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To Un-Live and Die in LA
Chapter Four Chapter 1 2 3 5 6 7
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Illyria’s hands were at her sides, held out from her body. With a rippling effect starting at her fingertips, her clothes began to disappear. Spike’s first thought was that it was like watching a watercolor brushstroke on canvas—in reverse.
No. It was more like the special effects in an X-Men movie. He half expected her to turn into Mystique . . . who was also blue, come to think of it. Although Mystique was a much harsher sort of neon blue, while Illyria was a more delicate silvery blue.
There was always the possibility that this was incipient hysteria. It had been a very long, emotionally charged night, after all.
He was fairly certain he wasn’t going insane. He’d been insane and it didn’t feel anything like this. Nope. This was much too surreal to be insanity.
Maybe there had been something wrong with the whiskey he had drunk. He seemed to remember some bizarre happenings following the time he had gotten drunk on Absinthe . . . or there was that time at Woodstock . . .
How the hell was she doing this? The leather suit of armor had been real; it had texture and substance . . . so, where did it go? Could she effect changes in the environment, or just her own person? Was this magick? A glamour of some kind? Or was she actually changing reality?
“My disrobing disturbs you?”
“Well . . . yeah. In a way. Sort of disturbing, sort of fascinating. I’m more used to people removing their clothes . . . not erasing them. How’d’ya do that?”
Illyria tilted her head. “I am not certain. When I inhabited the shell, I created the ‘clothes’. I am reversing the process and un-creating them.”
Spike decided he’d have to explore this process in more detail at a later date. At present, he found it disturbing, but also strangely erotic. And Spike was always up for new experiences. Illyria was breathtakingly beautiful, in a totally alien way. Spike suddenly understood Captain Kirk’s attraction to that green Orion bird.
Illyria was an arresting amalgam of inestimable age and power and human naïveté. She was totally beyond his ken, but looking into her eyes, he saw a lost, lonely woman who needed him. And Spike needed to be needed.
Spike took a step toward her and saw the relief in her eyes. She had been afraid he’d reject her. He suddenly “got” it.
He had told her he wanted Illyria, not Fred, but she hadn’t quite dared to believe. She had wanted him to really “see” her as she was—different, alien, not-Fred. She had needed that validation of her individuality.
Spike reached out and gently touched her hair. He pulled her into his arms and just held her, resting his forehead against hers. She looked deeply into his eyes and smiled—a genuine, happy smile.
Raising both hands to the sides of his face, she kissed him. It was the slow, languorous kiss of a woman secure in the knowledge of her attractiveness. The frantic awkwardness of her earlier kiss was gone. Her hands slipped behind his neck as she playfully bit his full lower lip.
Lifting her into his arms, Spike carried her to the bed without breaking the kiss. He sat on the edge, holding her in his lap. His lips traveled down her neck, pausing to feel the strong pulse of her carotid artery. He took the skin between his human teeth, enjoying the throbbing in his mouth, before moving on to plant a kiss in the hollow of her throat.
The warm breath of her sigh caressed his eyelashes. He planted a series of light, barely perceptible kisses down her breastbone and then flicked his tongue over her dark blue nipple. He pursed his lips and blew cool air over her moist nipple. Illyria moaned deep in her throat. Spike gently nipped around her silvery blue areola, then sucked her nipple into his mouth. His left hand cupped her other breast.
Illyria gripped his shoulders tightly and he overbalanced, falling backwards onto the bed. The towel gave way as she straddled him. He slid his hands up and down her back as he traced light kisses across her chest before capturing her other breast in his mouth.
As she lowered herself on him, he became aware of an elusive snatch of melody running through his head. It took several seconds before he was able to identify the song his subconscious had chosen. It was The Bluebird of Happiness. Spike grinned.
**********
Six hours later, a knock on the door roused Spike. He and Illyria had finally fallen asleep in a tangle of arms and legs, and he wasn’t in the mood for company. Spike groaned. The knocking continued.
“Gave at the office, not religious, not political—bugger off!” he called.
The pounding increased in intensity and the door began to vibrate.
“Don’t get your knickers twisted, I’m coming! An’ I don’t fancy havin’ to replace m’bloody door, so leave off!”
Spike grabbed the discarded towel off the floor and once more wrapped it around his hips. With an icy glower on his face, he flung open the door to see Willow, fist poised to continue pounding.
“Red! What the bleedin’ hell are you doin’ here?”
Oh, wow! It really is Spike. He’s here. If he was burned to ash, how did he get back? Not a resurrection spell, I don’t think. Vampires dust when they die, but he’s standing right here. OMG! Wait till Buffy finds out. This shouldn’t be possible . . . wonder if Althenea has any idea what happened . . . Why am I so nervous? It’s just Spike . . . isn’t it?
“Spike! You look cranky. Am I disturbing you?”
“Bloody right, you are. Go away!”
“Spike, I really need to talk to you.”
“ ‘S one thing you lot bargin’ into my crypt whenever the fancy takes you, but this is my own flat—bought and paid for, so just toddle off and tell the Watcher that, yeah, I’m still ‘cranky’!”
“Spike, please . . .”
“Oh, bollocks. Come in, then.”
Attempting to avert her eyes from Spike’s nearly nude form, Willow looked away and instead she beheld Illyria standing beside the bed in all her naked, blue glory.
“Oh. My. Goddess!” Willow gasped.
The color drained from her face and she appeared ready to faint. Her eyes swept from the blue streaked hair past the deep blue forehead, ice blue eyes, silvery blue lips, perky blue-tipped breasts, tiny waist, perfect hips, dark blue pubic hair, long, long legs to the blue shaded slender feet with silvery toenails and back up again.
Her heart pounded like a jackhammer and a deep red blush suffused her previously bloodless face and neck.
Spike swept her up in his arms and deposited her on the couch, losing his towel in the process. From her current seated position, Willow’s view now consisted of a flawless, white marble chest, washboard abs and . . . Oh my god!
Willow squeezed her eyes tightly shut, covered her face with her hands and said in a small voice, “Um, guys? How about if we start this whole thing over? Spike can guide me to the door, I’ll go out, pretend I’ve just arrived, and when I knock we can all be dressed, ‘kay? Cause if the shock of teleporting 6000 miles wasn’t enough . . .”
Her voice trailed off as Spike roared with laughter. He leaned over and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
“I’ve missed you, Red.”
Spike went to the dresser and dug out two black T-shirts, tossing one to Illyria and pulling the second over his head. Opening a lower drawer, he grabbed two soft, well-worn pairs of black jeans and repeated the process.
Zipping up his jeans, he said, “You can stop hidin’ your blushing eyes, now. We’re decent.”
Willow looked at him guiltily, with an embarrassed smile. “Sorry for barging in like this. I didn’t think . . .”
Spike sighed. “And there you have it in a nutshell. The epitaph that should be engraved on every Scooby tombstone for perpetuity—‘I didn’t think’.”
Willow froze. She had been spending a lot of time with Althenea’s coven reflecting and meditating. Her own descent into darkness had shown her that no one was entirely “good” or “evil”; actions counted for a lot. They had been so used to viewing Spike as just another “evil vampire” that they continued to treat him as such, ignoring the evidence in front of their noses. They didn’t think about him at all.
“You’re right. None of us really ever treated you like a person, did we? We never recognized that you might have private thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears . . . or a personal life of your own. We all sort of saw you as a . . . Spikebot. Useful when we needed you, ignored when we didn’t. I’m sorry for that. I’ve been learning a lot from the Coven, and when we all thought you were dead, I realized what we had been doing to you and how wrong it was.”
Willow met Spike’s eyes, a single tear tracking down her cheek. “Can you forgive me, Spike?” she asked simply.
Spike was instantly beside her, pulling her into his arms. She clung to his shoulders and hugged him back.
“I’m so sorry, Spike. I’ve changed, and now I’m able to see that you have, too. Would . . . would you mind telling me what’s been going on since I did the empowerment spell with the scythe? And Spike?” She whispered in his ear, a bare breath of sound, “For the love of Hecate, will you introduce me to that goddess?”
**********
The phone was ringing as Andrew unlocked the apartment door. Trying to balance two paper sacks of groceries, a bottle of Chianti, a long loaf of bread, his keys and a stiff cardboard mailing envelope containing his prize—the new X-Men edition written by Joss Whedon—Andrew scrabbled for the cordless phone.
“Hello?” he said breathlessly. “Oh, hi, Buffy.” His voice was a squeak. “Let me put the shopping down and I’ll be right back.”
He dropped the cordless on the couch, followed by his keys. Squatting by the coffee table, he reverently laid his comic book down and then carried the rest of the stuff to the kitchen. Realizing he could put it off no longer, he returned to the living room with dragging feet and picked up the phone.
Pasting a smile on his face, he said with false brightness, “Hi, Buffy. How’re you doing? What’s up? Anything new going on with you? . . . Me? No, nothing . . . Nothing’s wrong . . . Why would you think anything’s wrong? I’d tell you if anything was wrong, wouldn’t I? And I’m not, so there isn’t . . . What do you mean, ‘I sound funny’? I’m a funny guy. Ha, ha, ha. Funny Andrew, that’s me . . . I sound like a pod-person? Heh, heh, heh. That’s a good one, Buff. Pod-Andrew at your service . . . Buffy? . . . Buffy? . . . Are you there?”
Hanging up, he replaced the phone in the cradle. “We must have been cut off.”
Andrew shrugged and very, very carefully opened the cardboard envelope. Joss Whedon was a God! He had written Toy Story, an Alien movie and that wonderful, if short lived, show Firefly. Andrew had almost worn out the DVD. He loved the characters, the stories, and Captain Mal’s tight pants! He couldn’t wait to see what Joss had done with X-Men!
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