Chapter 1: Sensory Memory

“Don’t mess with Joan the vampire slayer!” the blonde warned, her voice brimming with excitement. She was high on power as she watched the vampire lying prone on the ground. Of course, she had put him there. The power trip, however, didn’t last, fear and instinct kicking in as she caught another vampire’s foot just inches from her face.

She lifted the vampire’s leg and ducked under it, flipping him to the ground as well.

Simultaneously, Randy rallied his strength, holding onto the arm of vampire behind him who had him in a choke hold and flipping said vampire over his head. He leaned over and plunged a stake into its heart.

“Joan!” he yelled, tossing the stake her way even before the vampire’s skeleton dissipated.

“Thanks!” Joan dropped to her knees, and with two quick, deep motions staked the vampires laying in the grass.

The literal loan shark one lawn away clacked his teeth together nervously. “You’re an odd duck, Mr. Spike,” Teeth began, trying to sound calm.

Joan and Randy exchanged, strangely, a knowing glance.

“I’ll aim high,” the bleach blonde said with a nod.

Teeth’s jagged maw fell agape. He turned and began running. “I don’t need the kittens!” he cried between pants.

The tweed-clad vampire leapt, catching the landshark by the shoulders and throwing him to the ground. Joan was on top of the crime lord in an instant, and she sank her stake through his rib cage with a sharp slush and crunch.

It was followed by wailing.

“Oh, sorry!” the young woman gasped, covering her mouth. She turned to her partner. “He’s not a vampire, so the stake won’t work.”

Pushing up onto his knees, Randy placed his hands on either side of the demon’s fishhead. “This will,” he assured her, and twisted sharply until he heard a snap.

Teeth gargled for just a second before going silent.

“Wow,” Joan said, not surprised, but definitely impressed. “For dressing like a complete dork, you have some great moves.”

Randy’s eyebrows narrowed. “Hey!” he yelled, while pointing. “I…”

He paused. Looked down. The anger faded to confusion. “Yeah, you know, I’m really surprised to be wearing this, too,” he admitted. He yanked the stiff jacket off his shoulders and threw it to the grass. He then fumbled with the bow tie, trying to get it off quickly, but unable to untie it. Frustrated suddenly, he gritted his teeth, tensed his neck and ripped it off, gasping from the exertion.

The stylishly-dressed Joan flinched, blinked, then said, “Guess you really didn’t like that outfit.”

“You know,” Randy said, brushing his knees off as they stood – neither of them giving a second thought to the corpse on the ground, “It would be just like my father to say I had to wear a bloody suit to work at his store. He probably even bought that monstrosity for me, just to embarrass me.”

Joan’s eye’s widened as he tossed the mangled bow tie down next to the shark. “You mean you remember?”

The vampire huffed, “No. But I’d be willing to bet I’m right.”

They sighed in unison, this time exchanging an unknowing glance.

Joan scratched her head. “I suppose we should get to the hospital.”

“Yeah.”

She looked to her left, then sharply to her right. She turned. “Uhm, Randy?”

“Yeah?”

“Which way to the hospital?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know.” But he started walking anyway. “Won’t find it standing still, though.”

“Point taken,” Joan agreed, and trailed after him.




They had passed lots of green lawns and white houses, and a few grave yards – there seemed to be an overabundance of them in the town – but nothing remotely resembling a hospital.

But that wasn’t the only scenery Joan had noticed. From behind she noted that Randy’s walk didn’t match his outfit. He sort of sauntered, and for some reason she thought he belonged in something with more presence. Like a cape or something, she imagined. But she couldn’t quite picture it, like she was staring into a familiar room in the pitch black of night. She knew what would be in the room, what should be in the room, but she couldn’t see it, and someone had rearranged the furniture.

She gave up trying after realizing she was giving herself a headache. So she tried to be proactive instead.

“Are we lost?” she wondered aloud from behind him.

“I think that would require us to know where we’re goin’ or where we are,” he quipped with a bit of venom. Randy was getting really pissed at the whole amnesia thing. Who doesn’t bloody know who they are? How the hell does that happen?

He thrust his hands into his pockets with need, not knowing what he was longing for. It’s downright frustrating is what it is. He pulled out a wad of cash and a heavy steel lighter. The cash he put back right away. The lighter he eyed quizzically while he walked, like it was key somehow. He flipped it open and flicked on the flame to see that it worked while he walked. Vaguely, he heard Joan say something as they walked, but he was too focused on the feeling he was missing something important. It was like the air itself was stale. He frowned, shut the lighter, and dropped it in his pocket. Then the urge to hit something bubbled up, and he thought that wouldn’t be good to show Joan because he’d already scared her once tonight.

“RANDY!”

His feet stopped. “What?!” he snapped, not knowing why he was so frustrated.

She came around to face him. “You’re ignoring me!” she snapped back, leaning in towards him, hands on her hips. “And we’re in someone’s yard!”

“Wha?” He pulled his eyes away from Joan’s indignant glare and looked around to see a covered porch, a tree that they were directly below, and then down to see a fresh carpet of grass below them… littered with dozens of cigarette butts. He tilted his head, intrigued.

Randy knelt down, picking up one of the cigarette corpses, and started having his own dark-room experience. On a whim, he licked it.

“Gross! What are you doing?!”

He ignored Joan as sensations washed over his tongue. He had a feeling they would, as he found he could hear and smell just about everything. And there was the story in order from strongest to weakest: dirt, grass, smoke, paper, cotton, saliva. He tasted his saliva.

“I smoke,” he realized, clinching his suspicions with the lighter. And then he understood the frustration. “I want a cigarette.”

Joan cringed. “I know your memory’s foggy, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to smoke the ones on the ground.”

“No,” he stood up, holding it out to her face. She backed away.

“I’m not licking it,” she said, holding out her hands in way that also said or touching it.

“It’s mine,” he explained, rolling his eyes. “They’re all mine.” He dropped the butt and pointed towards the house. “And this place…”

Joan jumped as he suddenly leaned in close to her, pushing his face against her neck, burying his nose in her blonde hair. It sounded sort of like the ocean, but more jarring, when he inhaled deeply right next to her ear.

And it was weirder still – when he froze.

The instant her perfume went up his nostrils it traveled straight to his brain and set up camp. Randy’s eyes widened and his body locked up. He gasped, loudly.

And Joan stepped back, her pupils tiny as her eyes went wide with fright. Her entire body tingled, and she clutched at her arms, nervously, to fight the chill that skipped up her spine despite her thick leather jacket.

Randy, on the other hand, looked overwhelmed. His face was blank, like he was suddenly blind, although his gaze was obviously locked onto Joan.

They both swallowed like they were choking down a whole jawbreaker.

His voice was helpless when he finally spoke. “Di-Did you…?”

“Did I…?” she found she could only echo.

He quickly looked back towards the house as he simultaneously coughed, reached into his pockets, and cursed his lack of cigarettes. He turned Joan’s attention back to the matter at hand with a nod of his head. “This house,” he finally continued, “has your scent all over it.”

“Oh!” she, shaking with excitement.

“You have keys in your pockets?” he asked, the thought of being helpful warming his smile.

The keyring jingled as she bounced up the stairs, and she could hardly hit the lock as she tried the first of four keys – with no success. She let out a little yip and giggle when the second slid right in, though, and she moreso danced across the threshold than walked as she entered her house.

Joan flicked on the lights and turned in front of the stairs.

“Honey, I’m home!” she joked giddily, grinning wide and unknowingly mimicking a 1950s sitcom. She had her hand on the rail in a similarly stylized way, the light glistening in her hair and making her white sweater seem to glow.

And that was when Randy realized beyond a doubt that he loved her.





Shell Presto can be reached at mangetsuDELETEME@email.com

Chapter 2: Names and Faces


Their lips came together in a forgiving kiss. It was warm– almost innocent – and he realized, despite the slate of his mind being wiped, that a kiss hadn’t felt this sweet in years.

Anya and Rupert gasped as they came up for air.

A wave of confusing emotions beached their brains. Time seemed to freeze as Rupert’s bones hummed. He felt much better at the thought of making up with his fiancée. He understood well that her tendencies could be annoying, but it was obvious she meant well. There was also a hint of guilt hiding in his marrow, though. He couldn’t explain it to himself. He wanted to say it was because she was half his age, or because he had thought of leaving her, even if he wasn’t sure why.

But looking at the slight blush complimenting her cherry-red lips made him care less and less with each passing moment.

Those cherry-red lips curved into a telling smile. Anya ran her eyes over the dashing good looks of the man before her, his large hands, his knowing eyes, the creases in his forehead that had come not only with age but also, she was sure, a weight of reading and hardened intelligence. His hair was quite soft, too. And she knew that surely he was financially savvy, as she had gone into business with him.

Yes, she concluded. I chose this man for a reason. And so her mind declared, On to the sex.

“I’m very sorry,” she said, her eyes giving meaning to her rather monotone words. “I would imagine it’s the newness of running this shop that has put a strain on our relationship. I’m not sure, but I get the sense that I’m very concerned with money.” Just the thought of the green stuff made her pause to allow a different sort of smile.

It made Rupert laugh lightly.

“Sorry,” she continued, snapping back to the matter at hand. “And I’m happy you want to stay. We should take steps to make sure neither of us feels neglected again.” She pointed to the back room. “I recommend steps in that direction. Followed by stripping. And lots of sex.”

The middle-aged man choked. Then the choke became a chuckle. He was sure then of why he liked this woman. He pressed his lips against hers firmly, and was not surprised when she forced her tongue into his mouth greedily. He picked the girl up, walked swiftly to the back room, and slid them both through the door. Hitting the light due to the unfamiliar surroundings, he was confused by the décor – it being a workout room instead of inventory.

Instead of being confused, however, Anya shivered with excitement. “Oh! A vaulting horse!” She felt her fiancé’s grip tighten, and his palms began to sweat. She pulled his head down closer to her, seductively nipped his earlobe. “I think I’m remembering something fun…”


THE SUMMERS RESIDENCE

Joan was vibrating like an atom as she stood on the stairwell.

“Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to come in?” she urged the vampire in her doorway.

“Right,” he agreed absent-mindedly, crossing the threshold and clicking the door softly shut behind him.

Joan wasted no time, bounding up the stairs. “Hurry up! I need to figure out my name!” she called to him.

He followed slowly, savoring the bounce in her blonde curls, the picture of her firm ass that had just escaped his view. “Don’t be in too much of a rush, Joanie! I’ve just started to like your current name!”

Upstairs, it was like a game show. Door number one, she narrated for herself as she walked into a room obviously decked out for a hip girl. Not sure if it was hers – after all, she had no idea who lived in the house besides she and her sister – she scoped out the décor, trying the room on like a shirt in a store.

Gotta say, love the parental advisory poster. She skimmed the books that lined the shelves, but realized none of them could ring a bell. If she had read any of them, none of the titles conjured plots in her head. She sighed, and moved to the CDs.

“Panic at the Disco,” she read aloud to herself. She popped it into the CD player, skimming through the tracks. The dance-beat riffs and sharp singing got her to bob her head a bit, but didn’t call to her. Turning the player off, she moved to the closet. The sea of conservative shirts and distinct lack of leather made her walk out of the room.

“Obviously not mine,” she declared, not sure of what she had been looking for in the closet, but knowing it had to be better than that.

Then she caught the glare of her superheroing partner’s white shirt in a lit up room down the hall. Somehow seeing that ‘70s – she could instinctively tell it was outdated – bleached-blonde head made her feel sort of bubbly. She wanted to sneak up on him, but realized the super-senses would probably prevent that. Nonetheless, she wanted to see what he could tell her that she couldn’t figure herself.



Randy watched her for a moment from the top of the stairs before he reoriented himself. He felt like he should have been picking up new scents, but truth be told, they were all familiar. Ignoring Joan’s overpowering scent, he walked past her room – it was easy to tell which room was hers – and headed for the largest bedroom. The walls were covered in pieces that screamed both vintage and new-age at the same time, many with goddesses and inspirational phrases. He wandered towards the dresser and found some photos of the redhead and the other blondie that had been with them. The college students.

He walked over to the bed, leaned over, and curiously smelled the comforter.

“Study buddies. Right,” he said with a wicked grin.

“Randy?”

He straightened up like a dog caught on the furniture. The vampire pressed his lips together and tried to bring an innocent look to his face before responding, “Yeah?”

“Is this my mom’s room?”

“Your…” he trailed, worried. Focusing, he tried to pick up any new human scent, but he couldn’t. He shook his head, then clarified, “Just you, your sis, and the two college girls from the magic shop.”

She looked around frantically as if panic itself had snuck up behind her and tapped her shoulder. “Are you sure?” she asked, not waiting for an answer as her feet started towards the other end of the hall.

A real hand on her shoulder calmed her. Joan turned to be assailed by Randy’s eyes, caught in them. Somehow she’d never noticed how glaring blue they were, like water, which struck her as funny, because the dull warmth resonating from his hand felt much like cooled bath water – the kind you cursed after being interrupted by a long phone call. Feels just fine now, though.

His words were equally calming. “S’okay, Joan. Those birds are college students. You could all be renting the house, with parents safe at your real home.”

It made sense, and more importantly, reasoned away her worry, so she nodded.

But Randy choked back guilt. He had no clue if what he said could be true, but it didn’t make sense that the teen would be with them if it were. He really felt like he had lied, but with their memories gone, he didn’t want the girl with him to be upset before she even knew her own name.

“That wasn’t my room,” she said, distracting herself right back to her original task.

“I know,” he boasted.

She huffed, driving a finger into his chest. “You know which one is my room,” she accused.

“ ‘Course.” He grinned coyly, secretly getting off on all the little touches they’d been exchanging.

She crossed her arms impatiently, and he obliged, pointing at a closed white door.

Then she tapped his nose, and he blinked, shifting like she could have knocked him over.

“That nose of yours is handy, Randy,” she rhymed. Unconsciously, she made a display of going to her room – a slow saunter down the catwalk of a hallway.

Randy was fixated on her hips and groaned his appreciation quietly.

“Something with my name…” she mused, heading toward a shelf. A stuffed pink pig caught her eye before any books did, however. And surrounded by her things, she realized that while they didn’t invoke any memories, then did invoke feelings. She squeezed the animal to her chest, and warm fuzzies fluttered inside her.

“I’m helping,” the vampire stated, not wanting to ask if he could rifle through her things for fear she’d say no. He moved to her closet, feeling almost high from the onslaught on his senses as he opened the door. Clothes, shoes… he noted, …bag. He knelt on the floor amidst a sea of shoes and picked up a messenger bag. It was equally trendy and heavy.

“Whoa!” Joan’s voice stopped his inspection. “I am hot!”

Randy looked at her as she eyed herself in the mirror over her vanity. “I could have told you that.”

She made a funny face, paying close attention to her eyes, then leaned toward the glass and studied her own cleavage. Her hands cupped her breasts for a second as she gauged just how much was padding and how much natural.

Randy hid his snicker with his hand, and she jumped as he hovered behind her.

“Wonder what I look…”

He reached out and tapped the glass as Joan’s eyebrows crinkled. He heard the tap, felt the glass, but his image didn’t reflect. “How the bloody hell does that work?”

“I guess because you’re a vampire?”

“You’d think at least my clothes would show or something. Or, for that matter,” he ranted, “maybe I’d have a reflection, if I have a soul or something.”

He looked down at his free hand and forearm. Damn, I’m pale. Bit thin for a bloke – although I don’t seem to be too tall, either. His tight muscles, quite frankly, impressed him. Nonetheless, he couldn’t picture his face at all. He began to pace, pissed that he was robbed of something so basic. “Well this is bloody great! Not only do I not have a memory, but I don’t even get to know what I look like.”

“You’re really handsome, actually.”

Pacing stopped immediately. “Really,” he more said than asked, innately sensing it was true. I’m apparently full of myself, too, he noted.

“Well,” she began, taking the time to study his features. “…your hair is pretty cool, despite being so two decades ago.” Inwardly, she wondered how she could possibly remember fashion trends.

“Come again?”

“Well, you have it bleached blonde.”

“How blonde?” He arched his brow as he looked up, pulling a gelled strand into his line of vision.

“Oh,” was all he could find in his vocabulary, his ego deflating.

“It actually looks pretty good on you,” Joan consoled. “I mean, you’d look pretty edgy if you weren’t… ah…”

“Dressed like a ponce,” he finished for her, cursing his tweed pants.

“Well, yeah,” she cringed, then forced a smile. “But you’re thin, and you’ve got amazing cheekbones and a strong jaw to match.” She stepped toward him. “And your eyes are this really piercing light blue.”

Those blue eyes were narrowed and staring straight into her green ones as his chest puffed.

“You’re sorta dreamy, actually.” She said warmly, then quickly turned toward the shelf again. “Based purely on how you look, of course.”

“Of course.” He took another glance at the emptiness in the mirror, then noticed the pictures lining the frame. Everyone at that shop was apparently pretty close friends, based on the pictures, the girls and the boy in various places, grinning in all of them. Randy felt like his reflection when he noticed he wasn’t in a single photo, though. There was even one of his dad, though his stepmum-to-be wasn’t in it. Matter of fact…

“I think that girl might not be your stepmom,” Joan offered, and Randy jumped. He’d been so lost in thought that she actually snuck up on him. She grinned broadly at that.

“Yeah. She seems to be all over that college bloke.” He was starting to have doubts about Rupert being his dad as well, but he pushed that aside. “Do you think I photograph?” he asked.

“I… I don’t know.” She sweeped the mirror. “Maybe not, though. I mean, there aren’t any photos of you here.”

“Do you think you’d have one?” he found himself asking, although he kicked himself – too late – and tried to recover. “I mean, if you could have one, do you feel like…”

He choked, not even sure what he was trying to say, but feeling very naked.

Joan eyed him up and down. Besides his good looks, she didn’t really have a bead on him at all. She couldn’t tell if they were friends or anything else beyond crime-fighting partners, couldn’t sense anything inside her besides a physical attraction she might have for any hot guy.

So she gave the only answer she could. “I don’t know.”

He then had an inkling of what it was like to be one of those vamps he staked, because a wave of pain rippled through his empty ribcage. It all the more reinforced that sense he had that he loved her. More importantly though, he realized, the girl didn’t love him back.

His stomach turned, and he hoped her lackluster response was because she didn’t know how he felt about her or know him well enough to have that sort of attachment. God, I hope I’ve never told her. Something deep down – maybe his soul, he thought – told him if he had already told her, then she had already rejected him at some point.

He drilled his attention into the bag he was holding. “I found this,” he said, pulling out a notebook stuffed with papers resting against a thick textbook.

“Oh!” Joan seemed to dance in eager anticipation, studying the vampire’s face as he dropped the bag to flip through the sheets. She tapped her foot behind her in impatience as she tried – and was denied – to see over the edge of the notebook. She held her breath as his eyebrow piqued and his eyes narrowed. She tilted her head with his in a moment of silence and curiosity. Then she damn near jumped out of her skin as he burst into a fit of laughter.

“What the hell?!” she yelled as he laughed, head tilted back, eyes closed. It was obviously genuine laughter, Joan knew, although she also thought it sounded maniacal. She grabbed the book out of his hand, but lost the page he was on.

He wiped the start of a tear from his eye and coughed as he regained his composure, but not without whimsy in his voice. “Oh, that’s great. Makes me feel a hell of a lot better about Randy.”

“What’s my name?!” she demanded.

“I’m sorry,” he said, wanting desperately to sound as honest as he felt, but unable to stifle his amusement. “I really am, Buffy.”

“BUFFY!?!” she screeched. “You’re making that up!” Her fingers raced through the pages, finally pulling out a test. Her heart sank.

“Buffy,” she read off the top of the page.

Randy finally swallowed back the last of his laughter. “It’s not that bad,” he thought aloud. “Sort of cute. Very blonde.” He rolled it off his tongue, and found it came out low and hushed, “Buffy.”

Ultimately, it sounded needy to him, and he shuddered. But Buffy shuddered, too.

She opened her mouth to respond, felt on a very primal level she had to respond, but found that ‘Randy’ just wouldn’t come out.

“… We should get to the hospital,” she offered instead.




Shell Presto can be reached at mangetsuDELETEME@email.com

Chapter 3: Clothes Make the Monster



He froze.

Two more steps toward Dawn and Alexander Harris would have broken the crystal that held the spell of forgetfulness over the band of demon-fighters. But instead he stood absolutely still.

He was watching the girl he thought was his girlfriend – that cute redhead, Willow – lay on her college buddy. She had fallen, but she seemed to be in no hurry to get up.

It wasn’t pain or even hurt that Alexander felt, just a mild sting; somehow he knew having a hottie for a girlfriend, or any girlfriend at all, was too much to ask.

The youngest among them was pretty intuitive herself. Dawn’s heart sank a bit as she watched Alex’s eyes lower to the floor of the sewer tunnel they were in. He dejectedly kicked a rock, stirring up a small cloud of dirt with it as it trailed towards the two girls on the floor. They didn’t notice.

Dawn took it upon herself to get his attention off it.

“Oh look! A ladder!” She ran over to it and looked up into the night sky through the slats in the large grate above.

“Nice,” Alex said, snapping out of it. He walked in the complete opposite direction of the black quartz lying on the floor. “Grate looks heavy. I’ll go first.”

On the floor, Willow Rosenberg had barely brushed her lips against her study buddy’s when she pulled back sharply.

“Oh my god!” she gasped in a hushed whisper. “I’m so sorry!”

“N-no!” Tara Maclay tried to sound confident as she followed Willow in sitting up. It was as though there was an invisible chain linking them. She could only stutter. “Th-that’s fine,” she whispered. “I…”

The voluptuous young woman put her head down, unable to meet the wide eyes of the girl who set her heart aflutter. She was so painfully nervous that the redhead’s gaze burned, and the saliva Tara swallowed did nothing to put out the fire. “I-I… I like you, t-too.”

Tara looked up to see a flash of teeth before the redhead frowned.

Willow caught a glimpse of Alex’s legs as he pushed open the grate with a loud creak. Here less than an hour and I have to break someone’s heart.


His knuckles still stung as he laced his fingers around the grate and pushed. As he crawled out of the sewer tunnels, Alex couldn't remember a time he was so happy to breath fresh air.

Of course, I can’t remember – I can’t remember anything, he thought as he offered Dawn a hand off the ladder. It was the same thing he reminded himself every ten minutes.

So, when he finally had to offer his hand to the redhead who may or may not have been his girlfriend, he couldn’t hold the scene in the sewer against her. After all, he had been the one to suggest they were dating, and she couldn’t have known any better. Heck, he hadn’t known his own name without looking at his driver's license.

He ended up smiling when he pulled her up, finding himself unable to be mad at this girl.

And Willow couldn't have been more confused as she took Alex's hand to climb up into the cemetery. She couldn't deny that she felt a closeness to the man. And he was handsome, although he didn’t make her think naughty thoughts like the girl following up the ladder. She gave Tara a hand and turned back apologetically to Alex, who was laughing nervously as he looked around the graves and forest for a trace of buildings.

"There’re more trees here than on the way to Isengard," he quipped, then paused.

The question What the world is Isengard? ran through everyone's minds, including his own, although he knew whatever he was saying, it was supposed to be funny.

"Well." He clapped his hands loudly and Tara jumped. “My keen sense of non-direction is telling me we’re lost in a cemetery.”

“We need to find the hospital,” Dawn said, hoping someone would lead them as she was, quite frankly, scared. “Joan is waiting.”

Willow tilted her head, her curls bouncing as she did. “I know honey, but first we have to find out where it is.”

“Or where we are,” Alex offered needlessly. They all studied the trees and gravestones, wondering which direction to go in.

Suddenly Alex called out, “Hey! The North Star!” he pointed excitedly. “If we follow that, and it takes us in the wrong direction, then at least we’ll know how to turn around!”

It was a sound plan, so they walked. He wasn’t sure how he knew it was the North Star, and no one else could remember it being the North Star, but the important thing, he told himself, was that he knew where the North Star was.





All things considered, Randy was not having a good day. Having only had a few hours’ worth of memories, it startled him to think that he had already been hunted down by a loan shark, discovered he was a demon of some sort – scaring the woman he loved in the process – and suffered a handful of small rejections from said woman.

Add to that the fact that he still hadn’t had a cigarette and he was stuck wearing tweed trousers, and he believed he earned the right to scowl as he followed the newly-named Buffy through the town – which was apparently Sunnydale, according to all the signs.

Buffy still couldn’t get over her name. No wonder I picked Joan, she thought to herself, Buffy! It sounded like a cat or a cartoon character. Or a total priss. And maybe a little British, or at least uppity. She wondered if she disliked the British, thinking thoughts like that.

It would explain why Randy likes it, though, she thought, pretending to look into a store window as she walked. In reality, she was trying to catch a glimpse of the vampire behind her, and she frowned when she remembered he wouldn’t cast a reflection. He had been upset ever since she said they should go to the hospital, and it confused her. It was obvious that he remembered something she didn’t about the two of them, but nothing really felt right to her.

Whereas holding her stuffed pig or seeing photos tugged at her heartstrings, the vampire set off uneasiness. Nothing seemed right about him. The way he looked, the mismatched bleached hair with the four-alarm nerd suit, made her uneasy. And whereas saying ‘Buffy’ or ‘Dawn’ felt natural, her mouth just didn’t want to form ‘Randy.’ She sighed, and her shoulders slumped.

“You okay, Buffy?”

She shivered. His English lilt made her name rich like mocha ice cream, and that did seem familiar, as did the throb that made her tense her abs with a sharp breath. There was a definite familiarity until she turned to look at him and the obscurity returned. Randy was like a badly-dubbed Japanese movie, the words and picture just didn’t mesh. At least he seemed more worried than scowly.

And suddenly nervous. “I didn’t do anything to upset you, did I, pet?”

“Oh!” Finally realizing she hadn’t said a word to him, she rushed to recover. “No, no, Randy, I’m fine.”

“You seemed down,” he noted, then smiled. “Guess we’re both a bit lost in thought.”

“Wish that were the only place we were lost,” she sighed. The slayer had had better luck getting them to a populated area – the business district – but still no luck finding the hospital.

And though neither admitted it out loud yet, they were both far too embarrassed to ask anyone where it was. So they continued walking.

Randy really was looking in the store windows. It wasn’t too late, but most of the stores were already dark. He saw a couple of places that had clothes and wished they were open. He had $150 in his pocket. He wasn’t sure where it was from, but he would have loved to use it. Even from a practical standpoint new clothes made sense, there wasn’t enough give in his shirt to throw a proper punch, and his shoes were more bloody uncomfortable the longer he wore them.

So when he did see a clothing store with the lights on, he got excited.

“Buffy!”

She turned sharply, going into superhero mode and scanning for whatever set him off.

It wasn’t lost on him, and he swallowed his excitement with a sheepish grin. “I’d, uhm, like to go get a different shirt,” he said, pointing across the street.

She looked like a mom or a school teacher as she placed her hands on her hips. “Don’t you think… oh, finding the hospital and figuring out what happened to us should take precedence?”

He shrank into his white button-down shame. “I know, love, but it’s uncomfortable.” He shrugged. “’Sides, it’s not like the rest of our party has any clue where the hospital is, either. Hell, they’re probably still lost in the sewers.”

She nodded in agreement. “Still…”

“And!” he cut her off. “Do you really want to get there first? Offer up the superhero and the vampire for testing?”

She squirmed, and suddenly stalling seemed like a brainy idea after all. “No, no, that doesn’t sound good at all.”

“Perfect,” he declared wearing a cocky victory grin that seemed all too familiar to the petite blonde.



He immediately gravitated towards the jeans, and was perusing a rack of black ones when his scowl returned.

“Oh, bloody hell, I don’t know what size I am.” Over his shoulder, he said to the girl hovering nearby, “Wait here. I have to check my size in the dressing –”

“Oh, don’t do that.” She rolled her eyes and before he could protest, she was tugging his shirt from his pants. There were more than enough racks between them and the counter to cover him. “I’ll just check the waistband and –”

“Buffy!” he whispered, too late.

Pasty but tight vampire ass drew her attention from his waistband.

“I’m not wearing underwear,” he groaned.

Suddenly Buffy was doing her own window shopping as she took in Randy’s sculpted obliques and the curve of his spine. After a good long minute, she snapped out of it and read the size off the tag in his pants, letting go of his waistband.

“Thanks, love.” He threw a look over her shoulder as he heard her pulse pick up. She was blushing, and looked away, so he took the moment to ogle her outright. He may have been dressed like a poof, but apparently he had some good material to work with underneath. And he didn’t need a peek beneath her clothes to know she did, too.

He picked two different cuts of black jeans and headed over to a table with T-shirts. He bit his thumbnail a moment, bobbed his head, and settled on a medium in black.

Behind him, Buffy scoffed, “Oh, you’re kidding me.”

“What?” He quirked a scarred eyebrow at her.

“You’re a v-

Before she could even get the word out his eyes went so wide they could have fallen out.

“-egetarian…” They shared a very awkward glance, and he rolled his eyes before the sass came back to her voice. “… so you automatically have to go with the all black and mysterious look?”

He brought a hand up to hold his chin like a critic assessing a painting. “I dunno. I kinda like it. It calls to me.”

“Fine, whatever,” she waved her arm, dismissing him. Strangely, she found herself also dismissing the murderous glance he shot at her. He did look scary, but she somehow knew it was a defense mechanism. She sighed. “Don’t stand around. Go try your clothes on.”

He growled softly, and she had to hold back a giggle. Mad as he was, as guilty as she felt for insulting him, he was too cute and tweedy to be anything but adorable.

He slammed the dressing room door against the back wall and pulled the white shirt off with such vigor the buttons flew into the mirror. Yanking the black T-shirt on, he cursed. He couldn’t stand being insulted, and she had no right. So what if I like black? He awkwardly thrust his trousers down, trying to pull out of them so fast he lost his balance and fell into the wall. The vampire leered into the mirror, even more angry by his lack of smoothness, both in dressing and impressing the girl. Not like I can see what the bloody hell I’m wearin’ anyway.

He wrangled out of the tweed, then pulled up the black jeans and zipped them. They had a lower waist, and he had no clue what his ass looked like in them, or if low-waisted jeans actually suited him. He absolutely didn’t want to ask Buffy.

But as a blur of royal blue wafted over the door and onto his head, he realized he didn’t have to. “What the bloody?”

“Put that on,” she ordered, her voice even and a little stern.

“What?” He looked it over – another button-down shirt, long-sleeved. “I don’t need you to—"

“Just trust me.”

The words stopped midway between his brain and his mouth. Then they just disappeared. Randy waffled, almost physically, his head bobbing from side to side. He didn’t want to give in, but he did like the idea of trusting her. He eyed the shirt again, cautiously sliding his arms in. It was fit around his torso as he buttoned it, but loose enough in the arms and shoulders that he could probably throw a punch. He aimed a high elbow at the wall to test it, found he was right. And his T wasn’t bunching underneath it. He gripped the doorknob tightly – I’m such a bloody wanker – before showing himself off to Buffy.

The show was more than she bargained for. The instant her eyes went wide he knew she hadn’t been lying about finding him handsome. By the time she blinked to recover, his expression had changed completely, he leaned into the door as a predatory look washed into his eyes – all the more brought out by her choice of shirt – and his tongue darted out knowingly before his mouth settled on a smirk.

Buffy felt the attraction ooze into her stomach and thighs before her brain even registered it. And when it did hit her brain, it was 5 o’clock on the expressway, her thoughts were so backed up.

“So you like it?” the vampire drawled.

“Hoh.”

His grin stretched like a jack-o-lantern’s, and she realized that wasn’t a word. Also, he finally did look like a creature of the night, and she ate her dark and mysterious comment.

He ran his hand down the front of his shirt playfully, pushed the door all the way open, and bent down to collect his money and lighter from the tweed skin he’d shed. The next minutes were a blur to Buffy. The bleach-blond – and it was striking how good his hair looked in contrast to all the black he was wearing – walked over to a shoe display, slid on a pair of Doc Marten boots, took all of five steps, ripped the tags off the clothing and, shoebox in hand, walked to the counter.

“Ring ‘em up. I’m wearin’ them out,” he told the attendant, a touch of glee bubbling into his otherwise casual display. When he had parted with most of his cash, he went back for the dumbstruck blonde. “You have to remember how to walk, or we’re not gonna get to the hospital.”

She left the store first. Familiarity had become a frying pan to the face, and she had no words that could placate the new tension between them.

Randy followed with slow and deliberate steps, but his undead heart was raving.





It hadn’t been the North Star.

The hospital, as it had turned out, was all of five minutes away from the particular cemetery they had started at. However, it had taken twenty to get back to that cemetery after they had gotten lost in the woods from following a jet. Getting un-lost was the easy part.

Explaining group amnesia to a doctor was the hard part, but after Alexander stopped talking, Willow managed to convince the doctor it was true.

The tall balding man looked the entire group over like they were a Rubik's Cube with one square out of place. Then he leafed through the pages on his clipboard, checking off the points they’d already established.

“None of you have any pain?”

Four heads shook ‘no.’

“We checked for signs of external trauma,” he affirmed. “No bumps or cuts.”

They all nodded in agreement.

He fixed his glasses, pressed his lips together like he may have known an answer to their problems.

“Where were you when this happened, when you woke up?” he asked quietly despite the fact that they were in an examining room with the door closed.

Willow, Alexander, Dawn and Tara shared nervous glances amongst themselves, glances that eventually locked onto Willow, the unofficial leader of the group.

She smiled shyly, making it a point to stare at the doctor’s forehead and avoid his eyes. “I know this sounds a little out there… but a magic shop?”

The doctor huffed and rolled his eyes. “The Magic Box, perhaps?”

Her shoulders lifted as she forced a tense grin. “Didn’t know the name. Maybe?”

“You should talk to the shop owner,” the doctor suggested. “We’ve had weirder things happen in Sunnydale. It would be nearly impossible for this to be some sort of internal issue in all four of you…”

“Ei-eight,” Tara corrected. “Th-there were ei-eight of us.”

“Right. Eight, which makes it even more implausible,” he continued. “And I can’t in good conscious give all of you CAT scans when it doesn’t seem it would help.”

Alexander swallowed hard and got ready to get the ‘you crazy?’ eyes. “So, do you think it could be a… a spell?”

The doctor put the clipboard down and pressed his hands together in front of his face as he exhaled. “I don’t… I don’t know. I, personally, don’t believe in magic. But, perhaps, if you all believed a spell would work on you, then it could work. Or, perhaps you all saw something very traumatic, and it triggered a short-term memory loss.”

Dawn leaned into Alexander’s ear. “There were those vampires…” she whispered.

“I think we may have been used to those,” he whispered back.

They both laughed as the doctor gave them a glare full of annoyance.

He cleared his throat. “Anyway, my best advice would be to go home… you do all have a place to stay, right? You said you had your driver’s licenses?”

As three nodded, Dawn squirmed. “I don’t,” she said sadly.

“You can stay with me, honey,” Willow reassured her.

Another cough. “Good, then my best advice is to go home, get some rest, and see if you get your memories back tomorrow. If not, talk to the shop owner. And if that fails, come back, and I’ll refer you to a psychologist or a brain specialist, although, like I said, this doesn’t seem to be physical in nature.”

A clatter of chairs and soft swishes of putting on coats later, the four were headed to the elevator. In it, a cloud of frustration hung over the group.

Alexander was the only one to talk. “I wonder if we should have told him the shop owners had amnesia too?”





Buffy kept throwing these little glances at him. They were walking side by side now, and Randy could catch them from the corner of his eye. It bolstered his confidence with every step, because if the bird found him attractive, she surely wouldn’t say no if he made a move, he reasoned. Guess clothes really do make the vamp.

His fingers got twitchy in his tight pockets, but not from a need for cigarettes this time. Her hand was free, just dangling by her side, and he debated reaching out to hold it.

Buffy couldn’t figure out what he was focused on, but Randy was looking down, letting her look up. She was amazed at how a change of clothing completely altered her perception of him. The vampire was oozing sexiness, and turning her stomach to jelly. The biggest problem, however, was the feeling of danger she had, because she couldn’t tell if it was the don’t-know-what-you’re-getting-into danger of sexual excitement, or if Randy was truly dangerous because he was a vampire. The image of him outside the dressing room reverberated in her brain. Sexy, for sure, she told herself. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that his predatory glance meant he really could eat her. She wanted to tell him to go all bumpy again, to see if the change of clothes affected her feelings on that as well.

She shivered, and then shook her head quickly. Stop thinking about sex with the vam— “Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed, pointing up the street. “I see hospital!”

Bloody hell! Randy’s hand quickly retreated back into his pocket. He growled at the building a good six blocks away and added glumly, “Yeah, there it is.”

“Let’s go!”

He was shocked when she, in her glee, pulled his hand from his pocket, wrapping warm fingers between his cold ones, to lead him down the street. So shocked in fact that his feet wouldn’t move, and the tiny blonde fell backwards as their arms pulled taut.

He caught her quickly from behind. “Sorry!” he said, too loudly, as he steadied her.

She turned to face him, ask what happened, but only a foot away from each other, they suddenly became lost again.

And then no feet were moving.

After a long beat, Randy trailed his fingers gently up Buffy’s arm, barely contacting with her skin. Goosebumps formed – her skin was telling her that his touch was cold – but it only warmed her.

He was smoldering. “I trusted you with the shirt, love,” he said, his voice hushed and strong all at once. “Can you trust me on something?”

She expected his eyes to narrow, expected that hungry glare, but got only an intense, almost scared gaze.

He felt her muscles tense as she clenched her fists, but she still nodded a ‘yes.’

“Then close your eyes,” he instructed. “Because I think I remember something.”

Her entire body went hard as a starlight mint when she shut her lids. The fear that he could bite her was thick, and she didn’t realize that by tensing up, she had made the tendons in her neck stand out all the more.

Fortunately, Randy was only interested in her lips.

Like glass, she thought as their mouths pressed together. His lips were cool and smooth, like magically soft glass. She breathed in faint traces of whiskey and cigarettes and knew she had done this before.

His lips warmed with every additional go, until he couldn’t help but slide his tongue into the heat she was giving off.

Then it burned.

The two became a hive-mind. Randy pressed her up against the nearest building, locking his hands around her hips as her now-sweating palms blazed a trail up his chest, around his neck, into his stiff blond hair.

He ran his tongue across her bottom lip and she gasped like someone held underwater. He didn’t let her finish before he greedily shoved his tongue back into her mouth and over her teeth to wrestle with the softness of her tongue.

She pressed her hips hard against his groin, and he obliged by cupping the curves of her ass and pulling her stiffly against his erection. He began a barrage of quick, open-mouthed kisses, and laughed to himself as she struggled to match his pace.

Until she pushed him away harshly.

He gasped and let go as he stumbled for balance, arms flailing before his boots caught proper grip on the pavement.

Buffy was nearly hyperventilating as she inhaled air in huge gulps, shoulders heaving.

“What the bloody – ?” he reached for her shoulder, but she batted his hand away. “Buffy?”

“Air!” she huffed between breaths.

“What?”

“You weren’t breathing!” she exclaimed as the heaving subsided a bit.

He tilted his head, cocked an eyebrow and stood perfectly still as her breathing slowed. After a few seconds, she was calmer, and he was more confused.

He inhaled only to tell her, “You’re right.” Another beat. Another breath. “I only do to talk. I wonder how that works?”

“Not well for me.” Her lips – covered in cherry lip gloss, he now knew – were curved into a sweet smile.

He rocked on his heels, thumbs digging under the waistband of his jeans. “So tell me, Buffy, did that feel…”

“Familiar?” she cooed happily.

“Yeah. Like we’ve done it before?”

She blushed, her green eyes glowing. Then she slid her fingers around his – grinning at his reaction from her hand being so near his crotch – pulled his hand from his jeans and led him properly toward the hospital, leaning into his shoulder as they walked.

“Definitely familiar.”







Comments —good or bad – make the author write faster and better. Really. Test the theory.

Shell Presto can be reached at mangetsuDELETEME@email.com

www.insomn.com

Chapter 4: Outnumbered



A feeling akin to Valentine’s Day singles’ spite washed over Alexander when he noticed the blonde superhero and her bleached-blond sidekick, arms locked, walking down the pavement towards him and his three female charges.

“Joan!” Dawn’s voice was a mix of excitement and relief as she hammered down the sidewalk. She didn’t stop until she firmly latched her arms around her sister, impacting with such force that Randy had to support Buffy with an arm to keep both girls upright. “Thank god you’re okay!”

Buffy returned the hug, petting her sister’s hair protectively.

“Of course I’m okay. I’ve got super powers, remember?

“But there were so many of them!” Dawn countered, pulling back to look her sister over for bruises. “You should be more careful until we know everything you can do.”

“Girl’s got a point,” Alexander added as he walked into earshot, followed by Tara and Willow. The two girls were awkwardly walking close enough to bump arms occasionally, but not so close as to imply anything.

Buffy’s arm immediately found Randy’s again when Dawn let go of her.

“It’s okay,” the blonde reassured them with a blush. She squeezed the vampire’s bicep gently. “I had backup.”

Randy wore a 4-year-old-with-candy grin as the others eyed him up.

“Does he have superpowers, too?” Alexander asked.

“Sort of,” the vampire replied, sharing a look with Buffy and wondering who should broach the somewhat disturbing subject.

“Randy’s a vampire,” Buffy said, careful to quickly string in her next point, “But he’s on our side.”

Tara and Willow unconsciously locked hands, fright playing in their features.

“A-are you s-sure?” Tara stuttered.

“Yeah, it’s all right,” Buffy assured her. “He has a soul and everything.”

“How can you be sure?” Dawn asked, getting uncomfortably close to Randy’s face, studying his eyes and teeth.

He took a step back. “Well, I’d imagine if I were your average evil vamp, I’d want to bite you.”

“You don’t want to?” she interrogated with a skeptical glare.

He shook his head. “Nothin’. You don’t look appetizing at all.”

The girl smiled. Then frowned.

Randy gently lifted her chin and shot her a dashing smile. “Don’t mean you’re not a fine lookin' bird, niblet.”

The gesture cleared Randy of the evil charges. As Dawn blushed, she realized he definitely was giving off those friend’s-hot-older-brother vibes in lieu of anything intimidating.

Buffy interrupted with the more pressing business. "So did you see a doctor? Could they help?"

"Nope," Alexander said curtly, noticing bitterly that he was the only one who’d gone this whole exchange without touching anyone.

There was a long beat until Willow realized Alex wasn't going to explain further. She picked up the slack. "The doctor said that it's unlikely to be an injury or a disease. He told us to check out the magic shop we were in when we discovered the memory loss."

"So we're dealing with magic?" Buffy wondered skeptically. "Like real magic?"

"We have been fighting vampires," Dawn pointed out.

"And I am one," Randy emphasized.

"And you're all SuperJoan," Alexander noted.

Buffy shrugged. "Good point. But do any of us know magic?"

They all glanced at one another as if someone should have WITCH in blazing letters on their forehead.

“I think the bigger question,” Alexander suggested, “is do any of us remember how to do magic?”

The silence was intense, and Buffy found herself wishing that finding whoever could do magic was as easy as Randy sniffing it out.

“I bet I’m a witch!” Dawn suddenly interjected cheerfully.

Buffy gave her a shove and started walking toward the magic shop, thankful their destination was somewhere she finally knew. Then she broke her pace.

“Oh, and guys?”

All eyes on her, Buffy squirmed and Randy’s tongue darted past his grin as he anticipated what she would announce.

“My name’s Buffy.”

It took exactly 3 minutes and 42 seconds for the laughing to stop. Well, excluding the little sniggers that followed as they walked back to the Magic Box.




“What kind of spell were we doing, anyway?” Willow wondered. “I mean, who would want to make themselves forget everything?

“Lots of reasons,” Randy surmised. “I mean, you screw up bad enough, I’m sure there’s a million things you could want someone to forget. And if we’re all close friends, then maybe that person would want the lot of us to forget.”

“So who screwed up what?” Alexander wondered.

Dawn shuddered a bit. “And what could be so bad that you’d want to erase everyone’s memory?”

“I bet someone cheated on someone,” Randy guessed. “That’s usually the hardest thing to deal with.”

Buffy gawked at him, stunned at his blatantness.

He shrugged. “What, pet? Probably true. I mean, love and hate being the world’s two foremost motivating factors.”

Her eyes asked Did you cheat on me?

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m too pragmatic to go to all that sort of trouble.”

“Y-you can s-say that,” Tara interrupted, “But do a-any of us kn-know ourselves that well yet?”

Randy scoffed. “It’s not a matter of knowin’, it’s a matter of feelin’. Do you think you could?”

She shifted uncomfortably, and the sentiment moved like a wave throughout the group, casting doubt in everyone except Randy and Dawn, who still bounced down the sidewalk hoping she knew how to turn boys into toads.

“Well, I’m clear,” Alexander added, despite not being sure he could never do such a thing. “I don’t have a lover to scorn.”

“Oh, about that,” Randy began, but Buffy cut him off with a jab to the stomach.

“Uhm, Alex,” Buffy began instead. “Before we met up with you, Randy and I found my house…”

“You did?!” Dawn cheered. Buffy axed the line of questioning by holding up a hand.

“Anyway, we found some photos, and I think..”

“Think, ” Randy again scoffed. “You bloody well know…”

“Anya is your fiancée, Alex,” Buffy quickly snapped.

The young man opened his mouth, but no words came out at first. When he finally gathered his senses, he managed a “Wha?”

“In the photos,” the blonde continued, “you were together and hugging and stuff. I’m pretty sure that ring on her hand is from you.”

He inhaled, remembering the blonde girl’s straight hair and thin legs in her high-heeled shoes. He remembered her 60s or 70s style blouse, and that struck a familiar chord in him as he dwelled on it. As he exhaled, he smiled.

“Anya.” It was the first time that day the woman’s name was properly pronounced. “Anya’s my fiancée.” He rolled the phrased around in his head. Nothing sounded wrong about it.

“And you left her with Rupert,” Randy noted.

“Oh my god.” White drew into Alexander’s face like vaccine into a syringe. “Oh my god!” He started jogging toward the shop, not understanding why he was suddenly frantic, but somewhere, deep down inside him, some part of him knew that the shopkeep really liked sex.

“Oh, this is going to be a bloody mess.”




“Anya!” Alexander burst into the back room without knocking, and saw exactly what he had feared: His gorgeous woman naked next to an equally naked middle-aged man resting lazily on a gym mat.

Hearing her correct name roused her from a post-love-making lull like a splash of cold water. Somehow, there was no urge to cover herself from Alexander when she turned toward him, exposing her firm, lean form and rosy nipples.

He swallowed hard, both from the shock of seeing her naked with another man and the testosterone-riddled joy of just plain seeing her naked. He laughed because it was the only thing he could do.

“Alexander?” she cocked her head, and all her thoughts must have tumbled out her ear, because she couldn’t think of a thing to say. Her body lacked modesty towards him, but her head had no idea why he would burst into the room.

He didn’t dance around the subject.

“You’re my fiancée!” he squeaked.

“What?” For a moment her face was as blank as a freshly cleaned blackboard, but the chalk came out soon enough.

By now Rupert Giles had roused and covered himself with Anya’s skirt. As he stared at the two children – and he realized at that moment, without the haze of sexual tension, that he did indeed regard Anya as a sort of child – he found he didn’t feel nearly as disappointed as he thought he would in overhearing the conversation. Instead of dread or anxiety, he had an overwhelming urge to shake his head, much like a teacher, and lecture them on the importance of knowing who your proper partner was.

“Well, don’t look at me,” he said instead. “I didn’t know.” He reached up to pull off glasses that he then realized were sitting atop the edge of the vaulting horse.

Anya pouted, eyeing Alexander, then the man she had just screwed, and suddenly covered herself from the older man’s eyes, although he was already intent on staring at the wall. The girl then scrambled for her blouse as her fiancé watched, silent in his shock.

She didn’t meet his eyes as she approached him, buttoning her shirt.

“I-I didn’t know,” she explained to the man whose last name she couldn’t even recall.

“I…” he wasn’t sure what he even wanted to say. Am I mad? he wondered, rationalizing that if he had to ask himself, he wasn’t. He placed a hand comfortingly on her shoulder. Her shirt was still clean, but he swore it felt dirty. He fought the urge to wipe his hand on his jeans. “I know.”

He hugged her, pulling her close with a desperation he couldn’t have guessed he’d have. Somehow this woman who moments before was nothing more than an acquaintance was a gem to be coveted, and he clung to her as if staking a claim.

“Ahem,” Giles cleared his throat loudly. “I’m sorry about the incident, but I’d appreciate the opportunity to dress.”

“Oh, right.” Anya broke from Xander and awkwardly took her skirt back. She tried to fix her hair briefly before leaving alone in the back room.

When they opened the door back into the main room, suddenly everyone had a book, and their gazes into said books were very stern and concentrated.

Except for Randy, who didn’t particularly like the tension. “You and Rupert find anything to help?”

Anya glowered.

Buffy shrieked, “Randy!”

“What?” He put his arms up in a display of innocence. “I meant before they shagged.”

The admonishment was tri-fold this time, from Buffy, Dawn, and Xander, “Randy!”

“Well there’s no point in denyin’ it happened,” he mumbled.

“Look, I…” Xander glanced at the woman beside him, more and more frustrated every moment he didn’t know a thing about her. He reached for her hand, wondering if how he twined his fingers around hers now was how they always held hands. Or maybe we don’t hold hands at all. Maybe we’re an arm-in-arm couple or a hand-in-pocket couple. He completely disregarded that she was wearing a skirt.

Most of all, it bothered him because he didn’t know why she would like him. He tried to stop the trembling that jostled everything below his elbows.

“We’re gonna go home. We need to talk,” he announced, and Anya nodded quietly in agreement before they left.

Giles exited tentatively moments later. He had straightened his hair and the wrinkles in his shirt as best he could without a mirror or iron, but he knew he didn’t look presentable. He coughed lightly in lieu of talking to the girls and his son – or at least the man who could be his son, were he sure he had ever had someone in his life to be Randy’s mother. Mostly, he took comfort in the fact that he did own the shop, and he could kick them all out if he wanted to.

“Uhm, hi,” Buffy said awkwardly. Dawn rolled her eyes and Randy didn’t stifle his laugh at his girl’s lameness.

“It’s okay,” Willow said, nervously clutching at her own hands. “You didn’t know. We didn’t know. I mean, I thought I was Alexander’s girlfriend, and I’m gay, so…”

Everyone but the vampire stared at her wide-eyes, and she shrank like a violet. But she believed in her point. “Well I am, and I’m just saying, we don’t know anything about ourselves or anyone.”

“I-I’m gay, t-too,” Tara announced, and the redhead beamed at the support. “B-but, I knew. I felt it r-right away. Knew I… you…” She lost the confidence, and hugged herself as she looked down, but Willow quickly doubled the hug with her own arms.

“It’s okay,” she nearly sang, and though their feet didn’t move, the girls went somewhere private in that moment.

Moving off the girls’ revelations, Randy announced to Rupert, “I’m a vampire, and therefore probably not your son, which means we just plain don’t like each other.”

The older Brit heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh thank God.” He tilted his head and laughed. “So your god-awful name is someone else’s fault. Brilliant.”

Randy growled.

“Great,” he declared sarcastically as he headed for the door. “Now that everything’s settled, I think I could use a…”

“Hold it,” Giles ordered. “I need to be filled in.”




The general consensus after the recap was that the answer to their problem was somewhere in the magic shop. Most likely in a book.

Possibly one of the thirty or so on the table the four young women and two older men sat at, maybe even one of those that were currently opened before them. And if not any of those, definitely in one of the hundreds of others in the shop.

The ticking in Randy’s jaw went unnoticed, but he was bored out of his bleedin’ mind. They’d been sitting in their little circle for more than two hours, and while everyone was sharing their interesting little discoveries – “Buffy, you’re not the only superhero, and they call you slayers” – no one seemed to care that the vampire was decidedly silent. It wasn’t that he didn’t like reading. Maybe it was that he still wanted a cigarette.

Or maybe it was the beautiful blonde eye candy sitting next to him. Stuck with everyone, it was like she had a ‘Look, but don’t touch’ sign on that gorgeous body of hers, and all Randy could think about was their tonsil hockey match earlier that night.

Not moving his head, he looked up and saw how oblivious everyone was. Maybe she wouldn’t mind a touch after all, he thought, recalling how she had matched his passion before. He really didn’t think he’d be interested in a prude. Still leaning into his right arm, he moved his left hand off his book and under the table before placing it on Buffy’s leg. They shared a sideways glance and a smile before she continued reading.

Randy, on the other hand, was only interested in how warm she felt. He brushed his hand slowly back and forth over her thigh, noting how soft her muscles felt, how dainty her strangely powerful frame was. And she let him for a while, smiling at first before her expression turned neutral. He continued gently, letting his fingers slide a little further up her thigh each time. Until she frowned. It wasn’t an angry frown, but a frown of lost concentration and it was quickly followed by her hand sliding under the table and pushing his away. And then slapping him gently when he tried to put it back.

His right hand moved to cup his chin as he pretended to focus on the book, but his intense concentration was on her. He ran his tongue over his teeth, breathed that exasperated library breath out his nose. She was his subject, and the subject was being difficult, but not unresponsive. He waited for her to once again become engrossed in her book then slowly moved his hand behind them to strike from an unexpected angle.

His fingertips had barely grazed her ass when she jumped.

“Spike!” she yelped as she batted his hand away.

Everyone stared at them, partly confused andpartly annoyed at the interruption.

Spike grinned wickedly. “That really is my name,” he mused, feeling it this time.

Buffy could only blush. “I… he…”

“I’m bored,” he explained. “And Buffy’s my girl or something, so of course I’m distracted.”

“Spike!” She got redder, and his smile widened.

“Sorry, love, but it’s true. Been a long day, I’m not feelin’ the study bug.”

As if his statement reminded the youngest at the table that there was life outside of demons and spells, she agreed. “Spike’s right. I’m getting hungry.”

Willow nodded. “I could eat. How about you, honey?”

Tara liked it when Willow spoke for her, and the nod saved her the embarrassment of stuttering.

“Oh, fine,” Giles retorted dryly. “Put off knowing who we are.” He told himself he had the burden of being the responsible one, his alpha male kicking in. However, the bookish librarian he didn’t know he had in him was also having a say. “I’m staying,” he declared dramatically, as if to cover up the fact that he was enjoying his exploration of the books on the table.

Recovering, Buffy asked, “Do you want us to bring you anything?”

He softened at her warmness. “No, I’ll be fine. I’m sure I’ll manage something.”

It wasn’t until they left the store that he once again began to wonder why he had a one-way ticket to England. He drowned that question in texts.




Spike felt like a single dad at a sleepover as he followed the gaggle of girls into Buffy’s house. He was carrying two large pizzas and keeping his mouth shut amidst the girl talk.

“This is really nice!” Willow observed as she took in the long staircase and separate entryways to the living and dining rooms. “And we live here?”

“Spike says so,” Buffy said.

Spike nodded.

Before he could ask where they wanted the food, Dawn giggled, “That’s so cool! It’s like I’ve got three sisters! And only one is annoying…”

“Hey!”

“S-so where are our r-rooms?” Tara asked.

“You only have one, love.”

Tara blushed, looking at the redhead. Confused, Willow looked at Spike, who in turn nodded at her, then Tara, then raising his eyebrow.

“Oh,” she said. Then, “Oooh” before turning red.

Dawn had run up the stairs, and Buffy had wandered into the living room, so Spike gravitated there.

“We should all watch a movie!” the slayer said with more bubble than champagne. “It’ll be like a sleepover!”

“Sure!” Willow agreed.

Spike groaned. No one paid attention.

“This should be fun!” Buffy said while perusing DVDs off the small entertainment stand. “I mean, I must have liked these movies to buy them, and I don’t remember seeing any of them.”

Willow joined her in reading the backs of cases. “This one looks really good. Beaches.”

“What’s it about?” Buffy leaned over her shoulder curiously.

“When the irrepressible C.C. Bloom and the shy and proper Hillary Whitney first meet under the boardwalk at the beach, all the 11-year-olds have in common is the need for a best friend. Worlds apart in lifestyle and location – ”

“Oh, hell no!” Spike protested as he finally dropped the pizza boxes on the paper-covered coffee table. “I’m a guy, and I should get a say.” He stalked over to the DVDs with them.

“You know you’re outnumbered,” Buffy pointed out.

Chin up, sarcasm dripping, he replied, “I could snore if I fall asleep.”

“Then get down here and help,” she ordered, pulling him down playfully by an empty belt loop.

They all had chick-flick titles, and he feared for the worst when he began pulling cases out to read them. After putting When Harry Met Sally and Fried Green Tomatoes back on the shelf, he finally found an interesting one.

“Here.” He handed the blonde The Princess Bride. “Romance for the birds. Swashbuckling and a giant for me.”

She smiled and messed up his hair before setting up the TV. “Dawn!” she called. “We’re watching a movie! Come eat dinner!”

Willow and Tara settled onto one end of the couch and neatly stacked two throw pillows on the floor, so Spike claimed the other end, moving the pillows on his side as well. Four people would now fit, albeit snugly, on the couch. Dawn hit the lights, grabbed a slice of pizza, and sprawled across the love seat as the mandatory previews started up, leaving only one place for Buffy to sit.

It was a simple pride, but pride nonetheless that swelled in the vampire as he thought, Mission accomplished.

Sitting while the girls cracked open the pizza boxes, though, he felt strange. He was definitely hungry, just short of stomach growling, but the scent of cheese and sauce didn’t hit him as appetizing. It was nice, sure, but it wasn’t hitting the parts of his brain that said ‘food.’

Willow noticed his consternation as she pulled at a wire of cheese that had refused to break. “Aren’t you hungry?”

He didn’t answer.

“Can you eat pizza?” she wondered. “Or do you…” She swallowed nervously, and Buffy looked up at him from her wrenching decision of pepperoni or extra cheese. Spike couldn’t place her expression, but he knew it wasn’t happy. He immediately leaned forward to grab a slice.

“I suppose I should try,” he ventured. The girls all stared at him as he took a bite, but he only noticed Buffy’s curious gaze. He could taste the pepperoni pretty plainly – liked it – but the cheese and sauce were muted, a bit like eating water. It wasn’t bad, but…

Buffy was blatantly staring at him, one hand holding a box open, her expression saying that she was completely lost in observing him.

He chuckled and licked some cheese off his teeth. “You gonna sit down and eat, love?”

“Hm?” she murmured, then, “Oh!” She settled on extra cheese, fighting to get the slice to break free of its stringy net of cheese, and seated herself next to the vampire.

Inwardly, he thanked whatever it was vampires were supposed to believe in that the blood conversation was dropped. He wanted Buffy to like him, and he didn’t know enough about himself – or her – to know everything in the vampire package and how much she could tolerate. For all he knew, maybe she had liked him before today and decided not to do anything about it because he was a vampire.

Eating his slice quickly and grabbing another felt more like a reflex, his stomach telling him he was still hungry, which didn’t bode well. Sure, the girls didn’t seem like tasty morsels, but he was a vampire, and vampires had to drink blood. He couldn’t focus on the movie as he wondered if he needed human blood, or if any would do. And where do I get it? He didn’t fancy Buffy would be keen on him eating small animals, either.
But the second slice seemed to curb his hunger a bit, and he took comfort in that as he unceremoniously wiped his greasy hands on his jeans. He couldn’t take his eyes off Buffy as he settled back into the couch. She had that little-girl-watching-a-fairy-tale glow on her face. His mind registered that the others must have had it, too, but it was the light in those green eyes that mattered. And when she finished eating and finally leaned back on the couch, Spike’s arm was waiting. She startled a moment, like she’d forgotten he was there, then immediately snuggled into him. He kissed her shoulder lightly and tried to focus on the movie, which was pretty good.

Good enough to want to keep watching it, but – unbeknownst to his mind – his body had spent the past twenty-four hours wide awake, fighting, and hiding from that loan shark. He was exhausted, and Buffy’s warmth was spreading into him.

Fortunately, he didn’t snore as he’d threatened.





Shell Presto can be reached at mangetsuDELETEME@email.com
www.insomn.com

Chapter 5: Dead and Tired



The first sensation was a chill wind hitting his face. It was strong, and he had to grab a steel rail and reorient himself to keep from being pushed back.

He sensed more than heard Buffy’s kid sister behind him. He felt as though she was yelling, but everything was strangely quiet except for the wind.

There was an old man with a wicked grin wielding a knife before him.

The man leapt at Spike, a tail trailing behind him. Spike dodged, grabbing the man’s wrist and wrenching his arm behind his back to lock him in place. The knife dropped as Spike squeezed the man’s free arm, but a long tongue raced after it, catching it before the weapon hit the uneven grating they stood on.

Spike cursed inaudibly, spinning the man round to grab his tongue, wrapping the slimy appendage around his own leather-bound arm. The bleach-blond got leverage by placing his hand on the lizard-man’s forehead and then pulled with all his might in one quick jerk

The tongue came off with a spray of blood that Jackson-Pollocked red onto his duster.

As the lizard-man let out a silent scream and choked, Spike picked up the knife and made a long, clean cut across his already blood-covered throat. Finally, he buried the knife in the other man’s chest and pushed him over the railing to the ground six stories below. Panting not from need of air but from the pure high of adrenaline and covered in the unsavory scent of demon blood, the vampire walked calmly over to Buffy’s little sister, offered her a reassuring platitude and quickly untied her. They hurried, hand in hand, down flights and flights of unsteady metal steps. His steps were light and full of energy despite the caution he needed not to trip.

Then the familiar little blonde who lit up his entire world met them halfway down, and for some reason he couldn’t explain, he had never felt happier to see her.

Buffy hugged her sister, then him. But his arms were numb suddenly, and he couldn’t feel her.



His eyes snapped open and he gasped harshly as though it had been a bad dream, although it had seemed to have a happy enough ending.

He pressed his lips together, confused and feeling like he’d somehow missed the point.

It was a fleeting thought as he discovered how warm he felt, much warmer than a vampire should. Long hair splayed over his shirt and brushed against his nose as he gently squeezed Buffy’s shoulder.

The girl had slept on him all night.

He smiled despite his stiff muscles. He had sunk in low on the couch, his rear barely on the cushions anymore, knees pressing against the coffee table. But Buffy looked snug as a kitten curled against him, her head on his stomach.

He got lost watching her, even though he couldn’t see her face. The slow reverberations of her breathing was relaxing, and her heart beating so close to him made him feel as though he had one himself.

Being this close to her, sharing her body’s heat, literally made him feel alive.

He didn’t know how long he’d been like that before she started to twitch. He tried to calm her by slowly petting her back and arm.

Then she whimpered and gave a high-pitched little cry.

“Shh, love,” he hushed to no avail.

Suddenly she started scratching at his leg, not coherently enough to hurt him, more frantic, unfocused. She moaned, frightened.

“Buffy!” he barked, wedging himself between her and the dream as he sat up, curling his arms around her to cradle her to him.

She woke with a start, confused. For a moment, he held a stranger, a scared little girl he was sure he’d never seen before, memory or no.

She looked at him the same way, only her lack of recognition was due solely to the fear chasing away all other thought. She gasped like an animal trapped in a plastic bag.

Then she knew him again.

“Spike?” she asked weakly.

He nodded, brushed frazzled hair from her face, and stroked her cheek. “I’m right here, love.”

She touched his face like she didn’t believe him. Warm fingertips explored his cool cheekbone, and she couldn’t deny it.

Then the waterworks started, and she yelped his name helplessly as she buried her face in his T-shirt.

He shushed and rocked her.

“Must’ve been some dream.”

“It felt so real,” she whimpered. “Oh god, it felt so real.”

“Well, it’s not,” he assured her before pausing with curiosity. “But what was it?”

She lifted her face from his black shirt, now blacker in some spots from her tears. She looked up at him, green eyes glazed in salty terror and morning light.

“I was in a coffin. Buried. I was trapped,” she sobbed.

“Well, it’s not true.” He cupped her face. “You’re right here. With me. Plenty of air and…” For a long moment, he looked around, stunned. “…sun …shine.”

The realization made the horror of her dream fade, and she stared at him as though he were an alien instead of a vampire.

“It’s sunny,” she observed.

“Yeah.”

“You’re a vampire,” she noted, as if expecting him to show his fangs. “So why are you not…?”

“I don’t’ know…” he trailed off, studying his pale skin. He certainly didn’t look like he got much sun. “Maybe that’s not the way it works.”

Slowly, he raised his hand above the top of the couch and into the line of direct rays. He wondered if fish ever tried to beach themselves to see if they could live out of water, and imagined he was such a fish.

It was unbearably hot for a second as he stretched his fingers in the sunlight. It quickly turned so hot his hand felt numb, and he thought he could tolerate that with little problem. Then there was smoke and searing pain. He hissed and drew back.

Buffy was smiling that feeling-guilty-I’m-amused-that-you’re-hurt smile women get. It was playful and tempting and he forgot the pain.

“Guess you don’t like long walks on the beach after all,” she quipped.

“Suppose I don’t.”

Their lips met exactly halfway between them, both moving in unison towards each other with equal eagerness.

Her breath was awful from all that pesky breathing she did, whereas his still held clearly the taste of stale pizza and grease. Hers was worse, though, so he was sure she didn’t notice his. And while neither his nose nor taste buds were too pleased, the feel of her hot mouth on his lips added a new element of hardness to his thankfully unnoticed morning wood.

Would they call it that with vampires? he wondered before she pulled on his shoulders and slid herself further up his thighs. He moaned into her mouth as his cock strained towards her heat.

She pulled back and covered her hand with her mouth.

“Oh god, I’ve got pepperoni-variety Godzilla breath,” she realized, then stood up.

Spike held back a whimper of his own as she stepped over his legs.

“And I’m probably all icky from fighting last night.”

“Not complainin’, love.”

The hands on her hips and smile on her lips sent the signal of a sarcastic Please. “Still, I’d feel better making out with you if I showered.”

His lips curved like a cat alone with the canary. “I can’t argue with that.”

He stretched his legs as she ascended the stairs, the sunlight surrounding the couch making it much easier to fight the urge to follow her right up into the shower. He kicked his boots up onto the couch with a dull thud, laying back proper on his cotton-stuffed desert sanctuary in a deadly sea of sunlight – sunlight that nonetheless made the room pleasantly warm and relaxing.

It being daytime and Spike being a vampire made it easy for him to fall right back to sleep.




The sun’s glare had shifted from the white of early morning to the ochre of afternoon when he next opened his eyes.

He’d had the same dream again, only this time he’d been a living punching bag, standing stalwart between Dawn and the lizard-man until Buffy arrived to help.

There was no Buffy next to him as he woke up this time, and he found that he already missed it. He did, however, have a blanket over him. And the curtains over the window directly behind the couch had been drawn to allow him safe passage to the foyer.

He rolled off the couch and stretched thankfully, taking extra seconds for his neck, then made his way up the stairs to find his girl.

He found the bathroom first, and hovered in the doorway as he contemplated using Buffy’s toothbrush. She might get mad, though, he figured. Personally, he didn’t see the harm in sharing with someone you’ve already swapped spit with, but he knew that birds could be weird about things like that.

So he opted for a quick swish and gargle with mouthwash instead. He’d ask for a brush when he found her.

He found her in her bedroom going through a box, her expression curious. She was laying on the floor in the shadows as if waiting in a place that would be safest for him.

“Hey,” she greeted him.

“Hey.” He carefully avoided the direct sunlight, a patch between her doorway and bed, and set himself down beside her. He peered over her shoulder. “What are we looking at?”

“A box I found in my closet.”

There were lots of little things in the cardboard photo box: a cross, some necklaces and rings, movie ticket stubs, and a few photos of Buffy and a tall, strapping guy with dirty-blond hair. Spike frowned, realizing, as he was sure she already had, that it was a box of boyfriends past.

He took a cross from her hand, hissing as he burned himself, and dropped it more quickly than he had planned back into the box before closing the lid.

“Don’t need to be looking at that,” he said, pushing it under the bed.

She leaned into him. “Jealous much?”

“A bit, yeah.” He wondered if he had gotten her something, and if so, where she would have placed it. He was overcome with the urge to give her something and he felt like a terrible boyfriend.

Not that a lighter would be much of a gift for a non-smoker.

She kissed the corner of his mouth, ending his inner monologue of punishment.

“You hungry? I was about to make lunch.”

“Starving,” he answered without thought. He was ravenous, and the mild curb from last night’s pizza had long worn off. He squirmed. Buffy wasn’t exactly looking tasty, but he did catch himself wanting to stare at her neck.

That can’t be a good sign, he scolded himself. “Think I’ll catch a shower, though, first. Think you can hook me up with a towel and a toothbrush?”

She did, and he didn’t even touch the hot water as he washed while his stomach growled at his good intentions.




Buffy was having a flip-flop day – and not in respects to her footwear.

Tara and Willow had apparently gotten Dawn to school and then gone to class themselves, according to a note in the kitchen. She was happy they were making an effort to maintain a sense of normalcy, but she wasn’t sure how she felt about being alone with Spike.

Part of her liked it. Just being near him felt a little naughty and exciting, but part of her also wondered about it. Nothing they had done since their first kiss seemed familiar, which made her wonder why she hadn’t been dating him, and she was sure she hadn’t.

Maybe memory-intact-Buffy knew better than to get too friendly with the undead. she thought.

Rummaging through the fridge, she wondered what the vampire would like. Her first thought was blood. She shivered. Does he need blood? Where did he get it? she wondered, then reasoned, He couldn’t be a good guy if he attacked people.

Then she remembered that vampire asking him about the kittens, and the refrigerator seemed colder as she gulped. There was no way she could date someone who ate kittens.

Driving the racecar of her thoughts away from that obstacle, she wondered what she liked. The fridge became a gateway to the unknown, a grouping of items for which she could attach a name but not a taste. She thought about it, caught sight of sliced cheese, and figured that if her mind was telling her she should slap it between bread, butter it, and throw it in a pan, then she must like it.

So she had grilled cheese and tomato soup ready when clean Spike came down in yesterday’s clothes.

“Hope you like grilled cheese.”

“Don’t imagine I’ll have a problem with it.” He slid into a chair beside her and stared at the soup. It immediately made him think longingly of another, tastier red liquid.

He sighed and ate a spoonful, which had little more flavor to the vampire than water.

“You like it?” she prodded.

“Because you put in so much effort getting it out of that can.”

She exaggerated a frown.

So he leaned over and kissed her.

“It’s fine.”

There was a thick silence for a few minutes, another bad side effect to not knowing anything about themselves.

Already knowing the answer, he asked, “Where’re the other birds?”

“School.”

It took him a moment to recall when school would let out. He didn’t so much remember as figure it couldn’t go into session earlier than 8 a.m., and he added eight hours. It was 1 p.m.

“So we’ve got another two or three hours to ourselves.”

“Yeah.” She pressed her thighs together and shifted in her chair. The wood cracked almost inaudibly, but it was a tree split by a lightning bolt to the vampire’s ears.

She squirmed as he noticed and smirked.

“Suppose since we’re not in school, we’re the delinquents,” he mused.

“We can’t be delinquents. Delinquents make trouble. We stop trouble. We’re the anti-delinquents.”

“Poor team name.” He shook his head and stuffed the last of his sandwich in his mouth.

“Decent teen band name,” she redeemed.

He swallowed and licked his lips with an acutely sexual undertone. “Is there dessert?”

She ignored the innuendo and hopped over to the cupboard. “I think I saw some cookies…”

She was cut short by the sensation of his cool mouth latching onto her neck. It scared her for all of a second – fear running through her that she had just turned her back on a vampire. But he ran the tip of his tongue from her exposed shoulder blade, over the spaghetti strap of her tank top, all the way to her ear. He made sure to breathe just so the coolness would agitate her skin, and the only nip she felt was on her earlobe with dull, blunt teeth.

“Spike…” she knew she had something to say, but she lost the words as he pressed his erection against her back, forcing her hips roughly against the counter. She gasped.

He stopped kissing her, but gently kneaded her shoulders.

“Feel like a bad person, doing this,” he confessed. “We both don’t remember, so I don’t know how far we…”

She let herself fall back against his shoulder, giving herself up to his caresses.

“I’ll stop if you want me to.” As he said it, he wrapped his arms around her waist.

In Buffy’s mind, she replied in an instant. In reality, her answer was a slow, languid drawl punctuated by deep breathing.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

She squealed as he turned her around and lifted her up onto the counter, a roller-coaster cry abruptly cut off by his lips crashing against hers.

He was starving and his internal vamp clock was telling him to sleep, but the feel of the blonde in his arms, his prick boxed between the counter and her thighs, made his blood boil like espresso. He snaked his tongue into her mouth and his thumbs tested the boundaries of the skirt already pushed a few inches up her tan legs.

He felt it give more as she wrapped those legs around his waist. She pulled back to nip at his lip before moving the collar of his button-down shirt. She playfully claimed a spot on his neck with a lick, then sucked deliberately. He moaned and let her stake her claim, ecstatic that the girl wanted to give him a hicky. He wondered if he’d get to leave a mark on her, then he rubbed the inside of her thighs with his thumbs.

She broke off her ritual with a pant, and he nuzzled her gently until she leaned back, a prone pose that made it easy for him to trace the neckline of her low-cut tank with his tongue. His hand moved to the soft flesh of her stomach. If her thinness wasn’t apparent just by looking at her, it was highlighted by how slender she felt as he stroked her side. It made him feel as though he was dominating a fragile creature and stoked his demon and his cock as he blazed a slow trail toward her breasts.

“W-wait,” she panted.

He removed his hand faster than he had from the sunlight, as if anticipating the request. He pressed his lips together and fought to calm himself. He wasn’t sure if he had a demon in him or if he was one, but he felt now more than ever that “Stop” wasn’t in his usual vocabulary.

But the growl in his stomach he endured had already proved Buffy was special.

“What?” The word was sharp with wanting, and he must have sounded pissed because the blonde’s eyes widened – perhaps with fear. He gently rubbed her shoulders and coughed, deepening his voice. “Sorry, love, just –” reining in the demon, he thought. That won’t do. “ –don’t want to bollocks this up, you know?”

“Yeah,” she agreed quietly. “I know.”

She ran her fingers over his chest, playfulness returning, although it was the playfulness of a kitten, not the feral need she’d shown just moments before.

“I just… ” She eyed the ceiling and winced. “I’m sorry, it’s just, this doesn’t feel familiar, and…”

He held a breath and awaited the guillotine.

“…and I…” She nervously played with a button on his shirt. “I want it to be special… you know?”

He exhaled. That I can live with, he thought initially. Then he realized he didn’t have a clue what she meant. “This… This is special,” he clarified as if she had been the one confused.

He hoped she would say something, but she didn’t. The vampire debated taking a step back, giving her some space, but he was terrified she wouldn’t let him hold her this close again.

He didn’t even know what to ask. “No, I don’t know.” As if trying to convince her, he repeated. “This is really special, Buffy.”

She looked like she was trying to pull her head into her chest like a retreating turtle, but her bright blush definitely wasn’t green.

“I’m not saying… it’s just… we haven’t done this before. I don’t remember, but I can tell…”

His mouth fell open slightly as creases formed on his brow. “You’re not a virgin, are you?”

“No!” she interjected, waving her arms dismissively and nearly clipping his nose in the process. “I mean, this feels familiar, just not with you.”

He loosened his grip at that. The image of Buffy with another man didn’t help his hard on.

She caught his wrists before he could step back.

“Spike?”

“S’okay,” he mumbled.

“Spike, I can’t remember my first time,” she stressed.

He shook his hands free. “Well, I can’t help you with…”

She broke in with urgency, “I want to take our time.”

“I got it!” he nearly yelled, voice loaded with frustration and hurt.

She slammed her hand against the counter with an attention-getting thud. “I mean today!”

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. They stared at one another.

Confused, Spike curled into himself like he was nursing a chest wound.

Buffy remained on the counter, her fingers gripping the wood with a strength and need that threatened to splinter it. Her complexion was still pink with a mix of emotion that started with sexual and ended with emotional frustration.

But as Spike withdrew silently, she realized that somewhere in his forgotten past was a man who had heard “No” so often that it was not only the only answer he expected, but also the only one he comprehended.

So she cleared her mind and closed her thighs, then tried again.

“Spike.”

“What?” he pouted.

“I want to sleep with you.”

She knew happy was too much to ask; he gave her skeptical.

“But?”

“And!” she stressed. “That would make you – and right now – my first time.”

He blinked. Then blinked again. Then buried his face in a hand. “Oh, bloody hell.”

She held herself and wondered for a split second whether he just thought she was girly or an idiot.

“I’m such a git.”

She touched his shoulder and he startled, then smiled. He kissed her, a less heady kiss on both their parts.

“You’re not a git,” she giggled, mimicking the Briticism.

“I didn’t understand,” he admitted.

“Obviously. Though I have to wonder how you pull off the shock-blond hair without any confidence.”

“I think that’s just you, love.”

“Huh?”

His next kiss was like pulling the starter cord on an engine. Buffy swore she felt a buzz.

“I couldn’t imagine any other girl –” He shook his head, “No, woman, having this effect on me.”

Their lips locked longer still, and only parted when Buffy needed to huff in a long breath.

“So I’m supposed to be gentle, yeah?”

She nodded lazily, entranced by his rediscovered boldness.

He laughed then as if his body knew he could only have gotten this far with Buffy in dreams, even if his mind had forgotten his numerous heartbreaks. Then he slid her off the counter and into his arms and headed for the stairs. She let her hair down on the way up, shaking it out to complete the image he offered and revving his sex drive while she was at it.

Part of Buffy fully expected him to toss her onto the bed and ravage her despite her request. She was pleasantly surprised when he instead laid her down gently and almost glided himself into bed next to her. He hovered over her, sliding an arm behind her head and craning her neck slightly for a delicate kiss.

“You nervous?” he asked, hearing her pulse quicken.

She played with the still-drying curls forming in his hair. “That is the natural response in this situation,” she answered, trying to mask the feeling while she wondered if she was any good at sex.

She couldn’t dwell on the thought as Spike ran a cold hand up her leg and into her skirt. She inched up the bed and his hand abruptly stopped.

“You sure you—“

She closed her eyes tightly and swallowed hard as she nodded her head in the affirmative. He waited, a concerned look plastered on his face, for her to look at him.

“Really,” she assured.

He licked his top teeth, then kissed her eyebrow. “Then you need to relax, pet.” He slid her shirt up and caressed her soft stomach with only a glancing touch. Try as she might to stop them, her abs only tensed at the sensation.

He grinned. “Well, maybe not too much.”

With his tongue, he traced a ring around her navel, then made a path up her chest, his thumbs making her shirt recede. She arched, expecting him to take her shirt off, but he stopped midway, leaving it bunched just below her arms. He unhooked her bra with the ease of a locksmith breaking into a diary, then pushed it up like the curtain unveiling a show.

He withdrew his mouth from her just long enough to take her in, committing her petite form – arms above her head, long golden hair splayed over the pillow, and nipples perked for him amidst the tan curves of her chest for him – into his mind’s centerfold for the month. With a need to rival his aching stomach, he wished he’d see this site enough times to fill a calendar. If he’d had a hard time of calming himself before then, the strikingly familiar thought of not seeing her again halved his libido if not his erection.

He laid on top of her then, lining his sternum upon her pelvic bone, closing his mouth over a taut nipple and flicking it with his tongue. When her hips jerked, it rocked his entire torso, and he nibbled to get a repeat performance. He ran his hand up her side, under her back and marveled at the varying soft and hardness of her body before pinching her other nipple.

“Spike!” she cooed.

He feigned distraction, ceasing all ministrations and mock waiting for her to continue as though she had voluntarily called his name.

She rolled her eyes, and he used the opportunity to sit up, pulling her legs up – and her skirt and panties off – with him in one smooth movement.

“Not very slow,” she scolded as he scooted up and finally freed her arms from her shirt. “And you’re not even…”

This time his tongue barely darted over the threshold of her lips as he kissed her, eliciting her mouth to open wider. He gently latched onto her lower lip, tickling it with a lick, before pressing into a long, slow kiss and sliding his blue shirt to her floor. He flexed his abs as she pushed his shirt up, and as though their lips were magnets he moved back only long enough for her to get his shirt over his head before assaulting her mouth again.

He toned it down to a tender slow dance, his lips alternating hard presses and longing respites to the tune of some slow Sinatra song he didn’t know the words to – or the performer of – playing in his head. She caught the rhythm, it seemed, and relaxed as he slid his hand between her legs, his fingers into the midst of her folds. She was wet and hot, a low pressure system building to a storm. He stoked her slowly, spreading the wetness over her outer lips and soaking his fingers, tracing little paths over the shallow channels and around her clit. Heavy lids closed over her green eyes, and she panted and arched when he commanded with just his fingers.

Then he didn’t have to fight his demon anymore, it seemed to just get bored and go away, and the pace seemed natural. So it was the man in him that tensed like the virgin he wasn’t when her fingers – with an efficiency he wasn’t expecting – popped the button on his jeans and had his zipper down in one fell swoop.

He pulled away for his own breath when she closed her hand around his throbbing cock and freed it from his jeans. She watched his eyes light up in surprise and the once shy girl flickered away with a devious smile.

“So are you a natural blond?” she mused, not taking her eyes from his expression.

Of all things to falter, his accent did, and for a moment he seemed to have a different – meeker – voice. “I-I’d imagine you could,” she squeezed him midsentence “t-tell from my eyebrows.”

She grinned with a power trip and pumped her fist over him before kissing him again. “Don’t ruin my fun, Spike,” she ordered.

He tried to swallow the nerves, but they shot right back up his throat as she propped herself up to look at him. Wordlessly, she tugged on a belt loop, and he obediently stood up and stripped for her before quickly sitting back on the bed.

And any familiarity faltered completely. They both realized then, in the time-out, that any memories they’d had of ever seeing another naked simply didn’t exist. Not live, not reach-out-and-touch distance.

So Buffy’s hand reached for his chest instead of the allure of his cock when she touched him again. It was smooth, which she knew was unnatural given the dark hair on his legs and arms, and she smiled realizing the vampire’s vanity didn’t stop with his bleached blonde hair. The dead man was in better shape than most live ones, every muscle on his wiry frame sculpted. And most amazingly was the way he was looking at her, his blue eyes a storm of masculine possession and boyish fear.

He licked his lips as he twisted his torso to run his hand down the length of her leg. He lingered on her ankle, wondering how such slender bones could support an entire person’s weight. Her skin was silky all over, save her privates, which had a neatly kept patch of blonde hair, a welcome mat to the swollen folds that made his cock twitch.

He slid a finger in to temper her, and she obliged by running her nails lightly up the length of him. The vampire exhaled sharply out his nose.

“Looks like you breathe sometimes.”

He clicked his tongue. “Am I supposed to make some cheesy quip about how you make me feel alive?”

A soft rosy hue was spreading over her neck and chest as he slowly fingered her, and the smell of sex filled the room.

“Do I?” she gasped.

“Hm?”

“Make you feel alive?”

He licked his cream-covered fingers and lay down on top of her, pressing his bare shaft to her damp lips. She pulled her legs up, hugging him with her thighs and just barely thrusting into him.

He trailed kisses up her neck, then whispered, “There’s not a thing you don’t make me feel, pet.” He wanted to declare his love for her then, wanted to let her know that all of this was far deeper than the physical, but he knew it was too early for that. So he vowed to show her instead. “Wanna be inside you.”

She awarded his asking permission – she knew he was asking permission – with a sweet peck on his lips. “You can.”

He immediately shifted, his hand disappearing between them to place his head at her opening, his hips, his whole body, shaking with anticipation. He bit his lip and looked at the metal posts that were her head board as he concentrated on feeling for her entrance.

Buffy mirrored his distraction, felt he deserved better somehow, but she couldn’t place why. There was something inside her that said this man had been waiting for this moment a long, long time, even if she wasn’t. It seemed cruel not to address it, even if she didn’t know what “it” was.

“Spike.”

She got his attention back, and he wore that blank expression that revealed he hadn’t a clue what she could be thinking.

It was why she wanted him to know. “I want you to. I want to do this with you.”

For a demon, his smile was pure innocence and glee as he kissed her, swallowing the woman’s gasp and holding back his own as he pushed deep inside her. She was tight, not virgin tight, but more snug than he expected. She clamped her muscles around him as he thrust in and pressed her heels into his ass.

Her panting caught an even rhythm and she found herself fixated on his Adam’s apple as he moved over her. Every long drag ended with an extra push against her pelvic bone, and she didn’t even realize that she was holding him tighter with each thrust until he had stopped thrusting completely, caught in her strong legs.

“And I thought I was nervous,” he laughed.

“Are you?” she wondered.

“Terrified,” he admitted, letting them both down onto the bed to rest. “If I have old tricks, I don’t quite remember them.”

She cocked her head, daring him. “None at all?”

He ran a hand through his hair as he considered the question, then through her long locks when he realized he could. She watched his eyebrows rise as he seemed to look back into his brain, then lower with a wash of determination as he returned his focus to her.

“Well,” he began, supporting her back as he rolled them over. He did a surprisingly smooth sit up as he supported her weight, pushing them both up into a sitting position, pulling her legs forward so she was on her knees. He pulled her arms around him, encouraging her to explore him as he explored her nipples with his hands, the inside of her mouth with his own. If they were going to play the first-time game, he vowed to himself he would get points for taking his deliciously sweet time.

Buffy was taken off guard when he grabbed her ass with both hands and gently slid her up and down his shaft. She could tell from his pained groan that he was setting a torturously slow pace for himself, but he hummed a little when he broke off their waist-up make-out session.

“Gonna make you take the reins for a bit,” he told her as he removed his hands.

She nodded and continued to thrust, a little jealous when he folded his arms behind his back, watching her with a smirk. Her long tresses moved back and forth as she moved, revealing glimpses of her bouncing breasts. And the short girl definitely looked taller from his angle. He could have laid there for hours watching that sight, although the shocks tingling through his system told him he wouldn’t last that long and Buffy certainly shouldn’t have to.

“So was the trick getting me to do all the work?” she panted, discontent showing beneath a thin veil of a forced smile.

He laughed, resetting his brain from record to work mode. “Sorry, just distracted by your beauty.”

She stopped thrusting. “Oh, come on.”

“It’s true!” he insisted, his hands finding her ass once again. “And don’t stop.”

She was still impressed by how easily he could move her from his more prone position, and she filed his strength into the pluses of superhero sex.

“The real point,” he said as she resumed her slow pace, “is I can’t rightly pleasure you if I can’t use my hands.”

He roughly squeezed both her breasts and she yelped.

“That’s it, be loud,” he instructed, pinching a nipple.

“Spike!” Her ascension turned into a delicious squirm, walls tightening around him.

“That feel as good for you, love?”

She gasped.

“Make it feel even better.” His left thumb and index finger found her clit and squeezed, and he had to clamp his right hand over her thigh to keep her from jumping off him.

Buffy felt like she was falling, but she had nowhere to go but down onto his cock. Her world was all heat and wetness as she slid over him. Her balance faltered as she pressed her palms onto his abs. His thumb was firmly stroking her clit with each thrust. And while he was still talking, the words simply didn’t make sense anymore. They were just a low rumble as the heat grew, spreading up to her shoulders and down past her knees. She ground into his thumb and against his hips as the heat reached her throat and elicited an ironically quenched yell.

Then she fell forward, limp, but not nearly as far as she had intended to. Spike’s fingers were firmly clenched over her shoulders, holding her up.

“You come?”

She blinked, her vision clearing to reveal a cocked brown eyebrow and smarmy grin on the bleach-blond vampire. She wanted to give him a sarcastic can’t you tell, but she was suddenly too drained to muster the wit. “Yeah. I finished,” she lulled.

He licked his lip. “Oh, I think you have one more go in you.”

He propped himself up against the metal frame of the headboard and brought her hands to rest against his shoulders, pushing her back up.

When his hands cupped and lifted her ass, the first thrust brought on nothing less than a spasm. He gave her no time to rest, and her sensitive flesh was all the more so after her first orgasm. If a Taser had a gentle setting, she imagined this would be it, with every little motion sending her cunt twitching.

“Spike…” It was almost painful as her body reacted, abs clamping, nails digging into his sides.

He hissed. “There’s my girl.”

“I can’t…”

The frame was squeaking loudly, picking up speed. He loosened his grip on her hips.

“Just a little longer, love,” he forced through gritted teeth. His eyes were thin slits, sharp lines creasing his brow. Keeping himself from coming had now become painstaking work, she realized.

He barely laid a finger on her clit when her lids snapped shut and her eyes rolled back. The dim red of daylight through her eyelids seemed to wrap around her as she shuddered despite herself.

Before her toes could uncurl, she was on her back with a sharp strain from the mattress. She panted lazily and opened her eyes to see her knees on Spike’s shoulders, her feet suspended behind him. She could see every muscle in his neck he was so tense.

“Sorry, love,” he pleaded more than apologized, and rammed into her now relaxed pussy.

It was violent, fast, but she was too slick for it to hurt and too pleased to second-guess his greed. And he was loud, panting so hard you’d think he breathed all the time. She smiled lazily and wondered if this creature-of-the-night knew how many times he’d muttered “God.”

He had barely hammered into her all of sixty seconds when he stopped, and she felt like she was impaled on a marble statue as his muscles locked into place. He twitched and pulsed inside her until, with his own lackadaisical sigh, he lowered himself over her.

They exchanged drunken smiles from across her folded body, her knees still between them.

“Can I have my legs back?”

They parted in cozy silence, his cum trailing after him as he moved the pillows to the foot of the bed. She eagerly accepted one, mustering just enough strength to lift her head onto it. He placed his pillow directly at her eye line, and they studied each other through one eye each as their faces sank into the polyester filling. He curled an arm around her, stroked his thumb over her back. Their knees touched, legs tangled. A broad smile lingered across his sunken cheeks. Her desperate red blush melted into a pink heady glow. And minutes of exhausted panting took the place of pillow talk.

Then the smooth surface of her face jilted with a look of confusion and his micro-massage stopped with momentary fear.

“No, it’s okay,” she breathed. “I just…” She traced the slight depression below his eye with gentle touch. “You’re sort of red right here.”

“Hm?”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“You’re kidding.” He leaned forward with a small groan and kissed her bare shoulder. “I’m perfect.”

Her voice traded in its pleased hum for concern. “No, I mean… I guess I’m wondering if you feel kinda sick?”

As soon as she asked, he went right back to feeling like shit. The hunger simmered in his guts, quelled only by how tired he was after their romp and the warmth of her body. “I’m just flushed,” he lied. “You are, too.”

“Do vampires flush?” she wondered.

“Well, I apparently do.”

He may as well have asked her the capital of Zimbabwe, her brow knitted so. She was onto him, he was sure, and his full stomach was about to turn an empty growl. He tried to pour his hunger into a kiss, deep and passionate, but it fizzled to soft and lingering in the delivery. She giggled into it, apparently taking it as some sort of thank you for her concern. But the distraction worked, and Buffy was stoked as he pulled away.

She purred, “You thinking of giving it another go?”

His slightly puffy eyes widened. His mind reeled. Bloody hell! Hadn’t meant to do that. He had only a split second to react and one hell of an act to keep up, so he forced a smile, crawled over top her, and pressed into another kiss.

Only he couldn’t match Buffy’s pace when she eagerly speared her tongue into his mouth. Then Buffy noticed he was barely holding himself up, letting too much of his weight rest on her. It was more awkward than uncomfortable. She brushed her hand against his flaccid member and he broke off the kiss to offer a pathetically weak laugh.

“Sorry, I just need a minute… or three…” His breathing abruptly stopped as his head fell into the pillow face-first.

There was no denying, Spike was exhausted.

Buffy forced his shoulder down onto her, letting his weight sink into her and the bed. She rubbed her hand over his blond curls and cooed, “It’s all right, Spike. Just rest. It’s okay.”

He was far too tired to argue, despite the damage to his pride.

And Buffy was terrified as she waited for him to fall asleep laying on her. Spike was sick, he had to be, and the only cause she could think of was hunger. He was a starving vampire whose mouth was not even inches from her neck. And she had just slept with him! That has to be inviting trouble…

She nearly jumped when he roused with a strained moan. Without a word, he rolled onto his side, angled the pillow so he could comfortably rest his head above hers, and pushed her onto her side as well. Spooning her close, he rested his chin against the back of the crown of her head. He squeezed her gently.

“Buffy.” It was a slip of a breath.

“Yeah?” she choked on her quickening pulse.

“I’d never hurt you, love.”

And as his body relaxed and his breath settled into nothingness, she found her fingers locking around his. She knew it was foolish, but she couldn’t help the warmth in her chest telling her to believe him.






This chapter was hell to write. And it’s late. I probably used three times as many pages as the other chapters to advance the plot a third of what I had planned. (Seriously, this chapter was supposed to have bowling.) I’m not even sure what I was striving for, so I can’t tell if I achieved it. Comments, good or bad, are my silver. Seriously, pay the bard.

Shell Presto can be reached at mangetsuDELETEME@email.com
www.insomn.com