroom and into the living room where Willow was reading through some texts.
Buffy looked back at Spike after her Watcher left. “Willow can always use a truth spell on you. Not sure it would work on a vampire, but we can try. Make you fess up.”
He curled his tongue behind his teeth and grinned. “Don’t rightly know how that would turn out, pet, seeing as I’m always truthful about being evil.”
“Oh, I think your version of evil now is telling really bad vampire jokes,” she snickered.
“So what do you call a vampire that lives in the kitchen?” he asked out of the blue.
She looked at him blankly.
“Count Spatula.” She groaned and rolled her eyes.
“What do you get when you cross a vampire bat with a pygmy?”
“Spike…” she warned.
“A little sucker.” He grinned unrepentantly.
“That’s enough, Spike.”
“What kind of ship does Dracula captain?” he pushed.
“Giles!”
“A blood vessel.”
“Giles! Make him stop!”
“If those two don't kill each other, I might lend a hand,” Giles muttered to Willow in passing.
She watched him as he downed a fifth of Scotch in exasperation, grimacing as it burned his throat. Checking her watch, she realized she was a little late for her next class, so she headed towards the bathroom to say goodbye to Buffy, popping her head around the door.
“Hey, Buff, I’m gonna go but I’ll be back in the morning with donuts after I stop at the magic shop.” She glanced at Spike, who was now trying to reach the knobs on the small television set that Giles set up for him.
“Hey, Red! Did you know that redheads feel more pain than other women?” he asked, grunting as he stretched lengthwise across the tub.
Her face scrunched up as tears gathered in her eyes, her breakup with Oz still weighing heavily on her. But this kind of remark from Spike was way off in left field. “Um, what makes you think that we feel more pain?” She was curious in spite of herself.
“Well… a doc, um… name’s Liem I think, yeah…well…” Spike grunted again as he tried in vain to reach the TV once more. “Well this Liem bloke, he did a study to determine whether redheads felt more pain than other women. Don’t know why he chose redheads, just at good as any other I s’pect. He gave the lot of ‘em a common anesthetic drug, and while they were kippin’ he pricked ‘em with needles and monitored their reflex responses to pain. Seems redheads need two percent more happy drugs to numb their pain.” He finally gave up in frustration and lay back against the tub. “Probably a genetic glitch or something.”
“A genetic glitch?” she mumbled as silent tears made tracks down her face. She didn’t wait on any more comments, murmuring a hasty goodbye to Buffy as she dashed out the door.
Buffy glared white-hot daggers at the vamp that was oblivious to the pain he just caused. Without thought, she hauled off and knocked him right up side the head; which unfortunately, caused the chip to fire. Again. Spike screamed this time and she was afraid the chains wouldn’t hold him secure.
“Giles!” she yelled as she rounded the corner into the living room.
He sighed in resignation, wanting to drink the remainder of the bottle. “What is it now, Buffy?”
“There’s something seriously wrong with that… that… thing that curbs Spike’s enthusiasm!”
They both looked in the bathroom at a prone Spike, blood once again dripping from his nose. “What happened this time?”
A small flash of guilt crossed her face. “Um… I kinda went Rocky Balboa on his head?”
He shook his head. “Whatever for? It’s not as if he can escape those chains - they’re magically reinforced. His threats are more of an annoyance than anything else, I assure you.”
“Well, he said some damaging stuff about Willow’s genetics… or… something,” she murmured, a hint of remorse creeping in.
“Why on earth would Spike talk about genetics with Willow? Why would he talk about them with, well… anyone?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “He’s been acting really weird, and I mean weirder than usual for Spike… spouting random facts and telling shitty vampire jokes.”
“Buffy, language,” he admonished.
“But, Giles, these were groaners, I swear!”
“It doesn’t matter. He’s waking up again. Let’s see what’s going on in that mind of his.”
“That sounds like a dubious prospect, Watcher,” Spike responded hoarsely.
“Yes, well Buffy tells me you are acting out of the norm, even for you. Since when do you know anything, at all, about genetics?”
The vampire blinked slowly and gathered his bearings. “Don’t rightly know. One minute I was enjoying my Passions and cuppa Wilbur and the next I felt like the bleedin’ Encyclopedia Britannica.” Sudden realization of his precarious situation made him audibly gulp. “What the bleedin’ hell did those tossers do to me?”
Giles wanted to try something, an experiment of sorts. “Spike, I’m going to give you a phrase or a word and I want you, in turn, to produce an anagram as fast as you can. Is this amenable to you?”
He stared at the Watcher. “Sure, Rupes.” He had no unearthly clue as to what he was on about, but he’d play along… for shits and giggles.
“William Shakespeare.”
“I’ll make a wise phrase,” Spike spun out of nowhere.
Giles eyebrows rose considerably. “The American Revolution.”
Without a beat… “Unite to revile a monarch.”
He grinned a lopsided smirk. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
Spike wiped the blood still dripping from his nose and chuckled. “Crap LP sung by the LSD prone Beatles.”
He moved closer to Spike and bent down to eye level. “Truth is…”
“It hurts,” he said softly.
Giles narrowed his eyes on Spike. Digging around in his pocket, he fished out the key to Spike’s cuffs and unlocked them, all the while ignoring Buffy’s protests in the background.
“Thanks, mate,” he said quietly, nodding his head in appreciation as he rubbed the raw spots on his wrists.
“Don’t make me regret it, Spike.”
squawks
05/18/17 04:16 am
pj! I remember wishing one of your stories would be finished seriously about a decade ago. Amazing. I just tried an old password I used to use and amazingly got in too. Memories!
pj
03/20/17 01:20 am
10 yrs later, i finally rem my username and password. Pari, you rock. Hope you are well.
Rabbit_moon1
12/23/16 01:12 pm
I donate every month. Please donate to keep this site up!
AudryDaluz1
10/06/16 08:34 am
Great post.
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:45 pm
And anyone else who loves this site, it's worth mentioning there's a nifty little "Donate" option just below the shout box here! ;)
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:43 pm
Just wanted to take a moment to thank Pari and all the mods for maintaining such a great site!
05/18/17 04:16 am
pj! I remember wishing one of your stories would be finished seriously about a decade ago. Amazing. I just tried an old password I used to use and amazingly got in too. Memories!
pj
03/20/17 01:20 am
10 yrs later, i finally rem my username and password. Pari, you rock. Hope you are well.
Rabbit_moon1
12/23/16 01:12 pm
I donate every month. Please donate to keep this site up!
AudryDaluz1
10/06/16 08:34 am
Great post.
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:45 pm
And anyone else who loves this site, it's worth mentioning there's a nifty little "Donate" option just below the shout box here! ;)
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:43 pm
Just wanted to take a moment to thank Pari and all the mods for maintaining such a great site!