Sunnydale, California, December 2002 (Tuesday Fandom Time)

[brat_inslayage]

The living arrangements around here were getting impressively diverse, Kennedy had to admit. It would be kind of cool if not for the cramped quarters.

Also there was the whole distinct lack of much to do. Sunnydale was hardly a big party town, and the nighttime scene wasn't exactly fun and games under the circumstances. She'd spent the morning training with the younger girls; Buffy was at work, Dawn and Willow were at school (Fandom really should send out a memo to other towns about canceling classes in case of evil invasions), Xander was busy repairing the latest damage to the house. But it was time for a break, and Kennedy was fine with the idea of leaving the others to their gossip session in favor of wandering out to the dining room and pulling out her phone to try and get in touch with her friends one more time. Same action, expecting different results, yeah, yeah. She didn't care if that made her crazy.

There's a vampire in the basement and way too many girls in this house, she tapped out on the phone. But I'm still alive and stuff. How are you?

No idea if it would go through any more than her previous attempts had, but she hit send anyway and dropped into a chair, drumming her fingers absentmindedly on the tabletop.

Anya	Anya was, of course, doing what Anya did best these days. No, not vengeance, although she really missed her powers right about now, thank you very much. Being a powerless human could really suck. Her current talents lay in budgets. Spreadsheets. Making sure they had enough money to feed and clothe everyone, because no one could appreciate how fast a pack of teen girls went through a tube of toothpaste. She might, occasionally, pitch something at Andrew's head if he came in range, just to keep him on his toes. It was funny to make the little monkey dance.
Kennedy	The figurative monkey-dancing amused Kennedy, too. Hey, something had to, because the bathroom lineup in the morning? Not remotely funny. "Something really interesting?" she asked idly, looking up from her phone.
Anya	"If by 'interesting' you mean 'keeping all of you little monsters fed,' then yes. Interesting," Anya answered, making a face as she checked the budget projections. "Slayers eat more than Boretz demons."
Kennedy	"Hey," Kennedy protested mildly, frowning. "You make it sound all--" If Constance had ever mentioned Boretz demons to her, she must have been tuning out at the time. "Not evil exactly, but..." She dug a hand into her hair. "Still, sorry you guys got stuck with all this."
Anya	"They smell and tend to eat the homeless. Boretz, not you. Unless you have a habit you forgot to mention," Anya replied absently. "In which case, go for it. Just make sure to floss before you come back from patrol."
Kennedy	"...no people-eating for me, promise," Kennedy blurted out, and it could be a sign of how much that concept grossed her out that she didn't even turn it into a double entendre. "Though the smelling thing might get to be a problem if another bathroom doesn't materialize around here after a while."
Anya	"Unless a few thousand dollars materializes for building materials, don't count on the bathroom," Anya warned. "Draw up a shower schedule and I'll put my name on it if you're afraid of the other children."
Kennedy	"Hey." Kennedy pulled herself up a little taller (because that made so much difference) and tried to look indignant. "Do I look like I'm scared of them?"
Anya	"I can't tell, you all still look young and squishy to me," Anya replied. "But the fact remains they are scared of me, or should be, which is why I am in charge of things and you are not." Take that, teeny Potential.
Kennedy	And sadly, Kennedy wasn't about to concede the point so easily. No, she was just going to scowl a little more instead. (Because Anya wasn't exactly wrong about the 'teeny' part. Sigh.) "Never said I wanted to be in charge." The hint of sulking in her voice hinted otherwise, though. "Though I kinda feel the need to mention I'm not scared of you, either." The 'occasionally less than brilliant' disclaimer didn't need to be explicitly stated at this point, did it?
Anya	Anya just glanced up from her spreadsheets long enough to fix Kennedy with a Look. "Just because I'm not into demon-y-vengeance anymore doesn't mean I'm stupid," she said bluntly. "And I know a lie when I hear one." "Almost too old to be Called, older than the other girls, still being treated as if you've got fluff in your brain when you were one of the few to actually be reared to this, unlike Buffy?" she continued, ticking off points on her fingers. "Stop me when it gets too familiar; I know a woman scorned, even if it's not by a guy.
Kennedy	Kennedy looked surprised for all of half a second before she realized that yeah, she had basically been broadcasting all of that from day one, at which point the defensive expression she'd been working up faded into a look of okay, busted. At least Anya wasn't the First. That was something. "That was never gonna happen, the guy thing," she muttered sullenly. "And way to be all freaky perceptive about it." Also good at poking holes in her ego. Wow.
Anya	"As a businesswoman, it is my job to be 'freaky perceptive' about a number of things," Anya replied smugly. "I am alarmingly good at multitasking." And alarmingly good at utterly terrifying people through sheer Anya-ness, of course, but that was a given. "Now, if you are done with the teenage 'emo' for the day, I can make you be useful. Otherwise, toddle off and go hit things. Slayers like hitting things, I've noticed."
Kennedy	"You think?" Yep, ego steadily deflating now. Oh, well, it was probably good for her. Then, still a bit grumpily: "...hitting things sounds good, actually. I'm gonna go do that."

***

Spike	There was indeed a vampire in the basement. A bruised one, who lay on his pallet with his eyes closed even though he knew sleep wouldn't come. Gingerly, Spike raised an arm and touched a raw strip of flesh on one wrist. He could tell it was healing already, but the memory would stick around. Memories had a way of doing that. Buffy ... she came to find him, she did. Freed him. Gave him another chance, even after the last several had been squandered or stolen. And now he was in the Slayer's basement, because life was just that funny. They hadn't talked yet about what exactly he was bloody doing here, but from the looks of things, the girls could use more than a little field practice. He could be the field. Maybe there was some room for hope in his world. Hope and other pleasures. He sat up, feeling parched, and called up the stairs. "Oi, if there's any of that hot chocolate with the little marshmallows still floating around, can someone fix a cup and bring it on down? I swear" -- black humor, here -- "I won't bite."
Kennedy	Kennedy had been on her way out to the back yard to hit things per Anya's suggestion when she heard Spike's question. "You drink hot chocolate?" she called down, but she'd already pushed her chair away from the table and headed into the kitchen. With as much as they were all relying on caffeine already it wasn't as if she didn't know where to find the mugs. Approximately twenty-three seconds past the length of time it took to boil water, Kennedy came down the steps into the basement gingerly cradling a mug. "Think this might be the last packet with marshmallows in it," she remarked once she made it to the bottom of the stairs-- and stopped, unable to keep herself from staring for a few seconds. None of the Potentials had gotten a particularly good look at Spike since Buffy'd brought him back. "...you, uh. Look like you could use it."
Spike	"I'll be all healed up by sunrise," Spike told the girl, attempting to shrug his injuries off. "All for the greater cause anyhow, isn't it?" He reached a beckoning hand towards the mug. "I've a taste for it," he said. "Slayer's mum used to make it for me, did she tell you that?"
Kennedy	"Must be nice, the healing thing." Kennedy-- still smarting a bit from Anya's comments-- didn't really bother to disguise the touch of envy in her voice, although the look she gave him did suggest that she doubted he'd be a hundred percent by morning. She was mildly skeptical, but not skittish, as she made her way across the basement to hold the mug out to him. "Well, y'know, getting to hear everybody's life story, not exactly top priority around here these days, but that's..." She huffed a slightly perplexed laugh; the idea of the Slayer's mom making hot cocoa for a vampire was brainbreaky, then the mental image of the Council's reaction was amusing... at least for the moment or two before that image transmuted into a memory of Constance's body, and grief replaced the amusement. "Huh. Everybody's all full of surprises around here, seems like."
Spike	Spike accepted the cup absently, as he looked the girl up and down. "Slayer didn't tell you anything about me," he guessed. "Ah. Classic. Letting you think she keeps a half-mad vampire in her basement for fun, is she?"
Kennedy	Kennedy put up with the scrutiny with a rare and merciful lack of comment. "I get you're supposed to be important," she answered as she leaned back against the side of the staircase, crossing her arms. "Her going in there to rescue you was a whole big thing. And I get you're supposed to be on our side in all of this." She tilted her head and gave him a bit of a scrutinizing look of her own. "That is, assuming you're not actually half crazy or killing people like Anya says..."
Spike	Bloody Anya, always willing to share everything she knew like no one had invented the concept of discretion. Spike snorted in a way that wasn't yes or no and decided to let the implicit question in the girl's last sentence lie. Anyhow, he wasn't killing people anymore, and he didn't think he was quite so crazy. Better not to frighten the baby slayer. "I'm on your side," he said, indignant. "Got a soul jammed in me. Slayer should have at least explained that much before she rode in on her white horse."
Kennedy	"Maybe she did," Kennedy replied, dragging the words out slowly. "Hell of a lot of new information to process lately." Plenty of lectures and speeches and exposition, and not nearly enough actual fighting; this whole under-siege thing really grated as much as the lack of qualified-combatant status did. "So... a soul, huh?" she went on, sort of casual but mostly curious. "That's supposed to make you all unique and stuff around here. That's kinda cool, I guess, but--" She glanced over her shoulder, up toward the door to the kitchen, and smirked briefly. "Think some of the other girls are still kinda freaked."
Spike	"But you aren't," Spike said, a bit skeptically. "Though, mind, some of the other girls are 'still kinda freaked' by Spooky Things reruns. Can't worry too much about frightening them." "At any rate," he added, "as far as I know there are two vampires with a soul in the world." Though he wasn't precisely thrilled to be the second of two.
Kennedy	"That Angel guy in L.A.," Kennedy guessed; she wasn't sure how much of what Wesley had said had been him trying to brag. "Still, two out of how many? For our world that's not bad." She couldn't help feeling a little defensive of the Potentials, though-- they were already her girls, as far as she was concerned, and despite any frustrations of her own there was a whole compulsion to stick up for them. "And hey, go easy on them. They're new at this whole thing."
Spike	"Him. The great poof," Spike agreed, retreating to sit down on his bed again with the mug clutched protectively in one hand. "What's your story? Ought to be as green as the rest of them, but you aren't, are you?"
Kennedy	Kennedy snickered and singsonged half under her breath, "Somebody's not a fan." She shifted to lean more comfortably against the stair railing. "Okay, first? I feel old next to Team Jailbait up there." (As if to punctuate that, from somewhere upstairs someone squealed, and she hoped they weren't getting into a pillow fight or something, god.) "Second, pretty sure I went to the most freak-ass high school that isn't Sunnydale High in the history of everything with a bunch of trouble magnets for friends, so I've seen a lot of shit." From her perspective two years in Fandom added up to a lot, but to anyone else there was a good chance it sounded unbearably cocky. Though to be fair, she was trying a little too hard to project confidence. "Hell," Kennedy went on, again with the smirk as if she fully expected him to be disappointed, "you're not even the first vamp who's been on my side."
Spike	It did sound unbearably cocky, but Spike didn't mind. He'd take cocky over the 'N Sync brigade; cocky had some chance of winning this thing. "We aren't a dumb breed," he answered. "Not the ones who last, anyhow. Make the stakes right and a fair number of us'll help humans in a pinch. World ending doesn't favor us anymore than it favors you."
Kennedy	"See, these are the things they never teach us in Slayer school," Kennedy quipped mildly. Thinking of Eric, whom she still didn't quite trust even if he had helped them out a few times, she shifted forward a step. "So how long does that mean you've been around?"
Spike	"Slayer school probably keeps things simple," Spike answered. "See the demon, fight the demon, kill the demon, all very neat. Start talking to the enemy and things change." Really, vampire school -- such as it was -- wasn't that different. That was why vampires didn't usually chat with their snacks, beyond the minimum. "And I am a hundred and thirty, give or take." A smirking grin lifted one side of his mouth. "Do I look it?"
Kennedy	"Oh god, seriously. My Watcher flipped her shit when she found out one of my teachers was a demon, and that was before I ended up really good friends with one who turned out to have serious vampire issues, and..." Kennedy trailed off briefly; Constance's death was still pretty raw. "It was a steep adjustment curve. Also complicated. Did you know vampires in other people's worlds are just weird?" She countered his smirk with one of her own. "Is this where I'm supposed to flatter you by saying you don't look a day over twenty? 'cause I wasn't planning on it."
Spike	"And here I am, used to slayers throwing themselves at me," Spike commented, but idly, and sipped the cocoa again. "I'll have to cry myself to sleep." "At any rate" -- he shook his head -- "didn't even know other worlds had vampires. What's weird about them? And what kind of bloody school hires a demon to teach?"
Kennedy	"So not my type," Kennedy informed him as if she were crushing his dreams and not terribly sorry about it. (This was... probably an unnecessary statement, since her behavior around the house made it painfully obvious at times.) "You'll have to deal." She frowned slightly, trying to figure out how to explain Fandom; it had been a long time since she'd been around people who'd even be willing to accept that level of wacky, and now she was surrounded by them and sorely out of practice in finding the right words. "The kind of school a girl like me gets sent to because she can't stay out of trouble?" she offered. "He was a good guy, actually. Made me TA for him. Then I got to know some of the kids, and it was like cannonballing off the ten-meter platform into a giant pool of grey area. I knew two girls who were half-vampire, half-human-- I know, I know, that made no sense to me either-- and another one who drank coffee instead of blood, and a friend of mine's from a world full of 'em where they're not all evil but not necessarily good, and also they explode like water balloons when you stake 'em and it's really gross..." Maybe she shouldn't be talking to a vampire about staking his kind, huh? Oops. "Anyway," Kennedy concluded with a slightly awkward shrug, "it's complicated. There. Not exactly so black-and-white here either, though, huh?"
Spike	Really, Spike was a one-slayer vampire these days, and he had seen Kennedy and Red together. He couldn't be too crushed. Besides, any flirtatious urges he'd formed would be drowned under the sheer, sheer ... chaos of what she was saying. He believed her, though; it was too detailed and spontaneous to be a lie. "Water balloons?" That was apparently what Spike was going to latch onto. He didn't like the idea of going out in a shower of dust, but at least it wasn't something out of a third-rate Hammer horror film.
Kennedy	"Big ones." Kennedy grimaced. "Some warning would've been nice before I found that out." God, it seriously felt like talking about a completely different life. "...not that I'm all stake-happy or anything, though--" because she wasn't, thank you very much, Eric-- "so you're safe." For now, at least. Unless he really did go crazy like Anya'd implied.
Spike	"Glad to hear it," Spike said dryly. "Though I'd be up for a spot of combat training, if the others want. Get the blood pumping, all of that." He sounded like such a defanged puppy. And he still wasn't completely adjusted to the concept of vampires blowing up like water balloons. But those were concerns for another time.
Kennedy	"I'd be up for that," Kennedy said instantly, resisting the urge to give him crap about that whole defanged-puppy thing; her more practical side had already latched onto the usefulness of the idea, although she couldn't help it if her expression was vaguely pitying. "Might have to get the girls to work up to the idea, though. Like, once we get them to the point where they won't flinch 'cause they think they breathed the wrong way around you." That was a bit unfair; while Chloe and Vi came pretty close to that description at times, Rona and Molly took it more in stride.
Spike	"You work on that, and I will try to finish my cocoa before it goes all scummy," Spike suggested airily. "I won't go roaming the halls just yet. Not until the girls're a bit less green."
Kennedy	Kennedy glanced up toward the ceiling and sighed. "Might take longer than the cocoa does to get that done, but." She nodded firmly. "I'll make it happen." For a moment, her bravado faltered and she was just a scared kid. In a quiet voice she added, "We gotta get them ready." Annabelle had been enough.
SPike	"We will." Spike's tone refused to admit any doubt. "You don't know the slayer yet. She likes to come off all -- blonde and in crisis and worried about her shoes. But she's gotten people through a lot." Spike's existence included. "She'll get us through this." Then, as if he realized that might have sounded dismissive, he added, "With your help of course, pet."
Kennedy	Hey, any acknowledgment that they weren't totally helpless here was cool, and Kennedy grinned briefly. "Nobody's pet, thanks." Well, that had to be said. The thanks, though, was actually pretty genuine.
Spike	"All girls are pets," Spike informed her. (This was one of many things he and Jono Starsmore would no doubt agree on.) "But I'll come up with something better before we start training." Or he could call her by name, but what madness was that?
Kennedy	"...oh my god, seriously?" Okay, that came out a little whiny but not as confrontational as it could have; it did remind her a little bit of Jono. "Just 'cause you're mister hundred-and-thirty and all..." No, Kennedy really couldn't maintain an actual level of indignation.
Spike	Spike laughed, then stopped. Laughing hurt the healing bits of his flesh. "Wasn't aware I was in the presence of her ladyship," he said. "Now, don't you have a pillow fight to get back to?"
Kennedy	Kennedy gave him a slightly wounded look. "Oh, yeah. So totally the kind of action I was hoping for." Come on, Spike, she was practically ancient compared to the other girls. Some dignity, maybe?
Spike	"If I ever start worrying about any other kind of action junior slayers get up to," Spike said indignantly, then paused and went thoughtful. "Well. It might fill a lonely hour, but hardly makes the close quarters more comfortable, does it?" He wasn't Xander, here.
Kennedy	"And I'm gonna pretend that subject never wandered into this conversation, if that's okay with you." Kennedy spread her hands and took a few steps back toward the stairs, then paused. "And hey. Who said I was worried?" Stupid, maybe, to fall back on that kind of bragging under the circumstances (especially since she had to shoehorn it in there), but it was comforting. Even if it was, at this stage, an exaggeration.
Spike	"Oh, certainly not me," Spike said, very airily. "I'd never dream of implying such a thing. Brink of an apocalypse, strange house with strange people and a vampire in the basement, no reason to be concerned." You'd have to be a moron not to worry, in his opinion.
Kennedy	Well, she was. A lot. Just not willing to let on how much. "Same ol', same ol'," was what Kennedy said instead from the third step up, leaning over the railing. "Not like I ever wanted a normal life."
Spike	"Now that is one thing you never need to worry about in good old Sunnydale," Spike shot back. "So welcome home." He'd decided he liked this one. More or less. A bit like Faith, but less brink-of-insanity. As insane slayers tended to have itchy stake hands, he'd hardly object.
Kennedy	Kennedy laughed, and twirled one finger in a circle over her head. "Party time. Streamers and everything," she cracked from the top of the stairs, just before she slipped out. "Been wanting to be here for years anyway." So, kind of crazy in her own way, arguably.

[[preplayed with the indefatigable icecoldfrost as children4cash, and the superlative life_inshadow as followshisblood. nfi/nfb/ooc-okay, based off bits from btvs 7x11, "showtime," but mostly just made up with the help of my rockstar npc cast. this will actually be a theme for the day.

oh, and no, sadly, that text message won't go through.]]

Comments

[furnaceface]

[All girls are pets, you know. Very important bit of information, there. Highly... scientific, really.

I am loving all of this so much, you guys. <3 Keep up all the awesome.]

[brat-intraining.livejournal.com]

[[all due credit to my amazing npc-ers, all of them. this wouldn't be turning out a fraction as well as it has without them.]]

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

[[OMG WES WOULD NEVER BRAG ABOUT HIS VAMPIRE BFF. HDU, KENNEDY. :DDD]]

[brat-intraining.livejournal.com]

[[oh, like kennedy thinks there's anything wrong with bragging... :D]]