Buffy always did love a good fight.
Damn, did she love a good fight. The thrill of the chase, the satisfaction of a secure capture. Loved to bait them on, to piss them off, to taunt them like a matador waving a red, quippy cape.
She picks up a blur in the distance, some newly risen vampire just now crawling its way out of its grave, and can't help but feel that trickle of excitement begin to build. Nice midnight work-out. Something, at least, that's still familiar. Before the vampire has even wiped itself free of dirt and debris, she's off. Jogging, running, then charging forward, the wind in her hair and on her face and rushing, slapping in between layers of clothing until she starts to slow to an eventual stop. She doesn't get too close, not at first, not when it's a better kind of game to ease in carefully from behind.
The vampire is in front of her, facing the opposite direction, muttering to itself.
"Oh, wow," it's saying in both surprise and excitement, smoothing out its clothing to brush away dead grass. It plucks from the long sleeve of its tuxedo jacket what looks like part of the floral centerpiece that'd once upon a time ago been resting respectfully on top of its grave. "That was weird." Eventually it stops fidgeting with its shirt and looks down, its hands held out suspiciously in front of him. Giving itself the ol' once-over, obviously. "So I'm, like, technically dead."
Buffy picks that moment to make her presence known. "This is a very life-altering experience for you, I'm sure," she says, and, as expected, the vampire almost instantly whirls around in surprise. She pastes on a bright, thousand-watt smile to greet him with, ever the amiable foe. "Excuse me while I interrupt it with my-slaying-you."
The vampire looks confused. A lot. "Uh. What?"
"My--slaying--you." Hugely emphatic.
"Listen, lady," it starts to say, taking one, two, three careful steps backwards to put a decent amount of distance between the two. It nearly stumbles and trips over the clumps of over-turned dirt, but manages to catch itself before falling. Smooth. "I don't know who you are--"
"Buffy," she fills in, cheery as can be. Though there's the serious thought of I really need to get a name tag running through her head.
"Right, whatever. Buffee. I'm not looking for trouble, man."
Truly a set-up for a good quip, or at least a formidable comeback, she figures, and opens her mouth to do so, only,
"Oh, you have got to be joking," a very familiar, very British voice suddenly rings out from behind. Buffy's eyes fall shut in automatic annoyance as Spike comes side-stepping into view from the lazy swell of shadows, looking highly affronted. "I'm not looking for trouble," he repeats disdainfully, snorting just so. "I oughta stake you myself."
"Spike," Buffy says, carefully, thickly, the one word being forced out through a tightly clenched jaw. There's a silent threat in there, one that, were he not suicidal and looking for his very own, very personalized stake to the heart, he'd pick up on and take his cue to leave. Right now.
"You're a disgrace, you know that?" Spike says instead, still talking to the vampire--the vampire that's now looking its own form of confused and offended. It's tottering back and forth on two colt-like legs, like it's not sure if it wants to turn around and flee, or stick around just to see what else may happen.
Spike turns to Buffy and, very selflessly, offers, "You wanna take him, or shall I?"
"Woah, okay, hey," the vampire instantly protests, starting to back up again. Buffy hardly notices, her eyes locked on Spike's. "Let's just be calm and reasonable about this, alright?"
"What're you doing here?" she seethes.
"What am I--?" Spike's confused look shifts quickly into indignation, this hardening of his features until everything is set into thin, tight lines. "Lemme guess, I'm not wanted?"
"Gee, and was it my lack of an actual invite that gave it away?"
"Too bad," he says, taking a hard step forward. "I'm already here, and there's not a thing you can do about it."
"I can see you two have your own--thing--going on," the other vampire comments, its hands now held up in the air in some placating, surrendering type way. "It looks important. You probably need to talk. Maybe sort out your issues--"
"We don't have issues!" Buffy reflexively snaps. "And we don't need to talk!"
"Oh, yes we do."
Buffy glares at Spike, hard, silently communicating with him via her eyeballs that he is about .02 seconds away from biting the big, dusty one.
He ignores the optic warning, now right up on her. "All you've done is shut me out--"
"And you'd think you'd get a clue."
"And ignore what happened--"
"That one-stop trip into temporary insanity, you mean?"
"Twice," he insists, almost vehemently. "Twice we kissed, Slayer--"
"Fine, twice. It doesn't matter."
"Why're you always saying that?" he demands, all rough and annoyed and in her face. "It matters, otherwise we wouldn't be having this thrice-daily conversation--"
"We have this conversation because you won't let it go! Seriously, you're like a dog with a bone, all--all constantly bringing it up and, and... not letting it go!"
"Because there's something here! Maybe it's not pretty--"
"Or of actual existence?"
"But it's real," he insists. "It's here, Slayer, burning between us. Burning me up from the inside out." He hesitates, this desperation in his eyes and in his voice, in the way he seems a thousand times more vulnerable now than Buffy can ever recall seeing him, that summer-long stint in the wheelchair included. "I know you feel it."
Buffy lets that sit between them, refusing to blink, refusing to back away. "The only thing between us," she then starts to say, freakishly calm and almost entirely without emotion, "is your own warped feelings. That's it."
And there he is again, the Spike she knows, the one always looking to claim the deepest dig. "It's easy for you, isn't it?" he says, his eyes flaring with the intensity of his words, the depth of his frustration. "Pretending nothing happened. Sweeping your nasties beneath the rug. It won't last though. Eventually, Slayer," he adds, stepping forward so that he's lined up booted toe-to-steel booted toe with her, so that all that's left in the space between them is this inch-thick surge of tension, "Eventually--it'll all come tumbling down. You'll see."
Her jaw is clenched so tight, she feels like bones might snap. Initial reactions are of the physical kind, Buffy feeling like a perfect response to his stupid diatribe would be bodily harm. A slap to the face or a quick upper-punch from below to knock him staggering backwards, send him sprawling to the ground. Her arms literally ache with wanting to hit him, and she fights to keep her hands balled at her sides instead, fingers curled into a sweaty fist.
"That's right," he says, and he's got that sick gleam in his eye, that even sicker slur in his words that means he's getting some kind of perverse thrill out of this, "Bottle it up. Lock it away." His voice starts to drop, paper-thin and whisper light. "Deny yourself, deny it all you want, 'cause we both know the truth of it--you get off on it. Don't you? Acting like something you're not? Prim and proper... not exactly in your vocabulary, is it, Slayer? Or maybe you just need the right motivation? Maybe all it takes is a little grunt work--"
Whatever else he has to say gets swallowed by his own cry of pain, as Buffy finally follows through with her first reactions in the form of a hard, heavy punch to his nose.
"Bloody hell!" Spike shouts, dabbing at the lightly bleeding area. He looks up at her with fire in his eyes, like it's her who crossed a line.
"Get out of my sight," she warns.
"Would if I could," he snarks back, pissed off but his voice still wavers with amusement.
There's this low crackle of a breaking tree branch that snaps Buffy's attention away from her undead counterpart, and when she looks around, she's surprised to see that same vampire from before slowly trying to flee. Not that she didn't give it a pretty lengthy amount of time to do so, what with the interlude by Spike and all, but still.
"Uh, hey," it says upon noticing it's been caught, a nervous chuckle added in.
Buffy resists the urge to roll her eyes.
"Why won't you just admit it?" Spike says, in serious whine mode.
She aims a glare at him, blasted on high, but any retort gets stopped short at the tip of her tongue.
"There's a circle of life, right?" the other, currently less annoying vampire says, back to that defensive position better seen on Cops--the 'innocent until proven guilty' one, the one that every drunk and their crackhead girlfriend seems to meet the camera crew with. "One that we all live by. And, okay, I don't know if you know, but, man, I totally had no idea that chick was gonna send the four friggin' horsemen my way! I mean, I'm young, and she was hot, and I thought the whole 'vampire' thing was some epic ode to Marilyn Manson--"
"It'd do us both a world of favors," Spike insists, his voice back down to that quiet, seductive, grumbly level, his bleeding nose apparently forgotten about with Intent To Seduce a main priority again.
"--and, added to my entirely surreal surprise, I'm waking up in my own friggin' coffin! Which, yeah, so that part was admittedly awesome, but still. You can't just sneak up on a guy with your... your wooden stakes and your holy water and your crosses, man, not when I haven't even done anything to warrant your super hero, super stealthy, ninja night attack--"
"Is it your friends?" Spike's silky voice cuts in. "That it? Worried what the Sidekicks might think if Blessed Buffy turned out to be anything less than human? 'Cause, God forbid--"
"It's anarchy, not hierarchy, that tugs this steamboat--"
"Enough!" Buffy shouts, silencing the both of them with a force that almost literally seems to shake and rattle the graveyard around them. "Get out of my way," she growls, and pushes Spike hard enough that he stumbles a good step or so backwards. He doesn't go far, just a few feet away, but even that short distance is enough to have lifted a huge weight off of Buffy's chest. It's like she can breathe again.
"Oh, God," the other vampire says, half-crazily, "I'm not ready to die!"
Buffy's not feeling the least bit sympathetic. "Guess you should've had that epiphany when your vampire friend was making you its chew toy."
"I thought it was foreplay!" the vampire defends. Then a little more lamely he adds, "I mean, you know, some chicks go for that kinky stuff."
"Yeah, Slayer," Spike says, that stupid drawl to his words and that even stupider smirk on his face. "Take pity on the boy."
She all but gapes, mouth flapping open a good time or four before she finally manages, "Two seconds ago you were ready to stake him yourself!"
"What can I say," he says, "I had a change of heart."
"You don't even have a heart."
All amusement seeps out of him, fast. His head lifts up high, stubborn pride in its entirety. "I bloody well do! Might not be frozen through like yours, but it's there. You think this'd be so hard if it wasn't?"
God, not this again. She feels like her head is swimming, taking a nice dip in a bowl of fluffy cotton. Or maybe something liquid-y, like Jell-O.
She sees Spike's feet move in her direction, black boots moving in between blades of grass like a snake slithering towards its prey. "Buffy?" he says, all concerned and worried and annoyingly attentive, and it makes her want to hit him all over again.
"Don't," she warns, holding a hand up to cease any and all forward movement. She pushes past the mental Jell-O, clearing her head. "Spike," she rushes to say, hushed and quiet so that it's this harsh whisper that still sounds amazingly loud in the almost eerie silence that surrounds them, "believe me, if you have any sense of self-preservation, you'll leave. Now. Call it a 'get out of jail free' card, call it a pass, call it whatever you like--just leave."
The smile on his face is both self-deprecating and defeated, as is the short-lived laughter that rumbles in his chest before dying the death of the never-had-a-chance in the hollowness of his throat. His eyes are unbearably soft, and they get even softer when he says, "You know I can't do that."
She swallows hard. Well that went and completely backfired. Not that she actually figured Spike would listen, because it's him, he of the in-one-ear-and-out-the-other, but there was a stupidly hopeful part of her that thought maybe, just maybe, perhaps he would. Inherently obliviously optimistic, thy name is Buffy. "Fine," she says, still quiet, but there's a new surge of anger and frustration in her voice--enough to keep him from coming closer, in any case. "Just stay out of my way."
With the special Slayer-kind of detachment that's recently come in overflowing amounts the past few months to the point that it's spilling into her normal, non-Slayery life, Buffy turns to the other vampire and eyes him with a look that could melt glass, or whittle stakes itself. "You," she says without moving her jaw--pretty much ventriloquisting it, "are gonna wish you had a brain."
"What are you, the Wizard?" it snarks.
She stares back blankly, all over-exaggerated blonde-ness. "I'm sorry, I thought we had this conversation already. I'm the Slayer." A mocking moment for recognition to sink in. Then, like a blurb in the back of a book, "She Who Stakes Your Kind?"
Spike speaks up, helpful. "You should probably start running now."
The vampire looks at Buffy, then Spike. Then back to Buffy. Then without so much as a parting quip, it's off and running, sprinting with flailing arms towards the nearest cemetery exit.
Funny how five minutes ago she would've welcomed the challenge of hunting the vampire down. Hell, she would've reveled in it--in the way her feet would've pounded into the ground again and again, how she'd feel almost weightless, how her legs would ache and her lungs would burn and all she'd see, all she'd feel and know, was the vampire ahead of her.
Now it just seems like yet another weight added to the ever-growing collection of cinder blocks that seem to be constantly resting on top of her chest, smothering her.
"Great," she sighs, an equal combination of annoyance and exhaustion. "The exact way I want to end all my nights. Chasing down yet another annoying member of the Undead. Because nothing says 'Hey, check out my extreme social life!' like Eau de Dusted Vampire and stinky sweat. Thank you, Spike," she adds, now whirling around to better criticize said vampire, "for prolonging what has already been a spectacularly bad day."
After a slight hesitation, he steps forward, his head tucked down and guarded eyes locked with hers. He looks almost contrite--you know, were an evil, soulless thing even capable of that particular feeling. "I can handle this for you, Buffy," he tells her, careful and quiet and immediately setting off all sorts of her inner-warning bells. "Let me do it. I'll chase after the sorry sod--I'll dust him, right and proper. You head home, make sure the Pint-Size's all tucked in--"
"What are you doing?" she cuts in, seriously annoyed now. Her eyes widen. "Please tell me you're not actually pretending to be helpful."
His steps stop suddenly. Quick change, and gone goes the remorse. Instead he stands there silently, all pissed off and unapologetically hurt, straightened to his full height. There's a heavy beat that passes, uncomfortable, and Buffy thinks maybe he was trying to be genuinely helpful, in his own twisted Spike way, but she marks that thought as highly unlikely and pushes it away.
"Fine," he says, so void of emotion that it doesn't even sound like his voice.
Without saying another word, he turns and storms away, the tail end of his coat whipping at the back of his legs.
She watches him go, a knot in her stomach forming.
Then, "Newsflash, Spike. I don't need you!" she yells after him, because she knows that's what this is all about. Him bolting like some glorified drama queen. He's trying to prove a point. He's probably expecting her to come rushing after him, she figures, internally disgusted. To follow him like some needy... needing-thing who needs his help.
And despite everything, she wants to. Partially. And she hates that part of her, the part that wants to throw caution to the wind, wants to screw Destiny and Obligations and go indulge herself for a few hours with Spike until she can't see straight, 'til she's sore and raw and begging for release, until Responsibility comes rearing its ugly head again.
Then again, there's also the other vampire. One that's probably already covered half the graveyard while she stood here and dished it out with her ex-nemesis / mortal enemy / pain in the ass / reluctant associate. It's a very large part of her that wants to follow through with her duty, wants nothing but to dust her night's last vampire, head home, and sink into a restless sleep until tomorrow restarts the same ol' cycle all over again. It's ingrained. It's instinct. It's life.
There's a lump in her throat that she can't swallow past.
As the wind picks up and the leaves in the few near-bye trees brush and scrape together, as she watches Spike slowly fading into the darkness until all she can see anymore is the back of his head weaving in and out of shadows, she can't remember the last time she's ever felt so desolate.
Two vampires, one a stranger and one someone she wishes she never met, tug at her from opposite directions.
Giles would be disappointed. Either way, really, but knowing she brushed off slay-time for some... other... time with Spike, well. There-in disappointment lies.
She'd hate herself in the morning.
She can't just let that other vampire go. She can't.
With a shaky breath, Buffy makes a decision.
***
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!