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Hearts Breaking Even by slaymesoftly
 
Twelve
 
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Chapter Twelve

“My clothes are back at the warehouse with Dru and Angelus, pet. Kinda doubt they’re going to be willing to pack a bag for me and send it to the Slayer’s.”

Buffy couldn’t take her eyes off his lean body, eyes that kept wandering to the prominent hip bones angled toward the still undone button on his jeans. She unconsciously licked her lips as she said, “May…maybe I can find something of Giles’ for you to wear…”

“I don’t do tweed, pet,” he bristled. He followed her eyes to his flat stomach and ran a hand down his chest. “What’s wrong with the way I am now?” he added with a knowing smirk. “Having a hard time concentrating, are you?”

Buffy rolled her eyes, his cockiness being all it took to get her mind back on their situation.

“You wish!” she huffed, stomping upstairs to search her watcher’s bureau for a tee shirt. She pawed through the collection of plain white shirts, pausing when she found a Grateful Dead tee shirt and one with a Black Sabbath logo on it. Underneath them were other multi-colored shirts sporting the names of bands – some she’d never heard of. “Whoa, Giles! “ she muttered, grabbing one of the white shirts and hurrying back down stairs.

She found the vampire warming up a cupful of pig’s blood and complaining bitterly to Giles that it wasn’t “fit for vamp nor beast”. Buffy threw the shirt at the vampire, ordering him to “cover up, now!” and bringing a raised eyebrow from the older man.

“Um, Buffy? Is that my shirt?” he inquired politely as Spike pulled the much too large tee over his head. “Where did…where did you get it?”

Buffy giggled at the slightly panicked look on her Watcher’s face and replied cheerily, “I got it from your drawer – you know the one – it has lots of tee shirts in it? Lots of DIFFERENT tee shirts?”

She watched with a grin on her face as her watcher struggled with whether or not to ask her what she’d seen in the drawer before he realized from her obvious glee that she had found his stash of concert shirts. He pulled off his glasses and polished them vigorously before clearing his throat and deciding to ignore the whole thing.

“Right, then,” he said quickly. “Xander and Willow will be by shortly and we can talk about our plans. Willow has done disinvite spells at your house, her house, in Cordelia’s vehicle, everywhere we could remember that Angel has been. There is nothing we can do about the school- it is a public building – so we must assure that none of us is there after dark. Jen- Miss Calendar is coming over also,” he added with a puzzled frown. “It appears that she has some interest in Angel/Angelus and wishes to be kept informed of his activities.”

“Miss Calendar? What would she know or care about Angelus?” Buffy’s brow furrowed. “She’s a techno-pagan. Demons and mechanical spirits and stuff like that that. What’s that got to do with vampires?”

“I don’t know, but when I warned her about Angelus, she was quite insistent that she be included.”

Spike watched quietly as the Slayer and her watcher discussed their possible strategies for drawing out Angelus and Drusilla and assessed their potential weapons. Buffy seemed to be in favor of marching into the warehouse they now knew about – thanks to Spike – and planting stakes in both their hearts as quickly as possible. She flounced over to the couch to pout when both Spike and Giles vetoed anything as hasty as charging in before they knew what to expect.

“Slayer.” Spike’s voice was serious, lackingt any trace of William or the lecherous vampire that had replaced him. “Listen to me, luv. Drusilla has a very powerful thrall. She can—“

“I’ve already seen it,” she muttered, still annoyed that they didn’t think she could take the two vampires. “I just won’t look at her.”

“Sometimes that’s easier said than done, luv,” he insisted gently. “I’ve seen her convince people they were safe in their mother’s arms while she was chaining them to…. Never mind. I just don’t want you around her unless I’m with you.”

“Afraid I’ll stake your ho-bag of an ex?” she said meanly.

He studied her face until she dropped her eyes and said meekly, “I’m sorry, Spike. I didn’t mean to—“

“Yes, you did,” he replied shortly, turning back to the Watcher and holding up his mug of pig’s blood. “I want to thank you for the O Neg, Watcher. It was a big help. But if I’m going to be using this stuff to mend, I’d like to have another day or so to get back up to strength before we take them on. Angelus is a right wanker, but he’s not a bad fighter and Dru can be very…”

He stopped when Giles held up a hand and said quickly, “I quite agree. As long as we know everyone is safe—“

“He’s going to come after the Slayer’s family and friends,” Spike broke in, crossing to sit near Buffy when she gasped. “It’s his way, love,” he said gently. “He’d rather spend weeks emotionally torturing a victim than fifteen minutes in a fair fight. He’ll try to weaken you by killin’ off the people you care about before he comes after you.”

Buffy’s eyes were wet with unshed tears. “How could he?” she whispered. “He loves me. He wouldn’t—“

Spike sighed and rolled his eyes, gesturing for Giles to come closer. “The demon’s out now, pet. And it’s furious that you made him feel… human. He can’t admit to loving you – wouldn’t if he could. He wants you to pay for making him weak.”

“What about Drusilla?” Buffy demanded. “I thought you two were l-l-lovers,” She stumbled over the word, finding it very hard to accept that Spike had loved the insane vampire for so long. “Can’t you just tell her to –can’t you just take her away?”

“That seems reasonable, Spike,” Giles put in. “Surely your long-time…consort would not join Angelus in an attempt to kill the Slayer if you asked her not to. You are responsible for getting her well again, are you not?”

Ignoring the last question, Spike just silently turned his head so that they could both see the still angry-looking rip in his throat. He looked into the watcher’s eyes and said tightly, “Dru will do whatever Angelus tells her to.”

Buffy’s eyes were big as the implication became clear and she reached toward him with a sympathetic hand, stopping herself just in time when she saw her watcher’s eyebrows go up.

Spike had seen the aborted gesture and smiled gratefully at her before he continuing, “Just give me a day or two to get up to strength and I’ll come up with a way to distract Dru while the Slayer takes care of Angelus. Then I’ll take her away and we won’t be back.”

He didn’t meet Buffy’s confused eyes as he spoke of leaving Sunnydale with his sire; the sire who clearly did not love him as much as she did his grandsire.

Any response Buffy might have made was interrupted by the arrival of Xander and Willow bursting through the door and trying to talk at once.

“Hey, G-man, did you know— What the hell is HE doing here?”

The boy’s eyes were fixed on the vampire sitting, in his opinion, much too close to Buffy. While Xander glared and postured, demanding to know why Spike was not only not dust, but apparently well on his way to being healed, Willow gave the vampire a timid wave and smile. The wink she received in response caused her to blush and study her shoes intently, thereby missing Buffy’s punch to Spike’s arm and his subsequent chuckle as he stood up.

Before any more explanations could be given, there was a light knock on the door and Jenny Calendar was ushered in by a nervous Rupert Giles. Introductions were made – the whole room falling deathly silent when she walked right up to Spike and said clearly, “William the Bloody, Slayer of slayers. I’d thought Rupert must have been mistaken when he said you had come to warn Buffy.”

For long minutes they stared at each other, the woman with undisguised curiosity and some fear, the vampire with a speculative assessment of the woman before him.

“Gypsy,” he said finally and turned his back on her.

The librarian and his students stared at the two polar opposites – one a dark-haired, dark-eyed school teacher, the other a blue-eyed, bleached blond punk vampire. Buffy’s never very plentiful patience quickly wore off and she snapped, “Does either of you want to tell me what that was all about?” She almost admitted to a pang of jealousy at the thought that Spike might have also met Jenny Calendar before he came to Sunnydale.

I wonder how many girls or women he’s gotten to know over the past 124 years? Why am I starting to think I’m not so unique?

Spike shrugged and gestured to the woman still standing where he’d left her. “Think the gypsy might have some information to share,” he said quietly, then went into the kitchen to fix himself another mug of pig’s blood.

There was another minute of silence while everyone thought furiously. The watcher’s eyes lit up with understanding, but it was Willow who spoke first.

“Miss Calendar? Are you a Gypsy? Did you…well, not you, obviously, because a long time ago, but your…did you…?”

Jenny smiled at Willow’s enthusiasm for having figured it out, and then addressed Giles.

“Why don’t you sit down, Rupert, while I tell you about my family and our history with Angelus.”

Jenny’s tale of how her ancestors had cursed Angelus, the Scourge of Europe, for having the poor judgment to kill one of their own young virgins held her audience’s rapt attention. The only one not closely following her narration of how her tribe had punished the old vampire was Spike. He listened idly from the kitchen as she explained how they had cursed Angelus with a soul. The Gypsies knew that, at a minimum, it would take the joy out of his life of torture and bloodshed, and with luck it would damn him to an eternity of guilt and regret. The hope was that the guilt would be so great that the vampire would eventually dust himself after several years of torment.

When word came that the souled vampire was still alive and working on the side of good with the Slayer, they sent Jenny to keep an eye on him and be sure he was still suffering. Very hesitantly, she admitted that they knew there was a possibility that a sufficient measure of happiness could break the curse, but the Gypsy woman had seen no signs that the vampire was actually happy, in spite of his growing feelings for Buffy.

All eyes turned to Spike when she said haltingly, “I cannot imagine what might have made him so happy that he could lose the soul he’s had for so many years…”

“My dark princess is a very resourceful woman,” he growled, turning his back on them.

Buffy was torn between the need to understand what might have happened, and her desire to spare Spike what was obviously a painful memory. Having no such compassion, Xander blurted out, “So, Deadboy Jr. What did your significant other do that was so happy-making it made Angel lose his soul?”

Spike glared at the boy, then asked Buffy with a serious face, “Can I eat him?”

She shook her head, giving Xander a quieting glare and stepping closer to Spike. “No, he’s my friend. No eating of Xander.”

“Just a snack?” he asked hopefully, snickering as the boy quickly retreated behind the watcher.

Buffy smacked him on the arm, drawing looks of astonishment from the gypsy and the watcher.

“Behave,” she scolded. “And tell us what happened to Angel. How did he get so happy – and if he was happy, why did he try to kill you?”

“Wasn’t trying to kill me,” he growled. “Wanted to teach me a lesson and when I wouldn’t roll over and take my beating, Dru jumped in to protect her ‘daddy’ from me.”

“So, he lost his soul and then he tried to dominate you?” Giles frowned, trying to understand the progression.

Spike looked at Buffy carefully before saying without a lengthy explanation, “No, it was before. He came to see how sick Dru really was and he smelled something on me he didn’t like.”

“He did all that because he didn’t like the way you SMELLED?” Buffy’s disbelief was plain. Spike whispered into her ear, “Think about it, Slayer,” then straightened up and shrugged. “It’s a vampire thing – got nothing to do with losing his soul. He’d have been just as brassed off with or without it.’

“So, if it wasn’t beating you to a bloodless pulp that made him so happy, what was it?” Giles brought the conversation back to the issue at hand.

“Dru’s bite,” the vampire muttered, refusing to look at anyone. “That and the fact that I had to watch them—“

“Had to watch them what?”

Again, Xander had no compunctions against asking the questions everyone else was avoiding. Giles cleared his throat and began to take off his glasses while Buffy tried to convince herself Spike didn’t mean what she thought he meant. She remembered the blatant sexual behavior of the two vampires outside the apartment last night, as well as their obvious delight in its affect on her. She turned stricken eyes on Spike, hoping he would tell her she was wrong.

Instead, he turned on her watcher, growling, “Haven’t you told her anything about vampires?”

“You’ll have to forgive me if I didn’t think the mating habits of the creatures she slays every night were things my teen-aged Slayer needed to know just yet,” Giles snapped back just as angrily, guilt that Buffy hadn’t known what to expect from Angleus fighting his belief that she hadn’t needed that information in order to do her job.

Not one to leave an uncomfortable subject alone, Xander pressed on. “So you had to watch them do what? Deadboy got groiny with your girlfriend? And that made him happy enough to lose his soul? Man, I’ve got to meet this woman! Er, vampire.”

While the women in the room stared at him, aghast, Spike moved toward him deliberately, his eyes blue ice as he said softly, “I would be more than happy to arrange that meeting, whelp.” The cold anger did not totally conceal the pain the subject was causing him and Buffy put a sympathetic hand on his arm and tried to turn him away from her friend.

“I’m sorry, Spike,” she whispered sadly. “This isn‘t very pleasant for me to hear either. I thought he loved me.”

Ignoring the gasps from the other humans in the room, he put his arms around Buffy and murmured into her ear, telling her that Angelus was a “bloody wanker” and not worthy of her tears. When she had taken a deep shuddering breath and wiped her eyes, he gave the watcher another glare and said so that everyone could hear, “Vampires are not moral creatures. We take what we want when and how we want it, and sexual fidelity is not an important part of most vamp relationships.”

He felt Buffy stiffen and reluctantly dropped his arms as he continued, “But Dru and I are…WERE different. Since the bloody poof left us to go off and brood about his soul, we’ve mostly stayed faithful to each other. We never mated, but I’ve loved and cared for her for over one hundred years and I thought…” He paused, and swallowed hard before continuing “I thought she loved me, too. I thought that I knew what to expect from her.

“I didn’t expect that the minute her sire showed up, she would be all over him like a bloody coat and I didn’t expect him to be so glad to see her that he would forget about the Slayer. I should have expected him to object to smelling Buffy on me – even though his nose could have told him there was nothing there to be brassed off about,” he added quickly when her watcher’s eyes narrowed.

Buffy gave a guilty start, remembering their activities of just a short time ago, but the vampire read her mind and growled too low for the others to hear, “that was AFTER they did us wrong, luv.

“ Anyway, that was when he decided that after all this time, he could just step back in as head of the family, give me a beating for talking to his girlfriend and shag my woman right in front of me, and I’d just stand there and take it.” Spike’s eyes flashed amber as his demon struggled to emerge again.

“When I didn’t, when the bloody wanker started losing, my princess - my reason for unliving - she hit me on the head with something and knocked me out long enough for Angel to pull my arm out of the socket and pin me to the floor with some kind of pole.

“Long story short – they left me lying on the floor while they shagged themselves silly and when Dru bit the big poof, the soul just couldn’t take that much feeling good and it took a powder. Could see it immediately. Could tell from how he looked at me that Angelus was back. That’s when they really decided to teach me a lesson.”

“How did you get away?” Giles asked with surprising gentleness.

“After they’d got tired of entertaining themselves with me, they went back to shaggin’. I guess they thought I was unconscious again, but I could hear the big poof ranting about the Slayer, how she made him weak, how he was gonna break her. How he was gonna punish her for—“

He stopped, not willing to say what his grandsire had planned to do to punish Buffy for allowing Spike to touch her.

“I crawled away while they were busy and went looking for Buffy. Had to warn her before he showed up and tricked her into getting too close…”

Buffy shivered in spite of herself as she remembered the cruel voice and the familiar and yet different face from last night’s encounter.

“So, Drusilla is recovered then?” Giles tried to focus on the immediate danger and not on the way the two blonds seemed to be leaning together for support.

“That she is. And when she’s fed the poofter enough of Sunnydale’s finest, he’ll be pretty formidable too. Not,” he added with a sharp look at Buffy, “that this slayer couldn’t take him. He’s strong, but he’s no match for her if she’s on her game.”

“What do you mean, IF I’m on my game?” Buffy’s indignation was stronger than her sadness at being expected to kill Angelus.

“I meant what I said earlier. He’s going to try to throw you off by hurting you in other ways. He’ll try to kill the people you care about, make you weak by making you grieve.”

“It could work…”Giles muttered almost to himself.

“Or, it could just really, really piss me off,” Buffy said quietly. Suddenly she looked much less like a teenager and more like the killing machine whose essence had been around for thousands of years.

Spike cocked his head and looked at her with admiration. The power radiating off her small body called to him in ways he’d never expected and he recalled why he’d been so anxious to add her to his list of dead slayers.

“Is it true you killed old Batface, Slayer?” he asked. “That you went back after him even though you lost the first time?”

“Yes,” she said simply, having no trouble knowing who “batface” was. She could hear Willow hiss, “The Master” to Xander, and saw him nod in understanding.

“Oh yeah, the Buffster kicked major Master butt. And then last month she put a hurting on his minions. Angelus is just dust waiting to happen.” Xander nodded his head with satisfaction, ignoring the pain on Buffy’s face.

“All right then, let’s talk strategy.”

Buffy sat down on the couch and patted the cushion beside her for Spike. He smirked at the startled looks of her friends and she poked him again before speaking.

“You’ll distract Drusilla – keep her from putting a thrall on me, and I will dust Angel…Angelus. That’s the plan, right?”

“Sounds good to me, pet.” He carefully avoided asking her what, if anything, she planned to do with his lover.

“May I offer an alternative plan?” Jenny’s voice was soft as she requested their attention.

Everyone looked at her, at a loss for any possible alternative to dusting Angelus. Spike frowned at her suspiciously, wondering if she was going to suggest dusting Drusilla also.

“What if I could restore the soul?”
 
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