Grosse Pointe Buff
By TalesOfSpike
Disclaimer: Spike, Buffy and all the other members of the Sunnydale crowd belong to Joss Whedon, UPN, Fox, and so on, and so on. Grosse Point Blank was written by Tom Jankiewicz, D V deVincentis, S K Boatman & the vastly talented John Cusack. It is of course owned by Hollywood pictures and Caravan Pictures and not me. I’m ripping them both off for no profit whatsoever, other than the happies I may get when and if you lovely people review.
Note: Sorry to everyone who’s been waiting for an update. I got sort of caught up trying to sort out another story, True Colors. (It’s not entirely AU so it’s not available at the Spuffy archive, but you can find it at The Crypt, along with my other stories or you can read the kiddies’ version at fanfiction.net.) Along with Christmas preparations and visiting my parents for a week, not forgetting the fact that hubby’s off work and expects me to actually spend some time with him, it’s been taking up most of my time for the last month. As long as I keep getting more reviews for this, I’ll work on finishing this in preference to doing any more with that from now on so there shouldn’t be more than a week at most between updates from now on (I hope).
Anyway, thanks to all of you who’ve stuck with me despite the break and especially Jaime who e-mailed me fairly recently to ask if there were going to be any updates and prompted me to get out of the True Colors rut. Of course, I can’t forget NeverMindDaria, Retroskater, fastpilot, FloX or Whisper2Ascream either. Thank you for taking time out to review. Belladonna gets a special mention because she not only reviewed, she asked to put the story on her wonderful site. (I don’t know anywhere else where you can get Spike/Buffy skins for your Winamp player, not to mention the other artwork and of course the fanfic. Check out www.immortal-sins.com/buffy
Chapter 4
1986/87
Despite his best efforts, Will was unable to prevent his gaze from wandering to the corner of the school canteen where Buffy and her friends sat, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by his current female companion.
"Give it up already," Faith protested. "You ain’t got what it takes to get with the Midwich babes."
"Midwich Babes?" Spike asked.
"Yeah," Xander explained. "Like that old Sci-Fi film. Village of the Damned. All blonde, too good to be true. Stick with their own kind. No time for others. Otherwise known as Buffy Summers, Anya Jenkins and Harmony Kendall and their wonderful escorts Riley Finn and Percy West—."
"Yeah, yeah. He gets the drift." Faith interrupted. "Doesn’t matter. There is no way in hell that Will, here, is going to get it on with one of their bitches."
Deep down Will knew that Faith’s protestations were nothing more than the truth. Still, hearing her say it brought some spirit of rebellion alive inside him. "’N’ supposin’ I wanted to, which considerin’ the fact I haven’t actually met any of them yet, so I can’t really say whether I would …but just supposin’ I did, what makes you think I couldn’t get one?"
"Okay, where do you want me to start?
No offence, but whether you actually got the smarts to go with it or not, the image says geek.
Hey, I wouldn’t even go out with you unless you changed the wardrobe, ditched the glasses and did something with that hair." Faith took another sip of her soda before going on.
"You’re too short for either Harmony or Anya. The only one of the three that wouldn’t be taller than you in a pair of heels is Queen B, and in case you hadn’t noticed she’s the one with the Teutonic boy-toy on her arm.
Chances are you ain’t going to be dazzling them on the B ball court and you sure don’t dress like your daddy’s a member of the country club. That only leaves one other entry route and I think, much like big bro here, you probably don’t have the guts to take it."
"Oh yeah?" Will responded to the challenge.
"Yeah. The day you manage to pull off the Bad Boy gig’ll be the same day X here gets to have sex with a real live woman."
"Hey!" both males protested at once.
Faith’s assessment of the situation was to prove far too accurate for Will’s comfort, even though he was quick to switch to jeans and T-shirts for schoolwear. In fact, he never even spoke to Buffy that entire year. It didn’t stop him sending covert glances her way from time to time, especially when he started to accompany Faith to self-defence classes at the Y only to find Buffy and her younger sister also attending. It didn’t stop him writing song lyrics about her, at least that’s what he called them. Anybody else would probably have called them poems, considering he didn’t have any prospect of them actually being put to music.
As far as friends went, Will found that it was the pair he spoke to that first day that seemed to stick, and as time wore on he got to understand more about why the pair were the way they were and the bond between them. Eventually, it got to where the siblings practically lived at Will’s house most weekends, otherwise known as the first couple of days after their father’s pay day.
Xander tried to deflect his father’s anger with humour. Faith, despite her size, chose to stand up to him head on, hence the self-defence classes. More than once, she gave the drunk a taste of his own medicine, normally resulting in a worse beating in return, but she was too pig-headed to back down. Neither of the pair would countenance getting the authorities involved, refusing to leave their mother alone with the man. Will knew that Xander lived in dread of the day, as she grew older that his father’s abuse of his sister might prove more than simply physical.
~+~
Summer finally came and quickly went. Will’s uncle opened a new club in LA, sort of a sister club to the Bronze, but less mainstream. His mum got talked into playing the part of DJ and promoter at the club on Friday and Saturday nights. Will helped out wherever he could, setting up the equipment for Dru and the bands she booked, and helping clear up at the end of the night. It became the norm for he and his parents to drive to LA on a Friday evening after his dad finished work and stay overnight at a motel, driving back home in the small hours of Sunday morning. Sometimes the Harrises came with them, sometimes they "house-sat" for them while they were away and sometimes when he came home Will was pretty sure Faith had used his bed for more than just sleeping.
Will found himself for the first time with some real cash to spend and with all LA to spend it in. He made new acquaintances, if not friends amongst the Goth and punk kids who turned up at the club when his mum was DJ-ing. That growth spurt he’d been praying for finally happened and though he’d never be tall, he finally hit the marker for average height. It was a few weeks before they were due to return to school that Faith commemorated the changes the summer had wrought by renaming him Spike, slim, hard, tough and with a wit so sharp it was dangerous.
~+~
1987/88
The situation amused Faith enormously. She took great delight in watching the furtive glances back and forth across the confines of the Y gym. The best bit was that she reckoned Spike was totally oblivious to the yearnings of the young girl who was so enamoured of him, but then considering his attention was totally focussed in the direction of her elder sister, that wasn’t so surprising. Faith racked her brain to remember whether the kid was one year below her in junior high or two.
It was kinda hard to keep track of things like that these days. Since Spike and Xander had decamped to Sunnydale High, Faith had been blowing off most of her classes. Nevertheless, Faith would bet the kid was only in seventh grade. That made her a good three years younger than Spike’s fifteen going on sixteen.
Back in the locker room Faith watched the younger Summers rush frantically to get changed back into her street clothes, knowing that Spike would be waiting for his friend by the soda machine. Smiling to herself, Faith took a bit longer putting on her make-up than she normally would.
"Buffy, I need some money for a soda."
"We’ll be going home in five minutes. Can’t you wait till then?"
"Actually, I was going to go to the library to work on my math assignment. So, can I have some money?"
Faith had to give the girl credit. She had his schedule pretty much down. Tuesday nights, class at the Y, followed by meeting Xander for a couple of hours at the library and then down to the Bronze to score some free food and see what bands his Uncle Oz had booked for the week.
"Does mum know you’re not coming straight back?"
"Buffy!" the girl half-sighed impatiently. "It’s all set up. If you hadn’t been so busy simpering to Riley on the phone you would know. Money. Soda. This week sometime."
"How are you getting there and back. You’re not walking the streets on your own."
"Who died and made you Hitler mom? Mom said if I rang, her or dad would pick me up."
"He’s not our dad."
"He’s the only dad I’ve ever had. And if Hank’s so great then where’s he been for the last ten years?"
"He writes…"
"To some of us." Dawn gave up on asking and instead plucked Buffy’s coin purse from the top of her bag. "I’ll be waiting for you at the soda machine when you’re finished."
Spike leant against the wall by the vending machine, one leg bent so that the sole of his Doc Marten rested against the wall, head tilted back to emit a plume of smoke into the air. He looked for all the world like James Dean born a couple of decades late.
A clatter by his feet brought him out of his Buffy-induced daydreams and he looked down to find a mass of books and a crouching girl at his feet.
"Sorry," the brunette stumbled over the words as he stooped to help her get her things back into order. "Strap broke," she explained pointing toward her faulty book-bag, not mentioning that she had noticed earlier that the strap had almost pulled free of the side of the bag and she had arranged its final failure to occur at just this moment.
"S’alright, pet. No harm done… ’cept to the bag. You goin’ to be okay for getting’ that lot home? Somebody comin’ to pick you and sis up?" Spike weighed up the now unwieldy bag.
Dawn blushed. "Em… Riley’s coming for Buffy, but I was going to the library. Mom or dad’s meant to pick me up later."
Spike hesitated for a couple of seconds before he made the offer. "Look, kid. If you wait till Faith shows up, we can walk you over there and I’ll give you a hand carrying that lot."
"Faith? Is that your girlfriend?"
Spike snorted. "In that she’s a girl and a friend? Yeah. I kinda prefer it when my best mate isn’t goin’ to try to kill me for screwin’ around with his little sister, ‘n’ then there’s the fact that she’s my second-best mate…"
"But she won’t mind if I come with?" the brunette asked.
"Nah, Bitlet. She’s cool. She even lets me out without a leash now and again… I’m Spike, by the way."
"I know, I mean …Dawn. I’m Dawn …Summers," she stuttered and blushed in a way that Spike found endearing, finally picking up on the vibe from the younger girl.
"Dawn Summers!" Buffy’s voice echoed down the corridor from the female changing room, closely followed by the blonde herself. She grabbed her sister by the shoulder and yanked her as far away from Spike as she could without leaving the building, which still wasn’t far enough to prevent him being able to hear her every word.
"What on earth were you thinking about, talking to that bleach-blond freak?"
"Pot, kettle, black," responded her little sister.
"Yeah, well, I don’t look like Billy Idol jnr. I mean he’s probably on drugs or …or he’s gay or something. The guy is wearing eye-liner, for Pete’s sake... and an earring."
"And that automatically results in an inclination toward the same sex. Maybe I better start locking my bedroom door in case you slip in at night and molest me.
I think he’s cool. Just because someone chooses to express their individuality doesn’t mean they’re some sort of aberrant. He was just helping me because my book-bag broke, and he’s walking me to the library and you can’t stop me. You’re only worried in case Riley sees you talking to a guy that doesn’t have a letterman’s jacket."
"Dawn. You are not going anywhere with that guy."
"You are not the boss of me, Buffy, and if you try to stop me going where I want, with who I want, I’ll just ring mom at work and tell her you’re playing the spoiled little princess and that you’ve been a totally rude bee-atch to someone you don’t even know, just because they dress different from you and then we’ll see who gets grounded."
Buffy threw a last parting shot before she stomped off in the direction of the parking lot. "Don’t come crying to me when he turns out to be an axe-murderer, then."
Dawn hung her head as she made her way back toward Spike. "I’m really sorry ‘bout that. She’s not that bad really. It’s just she can be… overprotective, y’ know?"
Spike used a hand to tilt Dawn’s chin up till she was looking at him and gave her a grin. "Can’t say that I do know that much about protective older sisters, seein’ as I happen to be an only brat, but I do know it’d be stupid to hold anything she might have said against you. You’ve got nothin’ to be sorry for Bitlet.
An’ by the way, you can tell your sister, that in England at least, a bloke wearing an earring only means he’s gay if it’s in his right ear and apart from coffee and a very occasional beer I’m livin’ drug-free these days. As far as the rest goes, I’ve always reckoned an axe was a pretty inefficient way to go about killing anybody. Too much blood all over you. I’d probably go for a rifle or maybe inject air bubbles into the blood stream, something like that… What d’you reckon, Faith. If you were going to kill someone how would you do it?"
"That’s easy. Give my dad enough money that he can stay in a bar twenty-four, seven and let him drink himself to death," the brown-eyed girl replied as she hit the side of the vending machine at just the right spot for a can of root beer to drop out.
"Hey…" Dawn looked on in admiration. "Can you teach me how to do that?"
Just over two weeks later…
Buffy could not believe it. Riley was due to pick her up for a date and the creature from Generation X was sitting in the living room drinking hot chocolate and chatting to her mum and stepfather about pre-Raphaelite art. The two males were being so English it made her teeth ache, like we didn’t have enough butt-pains without importing them. The albino freak had spent longer talking to the parental units than he had tutoring Dawn on her math homework. And what was up with that? Where did someone who wasn’t even in the country for seventh grade get off on tutoring seventh grade math?
~+~
"I don’t want you hanging around my house any more!" Buffy almost spat the words out.
"Really? I can’t see as how it would make any difference to you—," came Spike’s cold reply.
"And what’s that meant to mean?" Buffy’s eyes sparkled like emeralds, her rage lending fire to their normally limpid depths.
"It means that, it’s a good job that I happen to like your little sister enough to make time to help her out when she rings me ‘cause she’s got a problem with her homework, because if she had to rely on you helping her she’d pretty soon realise that what with the fact the only thing you make time for is hanging out with the in-crowd and dating the captain of the basketball team, you’re never there when she needs you and you don’t remember what you did in class last week, never mind three years ago."
"What I choose to do with my time is no business of yours. A social retard like you wouldn’t understand what’s involved in being popular." Buffy eyed him head to toe with a look of disdain. "It’s certainly not a concept you would ever have first hand experience with. But, I suppose that’s why you have to chase girls my sister’s age."
"If there’s…" Spike stopped himself before he said anything about being the prey not the hunter. His and Buffy’s little spat had attracted quite a crowd now and he didn’t want to say anything that might hurt Bit’s feelings or embarrass her. "…any truth in that, which there damn well isn’t, it would only be because she obviously inherited all her personality traits off your mother, whereas you only got her looks and your temperament obviously comes from the cold bastard who couldn’t even stick around to see Bit’s second birthday."
"Ew! Is that some creepy way of coming onto me?"
"It’s a way of saying that your sister and your mother are wonderful people, neither of whom I’m interested in dating by the way, but you’re a vapid, shallow, attention-seeking bitch whose entire life is a sham perpetrated solely for the purpose of being elected queen at whatever formal happens to be next on the list."
Buffy’s fist flew out with lightning speed, impacting with Spike’s nose.
Spike’s stance stiffened, his eyes suddenly looking icily cold. He raised a hand to check and sure enough his finger came away red with blood. "I take it from your physical retaliation that your brain has overheated under the strain of trying to come up with witty repartee, but if you’re frustrated, pet, you really should take that up with your boyfriend, ‘cause I find the idea of getting in a tussle with you about as appealing as spending the night in a pit full of rattle snakes." It was Spike’s turn to let his gaze rake up and down Buffy’s body.
Buffy’s fist flew out for a second time, only for Spike to grasp it in mid-air and force her arm back to her side, stopping not far short of using enough force to cause bruising.
"Uh-huh, pet. You don’t get to do that twice. Three people I happen to like live in your house. The fact you sleep there when you’re not busy playing kissy-face with your overgrown status-symbol or waving pom-poms like some institutionalised prostitute who has reach the pinnacle of her academic achievement spelling words out with her arms, is not going to stop me visiting them whenever it happens to be mutually agreeable. Learn to live with it."
Spike turned around sharply and strode off leaving Buffy glaring daggers at his back.
It was only when he and Xander were well clear of the throng that had built up around the argument that Spike asked Xander, "how is it, when I don’t even like the bitch, that even fighting with her makes me randy as hell?"
Xander chuckled softly. "I kinda thought you were protesting too much..."
End of Chapter 4