Mountain Dew 4/?

Author: dutchbuffy2305, aka db2305

Story note: 10 years post-NFA

Rating: M

Betaed by: mommanerd and thedeadlyhook

Feedback: I never tire of it! dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk

Years later, the pressure in the back of her neck suddenly lessens and Buffy becomes conscious of lying in a cramped position on top of Spike. She smells her own sweat and over-lubricated crotch and the memory of what went on this afternoon. It's a good thing her face is already hidden in the moist crook of Spike's neck, because she has several minutes of embarrassed flushing to do. Skanky unwashed Buffy comes on to only available vampire in spectacularly unsubtle manner, and annoying vampire out-heroes her by managing to hold out. Triple ouch.

Spike shifts beneath her and Buffy is forced to lift up her head. Drops of her sweat lie pooled in the hollow of his clavicles.

"Sorry, Buffy," he says soberly, his forehead furrowed with earnestness. "Don't know what came over me."

"Me too," she says with a nervous laugh. "Is it over, ya think?"

He sits up, neatly folding her body to a sitting position on the other side of the bed. He doesn't want to touch her, obviously. It hurts more than she could ever tell him.

Spike leans in to peek through his spyhole again. "Sun's behind the Zongpha Gang," he says. "We ought to check the cave, see if anything's been going on in there."

Buffy remembers that he's always been good with demon languages; she's never been able to make heads or tails from out of the sounds the Sherpas make as they name the peaks.

She loosens her shoulder muscles experimentally. Could be worse. "No demon hordes pouring from the tunnel mouth?" she asks hopefully. She'd like to hack off some heads of evil creatures, to get rid of all that unresolved sexual tension. She's not going to get any for a long time yet, even if they defeat their adversary tonight, they still have a week's worth of travel ahead before they're back in London.

"Nope. Could bloody well use a spot of violence," Spike mutters.

That perks Buffy up a bit. At least he felt something, even if it was only physical. They're so alike. That must have been what he was talking about, all those years ago, and which only pissed her off then. Stupid younger Buffy. She'd be damn grateful for a vampire with benefits these days. As the saying goes, the times a woman with a kid gets laid are short, frustrating and far between. Spike's ass looks good from this angle.

"You think you can make it to the cave?" she asks quickly, to hide her out-of-control thoughts. "We have to be there before sunset."

"Still getting a few rays too many. In ten minutes or so."

That'll be cutting it close.

Buffy's hungry, but she manfully suppresses the thought of dinner. She'd only get rice and emadatsi, which is like yuck, only there's there're no such things as pizza or Burgers for at least a thousand miles. Spike has blood in stock, of course.

"The roaring of your stomach is distracting me, Slayer," he says. "Piece of chocolate?"

Buffy's stomach seizes up sharply and her mouth floods with saliva. He needs to ask? She smells the chocolate he fishes from out of his trunk from twelve feet away. "Spike, I'm your slave for eternity," she says without thinking.

"If only," he answers lightly.

There's a moment, like when his eyes lock onto yours, and you can't breathe, and you feel like the world is standing still, and his eyes seem bluer than ever, but the smell of chocolate distracts you from that moment, and your stomach rumbles and he turns away. The moment is gone.

"Can't find the bleeding Sherpas," he says and Buffy stuffs the chocolate in her mouth now that he's not looking.

She really wants that moment back, to see if she can make it end another way, but these opportunities they never come twice, do they?

#

The moment they've been anticipating has arrived, and they should hurl themselves out there and eviscerate anything that moves, but Spike demurs. His shiny crinkly cocoon is suffused with warmth and toasty aroma of Buffy, and although he's been strong enough not to throw her on the cot and fuck her senseless, he now feels torpid, sated as if after a meal of a pair of plump nubile girls. They should leave now, before night crashes down with a bang to announce the start of the fun and games. He lifts a reluctant hand and watches gravity tug at it. If it descends it will be on Buffy's breast, swelling only faintly under layers of clothing.

His eyes tear as he strains to keep the evil hand from falling, and the world becomes blurry. He's outmatched, now. The hand will touch her and then all bets are off.

Buffy rolls off him and hauls him up, her voice gruff. "Come on, ba- Spike. My turn. We gotta get going, okay?'"

"Yeah. Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Spike finally manages to blink and sees Buffy, who's standing well in his personal space, but is buttoning and zipping and Velcroing up in a most businesslike manner.

Is all this being strong and not grabbing one opportunity after another a sign of personal growth, or cowardice? Pondering this question is much less appealing than committing violent acts in Buffy's company, so he lets it slide.

Spike wraps his shiny blanket, only slightly burnt, around himself once more.

"Ready?"

"Ready."

His hand is against the door when Buffy links a hand through one of the many loops on his thermal jacket and holds him back.

"Wait."

"Why?"

"I wanna tell you – just in case, –" she stammers.

Spike's dead heart cartwheels and lands flat on its ass, gasping. "What?"

She casts down her eyes and blushes fierily. "I did mean it."

"What?" The moment the word leaves his mouth he knows what she means, but he can't allow himself to feel it, not now.

Her lips tremble once, he thinks, but she shakes her head and uses her mitt to brush an invisible strand of hair from her face. "Never mind. That's too long ago, I know. I really, really enjoyed working with you again. I hope you won't wait another ten years to let it happen again. Because I'll be too middle-aged to slay, I should think."

"'Course not," he says, the only possible answer. "You'll still kick ass when you're middle-aged."

" I'll be forty-three in ten years. You think that is middle aged?"

Spike's sure the conversation was going somewhere else. He does the only possible thing. He grabs her shoulders and kisses her. The only parts of their faces that are able to touch through the goggles, caps, scarves and hoods are their lips, and he makes the most of it. Her mouth is warm and pliant and when she opens it there is her tongue, and she tastes like the sun, like he remembers, like she smells. She's been to heaven, and it shows in every molecule. Spike feels blessed just to be able to get a taste of that realm at one remove, he thinks, and then he knows that for a silly lie. He'd kiss her if she came straight from hell, wearing horns and stinking of brimstone. There would be interesting uses for the pitchfork, too.

Their goggles grind together with a chirping noise, and when he breaks loose their Velcro hood fasteners have become wedded to each other and have to be torn loose, with a sound like ripping living flesh from the bone. Without speaking, he kicks the door open and propels himself through the sun's deathly sun glare to the cave entrance.

#

Spike moves across the plateau like a foil popcorn packet in an oven, his blanket billowing outward and starting to smoke. Buffy follows hard on his heels, planning to toss him bodily into the cave mouth if she has to. Damn those flammable synthetics their thermal gear is made of. The Sherpas, wherever they are now, were dressed in leather and wool, and those would have come in so useful now. She should have found their bodies and stripped them. With that thought, she collides into Spike as he is sagging to his knees, one living flame, and she grabs straight into the heart of the flame and tosses him into the cave. It's like a toothy mouth, a vagina dentata, and if the teeth were wood, he'd be dead for sure.

Buffy douses her burning mitts and starts beating the guttering Spike-shaped thing on the floor. His foil blanket has fused together with his thermal jacket. Her hands still after she's peeled off the first layer of outer clothing and accidentally lays bare quivering, naked, blue-pink vampire muscle. If he were human, she'd just have to put him under a tepid shower and wait for the ambulance to arrive.

"Spike?"

"Wubby?" he whispers. "Don't banic, wove, just need a widdle dime here. Don't wook."

He's talking through a mouthful of porridge. Buffy tries not to look, but she can still feel him writhing silently beside her. He must be in pain. She shouldn't ask, he's asked for privacy while he heals, but she wants to show him she cares, so much, but touching him will probably only hurt even more.

Funny that it wasn't any easier telling Spike she loved him for the second time. Is that, like, significant? It wasn't hard telling Steve she loved him, even when she still meant it, and even easier when she it started to mean less and less. Telling Aura she loves her is the easiest thing Buffy's ever done and she does it several times a day without even having to think about it. So there is no correlation between the size of the love and the ease of the telling.

"Can you see?" she asks softly, after what feels like hours.

A pause. "Not yet," he says.

In a low voice she starts describing what's happening out there. "The sun is shining straight in here, but as long as we keep our heads down we'll be fine. I never noticed before how red the rock is, but it's almost shiny."

She sniffs, and again to be sure. "Are you smelling this? It's a funny smell. Not like usual. Like, food, or fish, maybe?"

"Me. And bussy."

"What? Oh. Ew. Really?"

"Yeah."

He's right. There's broiled vampire, melting polypropylene, singed hair. But the other one...Does she smell like that when she's horny? It's such an intimate smell, so shameful and secret. That's what panty liners and intimate hygiene products are made for, but Spike's never tried to hide his liking of her natural odors.

"I can't see outside too well, because the sun is shining straight at us. Outside everything looks sort of orangey with the heat and stuff."

Her descriptive powers totally suck.

It's hot in the cave. Is it getting hotter? The smell sure is intense, coming at her from everywhere. The cave's toothy excrescences are shimmering with heat, warping out of shape in the heated air. Buffy takes off her singed glove and touches the cave floor. It's springy, almost soft, like firm young flesh.

The cave's shape suddenly makes a lot of sense to Buffy. She cranes her head to check out the round drain-like tunnel at the end of the cave, and yeah, it does seem bigger. Does she want to put her hand in to check it out? Um, no. Andrew should have sent Willow, she knows all about being inside someone's pussy. She tries not to be judgmental, really, but this is grossing her out.

The cave floor, if the bumpy spiky lower half of the cave can be called that, is softening further and starting to ooze thick, sticky liquid.

They are inside something or someone, and she's pretty sure that this something is going to get laid at any moment now. Who or what is big enough to fuck a mountain? They have to get out of there, they'd be less hindrance to the enormous organ she pictures than a forgotten tampon.

"Spike! We're about to get totally fucked."

Spike doesn't immediately react, but he lies still and she hears him sniff. "Not a metaphor, I reckon?"

"Definitely not a metaphor. We need to get out of her or we'll be mashed to death by a giant penis."

"Not how I imagined this evening ending. Help me up, Buffy."

She has to look. The charcoal colored mass on the cave floor doesn't resemble Spike. Buffy bites her lip.

"I'm gonna hurt you," she says, her voice small.

"Think of me like a barbecued steak, love. On the inside I'm all pink and delicious."

She tries to laugh but it's a squeaky, almost hysterical giggle. "Yeah. I always thought so."

"Huh."

Buffy slides her arm gently under the place where she thinks his shoulder blades are. She doesn't want to, like, accidentally crumble one of his arms.

"Is this the right spot? Spike?"

"Yeah." It comes out in a breathy moan. "Do it."

Buffy lifts him a few inches and then stops. Black flakes rain off him and fall down as powder. Underneath she sees glistening pink and red stuff.

"You sure?"

"Stop," he says. "I'm not healed enough. Sorry."

This is a moment of choice. Spike doesn't ask, would never ask, but Buffy knows exactly what he needs. She's been there before with Angel, and although she's always firmly suppressed the shameful memories, they now pop up in full Technicolor glory. How it wasn't that scary or painful, and pretty damn hot, and dying seemed like an excellent idea.

There's no time to talk this to death. She's kind of sure she can force Spike to do this, but he might not be very grateful after. It's probably going to ruin this tentative possible maybe thing they have going on between them right now. But a girl's gotta be practical. Be ground to pulp by Godzilla's dick or maybe have a disagreement with your not even boyfriend? Easy.

She takes off her glove, and notices it's still warm in the cave. The last finger of sunlight rests on a glistening bulbous rock near the exit. It's gonna be soon. She slashes her wrist and directs the throbbing stream to where Spike's face should be. Hey, she knows his mouth and tongue are reasonably intact, because he talked.

Spike moans in despair, his whole body bucks, trying to get away from her, and then she hears him swallowing, hiccuping gulps she thinks at first are from greed, but then she feels his ribs heaving and she realizes he's crying. She should be glad he has ribs, and the muscle to move them in sobs, but she's just sad. It's always been a silent point of pride for him that he never even tried to drink her. They never talked about it, but she knew that much about him, even then.

"I'm sorry, Spike, I'm really, really sorry, there was no other way. We have to get out of here or die."

He doesn't answer, but drinks steadily. It's not like it was with Angel. It's her wrist, not her neck, less sexy even in normal circumstances, and he's a crispy critter, not a pale beautiful man clasped closely to her body. The arousal from Spike's fierce sucking is turning into hurt, and she's getting a little woozy.

Spike stops. "You're gonna need most of this yourself, love."

Buffy's glad that he's the one who quit drinking. He lost the one point, he shouldn't have to let go of the rest of his pride. She shoves her arms under him and hoists him up. The difference is amazing. He feels so much more solid under her arms, and between the charred bits of fused-together skin and Helly Hansen she can see actual skin. She slings him over her shoulder.

"Go!" she yells.

She's the one who's going, but the yelling keeps her steady.

Buffy stumbles to the exit, just as the last tongue of light flickers out. The plateau is in the shade now, although the western sky is still incandescent with glorious golds and purples against the deep blues marching in from the east.

A sound reverberates through the bones of the mountain, congealing the air into gelid solidity, quivering with the aftermath of the vast sound. Spike slides off Buffy's shoulder, but her hands are stiff and she can't grasp after him. She wants to speak, but her voice is a green taint in front of her face. Her head falls backwards, her hips lift up and her feet float inches off the rocky ground. She's being offered up. Something's coming from the cold deep spaces beyond the sunset, something so ancient and enormous that she hangs helplessly submitted to whatever it wants to do to her.

Spike. Where is Spike? She'll make the sacrifice, that's fine with her, as long as Spike is alright.

Her arms stretch out to the sides, very crucifixial, tightening her body like a bow, the ribcage sticking out with her breasts flattened out on top of it like garnishes of whipped cream. Little garnishes. Her knees draw up and her legs spread. Buffy is no fool, she knows exactly what is going to happen to her, but she can't move. Will Spike please come in and rescue her? She can still breathe and feel and see everything ahead of her, but all she sees is the purpling sky, with tiny stars winking on. Her breath is going fast, matching her heartbeat and the fluttering of her thighs. She's so hot.

#

Spike slithers off Buffy's back like a drop of sweat, tepid, willless, unwanted. His body doesn't even jar when he hits the floor; there is that little tension in his muscles.

The blood she's given him, which he hated to receive, is coursing through him, knitting up all the charred and unraveled bits back together in that web of magic and bone that is a vampire. He could blame her for punching through his self-imposed sobriety, but on the other hand there's this incredible joy singing through his veins. He's done without this for ten years, longer if you count his chipped period. Spike wills Buffy to heal him faster, he needs to fight beside her. He can hear her moan, but not see her.

A band of muscle attaches itself to his hipbone and he can turn over. Buffy hangs in the air in the cave entrance, shimmering and quivering like a golden-haired Frodo in an invisible web. If there's a web, there's always a Shelob, Spike knows that well enough and he turns back to see what is going to come at her from outside.

At first, he sees nothing, but then the blackened, star-pimpled night sky erupts into a bulge of sky stuff, as if someone's pounding a fist through the backcloth of the heavens. It grows as fast as a sunspot, a liquid form made of air and bent light. Spike stands up, jerking like a puppet where charcoaled muscles and tendons are missing connection. His head turns away from the sky-arm against his volition and he looks into Buffy's desperate eyes. They have failed. Whatever Andrew wanted them to do, they've managed nothing more than whining, running and hiding, and now they're going to be used like marionettes.

The force, or thing, that is steering him crucifies him in the steaming, curdling air of the plateau. The sky arm hits him in the back and punches straight through his spine and belly. As sense and reason leave him, his last thought is that what's taking possession of him is not an arm.

#

Buffy feels the splitting boards of the derelict house poking in to her back, and she just manages to hold on by grabbing a beam or something behind her head. Something else, Spike, is poking her somewhere else and it's nothing like she could ever have imagined. He pistons into her, she's steaming, flowing like water around him, the air perfumed by sweat and slick come and fear.

She looks into his eyes, knowing he loves her, knowing this must be the pinnacle of his existence. Nothing's ever going to top that, even burning up body and soul in the cleansing fire of the amulet. Her whole body clenches around him, through him, accepting him and everything that he's giving. She can top this, she can, and the knowledge gives immeasurable freedom.

She grabs the back of his neck so he can't look away. "I love you," she says and sees him die the small death of infinite relief and happiness.

They are making music together, weaving the world whole again in the slow dance of thrust and counterthrust, of mingling sweat and saliva, of looking and seeing only one another, of giving the other his or her due. They speak words of promise to each other, to take only what is given freely, to cherish and protect, to bring forth in joy, to be in harmony.

TBC

Feedback:dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk