Taffy
by  Auroramama

DISCLAIMER: Not my world, not my people, not my property.

*****

This was *not* what I'd come here for.

I'd expected some new horror, truth be told; there was one every time I
visited this town.  But a clean, well-lighted cage and a lead role as a lab
rat , that honestly hadn't occurred.

What the hell was wrong with the Slayer? Not satisfied with dragging in her
friends and family, she was outsourcing her job to Mad Scientists,
Lld?  Laughing now, no doubt, imagining me penned up with all the other
poor suckers in that fluorescent-lit nightmare hospital.  Well, I was out
now, and I was going to find her, and I was going to finish this.  It was
going to end the right way, with her blood on my hands and in my
mouth.  All the proof anyone could ask --

And there she was.  Out on the prowl, or actually crouched on the ground
waiting for the right monster to come along, but she didn't see me coming
because she was too busy...

Drawing in the dirt with her finger?

"So it's spells now, is it?  You should leave that to the little
witch.  Time for you and me to fight.  Pay attention, I'm only going to
kill you once."

She looked up at me with a strange attentive blankness, not at all the way
she usually began a fight. More like the way she was in the middle, more
instinct than thought.  No smart talk either, not a word.  Well, down to
business then, we both wanted the same thing.  Finally.

I threw myself at her, knocked her onto her back, and she continued the
roll to throw me over her head.  But I'd got a grip on her hair, right at
the back of the neck where it was thick and strong, and I pulled her down
with me. The back of her head hit the ground hard. She blinked, and in that
blink I was at her side, striking for the throat --

And someone set off a grenade in my head.  There was a burst of black pain
so bright I couldn't see or think.  When I could, it was me on my back and
the Slayer straddling me, pinning me down for that final slam of stake into
heart.  I tried to backhand her away from me but the pain had sapped my
strength and it was no good, she had me this time, well, then, it had been
a marvelous ride, all in all, though too bloody short -- I felt the
tremendous impact over my heart, tried to get the words out before I went
to dust -- *thanks for the good times, love* -- no sound, tried it again
and heard myself, not as light as I'd hoped but not bad...

...especially with this miserable bloody headache, and the way she kept
hitting me, thump thump thump over the heart...

...with her fist.

No stake.  There had never been a stake.  And now she tilted her head in
that infuriatingly perky way she had, opened her mouth, and said,

"Where dust?"

God.  She was brain-damaged.  Had she really been working a spell, one that
backfired?  Or -- why hadn't I noticed it before? -- was she just
unbelievably drunk?  She smelled like she'd been rolling around in a locker
room and had finished up with a nice beer bath.  Had more than was good for
her, obviously.  Well, this wasn't quite the way I'd imagined it, me
recovering from a case of migraine, her all stupid with drink, but that was
hardly my fault.  And oh, was I done with waiting for the perfect moment.
This moment was good enough.  Buffy had stopped punching me and was leaning
over me to puff air at my neck, her tangled hair brushing my chest, rather
distracting until I realized she was trying to blow my dust away. "You
think that's funny, do you?" I asked her, but she was ignoring me.  Right,
then, ignore this, I thought, and brought both fists down on the back of
her skull --

But the little man in my head, the one with the grenades, was still on the
job.  Just my luck. And when I stopped clutching my head and opened my
eyes, Buffy was patting the ground on either side of me, apparently having
twigged to the need for a stake, or at least a stick.  The other hand was
gripping my throat.  No chance for me to get away and regroup (and figure
out what the hell was going on.)  And the trouble with this staking
business was that pieces of wood weren't all that hard to find.  Sooner or
later she'd do me, unless I stopped her, and ripping her guts out wasn't
currently an option.

A harmless distraction might work, though.  I twisted under her, got my
thigh between her legs, and pressed.  Slowly.  No headache this time; that
was a start.   No immediate reaction from Buffy either.  I bounced her
gently, gave her a little ride. Go on, Slayer, dirty nasty stuff, you know
you hate it, now jump up all revolted and give me a chance to get out of
here...

But she didn't jump up.  Nothing like.  She made a little pleased sound, as
if she'd found money in the street, and then she snuggled into me and clung
tight.  It was as if she'd -- melted -- and stuck  to me everywhere, like
taffy.  Like (toothache sweet, slightly grimy) salt water taffy.  And while
I tried to figure out how to pry her off me without getting myself staked,
I remembered.  Because, whatever *she* might think, it was Drusilla in my
head, wasn't it?

... a day at the beach.  Dru and me, curled up in the shadow under the
boardwalk, dozing and nibbling on each other by turns.  The ocean and the
sunlit sand were one long low stretch of painful light.  Hard to see anyone
coming.  Not the safest hidey-hole, no, but the humans on the beach would
have just as much trouble seeing us, unless they came under the boardwalk
themselves, and then we'd have them while their eyes were still full of
sun.  Actually, when we'd parked the car and strolled down here last night,
I'd expected a meal to come our way by noon.  Hadn't they been listening to
the radio?  But no one was making love, or anything else, under our
boardwalk that day. Maybe they didn't like the cool hard sand in the dark,
colder than Dru's skin. No one showed, and the day wore on and on. Late
afternoon now, and the sun seemed to be stuck like hot glue just above the
horizon, until Drusilla was humming with hunger, the way she does, and
looking at me expectantly.

I never could say no to that look, and I was feeling peckish myself, so I
put a finger to my lips and went over to wait under the stairs, the ones
furthest from the parking lot, for a snack.  Got lucky at last; a girl in a
gaudy flowered swimsuit came running up, giggling, looking over her
shoulder to see if she'd lost the bloke she was teasing.  I looked too, saw
that she had, and snagged her by the ankle, ignoring the momentary sunburn
to my hand.  She was down in the dark with me before she knew who'd caught
her, and I broke her neck next moment, business-like. I would have liked to
let Dru play with her, but I wanted her well and truly hidden before her
honey could come seek.  I carried her back to Drusilla and set her down on
the sand like a bouquet.

By the time Dru had taken the edge off and I had had a good drink, it was
twilight and the beach was quiet.  Dru got that gleam in her eyes that
meant she was ready for a real hunt.  She walked out onto the open beach
like an empress, dark against the glowing sky, and spread her arms to the
breeze.  The sand was still hot with sun; she laughed at the pain.  I
wondered, again, what I'd done to deserve her.  I closed my eyes for a
second, remembering things, and when I opened them she was about a mile
down the boardwalk, stalking the arcade.

She'd caught a scent, no doubt, or a wisp of emotion, from someone good to
eat.  Drusilla was always stronger and faster than she looked. I followed
more slowly (not crashing along oblivious like our last meal's idiot
boyfriend, who'd run right by us a moment after we'd taken his girl) and
let her hunt in her own way.  From a distance I saw them act out the
plot:  the lost child, the eerie friendly lady, the reassuring embrace.  I
could hear Dru whispering but not the words.  She had him in a little
alley, just out of plain sight, and they both looked up at the sound of my
boots.  The kid's neck was wet with tears, and just a little blood running
down to the collarbone, but his eyes were as wide and tranquil as
hers.  "We saved you some," Dru said, and the boy held up a crumpled bag.

Afterwards it was dark and deserted enough for a quick tumble on the lawn
at the edge of the parking lot.  I had stashed the kid's body under a
tangle of wild roses and got nicely scratched for my trouble. Those buggers
may smell sweet but they've got about a million more thorns than the kind
you give to ladies.  So now I was bleeding too.  When we were done we were
such a mess that even Drusilla noticed it.  She stood on tiptoe and held up
both arms as though she were afraid of them.  "He sticks," she said
mournfully, and danced away from me when I reached for her.

"It's just the sweets he'd been chewing, love.  Nasty stuff.  It's all
right, Dru, we've got the biggest bath in the world right next door."

She looked at me dubiously.  Going to make me work for it.  Nothing new
there.  I shook my head till I came out in fangs, and I leaned into her,
playing menace so she could play fear.  "Or I could cut you up a bit, make
you bleed like me, until there's blood enough to wash in."

I felt Drusilla's pleasurable shiver more than heard it.  "Oooh,
Spike.  Naughty.  Not the black lamb, that won't do for washing."  And she
tilted her head, challenging me to read her mind.  (Oh, yes.  For that she
always came to me.  Her own sire couldn't catch her drift the way I
could.)  But this was an easy one.  I moved fast and caught her, held her
wrists behind her back, growled in her ear.  Told her she was my tender
black lamb, you know the sort of thing, I'm not writing it all down.  (It
sounds silly when you say it out flat.  You have to be there.)  And then I
picked her up and walked her into the sea.

Dark water spread over the sand at each pulse of the waves.  Yeah, it was
like blood, but it was more like Guinness, heavy and black, striped with
foam the color of old ivory.  Quiet and almost calm, now that twilight had
turned to night and the shore breeze died down. The salt got into every
tiny scratch, of course.  Dru wriggled in my arms, twisting until she was
upright, my hands gripping her waist.  She was reaching for the water with
her toes like a ballerina.  "Let me, let me!  I want to walk on it."  Oh,
she wanted it badly, to say something that sounded like blasphemy even to
me and not stop to play with it.   So I walked in deeper, still holding her
high, until her bare feet touched the water, white against the glassy
blackness, and the foam catching at her ankles like thick lace.

Sometimes I think if I went back to that beach I'd find us still standing
there.

So that's how I know about salt water taffy, and how to wash it off --
eventually I did drop her in and we got cleaned up somewhat, though Dru
kept talking about sand in her things long after the last grain was gone --
and I suppose that brings us back to the present.  By which I mean me on my
back and a drunken (at the very least) Slayer melting dreamily all over me,
mumbling about the way I smelled.  And me without a way to kill her, or
even hurt her, or get her the hell off me, unless I wanted to hand her a
stake and try to get what was left of her mind back on her business.

And then I smelled smoke.  I turned my head to look, and she looked too,
and we were both staring at some miserable bit of the Sunnydale campus
going up in flames.  When I turned back to Buffy she had her noble heroine
face on, despite the twigs in her hair.   "Fire bad!" she told me
earnestly, and then off she went, forgetting I'd ever existed.  Saved by
the fire alarm.  It was too much to hope that she'd get herself killed,
even in her current state, but maybe the amnesia would be permanent.

I thought about getting out of town.  I did.  But the wankers who'd messed
up my head were here, and they might be the only ones who'd know how to fix
it.  They came after me all right, but I kept out of their way, and I kept
out of the Slayer's way as well, but she wasn't looking for me, so
apparently all was forgotten.  Home free.  All's well that ends, et
cetera.  Until the day I sat up and heard myself say out loud, "How could
she forget?  I can't."

But that's another story.

*****