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English
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Published:
2024-09-26
Updated:
2024-12-05
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9,077
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8/?
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Poetry Professor

Chapter Text

Spike accepts them skipping a week, it's Halloween and Buffy rather party with her friends. The whole campus is alive with the holiday. His fangs itch at the smells of desire, fear, joy, and drunkenness drenching the campus. His longing to tear flesh with his teeth grows stronger. To have tender skin part under the force of him. 

Spike made a deal though with the Slayer. He is too afraid to lose this position, to be wanted and useful.

Strolling the campus, herding the sloshed back to their dorms. Splitting up guys ganging up on a poor girl. It's pleasant to be useful, to protect the campus’s reputation. The itch in his teeth becomes more and more urgent as the night wears on. 

He made a promise to the Slayer, who becomes more and more of a lady in his mind.

A miasma of fear clocks him full in nose, a rush that nearly tears his demon forth into a frenzy. A fledge nearby busts out of the bushes, slavering at the smell of a good meal. Seeing red and no sense, Spike bites. Fangs coming and tearing and drinks newly turned blood. Darkness strengthens him and he stumbles away. Eye wide with disbelief as he touches the sharp planes of his teeth.

The fledge clutches its neck, ridged brows wrinkling, stumbling around, disoriented at the connection with a vampire not its sire. It doesn’t take long for Spike to strike out with a stake, wiping his lips as the poor creature crumbles. 

The air is rich and thickens stickily with fear, Spike full now still has a growling stomach at it. Following his nose, a house’s door disappears before his eyes and he sprints past a girl in a bunny onesie. Spike throws his elbow into a window, uncaring at the broken glass tearing at his wool sweater. This is his job and this is what he signed up for. 

His feet firmly planted inside the house, a certainty seeing the window closing up and turning into a wall with cheap paint. Some girl rolled her eyes and called him an old man and a crasher.

He is trapped where he isn’t wanted. 

Shoving the fear growing inside him at a startling rate, Spike growls wanted or not did not matter. He made a promise to the school, they need him.  

If no one wants him, he can at least be needed. 

Wolf rank hits his nose. Ah balls a werewolf around a bunch of horny frat boys. Likely not gonna find silver laying about, only a few rings to add a little oompf to his wallops. Drusilla had a distinct fondness for those rings when his fingers were inside her. A pang reverberates him remembering his dark beloved. Like everyone else at the end she did not want him. She rather drip in slime than tolerate his presence. 

Clutching the rails as a wave of his own terror that being an unwanted git was his fate. Immortal life means nothing if all things turn you away. 

The wolf in the bathtub flinches away, turning ever so slightly away. “Go away, I don’t want to hurt you.”

That phrase douses him with clarity. “Can handle myself, wolf.”

The wolf’s claws grow slightly and he rocks himself jerkily, “I’m not going to change, I’m not I’m not I’m not.”

Spike nosing the air, “You’re drowning in fear kid.”

“What do you know!” the kid lunges claws out, face half changed into a ridges and hair. 

Knocking him easily aside, “I know because I’m going blind with fear too.”

Want. Doesn’t want. Want. Doesn’t want.

It's choking and makes his gums itch, cold palm going to the button on his torn sweater. Spike extends his other hand, “Come on kid, could use a dog in this fight.” And keep an eye on him if wolfing out turns him savage. 

“Names Oz.” The boy shakes his head like a wounded animal, then stands on his own two feet.

“Don’t care.” Confident that wolf-boy will follow Spike leaves the loo. 

Nosing the air trying to find something familiar. 

“You two look like a pair of cats doing that.”

Red! 

Oz calmly embraces the girl, “Willow hey.”

“Hey.” The young witch burrows her face in her guy’s chest. That simple gesture fills Spike with a knowing that no one will ever take comfort in him like that. Might as well just leave, except for the fact he’s trapped. 

“Not to interrupt a tender moment, but anyone knows what's going on?”

“Air is crackling with fear.” Oz states. 

Spike adds, “Someone’s skimming off the top, eating it. Like a Cubi.”

Willow, “So weird you’re on our side. Is drunk you evil and sober you good?”

“I can break some glass if you want to relive our highlights.” Spike sniffs, “I smell Slayer on your Red.”

“Uh yeah we’re roomies, and she is somewhere around here.”

“Splitting up in an infested house, smashing idea.” His tone dry, “You stick to the muscles. Come on, lest, Red you got any tricks? Some explosives? Crack open a wall?”

Willow narrowing her eyes coldly, “You want to run away.”

“I’m thinking of gathering the innocents and breaking a way out.”

Oz, “So he’s a good vampire. Wills, did you curse this one with a soul too?”

“Oi! I’m following a contract and don't need a soul for that.” 

A scream tears through the air and Willow remarks that it sounds like Buffy. Craning his hearing, it comes from below. A basement. Along with tearing of the earth. Spike snarls rips open the doors he turns to the kids, “Where is the bloody basement!”

Wolf and Witch weren’t there. Balls.

His boots hit the earth of an unfinished basement. 

“They all run away from you. Open your heart.” A boy, with a broken neck, and teeth stretching across his thin face. 

A growl rose from Spike, striking out breaking the neck further, “git. Does she look alone?” Tossing the long cold body aside he turns to a small Slayer grunt. 

“Zombies!” she helpfully informs him. Her limbs coated with sweet adrenaline and blood. After kicking a few heads in, he’s back to back with her moving towards the door. 

Slamming it behind them. They brace their shoulders against it, looking at each other strangely as nothing trying to come through. 

“You came for me?”

Spike points to his safety committee button, “Made a promise. You’re a student on school grounds.” 

Her hand rests on his shoulder, warm and strong, “Weird but thanks” her eyes scan the room, “Oz! Willow!” Buffy embraces her friends sushing Willow soothingly. Before turning to the whelp to scold him. 

She finds Spike crouching, “Is a summoning circle, old…” he wrinkles his brows. 

“It's been hitting where we’re unsure of ourselves.”

Willow kneels next to them with a book, “Gachnar, a demon.”

“Let me guess it’s been feeding off fear.” Spike adds sniffing the air. “Irish lot, mostly like if you break the circle it will summon as is.” he smashes the circle. 

“Spike!” Buffy yells, “You just said it would…oh”

“Baby demon still.”

The demon no taller than a hand span crows to fear him. Buffy steps on it. At that moment a loud grinding sound drywall spraying from a force on the other side of the wall. Buffy spares Spike a smile before shoring up his weak right side. 

Buffy drops her guard, “Giles?”

Xander, “Dead Poets Society and our hero have already slain the demon, G-Man.”

Giles stopping his chainsaw, “Oh well…would you consider slaying the remainder of my candy?”

It didn’t take much candy for Willow to start feeling sick. And Spike was surprised that Giles poured him a decent pear brandy. 

Giles sips, “Why did you help?”

Spike points to his button, barely hanging onto his shirt. “Made a promise.”

Giles gaze lingers on the kids, laughing and the old man softens. “You’re a vampire, you’re playing some sort of game.”

“Then why give your girl the spell, give me access to her blood.”

“She would have found it anyway, and perhaps a worse option. I gave her a stable choice, besides you can’t keep this up. You’ll lose interest and fuck up. My slayer can and has handled you.”

Old boy’s upper lip was stiff, glasses tucked into his pocket and eyes glancing to his charge. How many times has that girl nearly died? How many times has this watcher sent her into danger. Though Watcher is made of stern stuff, Spike’s seen it. Is a good laugh remembering the Librarian beating Angelus with a stick. He didn’t send the girl alone to face evil. 

Spike sets down the glass, “I’ve respect for you. I’ll say this once, I’m here in Sunnydale because the Unni needs me.”

He goes over to the kids noting the whelp eyeing him suspiciously before making room. Spike had been useful, he’d save lives. So he earned a seat for tonight. 

If he could not be wanted, let him be needed. If he wasn’t needed, let him be used.