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Title: Pillow Talk Author: Miss Murchison Rating: Moving up to R for language. I'll have a better reason soon. Disclaimer: All characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc. Only the lame plots and dialogue herein are mine. Notes: A Spuffy story that starts in early Season 6 before deviating from canon. A slight change in circumstances, a different decision or two, and you wind up with very different results.
Thanks:
To
Keswindhover and
The story begins here.
Buffy brushed her hair away from her face and leaned on the counter at The Hill of Beans. She was exhausted. Nancy and the others worked with inhuman persistence to repair the damage to their business, keeping Buffy working too by the power of their own example and offers of overtime pay. By the time she got home, it was nearly dark again, and the burst of energy she'd felt that morning had long since burned itself out. She was even too tired to feel guilty for skipping patrol. She came in through the kitchen door, noted that the island and floor were clear but there was still a pile of dishes in the sink, and passed without another glance at the mess into the dining room. She stopped at the foot of the stairs at the spectacle of Spike sitting on the couch with his head thrown back, her favorite pillow clasped in his arms. There was no snoring or snorting involved at the moment, and he looked more like the pale, romantic male of her earlier imaginings than Dawn's earthier description. He stirred and sat up, as if he sensed her gaze. He's a vampire, remember, Buffy? He probably smelled you or something equally disgusting. "Buffy?" She shook her head at his anxious, inquiring expression. "Not now, Spike. No discussions, no movie tutorials. I need sleep." She started up the steps and almost bumped into her sister, who was halfway down the risers. "Buffy? Are you okay?" "Tired," she muttered. "We got the shop fixed up though." She climbed past Dawn and staggered into the bathroom. She'd planned only to brush her teeth and wash her face but a glance in the mirror made her shudder. No wonder Spike and Dawn had looked so worried. She hadn't had a chance to change or clean up since the fight last night, and she'd kept going the past few hours on a few shots of espresso George had made to test the machine after cleaning it. There was dirt on her face, braids were unraveling into wild strands around her shoulders, and she was still wearing the sweat suit that had been baptized with cheap beer in the Chinese restaurant. She looked far worse than the living dead man downstairs. And even dead, her pride wouldn't have let her go to bed without cleaning up first, no matter how exhausted she was. It was physically painful to have to turn the faucets and peel off her clothes, but once she filled the tub and sank into the warm water, this extra chore didn't seem so terrible after all. She slipped a rolled towel behind her neck so she could let her head loll back, and the bath was suddenly more than just bearable. She decided that this was a good tired. She was too tired to think, too tired to want anything, too tired to remember the things that haunted her, even too tired to be angry. Maybe all that time she'd been sleeping and hoping for some energy, what she'd really needed was to be this tired. She felt her eyelids droop and let them close. It was very pleasant, and then—nothing.
Waking up was definitely not as nice as falling asleep had been. She was shivering, parts of her felt like they were being held in a vise, she was sitting on something cold and oddly shaped, and for some reason she was making a strange noise, not quite gagging, but very wet and surprisingly hard on the throat. I think this is what they mean by "sputtering." A few seconds later, her thought processes cleared a bit. She was coughing and her body was twisted uncomfortably. Her throat hurt so much it took a moment to concentrate on other sensations and realize she was held in strong hands that gripped her slick skin tightly. Too tightly. It hurt. And there was screaming that sounded like it was coming from Dawn. Spike was nearby too, because he was saying, "She stopped breathing. I was listening, and I heard--I mean didn’t hear--her stop. It was just a few seconds before I got her out of the water. I was here in just a few seconds." He was breathing hard too, which was silly of him since he didn't need to. But then he was silly, a lot, considering that he was an evil fiend. "She started breathing as soon as I slapped her on the back and she coughed up the water." Well, that explains why it feels like someone tried to drive a rebar between my shoulder blades. "Did she—did she do it on purpose?" Dawn had stopped screaming, but now she was gasping, too. There seemed to be an epidemic of some sort. What happened to me? Buffy thought she should push away the hands gripping her, but she didn’t want to. Besides, she was too busy telling herself that she was warm and wet and breathing gentle, moist air with people who loved her nearby, not digging through cold earth and fighting for oxygen alone, alone, alone. So instead of pushing away, she clung. Spike’s voice again. He was very close. "No, Niblet. I’m sure she didn’t. She was just tired." Buffy opened her eyes. It was all misty. She closed them immediately, but then realized it wasn’t graveyard fog surrounding her, so she dared to peek again. It was just some mist over the bathroom mirror. Nothing scary. At least not until it started to clear, and she could see herself, sitting half in and half out of the tub, gagging in a very unattractive way and leaning on something that didn’t appear to be there. She sat up the rest of the way, swung the foot that was still trailing in the water up and onto the floor, and tried to snatch up a towel. "Spike, why the hell are you in the bathroom when I’m all wet and naked?" I should be much more angry about that. I’m sure I will be, when I stop coughing. "Because the mighty Slayer fell asleep in the bathtub!" Spike was still supporting her with one hand as he wrapped a towel over her shoulders with the other. She realized the towel was covering her breasts, but not doing much to spoil the view of other even more embarrassing regions. She tugged it down, which moved the problem without resolving it. She grabbed a bigger towel. Spike was leaning against the wall now. He didn’t look worried any more. He looked like he was having a good time. "Get out!" It was hard to sound forceful when everything came out in a croak. He crossed his arms. "So you can do what, Buffy?" "That is none of your business." Her attempt at haughtiness brought nothing but renewed gentleness. "You need to go to bed, love. Falling asleep on patrol is one thing, in the bath it's another." Buffy resisted an impulse to turn and stare in horror at the tub, finally realizing the seriousness of what had almost happened. Had that been what she was doing? Drowning again? That thought brought up too many memories, and she whirled back to the mirror. If her throat didn't hurt so much, she would have shrieked at what she saw there. "I can't go to bed with my hair like this! It will dry a tangled mess." Spike pushed away from the wall with a sigh that screamed Long-Suffering Male. "Well, her majesty seems to be herself again, but I don’t want her falling and—" Before Buffy could sputter an objection to this (it was ridiculously hard to come up with one that took into consideration the fact that she had almost managed to drown herself a few minutes earlier) Dawn said, "I’ll help her brush her hair and put on her pjs." This was humiliating, but much better than having Spike stay there and watch, especially since he disappeared every time she looked at the mirror, so she couldn't monitor his smirking properly. Dawn was putting up with no nonsense, and she sent Spike for a chair that Buffy could sit in while the tangles were brushed out of her hair, and she found a nightgown that felt soft and warm and comforting. Still, it seemed like hours before Buffy was able to crawl into her bed and grab hold of her pillow and hold to it as if it were an anchor that would protect her from future mishaps.
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Please send feedback to: missmurchison@mchsi.com
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