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“I wasn't kidding, y'know.”
He zipped up his trousers with a lazy shrug. Buffy's rancid meat smell clung to his leather, it would take a tsunami to wash out the odor completely. The corner laundromat probably would have kicked him out if he hadn't always broke in after-hours to clean his clothes. Jokes on them.
Buffy stuck an accusatory glance to him. It stung, really, if he was being honest. She didn't believe he cared, even after making her come behind a dumpster with putrid meat sweat all over her. Offended. He should be proper offended, and she should beg for his forgiveness.
Her lips, swollen from their interlude, pursed in that cute, miffed Buffy way, and he forgot what he was even on about.
She re-buttoned her ugly uniform button-down, the most dreadful punishment not even the cruelest demon could have conjured. “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
The question bit him where it hurt. As always with this one. He was gonna have to repeat himself.
He fumbled with his pocket, tilting his head to the gritty brick building he just scraped his whole arse against for her pleasure. “This job. I meant it when I said you don't belong at a place like this. It's too dull for you.”
“Spike,” she said his name in that tone. She meant it to be a warning, but he heard the fragile glass cracking beneath. Pitiful was not a word he'd have ever used to describe the Slayer before, but to see her so used up and desperate like this tempted him.
“Fine, fine.” Spike mumbled and lit his cigarette in three solid drags, billowing smoke between them like a cheap theater trick. His shoulders shrugged. “Don't wanna ruin a good breaktime shag, I get it. Just saying you can't shine in there.”
The moon hid behind a forest of thick, cumulus clouds above. It was a shame. He liked when the moonlight shone on her skin. In the cemetery, in the alley, on the porch—Buffy glowed beneath night's natural spotlight, a radiance that could not be captured by words properly, not even by an old washed up poet like him.
Between two fingers, he took another long puff and released the tension from holding back. His smoke was quickly confiscated by the deceivingly petite blonde.
She tried to inhale the whole damn fag instead of a deliberate drag. It was adorable. Nearly burnt her whole sodding tongue for the failed effort. He could kiss it and make it all better if she’d let him, let their tongues mingle for a long while again like a ice cold soak for the burn.
Coughing, she refused to hand over his cigarette; instead, her lips circled the filter again, but this time with proper form, a solid perch between her kiss-bruised lips, she breathed it in.
Success this time, it seemed, as a self-satisfied smile teased the corners of her mouth. Smoke trickled out of the crack of her lips, a little from her nose. She was the most dysfunctional chimney he ever saw, but still she burned the hottest.
“You're sexier when you smoke.” He arched a devious eyebrow, knowing she'd hate that he called attention to her adopting one of his bad habits.
“Shut up.” There was barely a bite behind her bark this time. Her edge was buried behind the tired slump of her shoulders.
He was disappointed. The almost immediate return of the heaviness that haunted her these past few months was a bit of an ego death. The sex had verged on something euphoric, an electric storm of lightning jolts to their pleasure centers. Spike hoped she'd feel better longer, more like her fiery self for the rest of her shift. Long enough for her to see how daft it was for her to be working there in the first place.
She passed the cigarette back to him, fingers lacking time-honored skill and lingering between his for the exchange. Spike's fingers smelled of her good bits, heady and that special kind of sweet, but he doubted she’d be able to tell from beyond her nasty meat-infused uniform, human senses and all. Another strike for shame.
He smoked and let the gentle heat numb his throat.
“This has to stop, you know.”
“Yeah?”
This was about the hundredth time he’d heard that, usually as a quarter note rest between two consecutive whole note shags if memory served. Maybe he shouldn’t have zipped up so quick, it was hard to tell these days when she was playing coy or mean lady laying down the law.
“The late nights—” Buffy chewed on her cheek, furrowing her brows. “It’s bad enough I’m doing this to myself, but I can’t let Dawn be alone all the time. She needs me to protect her and her friends.”
“Funny thing that is,” he said, taking another long drag. “Shouldn’t the sister of the slayer be the most trained to take on the demons of the night?”
“It’s besides the point, Spike. I’m not even home enough as it is with this job to teach her what I know. Make sure she’s safe. Can’t keep sneaking away to crypts, back alleys, truck beds…”
“I could always sneak over to—”
“No,” she seethed. “Not gonna happen.”
He didn’t say anything for a while, let the silence do the talking for once. Buffy’s break was probably long over, and clearly she’d worked up the nerve to say what she needed to say to him, but she hovered against the brick wall, breathing his second-hand smoke like she wanted to be sick. This job would kill her before any smoke would. He knew it. She knew it, but didn’t want to admit it.
Pity really. Little Bit and all those tiny demon snacks she called friends were ripe for the taking in terms of learning a little fightin’. Sunnydale was known for its unusual criminal element; any parent with a half a working cranium should want their little girl or scrawny boy to have some self-defense under their belt. Demon-related or not.
And here in town was their best teacher, the one and only slayer!
Instead, Buffy was slumming it, taking orders from pimply-nosed bosses and flipping burgers for ball-busting customers. Sodding moronic, it was.
“Shame you can’t teach Slayer-arts for a pretty penny instead. Flexible schedule and all that. Still have time to save lives.” Spike bit down on the end of his fag to keep it from dropping, bits of ash clung to his teeth. He’d forgotten how their conversation had lulled on a completely different topic, which probably made his interjection rogue and doubly unwanted. Whatever. “You’d make money and do the thing you do best.”
“Yeah, step right up. College drop out, zombified freakshow here, ready to roll out the red carpet of all fighting skills.” Buffy laughed dryly at the self deprecation. “Parents will line their kids out the door of my nonexistent mojo dojo.”
“They would if any of ‘em had a lick of sense.”
Buffy was retucking her shirt uniform, unwrinkling her terrible, fashion-insulting hat for her cashier job. Getting ready to the special hell hole for her here on Earth. Spike didn't know how she'd last another minute in there.
He took a risk. Grabbing her shoulder, Spike pinned her against the wall, a little erotic conversation steering if you will. It was the only way Buffy would hear him, listen to his ideas. She half-assed an attempt to push him away, but her heart was barely in it or he would have gone flying.
“You could always have a little demonstration. Maybe something criminal that gets the attention of the local papers.” His thumb trailed down her cheek to the tip of her chin. Her eyes cast far away from his. “Add a little good word to your name. I know a couple of loose-skinned demons that would spot you a decent performance in exchange for a quick emotional feed.”
Lately, they'd probably be able to feed off of him with the amount of pitiful feelings he'd been playing pinball with around the Slayer. It wouldn't hurt him, at the very least.
“Where do you even think this would work? I can't be throwing down in my living room while Dawnie studies the next room over.”
Spike scoffed. “Get that Watcher of yours to finally pay you his due. Back room of his magic shop. It's already set up for you, just get a couple of mats and a sign for Buffy's Beatdown, copyright pending, and it'll look more official. Can't be too pretty anyway or it won't feel worth your expensive fee. People like when self-defense boot camps are rough looking.”
Buffy stared up at the wispy clouds, a small gap formed allowing a strip of moonlight to highlight her cheekbones just so. Like a statue of carved granite or a pearlescent painting. She was beautiful all the time, but especially when deep in thought. He leaned his hand against the wall, unclamping his hand from her arm.
“I don't know.”
“Yeah, you do, Slayer. It's in your blood. You'd be the boss. Your times, your price, your kids. Think about it.”
She sucked in her bottom lip, chewing on it. He wanted to do it for her, but kept his lips on the cigarette dangling from his mouth like a blade of grass.
“If Giles says okay, then it might not be a bad idea to give these kids a fighting chance against the things that go bump in the night.” Her features perked slightly. "Buff-n-Tuff Bootcamp, hmm that could work. Maybe I'll put in my two weeks tomorrow."
“Does that mean I can sink some fangs into your cross-eyed boss? He really grates on my nerves, that spineless little yell he does in the mornings. I don't know how you put up with—”
“Stop spying on me and no fanging, Chip-for-Brains.” She gnashed her teeth. “This is my life, not yours.”
She tapped her temple as if he could forget he hadn't snacked on anyone for months. Couldn't hurt a fly except for when she….
“Fine, you're no fun.” Spike pouted, breaking their intimate position, their physical closeness. He wanted to shrink back into the shadows of the night, let her think she was alone, but all along watching, making sure she was… Safe? Happy? Alive?
He didn't know why he watched her anymore, just that he couldn't be far from her ever since she came back. It was a sickness. He wasn't a total fool. Maybe this new idea would give her back that spark of life in her eye, that Slayer flair she had been missing since before that last day with Glory.
“I'm going back inside.”
A simple enough statement. Plain Jane and boring. Buffy never offered him comforts or romantic lines of poetry. But at least this time she told him she was leaving. It was a good first step into something… different, something other than her cold shoulder and look of shame.
“I'll see you later, Buffy.” It came out more threatening than he sounded in his head. He wanted to seem less pathetic, but instead, he came across possessive and predatory. He was cursed as this monster in love with his hunter, not the other way around.
She whispered, “No. You won't.”
It was a lie.
She'd lurk around his crypt tonight and throw him around, crashing into a sweaty mess on top the stone sarcophagus. And then, he'd lie there all helpless like, and so on and so forth. Bruises and bites and smacking skin and all that naked glory.
But Spike didn't say anything.
He could be her punching bag until she was ready. Til she was healed. No more greasy burgers and greasier bosses. That fighting dojo of hers would have to work. Had to.
He'd make sure of it.
Then, Spike could be hers.