Chapter 41 - Preparations

After she changed clothes, she and Spike ended up in the kitchen.

“So, what else were you checking in about?” Buffy asked Spike as she ate a yogurt.

He slumped against the cabinets. “Thought you might want to start fightin’ today.”

“Sparring. You mean sparring. Training.”

Spike shrugged. “Whatever.”

“I don’t have to go to the Magic Box until patrol. Though Willow might call this afternoon. She said she’d show me around town. And I told Mom I’d try to get a Christmas tree today or tomorrow.”

“So is that a yes?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Buffy stirred the yogurt. “I wonder when Angelus will show up.”

“You’ve only been out one night, love.”

“I’m just edgy.”

“It’d be like him not to show his face, just so you do what you’re doing. Throw you off balance, and size you up at the same time.”

“I suppose. Here, just let me go change.”

“Bloody hell, you just changed.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. Vampire or not, Spike was such a guy. “These are lounge clothes, not training clothes. I won’t be a sec.”

She quickly went upstairs and put on a sports bra, a close fitting tee, and a pair of loose sweatpants. Running downstairs in search of her tennis shoes, she saw Spike draping his duster over one of the barstools.

“You ready?”

“Hold on,” she said. “I know they were just—oh, there they are!”

A moment later, she went out the back door. It was a nice clear day, and not even that hot yet.

Spike was standing in the backyard, looking resigned.

“What?” she asked.

“I still can’t believe I’m doin’ this.”

“You don’t want something to happen to me?”

“No…”

“You don’t have a problem killing other vampires. You said you killed some.”

“Yeah…”

“So?” She stared him down.

“It’s just…the principle of the thing.”

“Oh, please. We’re not back to the ‘helping the Slayer thing’ again, are we?”

“I s’pose not.” He sighed. “Well, pet, c’mon. Show me what you got.”

“What, you don’t have some moves or anything to teach me?”

“Fight with me. You’ll get the moves.”

Buffy slowly circled him. “By…?”

“By not doin’ the ones again that get you dead.”

“And getting you dead? Y’know, since we’re unarmed and all?”

She lunged with a straightforward staking motion that he easily avoided.

“You hit me in the heart with your fist, we’ll call it your round.”

“And how will I know when I’m dead?”

“Should be obvious.”

Buffy saw that for the moment, Spike wanted her to take the offensive. She let out a series of punches that he avoided or blocked, and then they went on to trading arm-to-arm blows.

Suddenly he caught her arm in midair and twisted it at a painful angle.

It was such a simple movement. A moment later and her back was pressed to his front, his mouth at her neck.

“You’re dead,” he breathed in her ear.

Spike released her and she swung backwards at him, but he had already moved away.

Buffy quickly advanced, landing a punch in the face with her left hand as she brought her right down toward his chest, a move that had worked for her with other vamps. But he saw the line of her arm and caught it before it made contact with him. Pushing her off, he simultaneously threw her back several paces.

When she approached again, Spike took the initiative and swung first, a blow that she narrowly missed as she jumped to the side.

He didn’t give her the chance to regain her ground, however. Advancing on her, Spike steadily pushed her back as they exchanged blows. Buffy tried to get the advantage once again, but it seemed that the offensive part was over for her unless she could retake it.

She tried a spinning kick, which was a mistake. He always got her on the kicks.

Spike caught her by the leg and yanked, his fist moving quickly to grab her by the hair as the rest of her came within reach.

“You’re dead.”

Then he spun his own body around once, sending her sprawling using the momentum of the action.

Buffy rolled several body lengths away, coming to a stop on the grass. That one had hurt a little.

Spike was unhurriedly making his way over.

It was the slow walk of a hunter. Confident, stalking—smoothly shifting his weight from one foot to the other, arms swaying slightly as he approached her.

A booted foot came down on her chest. “You don’t watch, you get up. No one else is gonna wait.”

The pressure was released, and Buffy slowly got to her feet.

Too slowly. A kick to her midsection sent her back down and careening into the unforgiving surface of a tree.

“You’re dead.”

Buffy instantly jumped to her feet, falling back into a fighting stance. “And now?”

He advanced. “We do this till you’re not dead.”

-----

Buffy lay in the tub, soaking. Well, perhaps ‘soaking’ wasn’t the right word to use. More like ‘Buffy lay in the tub, because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to move to do anything else.’

She and Spike had trained—no, fought, she amended, they’d definitely fought—until early afternoon. It had become apparent to both of them that despite her protests to the contrary, she couldn’t keep going.

He hadn’t gone easy on her. But she hadn’t expected him to. Anyone she really fought would be trying to kill her, fighting dirty, and not pulling their punches.

Aside from the trying to kill her bit, Spike had definitely done all of the above. That wasn’t to say that he had hurt her, specifically. He hadn’t gone out of his way to land a painful blow, or pushed her more than he had to to make a point. It was simply that there was only so much of being knocked down, hit, and pulled that a person could take, even a Slayer person. Her arms were actually sore from hitting him so many times.

She’d gotten some of her own in and had surprised him a couple of times, even though it hadn’t slowed him down for more than a split second. And she’d never managed to ‘kill’ him.

Buffy lost count of how many times she’d been killed.

Though having a strong opponent that she didn’t have to worry about hurting was refreshing. On the other hand, she was really sore. But she did have Slayer strength and healing, so maybe it wasn’t so bad. On the other hand, she was being whaled on by a vampire, so maybe it was.

She looked down at her nude body through the bathwater. There were surprisingly few marks, and those bruises that were already forming would easily be covered up by clothing until they disappeared. Quite thoughtful of him, really.

There was something the magazines said about that, about men who made sure their women were never marked where people would ask about it. She’d definitely found the smart sort of abuser, Buffy thought dryly.

Of course, she was paying him to beat her up. It would have been almost funny, if it weren’t so horribly bizarre.

Buffy consoled herself with the thought that soon enough she would be beating him up, as well as any other vampire that crossed her path.

It was like in all those action movies where the karate dude or army guy gets the crap beat out of him, before he can overcome and beat the master, and then go on to kick his arch nemesis’s ass. Except in those movies, the beating/training part was always a montage. Buffy found herself looking at the movies in a new light, as well as in desperate need of her own montage.

-----

Willow came over later that afternoon, and took a tired, yet able to move again, Buffy around town, giving her the daylight tour. Stores, restaurants, parks, the campus again—all of the non-patrol things.

They had gotten back around dinnertime, and Buffy invited Willow to stay. When Joyce came in shortly after, Buffy introduced them.

“Mom, this is Willow. She goes to school here, too.”

Joyce smiled and Buffy braced herself for it. She prayed her mother wouldn’t say, ‘I’m glad you made a friend,’ like she was in fourth grade or something.

However, she only said, “Nice to meet you. Did you meet Buffy on campus?”

Willow, who had already been warned not to bring up Slaying, magic, or Hellmouths, simply said, “Yep.”

“Well, that’s nice. Do you have any of the same classes?”

“No.”

“But we checked our schedules, and we have the same English professor,” Buffy said.

“Maybe you two can study together,” she suggested brightly.

They’d gone on to talk about all the usual stuff, Buffy supposed. Over dinner, her mother asked Willow about her family, how long she’d lived here, how did she like college, etc.

Afterward, noticing the increasing twilight, Buffy said, “I’m gonna go hang with Willow for a while, Mom. Hit the coffee shop or something.”

Joyce looked up from doing the dishes. “Okay, honey. Don’t be too late?”

Buffy nodded, and Willow followed her out the door.

“I feel kind of bad for lying to her, but I can’t just dump the whole Slayer thing on her.”

“Yeah. I remember when I tried to tell my mom about the magic. She went all clinical on me, and explained that she understood why I was acting out, and that I had delusions of power and was identifying myself with mythical icons in an attempt to control my spiraling adolescent life.” Willow frowned to herself. “Not really the same though, mainly since I could do magic in my room, and there was no going out all the time. Well, not until recently, and by then I was out of the house anyway. But still.”

“Yeah, but still,” Buffy agreed.

“You get used to it,” she encouraged. “The weirdness like becomes routine.”

Oh, I’m way past routine already, Buffy thought as they walked. The weirdness had taken over every part of her life so gradually that she hadn’t even noticed it.

She looked over her shoulder into the darkness, and though there was nothing there, she could feel Spike trailing behind them.