What’s in a Name – 1

When I signed up for this round, I had an idea for this comm that I abandoned (temporarily) because I was intrigued by the theme of fairy tales. “The Beauty and the Beast” came to mind first, but I know that’s been done already. In fact, after a moment I remembered I’d done it myself! I’ve been busy with work and haven’t read all the posts this round, so I don’t know if anyone else settled on the same tale I did.

What’s in a Name?

Disclaimer: All characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc. Only the lame plots and dialogue herein are mine.

Notes: This is set in a fluffy, silly Season Six similar to the one from my last seasonal_spuffy fic, although no familiarity with the previous fic is needed to understand this one. Everyone is sort of happy and sort of gets along, with enough exceptions to the general cheer and goodwill to keep things interesting. The main difference from the last story is that Buffy has admitted her relationship with Spike to her friends, but not to her innocent little sister.

Rating: R

Thanks: to itmustbetuesday for the comm and the inspiration and to keswindhover and revdorothyl for suggestions and beta.

 

In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst.

   – Oscar Wilde

 

Buffy stared at her bedroom ceiling. “Do you know when sex is really, really good?”

“All the time.” Spike revised his answer as she turned to look at him. “I mean, with you. With you, love.”

Buffy grinned. “First time right for you. You’ll do it any time, anywhere, won’t you?”

“Try me.”

“Mmmmmm.” Buffy stretched out on the bed, running several ‘anytimes’ and ‘anywheres’ through her mind. She’d have to try out a few of these ideas, although some others were probably really uncomfortable and best left to fantasy. She looked at Spike speculatively and saw he was staring at the wall. “Anything wrong?”

“No. More typing next door, that’s all.”

“What’s up with that? The semester’s over. You’d think Willow would be taking a break. She made it through finals with her fabulous GPA intact.”

“And she’s got her very pretty playmate Tara to celebrate with. But I hear her keyboard tapping away.”

Buffy was thinking of something else. “That’s the way it always goes, since high school. Buffy saves the world and flunks Chem. Willow saves the world and gets a 4.0. Remind me again, why am I the Chosen One?”

Spike was leaning over her, Willow’s nighttime habits apparently forgotten. “Just chosen for different things, pet. Willow for brains and witchery and you for brawn and bitchery. Ow!”

Much rolling around on the mattress, slapping of buttocks and playful biting with blunt teeth ensued.

“I am not a bitch!” she snarled.

“Yeah, Slayer. Nothing at all bitchy about pinning a bloke on his stomach and twisting his arm behind his back because he makes a bit of a comment. Nothing at all.”

She released him and flopped on her back, working on an adequate comeback. Damn, he was aggravating, she thought. Sometimes, she wanted to just make him shut up for good, because he was so sarcastic and annoying. He was— Eek! He was crouched between her legs.

As the criticism she had been about to utter changed to a squeal of surprise and pleasure, Buffy clapped one hand over her mouth.

Willow’s head turned as a feminine squeak from the other side of the bedroom wall was followed by a low-pitched, lascivious laugh. “Well, someone’s having a good time tonight. Just like last night and the night before that, and—.”

Tara flopped in a papasan chair, her expression glum. The wicker creaked unhappily beneath her. “It’s nice. I just wish it were us sometimes. How many weeks has it been now?”

Willow gave Tara a desperate look. “Maybe we can borrow a room somewhere, or I can check and see if my parents are going away for the weekend so we can use the Rosenberg homestead.”

But Tara, usually the most affable of creatures, was looking stern. “No, Willow, running away for a night won’t help. You have to get rid of him.” She gazed across the room. “And not just because we can’t make love with him here.”

“I’ve tried. And tried. I tried reversing the spell, but it doesn’t seem to have a rewind button.”

Tara wrung her hands. “He never sleeps. He just works, eats, and, uh, visits our bathroom. Makes a mess in the bathroom.”

“At least he keeps himself clean.” Willow forced a smile that said she was trying to look on the bright side. But then a stray memory made her face fall again. “I tried stealing the laptop when he was in the shower one day, but he just transported it back to the desk.”

“Try talking to him again.”

Willow went over to the small desk wedged into the opposite corner of the bedroom. Her laptop was open on the flat surface, its monitor glowing in homey blues and grays. A pile of books was stacked carefully on a chair borrowed from the dining room. Atop the tomes, a small figure squatted, leaning forward, stubby hands moving over the laptop’s keys so fast they were a blur. He was wearing an odd patchwork of clothes, his shoes curled up at the toes, and he had a long beard that almost completely obscured his features.

In other words, he was a pretty standard gnome. He even owned a pointed hat. It was hanging on the post of the bed where Tara and Willow had once engaged in amorous activities, but where they now slept fitfully, their dreams invaded by the sound of the keys being press on the laptop and the misty glow of the monitor as the gnome moved from Google search to word processor.

Willow crouched down next to the little man.

He barely glanced at her as he said, “Good evening, Pretty-Girl-Who-Does-Magic.”

Willow cleared her throat. “Good evening, uh—look, won’t you tell me your name?”

“I have told you that I am The-Kobold-Who-Makes-Things-For-Pretty-Girls-Who-Do-Magic.” He reformatted a paragraph and started adding footnotes. “I make you term papers.”

“Okaaay.” Willow realized her hands were at her scalp and she was pulling at her hair. “And that was good. Very good. Because I needed two papers done, and I had to help Buffy find a demon, and I had a really bad cold, and there was no way I could do everything myself. But now I don’t need any more papers. It’s summer. No classes.”

“But you will need more later, when your studies resume. Besides, when I researched for a paper on Black Marketing, I discovered there are people who will purchase completed term papers for large sums. I will make Pretty-Girl-Who-Does-Magic rich.”

“But that’s illegal.”

The little man looked away from the keyboard for a moment. He seemed perplexed. “So is having The-Kobold-Who-Makes-Things-For-Pretty-Girls-Who-Do-Magic write term papers that you hand in as your own work. I discussed this fully in the paper I wrote for you on ‘Ethics, Plagiarism and the Cyber Generation.'”

Willow paged through a huge stack of folders lying next to the desk. “And it’s not as if anyone is going to buy papers on ‘Offshore Drilling and Prison Reform,’ ‘Apartheid and Marijuana Legislation,’ ‘The Effect of Acupuncture on Teenage Sexuality,’ or—oh, here’s a new one—’Nutrition and Population Control.'”

The Kobold responded indignantly. “I wrote that one last night because you said some earlier topics were not sufficiently related to each other. And although you have refused to assign me new topics, I cannot stop writing or leave this place. When you called me, you made an agreement that binds us both.”

“You wanted my firstborn child!”

“Only because it is the traditional request. But you said, ‘gay now,’ and explained that meant offspring were unlikely, which I confirmed by noting the absence of Heirs-To-The-Throne-Who-Might-Offer-You-Marriage. This meant I was able to ask for something else. And after I saw this pleasant room that stays cool in summer and warm in winter, and the magnificent plumbing in the next chamber, I knew this would be better than something that would have to be swaddled and fed for years before it would make a proper servant.”

“But I only wanted you to stay until you finished the papers I really needed.”

“You did not say so, Pretty-Girl-Who-Does-Magic.” The Kobold gave a smile of grim satisfaction and his gnarly forefinger tapped the keyboard twice, with extra force. Under the desk, a printer was startled awake and began grinding out pages. “I have finished a 25-page paper on ‘Pornography and the Bermuda Triangle.’ Now, I will write one on ”The Changing Image of Beauty during the Course of the Twentieth Century.'”

“Why?” asked Willow, suspicious of the sudden coherence of this.

He explained patiently, as if she were a stupid child. “Because that is what The-Kobold-Who-Makes-Things-For-Pretty-Girls-Who-Do-Magic does now.”

“No, I mean, why that topic?”

“Because I just realized that it will allow me to spend the evening looking at pictures of Mae West and Betty Grable.”

Buffy lay back on the pillows, pleasantly sated, as Spike kissed his way back up her body.

“You are the most luscious thing,” he purred.

She sighed happily.

“Only thing that could make you taste better is if it was your time of the month.”

Buffy grimaced. “Damn it, Spike, sometimes I think you’d be the perfect lover if you’d just shut up!”

Willow was lying with her head pillowed on her arms. “I give up.”

“Let me try.” Tara went over to the desk and knelt down so that her head was just below the level of the kobold’s.

He kept typing but shot her a smile much warmer than any glance Willow had ever received from him. “Hello, Pretty-Girl-Who-Gives-Good-Things-To-Eat-And-Asks-For-No-Favors.”

“Hi, The-Kobold-Who-Makes-Things-For-Pretty-Girls-Who-Do-Magic. May I call you Kole for short?”

“I would prefer you do not, although I am indisputably short.” He was smiling at the monitor. “Unlike Myrna Loy, who was the epitome of tall elegance.” His fingers moved on the keys. “As I shall point out in this paper.”

“I meant—never mind. Do—do you like writing term papers?”

“It is among the most pleasant tasks assigned to me over the centuries. It is easier on my fingers and back than spinning gold from straw or baking pies for a whole kingdom, and this room is much more comfortable than the dungeons and drafty castle kitchens where I have had to work in the past. Also, there is the wonderful plumbing. And you bring me good things to eat.”

“But—is there nothing you want even more than this?”

The Kobold stared at a jpeg of Twiggy and a tear rolled down his cheek. He stopped typing long enough to brush it away, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “I remember a time, once, long ago, before the spell was put upon me, when I could do what I wanted instead of what I had been ordered to do. That was before I was The-Kobold-Who-Makes-Things-For-Pretty-Girls-Who-Do-Magic.”

Tara leaned forward, her hands gripping the side of the desk. “Who were you then?”

He shook his head. “I cannot tell you. You have to guess.” The Kobold switched his screen to a picture of Kate Moss and winced. “I think I will change the name of this paper to “The Degeneration of Standards of Beauty in the Twentieth Century.”

Late the next evening, Dawn looked up as Spike and Buffy slunk in through the front door, followed by Tara and Willow. “Bad patrol?”

The witches collapsed in a chair, and Buffy walked across the living room, opened her weapons trunk, and tossed her axe inside. “Two fyarls and three vamps. One of the vamps got away.”

Spike disposed of his weapon next to Buffy’s and stared at Dawn. “And why are you still up, Bit?”

“Adult Swim. There was a Full Metal Alchemist marathon.” Because admitting she’d been sitting there worrying about them and wishing she was with them would be seriously uncool.

Buffy dropped on the couch next to Dawn and gave her sister a hug, but she still echoed Spike’s sentiments. “It’s too late for any one to be animated. Bed.”

Dawn made a face but obeyed, and a few minutes later Buffy and Spike followed, calling good night to the witches.

Tara too started to climb the stairs and looked back. “Willow?”

Willow shook her head. “I’m not going up there again until I know how to get rid of him.” The picture of determination, she strode into the dining room, where the table was covered with books.

With the slightest and least martyred of sighs, Tara came back down the stairs and went to make a supportive pot of herbal tea.

Just before dawn, Tara woke up on the couch and looked around. Willow was still poring over the pile of books on the dining room table. Clutching an afghan around her, Tara stumbled over to kiss her girlfriend on the forehead.

This tenderness made Willow burst into tears of frustration. “I don’t know what to do! He’ll just keep pulling all-nighters and all-dayers forever. In the past 24 hours he’s written about date rape, space exploration, school prayer, and hypnosis. All in the same paper! He says we made a deal and he can’t stop.”

“All his other deals ended sometime.”

“Maybe the other Pretty-Girls-Who-Did-Magic were smart enough to stipulate when the deals ended. Probably when he took their babies, if they were the traditional sort. Or else the girls ended the contract by dying. Because he’s perfectly willing to keep typing until I keel over from old age.”

Tara grabbed Willow’s hand and held it tight. “Is there any way you can break your part of the bargain?”

“I can’t force him away from that chair, and I can’t take the laptop away. I’ve tried. I even tried not feeding him, but he, like, beamed the food up from the kitchen!”

Tara looked horrified. “You didn’t feed him?”

“One meal! And he took Dawn’s mac and cheese just after she’d cooked it, and I had to tell her a story I don’t think she believed and give her money to go to the pizza place. Who knows what she thought was going on!”

“She probably thought you’d done a spell that backfired,” commented Tara with unusual sarcasm.

But Willow wasn’t listening. As she stared at the kitchen, her expression was transformed from desperate to inspired. “Move it! That’s it. I’ll do what he did with the food and the laptop!”

Tara watched her girlfriend grab up books and a notepad. “I thought you said you couldn’t move him?”

“I can’t. But maybe I can move the spell. No spell, and he stops being OCD term paper guy and goes off and does whatever kobolds do when they’re not enchanted.” Willow unearthed a pencil from under a pile of manuscripts and started jotting down notes. “Do we have any Black Catechu? There should still be some mistletoe left over from last Christmas…”

Buffy sat up in bed. “What was that?”

Spike muttered his response into the pillow. “The lesbians are restless.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t Dawn?”

“Dawn is in the living room watching Orlando Bloody Bloom being interviewed on a morning chat show. I can hear her little heart going pit-a-pat.” He stretched. “That row is definitely happening in the other bedroom.” He was quiet a moment.

Buffy smacked him on the butt. “If it’s them, stop listening. I don’t want to know what my friends are doing in bed.”

He ignored her. “Seems to be happening out of bed, whatever it is. Can’t hear the words, but there’s a chant, and something is creaking.” He snickered. “Sounds like someone is breaking some chains—or putting them on.”

“Ewwww!” Buffy slapped his shoulder. “Shut up, Spike!”

“And if I agree to shut up, what will you do in return, love?”

Two minutes later, Dawn ran up the stairs, calling, “Guys, you’ll never guess what just—” She stopped at the sight of Spike, naked and furious, stalking up and down the hall and gesturing while faint croaking noises came out of his mouth. With a squeak, she turned around to stare at the staircase.

Buffy shoved Spike back in the bedroom. “Get dressed!” She turned back to her sister. “Uh, Dawn, this isn’t the best time to break it to you, I know, but Spike and I, that is—”

Dawn completed the sentence for Buffy. “You do it like rabbits. My bedroom is next to yours, remember? I’ve known that for months. What I want to know now is why did a hobbit just run down the stairs and out the front door, yelling, ‘I’m free, I’m free?'”

To be concluded when I get home from work…

 

Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/105144.html