Title: Served Cold
Author: bewildered
Rating: NC-17
Words: 4300 (one-shot, but in two posts due to size)
Season: 4
Summary: What do you do when your vampire ex-boyfriend comes to town, stalks you with the help of your so-called friends, and then leaves without saying hello, much less goodbye? Revenge sex, obviously! Shameless PWP set after Pangs.
Thanks to EF’s Sigyn & Zabjade for betareading!
SERVED COLD
“What now? Are we off to see the wizard?”
“Shut up, Spike.” Buffy stomped down the street ahead of him, swinging the six-foot chain attached to his manacles. “We’re going to my house.”
He grinned at her stiff back. “Lovely! Joyce always has marshmallows in the pantry.”
She cast him a poisonous look over her shoulder. “Mom’s not there.”
The streets were empty – Spike gauged it was after midnight – and they walked in silence for some time before he sighed and gave in. “And why are we going to your house? Do tell.”
“Because the butcher closed at three.”
“Well, that’s not cryptic at all.”
The slayer sighed and stopped in her tracks, turning to look at him again, and now… she didn’t look angry. She looked tired. Which he supposed was to be expected when one had cooked up a holiday feast for one’s mates, and fended off a bloody bear besides.
“You’re my prisoner. And even though I hate you and will most likely kill you in the morning, in the meantime I may as well feed you.” She turned and started to walk again. “There’s blood at my house.”
Now that was interesting. “This some new fad diet?”
She shrugged as if it was of no moment. “I keep a few pints in the freezer, just in case.” And then she gave his chain an angry swing. “But I don’t think I need it anymore.”
Ah. There it was. It would be kind to let that sleeping hangdog lie, but bugger kindness. “Saving it for when Angel came to call, were we?”
Her whole body quivered with outrage, but she stomped onwards in silence.
Spike grinned, sauntering in her wake. Might not be able to bite, but was good to know he could still draw blood.
*
Buffy stood in front of the microwave, watching the Tupperware of pig’s blood spinning around and around, fuming.
Angel had come to town. He had come to town, and he had stalked her, and he had gotten her friends to go behind her back and lie to cover him, and then… he had left. What was his problem? Was he allergic to greetings? I’m not going to say goodbye, she grumbled to herself. No, I’m just going to make sure you see my dramatic exit, so it hurts even worse than saying goodbye, and then come butt into your life every chance I get, except from the stupid shadows because I’m a stupid in-the-shadows-drama-guy who can’t be bothered to say hi to the supposed love of my life.
God, she was just so angry. She wanted to yell and scream and hit something, but instead… Well, instead she was getting her petty revenge by giving the blood she’d saved for Angel – just in case he showed up unannounced – to the vampire she suspected Angel despised the most in the whole wide world.
It wasn’t enough.
She was still muttering under her breath when the blood was finally thawed, if not actually warm; she grumbled her way down the basement stairs to where she’d padlocked Spike’s chains to a convenient pipe. There had been an old cot folded away under the stairs that she had grudgingly unfolded and laid some sheets on for her prisoner – not that he deserved them, but her mom would blow a gasket if she found out there had been a guest under her roof that hadn’t been offered clean linens, evil or not – and he was lounging on it, looking as if the heavy chains were a fashion accessory.
“Got it warm enough?” He glared at her as if she were an overworked and underpaid diner waitress. Which she actually had been once, so she really knew the look.
“It’s liquid,” she retorted. “That’s warm enough.” She tucked the bendy straw between his pale lips.
He took a sip and grimaced. “Slayer, there are some things best served cold. Blood is not one of them.”
“Want me to dump it out?”
“Sod off.” He sucked furiously at the straw, watching her as if she were a live grenade.
She felt kind of like a live grenade, actually. Like someone had pulled her pin and any second now she was going to go off, and when Spike had slurped up the last dregs of blood, she did.
“Who does he think he is?” she ranted, setting the empty Tupperware on the floor and starting to pace.
Spike lolled back on the cot, licking his lips. “Wanker,” he said agreeably.
“Coming up here and being all tortured-hero about his stupid destiny!”
“Too right. Bloody tosser.”
Buffy glared suspiciously at Spike. “Why are you agreeing with me?”
He shrugged. “Always game for ragging on Angel. He’s a ruddy bore.”
“He is not!” Buffy said hotly, then scowled. “He’s just a big jerky… jerkface.”
Spike nodded encouragingly, and… what the hell, ranting was better with an audience. She started pacing again, back and forth in front of the cot.
“Can you believe he just came up and convinced all my friends to lie to me just so he didn’t have to face me himself?”
“Manky knob.”
“And then! Then! Willow said he was acting all jealous, just because he saw me talking to Riley! Who I’m not even dating. Not yet, anyways, and maybe not ever! I haven’t even decided yet! She said it like it was supposed to make me feel better or something, but seriously?”
“Gormless tit.”
“I mean, he’s the one who’s all you deserve someone normal and this is a freakshow you superfreak, and then he gets all Tarzan-chest-beaty when I actually meet someone normal? What gives him the right?”
“Barmy git.”
“You know what I should do? I should give him something to be jealous about.” She folded her arms, glaring in the general direction of Los Angeles. “It would serve him right if I went and had sex with Riley right now.”
“You go do that, Slayer,” Spike said approvingly, clapping his manacled hands. “Happy to be your cameraman, send proof to the plonker.”
Buffy was halfway to the stairs on her vengeful mission when she stopped in her tracks. “No, wait, I can’t.” She stamped her foot in frustration. “Stupid Riley’s in stupid Iowa right now with his stupid family.”
Spike glanced at the floor under her feet. “Have to say, Slayer, that might be better for his health,” he said drily.
She looked down, belatedly noticing the cracks in the concrete radiating out from her boot heel. “Whoops.” Those had been there before, right? She was almost sure of it.
Anyhow, she resumed pacing. “I just need to do something. Anything. I don’t need him, and after today I’m not even sure I want him anymore, and…” Dammit, she was starting to cry, and she needed to hit something, but the only thing in the basement that she could hit was Spike, and he was all chained up and letting her talk, like she used to talk to Willow, except of course she had never chained Willow up, even when she had been an evil vampire.
She couldn’t hit him when they were having girl-talk.
*
God, this was bloody brilliant.
Now that he’d got some blood in him, could feel it healing his cracked lips and arrow wounds, Spike was finding the sight of the slayer on a rampage more entertaining than the telly. He’d not had the opportunity to observe her all hot and bothered before – not outside of the heat of battle – and she was truly an inspiring sight, all flashing eyes and swirling hair, just radiating glorious fury. Didn’t hurt that she had her knickers twisted about bloody Angel and his delusions of relevance; a more deserving target of scorn Spike had never known. Perhaps he could goad her into staking the sod. That would almost make his inability to bite without excruciating pain worth it.
“You could go find another bloke to shag,” he suggested helpfully, when she seemed to have run out of steam.
She sank down onto the steps. “No. No, that’s not going to work.” She wrapped her arms around herself, looking lost. “I’m not… I’m not any good at that. Finding guys.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Seem to recall you made a good show of it, not so long ago.”
“What, Parker?” She laughed shortly. “Yeah, that worked out real well.”
God, she must really be low, not to have punched him in the nose for that reminder. “Universities are bloody infested with dodgy fellows looking for a tumble,” he pointed out.
“And yet, somehow they all manage to resist my feminine wiles,” she muttered testily.
“I’d do you,” he said without thinking, then stiffened, anticipating the beatdown of the century. Pity that, he’d been looking forward to Y2K.
But she just looked at him, face blank. “You’d what?” she said finally, voice dripping disbelief.
What the hell, might as well be hanged for a bloody sheep. “I’d shag you.”
She stood and walked over to him, staring down at him with guarded eyes. “You’re kidding, right?”
He grinned up at his death. “Not a whit. You want to fuck someone, prove you’re not Angel’s plaything?” He stretched sinuously, watching her eyes track the ripple down his body. “Could be convinced.”
Her eyes snapped back to his face and narrowed suspiciously. “What’s in this for you?”
Bloody hell, did she actually think so little of her own attraction? Shagging her would be reward enough. He’d bet a dozen kittens she was a screamer. “Blood,” he said instead. “You said you had a few pints. Warm me up another one.”
She glared down at him. “You hate Angel.”
“That I do,” he agreed. “And he hates me.” He lowered his voice to the silky rumble he used to convince women to come into the darkness. “He’d go mad at the thought of me laying my hands on you, making you sigh and tremble and come apart. Sullying your precious purity with my dark passion.”
Her nostrils flared. “I hate you, too.”
“All the better,” Spike purred. “No need to pretend this is about anything more than revenge.”
She turned abruptly and walked away, and Spike heaved a sigh, resigning himself to continued celibacy and starvation, but then Buffy picked something up off the laundry machine and turned back to him, face set and determined.
It was the key.
Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/576236.html
