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“I was talking to Giles yesterday,” Buffy starts, leaning comfortably against the kitchen counter.
From the couch in the living room where he had been watching TV, Spike looks up at her. Their apartment isn't enormous, so there really isn't much of a distance between them. “Oh yeah?”
“Yep. He was telling me all about these gross old books he found. If he's right, they were written by some of the oldest vampires. Buuut…” She meanders towards him as she talks. “Not just any vampires.” She grins brightly, and he narrows his eyes, skepticism plain on his face.
“Not that old line with the disturbing feet, I hope? Or Dracula.”
“The huh? No, he found out something really cool, no—no feet.” She sits beside him, and he puts in the teeniest effort to reduce how much his body is spread across the cushions. “So all vampires are descended from the same demon, right?”
“For the most part,” he says slowly. “That's what the Watchers think, anyway. Some Old One called Maloker, if I remember right. But Rupert should already know that, or he hasn't been reading nearly as much as he looks like he is.”
“He knows.” She gives him a playful glare. “But… Spike, these books talked about another line. Sired after Maloker. It was started by this… this demon lord. He was inspired by Maloker’s vampires, but he didn't like how stupid they were, so he made his own, special vamps. To be more cunning and evil and stuff. His name was—”
“Archaeus,” Spike finishes her sentence. “Heard of him, fairly certain that's the truth. Vampires don't tend to keep good records, though, and humans didn't exactly get much opportunity to study his descendants. Them being especially clever, and all that.”
“Right. But—I was thinking, and feel free to laugh at me or whatever if I'm wrong, but… Archaeus was known for his powers of hypnosis, right? There isn't much on if that passed down to his vampires, but… Well, the Master was pretty good at it. And so was Drusilla. So, I was wondering if—”
“If my bloodline is descended from that creep with the big scary bone-fingers comin' out his spine?” An odd smile spreads across his face, and he tilts his head. “S’possible. Hypnosis definitely runs in the family.”
“Well yeah, but it's not like you can do it.”
“No?” His sly expression deepens.
“What, can you? You can't… Can you? No, that totally would have come up if you could.”
He shrugs. “Was never as good at it as Dru or old Heinrich. Takes a lot more time and effort, not nearly as practical as it was for them. Better at it than Angelus was, though.” He lets that sit for a few moments, and he leans in a bit closer. “Want me to show you?”
She sputters, recoiling a little. “Uh, no way. What? I've been hypnotized before, Spike. The first time, I died. The second, I may not have died, but I did get horribly embarrassed. Well, not as embarrassed as Xander was… whatever. Not something on the list of things Buffy wants to do, like, ever again.”
“Buffy, Love,” he soothes, his face softening. “Surely you know I wouldn't do anything like that, right? Wouldn't make you do anything you don't wanna do. I'll just alter your perception, that's all. A neat little trick, nothing more. But if you don't want me to, then I won't.”
“Just… my perception?”
“Yes. You've given me an idea, there's something I'd like to show you. This’d be the best way to do it.”
“And you won't compel me to do anything... physical?”
“‘Course not. I've got much better ways of doing that.” He bounces his eyebrows playfully.
She thinks about it carefully, before hesitantly nodding. “Okay. I… I trust you. I'm choosing to trust you on this.”
“Okay… Come closer? I need to be able to gaze deeply and intimately into your eyes.”
She squints, but does as he asks without arguing. Spike only seems satisfied with their repositioning by the time she's climbed onto his lap and rested her forearms on his shoulders.
“Now what?” She asks.
“Now…” he speaks slowly and huskily, “look into my eyes… surrender yourself to my words. Open up your mind. This needs to be collaborative… like with human ‘hypnosis’. Won’t work… not unless you're willing.”
She rolls her eyes, but settles them back onto his face, staring intently into his gorgeous baby blues. It's not like she really needs a reason to gaze into his eyes, anyway.
“Good…” his voice slithers handsomely around her ears. “Hear what I'm saying… the resonance of my voice… hear my words. Feel them. When you look into my eyes… you start to feel yourself loosening up. Not sleepy, just… tired.” He begins to sway, and she sways with him, passively going along with his commands and trying not to think impatient thoughts. “Soon, your eyelids will start to feel heavy… and you will allow them to fall… but not yet. No… for this moment… you will remain with me.”
Gradually, Buffy starts to lose herself in his gaze. His arms around her waist seem to fall away, and her focus drifts aimlessly, similar to how she slips away into nothing when Giles or somebody is getting extra boring as they explain something. But unlike those times, her slowly disintegrating thoughts are not replaced by any wonderings or worries. She simply is, in his eyes.
“That's it, pet…” he purrs, “just like that.” His praise warms her, and she feels loved. There is only him, and he loves her. “But your eyelids… they're getting heavy now. Terribly heavy…” just as he says so, her eyelids begin to droop, as if something heavy weighs them down. She wants to hold his gaze, but it's difficult. “You don't think you can hold them up much longer. They're getting heavier… and heavier… and heavier… and now you can't keep them open at all, can you?”
Her eyes drift shut, and while beforehand, she was lost at sea, now she's nowhere at all. A warm, comfortable void of nothingness curls around her, and she feels safe. She's with him, after all.
She doesn't feel his arms, or her clothes, or even his body straddled by her legs. It's all too far away to matter. Nothing around her matters. But she's with him, and she's safe.
There is no desire, no pain, no thought. Only him.
“Listen to me, Buffy… Listen to me very carefully…” Yes. Buffy. That's who she is. But more importantly, she is listening. “You are still in a trance… a very deep state of being… and you feel no need to awaken. But I am about to count down from three… and once I have done so, you will open your eyes… and you will have your own mind again, but we will still be tethered… and you will sense the world only how I want you to. Understood?”
There is no reason for him to ask, as she will simply do what he wants. She will always do what he wants, because there is only him. Nothing else could ever drive her to do anything ever again, just him.
She is lost in him, wholly and entirely, just as she knows she should be.
“Three…… Two…… One…… Wake up, Love.”
Her eyes snap open, and she regains herself. Despite the sudden reawakening of her conscious mind, she still feels very relaxed and unworried.
In front of her, though, is a perplexing sight.
She's still sitting on Spike’s lap, except she isn't, because he isn't Spike. Not exactly.
The face is the same, but his skin is warmer, both in tone and in temperature. Small oval glasses framed by silver are perched over his nose, and his hair is unrecognizable. It's brown and curly, but styled so that it sits neatly atop his head and only slightly threatens to fall into his eyes. And his clothes… they're all old-timey and fancy.
His facial structure, eyes, and fond expression are all the same as her vampire boyfriend, but everything else is completely changed.
“Buffy?” He asks, and his voice is different, too. The same voice, just softer. Held a bit tighter in his throat, and higher in pitch than she's used to. But the tentative look on his face is wonderfully familiar, even if it looks strange on someone so… unassuming.
“What… am I looking at?”
He takes a big breath, one that’s much more human-sounding than it should be. As he moves, she can feel the thick fabric of his outfit against her sides and under the bare skin of her arms.
“Me,” he replies shyly. “You never got to see me as I was, in life, so I figured…”
She smiles softly in amusement. “So you hypnotized me into seeing it?”
“Well, yeah. It worked, didn't it?”
It did work, and somehow she knows that he knows it did. How does she know that? How does he know?
“‘Cause I'm still in your head,” he replies. “Technically, you're still hypnotized.”
“Oh.” She takes a moment to look him up and down. “So… everything I'm seeing right now…”
“All in your mind, yeah. All part of the illusion.”
“But I can feel you. You're—” she cautiously moves one of her hands to the side of his neck, just above the collar of his coat, which is far higher on his neck than what he usually wears. When she feels his skin, it's warm. “You're human. You're alive.”
“The brain is a funny thing. All your senses send their signals up there, where they turn into perception. I've just convinced your brain that it's perceiving things differently.”
“But I can touch you? And it won't break the illusion?”
“It's a little hard to keep it convincing when you question it like that, but yes.” He barely has time to finish his sentence before she brings her palms up to cup his cheeks, which subtly flush pink at her touch.
As she stares at his human face in curiosity and awe, he gently grasps her arms in his hands, and they're just as warm as his face.
“This… this was you,” she says quietly. “Before you were Spike, this was you. This was…”
“William, yes,” he says in that soft, gentle voice that would sound ridiculous coming from her fearsome vampire, but makes perfect sense coming from the mouth of this dainty, frilly fellow. He frowns. “I’m not frilly, Slayer. William was many things, but frilly was hardly one of them.”
“Quit reading my mind, William.” She smirks, and then smooshes his face with a kiss.
She always did like the feeling of kissing a vampire. Her body always ran hot, so the coolness can feel pretty damn good. Especially in the summer. But it makes her feel all sorts of weird giddy feelings when she presses their lips together, and his are as warm as her own. Under his jaw, she can even feel a pulse. As far as illusions go, it's very convincing.
He smiles into the kiss and pulls her in closer, wrapping her tightly in his arms. A chuckle escapes her as her face presses into his glasses.
Pulling back but still mostly leaning against his chest, she admires him. It's funny... his sharp, attractive features really don't suit the look. Maybe vampirism was best for him anyway.
And though she definitely prefers him in leather… he almost looks cute dressed up all fancy-like.
“You're lucky I love you,” he grumbles at her thoughts, somehow still sounding polite as he does so, “only you could get away with this.”
“Damn right.”
She kisses him again, more passionately this time, and allows herself to get lost in him once more.
William lets out a pleased groan, and she finds herself getting way too excited. He sounds so… so fragile. It makes her want to do all kinds of things to him. Judging by how he heats up after she thinks it, he wouldn't be opposed.
As she starts to… er… experiment, she briefly wonders why he hadn’t done this sooner.
Then she feels it. An innate truth, a fact nestled plainly in her thoughts.
Because he trusts her. Now more than ever, he trusts her enough to share this with her. This vulnerable secret.
Chewing on his ear, she savors the gasps and whimpers and happy little sounds he makes at her roughness, and she smiles as she does, genuinely touched by what she's learned. She trusts him enough to let him read her mind, and he trusts her enough to show his most vulnerable self. It's incredible, it's wonderful, and she doesn't ever want to stop touching him. So she doesn't. Not for a looong while, anyway.
For now, she just takes her time in appreciating this strange, amazing gift, and feeling pretty glad she decided to bring this up to him.