Title:Mostly Harmless
Author: Dear Cheetoh Breath
Email: [email protected]
Summary: An evening with Spike and Tara has unexpected and comically offensive results
Spoilers: Wrecked - Season 6
Pairing: Spike/Tara
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: All these characters belong to Mutant Enemy and the wonderful geniuses who comprise Mutant Enemy. They are not mine, I only hope they won't notice me borrowing them and getting them all sweaty.
Notes: Thanks to the wonderful beta readers, Michelle G. and Puck
Intro: This takes place the night after "Wrecked." This is not a "Tara woke up straight" story - she begins it gay and ends it gay. Basically I was challenged to write a Spike/Tara story with the theory that no one was too gay or straight for a little enjoyment of Spike.
Note: To be lesbifriendly, this piece was written while listening to Michael Stipe and Tori Amos, and while the latter is not gay, her music is believed to have that effect on others.
Tara looked at her watch in the dim light of the hallway. It was after midnight, and she'd just gotten Dawn to sleep. The fifteen year old was curled in a little ball around the book they'd been reading. She seemed grungy and adorable in mismatched pajamas with grape juice stains, her hair half-falling out of a French braid, snoring softly. Tara wondered how Dawn had managed to stay so young through the years.
She closed the door and started downstairs, careful to avoid the creak on the first stair that had awoken and alarmed Dawn the last time she'd thought she'd gotten her to sleep. Neither Willow nor Buffy had so much as called to say they'd be late, resulting in Dawn begging her to stay, taking care to mention that the demon who'd been the cause of her broken arm, unlike the vampires she usually feared, wouldn't require an invitation to get into the house. So Tara had stuffed her homework and a video in her backpack and came over to spend a tense evening half hoping and half fearing Willow would return at any minute.
As she crept slowly down the stairs she tried to remember if she'd left the TV on in the dark livingroom. She figured that she must have, since Buffy or Willow would have definitely come upstairs to check on Dawn before settling in for late movies or infomercials.
It wasn't until she'd collapsed on the couch that she realized there was another source of weight on it. Her eyes snapped open and she jumped back into the corner, trying to decide whether it'd be better to run back upstairs to try to protect Dawn or outside as a distraction to whatever it might be.
When the object in the darkness cursed under his breath and lit a cigarette, she let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Oh, it's j-just you, Spike. You scar-surprised me."
"Yeah. Just me. Sorry to disappoint," he said, his voice pained and acidic. "So they left you with niblet again? Should be demaning hazard pay just for keeping the kid breathing night to night."
"I don't mind, really," Tara replied as she noticed that Spike was watching the movie she'd brought over for herself.
"You're not a bad liar. No doubt they all believe that. You probably even believe that. No, you're not bad. But you're not good either," Spike said, spreading out across half the couch.
"Well, it'd be nice if they'd tell me when they were going to be out all night. Dawn gets scared. Anyway, someone has to do it," Tara said with resignation.
"But you're not someone," Spike said between puffs on the cigarette he didn't seem interested in anymore.
"So I'm no one?" she asked incredulously.
"No, you're you. More than just the someone who happens to be around. They're making you be the mother, the good mature one because you let them. Maybe you think it's going to make them appreciate you or accept you. You're being used and it's all because you let them," Spike said in his best insightful voice.
Tara fidgeted. "Am I supposed to thank you for that revelation?" she asked.
Spike smiled, her uneven voice confirming his conclusions. "Aren't you tired of being the babysitter? The good but forgotten one?"
Tara chuckled for a moment. "Oh, I know this speech. Now's when you either offer me something illegal or just ask for a blow job."
"And then you get offended and storm off, all puffed up and dignified?" Spike replied, somewhat chuffed that he'd gotten a lesbian to say "blow job."
Tara relaxed on the couch, finally planting her feet on the floor. "I wouldn't think you'd had to ask, you being....how you are. They'd ask you."
"Haven't got too many offers lately - not that I haven't gotten any - just a man's gotta show some taste," Spike replied as he ground out the cigarette in the soil of a plant next to the couch, enjoying the change in the conversation's topic.
She brought her hands to her face as she giggled, wondering if she could pass it off as a reaction to the movie. Laughing at vampires, even chipped ones, wasn't known to be good for the longetivity.
"And now comes some cutting remark about Harmony or Dru - wouldn't badmouth the sanity-impaired, what with you being one of them only weeks ago," Spike rebuked.
"N-No, it wasn't that..it..I didn't think, well, that v-vampires, even if they existed, could....y'know," she managed to say.
"All is takes is blood, luv. I got plenty," he replied in a deep voice.
"Oh. Well, um....ew," Tara said cringing.
They sat in an awkward silence watching the fictional characters on the screen, Spike grateful that Tara hadn't noticed he'd moved a lot closer to her during their brief conversation.
As the credits rolled, Spike grabbed a book sitting on the coffee table in front of Tara. "`In The Time of the Butterflies?' What's this, one of those poncy romance books where all the men are just big women with dicks?" he asked, holding the book as if he feared it might vomit on him.
"No, it's a novelization of a family who rebelled against Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. It's for this month's book club," Tara answered, letting a bit of a superior tone creep into her voice.
"So you're still doing that with the parasite. That's good. Her being out with people," Spike replied dropping the book on the floor by his feet. When Tara leaned over to reach for it, he caught her arm and said, "But what are you doing for fun? Can't have much of a social life just looking after a kid."
"Why are you suddenly so concerned with my social life? The only other time you paid any attention to me was when you hit my nose," Tara said in a tone that she hoped sounded at least sort of mean.
"Just making conversation. No harm in that," he said comfortably as he began to stroke the palm of the hand he'd grabbed with his thumb.
"Wh-wh-at are you doing?" Tara asked, wondering if she should try to pull her arm from his grasp, and wondering what he would do if she didn't.
"Are you going to try to stop me?" he questioned, his eyes focusing on the details of her body, from the fullness of her lips, to the inviting contours of the leg next to his, to the faint scents of fear and craving on her skin. When she continued to sit there without struggling, even as his hand traveled up past her wrist to the sensitive skin on the inside of her arm, he thought to himself, "She really does want me. Only logical, that. After all, no one's that gay." He brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles, it was a bleedin' shame that modern boys didn't pay a lick of attention to a woman's hands, but then, that also meant that when he did, it gave him quite the advantage.
Tara pretended that she hadn't nearly squeaked at the feel of his cool lips caressing her fingers, the skin between them, the back of her hand... "W-we have to stop this," she said in an anguished whisper, but made no move to reclaim her hand from his attentions.
"Of course we do," Spike replied evenly, holding her right hand in his left while his right hand moved toward her knee. "It's completely wrong, unseemly even," he said. "People will say we're in lust," he whispered as his hand made contact with her leg.
She tried to clear her head, figure out why he was doing this, why she was letting him, why her body was responding to him as if he were Lucy Lawless. She glanced down and was dismayed to see that even through her bra and shirt her nipples were visibly erect. Her nipples had betrayed her before, hardening at the mere idea of proximity to Claire Cavadias back in the ninth grade. She tried to convince herself that it was just that his hands were cold, the room was cold, that the entire planet had defied global warming and had gotten very very cold, except that only one part of her body felt it.
He was so close - she realized he was leaning in to kiss her. Before he could, she jumped up, wrenching her arm out of his clutches even though the force caused her to half-fall into the coffee table as she tried to stand up. She dashed to the staircase and grabbed the railing, "I....I have to check on Dawn. Upstairs," she declared, trying to sound calm and mature and in control and like she wasn't just trying to talk herself out of throwing herself right back onto the couch.
Before she'd even reached Dawn's door, she heard Spike behind her. She knew that vampires could move extremely quickly, but she'd never had a demonstration of it before. She turned to see that he stood at the top of the staircase, effectively blocking it. It didn't seem as frightening as it should - maybe because the look on his face held equal parts predator and amusement.
Standing so close to him, she realized he really wasn't very big. Not much wider than her, and maybe a few inches taller. Definitely within the size range for a lot of really fun things. She hesitated. Was she actually thinking about sex with Spike? Aside from not having her preferred type of equipment, he was a vampire. And he was in love with her girlfriend's...former girlfriend's best friend.
He wasn't really interested in her. He didn't want her. She was simply a warm body who happened to be in a convenient place at an opportune time. But maybe that was good. He'd use her, she'd use him, no big consequences. She wouldn't even have to search Buffy's room to see if there was a condom left. She thought to herself, "You're seriously considering having sex with Spike. Tara, you're losing it. Again. If you ever even had it."
"You're really loud when you're quiet, lamb. You plotting some escape from big scary me?" Spike said, somehow taking up the entire hallway, even without the coat.
"You're not scaring me," Tara whispered, definitely at a higher pitch than she had planned on.
"No, I'm not scaring you, am I?" Spike asked huskily, running a finger from her temple, around behind her ear, and down her back. He left his hand resting at the small of her back, feeling her tremble slightly through the fabric of her shirt.
As he reached out his other hand, Tara grabbed his arm at the wrist and clutched it hard. Harder than he thought a girl like her could, anyway. Her eyes were bright and he could hear her heart going what seemed a million miles a minute. For a second he wondered if she was going to fight him off. He couldn't really hurt her, but he doubted the chip would keep him from easily deflecting anything she tried. As her nails started to dig in, he considered having her try to put a bit of a hurt on him.
Remembering back to an overheard conversation where she'd told Willow about her years of horseback riding, he briefly thought about asking if she had a riding crop. The pleasantly lurid idea fled his mind when Tara used the captured arm to pull him closer and kissed him hard. A million quips ran through his mind, each wittier than the last, but he left them unsaid since talking would require separation. Within seconds he'd eliminated the space between them and held her close enough to feel her heart pounding.
Tara released his arm and ran the now-free hand up across his chest and wrapped her fingers around his neck, holding him while she expanded the kiss to fully explore his face. She acted on a sort of hormone-driven autopilot as her mind greatly protested this recent set of events.
"You kissed Spike! You kissed Spike? Was there some line on the Snapple jar after `high fructose corn syrup' that read, `now with calcium-fortified crack'?" Her thoughts spun furiously like a hamster in a wheel desperately trying to power a nuclear sub and left her just as breathless. Or was that because neither of ersatz blonds had come up for much air since she'd kissed him? And he kissed back. "Spike kissed back?"
Spike let his hands drift upward and around her body, enjoying the way the soft flesh arched out to greet his wandering fingers. He slipped one hand down her back and cupped her ass, establishing even more contact between their bodies.
Tara became aware of something hard between their two bodies, and briefly thought that maybe that was the sign that it all had to end right then, until she was distracted by Spike's lips traveling to her ear, and then she was distracted even further by the sound of a scream and a crash from Dawn's room. She broke away from the vampire with strength she was pretty sure she didn't have and ran in, a bit alarmed that her door wasn't actually all the way closed.
She regained the ability to breathe when she noticed that Dawn was sitting upright in bed, looking absolutely terrified, but extremely alive, no more injured than before, and sans demonic company. Sitting on the bed next to her she asked, "What happened? Did you hear something....outside?"
"No, no....I guess I just had a nightmare. I dreamed that Harmony and her vampires could get inside and that they were drinking everyone really quietly while they worked from room to room and mine was next," Dawn said just above a whisper.
"That does sound pretty scary. But Harmony was disinivited, and no other vampire would be dumb enough to try anything in the slayer's house. Do you want me to stay and maybe we could read some more?" Tara asked, wondering if Dawn had heard them just outside her door.
"It's all right. I'm okay now. I'm sorry I made you run in here for nothing," Dawn said in her only slightly tragic voice.
As she got up to leave, Tara saw the cause of the smashing noise. When Dawn awoke she must have broken her water glass with her cast without realizing it. Tara collected the pieces in the remnants of the glass, trying to get them all so Dawn wouldn't add a sliced up foot to the broken arm the next morning. She hurried out of the room purposely looking down and went into the bathroom to dispose of the remains.
"Dammit!" Tara swore under her breath. A shard of the glass had managed to lodge itself in her thumb. After she dumped the rest of the former cup into the trash in the bathroom, she turned on the light and started the faucet. She managed to pull the piece from her thumb without ripping up her skin as she feared would happen. It still bled more than it seemed it should, causing her to wonder if it had gotten deep enough to hit a vein or artery. She was too wrapped up in trying to convince herself that it was impossible to bleed to death from a cut finger that she didn't notice Spike had entered the little room until he closed and locked the door behind him.
"Let me see."
"No, it's fine," she said wrapping her other hand around the injury.
"It's been said that vampires have healing properties," he said with a lecherous smile, showing off the tongue that had brought countless women all over the world to their knees, often literally.
She narrowed her eyes at him, then tentatively held out her left hand. Before he could take it in his own, she snatched it back and put it in her mouth. She smirked as she sucked on the wound, then grimaced at the taste of the blood in her mouth.
Spike laughed. "It is an acquired taste, lamb. Like certain another tastes," he said, his voice getting throaty as he his glance traveled downwards.
Feeling her face burn as she blushed, Tara quickly opened the medicine cabinet and took out the tin of band aids. She focused all her attention on bandaging her thumb, trying to ignore the twinges from between her legs. "Just put the band aid on and then tell him to leave. Tell him you'll do the disinvite spell. Just make this be over, even though with the way things are going in Sunnydale you'll probably be eaten before you're eaten out again," she thought.
"One of us should probably leave now," she said. She walked past him to the door, turned around and said, "Any time you want."
"I don't think you want me to leave," Spike said as he drew closer. Tara took a step back and was stopped when her back came up against the door. When she made no move to open it, he advanced again and taking her head in his hands, he kissed her slowly, maddeningly, running one hand down the side of her body and enjoying the trembles that resulted.
Tara kissed back, tasting beer and cigarettes in his mouth and something unrecognizable that didn't bother her as much as she thought it would. She wanted to thank whoever had invented vampires as the supernaturally strong mouth made her feel as if she were about to melt right up against the door.
Spike abandoned her lips in favor of her neck and worked slowly down. She felt a faint scrape of teeth half-way down and couldn't help shuddering. She felt more than heard him chuckle low in his throat as he moved his right hand from around her waist and wrapped it around her wrist. He placed her left hand on the doorknob and whispered, "Why not leave then, if you're scared I'll bite."
But by then his lips were tracing her collarbones and his left hand had loosened his grip on her hair and was massaging her scalp. A piece of her mind told her that this was the time to leave. She could open the door, get out immediately and leave Dawn with Spike for the rest of the night. She'd be safe with him. Probably the only one who could be. The rest of her mind protested. It was more than a kiss by now, and it was a man and a vampire and she and Willow weren't exactly totally broken up. But he did have an amazing mouth. Already she could feel her panties dampening.
He broke contact, moved away a little, surely not to breathe. Was he going to stop right then?
Seeing her chest heaving, her nose beaded with sweat, Spike brought the hand in her hair down and pressed it flat between her breasts. He leaned in and kissed her again, teasing her lips with his tongue as he unbuttoned her shirt with his left hand.
She kissed him back hungrily, moving her hand from the doorknob to his waist before sliding it up and under his shirt. Her hot hands ran up and down over the muscles in his back, feeling the sharp definition. He pushed her shirt down on her shoulders. As he slipped a finger under her bra strap, she pulled him tightly against her, pushing her leg up hard between his without thinking.
"Bloody hell!" Spike gasped, jumping back at the pain in his groin. He hadn't expected her to fight dirty.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry! I j-j-just....I forgot that wasn't...." She took a breath. "If you were a girl it'd..."
"Well, I'm sodding not. And just for that..." he grabbed her wrists and raised them above her head, pinning her against the wall. He inserted one boot between her feet and wrapped his lower leg around hers, using it to force her to bend her knees and spread her legs wide. Her left leg was now immobile, and she was depending on the right one to support her weight. He reached down with his free hand and placed it on her right knee, squeezing and caressing as he moved slowly upwards.
His attention returned to her chest as he noticed that her shirt was still wide open and her rapid breathing made it seem that her breasts might burst out of her bra at any second. He started right where her collar bones met, sucking hard enough to leave a hickey, before he slowly worked his way down. He kissed a torturous path between her breasts down to the base of her bra before starting up again, this time paying close attention to the exposed skin of the sides of her breasts.
His strong hand was stroking the inside of her thigh and he was applying his mouth to the edges of her bra, slipping his tongue just under the lace. She tried to stifle her moans, partially out of fear that it might wake Dawn up, partially out of fear that Spike would realize just how much his calloused fingers and talented tongue were affecting her.
When his hand reached her panties he released her arms and she let them fall to his hair, entwining her fingers in it as his mouth returned to her shoulder, slowly moving her bra strap away. The strength was leaving her legs and she felt herself slipping down in his arms. He grabbed her around the waist and turned her so that she was leaning over the sink, with her hands braced on either side. He conformed to her shape from behind her, and brushed her hair off to the side so he could give the nape of her neck the oral attention it required. She closed her eyes and felt his hands running down her stomach, up her legs, cupping her breasts, reaching down through the elastic waistband of her skirt to caress her belly and hips. She realized that she wasn't the only one moaning as she felt his voice rumbling at the back of her neck.
He cupped her mound through her panties, enjoying her gasps as his other fingers ran along the cloth border, waiting for her signal before venturing underneath. It was only a matter of minutes before she took his cool hand in her hot sweaty one and pushed it in the side - he could have sworn he heard her groan "Fuck me," under her raspy breath. Obeying the physical and verbal commands, he slipped two fingers inside her, pistoning them as he felt her body quake.
She felt herself moving her hips against his fingers, wanting to guide him to the right spots, but unwilling to take her hands off the sink, since it felt like that was the only thing that was keeping her from collapsing. She couldn't make out what he was whispering as his fingers sped up inside her and the fingers of his other hand found her clit. As she felt the pressure built inside her, her last coherent thought screamed through her head as she forced herself to remember the gender those magic fingers belonged too, "Bad lesbian! Baaaaaad lesbian!" she condemned herself in her mind as her orgasm hit.
Sagging against Spike, she caught her breath and tried to regain the ability to think. His fingers were no longer insider her, but running along the top border of her panties and slowly pushing them down. She then became aware of his erection, pushing through his jeans against her backside. She looked down at her watch and said in a rush, "Oh my god! It's 3 am. I have to go. You can stay with Dawn until Buffy gets home, okay?" Catching him somewhat off guard, and extremely distracted, she managed to bolt past him, unlock the door and be halfway down the steps before he reached the top of the staircase. Only bothering to button the middle buttons on her shirt, she grabbed her backpack, not caring that half her things were still spread out on the coffee table and nearly ran out the front door.
Spike called out after her, "This is because of the nose, isn't it?" He sighed to himself, "Women. They're all sodding insane," as he headed back to the bathroom.
The End (sort of)
Boring Author's Notes: In answering the challenge, I tried to keep from writing a story where Tara stopped being gay, and I also wanted to avoid the other extreme of rape. There ended up being a very thin line to follow, which also ended up being somewhat humorously offensive. I've left it open-ended - I'm still playing with a sequel that deals with the consequences - and may or may not include sex.