Pillow Talk

Title: Pillow Talk

Rating: NC-17

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 revdorothyl for the beta.

The story begins here.

This chapter marks the beginning of Part II of the story. The first part took the story from one kind of pillow talk to another. Part II begins with yet another conversation.

There will be three parts in all. There is a list of links to the individual chapters here.

Part II, Chapter 6

"So," said Buffy, Clem likes ABBA."

"You know," replied Dawn as the rhythms of "Dancing Queen" pounded their way through the walls of Clem's house and onto the street," even though he never told me that, it seems like something I always knew about him. Is that weird?"

"No, Dawn." Buffy made her voice as portentous as possible. "It was inevitable. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, the Clems of this world have gotta love ABBA."

Dawn winced as "Waterloo" began. "Ouch. Could it be any worse?"

Spike stepped up behind them. "I forgot how bloody awful his taste in music was. I should have brought some of my own tunes."

Buffy exchanged glances with Dawn. "See, it could have been worse."

Dawn nodded, stopping on the porch and gesturing at the front door. "And not even 70's pop on crack can keep me from seeing what's inside."

Clem lived in a tiny house in one of Sunnydale's oldest neighborhoods. In general, it was also one of the shabbiest, but a wealth of care had obviously been squandered on this particular dwelling.

'Squandered' is definitely the right word. Buffy picked her way through the army of lawn jockeys, plastic dwarves and pink flamingos that inhabited the front yard and served sentry duty on the porch, next to the pink plastic chairs that sat next to the pink flowers in pink pots that squatted beside the pink front door. The house itself was lime green with pink shutters. Cautiously, she lifted the knocker, which had a fake hand made of bright plastic molded to it, as if to suggest, in a pleasantly humorous fashion, that the last person to attempt entry had had his arm severed.

"I don't think they'll be able to hear us, love," said Spike over the increasingly loud music, but the door opened almost immediately.

Buffy blinked. "George?"

"Hi!" George waved them inside. "Welcome to the party. Everybody who's nobody is here already."

"Wow," said Dawn as she stepped past George into the living room.

Buffy's jaw dropped. "It's the Wide World of Kitsch."

"Forgot to warn you," bellowed Spike. "It's a bit overwhelming on your first visit."

Buffy stared at Spike. "You visit here?"

"He's my friend." Spike shrugged. "And it makes him easy to buy for at Christmas. Just open one of those bloody catalogs you'd normally toss without a glance, pick the first thing that can be personalized, and have it shipped with 'Clem' emblazoned on it in the biggest letters they've got."

Buffy wanted to ask where Spike had catalog stuff shipped. The third crypt on the right past the angel with broken wings, Restfield Cemetery, Sunnydale, CA?

There was plenty of personalized crap in the living room, including the wall clock and the display case with "Clem's spoon collection" hanging next to it. The tub filled with ice and beer cans had "Clem" on its side, and so did the set of glasses and the coasters next to it. Even the paper napkins had his name on them. The sign over the stereo announcing "Chez Clem" could not have been more redundant.

There was even more just plain crap. It ranged from fake Tiffany lamps to lamps in the shape of naked women with fringe on the shades, from the plastic replica of a sailing ship, to paintings on velvet, and on to the pièce de resistance, a small working fountain shaped like a little boy peeing into a jar.

All of it complemented the furniture, which was mostly covered with leopard skin prints, even the inflatable chairs. However, most of the furniture had been shoved against the walls to create a small open area in the middle of the floor where people and other things were dancing. Clem was one of those things. He was gyrating happily, a large pink cocktail in one hand, its cocktail parasol in imminent danger of falling out.

Buffy picked up what she thought was a snow globe and realized the tiny things that moved when she shook it were locusts. "Clem has the whole Biblical plague set," Spike informed her.

But something was missing, even if it wasn't a river of blood. "Where's the Thomas Kinkade painting?" she asked Spike.

"Come on, Buffy, even Clem has standards."

Before she could think up a retort, one of the loudest and most piercing sounds on earth, a chorus of teenage squealing, cut over the strains of "Waterloo."

Dawn, Bess, and a very, tall skinny girl with green hair were greeting each other as if they'd been separated for decades, by which Buffy gathered that communication had been cut off at least since classes had ended earlier in the afternoon.

"Nancy wouldn't let Bess come unless I supervised," shouted George in Buffy's ear. "She thinks there's something fishy about Clem, and I can't convince her it's only the singing bass on the wall."

Dawn was swept off by her friends, and someone grabbed Spike's arm, pulling him off to join in a conversation in the opposite corner of the room.

Buffy turned and found that another party-goer was dragging George onto the tiny "dance floor." Gazing around the room, she realized she didn't know anyone or anything else there. She wandered along the perimeter of the crowd and peeked through a half-open door into a very yellow kitchen.

Half-turned away from Buffy, a plump, furry little demon was bending over the kitchen table, which was covered by bowls of chips and cheesy puffs, and a lazy susan filled with condiments and dips. The demon gave the lazy susan a twirl, and the device began to bleat, "Feelings…nothing more than feelings…"

The little demon's snout broke into a smile. "Good! He does have Miracle Whip." It snatched up the bottle.

A similar demon turned away from the magnet-covered fridge, a tray of cold cuts in her hands. "Did you listen to the news on the way over? That big diamond at the museum was stolen."

"Really?" The first demon was picking over the meat, building a thick sandwich.

"Yeah." The second demon finished piling up its own sandwich, added a swirl of mustard, topped it with a slice of bread, and picked up a knife. "And the radio said one of the guards was frozen solid."

Buffy stopped just inside the door. Frozen? That sounds like it could be demons --

"Great." The first demon's sarcastic tones startled Buffy. "Sounds like some greedy witches or sorcerers to me. But you know who will get blamed."

"Yeah, as soon as a human finds out about demons, they decide everything that goes wrong is our fault. Never occurs to them to start by suspecting one of their own." The demons turned, sandwich plates in hand, and saw Buffy. They squeaked, exchanged glances, and scooted out to the living room.

Buffy leaned against the kitchen table, jumping when she accidentally set off the lazy susan again. And I thought I felt out-of-place at some high school parties.

She found herself staring at a needlepoint sampler hanging on the wall, which read, "Bless Clem's mess." It was lying because the place was obsessively neat, from the piles of plastic fruit in bowls on the counter to the scrubbed linoleum on the floor. Even the supply of cocktail parasols, swizzle sticks, and hors d'oeuvre picks Clem had set out for his guests was rigidly organized. Buffy picked up one of the swizzle sticks and realized they didn't represent hula girls, as she'd first thought. What she'd thought were grass skirts were actually tentacles.

"..nothing more than feeeeel…" The lazy susan wound down.

More to take her eyes off the walls than anything else, Buffy opened the fridge door and discovered that Clem had at least one redeeming quality. He was well stocked up on Tab.

As she was reaching for one of the soda cans, a very tall and slinky demon wearing a red leather corset came in, tossing her long green hair over her shoulder. A few strands rebelled, the snake heads at the end of the locks raising themselves up and crawling back across her bosom for a look at what was happening in the kitchen. The demon paid no attention, saying to the horned creature following her, "You'd think I'd know better than to come to one of Clem's parties, but I was just so bored tonight. But at least at home I was bored in good company. It was bad enough when he started hanging with that blood rat, but now he's inviting humans, and even Slayers. Oh!" She stopped, seeing Buffy, but instead of looking embarrassed, her haughty features twisted into a cruel smile. Two or three of the snake heads gave hissing laughs. The horned demon started snickering.

Buffy set the can of Tab back on the shelf and marched down the hall, where an open bathroom door gave her excuse for fleeing the kitchen. She slammed the door behind her and gave an involuntary little shriek when she turned and took in the décor. Ancient but well-scrubbed pink tile was complemented by a shower curtain covered with terrifyingly large butterflies. The stool and its tank were covered with something green and fuzzy. At first she thought it was a demonic form of mold, but it proved to be some kind of decorative thing designed to match the throw rug on the floor. A crocheted doll with a long skirt and terrifyingly cheerful expression topped the tank. On inspection, Buffy found that it held an extra roll of toilet paper. The place smelled overwhelmingly of Pine Sol.

Buffy picked up the rubber ducky sitting on the vanity. It was red and had horns and a forked tail. As she set it down, something began to ring, and on inspection, she found that the toilet paper dispenser did double duty as a telephone and triple duty as a radio. But as she reached for the receiver, either the caller gave up or someone picked up on another extension.

Spike found her on the back deck five minutes later. She was leaning over the wooden railing, her back to the house, where the stereo was still asking Fernando if he could hear the drums. Over her head, kitten-shaped fairy lights blinked on and off, perhaps to remind Clem of one of his favorite meals while he sat in his deck chair and contemplated his very personalized domain.

She turned as the door opened behind her and Spike slipped outside. As he did, the music changed abruptly, and Karen Carpenter assured them that a kind of hush had fallen over the world.

Spike grimaced. "I guess he thinks we've gotten to the slow dancing part of the evening."

Buffy nodded. "I'll say this for you, Spike, you really know how to show a girl a good time. I don't know why I didn't start dating you sooner. I've been missing some really swell parties."

Ignoring this, Spike leaned against the opposite railing of the deck, facing her, and searched his pockets, coming up with a lighter and a cigarette pack. "I need something to calm my nerves after that scene Dawn played earlier. She had to find out sometime that she isn't human, but bloody exhausting, that was. Too bad. She seemed calm enough last time I saw her." He gave her his patented one-eyebrow-raised questioning look. "Or has she been inflicting her bursts of melodrama on you instead of me?"

"No, she's been good the past few days." Buffy voiced one of the many worries nagging at the back of her mind. "She wasn't like that the whole time I was gone, was she?"

"Just sometimes. Then, it was because it was all her fault you were dead, she was a poor orphan, and so on." He added with a touch of pride, "I threw a pitcher of water over her once."

The second half of his revelations distracted her from the anxiety caused by the first half. "Really?"

"I did." His expression was gleeful, and he pointed at her, pulling away from the railing and almost dancing as he laughed. "And at last. There it is. That look I always wanted to see you give me."

Now she felt nothing but bewilderment tinged with embarrassment. "What look?"

"The 'my hero' one." As Buffy gave a snort, he told the story, with lots of expressive hand movements. "Dawn was whipping up a huge storm one night, and the more she wept and wailed, the more your Scooby friends petted and fussed over her, until she was so wound up, I didn't think she could calm herself down." His cigarette drew a glowing path in the air. "Genuine Victorian lady-type hysterics, that's what she was having. Beating a path into the carpet, her arms going like windmills so no one could stop her, and everyone fussing that the neighbors would call the police. So I got myself a water jug, and on her next pass through the hall--" He caught his lower lip in his teeth, raised his hand over his head, and mimed pouring it. "I tell you Slayer, you would have been proud of me."

Buffy had her hands over her mouth, trying to keep from laughing, but at that she blurted out, "I can't believe she ever forgave you!"

"It took a good few days, a Green Day CD, and carton of Ben and Jerry's." He dropped the cigarette into a plant stand shaped like a beaver and stood before her, smiling broadly. "There. You're happy."

"I am." She took a step forward and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him.

It felt so good to hug him tight without worrying that she was doing something horribly wrong. She still didn't know if it was right, but she'd made her decision to gamble on him last night. It was like that liberating moment in a fight when you decided what your strategy would be, and suddenly it didn't matter if you won or lost, all that mattered was following the plan.

Until the plan falls apart, and you have to make another one.

Shut up, internal voice. I'm busy making out with my boyfriend.

After a few minutes, she snuggled into his shoulder and asked, "Did Victorian ladies really have hysterics?"

"The posh ones did. When they weren't too busy fainting. Boring lot, they were." He was running his fingers up and down her spine in a very not-boring way. "Me, I prefer California girls."

Buffy heard herself asking, "The kind with a bit of demon in them?"

His fingers stilled. "You've decided you're that kind, have you?"

"I know I am."

Spike's hand pushed up her chin. "You're taking it calmly." He sounded more confused than relieved.

She shrugged. "I must be the improved, mature Buffy, because I didn't wig out when Tara told me I wasn't all human."

"Now, this is a part of the story I haven't heard."

She raised her head. "You knew, though. Dawn was right. I thought you just weren't paying attention, but you knew you could hurt me."

"I'm not as blinded by lust as you think, love." He was still watching her carefully.

He knows how much being a normal girl meant to me.

He also thinks I'm stupid to want to be ordinary.

And he's worried I'm going to give him hell for going all protective male and not telling me that both Dawn and I are humanity-challenged.

She narrowed her eyes and glared at him. "Yeah, well, just remember I can still beat your ass into the ground any time you get out of line."

His goofy smile returned immediately. "Promise?"

to be continued...

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