Fic: The Spuffy, the Witch, and the Utility Shed [5/11]

Title: The Spuffy, the Witch, and the Utility Shed
Author: bewildered
Era: BTVS between s3 & s4
Rating: NC-17 eventually
Summary: When Buffy encounters Spike at her college orientation, the last thing she expects is to be hurtled with him into a demon dimension. Now they must battle together against hordes of unnatural creatures, talking beavers, and… is that a lion?

AU set between seasons 3 and 4. Don’t let the hints of plot fool you, this is mostly just an excuse for some smut. Well, smut and mayhem; it is Spuffy.

With deepest, most heartfelt apologies to C.S. Lewis for the mutilation of his characters and bits of his dialogue.

Warnings: NC-17 for violence and sex. (As of initial posting, 5/15, the smut is still Future Smut, but is on the way soon!) Lots and lots of beloved childhood character death. Sorry!

Thanks to the_moonmoth, who inspired this fic by sending me fic prompts and then egging me on as I got sillier and sillier, and then beta-reading at the very last minute. I am the luckiest ever.

Click for a chapter index!

Chapter 5: What Happened After Dinner

The demon-beavers’ homey dam turned out to be an excellent base of operations; there was a pantry nicely stocked with bread and jam and cheese and hams, which kept Buffy nicely fed, and there was also a constant stream of vicious talking animals coming to raid Buffy and Spike, which kept Spike grodily fed, and in the meantime it was easily defended, snug and secure and easily locked up at night, with a sturdy bolt on the only door.

The weather started to change almost immediately after they arrived, the snow and ice melting swiftly so that soon the icicles were gone and the river was flowing, a deep pool on the one side of the dam and a merry stream on the other, and flowers were blooming soon thereafter, and it would have really been quite idyllic if it weren’t for the homicidal animals. Well, and the fact that Buffy really hated Spike, even when he was defending her back and making jokes that she didn’t want to find funny. She was starting to find them funny, which fact she found disturbing.

She was probably going crazy. But it wasn’t like she had any choice.

They went every day to check the clearing where they had entered the dimension, but no matter how much they searched they weren’t able to find anything that resembled a portal, even climbing the trees (because of the falling), and Buffy really hoped that someone back home was trying to bring them back, because the demon-beavers had not been much for reading; they didn’t have any books to even try and research. (Well, there had been one book, tucked under the mattress of the little bed, but one glance at the contents had been enough to convince Buffy that it would be less-than-useful in their predicament, and in fact had also convinced her that it should be burned immediately so that she never had to glance at the contents again. Ew.)

Things had gotten quite settled and domestic by the time the wolves attacked.

They had heard the howls for a few nights running, unearthly wails demanding vengeance, vengeance for their slain queen, and every night they had made extra-certain that the door was well-bolted, but when the attack finally came it was in broad daylight, just when they least expected it. Which was, of course, when they should most have been expecting it, Buffy berated herself later, but the fact was that they had gotten complacent, and so it was their own fault.

Her fault. It was her fault.

Spike’s fascination with the sunlight still had not faded, and over the weeks he had managed to find more and more excuses to spend the day outside. At first he made noises about “patrolling” and put on a dramatic show of rattling knives and shifting to his vamp face, but after Buffy caught him lying shirtless on a grassy hill, basking in the sun with a soft, blissed-out smile on his lean face, he had apparently assumed the jig was up, and just shrugged and grinned sheepishly on his way out the door each morning.

Buffy would have mocked him for it, except she couldn’t get the picture of sunbathing Spike out of her head, and was herself managing to find more and more excuses to follow Spike out the door and conveniently stumble across him whilst “patrolling” the grassy hill. Not that she thought he was attractive – not at all! She just had to make sure that he wasn’t sunbathing evilly. It was her sacred duty, even if they were just a bit out of her jurisdiction.

It was her responsibility to keep an eye on him, that was all.

She was very, very responsible.

The morning that the wolves attacked, she had waited a scant five minutes before following Spike out the door, because she kept hoping she might stumble across Spike in the actual process of taking off his shirt – he might be taking it off evilly, she reasoned, and if so, she didn’t want to miss it – and he hadn’t even made it out of the valley when she slipped out the door and started up the hill after him.

She only made it a few steps when she was shoved forward into blackness.

There were snarls and growls, and curses, shooting stars in the dark, and Buffy swam feverishly through the darkness trying to grasp at them; they slipped through her fingers like water, like fire, like air, but there was one word that arced into her, a bolt of lightning, over and over, until it finally jolted her awake.

“SLAYER!”

She sat up in a rush, pain stabbing through her head, and cast her eyes about wildly, finally finding the source of the voice, a roiling ball of fur and blood and black and white, but she couldn’t comprehend what it was, not through the pain and dizziness and disorientation, until the heaving mass shifted and she saw Spike’s face, eyes blazing.

“SLAYER!” His voice was harsher this time, pleading, and there was something in his eyes that didn’t look right, because it was fear, and Spike wasn’t afraid, even when he was afraid, he always had swagger and bravado and why did he suddenly look terrified? Buffy couldn’t see, and she realized there was blood in her eyes, blood oh god her blood, and she shoved abruptly to her feet, swaying precariously, but there was fighting, there was fighting and she was The Slayer, she had to fight, and as her vision cleared, as she wiped the blood away and the sweat and the tears, she could see that Spike was wrestling with wolves, more than one – she couldn’t count, because they were moving and she was dizzy – and as she watched one of the wolf-heads in the throbbing mass of battle gaped wide and then crashed shut, and Spike’s throat was there oh god Spike’s throat his throat, and she fumbled in the pockets of the duster for her knives, and as the teeth ripped and savaged she hurtled forward and watched her hand as it rose and fell, stabbing and stabbing, until the clenched teeth sagged and released and fell away, and there was another face, slavering and growling, hair bristling on its neck, and “Traitor!” it muttered and “Vengeance” it snarled, and Buffy set her teeth and her shoulders and drove the knife between its eyes, and there was a third, but it quailed before her and she hesitated for a moment, but then she danced forward like a cat, slashing at its eyes and then at its throat, and it was dead before her, bleeding from a dozen wounds she didn’t remember but she didn’t care, she fell to her knees and crawled to Spike, and he was dead, he was dead, but he gurgled out words, almost words, and she sighed in relief because of course he was dead but he wasn’t dust, and she fell across his body in exhaustion.

His chest shifted weakly beneath her. “Did we win?” his voice rasped in her ear.

“Shut up,” Buffy sobbed, and pushed back onto her heels, gathering his mangled body up into her arms. He was covered in blood and strangely light, and she heaved to her feet, stumbling with dizziness, nearly tripping over the black-furred wolf corpse before her.

“Did I rescue you?” Spike insisted, eyes half-focused on her face.

“No, you moron,” Buffy snapped, pulling him closer. “I rescued you.”

Spike relaxed into her arms. “That’s all right then,” he sighed, and subsided into unconsciousness.

Buffy kicked open the door of the dam and kicked it shut behind her and rushed to the bedroom and laid Spike down on the rough straw mattress, falling to her knees.

“Don’t worry,” she crooned in a voice that didn’t sound like herself at all, it sounded thin and sad, and she set her chin and tucked him in and pressed her forehead to his chest, just for a moment, before she stood, legs still wobbly, and went in search of bandages.

She wasn’t going to let him dust. Not like this.

Go on to Chapter 6!

Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/556264.html