Chapter
2.05
Friday, May 17th, 2002
"Hey, lazybones. Time you were up." Buffy tried
to gently chivvy the vamp into wakefulness.
"Wha'? Whatimesit?" Spike stalled pulling Buffy
closer.
"Em, well, it's five thirty two."
Spike pulled the covers back over his head. "In
the a.m.?" he asked.
"Well, yes, but I need you and your amazing vamp
climbing abilities."
"At this time in the morning, unless I haven't
actually been to bed yet, I can tell you there's only one thing
I'm interested in climbing."
"Well, Mount Buffy is about to get up and start
dealing with this room so that we have a hope of getting everything
packed by the time Dawn said it would be ready."
"And where are my climbing abilities supposed
to fit into the picture? You want me to hang a trapeze above the
bed, now that we've got the room to ourselves?"
"No. Does your brain ever get out of the bedroom?"
"Not when you're in it."
"The bedroom or your brain?"
"Either," the vampire responded with a wicked
grin.
"And why a trapeze? I never really got that."
"Then I guess we'll have to find different accommodation
next time it's just the two of us in LA so that you can see for
yourself."
"You know hotels with trapezes in the bedrooms?"
"Well. I never said it was a hotel as such. More
like a brothel, but we can rent the room without the room service."
"You!" Buffy's gasp of outrage was swiftly silenced
as Spike wound his fingers through her hair and pulled her close
for a kiss, but as soon as she was able to regain her breath her
protests continued.
"I can't believe you think I would go to a brothel
with you. That is so humiliating."
"And that is so narrow-minded. Guess I better
cancel the booking for the first night of our honeymoon, then."
"Did your brain get fried with all this going
out in the sun or something? Why would you ever think that I would
go to a brothel with you?"
"Looks like it did." Spike rolled to the edge
of the bed and stood up, going in search of the jeans he had abandoned
last night. As soon as he spotted them he pulled them on, the
rip of his zipper being pulled up sounding a death knell for the
discussion.
"So? What was this climbing that you wanted doing?"
Spike asked his tone harsh.
"When we moved in, we flattened all the cardboard
boxes and stored them up in the crawlspace."
The vampire grunted and had left the room before
she could respond. Needless to say when Buffy moved to follow
him, pulling the top sheet from the bed to wrap around herself,
she was almost run over by the puppy in Rogue's effort to beat
her out of the door.
When she made it to the landing, the hatch to
the crawlspace was already open and cardboard boxes were raining
down through the hole. However, only a fraction of the boxes she
had expected appeared before the vamp swung down and tipped the
hatch cover back into place as he dropped silently to the floor
again.
"Is that it?" she asked indicating the sparse
half dozen boxes.
"I'm goin' to go with yes, seein' as how the
rest of the boxes up there were all between the leak in the roof
and the damp patch on your ceiling, but if my word's not good
enough then feel free to climb up there for yourself."
"Spike? Please." Still clutching the sheet with
one hand, she reached out with her other to try to smooth away
a patch of dust that decorated one of the vampire's sharply defined
cheekbones.
"Please, what? What would madame like now? Let
me guess it must be my job to clean up the dog crap in the bathroom,
after all it was my dinner it ate so it must be my job. Or did
I miss doing the breakfast in bed? Can't be that you've got an
itch needs scratchin' 'cause I'm sure I offered just before you
got all 'Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' on me."
"Well, pardon me if I don't want to spend the
first night of our married lives in a brothel."
"Don't worry about it. I'm sure we can get a
nice room at a nice suburban Holiday Inn instead. I'll give the
contract to Anya. I'm sure she'll appreciate the thought even
if you're too damned uptight."
"Well maybe in that case you should have beat
Xander to it and married her instead of me."
"Well, you know, there's times I think I'd be
better off."
The words sank into a well of silence and when
Buffy finally spoke her voice was tremulous and unsure. "Really?"
Spike's voice softened in return. "On a very
rare occasion when I've fried my brain from too much sun, but
soon as I see you smile the idea goes straight out of my head."
"So you don't really wish you'd married Anya?"
"Pet, if you don't know by now that I love you
in a way I have never loved anyone else in my entire existence
then I've obviously been inadvertently speaking Swahili for the
last two years."
Dawn's head appeared at the doorway to her room.
"You know, arguing at this time of the morning in public is way
antisocial, but can you at least do the making up in private?"
"Not really," Buffy answered, "seeing as how
you're going to be in the bathroom cleaning up the mess your dog
left last night."
"Hey, I'm not up. I'm supposed to be resting.
I was just wanting you two to be quiet so I could go back to sleep."
"Think again. For one thing, if Spike ends up
being the one to clear that up then I would suspect that dog might
well be making a return visit to the pound. And for another, you're
the one that said we would pack Willow's stuff so don't think
you're going to sit in bed and paint your nails while we do all
the work."
"I was thinking more of lying in bed and
sleeping." Dawn's protests died at the expression on her sister's
face. "But I guess I'll just get dressed and clean up the bathroom."
"Good call, Bit."
Buffy waited until Dawn had gone and then led
the vampire down to the kitchen, taking him through the dining
room to try to avoid disturbing Wesley. She got him to sit down
while she put the coffeemaker on and set a mug of blood to microwave.
Then, while they waited, she came to stand between his knees,
her arms wrapping around his neck, so that they were eye to eye.
"Now, were you serious about having booked us
in at a brothel for our honeymoon?"
"Just the one night," Spike grudgingly admitted.
"Why?"
Spike shrugged. "Look, it seemed like a good
idea at the time. Just forget it. We'll do something else. It
doesn't matter."
"But it obviously does, otherwise you wouldn't
have got all uptight about it."
"I wasn't the uptight one. Just forget it, pet.
I'll give it to Anya like I said. Her an' ...him'll have a hell
of a time."
"Look, I'm sorry. Another time maybe. just not...
not then." Buffy's eyes implored him to understand, to lose the
kicked puppy air that seemed to hang over him. "Our wedding night
should just be about you and me and how we feel about each other.
Not sexcapades hanging from a trapeze."
"Which bit of "forget it" didn't you understand,
Buffy? Just drop it. I get the message. I fucked up. Why don't
you just arrange whatever you want? Just so long as it doesn't
involve me turning into a big pile of dust, I don't really care.
I'm obviously just too incompetent to be left to organise
anything on my own."
The vampire pushed his stool back away from her
and grabbed a roll of trash bags from under the sink before heading
back upstairs. Buffy was grateful, despite the early hour, when
the phone rang, giving her something other than the circling mug
of blood in the microwave and holding her sheet up for her to
concentrate on.
"Hi, Summers residence."
"Buffy, it's Anya."
"Talk of the devil," Buffy muttered under her
breath but the former demon seemed oblivious.
"I wasn't sure if you would be up or not, but
I thought if you were, since Xander said you were moving Willow
out that you might need help. Moving's a friends thing, right?
Oh and I found out some news last night that you might be interested
in."
Then Buffy heard Xander's voice in the background,
a much beset moan of, "Ahn?"
"Oh, and Xander wants to know where Spike took
Willow last night. She's not answering her cell and he wants to
make some futile effort to stop her before she tries to reverse
Evie's curse, but I told him he was bound to be too late already,
but he's all guilty because he didn't think to tell her about
how the curse worked when she rang last night. So now he's trying
to take it out on everyone else."
"And just out of curiosity, how does the curse
work?"
"Well, it's really clever. But are you sure you
don't want me to save this for when I come to help? That way I
can tell you all at once."
"Sure, that sounds good."
"Should I bring doughnuts, too?"
"Doughnuts would be the best thing about this
morning so far," the slayer sighed.
"I'll get Xander to drop me off on his way to
work, then."
Xander's voice sounded in the background again.
"Ahn? Willow?"
"Look, Anya, how about I track down Spike and
get him to call you back?"
"I thought he was staying with you until Wesley
either went back to LA or found a place of his own."
"He is. He's just— Wait a minute." Buffy turned
her attention to her sister, who had just walked through the living
room into the kitchen. "Dawn, go see if you can find Spike and
find out where he dropped Willow last night."
The teenager rolled her eyes and passed Buffy
a newspaper wrapped bundle. "Hold this till I get back."
Buffy tried to work out how to hold the sheet,
the phone and the bundle of dubious provenance that she had been
given by her sister. The longer she held the parcel the more sure
she became of what was in it, and the more sure she was that she
didn't want to be holding it at all. Maybe this whole puppy deal
had been a bad call.
Dawn came trundling back downstairs with a slight
limp that reminded Buffy that maybe she shouldn't be running messages
after all.
"Have you opened up that scab on your leg again?"
Dawn shrugged. "It's just a little bit. Spike'll
clean it up for me after breakfast. And he says she's at the shitty
motel by the off-ramp."
"The Sunnydale Motor Lodge."
"Well unless there are suddenly two shitty motels
by the off-ramp, I suspect that would be the one."
"Is this what I think it is?" she asked as passed
the bundle back to the teenager.
"Well, you're the one who told me to clean it
up."
"Outside bin, now."
"Where did you think I was going when you interrupted
me? And what the heck have you done to him this morning? If he
wasn't a vampire and a guy I would swear he had PMS."
Buffy waved her sister toward the back door.
"Anya, hi, you can tell Xander she's at the Sunnydale Motor Lodge."
"Okay, I'll see you in about half an hour."
"Sure... and Anya?"
"Mm-hm?"
"In case I forget to say it later... Thanks."
A bleary-eyed Wes, stumbled into the kitchen
at this point, dressed in a more rumpled version of yesterday's
clothes. "I guess it's officially morning, then?"
"See? Like I said it's really clever. It means
if she goes really bad, then, she'll probably kill herself
before she can kill too many other people. And... if she actually
studies all the proper books and learns all the stuff about the
nature of magic and how to use it properly and she isn't too conceited
to pay attention to it, then she'll be back to looking her own
age within a couple of years of study. Well, near as she can,
with the blood on her hands."
Anya, along with all the current occupants of
the house were gathered in the living room, having coffee and
doughnuts before the serious business of moving Willow's stuff
could begin. Wes had retreated to Spike's apartment, in search
of a shower, some clean clothes, and Buffy suspected another hour
or two of sleep. Noticeably, the engaged couple were separated
by most of the length of the sofa, one dog and one teenager. Spike
had already filled several trash bags with clothes and bedding
and deposited then on the front porch, but that was as far as
anyone had got by the time the former vengeance demon arrived.
"B-but didn't we stop her? I thought we got there
before she could..." Tara began to argue and then realised that
everyone else in the room seemed to know something she didn't.
"Well," Anya continued. "According to what Evie
saw in her head, you know that Madre de Dios or Sangre de Madre
or whatever that she told us she bought on the black market? Guess
what? It just slipped her mind that she went out that morning
and murdered Bambi's mom."
Tara looked even more crestfallen than the others.
"You all knew. Didn't you?"
Buffy sighed. "Spike and Giles suspected. The
rest of us found out last night."
"I don't get it," Dawn announced. "You knew that
she would have killed Rogue, but you're acting like this is a
bigger deal again."
"Because to a Wiccan it should be. The deer is
a symbol of innocence and purity. It's probably about the worst
sort of sacrifice she could have made, short of human."
"So, like I said," Anya continued. "In theory,
she should be able to reverse the ageing, but, in practice, the
only way to overcome the blood on her hands would be some sort
of massive sacrifice on her part."
"So, your friend Evie is basically forcing her
to be good?" Tara asked.
"Well, you could say that, but it's not so much
about forcing her to be good or evil as forcing her to examine
her own actions in comparison to a code she claims to adhere to.
I mean Evie has no qualms about the men I've
tortured and killed. She wouldn't think twice about the stuff
that Spike's done, either. I mean it's not her personal style
and Willow should be grateful for that, but she's not the type
to condemn anyone for a bit of slaughter. I think it was the hubris
of the whole thing that tee-ed her off, especially coming from
someone whose supposed religion is all about the opposite."
"The who-what?" Dawn asked.
"Hubris. Prideful insolence," Anya explained.
"And you say the more she tries to reverse it,
the worse it'll get?" Dawn asked.
"Well, of course, because that would be a selfish
use of magic. And to judge from what I heard of her conversation
with Xander I was right about him being a bit too late with the
warning."
"Cool."
"Dawn!" her sister reprimanded the teen.
"I don't see what's wrong with speaking my mind.
Seems to me that Willow had it coming. It also seems like you
promised days ago to tell me how this was all her fault and you
never have."
It was Tara who answered the teen. "After the
meeting at Lily's, Willow sent Sam an email. I think she thought
she could warn them off."
"But it had the opposite effect." The teenager
finished for her. "That's what she meant about me being an object
lesson. I got to pay the price for Willow's arrogance."
"That's the way it looks from here, love." Spike
spoke for the first time since Anya had arrived.
"God... I wish I hadn't kicked her ass out already,
so that I could do it again."
Spike bent over from his position on the arm
of the sofa to kiss the teenager on the top of her head and drape
an arm around her shoulders. Buffy looked on and was ashamed to
find that she was jealous of her own sister as the vampire gently
stroked her hair.
"Oh, and I've got some other news," Anya babbled.
"Evie could remember the last slayer and vampire who were mated."
"So what happened to them?" Buffy asked
"That's just it. Nobody knows. Just one day,
next slayer appears and no one ever saw either of them again,
dead or undead. Evie said there were all sorts of theories. She
thinks the Council killed them both, but that's really just one
possibility. This was all about a couple of hundred years before
my time, though, so it's not as if I can make any sort of first-hand
assessment."
"That settles it then, pet. Once this woman from
Social Services has been, you get to keep the marbles."
"Don't be silly. They're far more useful to you,
with the daylight thing."
"Reckon I'll just have to be silly, along with
all my many other faults, 'cause being able to go out in daylight
won't mean a damn to me with you dead."
"Em, guys. Weren't you meant to be not discussing
the daylight thing in the house?" Tara reminded them.
"Balls! Well, I guess if that wanker Finn's still
listening, he can go shag a sheep or whatever it is that they
grow in Iowa."
"Look, remind me when I get back from LA," the
Wicca told them. "I think I can disable any bugs or cameras they
have in the house. I wasn't sure how to do it without taking out
the phones and stuff as well but I think I have a lead on how
to adjust the spell. I just need to do some more research before
I try it."
"Thanks, pet," Spike smiled over at the Wicca
and it began to seem to Buffy that everyone in the room was basking
in the warmth that was non-sarky Spike except her.
"No biggie. I mean I'll be living here, too,
so it's in my own best interest."
The rest of the "meeting" passed in a blur for
Buffy as she got to watch the vampire seemingly manage a half-hearted
smile for everyone except her. Then, when Anya volunteered to
do the washing up, she saw how he slipped from the room when he
thought no one was looking. And to judge from the smile on the
former demon's face when she opened the envelope that he gave
her and read what was inside, the vampire might have given her
The Hope Diamond rather than a night for two in a whorehouse.
Buffy even began to wonder if he was right. Maybe
it was her who was being uptight, or maybe it was some shard of
self-respect that you lost along the way if you were ever demonised.
Doubtless Xander would have something to say on the subject,
but then she wasn't sure if it would help her case or destroy
it.
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