Title: Black Satin and Plaid Flannel Author: Pattyanne snapkik@yahoo.com Disclaimer: None of the BtVS characters belong to me. Feedback: Love some, thanks. Rating: Up to NC-17 Summary: Buffy decides to have a slumber party and invite the scoobies and her vampire boyfriend. AN: For anyone who is just picking up this story, or has forgotten because it's been so f **** ing long since I've updated it, here's some background: 1. Angel is gone. 2. Spike and Buffy are in looooove! 3. The others are on board with it. 4. No chip, no Riley (!), no NONE of that crap! 5. No angst (so sorry) 6. If you want/need to refresh your memory go here: http://spikeluver.com/SpuffyRealm/viewstory.php?sid-3073 All right? Let's go then. *************************************************** Part five: Bedtime Stories "Love is lovelier, the second time around...just as wonderful with both feet on the groounnndddd!" "Oh, god....who let her start singing?" "Hey!" Spike snapped, glaring at Xander. 'You just shut your yap and leave her be. She's a beautiful singer." Smiling up at the small blonde straddling his upper thighs, he folded his arms behind his head and gave her a little bounce. "You go ahead and sing all you want, baby. Don't pay a bit of attention to that stupid prat." Buffy made a face at Xander, then fell forward in a giggling heap on Spike's chest. "I love you," she said, nuzzling her face against the side of his neck. "I love you, too," he replied, bringing his hands around and running them up and down her slender back. "You haven't had another nip at the tequila bottle, have you, luv?" "Nope." She shook her head. "Just feeling good. Life is almost normal and ordinary tonight." He chuckled. "You'd hate normal and ordinary, and you know it." "Maybe. But it's nice to give it a try every now and then." "Ha!" Anya shouted from the other side of the room. "Gin!" She laid a hand of cards down on the floor in front of Willow. "You owe me ten dollars!" Willow smiled, tossing her own cards down. "Will you take a check?" she teased. "No." Anya frowned. "No, I won't. Do I look like a bank? Cash only, no checks." Seeing how serious she was, Willow's smile began to fade. "Anya....come on. We were just playing for fun. Ha-ha. Good times?" Anya folded her arms across her chest and whipped around. "Xander!" she complained loudly. "Willow won't pay me the money she owes!" "I don't owe her money!" Willow chimed in. "We were playing for fun. I THOUGHT she understood that." Xander, who was lying stretched out on the floor in front of the TV flipping channels, didn't reply. "No one gambles for fun," Anya stated clearly. "The purpose of gambling is to win and take money from the person you're gambling with. You don't go to Las Vegas to gamble and let them keep the money if you win." "This isn't Las Vegas!" Willow retorted. "And we weren't playing for real money!" "I was!" "Well, I wasn't!" "Xander! Make her pay me!" Anya insisted stubbornly. "I'm not paying her!" Willow added, just as firmly. "You have to! A gambling debt is a debt of honor!" "Oh, come on!" Spike exploded from the couch. Buffy was still cuddled on his chest, dropping soft kisses all over his face and neck. "How's a fella supposed to con- centrate? Christ, Harris! Can't you control your bloody women?" "Nope," Xander replied, eyes still glued to the TV, ignoring the squabbling girls. "Gave up trying long ago." Tara walked in from the kitchen, carrying a can of soda. "What's wrong?" "I'll tell you what's wrong!" Anya said loudly. "Your girl- friend is a welshman!" "What?" Tara's brow furrowed. "She means a welsher," Xander interjected. "She played a game of Gin," Anya informed Tara, "with clearly outlined stakes, then she lost...and NOW she won't pay up!" Tara looked at Willow. "You were playing for money?" Willow sighed, rolling her eyes. "Not for REAL money. For PRETEND money." "Pretend money?!" Anya sounded scandalized. "As if!" By this time, even Buffy was tired of listening to the argument. "Knock it off, you two!" she said, sitting up and giving them her best 'slayer' glare. "Anya....do you WANT me to go and get that stuffed rabbit again?" "You wouldn't dare!" Anya challenged, her voice not nearly as certain as her words. "Oh, yes I would," Buffy said. "There is no gambling for real money allowed in my house. If you can't play nice...." She let the rest of the sentence trail off, her tone of voice making her point. Spike grinned, pulling her back down. "Meanie," he whispered in her ear. "Damn straight. Now...where was I?" "Right here." **************************************** "Okay. Who's on first?" Xander grinned. "That's what I want to find out." Spike looked at him. "What?" "No, what's on second base." The vampire rolled his eyes. "No. No Abbott and Costello routines or I swear I'll thump you good and proper." "And I'll hold you down while he does it," Buffy added. "Fine. You people wouldn't know funny if it came along and bit you," Xander grumbled. "Don't tempt me," Spike said. He turned out the lamps, leaving the room in utter darkness save for the firelight. Willow licked melted marshmallow off her fingers. "I'd forgotten how good these are." "And how addicting," Buffy said, reaching for another graham cracker and snapping it in half. Spike waited until she'd finished assembling her snack. "All right, Miss Sticky-fingers, you gonna tell a story or not?" "Not," she said, her voice muffled by the mouthful of chocolate and marshmallow she was diligently trying to swallow. "My stories suck. Besides, you were all there when they happened." "Well, I'll tell one," Xander started to say, then was abruptly cut off. "I'm thinking...no," Spike said. "Your stories are even duller than hers." "Hey!" Buffy protested. "I didn't say they were dull. I said they were all there when they happened." "Same difference. No, Slayer, I do believe I'M the only one qualified to tell a proper horror story." She smiled at the others. "He really does tell them well." "Uh, yeah," Xander put in. "Of course they're all TRUE, so get ready to be seriously nauseous." "Never mind him, honey," Buffy said, reaching up to pat Spike's cheek. He caught her hand in mid air, bringing it to his mouth and pretending to bite. "Not until you wash those little hands, baby face," he said, giving her hand back to her. "Now everyone just shut up and listen." **************************************** "A long time ago....a VERY long time ago...I lived in the city of London. The times were much simpler then, and true horror was much easier to find. It lurked in every dark stairwell, round every street corner." "It was 1888, and I was twenty-five years old at the time. I had spent the evening in the home of a young lady I was in the midst of...courting. We had dined with her parents, and I had then been invited into her father's study for brandy. We passed a half an hour or more discussing the latest news from the Whitechapel district of East London. A few months previously, a rather gruesome crime had been committed there. A young woman of...questionable...propriety had been mutilated and murdered. Her name was Maryanne Nichols. They found her at 3:45 in the morning on Friday, August 31. A police constable Neill, while in Buck's Row, had come across the body of a woman lying on a part of the footway. On stooping to raise her up, under the belief that she was drunk, he discovered that her throat had been cut from ear....to ear." "She was quite dead, but still warm. A Dr. Llewellyn of White- chapel Road, whose surgery was less than 300 yards from where the dead woman lay, was called out upon the solici- tation of a constable. He inspected her body and pronounced her dead. After making a hasty examination, he then discovered that, in addition to the gash across her throat, the woman had terrible wounds to her abdomen. After the body was removed to the mortuary of the parish in old Montague Street, steps were taken to secure identification, with little prospect of success. Her clothing was of common description, but the skirt of one petticoat and the band of another article bore the stencil stamp of the Lambeth Workhouse." "Now, if the woman was murdered on the spot where the body was found, it is impossible to believe she would not have aroused the neighborhood with her screaming...which must have been horrible indeed considering how long and lingering her death must have been. The pain...the terror...the awful knowledge that the end was upon her, that she had nowhere to go...no one to help...must have been agonizing." As the fire burned low, Spike rose to his feet and grabbed another bunch of kindling from the wood box. He placed it in the dying flames, then used the poker to stir them up again. "Bucks Row was a street occupied all down one side by a respectable class of people, superior to many of the surrounding streets, while the other side had a blank wall bounding a warehouse. Dr. Llewellyn called attention to the very small quantity of blood on the spot where the body was found, even though the woman had been literally torn apart. Disemboweled...her neck split open...and yet almost no blood." "The weapon used, he said, could hardly have been a sailor's jack knife, but more of a short and pointed weapon, one with considerable power being applied to it. He didn't believe that the woman was seized from behind and her throat neatly sliced, but rather that a hand was held across her mouth, while her neck was punctured...and then ripped open. The other wounds found on her body were of a similar nature." "Over the course of the next few weeks, four more of these particularly brutal attacks took place. Annie Chapman, found on the eighth of September. Throat punctured and slashed. Her uterus torn out. Very little blood found. Elizabeth Stride, found on September 30th. Throat punctured and then ripped open. Catherine Eddowes, also found on September 30th...forty five minutes after Elizabeth. Uterus and left kidney removed...and not found anywhere near the body." Spike's captive audience leaned forward, hanging on every softly spoken word he uttered. None of them had ever heard him speak in this more cultured voice. "The last one was the worst of all. Mary Kelly. Found on November 9th, at 10:45 in the morning. Her entire body mutilated beyond all recognition, her heart torn out of her chest...and nowhere in sight. Her breasts, eyes, and nose cut off." Turned slightly away from the others, Spike stared into the sputtering flames. "Then...as suddenly as they'd started...the murders stopped. And, to this very day, no one has ever been able to identify the killer. There've been a lot of wild theories. Some say he was a skilled surgeon, or a member of the royal family. Who's to say?" The fire had died down again, casting the room into deep shadow. The silence ticked by for a few seconds, then he turned on them quickly, his demon fully upon his face. "Would you like to hear MY theory?" he growled. "Be- cause I was there!" He lunged forward, making them all gasp and fall back. Tackling Buffy to the floor, he buried his face against her vulnerable throat, snarling and snapping at it playfully while she squealed. "Somebody get the lights!" Xander yelped. Jumping to his feet and doing it himself, he turned on Spike. "What the HELL is all THAT supposed to mean?" he demanded. "Are you trying to tell us that YOU were Jack The Ripper?" Spike sat up and shrugged. "I didn't say that." "Right!" Xander scoffed. "Puncture wounds...not much blood...mutilated victims. Put 'em all together and what do they spell? You! That's what!" "Don't let your imagination run away with you, junior," Spike replied. "It was just a story." "Oh, yeah? Well....I'm keeping my eye on you!" "Even if it WAS him," Buffy piped up from the floor. "You're okay. Jack only killed prostitutes, so unless there's something you haven't told us about yourself....?" "Hmmph," Xander muttered. "Just the same...you'd best watch it." The only reply Spike made was a two fingered one. **************************************** "When are you going to do it?" "Are you on about THAT again?" "You'd better believe it." "Well, sod off, will you?" "Not a chance. You got dared, and you took the dare." "Didn't really." "Oh, yeah...you did." "Prove it, then." "Well, I guess we know who the REAL welsher is around here." "Hey!" TBC..... Next: Five Minutes In Heaven