Imagine, explicit warnings! These characters aren't mine; they belong to Mutant Enemy. Then, imagine explicit content! Well, medium-explicit, anyway. Ah, well.
He opened the door.
"So this is your lair." Illyria stepped over the threshold, seeming to need to stoop--even though she didn't--as she entered the basement room. She stood stiltlike near the doorway, head angling this way and then that, predatory. "Or do you prefer to call it a hole? Or a nest. I recall that vampires nested."
"In trees?" Spike tossed his coat at the chair, made a beeline for the fridge. "Want a beer?"
"They made their nests beneath the foundations of buildings, to hide from those that would call them prey. Great worm-demons, the feasters upon ashes and agony. Such are extinct now, but in their time, they boasted noses so keen, they could track your ilk to weeping exhaustion before swallowing them whole and subsisting for days on the exquisite savor of their pain."
"Uh . . . yeah. Beer?"
"Then when they tired of the game, they tightened their belly-muscles and--" She made a wringing gesture.
"Okay, no beer. Salty peanuts?"
"What is this thing you call beer?"
"Oh, come on," said Spike, "you have Fred's memories, you gotta remember beer. It was that stuff she drank with pretzels, right? Wasn't a week in the year she didn't go out at midnight in search of a pretzel stand and that crummy beer you get in white plastic cups along the beach. So piss-weak that even a ninety-pound girl like her could chugalug it. Course she wasn't solid muscle like you, love--more like solid brain-cells. God, I miss that girl."
Illyria sneered at him. Spike bared his teeth back, then glanced at the coffee-table and sofa--such as they were--and felt misgivings. Magazines and game-cartridges, empty cans and dog-eared books, balled-up sheets of paper and chewed ballpoint pens, littered every surface. Still sipping his beer, he went over and began to put things away. He wasn't tidying for Illyria, or so he told himself; wasn't because he had a woman visiting, it was for his own sake. Anyway, she ignored him. Snooty nose in the air, she strayed around the tiny apartment, staring at random points in mid-air. Maybe she was communing with the spirits? Or something like that.
Seeing her distracted, he shoveled one of his magazines under several others--hiding it at the bottom of the stack. Then he sauntered away, draining and crushing his beer-can. Threw it into the sink. Got another. Tilting it and letting it wash down his throat, he thrust his free hand into the front pocket of his jeans, groping for cigarettes. It was then that her voice said, from the bedroom, "Call them tits or knockers, jugs or melons--hers were mouth-watering, she knew it, I knew it, and I intended to get my hands on them before the night was through."
Spike turned. "Uh," he said.
Illyria stood by the coffee-table. A magazine--was it the one he had hidden?--was open in her hands. She turned several pages. She read, "She lay face-down on the mat, plump boobs squashed together in the confines of their regulation white cotton bra. Her gym shorts were down around her ankles. A breathless tee-hee issued from her cherry lips, as he shot his sizzling juice of love into her honey-pot--" She stopped. Lowering the magazine, she stared at Spike. "Explain," she commanded.
Spike relaxed into a smile: he was almost sure the magazine she held wasn't the one he had hidden. "Blue, why are you wearing my coat?"
"Are you aroused when I wear it?" Illyria asked. "You do not appear to be in a state of arousal. But here it says--"
The black leather coat hung from her shoulders, reaching to her ankles. It belled out, loose and flaring; she stood with her weight thrown onto one hip, one long leg thrust out. She looked like a dominatrix, except that her expression was completely serious. There wasn't even an awareness of irony to it, let alone underlying humor; no comprehension of, no smile at the game.
She flipped pages. "Here. In the ‘letters to the editor', on this page. Here, I read that the male is stimulated when the female dons his clothing--"
"If it's his shorts, maybe," said Spike. "Or just his socks. His coat, no. Anyway, c'mon, you gotta remember that stuff. Don't tell me you don't."
"I remember the shell's experience of sex," said Illyria. "It made no sense. It served no reproductory purpose. Reproduction was not even an issue! Nor was--" she consulted the magazine again, "a baton. I remember no baton, yet here--" stabbing a finger at the page, "a baton features extensively. A striped baton, pink and yellow, with pom-poms at the ends. Is this obligatory equipment?"
He sauntered toward her, grinning.
"Yeah, love. Well, no. That is, some people like to use, uh, equipment . . . and some people are less--adventurous. Between the sheets, I mean. Everybody's got their own kink. What's the title of that?"
"This is gibberish," pronounced Illyria, ignoring him. She was still wearing his coat. She turned the magazine sideways, upside-down, then upright again. He was craning, trying to read the cover. She went on, oblivious, "This article instructs in the use of a step-ladder, peanut butter, and eight four-foot lengths of silk scarf."
"Um--"
"Not physically possible," she concluded. "For your kind, that is. I myself could assume the position described." Spike's face became a study, distraction warring with anxiety. He had finally got a look at the magazine-cover, but— Then she spoke the fatal words: "What is this scribbling in the margins?"
Spike yelled. He made a grab, and Illyria twitched the magazine out of his reach. "Hey! Gimme that!"
"Some of these pages fall open," she said, engrossed in her reading, "of their own accord, and their edges are finger-marked, as if they have been handled over and over."
"Will you give me that right now!"
"No," said Illyria, still reading. Her hand planted itself on his chest, held him off with effort. "This is all erotica. Even the advertisements feature sexual couplings, in a variety of combinations. This is meant to titillate? Why am I not titillated?" She looked up. She let her hand drop. Spike, who had been trying to barrel toward her by main force, fell forward and landed against her. "You are a vampire, and bipedal. You understand bipedal eroticism. You will enlighten me."
The magazine was safely tucked behind her back now. Her free arm snaked around him, her hot breath gusted against his cheek. Spike became aware of the heat of her body--an unnatural burning heat--in a way he hadn't been, when they had sparred in the testing rooms of Wolfram & Hart. This was just another kind of testing. He smiled, caught his tongue-tip between his teeth, and relaxed against her. "First give me the magazine, Princess Bluebell. Then I promise to dispel the shadows." Her head was bent, her gaze moving over his body. Her mouth was very near his face. Then her lips parted and her tongue flicked out, tasting his skin.
"If I must wear a human shell, I wish to sample the pleasures of human life. And yet your anatomy lacks so much--only one male appendage, but so many orifices! It should be the other way around. But no opportunity for pleasure should be overlooked in this squalid and debased existence. Naturally I wish to learn."
"And came to me, right? Good choice. Straight to the source, that's what I always say--"
"No. First I asked Wesley, but he refused to instruct me."
"I wasn't first?" said Spike. He perked up: "But, then, right next--"
"No, next I went to Gunn, whom I find strangely compelling. But he too refused. They both seemed . . . ashamed. Vampires know no shame. So as a last resort, I chose a vampire."
"Well, ta very much! And then you came to me."
"No," said Illyria. "I went to Angel. His station is closer to My glory. However, he was disobedient, and refused to become my pleasure-consort--"
"Wish I was a fly on the wall during that conversation. Almost makes up for the humiliation-- almost. So Angel turned you down. And then--"
Illyria nodded. "Then, I thought of you."
"If it wasn't for the magazine," Spike muttered. "Look. Tit for tat, alright. You've got something I want, I've got something you need. We can come to an accommodation. For the last time, give me the sodding magazine, don't hold it out of reach that way-- Will you give me my magazine already, I'm doing what you want!"
"Not till you teach me pleasure."
"Hey, I already am!"
"That? You merely stroke my face. And why are you showing me your tongue?"
"It's called foreplay, sweetie. Wanna play?"
"Is it eroticism?"
"Didn't it eroticate you? You're a hard room, Royal Blue. Look, here. Try this."
"Do not come so close to me. What is that you do with your mouth? Oh. Very well . . . That is wet, and I do not enjoy it. Do it again, though . . . How cold your skin is, vampire."
"And how hot you are, grandma," breathed Spike. He stopped. "Look. This would go better if you took off your armor--" Then he stopped, as her iron-hard fingers closed on the front of his shirt, and began to twist the thin rayon material into tatters.
"My armor?" said Illyria. "Let me rip yours away instead."
And taking the initiative, she began to undress him.
As she did, she continued talking. "Resistance is useless, vampire. Do not squirm so. Now you will back toward that bed. Now, lie down. On your back. No, roll over. No, I think I prefer you on your belly before me, it is more fitting. Can you perform in that position? What can you do? Very well, you may lie on your back. I hope you feel privileged, insect. How many positions are you versed in? First we will run through them one by one, then we will repeat my favorites." She bent over him, hissing in his ear. "There were certain decadents among my courtiers in the Primordium, who coupled with your kind for sport. They would impale their chosen vampires, visit them with the utmost ecstacy, and, at the moment of the victim's climax, release their spume and watch as their partners were incinerated by its fiery spurts. Exploding in ashes, with their faces still distorted by irresistible desire."
She broke off.
"I am telling you an erotic story, after the fashion of that magazine! Why has it no effect? Why do you remain flaccid?"
"‘Flaccid'?? Hey, enough with the insults to my manhood, okay?"
"You insult me with your unaroused flaccidity! Come to full tumescence at once. Or--"
It was the last straw.
"Get off me," said Spike. He pushed her away; astonished, she allowed it. "No magazine is worth this. I don't care if you rip the bloody thing up and I never get another one! Get out of my basement, go back to Wesley and tell him to rent you videos--hell, tell him to rent you escort boys if you want, but you're not getting anymore out of me--"
He broke off.
She was moving away, her face averted. The magazine was still gripped in her fist, held out awkwardly away from her; her blue hair fell over her eyes. Then she put her chin up and glared at him. Her lower lip was stuck out. Then a look of surprise and confusion came upon her, and the back of her free hand came up and swiped at her eyes.
"Hey! Blue, don't cr— I mean, your majesty, don't smite me with your dread wrath, look, you got me running scared here. Too intimidating by half is what you are, that's the problem. Wrong game, doesn't work. Gotta learn to play a little more gentle."
"But I did as the magazine advises. It says, desire often sparks from anger, argument is erotic, enemies attract. Human sex is like fighting. And--I have fought you, Spike, I know you become aroused by battle--and I overheard Harmony when she spoke of you and some--Slayer? Named Buffy. You enjoy strong women. You enjoy being dominated. Is my technique so wrong?"
"Dead wrong, yeah. Look. Forget the magazine--just give it— Not gonna give it, are you? Damn. But forget what you read, okay? That's just porn, it's for reading an' not doing--got nothing to do with real sex. That's a rose of a whole nother name, and you can't learn it from any skin mag. Porn's for when you're alone."
"So many synonyms for the battle to reproduce--porn and erotica and sex and lovemaking, there are too many of them."
"Aren't synonyms, love. All different things, and they don't have anything to do with fighting. Can't be explained. You have to learn by doing."
"Show me," said Illyria. "The shell remembers--" There was a strange tender look in her eyes. She put her hand on his shoulder, swayed toward him. Spike gulped in surprise. The next moment, she was in his arms.
Her body was still hot, not fever-hot like a human woman but dry and hot, a dragon heat. And her skin was rough. The carapace over her small breasts, pressed against his chest through the shreds of his shirt, felt almost like her bare skin--lizard-rough and hot, yielding, alive. It was her skin too, Spike thought suddenly, just part of her shell; she was naked, had always been naked. Naked in front of all of them and the whole world. But she could incinerate him just by breathing, gusts of fire into his mouth. And her mouth wasn't dry, wasn't rough. It opened gentle, wild, hungry under his, and then his head tilted one way, her head tilted the other, and they were wrestling softly, falling over together, fastened in a kiss. In perfect accord, never a bump or a fumble. Her hands went all over him, madly touching wherever he was bare, and her bare breasts were rubbing against him. Dragon body, flower mouth, crystal eyes gone wide and their gaze fixed on his.
The heel of his hand brushed the lapel of the black leather coat, and he thought: she comes to me wearing the skin of a Slayer.
His fingers curled, closing, empty, in the raw silken fall of her hair, and he thought: she comes to me wearing the shell of a dead girl.
He did not know that his eyes had fallen almost shut, just slitted glitters of tears, and his lashes lay like dark fans against his white cheeks, or that his cheeks had hollowed, his skin drawn tight with hunger for something gone, something always lost . . . but he thought: she comes to me wearing the costume of heroes.
The magazine--Illyria had dropped it at last--lay discarded on the bed. But Spike didn't reach for it, because she had made him forget. And she breathed against his mouth, "So that is what those memories signify."
She drew back at last. One of her small steel-hard hands was toying with his hair. "We are not going any further, are we?" she asked.
"No, love," said Spike.
"You are like Wesley, and Charles Gunn, and Angel. You find me undesirable."
"It's not like that. Look, you haven't got the mirror business down pat yet, but cross my heart, you're every man's fantasy. It's just that I--that we look at you and we see somebody else."
"You see the shell. Winifred Burkle."
"Not really," said Spike.
She looked down and sideways, at the magazine; she reached out, turned the pages slowly. Spike shifted his weight, reached out too and touched her hand. She stopped and he took over, till he reached the place she had been looking for. The pages whose margins had been scribbled over, every fraction of blank space filled obsessively. "Who is she?" asked Illyria. "In these pictures. You said, ‘if I never get another'--you did not draw those, did you?"
"No. Stole ‘em from Angel's smut drawer. And her name is Buffy."
They were drawings in pencil, shaded with thin fine strokes, and sometimes the artist had rendered the subtle shadows along cheek and forehead and throat by nocking them with his thumb, leaving his thumbprint on the cheap pulp paper. The prints left blurs, smeared like tears. The girl was fair-haired and somehow the way that light reflected off her high forehead had been captured, and the darkness in her eyes. She was there in a white cowl-necked sweater, she was there in summer dresses that seemed, even in black and white, to be full of yellow sunshine; she was in skimpy party dresses, tank tops and jeans, denim jackets (and a stake gripped in her fist), and on the last pages, she was drawn nude. But those weren't the most-handled pages--the pages that fell open of their own accord, whose edges were smudged, the paper buckled. Those were the pages on which the drawings were just close-ups of the girl's face.
"Tell me about her," Illyria said.
They sat together till late that night, talking; and that was how the Old One got her first understanding of the nature of love.