The Sequel to
Reasons For Living

Headfirst

by
Narcolepticcat

9 Gujungaranji

Bobby Gujungaranji got on the horn.

He let headquarters know his truck was busted (a lie) and that someone needed to come trade off the cargo. Another truck came, picked up Bobby’s trailer, and it was done. Bobby Gujungaranji was going to the Hellmouth.

Alexander the Great called me Guju, the Lahtentai demon thought. He gave me a pet name and spared my life.

On some level Bobby Gujungaranji knew that the vampire had no real interest in him. He was basically a psychic ball of snot with horns who could make himself look mostly human when he really, really tried. Of course Bobby Gujungaranji knew this, but did Bobby care? No. He only cared about the rumors.

Bobby G. cared that two vampires with souls… And how many does that make  now? the demon thought. That two vampires with souls who were lovers were both really scared of themselves and petrified of each other. That two vampires with souls were both on killing sprees, humans, demons, whatever stood in their respective ways, and there was no one keeping them in check. At least those were the rumors. Hot gossip they were.

And Bobby Gujungaranji knew a thing or two about rumors. The last time he’d been on the Hellmouth he’d gotten it on with a two-headed Basilica demon. Getting a demon with one head to keep its mouth shut was one thing. Getting two independently thinking heads on one demon to keep both of their mouths shut was, in fact, another.

And more than rumors there was one cardinal law of vampires with souls, one that he’d learned on birth in 1937, one that became cardinal law while still only in the form of a vague prophecy, and that law was: all vampires with souls are intimate buds with the Slayer.

Bobby G. wasn’t sure that the Great actually had a soul, he couldn’t really tell that deep into the vampire’s mind, but the rumor was he had a soul, and Bobby knew rumors.

His truck trailer-free, Bobby Gujungaranji made his way south. Away from the Great’s hotel, away from San Francisco, away from the rumors to find out the truth. Bobby G. was going to have audience with the Slayer.

And he’d be damned if he didn’t at least see the Basilica demon again.

“Buffy?”

Giles called out from the kitchen. He scraped the last of the eggs off the skillet and placed it back on the stove top. He pulled two slices of toast from the toaster and put the toast, eggs, a glass of orange juice, and a jar of strawberry jelly on a tray.

He carried the tray up the stairs and called out to Buffy again.

“Are you awake?”

Giles stopped in front of Buffy’s door, spoke to it as if it were the girl.

“Buffy? You’ve been in that room for days. You need to come out. It’s been more than a month since you got back, and I’m never one to question your privacy. I never doubt that if you’re avoiding me, or us, that you’ve got an exemplary reason, but, Buffy. This is somewhat extreme. You know you can tell me… Whatever it is.”

He heard shuffles behind the door; the sound of bedcovers moved around and feet beginning to pace.

“Buffy, I…”

The pacing stopped, immediately behind the door.

“I screwed up, Giles. I did something really bad.”

“You can tell me.”

“I know I can. I know. I know. But still, really not gonna.”

Giles placed the tray in front of the door and walked away as the pacing in the room resumed. He called back over his shoulder.

“Food’s by your door. I’m downstairs.”

The door opened and Buffy peeked her head out, examined the tray. She grabbed the orange juice and the toast and closed the door, left everything else in the hall.

“Willy.” Bobby slid up to the bar and smiled warmly through his snot and horns.

“Bobby Gujungaranji.” Willy the snitch smiled back at Bobby and offered his hand in greeting.

The bar was slower than usual, or, to be accurate, slower than Bobby remembered.

“Rough times?” Bobby asked.

“Demons, they don’t drink here anymore. There’s a new place. Outside of town. I ain’t been over there, I hear the owner’s got a contract on me.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know. Try not to think about it.”

“Willy, could it be that you supply the Slayer with information whenever she threatens to threaten you?”

Willy gulped and then laughed. “I don’t know anything about giving any Slayer any information? What’s a slayer?”

Bobby and Willy laughed together for a moment before the moment passed. Willy turned and pulled a bottle off the shelf.

“This is almost empty, Bobby, you want the worm?”

Bobby nodded and Willy poured a glass, shook the worm out of the bottle.

“So, what brings you back to the Hellmouth this year, it’s been, what? Four, five years now?”

“Something like that… I need a favor. The kind that involves threats of threatening.”

“I don’t know how to get in touch with her Bobby, she comes around when she comes around. That’s all I know.”

“Bullshit, Willy. I know better. Where’s she live?”

“What’s this about? Aren’t you a peaceful demon or some such? Make a real human living, don’t you?”

“Willy.” Bobby Gujungaranji pounded the bar, felt the hard wood crack under the pressure. “Don’t tempt me.”

“She lives on Revello drive, somewhere. That’s all I know.”

“That’ll do.” Bobby’s face shifted into it’s basically human form, he downed the rest of the glass and moved toward the door. He didn’t stop as Willy called out after him.

“You’re almost as good at that as she is.”

Bobby called out over his shoulder, hitting the daylight, “You say that like I didn’t already know.”

And he was on his way to meet the Slayer.

“She’s not talking to any of us…”

“She doesn’t feel she needs to…”

“She’s wrong…”

“What could be so horrible that…”

The doorbell rang.

Willow, Giles, Dawn and Anya stood in the kitchen dancing back and forth about who should try to talk to Buffy first. The doorbell rang again and Anya noticed.

She turned from the kitchen, walked through the dining room and opened the door.

“I need the slayer.”

“Hold up, gnarly. I don’t know you.” Anya said.

She crossed her arms and stared down the man in the doorway.

“Come on. Anyanka, right?”

“You are walking some kind of thin line, mister…”

“Gujungaranji.”

Anya’s eyes grew wider. “You’re a Lahtentai demon. Why should I trust anything you say, weird psychic guy? And why aren’t you covered in snot?”

“Oh, well, about a hundred years ago they perfected this wonderful thing called tissue paper.”

“What do you need with Buffy?”

“That’s for her to know.”

“We don’t keep secrets… Well, Buffy keeps secrets, but the rest of us are open books. I’m sort of a coffee table book about ancient disasters, Giles is like a reference book. It’s kind of funny if you think about it, Dawn’s like a book that starts on page
sixty, and Xander’s like…”

“Xander…” Bobby said.

“Well, he’s like a runaway book. Oh, a pop-up book. And Buffy’s like one of those choose your own adventure books: slay the vampire, go to page twenty; fight the polar bear, go to page seven; or kiss the boy, turn to last page. What was I talking about?” Anya stopped, scratched her head.

“I’ve seen Alexander the Great. He’s looking for William the Bloody. The slayer needs to go after him. Bad things are happening.”

10 Setting Sun

Xander stared at the window of the hotel room. He stared at the curtains that immobilized the darkness in the room, kept him and furniture dark and cold as night even in the middle of the afternoon.

The demon truck driver said the government was after Spike, after Xander too. But why? Between time in the ocean or on it, and traipsing the country looking for Spike, Xander knew what he’d been doing that was so wrong: nothing. Spike, on the other hand, he couldn’t account for, wouldn’t dare to assume to know what his wayward, angered blond lover was doing.

The room began to grow cooler still and Xander knew the sun was going down. Somewhere inside him this knowledge seemed wrong, unsettling. He was hungry, and unsettled, and the sun sank slowly from the sky, hidden out in the world by four walls and thick curtains.

Xander picked up the phone and dialed in the numbers that he would never forget. The other end was a busy signal. He placed the handset back into it’s cradle and brought his attention to the nightfall around him.

Buffy dropped the phone to the ground. Words, sounds flared out of the receiver as it dropped; words burned into her mind.

…She had finally come downstairs. There was a demon, said he’d seen Xander, said a lot of things. That he could read minds.

So she had finally come downstairs and started talking to the demon. Weird time, Sunday evening. The sky still blazed; a hint of darkness blurred the back edge. So she’d sat down, avoided all of the eyes in the room. Couldn’t let them see, let them know. The demon, Gujungaranji, had talked. He was strong, very sure. Buffy was impressed. She cracked a smile when she guessed that Willy the Snitch had been even more impressed.

Gujungaranji had given shirtless, wet Xander a ride in the middle of the night across northern California, into Nevada. The pair had talked. The demon had mentioned the initiative, Buffy’s ears had burned, dry where I should be wet, wet where I should really be dry, and she’d crossed her legs.

She had finally come downstairs and the government, her ex-lover, was after her best-friend and another of her ex-lovers and oh god, is my best-friend an ex-lover now too.

And then the demon had said the thing she hadn’t thought anyone else could know:

“You leave ‘em littered around like the ashes of vamps you’ve staked. You really should clean up messes before you make more.”

She had slapped him and his demon face had been revealed. She’d slapped him again, and he’d started to laugh. She’d gotten confused and he had kept on laughing.

The others, the ones she couldn’t look in the eyes, had gone into defense mode, Willow’s eyes had done that ‘I’m a powerful wicca’ thing they did, Giles and Anya’d both reached for weapons. But the demon had stopped laughing and was looking Buffy straight in the eyes.

I’m sorry.

You should be, you slimy… slimy thing.

How was I supposed to know you didn’t keep your minions informed. Wait, I correct myself, how stupid could I have been to assume that you’d inform minions.

They’re not my minions. And yeah. How stupid.

You’ve got to go find them, whatever they are to you, whatever is between the three of you, you’ve got to do something about it.

“I know that.”

They’d stared at each other for a few more minutes and, finally, Anya had spoken up. “You know what? All I know is you almost-people are having some kind of conversation and we’re not in on it, and that’s just…”

“Rude?” Willow offered.

“Typical. But yes, rude as well. I once did terrible things to rude people. But I also did rude things to typical people so… What does that make me?”

“Afraid of bunnies?” Giles offered.

“Exactly. Cotton tail. Why have a cotton tail if you’re not going dose it with chloroform and stick it in someone’s face so you can have your way with their inanimate bodies?”

“You’re completely frightening, Anya.”

“You’re completely British, Giles. Go drown yourself in a pint.”

“Kids,” Willow interrupted. “You guys are extra bitter today.”

“Because you’re so sweet all of a sudden,” Anya said. “World eater.”

Willow had made her shocked and exasperated face and before she could get out a witty retort (*Undead sleeper with-er* or *Bunny-launderer*) the phone had rung and Anya had darted for it.

She’d answered, “Hello… Oh my god.”

Anya’s face had dropped and she’d snapped her fingers to get Buffy and the demon’s attentions. She’d covered the mouthpiece; she’d wanted to cover the earpiece, too.

“Buffy…” The slayer had turned to look at Anya. “It’s Spike.”

Spike had never been one for Sundays. Sundaes with O positive and macadamia nuts on top were another thing. It was unusual for Spike to even move on the day, loaded as it was with dogma. The years at sea, the roaming years with Xander… I hate the word, as I hate hell, all… Xanders… had seen many Sundays come and go
with the pair wrapped up in each other deep in the bellies of the boats. As a beast without a soul the demon hard-wiring hated the day, added to what the human had already felt about the day. William had thought of Sunday in only one way: a day to dote on
mother without interruption, another day for everyone else to reject him.

This Sunday was no different. Morning, daylight, an invitation to bed, locked away from the whole of the world, from the sun, with his lover… Not. My. Lover. Locked away in the arms of a man who belonged, lock stock and barrel, in soul if not in body, to the woman who’d stolen what belonged to Spike.

Every moment in those mortal arms, weak in their humanity, weaker, at least, than Spike, was a moment his anger intensified. He’d been through the gamut. Run the gauntlet. Gotten pissed, gotten pissed, gotten hammered. Forgotten for a while. Even in his sleep, cradled, cuddled beside the clean, tall, warm Nice,
basically, I suppose body, every moment he got more and more pissed. More and more likely to lose a little bit more control.

The sun was going down, Sunday was finally ending, or thinking about it.

Spike stirred in Riley Finn’s arms and stretched his free arm down and away. He stretched his arm down and across the front Riley’s pants and felt the reason the slayer’d fought so hard for him. Spike felt Riley’s hardness and Riley ground forward unconsciously, Spike turned his hand around, from pressing the back of it against the front of Riley’s pants to groping, pulling
the front of those pants with the palm of his hand. Even as he tugged on Riley’s pants, kneaded at the zipper, willed it to go down, Riley began to wake up and Spike realized his body was responding in kind.

Spike’s lips etched into a crack of a frown, almost indistinguishable from a straight face, slightly harder, and he stared at Riley’s closed eyes. He watched Riley’s eyelids flutter as the unconscious grind surged forward, rendered Spike’s hand moot, pushed the hardness in their pants together. Spike against Riley, Riley against Spike.

Riley’s grip around Spike tightened and he drifted closer, leaned in to kiss the vampire. Spike broke the embrace, fled the room; Riley stared at the air in front of him, confused, alarmed by the speed. He heard shuffling movements in the outer room, listened to make sense of them, but couldn’t.

“Spike?” He whispered, “Where’d you go?”

The answer came in the form of loud music, blaring, drowning out his question. He tried to speak into the space again, but couldn’t even hear himself.  

Spike reappeared in the doorway, barefoot, his shirt off, the button of his pants open. Riley stared, the music, the noise of it, seemed to create a fog, like he was peering past the sound into the future; he stared at the six square inches of denim from bare skin to where he wanted to be. Spike stared back at Riley, amused, aroused but detached from his arousal – hard outside, but not committed to it inside – as Riley peeled his shirt off of his body. Just as Riley’s shirt went over his head, as eye contact was broken, his face covered, Spike pounced on Riley, held his hands over his head, arms and hands and face all wrapped up in the ocean of the white t-shirt.

Spike straddled Riley’s lap, leaned down, their stomachs grazed, one sweaty in the hair that dusted it down low, down where no one ever saw anymore, one smooth and dry and well-used until now. Spike straddled Riley’s lap, held Riley prisoner within his clothes, as he writhed over Riley’s body, mock kissing Riley through the shirt wrapped over his head. He licked and sucked at Riley’s lips through the shirt, soaking it into invisibility before biting, gently, gently biting at the fabric, ripping it just around Riley’s mouth.

Spike could hear beyond the blaring music he had turned on. He could Riley’s whimpers and sighs and as he straddled Riley’s lap, felt the hardness of the man beneath him all he could do was stare at the mouth he’d revealed through the hole in the shirt. The mouth hung slack, shaping words like, ‘want’ and ‘fuck’ and
‘Spike.’ He stared at the mouth a moment longer, thought of all the perverse things he could do that mouth. Instead, he leaned down, pressed his own lips flaccidly to Riley’s, felt Riley suck and kiss blindly, deafly against the body before him. Spike reached off of the bed with his free hand, moving more quickly than when he’d broken away from Riley; he came up, from his reach, with the handset of the phone. Then he dialed the numbers he (they, everyone) had memorized by now, and placed the phone face up on the bed.

He listened to, for, the ringing, knew that the soldier couldn’t hear it. Opened his pants, and freed his hardness as he listened, rubbed it over Riley’s lips. Felt tongue sneak out. Heard the answer, Anya’s voice, “Hello?”

Riley licked again, spread his lips. Spike yelled, for the phone, for Riley, “Suck my cock, Soldier boy.”

Anya’s voice, again, “…Oh my god.”

Spike closed his eyes, lost for a moment in Riley’s mouth. Heard shuffling, knew Riley couldn’t hear it, didn’t know what was going, what this was about. Buffy’s voice, small through the din, “Spike, where are…”

“You give bloody brilliant head, Commando,” Spike yelled, the old, vicious smirk returning to his face.

Riley could hear the yells, stopped sucking for a moment. Spike pulled back.

“Fuck me, Spike, please.” Riley’s voice was a siren call, pathetic, confused and hungry. A whale lost from its pod, a demanding tenor without a choir.

“Your wish, bint, is my deed,” growled back, sure Riley couldn’t hear, sure the Slayer could.

Through the phone, sobs sounded. Spike knew bitter tears, knew the sound of ‘em. The Slayer was going to be really miffed when she got over the shock. Maybe she’d know how he felt. Either way, Riley’s mouth opened back up, swallowed down, licked, sucked Spike’s cock, worked his tongue under the foreskin, circled around, stop, reverse.

Spike leaned away again, faster still. Hung up the phone on the sobs and moans of the Slayer.

It was dark in Iowa.

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