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.”
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Shell Presto can be reached at mangetsuDELETEME@email.com
www.insomn.com
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Note: I don’t own Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon does; but I do own this piece of fanfiction, which is meant solely to entertain. Also, special thanks to my beta, Dorian’s Kitten. Without her, there would be screwed up tenses.