InsaneJournal

FIc: THE PROPER SLAYER (pt 8 of ?)
Buffy's back home in Sunnydale after her AWOL summer with an unhappily-souled Spike. But she doesn't fit in anymore. And now Spike's back, and they're both in trouble ....

Fic set in an AU early season 3. Sequel to Let's Get Lost.

Click tag to see previous parts.



Previously ....

Her panties, torn into one unwearable strip, had fallen off behind the tombstone. He grabbed up the silky bit of nylon, brought it to his nose for a long grateful sniff before stuffing it into his pocket.

When she got home from school, there, balanced on the sill of the bedroom window she'd left open, was a flattish pink box, inside of which, wrapped in pink tissue, were seven silk bra-and-panty sets, each one a different color.

"You are sick," she said, out loud as if he was there to hear her, which he wasn't, since it was four o'clock on a sunny afternoon. The next day, there was a mention in the local news of an early-morning break-in the previous day at the lingerie shop on Main. Buffy spotted it reading over Giles' shoulder. That evening, after sitting through dinner with her mother and Faith, who still seemed to be eating for two, she went up to her room and retrieved the box from under the mattress where she'd hidden it.

She put on the black set, and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. Scooped her hair up onto her head and gave herself a pouting air kiss. The things fit her, but they made her look like someone she didn't recognize. Didn't want to recognize. All day she'd been thinking back to the summer. To what she'd done in and out of that mysterious townhouse, with the swimming pool in the basement and the manservant who blinked at nothing. She remembered how she'd tied Spike up and left him while she played softball for hours in the park. Remembered how she'd lived with him, and lived on him, for all those weeks with barely a thought about where it was all coming from, who paid for the upkeep of that house, and that servant, who paid for the air conditioning and the clear rippling pool and the lovely meals she'd eaten. Where the money came from later on for the gasoline, for the motel room where they'd rolled around in the bed all day, feeding off each other's endlessly recurring need.

She took off the bra and panties and folded them up. At the bottom of the box she found the thing she'd missed—a card with the address of a motel out on the coast road, in the next town down, the room number scrawled on the back.

So that's where he was. She brought the silken things with her when she went.

When she knocked, the sun was setting, casting long slanting orange beams right under the overhang, throwing her shadow up tall against the door.

Spike opened it without letting the light touch him, retreating at once into the dim room. His hair stood on end, and he was naked. The bedclothes were twisted half onto the floor; she saw a bottle of Jack and a glass on the nightstand.

"Did I wake you up?"

"Guess so."

"I'm giving this back." She put the box down on the dresser, averting her eyes from his body.

"Chose those out special for you."

"They're stolen."

"Well, yeah. Broke in there an' chose 'em out of the shop's whole stock, just for you. To please an' adorn you. Girl like you shouldn't wear nylon."

"I'm not going to wear them, and I'm not pleased."

"Was afraid you'd take that line."

"Yet you stole the things anyway."

"Extravagant gesture for my extravagant love. Haven't forgotten that, have you? That we're in love." He sidled around in front of her. "Why won't you look at me? Seen it all already. Or does my beauty dazzle you?"

"Spike ... there can't be any extravagant love."

"I'm gonna take you out of here. We're goin' to Mexico."

"No."

"Haven't killed anyone since. There's no reason why we can't be together!"

"No."

"Why not! Was your idea in the first place."

"Yeah, it was. But then you set me straight. You reminded me of who I am and what I'm supposed to do, and where. You sent me back here to be the slayer, and that's what I am. I'm the slayer, and Sunnydale is the hellmouth, and that ... is that." She went to the door. This had gone more easily than she'd imagined on the way over. Even seeing him all nude and pale and beautiful—the bruises she'd put his face were already mostly gone—couldn't keep her from saying what she had to say. And now she'd leave.

"Bloody hell. You think that's all there is to it?"

She thought later about how she would've gotten out the door, if only she'd opened it right then, instead of hesitating, hesitating for just a second or two, but long enough for him to come up tight behind her, his hands on her shoulders, his mouth questing through her hair to touch the nape of her neck. Once that happened she couldn't help the shiver that ran through her, couldn't help throwing her head back against his shoulder, or rolling it as he gathered her hair up, laying soft kisses in a trail along her hairline, to her jaw, her cheek, so that her mouth was right there to open against his.

"Thought you'd come here last night. Looked around for you in the usual spots after it got dark, then came back here. Waited for you."

"I ... I stayed in last night. With my mother. We ... we baked."

"Did you bring me any?"

"Spike—"

"Saw the other. Faith. She's a hot one. She's going to get herself killed, goin' off half-cocked the way she does."

"You saw her—"

He put a finger on her lips. "She didn't see me. An' she won't. Will make sure of that. She's got plenty else to keep her busy/"

"Spike, this is crazy."

"Say you love me, Miss Anne."

"I'm not proud of it."

"But say it. Been waitin' to hear it again."

She looked into his face, and tried to think when it had happened. With all the individual days and nights she could recall in such detail from those summer weeks with him, she couldn't pinpoint the moment when it happened, when she, who'd thought there could never be anyone else after Angel, had fallen in love again.

Another vampire. Another enigma.

"Others surely love you, but no one else understands you like I do. Can say it," he prompted, his fingers twining in her hair. She was pressed against him, all the way down, his bare skin against her clothes, his bare feet beside her boots. He whispered into the top of her head.

He did understand her, but she had to make him see that he didn't completely understand this. "It doesn't matter. It's not something that's going to—"

"Say it."

She wanted to. It was, amidst all her resistence, a relief. She pressed her lips against his breastbone and whispered. "You know I do. I love you, Spike."

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