Chapter 14
~~The Adriatic’s main cargo hold ~ 1:30 a.m.~~
“You brainless BITCH!” the Shining Man roared at Dru. In his rage he appeared more opaque than translucent. His colors popped orange and red, like a fireball scorching a path across the floor of the small wooden crate.
“Did I ask you for so much?” he demanded. “DID I?” He leaned down to where she’d curled herself into a corner of the box.
She shook her head ‘no’ in a frantic gesture, her dark hair flying about her face wildly.
“What were your instructions, Dru? What was the one thing you were supposed to do?”
Dru wasn’t certain answering was her wisest move here. Talking only seemed to fuel his rage. Remaining mute, she clutched her dolly tightly against her stomach, both hands wrapping protectively around the small object.
“The one thing I asked was for you to sit down and shut up. Was that really so hard?”
Actually, Dru thought, that would be two things. She tugged Miss Edith close and peered up at him through tangled hair.
“The plan was to turn William just before we arrived in New York City, not in the shipping lanes off the coast of Canada. Turn William now, and you’ll be swimming for hours, dragging his sorry corpse behind you, only to end up in Canada! Canada in the nineteenth century, for fucks sake! Hockey isn’t even in beta-testing in 1880!”
His image gave off a popping sound that reminded her of bacon frying. “What part of that seemed like a good idea to you? Why did you disobey me, you stupid cunt?” He leaned down, pressing into her space, filling the air with his strangely sulphureous scent.
Dru stroked Miss Edith’s hair, finding a thin slice of comfort in the contact. “William called to me. Asked me to dance. My William loves to dance.”
The Shining Man peered into her eyes, rage feeding the flame that licked around the edges of his image, flashing crimson and gold. She began to pat her dolly’s head with frenetic energy.
“If I were corporeal, I would strangle the living shit out of you, Dru. Don’t care if you don’t need to breathe. Just the feeling of my hands crushing your windpipe would be the perfect thing to help take off the edge right now.”
“It’s a good thing you’re just a pretty picture, then, isn’t it?” Dru’s steady voice was in direct contrast to her insides, which felt as solid as a sea sponge. Where she found the courage to stand up to him, to allow herself this sauciness, she did not know.
The Shining Man became still as if he were zapped by a freeze ray. Just as she began to feel a small swell of pride at stunning him into silence, he blinked. Then his lips thawed slightly and slowly split into a wide grin.
“Don’t need to touch you to cause pain, though, do I, Dru? Even pretty pictures can carry a big whammy. Because sometimes the pictures aren’t so pretty. Sometimes they can be downright … disturbing.”
A wave of fear crashed over Dru’s head, pulling her down. Not this. Not again. She curled her trembling frame into the fetal position with Miss Edith as her core.
Zzzzap! The picture in her mind arrived with a sizzling sound and a scent of rotten eggs. To say picture in her mind wasn’t accurate, however, for it was as real to her as the walls of the crate surrounding her. Far more substantial than the flickering image of the Shining Man, at any rate.
It was her father but not as she wanted to remember him, as she willed herself to think of him during all those endless, nightly battles. It was Daddy as she’d found him on the parlour floor that one dark winter morning. His throat had been torn out, a sticky pool of blood blossomed on the carpet beneath him. The air carried the sick copper stench of his death, the same scent which filled her head now.
His face was so still in death, so pale. His eyes remained closed. It was a small mercy, but one she treasured, for the thought of what horror might be reflected in those eyes made her insides tremble.
Instinctively, she reached out her hand to touch his familiar beard just one more time. There was a spot left on his cheek that was relatively free of blood. She could lay her hand upon it for reassurance, as she’d done when she was a little girl.
Just as she began to extend her arm, his dead eyes fluttered open. The familiar tint of his brown iris was replaced by an unnatural yellow glow. Her father’s blood-filled mouth opened, in a jerking, obscene manner, as if he were a puppet being controlled by an unskilled master.
“Drusilla?” her father’s voice croaked.
“No, no, no, no!” Dru clutched onto Miss Edith, scrabbling her legs against the wooden floor and screwing her eyes shut tightly. It did nothing to take away the picture inside her head, however.
“Daughter, come closer.” The unearthly voice burbled at her.
“No, no. I’ll be good. Make it go away. Please, make it go.” In desperation, she let go of Miss Edith so she could ball her hands into fists and pound them against her temples. If the Shining Man wouldn’t take the picture away, she’d drive it out of her head.
Her father’s stiff, blood-splattered lips tugged up at the edges. When it spoke this time, however, it used the Shining Man’s voice. “Because if you disobey me again, Dru, it won’t be Daddy visiting you. It’ll be your sister. You remember what Angelus did to your sister, don’t you?”
And she did. Sweet, merciful Christ, she did.
“Very well,” her father’s corpse said with the Shining Man’s voice. With a final zzzzzap, he popped out of existence.
Dru remained curled in the corner, fists still raining blows down upon her head. “Will be good. Very, very good. You’ll see.”
“Dru? Stop hitting yourself. Why are you hitting yourself?” the Shining Man asked in the sing-song manner of a cruel older brother.
She attempted to collect herself, but felt disconnected from not just the Shining Man, but the crate, the ship. She felt disconnected from her own body. Loss, hatred, love washed over her, tugging the shell of her this way and that, like seaweed being dragged through tidal pools. Squeezing her eyes tightly, she scrabbled a hand out to feel the comforting porcelain surface of Miss Edith. Gripping her dolly tightly, she wrapped her thin frame around it, making herself as small as possible.
On the edges of her consciousness, she could discern the Shining Man’s voice. It sounded strangely muted, like a man speaking to her while underwater. His words were distant, garbled, and she could only determine their meaning with great concentration.
“I took you in because I thought it would be easier than dealing with the White Demons, but I might change my mind. I might just leave you, Dru, alone on this ship. I wonder what you’d do without anyone to take care of you. No Angelus, no Warren. No one at all …”
Dru heard another voice then, a strangely familiar female voice. “You’ll never be alone. I’ll never leave you, Mummy.”
Cradled in her arms, Miss Edith’s face glowed up at her. Though the Shining Man droned on, winking and flickering furiously, it was as though mother and child were alone in the room.
“We don’t need him or Angelus. Never needed them and never will. Nasty boys with cruel words and sharp teeth.” Miss Edith’s voice was steady and measured, like warm honey coating Dru’s mind in a comforting blanket. The doll sounded exactly like Dru’s little sister. How strange she’d never noticed it before tonight.
“We could manage this quite well on our own. Don’t you think?” Miss Edith stared up at her with cold, unseeing eyes.
“Yes, yes we could.” Dru nodded enthusiastically at the little bundle in her arms.
“Don’t need his images of that white-haired Dark Prince, either. I can bring pictures to you, too, and none of mine are frightful,” the doll cooed in Dru’s dead sister’s voice.
At that, a beautiful image slid through Dru’s troubled mind, rippled and turned and whirled. She was in the arms of her brown-haired William, dancing under a western sky. The moonlight winked off the pistols he wore strapped to his hips as he twirled her gracefully. When he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tightly against his cold, lifeless chest, she let out a trembling sigh that was almost like a prayer.
“You and William. He can be yours, Mummy. Can be ours. You just need to listen to me.”
The Shining Man prattled on, paying no attention to the fact that his audience of one was no longer with him. She was, instead, staring into the eyes of the little bundle she held tightly in her arms, and she was listening very, very carefully.
~*~
~~The Adriatic, Room 17 ~ 1:40 a.m.~~
William lay on the bed, his arms above his head, his wrists crossed and just touching the brass headboard. Buffy straddled his waist in order to better access his wrists and the bed frame. The moment she’d done that, he’d closed his eyes, thankfully. His lashes lay against his cheek, too long and thick for a man, really. He almost looked serene, if you didn’t notice his tightly clenched jaw. Stretching up to weave a bit of twine through the frame, her breasts brushed briefly against his bare chest, and she felt him shudder beneath her.
“It’s a good thing George left the twine behind,” she mumbled nervously.
William’s only response was a tense nod.
She wove the twine through the frame and back around his wrists, slipping a finger inside the bonds to assure that it wasn’t too tight.
“I don’t want it to be uncomfortable,” she said.
“That is not what’s making me uncomfortable,” he gritted out.
Oh.
Winding the twine around his wrists for a third time, she checked for tension once again before tying off her work with a firm knot. She hesitated, just for a moment, before shimmying off his lap. Looking at him lying there, trussed up and trusting her, she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt. Should she really make him go through with this? Sure, he’d sort of offered, but at the moment it seemed like she was abusing his trust somehow.
“William? If you want, we could …”
His eyes fluttered open, cool lamps of blue flame in the darkened room. His low baritone spoke carefully. “We’re both tired, Buffy. Exhausted. It’s nearly two in the morning. Let’s just sleep, darling. Please.”
She tugged the covers up over his torso, covering herself in the process. Turning her back to him, she shut her eyes tightly, determined to sleep. After all, she’d just been about to drop. Slumber was sure to claim her within moments.
~~2:30 a.m.~~
It was as though someone had replaced her entire blood supply with espresso. Sleep? What was that? She lay in a miserable bundle feeling as wired as an infomercial pitchman. The mattress, which had always seemed quite comfy before, now felt as if it were stuffed with sharp objects. Her former refuge had become a trap filled with triangles and pointy things whose number one agenda were to keep her from sleeping.
She readjusted herself for the umpteenth time, turning to face William again, peeking at him from beneath her mostly closed eyelids.
The moon shone through the port hole, illuminating his body in a silver glow. His toned chest rose and fell with measured breaths. Though his eyes were closed, he didn’t have the relaxed countenance of a dreamer. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut as if he were sitting in a dentist’s chair. His jaw too, clenched tightly, a muscle ticcing out a steady beat.
Kinetic tension roiled off him in waves. Opening her eyes up for a better look, she could see a fine sheen of sweat glistening on his skin.
She reached up and touched his side gently. She knew he wasn’t asleep. They might as well keep each other company.
“William?”
His eyelids flickered open, but he didn’t turn to look at her.
“Are you sick? You look ill”
“I’ll be fine, Buffy. Please, just sleep.” He bit his bottom lip as though in pain.
She leaned up on one elbow, worry growing. “But you’re not fine now.”
Instinctively, she checked for a fever, placing her palm on the center of his chest. He sucked in a sharp breath, and he looked at her with an expression bordering on agony.
“William? What’s wrong with you?”
“I’ll be fine, as I said. It’s just better if you don’t touch me just now.”
Fighting her instinct to confront him directly, she removed her hand in a deliberate motion and lay back in bed, determined to watch him.
He was clearly in some kind of distress but too damned proud to tell her about it. It was his stupid idea to be tied up in the first place. If he’d changed his mind about it, all he had to do was say something. If he wanted to be a stubborn ass about it, fine, he could knock himself out.
After another twenty minutes, she could stand it no longer. Just when she was ready to admit defeat and try talking to him again, he startled her by speaking.
“Buffy, I’m afraid I must ask you to loosen my bonds.”
About time. She sprang up, feeling more than a little smug that he’d been the one to break the silence. She was just about to straddle his waist again, when it dawned on her that she really didn’t need to do that. The knots were just as accessible to her if she sat next to him. All she really had to do was lean up from where she now lay.
It wouldn’t be quite as much fun to do it that way however, she had to admit. She willed herself to not grin as she carefully climbed back on his lap.
Stretching up, she slid her fingers between the knots, testing them.
“These don’t seem to be too tight at all. Is it your shoulders? Like having your arms above your head is making you crampy?”
“Buffy…” he groaned.
“Making you cranky then.”
“If you could simply remove the bonds …” He enunciated each word carefully, as though she were a particularly dull child. A wicked idea flitted across her mind, and she ground her bottom against his groin as a reminder that among the many things she was, she was not a child.
She felt a hardness there, but something about it was wrong, very wrong. She’d have expected to come into contact with his erection. She knew what an engorged cock would feel like and, Victorian gentleman or not, would fully expect William to be in this condition. What she didn’t expect was the shape of this.
Was William deformed?
It stopped her cold. She’d never seen him nude before. He’d barely given her the chance to see him shirtless. But surely, if he had something very wrong in his nether regions, she’d have known by now. Surely Spike wouldn’t have been able to strut around with such confidence if he had extreme wackiness going on with his penis.
She stopped untying him and climbed off his lap.
He looked up at her, his eyes a question mark.
“Have you got something weird stuffed in your pants?” Well, she could have perhaps phrased that a little more delicately, but there it was.
He closed his eyes and mumbled. “Oh, god …”
She unfastened the buttons of his trousers, half expecting him to protest. For some reason she couldn’t quite understand, he did not.
Once she’d unbuttoned his trousers, she began to untie the drawstring around his olde tyme underwear, when he finally found his voice.
“It’s a … device. If you’d untie me, I’d be able to remove it.”
“If you removed it, I wouldn’t be able to see it,” Buffy replied, urging his hips to rise so that she could slide his trousers and underwear down to his knees. Again, surprisingly, he complied.
Now that he was laid bare, she could clearly see that he had attached a strange metal device … to his penis! It was made of metal and fastened to his cock like a clamshell, secured to his hips by a thin leather belt.
“I think I speak for everyone who’s ever lived when I ask you, ‘What the fuck, William?’ You’re torturing yourself?”
His eyes remained closed as he spoke. “It wasn’t intended as a torture device, strictly speaking. It has, unfortunately, rather become one tonight.”
Now that she’d gotten over her initial shock, she noticed how the halves of the device had to be pinching him. It was pointing downwards and definitely designed to accommodate a flaccid penis, not the full-on erection that William had been sporting for some time. It was like putting a ten inch sausage in a six inch casing; it had to hurt like hell.
She looked for a way to release him, only to be thwarted by the padlock decorating the front of the device.
“Key?” she asked.
“If you’d simply untie me, I could tend to …”
“Key?” she interrupted.
“Why must you do this?” he asked, finally opening his eyes and looking into hers with an earnest expression.
“You took care of me in my ‘medical emergency,’ as you may recall. It’s the least I can do.” She busied herself by sliding off the bed.
“My front jacket pocket,” he replied, after a beat.
She fished the key from his jacket pocket and, almost as an afterthought, slipped her hand inside the wardrobe to snatch up a small bottle of face cream. ‘Chafed’ wouldn’t begin to describe William’s condition at the moment; he’d need this.
She swiftly unlocked the padlock and very gently pulled the two halves apart. His cock was red and raw in a few places, but still quite erect, and as it sprang free it lay on his groin in a far more natural position.
Moving carefully, she undid the leather belt, then dropped the device onto the floor in a heap.
“Why, William?” She couldn’t help herself. “Do you wear this vile thing every night?”
“No. Just tonight.”
“Why? Why now?”
Before he could answer, it came to her.
“It was Dru, wasn’t it? You saw it as a kind of protection against Dru. That was another reason you wanted to be alone in the room while I was in the bath.”
“That it was,” he admitted. “It may seem foolish, but when she accosted me in the lounge, it seemed she was particularly interested in that area of my person. If I could perhaps slow her down, it might give me a slight advantage in battling her.”
She looked down at him in wonder. Her brave knight, off to slay a dragon but only wearing shining armor on his cock. A most unusual hero, but then she had to admit that she was a very atypical distressed damsel. She found it so sweet, so charming, that for a moment it was hard to breathe.
“That was very brave of you, William.”
“It was?” His voice sounded more shocked than pleased. “At the moment it feels horribly embarrassing.”
She sat beside him. Smiling to herself, she poured a small dab of the face cream into the center of her palm and warmed it between her hands before carefully dabbing her lotion-covered fingertips to the side of his cock, which was looking particularly sore and red.
The air escaped his lungs in a ‘whoosh’ and he looked at her, startled.
"It’s all right,” she soothed.
“You needn’t…” he trailed off.
“I know. But as I reminded you, we were in the reverse of this situation just a few days ago. I think it’s your turn now.”
His eyelids fluttered shut, and his sigh was almost too faint to hear.
She gently placed one hand on his upper thigh. His muscles tense and bunched beneath her touch, then went slack as he took in another measured breath.
The tip of his penis was also a bright, angry red, having been confined against the rough metal for so long. Very tenderly, she touched her fingertip to his opening, the pearl colored lotion just matching the dab of pre-cum that wept from his slit.
He shuddered beneath her touch. His abdominal muscles flexed and his thigh muscles tightened in anticipation.
He’d been suffering in silence for far too long. Now wasn’t the time for teasing explorations; it was the time for comfort, for release.
Holding his shaft gently, but firmly, she slid her lotion-coated fingers down the length of it. His responding groan made her cast a quick look to check his expression. He wore a look of pleasure, not pain. Trailing her fingertips up the length of his cock, she danced light touches across the head before gripping him gently and stroking down, once again.
His hips rose of their own accord, bucking against the pressure of her hand. His fists knotted in the sheets as he gulped in a lungful of air.
“Oh, please…” he moaned.
Holding his cock even more firmly, she slid her fingers up to his tip and then back down again, this time reaching around with her other hand to gently cup his balls.
He came with a shuddering sigh, his creamy spendings splashing onto his abdomen as he raised his hips to her touch.
Carefully, almost cautiously, she pulled her hands away and glanced up at his face.
He laid there, arms still bound above his head, absolutely vulnerable to her. There was something about seeing him stripped bare in every sense that filled her with a sense of vertigo, and she found herself reaching out to hold his hand.
She squeezed it, and he returned the gesture, adding a shy grin that completely undid a knot deep within her. It was just a half-smile, but it swept caution and thought out to sea, and began to work at crumbling the foundation of her carefully laid wall.
She leaned up, pressing her body against his, feeling her nipples brush against his chest through the cool cloth of her chemise. She brushed her lips against his, the barest whisper of a kiss.
As she pulled back, his smile was so radiant that it was almost painful to look at. She glanced down to his chest in her sudden discomfort.
“Our first kiss. Well, our first kiss as far as you can remember,” he murmured.
“Our first kiss when I was Elizabeth - did I kiss you, or did you kiss me?”
“You kissed me, love. It seems to be the way of things, regardless of our incarnation.”
She closed her eyes and laid her head on his chest, placing her fingertips lightly on his left side, so that she could feel the comforting thrum of his heartbeat.
“As Elizabeth, at least we kissed before I’d watched you orgasm.”
His chest shook with laughter. “Actually, no, darling. But that’s a story for another time.”
What a mysterious man he was. She’d tried to see him as bookish wimp, or potential monster, but he was quite far from both. He had a quiet bravery, a loving determination that defied her every attempt to dissect him, to file him neatly away.
Pulling back from him, she reached up to the bed frame and began untying the twine, but with a gentleness that surprised her. She could feel him watching her, cautious and still, his eyes brightly burning through the shadows.
Once she’d worked the last knot free, she unthreaded the twine, wound it into a ball, and threw it into the corner of the room where he’d tossed his shirt earlier.
His gaze remained on her, studying her movements, ready to retreat to his cot upon her slightest request. Damn him. He made it so impossibly difficult to keep him at a comfortable distance.
Helpless to him, she lay on her side next to him. When he shifted his arm slightly, she resisted no longer, and tucked her head up on his chest, just beneath his chin. He released a contented sigh, and she tensed, just for a heartbeat, before surrendering to the moment.
She wrapped her arm about his waist, for the first time that she could remember feeling completely safe, feeling loved.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
If I stop updating this story on Spuffy Realm, I will still continue to update it on Elysian Fields and my livejournal so you might want to check there. Thank you to Capella and Science for the beta and, as always, Amy for the banner.
Chapter End Notes:
Happy Christmas to you all!