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.