My Life is Different Ch. 03

Justine knocked on the door again. Buffy and I were lying naked in the tub and neither one of us felt like getting out, but I think Justine was getting suspicious.

"Almost done," I called out, "The healing spell, was a success, I just need to, um...put the spell in park and make sure it doesn't drift to other parts of the house."

"Put the spell in park?" Buffy whispered.

"She's not a witch," I whispered back, "She doesn't know how spells work. I can tell whatever I want."

Buffy and I just lay there for a while, limp and relaxed. I knew I had to get out of the tub eventually, but the exquisite feeling of Buffy's warm, naked flesh against mine was making it hard to motivate. I might have spent another hour in the tub with Buffy, but Justine came knocking on the door again just a few minutes later and yelled, "The vampire is awake and he says he wants to talk to the Slayer!"

Almost instantly Buffy and I rose up out of the water and we hurriedly grabbed towels. Now that Spike was awake, it didn't seem like a good idea to leave him alone with Justine.

"Is one of you the Slayer?" Justine called out through the door.

"I'm the Slayer," Buffy called out through the locked door, "I'll be out in a minute!"

We got dressed quickly. Spike still had that chip in his head, but somehow my head was filling with disturbing pictures of Justine lying in a pool of her own blood, while Spike stood menacingly over her dead body. It may not have been logical, but Buffy and I both dressed with a sense of urgency.

Buffy was in such a hurry to get dressed, that the rips in her clothes got even wider. Her jeans were a lost cause now. That was a real pity, I loved those jeans on Buffy. They were the extra-tight jeans that looked almost like they were spray-painted on. They really showed off the shape of Buff's thighs and her super-firm butt.

Buffy and I burst out of the bathroom, looking for any signs of violence or foul play, but all we found were Justine and Spike standing around, looking to us, as if for answers.

"So, there you are," Spike said, actually sounding pleased to see Buffy, "I was starting to wonder. Last thing I remember we were fighting that shape-shifty thing at the high school, and now I'm here. And where is here, exactly?"

"My living room," Justine answered.

"Fremont," I told Spike.

Spike raised an inquisitive eyebrow and asked, "Fremont? Where the blood hell is Fremont? And why are we in Fremont when there's evil afoot in Sunnydale?"

"We're in Fremont because I did a spell that brought us all here," I told Spike, "You and Buffy were both unconscious and that thing was going to kill all three of us, so I thought...anything would be better than getting killed...so I did a spell and here we all are...not torn into ground chuck and blood spatters on the school floor."

"And since when do you care about stopping the forces of evil?" Buffy asked, incredulous.

"Hey, I might not be the Slayer, but I still fight the forces of evil," Spike boasted, "I'm sort of like Batman...only without the embarrassingly tight spandex costume. Did you not see the way I threw myself against the forces of darkness?"

"I saw the forces of darkness pick you up and swing you around like a tennis racket," Buffy countered.

"Last time I underestimated him," Spike conceded, "Next time I'm gonna kick his ass!"

"Wait, I thought you were a vampire," Justine said awkwardly, "since when do vampires fight the forces of evil?"

Justine looked from Spike to me and then to Buffy. She seemed to be hoping that one of us could answer her question, but I was just about as mystified as her. I remember it wasn't that long ago that Spike was trying to Buffy and me. For Spike to want to help us in vanquishing the doppelganger, just seemed way out of character for him.

"Everybody needs a hobby," Spike said simply, as if that explained everything.

* * * * * * * * *

It took some time, but we eventually convinced Justine to drive Buffy, Spike and me back to Sunnydale. Justine was even nice enough to provide Buffy with a change of clothes, since the doppelganger shredded her jeans and her shirt.

I eventually figured out Spike's radical change of behavior. Spike had spent a century or so as a predator, and it had really traumatized him when he found out that he couldn't kill humans anymore. It was like being the biggest, strongest lion in all of Africa, with the strongest jaws, the sharpest teeth, but still somehow unable to kill any of the zebras on the sub-Saharan plains.

That was a huge blow for Spike. Despite all of his power, he couldn't use any of it.

At least that's what he thought until his fight with the doppelganger. Now he knows he can still hunt. He can't hunt humans anymore, but he can still hunt other things. So, instead of being a lion who can never hunt again, he's more like a lion who's simply been forced to hunt hyenas instead.

It's a much smaller adjustment, and Spike seems to be very happy about it. He can still be a predator, he just has to switch targets.

"Demons," Spike yelled enthusiastically in my ear, "Nasty buggers! Let's fight that evil!!"

Buffy sat right next to me on my left and said, "Spike, you do realize that you're still a vampire, right?"

"What? A vampire can't fight evil?" Spike asked defensively.

"I'm pretty sure there's no rule against it," Spike continued, "And even if there were, I've never really been real keen on living my life by someone else's rules. If Spike wants to be the vampire that fights evil, Spike will bloody well be the vampire that fights evil!"

"I think I liked him better when he was trying to kill me," Buffy said irritably.

"And before we can fight that evil, we're going to have to find that evil," I told Spike. "The doppelganger looked like Chip the first time we saw him. He can probably look like anyone in town. Right now, he could be another one of the students on campus. Or maybe one of the teachers."

""Yeah," Spike conceded, "But if you had a blood sample or a lock of his hair, you could do another tracking spell and find him, no matter who he looked like."

Spike gave me a smug grin and I had a feeling he wasn't just talking about a hypothetical situation.

"Spike, are you saying you have something like that?"

His smile seemed to get even more extreme and he pulled something out of the pocket of his leather duster. It was a lock of hair.

"Spike, have you been pulling people's hair again?" Buffy asked, accusingly.

"Hey," Spike snapped, "I had the bloody demon in a bloody wrestling hold! I just ended up with a handful of his hair when he grew like three bloody times his normal size and broke free!"

* * * * * * * * * *

The trip to Sunnydale was awkward and uncomfortable. Spike and Buffy fought most of the time and I was trapped in the vehicle with Buffy to my left and Spike to my right.

It would have been so much easier if I could have just teleported us back to Sunnydale, but the only spell I know for traveling long distances in the blink of an eye sends you to random destinations. Hypothetically I could cast it a hundred times and still not make it back to Sunnydale!

At some point I tried to distract Buffy and Spike from sniping at each other, but explaining to Justine exactly what a slayer was.

She totally wasn't getting it. Once she found out that Buffy had super-human strength, super-human reflexes, resilience and rapid healing, she insisted that Buffy must be some sort of super hero. I tried to explain that Buffy didn't wear a mask or a cape or a spandex costume, but it was too late.

"She has super strength, super healing and she fights evil, therefore she must be a super hero," Justine declared firmly, and then to buttress her argument she added, "Doctor Manhattan didn't wear a mask or a cape or a spandex costume and he was still a super hero. The same rule applies to Buffy."

Buffy rolled her eyes and Spike got an amused smirk. I started wondering how Xander was going to react when he met Justine. He'd never met a girl before that liked comic books as much as he did. He was probably going to be in comic-nerd heaven.

* * * * * * * *

"Giles this is Justine. Justine this is Giles," I said, getting introductions out of the way.

"He's sort of the brains of the operation," Buffy told Justine.

"Oh, you mean like Mister Fantastic?" Justine inquired, excitedly.

"Mister who?" Giles asked, confused by the comic book reference.

Giles and Justine basically spoke two different languages and Xander wasn't there to help translate. Dammit! The one time Xander's comic-nerd skills could have been put to good use and he was missing in action!

Buffy quickly solved the problem by changing the subject.

"Giles, we've got big evil problems afoot," Buffy said, taking the focus off Justine and redirecting it towards the problem of the doppelganger.

"Well, what sort of big evil?" Giles asked.

* * * * * * * *

Giles had plenty of books shape-shifters. The problem was that there were lots of supernatural creatures that could shapeshift and Buffy and I didn't know enough about this one, to narrow it down to just one type. And without knowing what sort of shapeshifter it was, it was going to be very difficult to come up with a plan for how to defeat it.

Buffy, Giles, Justine and I all ended up going through Giles's books on supernatural threats, hoping to find the shape-shifty beastie we were looking for. Much to my surprise, even Spike helped. Giles was really shocked to see Spike doing research, but I guess Spike really, really had changed. He liked killing things and if demons were the only thing he could kill, he'd dedicate a lot of time and effort to the cause.

After about an hour or two of research, Giles finally came up with something.

"I think I've got it," Giles announced, "I'm pretty certain. I think it's a skinwalker."

"A what?" Buffy and Justine asked in unison.

"It's a um, type of evil creature that was once human," Giles explained. "Apparently Augustus Van Buren encountered a skinwalker in the Arizona Territory back in 1887 and the one he encountered sounds quite a lot like the shape-shifter that tried to kill Buffy and Willow."

"He tried to kill me too," Spike said admonishingly, apparently offended that Giles forgot about him.

"Yes, of course," Giles said almost apologetically, "Well, at any rate the skinwalker possessed superhuman strength, just like the one that fought Buffy and Spike, and it could change its appearance and mimic any voice. It could appear as a white man or an Indian. It could speak fluent English, fluent Navajo and fluent Apache. It could be anyone. According to Van Buren, he couldn't trust anyone until he knew the skinwalker was dead."

That seemed to be our guy. The doppelganger we saw at the old high school didn't just mimic Chip's face and body perfectly, but also his voice. I was willing to bet that Chip's doppelganger was a skinwalker.

"So, how do I kill it?" Buffy asked, getting straight to the most important question.

Giles seemed surprised by the question. He had been looking down at the pages of Van Buren's book, apparently getting lost in the history of a man long dead. Giles is a real bookworm and it's easy for him to get absorbed by the printed words on the page of a good book.

Okay, fully disclosure, I'm a bookworm too. I get totally engrossed in books too, but when Giles does it and I can poke fun at him, its cooler that way.

"Um, yes, well," Giles said, stalling while he flipped the pages and attempted to find a passage where Van Buren explained how to kill a skinwalker.

"Aha," Giles finally exclaimed triumphantly, "According to Van Buren, the skinwalker gained his powers and immortality through death, through the killing of innocents and the defiling of corpses. He can be killed by the forces of life. If dampened with water from the Fountain of Life, the skinwalker will lose much of his powers and will suffer great pain."

Giles looked up from his book, with a look of satisfaction and smug victory on his face. I almost felt sorry for him a few seconds later, when Buffy deflated his sense of satisfaction with her follow-up question.

"And what exactly is the Fountain of Life?" Buffy asked.

The room got real quiet and the smile rapidly disappeared from Giles's face. The poor guy looked deflated.

"Apparently more research is in order," Giles finally conceded. Then he went through his book collection and found half a dozen books by Augustus Van Buren and started handing them out.

"New assignment everyone," Giles announced, "Scour Van Buren's books and see if you can find a definition in any of them for the Fountain of Life, or where such a fountain might be located."

Research can be slow and tedious. Finding the exact passage where Van Buren scribbled down the definition of "Fountain of Life" could have taken hours. I mean, Van Buren had written hundreds of pages, and there was no way to tell even which book it might be written down in!

I say that, but this time I got lucky. The answer was in the book that Giles had handed me, and it only took me about ten minutes to find the information I was looking for.

I read silently from Van Buren's book, specifically I read one paragraph over and over, and occasionally raised my eyes up from the pages of the book and focused on my friends, hard at work, doing their own reading.

You see, the "waters from the fountain of life" was Van Buren's poetic way of talking about the fluids that a woman secrets from her sex, when she's sexually aroused.

There was really no way I wanted to explain this to Giles or Spike, especially not when it dawned on me that there was really only one way for us to obtain a sample of these "waters from the fountain of life"! The only thing that would make it worse, would have been if Xander were here, and I had to explain it to him!

Deciding that this was no time for honesty or openness, I closed my book, set it down and said, "Oh, my gosh! I think I know what this stuff is! I think I've got some back in my room!"

"Seriously, Willow?" Giles asked, looking up from his own book, "That's wonderful news! What is it?"

"It's um, witch-stuff," I said, standing up and backing away, "Sort of a witch's brew sort of thing, and Buffy and I are gonna go back to our off-campus housing and go get it right now."

"We are?" Buffy asked as she set her book down.

Spike raised and inquisitive eyebrow and said nothing, but he seemed to know that I was deliberately withholding information.

I made an awkward exit and refused to answer Buffy's questions until we were at least a block away from Giles's apartment and well out of earshot.

"So, you know when you're thinking naughty, sexy thoughts? I mean really, really yummy, naughty, sexy thoughts and you get so hot and bothered that you get your panties soaking wet?"

"Yeah," Buffy replied with a leery tone of voice that implied she thought the question was impolite and uncomfortable.

"Yeah," I said, trying to approach this delicate subject with caution, "those fluids that soak your panties when you're having those naughty, sexy thoughts....those are the fluids Van Buren was talking about. That's what will hurt the skinwalker and make him easier to defeat."

"Wait! What?" Buffy exclaimed, sounding shocked and offended, "You want me to strip down naked, spread my pubic lips wide and rub myself up and down against the skinwalker in hopes that I can get my fluids all over him? Will, I'm not doing that! That's crazy! That's not what I signed up for when I agreed to fight the forces of evil!"

"Okay," I said, trying to sound soothing and calm Buffy down, "there are other ways to do this. You don't have to rub up against the skinwalker like some sort of demented stripper. I have a much more civilized idea."

"Yeah? Let's hear it," Buffy demanded, sounding dubious.

So, I explained my plan to Buffy. I'd get her home, strip her naked, use my tongue, my lips and my talented fingers to get her all hot and excited and use a glass test tube to capture any fluids that escaped from the lips of her beautiful womanhood. Then I'd use a rubber stopper to trap her juices inside and we'd carry the test tube into battle, when we went to fight the skinwalker.

"Brilliant plan, Will," Buffy responded, when I'd finished explaining, "Just, I'm making one revision. You're the one who's stripping naked and I'm the one who's going to get you all hot and excited."

My face immediately felt hot and I looked around to see if anyone on the street had heard what Buffy had just said. Buffy and I had been having naked fun-time for months now, but I still got embarrassed at the thought of anyone else knowing about it.

Luckily the closest bystander was about sixty feet away. Once again I felt that my reputation for being chaste and virginal was safe.

"Why does it have to be me, who gets naked?" I asked, "I'm the one who came up with the plan for how to weaken the skinwalker. Why can't you get naked?"

"Actually, it was that Van Buren guy who came up with the plan, Will," Buffy said, self-righteously, "You just copied off his homework. And I got naked in Justine's bathtub back in Fremont. Remember that? That was some intense orgasmage. I think my pussy is outta commission for the rest of the night."

"And besides," Buffy added, "I'm the one who has to fight him, so you should be the one who provides the water from your fountain of life. It's an equitable distribution of labor."

* * * * * * * * * *

When we got back home, Tara and Terri were just finishing up the movie marathon. We had been gone for hours and Buffy was wearing different clothes now than when she left. Buffy and I made with the apologies and Buffy said she'd explain later, but right now we had important stuff that we had to do and there was no time lengthy discussion.

In our bedroom, I got Buffy the test tube and the rubber stopper. Buffy held both in her hands for a few seconds, before looking at my with that familiar smoldering lust in her eyes and said, "Strip! Now!"

She said it in her authoritative, prison-guard of cell-block-D voice, which always makes me feel all soft and gooey inside. I can never refuse her when she uses that voice. That voice always bypasses the logic center of my brain and just goes straight to my libido and gets me all sexually excited.

Buffy had seen me naked lots of times, but stripping for her when she was using that stern prison guard voice made everything different. It made me sexually aroused and nervous all at the same time.

Buffy watched me intently as I grabbed the hem of my t-shirt and lifted it up to reveal my flat belly, ribcage and my boobs, concealed inside the nylon/spandex fabric of my bra.

I tugged the t-shirt over my head and unbuttoned my jeans. The t-shirt ended up on the floor and I pushed the jeans with some difficulty, down my thighs, to expose my nylon/spandex panties. When I finally removed my jeans completely and I was standing there in just my bra and low rise hiphugger panties, Buffy gave me a stern and attentive look, just like a female prison-guard might do.

The stern look ratcheted up my nervousness, but also my excitement. Something about this submissive/dominant roleplay with Buffy always gets me hotter and wetter than just ordinary sex. I'm pretty sure Buffy knew that, and was really the whole point of her whole authoritative, prison guard of cell-block-D act.

I undid the clasps on my bra and let it fall to the floor, on top of my t-shirt and my jeans. Then I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my panties and pushed that tiny piece of fabric down my narrow hips and slender legs so that I could step out of them.