Buffy Summers clomped up the porch stairs at 1630 Revello feeling dizzy and spent.  The night somehow seemed even darker than usual (they'd been pretty darn dark, lately), so when she fished for the keys in her torn pants pocket and didn’t find them, she didn’t waste a thought about retracing her steps.  After all: if some psycho killer happened to pick them up and pay a surprise visit, it would only be the second worst thing that happened tonight.

So, Buffy knocked on the door to her own house instead, trying her best to ignore the gloomy implication of such an act.

“Whoa, are you okay?” Dawn asked.

She brushed past the girl and made a b-line for the stairs.  “Why?”

“You look like you’ve been mud wrestling.”

“Vampire.”

“And, you’re limping.”

“Same answer.”

She slammed into the bathroom at top speed and peeled off her disgusting clothes, avoiding the mirror like it was filled with deadly cobras.  In the shower, she used up an entire bottle of soap without even thinking about it, pouring it directly on the skin and scrubbing hard at all the tender parts.  There were plenty of those.

There was a long interlude where she closed her eyes and tried to make her mind go blank, just letting the warm water spray on her face and chest.  But image after image kept ripping through the darkness, like TVs snapped on with the volume turned way too loud.

By the time Buffy slathered on the second coat of shampoo, her cleansing ritual had blossomed into an epic abuse of shower power.  Accordingly, a tiny fist began to pound the door.

“Uh, hello in there?” Dawn’s little voice rang.  “It’s the other people.  Ever heard of us?”

She quickly rinsed what was left to rinse, twisted off the faucets and then bundled herself up in soft, white towels.  She risked one glimpse at the horrible mirror.

Unfortunately, it was still her in there.  She was kinda hoping for the snakes.

Buffy made a dash for her bedroom and locked the door behind her.  She dug through a drawer of frilly, girly nighties, scowling at them like they were polka-dot overalls and lumberjack shirts.  She forsook them all, and pulled on a billowy old sweatshirt instead.  It was gray and cottony soft, and it had a mysterious koala bear printed on the left breast.  Was it the logo of some sort of Australian billowy sweatshirt company?  It seemed to her like all the clutter people piled up over the years had a progressively shorter and shorter life span in their brains.  Certain purchases eventually became unexplainable, and the owners all became archeologists of their own lives.

She turned the lights out and slid under the sheets.  Her body wasn’t throbbing anymore, but the night’s events had left behind little memories of sensation.  Ghostly hands grabbed and ghostly fingers probed and ghostly…

…Uh, ghostly other things.

They ‘other-thinged’.

But that wasn’t what kept her awake.  And it wasn’t Spike’s words, either – those lovely little fortune cookies of vampire philosophy he’d felt so inspired to share.

It was those eyes: Jenny’s hooded, blank eyes.

Watching her.

Even now, after the Shower to End All Showers, it felt like they were watching.

Buffy tossed and turned and balled up the sheets, tried to karate-kick the girl’s leering eyes out of her brain.  And when she was done doing that, she just went slack, and let them look.

She started to feel the hot rush again, and the long harp string vibrating down her spine.  She begged her hand not to do what it was doing – literally said the word “please” out loud.  But her fingers had their own wicked plans.  They splayed her little wings down there and went about exploring the soft skin inside.  And Jenny’s eyes watched this part, too, glazing over with a sinister joy…

“Because there’s a blackness in hearts…”

“No,” she said, out loud again, hating the little note of pout in her voice.  She reeled the traitorous hand back in and tucked it tight to her chest.

This little melodrama repeated itself twice over the next hour, interspersed with jerking, twisting, banging her head on her pillow and swearing to find out whether Doublemeat’s health plan covered psychotherapy.

Then, at long last, Buffy drifted off to Dreamyland.

~*~*~

Ah, Dreamyland…

A wondrous, magical place, where the rules of time and space and narrative structure all went kablooie, and where all the brain’s crazy little corners grow arms and legs and come out to play.

Speaking of plays, Buffy was at one.  With, like, the audience and the dramatically lit set and the boring-ness and everything.

She was sitting in a dim, packed theater, a few rows from the stage.  Giles was there. He was sitting in the seat next to hers, thoroughly absorbed in the dialogue, massaging every line with his gigantic British brain.

Buffy yawned and fidgeted and kicked up her feet, overcome with that distinct-yet-totally-implausible Dreamyland conviction that she’d seen this particular play before, and that dull plus dull still equaled dull.

“Can you pass the popcorn?” she whispered.

“Shh,” Giles hissed.  “There isn’t any popcorn!  This is a vegetarian event, for heaven’s sake.”  He pushed her legs off the seat, and then grabbed her wrist.  “Pay attention, now.  This is the important part.”

The scene up there was familiar: a quiet suburban living room in a Southern California town.  The two actors were caught up in one of those oh-so exaggerated soap opera moments. One was that Erin Brockovich chick. Julia Something.  She was seated on a little stool, her hands clasped and her watery eyes pleading.  The other actress (Kate Whatserface, from Titanic) worried back at her from a big, cozy couch.

“The way they would look at me,” said Julia.  “I just couldn't...”

Titanic Kate reached out with her sad, sad eyes, looking at Julia like she was a kitten with a broken paw.  “I won't tell anyone,” she said. “I wouldn't do that.”

“Why can't I stop?  Why do I keep letting him in?”

“Do you love him?”

A dozen gasps flared up around the theater.  Even Giles seemed to be affected by the words, his eyes shimmering like blue diamonds behind his glasses.

Julia’s face shifted and swam, a traffic jam of mismatched emotions.

And, while the audience waited for the answer with bated breath, one of those strange and magical dream winds swept across the venue, quietly rearranging all the elements.

And when the wind had passed, it was Buffy up there on the stool, contemplating the baffling question set before her.  And Tara Maclay was the one sitting on the couch, looking at her like she was a lost little puppy.  They had traded places with the actresses so smoothly and subtly that Buffy hardly noticed the shift at all. 

Oh, and also: she was totally naked.

Buffy noticed that shift, like, right away.     

She immediately shot to her feet, her hands moving to preserve whatever scraps of dignity they could.  The audience just kept looking at her.  There were a few titters of laughter, and a cough, but mostly they just looked.  Looked and looked.

Buffy scanned the faces of the people in the first row, filled with woozy shock.  A line of boys were seated there, front-and-center.  Or, men.  A line of boys-to-men.  There was Pike and Scott, Parker and Ben, Riley and Angel.  They were all just sitting there, with more or less the same vaguely annoyed expression on their faces.  Occasionally, one would scan her nakedness with a disapproving scowl.

Of course, if this had been a real stage, instead of the jail of her own sleepy head, Buffy would’ve ran the heck away.  Instead, she just stood there, totally mortified, shuffling her feet and clutching her skimpy skin bikini with all her might.  The seconds passed like hours this way, and eventually she could hear angry whispers begin to snake through the crowd.

She looked to Tara for help.  But the witch just glared back at her, with an expression that was more disgusted than Buffy thought the girl’s soft features were capable of.

“Do you love him?” she asked again, the words now mocking and cruel.

“Uhhhh,” Buffy said.  “Uhhhhhh…”

Suddenly, a stir of voices bubbled up from the rear of the stage, and a fake prop door swung open.  The gang filed through it one by one, babbling incoherently.

“Pizza,” said Xander.  “I tell ya, they were throwing pizza.  How’s that for a Glad Ta Meetcha?”

“Well that’s normal, in their part of the world,” said Willow, rolling her eyes.  “That’s their custom.”

“Yeah, try not to be so closed-minded, man,” said Dawn.  “It’s not like we got a zillion lottery tickets.”

Buffy’s attention whirled between the audience and the actors, unsure which direction was worse.  When the latter saw her, they all froze in their tracks.

“Jeez, Buff!”  Xander shouted.  “Didya maybe forget something?”

“Yeah,” Tara sneered.  “Her line.”

They all stood glowering at her.  Out in the crowd, the little angry whispers were starting to build up steam.  A voice from the black square of the mezzanine barked out the word, “Refund.”

“No,” Buffy protested, blushing hotly and on the verge of tears.  “No, I-I didn’t forget.  This hasn’t happened yet.”

“It’s already happening, love,” growled a voice from stage left.  “It’s already done.”

And then – hands stuffed in his jacket pockets, boot heels clacking – William the Bloody prowled onto the stage.

The crowd went wild.  Whooped and whistled and hooted and cheered, like Fonzie himself had risen from the grave.

He crossed the stage to meet her, every movement filled with prickly menace.  For a moment, the horrible notion entered her mind that she may have to fight, engaging the vampire in some sort of ridiculous Skinny-Dipper Kung Fu.  But he stopped a few yards shy of the mark, his face twisting into a mask of bewildered outrage.

“Oh, sod it,” he muttered.  “Not again.”

The cheers died out, and then the audience and the entire cast were all just staring at her again.  In the front row, she spotted Riley shaking his head sadly.  Next to him, Angel cut loose with a long, somewhat irritable yawn.

The moment she saw this, the temperature in the venue dropped a few sharp degrees, and she could feel drafts racing in from every direction.  A weird little non-dreamy thought crossed her mind; something about stage lights, and how the air should be unbearably hot.   But the set had taken on the feel of a new doctor’s office; a chilly, well-lit and briskly degrading cube.  Cold floorboards nipped at her soles, and her makeshift palm panties felt like they were leaving winter-blue prints on her private parts.

“Did I do something wrong?” she whimpered.

Down in the boys-to-men row, Parker started snickering cruelly.  The sound stabbed her with an unexpected urge to pee.

“Are you even in this scene?!” Tara barked, bitterly enunciating every word.

“You don’t know her like I do,” said Xander.  “She’s, like, the queen of this.”

Spike’s eyes pierced hers.  “She’s the bloody empress of it,” he bellowed.  “Forgot her lines – forgot her sodding costume.  Probably forget her head if it weren’t stapled on.”

The buzzing out in the darkness became louder now: low murmurs and boos, and sharp giggles like pushpins biting into skin.  And now, her ears picked up something else in the din.  The sound was faint but familiar; a crackling, electric growl, like thunderstorms drowning in deep lakes.  She tried her best to ignore it.

“Reeeefuuuund,” howled the jerk on the mezzanine again.

Buffy edged towards the couch, crablike.  She snatched desperately at a wooly white blanket there, but Tara just slapped her hand away.

“No,” she said.  “Not until you answer the question.”

Buffy was gasping out short, panicked breaths, on the verge of crumbling.  “I can’t,” she said.  “I… don’t know how.”

Willow gave her a little shove.   The redhead looked harder than the bashful little nerd Buffy remembered, with long creases scarring her freckled brow.

“C’mon, Buffy, you gotta give them something,” she chided.  “You were gone all summer long!”

Before she could reply, Spike snapped into action.  Filled with the strength of nightmares, the vampire wrenched her down onto an armchair, and spun it to face the crowd.  Buffy clamped her knees together and hugged her chest tight, but in the next moment Super Spike was crouching behind her and prying her legs apart with his hands.  She fought back as hard as she could, but his grip down there hardened to steel.

“They paid good money, pet,” he said, sounding weirdly sincere.  “You can’t lock it up forever.”

Buffy pushed back and whimpered little protests, but, as most dreamers know, such bedtime battles are hardly ever won. When her thighs finally sprang apart, it was like someone pulled a plug out of a socket.  The crowd fell deathly silent, and hundreds of gazes met at the intersection of her legs.

Spike gave her shoulder a little pat.

“Showtime, love,” he said, and then receded into the shadows.

For a few strange moments, Buffy just sat there with her knees parted, fighting back tears.  A big, scary feeling tumbled up through her body, tickling the backs of her knees and divots of her spine as it went.  When it reached her mouth, she blew it out like a plume of luxurious smoke.  Time slowed to a gentle crawl.

Filled with a sudden, otherworldly calm, she searched the eyes of the crowd.  They were half-lidded and filled with bleak desire, like windows onto blank, sweltering deserts.

Buffy felt her body slowly defrost under their glare. Compelled by another one of those strange, subliminal winds, she eased backwards into the chair.  It felt like the cupped, pillow-y hand of a colossal teddy bear.  Her body became impossibly light as she filled it, and marshmallow soft.

The sensation she felt was a surprisingly nostalgic one; Buffy loved this chair.  Even though the chair did not, in fact, exist in the real world of burgers and property taxes, her dreamy head was positive that it was the oldest and most beloved piece of furniture in the whole house, and maybe in the whole world.  Warm, plush fibers stroked and tickled the skin of her back and bottom like little baby bird feathers, and the feeling coaxed an unexpected sigh from her lips.

She draped one knee and then the other over its arms, dangled her calves and feet over the sides in a way that might have seemed innocent under other, less-nude-y circumstances.  The legs spread as far as they could, and when they were done her fingers slipped down between them, dancing along the cambers and dipping into tender grooves.  Blood and heat answered their touch, the flesh there swelling like a delightful bruise.

She forced her eyes to look down at it – to see what it was that all those grim faces out in the darkness were staring at.

“Pussy,” they called it; they were looking at her soft, wet little pussy.

The p-word rang in her head like an organ note in an empty church.  The audience was staring at it and so were all the actors on the stage. Now, Buffy was looking at it too.  And, for some weird reason, it seemed like she was the only one in the world who wasn’t angry at it.

When one fingertip grazed the clit, she sank its neighbor into the pool.  The pair quickly fell into a quiet rhythm, dipping and stroking and drawing tiny circles.  They seemed to melt everything they touched, and warm waves began to gush out of her.

A shaft of bright horror passed through her when she realized that the chair – her favorite chair in the world – was getting soaked, too. A flower of buttery wetness bloomed outwards from the seam where her bottom met the seat and ruined, ruined every inch of fabric it touched.

She knew she wasn’t peeing herself, but a nagging little voice kept insisting that she was, or that she would, or that everyone would think so.  But she couldn’t stop now, because she was so close, and they were all looking, and they paid, and this was life, this was the life part of life, the alive part of living, and the wave was cresting and they all paid to look.

And when close became now, when the wave crumpled over and crashed onto the shore, Buffy cried and giggled and screamed, all at once.

The crowd became enraged at the sound of her orgasm.  They erupted into boos and hisses and nasty catcalls.  Buffy tried to close her eyes – to pretend they weren’t there, pretend this wasn’t happening – but her eyelids felt like they were nailed open.  She stroked and gasped, bit her lip, and beneath the sound of the audience’s protests, the rumbling, electrical sound returned, louder and more real than before.

Spike stormed back into view, his black coat flapping like a cape.  He mounted the edge of the orchestra pit and started hollering at the crowd.  “Piss off, wankers!  What do you know?  What do you know about it?!”

They roared back and started pelting him with things: bottles and little crosses, baseballs and wooden stakes.

“It’s alright, love” he said, and started stripping down, yanking off his jacket, his shirt, his boots.  “Don’t pay these sods any mind.  You’re doing just fine.”

After he tugged off his jeans, he balled them up and sent them sailing into the front row.  They landed with a thwhap around Angel’s face, and stuck there like a brooding denim mask. 

When Spike leapt onto the chair, his arms and legs magically hinged with her own, and tracts of his cool skin pressed to hers like a doctor’s hands.  She realized he was covering up her body, now.  Only her legs and feet could be seen, poking back at the audience like the punch lines of dirty jokes.

His face filled the camera of the dream, now.  There were many versions of this vampire’s eyes, and these were the haunted, hungry ones, the ones begging and pleading to be invited in.  So that’s what she did: whispering “yeah, yes,” her fingers folding at the nape of his neck.

He rocked forward, dove in.  His cock slid deep, gliding all the way to the hilt. Buffy came, instantly and uncontrollably, like a gun shot her and then shot her again.  She squealed and wept.  Giggled out a thrilling scream.

His face was smiling into her neck, mouthing tender, soothing words.  But her hips kept jerking, tickled by clouds of butterflies, and her ass was slick and blushing hot.  She rolled it forward, crushing herself to his beloved body, and she kept coming and coming like she would go crazy from it, like she’d go seriously nuts forever.

He stirred his cock into her, the motion as slow and thick as honey. The world ripped open as he did so, giant spotlights blasting out of the cracks.  After a couple of thrusts she forgot how to breathe.  Her lungs just swelled until they couldn’t hold anymore, and then fired it all out on a wave of choppy, panicked laughter.  She thought it would never end.

And, the precise moment she thought that, it did end.

A dozen rough hands found her lover.  They grabbed him all over, pulled and jerked him off of her.  She made a mournful sound as the connection was suddenly broken, like a light switch snapped off inside her heart.

The crew from the front row dragged Spike to the edge of the stage, the crowd cheering them on.  As she looked on in helpless horror, Angel and Riley gripped him by the ankles and wrists, and began to swing him like a hammock.  “A one, and uh two, and uh…”

On three they launched the blonde vamp into the crowd.  His rag-doll form sailed out on a high arc, landing in a sea of giddy, outstretched hands.  She watched the audience ferry him away with their palms, rock concert style, until he vanished into the distant darkness of the cheap seats.

Buffy crashed hard.  While her ex’s hi-fived and attaboy-ed, she felt her hands and legs draw inward, building a turtle shell around her R-rated parts again.  The wonderful flower of warmth beneath her cooled to a clammy, tacky stain, and the butterflies hardened into streaks of ice.

Suddenly, a face in the crowd stood out to her like a wound.  Giles was glaring at her, wearing the angriest expression she’d ever seen in her life.  He swam towards the center stage, long legs striding over heads and elbows, over the backs of chairs.  As he closed in, Buffy saw that he was a massive, towering being; as big as any fairy tale monster she’d ever fought.

He mounted the stage with a big, hopping step and then he was looming over her, his face flushed purple with rage.  His eyes gleamed down like ponds of ice, paralyzing her with childish terror.  Buffy curled herself more tightly into the shell of her arms.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

The Watcher didn’t say a word.  He just scooped her up and tucked her under his arm like an errant cat.  The crowd sent up a football stadium cheer as he carried her to the couch.

“Please, no,” she squealed, her voice barely registering above the roar of the crowd.  “Please don’t do this!  Please don’t do this to me!”

Giles plopped down hard on the couch and pulled her across his lap.  Buffy already knew what was going to happen, and the dread she felt was excruciating.  Her brain was screaming at her when he planted his huge hand on the small of her back, pinning her in place.  She quizzed her body for a counterattack, but the most she could manage was to waggle her forearms and uselessly kick her feet, like she might somehow swim her way out of this.

Whatever bits of Buffy’s conscious mind were floating around in there, they suddenly seized onto a brilliant Dreamyland plan: When something very bad is about to happen, close your eyes.  So, that’s what she did.  She squeezed her eyes as tight as fists, wishing hard for the curtains to fall.

Unfortunately for her, Dreamyland had one longstanding, ironclad rule: Everyone here is you.  All of those eyes – the crowd’s eyes, her friends’ eyes, The Watcher’s eyes – really belonged to Buffy Summers.  And so when she shut off the camera in her dream body, a dozen others instantly took its place, floating above the scenery like tethered balloons.  Because there was no escaping this part.

Because it was already happening.  Because it was already done. 

The scene was mercilessly lit: a bad, bad girl lying prone across an old man’s lap, legs quivering, face churning out hot tears and pathetic little sniffles.

Bad girl.

The man’s cold hand pressed down on the bow of her back, just a few inches above her bare, little...

Naughty.

And that’s what everybody was staring at now; waiting for the inevitable, waiting for the show to start.

Because, they had paid…

“Well, it’s about freakin’ time!” Xander barked.

“Right?” said Dawn, her little voice chiming with glee.  “Give it to her good!”

The gang huddled around the couch like it was a Thanksgiving spread, giggling and licking their chops.

He started spanking her.  The smacks rained down, hard and fast, and she could feel the burn blooming a full inch beneath wobbling flesh. Buffy watched her own body squirm and wriggle, and saw long, choking sobs shudder out of her mouth.

The blows soon settled into an alarmingly callous rhythm, and the pain and embarrassment of her situation quickly swelled into something much worse.   Her heart became filled with an all-consuming torment that promised there’d be no sweet, loving future where this scene didn’t happen, where she was never naked and helpless and hurt and ashamed.

She kicked her legs and beat her fists, begged and pleaded for it to stop.  The crowd went wild at the sight of this, their ovation blending with the awful clapping sound of her reddening cheeks.

In desperation, she dug both hands into the gap between the cushions and the couch frame, the graveyard of countless TV remotes.  She pushed her face in there too, and started burrowing like a worm into the dark, quiet world she knew was waiting for her down there.

Tara was still sitting on the far end of the couch.  She grabbed Buffy’s ankles and yanked her legs out straight.  “Hold her!” she squealed.  “She’s trying to go back.”

The torrent of swats kept coming, striping her butt with pink fingerprints.  The Watcher’s hand had become a hateful machine, and for a crazed moment Buffy was certain there was no off switch, and that this scene would never, ever end.

She kept digging and squirming into the plush trench, grateful when the cushions pressed over her ears.  Before long, the circus noise of the theatregoers damped down and fell apart, along with the horrible goading voices of her friends.

By the time her shoulders squeezed through, even the shameful slapping sound had faded to a distant whump, whump, whump, like the rotor blades of the world’s slowest helicopter being lifted into the sky.  She swam further and further into the soft, black crease, her ankles stretching like taffy where Tara held them until they finally slithered free.

As she clawed her way down, the rumbling sound returned, static cracks and shocks and the bellows of alien worlds colliding.  But it didn’t matter, because now the smell of hot chocolate and fresh sheets and cheapo, bargain-bin hairspray filled her nostrils.  She was going the right way.

“Oy,” called a voice from the void.  “Down here, Buffy.”

She tried to squeeze herself through a slit of invisible velvet, but it was suffocating her, crushing her flat.  “I can’t make it.  I can’t fit.”

“Plenty of womb down here.”

“What?”

“Said there’s plenty of room down here, love.”

She wriggled and writhed, felt the bones of her body melting to glue.  “But,” she said, “you’re still up there.”

“Acting, love,” the vampire replied, his voice flickering out of the blackness like a little candle.  “Besides, this is where we all go, eventually…”

And then she woke up.

Alarm.  Buzzing. 

Buffy opened her eyes.  The morning that greeted her was disorienting and upside-down, her feet where her head should’ve been.  She was tangled in sweaty blankets, as though she’d been tunneling through them in her sleep.  As her brain creaked to life, the embers of a very freaky dream winked out one by one, until there were only wisps of smoke.  Buffy grasped at them anyway.

Something about a play?

She rolled sideways, the sheets burrito-ing around her, and belly-flopped onto the floor.  The alarm kept buzzing away, totally oblivious to her plight.  When her fingers found it, she just barely resisted the urge to squeeze its little plastic guts out.

8:30 a.m., it said.

Shower-time was less of an event this morning.  She patted herself with a hotel-sized bar, gave her legs a cursory meh of a fur-exam, and then she was brushing teeth, toweling off, pulling on an outfit, moussing hair, the works.  She finished it off with a citrus spritz of perfume, then stared at the clock again.

9:23 a.m.

Record time.

~*~*~

Today was a “day off”.  For most people, “days off” were different after high school, but they were even different-er for Buffy Summers, the Vampire Slayer.

Back in the olden days, the final school bell just meant it was time for her to go to work.  There were other kids like her – kids who went off to sling frappuccinos or sell movie tickets, and even a few lucky souls who took piano lessons or ballet or something.  Buffy’s after school job, on the other hand, had a body count.

Nowadays, days-off meant slovenly mornings and lazy afternoons.  Dawn was already gone – the way she always seemed to be these days – and Wicca Incorporated was nowhere in sight.  Feeling blissfully unadventurous, she poured out a big bowl of Sugar-O’s and spent some quality time in front of the boob-tube.

She clicked through channel after channel of daytime junk: weird soap operas she didn’t recognize, talk shows that sounded more like yell-shows.  News, news, M.A.S.H. re-run, news.  One final click, and they all went away.

She sat very still for a couple of minutes, staring at the empty screen.  The house was quiet.

Too quiet.

She needed to get the hell outta there.

~*~*~

Sunshine!  Summer days!

Sunnydale, California, could be a very bright and cheerful place, at times.  Sure, the number of murders-per-capita rivaled most active war zones, but when the air wasn’t filled with screams and when the great, big yellow glob in the sky was shining down, life here could almost pass for normal.  Heck, pleasant, even!

So, Buffy strolled down Main Street, taking in the sights and sounds.  Children played and laughed and puppies yipped.  Young lovers waltzed hand-in-hand past old married couples lugging the month’s supply of groceries.  Through the glass front of the Espresso Pump, she stopped to watch a gaggle of teenage girls sitting in a booth, teasing and singing and plotting their adorable little schemes.  One day, she realized, they would all be dead.

Rotting in the dirt, six-feet down, their eyes chewed away by…

Ice cream!  Ye Olde Ice Cream Shoppe!

Buffy stopped to get one, quietly delighting in the fact that a double-dip Rocky Road with sprinkles suddenly qualified as “brunch.”  She sat on a bench near the corner of Hamilton, licking like she’d never licked before.  As the world streamed by, she thought of all the things she could not-do today.  She could not-pay-bills, for instance; or not-workout.  There were dozens of things not to do.

Visions of cute shoes danced in her head, but when she got to the mall she just stared longingly at them.  Shoe prices were pretty hilarious to her, these days.  There was only one pair that seemed worth trying on: black 3-inch stilettos with a kinky studded strap.  She totally hogged the mirror with them, slinking back and forth like a model at the World’s Sluttiest Fashion Show and flashing a deadly little zipper of a smile.

After that, she hit the bookstore.  She wandered through the maze of shelves, marveling at the sheer volume of words that surrounded her.  Trillions, maybe.

She thought about college again.  About poetry and poems and poets.  And while she thought about these things, she flipped through a How-To book for skinning and cooking wild animals:

‘A sharp knife is better than a dull knife when it comes to field dressing a buck’, it read.

Well, duh.

Back on the promenade, she swam upstream through schools of chattering strangers.  Some of them were loaded down with paper bags, looking vaguely anxious and confused.  Others solemnly pushed strollers filled with bored-looking kids.  For the most part, those people just looked exhausted.  Dead inside.  As if they knew where all of this was headed some day. 

As if they could hear the hungry worms crawling beneath their…

Victoria’s Secret!  Shiny!

The mannequins in the window were draped with assorted, tissue-thin lingerie.  One statue struck a saucy pose: hands on hips, the curves of her pasty, lifeless anatomy on full display under a sheer, red nightie.  Nearby, another garishly painted dummy bent low to adjust her stocking under the words Back Stage Sexy, a fringed garter belt perfectly framing her toned, fiberglass tushy.  A stapled-on wig fell in a coquettish swirl over one eye, while the other pouted soullessly at all the mallrat voyeurs beyond the glass.  Rounding out the sexy scene: a trio of headless, armless corpses, advertising the latest in contour-control bras.

Buffy drifted inside, listlessly combing up and down the aisles.  Compared to the way the sultry sirens in the window wore it, most of the stuff looked incredibly cheap and lame hanging on the rack.  A row of twenty or thirty Supersmooth Cheekinis dangled in a row from a metal arm, like sides of beef in a slaughterhouse.  She formed a mental picture of a third-world Cheekini factory, where grim-faced workers churned out an endless river of sexually stimulating underpants for pennies on the dollar.  She mused that the same factory probably made uniforms for Doublemeat Palace.

She asked one of the clerks if she could try on the ‘Back Stage’ dealie.  The little sales droid bounced around from aisle-to-aisle, spouting cheerful little nothings as she gathered the supplies.

Buffy thanked her, then took the gear into a pretty pink dressing room: black satin bra, garters, and a pair of worn, store-loaner fishnets with a history she tried not to think too deeply about.  She clicked the door shut, accidentally-on-purpose forgetting to lock it, and then stripped, all the way to her birthday suit.  She stuffed her legs into the thigh-highs and snapped the garters into place.  Hooked the bra on.

A weird staring match ensued with the creature in the mirror. She swayed and turned, hitched and adjusted.  The beaded fringes that dangled from the belt shimmied and danced when she twirled, first one way and then the other, ending in a feisty, feline pose that could melt an iceberg.

“You wanna fuck?” asked the slutty chick in the mirror, whispering the words through a phony, razor-thin smile.

Unsatisfied, she conjured the display doll’s pose in her mind, and tried her best to copy it.  She strapped her heels back on, and dipped forward gracefully.  When she tilted her head back to look, she realized her hair wasn’t falling quite right, and probably couldn’t.  Her new short ‘do just bobbed awkwardly into her nose and eyes.

She tossed her head a few times, and the bright spray of bangs reminded her of the fringes back there, so she gave her ass a come-and-get-it shimmy.  The beaded threads twirled and cascaded, beating like little rain drops across her skin.

“You wanna fuck me?” she asked again.  “Go ahead and fuck me, you… you… fucker.”

Buffy winced at the last word, and blew out the sort of small, self-pitying sigh common to most species of Nerd.  Thoughts of surrender crossed her mind, but she kept swaying her hips instead, trying to lose herself in the motion.  She arched her back and gave her butt a sharp, stinging swat, and then another, wondering if anyone could hear, if anyone knew what was going on.

Nothing.  She frowned at the door.

Buffy stood back up and faced the mirror girl again, dead-on this time.  She decided that the cropped hair made her look a little older, a bit more weathered.  It was strikingly yellow, with a little chemical help, and it made the little patch of fuzz downstairs look much darker by comparison.  She wasn’t alone on that tip.

After a few moments of sober deliberation, she pried off the bra and belt, slipped on her real clothes, grabbed a fresh pack of fishnets from an overflowing bin, and marched to the checkout counter.  Her eyes bugged out a little when the price winked up, but she courageously reached for her purse and charged like a raging elephant.

Later, in the little budget spreadsheet Willow designed, she’d record this purchase as a medical expense.

Because mental health sort of counted as medical, didn’t it?  And, according to Doctor Buffy’s own foolproof diagnosis, over the course of the past three weeks she had gone totally and permanently nutso.

~*~*~

3:44 p.m

Buffy still had some time to blow before patrol.  She briefly entertained a trip to the Magic Box, but kept making lazy laps around the block every time she drew near.  For some reason, she didn’t much relish flouncing in there with a bag full of kinky, overpriced Underoos.

On the third pass, signage of the Sun Theatre beckoned her with promises of Summer Blockbustery goodness.  She gave the marquis a cursory glance, settling on something called, “Death Masters II:  Armageddon It!”

She bought her ticket, grabbed a medium bucket of popcorn and a four-dollar “value” soda (medical expense).  While a movie trailer screamed in deafening Dolby, she found herself a nice, shady seat in the back row, far from the mass of coughers, snugglers and whisper-geeks who flocked to these sorts of affairs.

The flick was just as funny as she'd hoped.  Muscular dudes snarled their lame catchphrases over the roar of gunfire. A sexy Hollywood goddess in a leather bikini whipped exploding knives at a nuclear-powered zeppelin. When one of the Death Masters executed a super-slow-mo flying back fist, the Slayer almost choked on her crunchy, buttery snackage.

As the film neared its big, retarded finale, the screen erupted into flowery explosions and hysterically implausible kung-fu fights.  The intensity became almost hypnotic, like the music and the actors were racing each other to the inevitable credit scroll.

After it was over, Buffy filed out with the rest of the crowd.  The sun was hanging low in the sky, reminding her of one of those crazy relatives who hovers in the doorway saying, “Goodbye, goodbye,” but never actually leaves.

She trudged back to Revello Drive.  Dawn had already come and gone.  She’d left a post-it note in the kitchen, alongside an extra key.  Buffy picked up the note:

'At Marcy’s.  Sleeping over.
Try not to lose this one.

Dawn
A.K.A. The Keymaster!'

Buffy retreated to her bedroom and fished Victoria’s dirty little secrets out of their bag.  She started ransacking her closet for an appropriate disguise, tossing aside mounds of chiffon and nylon and lace.

The first winner was a velvet leopard print tank, no worse for lack of wear.  Next, three skirt candidates were interviewed.  While she liked the cut of Tan Suede’s jib, Black Mini got the job on personality alone.  Plus, if stuff got rough, Mini was a pretty cheap date.   And, when it came to her nightlife, stuff almost always got rough.

One way or the other.

The jewelry box was next.  She dug through the spaghetti piles: shiny crucifixes and rainbow beads hung from gold-plated serpentine links and leathery loops.  She pulled a silver chain free, and frowned at the little heart-shaped locket clasped in the middle.  In a moment of brilliant fashion surgery, she replaced it with the box’s miniature lock, and plugged it shut around her neck with an affirmative little grunt.

She skipped the clock this time, and looked out the window.

Sunset.

~*~*~

Shoes.

Shoes were always a problem.  When your night job involved killing evil monsters, mummies, zombies and vamps with your bare hands, the trick was to balance style and common sense.  Tonight, Buffy rocked a pair of ankle boots with a kitten heel.  Perfect for sidewalks, dark alleys, grave mud and rib-crunching sidekicks.  Also: cute!

It was the grave mud, now, Buffy listlessly mowing up the aisles, occasionally drifting just a little bit outside the lines.  Just to let ‘em know she was back.

So far, there wasn’t much in the way of action.  There was an ‘almost’, but it just turned out to be a trio of deeply stoned teenagers, waving their hands and philosophizing about the trails, man, the trails.  From a distance, it really did sorta look like karate.  Or, maybe Tai Chi.

So, she kept kicking along through the Dead Zone, kinda looking for trouble and kinda not.  She tried not to think too much about the direction she was headed, or how her winding path kept narrowing to a single, infuriating direction.

By the time she reached the door of his crypt, she was sweating a little.  Not, like, gross sweat, but the beady, tingly kind.  Or, at least that’s what she hoped.

She knocked twice.  The door creaked open.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

Spike gave her a wary, sideways look.  “What?”

Buffy shrugged at him.  Tried and failed to figure out what to do with her hands.  “Patrolling,” she said, jerking her thumb back lamely.  “Just wanted to see if you wanted to… uh, you know… tag along?”

He blinked at her, totally bewildered.  “Tag along?”

“Forget it,” she said, and turned to leave.

The vampire practically jumped out of his skin.  “Yeah! Yeah,” he said.  “Just let me, uh, grab my gear.”

He stumbled frantically into the depths of the crypt, his open black shirt flapping like a bat’s wings.  She followed him without invitation, marveling for the millionth time at the weird guy-ness of the place.  There were empty beer bottles filled with cigarette butts, and peeled plastic packaging strewn about like the shed skins of snakes.  A cheap little TV sat on a rusted tray like a shrine to the world’s crappiest god.

“Just… gotta get a few things,” he hollered, smashing through some invisible plates.  “Go ahead and make yourself comfortable…”

She reclined into his old, tattered armchair, pretending it was Queen Anne’s throne.  A bottle of something red sat on the chipped little end table, and – after deducing it wasn’t blood-or-blood-related – she tipped it back and took a long, hard swig.  It was warm and earthy, with yummy, fruity notes.

Spike returned more composed, one hand smoothing back his platinum hair.  He caught her halfway through her second swig, but instead of bashfully setting it aside she tipped it back even more, letting the scarlet wine rocket down her throat.

“Oh, right,” he said.  “Yeah, help yourself, love.”

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, never taking her eyes off him.  The vampire was both strange and agonizingly familiar.  Buffy suddenly realized that she’d known this freak since high school, and that they’d tried to kill each other many times over.  Not especially newsy, but for some reason the factoid overwhelmed her tonight.  She raised the bottle in salute. 

“Good stuff,” she said.

He grunted and shook his head, eyes skeptically slotted.   He was still blown away by the costume, it seemed.  Either that or by her mood – the way she just melted into his chair and kicked back the wine, like they were old buddies or something.

Except, at least one of us isn’t wearing underpants...

“So,” he said, “we gonna go hurt something or what?”

“In a sec,” she replied, stretching her neck and shoulders like a cat.  “Kinda sore, you know?”

The word staked him, dead in the heart.  She shot him an innocent little smile, driving it home another agonizing inch.

“Yeah, uh… I mean–”

“Let’s watch some TV first,” she suggested.  “Kinda dead out there, and I sorta got this itch for bad tube-ness lately.”

Spike closed the distance cautiously, tossing aside the jacket on the way.  He snapped on the TV – old-fashioned-style, with his hand – and then sat in a sullen, cross-legged pile a few feet north of the set.  The tube flickered back images of a ten-car pileup, and columns of black smoke.

“Pass,” she said.

He twisted the chunky dial sideways.  The snowy images that thunked past proved he had a better taste in wine than in electronics.  The dial finally stopped on one of those old, black-and-white movies; the kind where everyone overacted and was way-dramatically lit.

He scooted backwards excitedly: mouth hanging open, features drawn to the screen like a dog to a fat, white moon.

“What’s this?” she asked.  Not really caring.

“Oh,” he said, sounding weirdly tense.  “Uh, sorry, yeah, we can change it.”  He reached for the knob.

“I just asked what it is, spazmo.”

He shot her another bewitched look.  She bonged her knees together playfully in reply, and then spread her thighs just wide enough to give him a flash of the goods.  But he wasn’t looking down there.   He was staring at the necklace, and at her eyes.  Terrified.

He’s terrified of you...

“It’s, uh, it’s called… Roman Holiday.”

 She took another long hit of wine.  “Sounds like a hoot,” she said.  “What’s it about?”

“You know, I might want to have nip of that,” he said.  He pointed to show he meant the wine, just in case.  “I mean, when you’re done with it.”

She waggled the bottle at him, and shot a smile that showed only the tips of her teeth.

He crawled over to the chair and flopped backwards between her legs.  For a few moments, they squirmed for comfort, and when they were finished, her fishnet calves were draped casually over his shoulders, and the back of his head rested a few inches from the Y of her thighs.  He held one hand up, and she stuck the bottle in it.

“Yeah, so.  Roman Holiday,” he said.  “Well there’s this ritzy bird.  A princess…”

“Princess?” she said, squeezing her legs hard against his chest.  “Like, with a castle and everything?”

“Hey, watch the bloody shirt!” He grabbed her ankle above the boot, glaring at the muddy sole.  “It’s a buck a wash, you know?”

“So?  Take it off.”

“Oh, so you can sod up my skin instead?  No thanks.”

She tipped the shoes out in front of his face.  “Fine, princess,” she said.  “Take these off, then.”

The vampire cast a fierce sideways glance at her, then quietly obeyed, yanking off one boot and then the other, and tossing them away.

She smoothed her legs and feet, sharpened them against one another like knives.  The texture of the fishnets felt nice and naughty, and she suddenly wondered why she’d never worn any before. Spike stared at them, mesmerized.  She knew he wanted to touch them – knew it was driving him crazy.  But he kept his cool somehow.

(Terrified.)

“You were saying?”

“Right yeah.  Snooty princess, on a trip to Rome.  Pissed about being so bloody rich and famous, if you can believe it.  So, gets a jab from a doctor to help her sleep.  Conks out on a park bench, and this wanker finds her, an’ he hauls her back to his flat.

“But, instead of giving her a proper shagging, the wanker just lets her sleep in his bed while he flutters off to work, because he’s a mincing poofter with stupid hair and a Nancy Boy of the highest order.  The end.”

She smiled and smoothed her hand up the back of his neck.   On the screen, the actors were chatting next to a huge stone face.  It was a pretty gross looking thing, with hollowed-out holes for eyes, and a long tongue that dangled out of its mouth like a panting dog.  The man and the woman stood next to it, exchanging soft but eager looks.

Buffy stifled a laugh.  “Whoa, what the heck is that thing?”

Spike’s shoulders sighed under her bouncing legs.  “Mouth of Truth.”

“Huh?”

“The Mouth of Bloody Truth,” he said again, exasperated.  “You stick your hand in there, and if you tell a lie it bites it off.”

“Gross!”  She pressed her knees against his ears and crossed her legs around his chest, gave him a playful squeeze and a tender, little shake.  “I knew you’d pick something sick,” she said, filling the words with a breathy heat.  She ran her fingers up his neck again, and through his hair.

The bait worked this time.  He set the bottle aside and smoothed his hand along her calf, gave the back of her knee a little scratch, plucking the smutty webs there like tiny harp strings.

While the TV violins sawed away intensely, the princess stuck her hand about halfway in the statue’s mouth, then giggled and pulled it out.  “Let’s see you do it,” she said.

“Sure,” the man said, not looking so totally sure about it.

He slowly placed his hand in the gap, the cheesy music swelling dramatically.  Buffy slid her hips forward in the chair, Spike’s neck gradually slipping into the noose of her thighs.

The hand disappeared, all the way inside.  The TV man screamed.

The princess jumped.

And, so did Buffy, a spasm jerking through her hips.

“Ow!”  Spike barked.

“Sorry,” she said, and belted out a low, goofy laugh.

“Coulda ripped my sodding head off!”

She bent forward, put her lips next to his ear.  “Awww,” she purred.  “Want me to kiss it and make it better?”

And before he could answer, she did – started lapping and nipping at the skin of his neck, smiling and breathing hot.  The tense coils in his back and shoulders seemed to melt beneath her tender touch, like they’d been aching for this since the moment he’d opened the door.

He kissed her thigh, ran his tongue along the seam where the stocking met it, tangled it in the garter strap.  When her turned to face her, she ground her hips forward again, letting the seat cushion push the skirt up.   He ran his hands up under her legs and helped get the job done, peeling the mini up and cupping the globes of her bare ass firmly in his palms.  He squeezed and massaged them.  Kissed her warm thighs and drew little circles with his tongue.

She grabbed the back of the chair, her cheeks flushing hot.  By this time, her stockinged legs had grown minds of their own, crisscrossing over his back and gradually pulling him closer.  His smart hands kept working underneath, the pinkies straying into the small, delicate grooves that bordered her pussy.   The fingers stroked and teased the soft muscles there while his mouth slowly inched its way home.

When it arrived, she rewarded him with a whimper.  He ran his tongue up and down the seam playfully, licking the envelope to a filthy love letter.  His strong hands lifted her ass several inches above the cushion and spread the cheeks.  After that, she was airborne, riding his face.

Horsie…

He teased her tiny hood with his nose for a moment, then his lips found her lips.  He kissed her wet pussy like it might kiss him back, his tongue mapping every secret corner.  She rode her hips in a slow circle, feeling the little fringy bangles of Victoria’s garter belt tap along her back.

After she did it the third time, she arched herself even further into the air, freeing his hands to do whatever they wanted.  What they wanted turned out to be good.  His thumbs immediately found the slippery place where his chin brushed against her, kneading the thin flesh there.

The tongue dove deep, and flickered like a candle.  Buffy saw a forest fire, felt a wall crack in half.

When she opened her eyes he was looking into them, and she knew at once he’d been looking the whole time, praying for them to open, just like his body had prayed for her casual touch.  They were shot through with pain, like his heart was trying to squeeze through them.  She pushed back with her own eyes, and for a few moments the two gazes wrestled each other in the space between.

She grunted and pitched herself forward, sending both of them tumbling to the ground.  Her mind and body were both moving snake-quick.  He froze dumbstruck for a second while she flipped herself upside-down, pressing her face against his jeans and jerking at his zipper.

After the shock passed, he went right back to kissing her, taking big mouthfuls of her legs and ass, and pushing his tongue back inside her as she drew his cock into her lips.  They writhed together on the crypt’s hard floor, suckling at each other’s filthy treasures, each head resting on the pillow of the other’s thigh.  A wonderful delirium settled in: the feeling of being one thing, a mindless sex machine, fucking and sucking with their hips and faces.

A hot, surprise orgasm slammed out of her, warm leaves blowing in its wake.  She groaned and shook, and the small muscles of her back were wracked with sudden spasms.

Spike felt it happen.  He clenched tighter, trying to reach the finish line with her.  But she wouldn’t let him.  She peeled her mouth away with a devilish smile.

Poor Horsie…

He cried out in disbelief when she bounded to her feet, glared at her like he wanted to bite her in half.  By the time he staggered up, she was already standing in the open doorway. Laughing.

“Whuh?”  he said.  “What are you…?”

She shot him another sizzling little smirk.  “Aw, what’s the matter?  Can’t get your sweet release?”

Spike’s fangs fired down.  “You bitch!”

She giggled at him cruelly.  “Don’t blame me.  You said you wanted to ‘hurt something’, right?”

The vampire’s golden eyes blazed at her like a pair of suns.  He was breathing heavy, unaware he was even doing it, and his fingers convulsed at his sides like they were strangling the air around his dick.

She turned.  Gave the skirt a little flip, flashing her ass.  “Well, then.  I guess you’re just  gonna have to catch me.”

Buffy took off running:  arms and legs pumping, shoeless feet pounding the dirt like the Earth stole something from them.   She ran as fast as she could.  Which was pretty darn fast.

And – predictably, mercifully – he chased her.

Running, she thought.

In a graveyard, no less.  Talk about déjà vu. 

The headstones whipped past like lights on a highway, the names and dates all lost in the blur.  The vampire was lagging far behind, so she eased off the gas a little.  Let him get closer.

The graveyards of Sunnydale were like summer homes to her.  She knew all their secrets, so she just emptied her mind and let her stamping feet guide her across this one.  Her heart was a banging drum in her chest and she was giggling, and Miss Mini lapped at her bare skin like a delightful phantom, and she could taste poison in her mouth. 

“C’mon slow poke,” she cried.  “Can’t you see I’m unimpressed?”

Near the northeast bounds of the cemetery, she carved a hard arc towards the little copse of weeping willows where she’d spotted the stoners earlier that night.  Her senses were blazing, so she could still feel their presence there, frozen stiff and camouflaged like wary animals. 

When she ground to a halt near the mouth of the clearing, she could hear their bleary, guarded eyes chattering back.  Is it the cops?  Is it something worse?   She grinned savagely into the nest of shadows there, drinking down their fear like fine wine.

It’s the undead, my pretties.  We’ve come for your souls…

BooooOOOOooooooo…

Spike’s boots stopped beating a few yards shy of where she stood.  She turned, smiling like her mouth was filled with fangs.  He wasn’t pretending to breathe now, so she was a little surprised to find his human face staring back at her again, as white and distant as the moon.  His mouth was a hard line, and his eyes were illegible black scrawls full of pinprick stars.

“Poor baby,” she teased.  “You gonna cry or something?”

He shot her a murderous scowl.  When he charged at her it was in the old, school-days way.  They snapped and reeled at one another like vipers, trapped and sparred and traded uppercuts.  The stars spun overhead, an audience serenading their power ballad.  She started laughing again: big, psycho belly laughs, unable to contain herself.

As they grappled, Buffy thought she heard a little panicked gasp from the potheads’ secret tree fort.  She whirled like a dancer, slashing a backhand across the monster’s face that stunned him.  He staggered backwards a few steps and licked his thumb.  Cursed and spit at the dirt.

“I get it now,” she said, sing-songing the words.  “You thought we were gonna hang, right?  Watch some TV, act all palsy-walsy? Snuggle, maybe?”

Here it comes, she thought, watching his dead chest rise and fall, rise and fall.  And his eyes: little wet stars twirling in them, dreaming the answer out loud.

“Oh,” she sighed.  “You thought we were gonna sleep together, didn’t you?  Oh no… oh, you poor, delusional freak.”

Spike made a sharp and anguished sound.  He cradled his own head like he wanted to tear it off. She started walking towards him, feeling as light as a ghost.

“You thought we’d curl up under the sheets?” she asked, genuinely curious. “And then I’d lay there. In your warm arms...”

Another cry barked out of him and he fell to his knees, like a mad dog gunned down in the snow.

She knelt down with him.  The ground there felt clammy and new, like the kind of dirt people pay to have installed on lawns.

“Why?” he said, gasping and choking on the word.

“Shhhh.”

Buffy stroked and smoothed his marble-white chest, his shoulders, and gently curled an arm around his waist.  She met his wide, glassy eyes with her lidded ones, and then licked and nipped his lower lip, nerves sizzling all over.  The night was hot and her legs were still slick, so she dragged his hand down there, pushing it into the soft crease of flesh where her pussy met her thigh.

Her lips pressed against his ear.  “Because there’s a blackness in hearts,” she whispered.  “Even in beating ones.”

He shoved her hard, sending her reeling backwards into the dirt.  She was cackling like a lunatic, and the sound was so sudden and jolting that it even gave her the creeps.  But that thought turned out to be even funnier – a Slayer so scary she scared herself – and plunged her into a wild fit of hysterics.

“BooooooOOOOoooooooo,” she moaned, rolling and twitching on the grass, the violent peals of laughter stabbing her gut like switchblades and broken glass.

He grabbed her wrists and shook her.  “Stop!  Stop it!” 

She kept giggling up at him.  The warm wine in her blood was tickling her, now, splashing against smooth walls of ice.  “Or what?  You gonna punish me?”

His fangs growled down, yellow eyes burning with hatred and something even hotter.  But the hate was all she could use right now.

“Punish me,” she said.  “C’mon Big Bad, make me feel it.”

“I can help you,” he said, each word pleading and pitiful, trying to convince himself of it.

“You had your chance.  You all did.”

The face that looked down at her seemed strange for a monster; full of gut-shot horror and grief.  The arms that pinned her were still iron, but everything else was shaking and twisting away from her, his body at war with itself.  A pair of excited whispers wafted out of the thicket, and he snarled at them savagely.  But his amber eyes were darting and his jaw was working, chewing on her words.  She knew he was quite a bit smarter than most people gave him credit for.  He was starting to understand.  

She felt pressure build in her blood like steam in a pot.  When it hit the boiling point she wrenched one of her hands free and smoothed it across his wet cheek.

“This is all you get,” she said.  “It’s all that’s left.”

He stared at her for what felt like an eternity, and then gave her the smallest nod.

Somewhere in the dark world, a curtain came up, revealing the pale spotlight of the moon and two actors poised on a grim set, surrounded by a sea of headstones.  He pulled her across his lap, and waited for his cue.

“Oh no!” she squealed, wiggling and squirming ludicrously.  “O, unhand me, you brute!”

“Oh, shut it, wench,” he bellowed, his voice thick with bogus swagger, “or you’ll get it even worse!” 

Spike flipped up the flimsy skirt, tucked it into the waistband of the garter belt.  Hypnotized by the night’s strange, shameful gravity, she dug lines in the soil with her toes, imagining brown rings of soil pushed under the nails.  When the palm sung down the first time she yelped and wriggled, and when it came down again she arched her back and splayed her knees, playing the helpless damsel at last.  It hurt just enough, splattering on one cheek then the other, then straight up the middle.  When she spread her legs wider he complied, mashing his palm against her pussy between swats.

She wept and moaned when he took his belt off, really selling it.  He bent it into a loop and started slashing away, roaring harsh, ad-libbed nonsense.  The sound of the whipping was incredible: a bright, sharp knife carving the air, ending in a sizzling thump that left hot tooth marks in her skin.

“Now… tell me… I’m bad,” she said with a gasp, just loud enough for him to hear it.  “Tell me I’m wrong.”

He grabbed her up by her shoulders, gathering her into his lap.  His face was human again, those blue, blue eyes full of need and hunger and the other thing, the thing hotter than hate.  He kissed her.  Consumed by a sudden, unexplainable mercy, Buffy allowed it.  Let his tongue warm itself inside her mouth.

“Over there,” she said, with her lips and eyes.  He followed them to the tombstone, and the bed of freshly packed dirt set before it.

She wrapped her legs around him as he stood and carried her to the grave.  When they went down again, she tugged open his jeans and gave his cock a gentle squeeze.  “Rip my shirt off,” she said.

He grabbed the tank and ripped it in half up the middle.  She pulled herself onto his hips.  Her knees locked around his waist, she began grinding and shoving, her whipped, stinging ass smearing the cool mud all over itself like a balm.

Above her, Spike’s top half was like an abstract painting, blurred by tears and shadows.  She could feel her body slowly coming to life, the world becoming bright and warm again.  Filled with an urge that was almost electrical, she toppled them both over sideways, pinning him beneath her.  Like that first time, she thought.

When we brought the freakin’ house down.

As she rode him, the portrait of his face drifted slowly back into focus, framed by black earth. He was trying his best, she knew.  The thing in his chest he’d sung about – that lifeless lump of muscle – was haunted by a dream of a murdered man.  He tried to show it to her with his eyes.  And, for the first time since that night in the Bronze, she tried to look at it. 

It was bruised and childlike, guarded over by sharp weapons and tall, steel walls.  She didn’t think she should dare to love it, so she rammed her hips down and tried to fuck it to death instead.

“Harder, you wimp!” she cried.

He reared and bucked, snarled his cock deep inside.  She unhooked Victoria’s top-secret bra and ran her hands over her breasts, bit her nipples hard with her fingers.  She remembered the way the dirt felt when she clawed through it, the way it baptized her skin.  And afterwards: that moment of perfect loneliness standing in the quiet woods, realizing how empty and cold the world was, no matter how much people lied to themselves about it.

The rain was so warm, she didn’t even notice when it started.  By the time she felt it, the misting drops had become a storm – one of those hot, summery storms that felt like the sky was sweating down at them.  She tossed her head up into it, shook her hair.  Spike’s hands gripped her ass hard, and she crushed herself to him.  Her small breasts flattened against his chest as she buried her face in his neck, feeling the wet mud slathering her cheek and her eyebrow.  She breathed a stream of curses into his ear.  The voice barely sounded like hers.

“Youfuckmesogoodbabyyeahfuckthatlittlepussyfuckithard…”

The rain teemed on her back and thighs, making her body feel solid and real again.  When he brought his knees up she stopped riding and let him drive for awhile.  She twined her ankles around his calves and turned off the switch in her hips.  Her ass bounced off his thighs and he ripped and reamed, faster and faster.  The world lost color and shape for a moment when she came.  Blood thundered in her ears and behind her eyes and between her legs.  She screamed like she wanted to wake up whoever’s grave it was they just defiled; instead, it blasted a shockwave through the vampire’s body that sent him sailing over the edge.  He slammed home the last few thrusts like the end of a dizzy jazz solo, shooting rambling beats into her.

They laid there for almost a minute, his cock still snug inside her.  The few scraps of clothing that still hung to her were completely drenched and filthy, and the stockings were ripped and ruined.  She kissed him on the neck, surprising both him and herself.

“Let’s go back to your place,” she whispered.  “I wanna see how it ends…”

~*~*~

Buffy awoke with a start, her heart racing.   They were in bed together.  They’d messed up the sheets pretty good from the looks of it, with damp streaks of dark green and brown everywhere.

She was lying in his arms.  Just like she swore she wouldn’t.

She sat up – slowly and gently, not taking her eyes off him for a second.  His hair was a tangled white mop of curls.  That was a far cry from the way he liked it: slick and smooth, but somehow crisp, like a baby snake’s forehead.  His fierce eyebrows were surprisingly slack, drinking a pleasant dream.  He was breathing, too.  Even in his sleep, he breathed.

For a few minutes, Buffy tried to get back down there with him.   She shut her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder, but her body wouldn’t cooperate.  Invisible spiders tap-danced up and down her spine, and the her thigh muscles kept flinching and yawning like a pair of impatient dogs.

So, she quietly slithered out of the bed.  She was totally naked now, and took a quick wardrobe tally.  The shredded remains of her leopard print top were decorating someone’s grave out there.  The survivors were hanging limp over the headboard: Miss Mini, Super Bra, and the garter belt with the cute little fringes.  She would’ve felt mega-lame wearing any of them at the moment, so she just wrapped one of the muddy bed sheets around her shoulders and shuffled stiffly into the den.

She plopped down on the armchair again and found the wine bottle where Spike had left it on the floor.  There were only a few swallows left in it, so she nursed it gently, and swished each sip like mouthwash to make it last.

The TV was still on.  “Roman Holiday” was over, and had long since given way to some old kung fu movie.  The sound was turned mercifully low, making the actor’s overdubbed English dialog seem less jarring and freaky.

“I will kill you until you are dead,” barked one yellow-pajama-ed warrior with a long, swooping ponytail.

His dark-robed enemy strode forth menacingly: “Quiet!  Or I’ll blow your face up, mmmm?”

An old Yoda-looking dude stepped between them, his arms thrust out dramatically.  “Hey!” he shouted.  “This is a martial arts competition, uhhhnnn?   This is no place to fight…”

Buffy took another nip of wine and nestled herself deeper into the chair, finding the scent of cigarette smoke there weirdly inviting tonight. The mud and rain on her skin had long since dried to dark dust, and now everything felt clammy and tingly.  The momentary sensation brought back memories of a childhood that had never felt so distant.  

Fifteen minutes later, the dueling kung fu guys were hiking together up a mountainous path.  Via some mysterious, bad-movie magic, they had become allies.  As they crossed a craggy pass, a bunch of soldiers attacked them.  Yellow Dude smashed the first three with his staff, and then Blacky took care of the rest with his twirling nunchuks. 

“Mmmm! I see you know the dragon form of the split-staff,” said Yellow Guy.

“And I see you know the phoenix form of the solid staff,” Black Robe replied.  “Quite a damn pair we make. Ha!”

When the bottle was empty and the words “The End” were emblazoned on the screen, Buffy tiptoed back into the bedroom.  She pulled on what was left of her outfit, topping it off with a black tee-shirt silently pilfered from Spike’s chest-of-drawers.

She gave him one last look.  There was a dent in his brow now, like the storms of a nightmare were blowing across it. His hand pawed mournfully at the spot where she had slept.

She returned to the den, grabbed her boots, turned off the TV, and then slipped quietly back into the night air.

Feeling it.