thismaz | Bewitched

Title: Bewitched
Fandom: BtVS
Pairing: S/X in future.
Rating: G for this chapter. Touches of NC-17 later.
Summary: When Valentine's Day arrives, Dru dips her finger in the brew and gives it a stir.
Note: This was supposed to be a simple, four chapter story. I have nine chapters drafted out, so far. I'm thinking there won't be too many more than that, but I've been wrong before.
Note 2: This chapter started off as a character study of Spike during his wheelchair period. It sort of grew.
Word Count: 1,850
Betaed by

sparrow2000 and DJ, with many thanks.
Comments: Are greatly appreciated, loved and cherished.
Disclaimer: here.

Prologue

Dru was late coming to help him out of bed and into his chair, leaving him lying for hours, or so it seemed, after he'd felt the sun set, impotent and furious about it. Three weeks since he'd broken his back and two days since Angelus came back. Dru hadn't slept with him since.

Using the power he still had in his arms, Spike managed to drag himself up enough to sit, leaning against the headboard, and coincidentally pulled himself free of the sheet. He looked down at his lower body with disgust. Arms, chest, head and neck all worked fine, but below the belt? He pinched his thigh. Nothing! Hips and legs were inert and unresponsive to even his determined will - truly dead weight. To avoid the sight, which appalled him as much as it disgusted him, he dragged the covers back up to his waist. A small voice, deep inside and far back in his past, was whispering that a person who couldn't look after himself didn't deserve to survive. He growled his defiance of that thought and offered Heinrich a virtual 'fuck off', snarling, 'who's the one who's still here, though, eh?' at his dead ancestor.

Looking around, he saw that his clothes were where Dru had left them, neatly folded on the hard backed chair beside the bed The three feet of space between it and the bed were too far for him to reach. He was truly, fucking helpless. Unless... Allowing his upper body to tip sideways, he braced his left hand on the edge of the mattress and stretched out his right arm, reaching towards the chair. It was awkward and he couldn't sustain the stretch for long, his upper body slumping under its own weight after a moment, forcing him to lean on his right hand on the floor, as he gathered himself for another try.

On the third attempt, he managed to snag the hem of one leg of his jeans with his fingernail and carefully he began to pull it back towards him. The pile tottered, the t-shirt and shirt on top of his jeans threatening to fall in the wrong direction and he froze while the pile settled again. One more careful tug and the whole lot toppled to the floor between the chair and the bed.

Planting his right hand flat on the floor, he shifted his left hand down to join it. With the extra reach that gave him, he was able to drag the heap nearer, although the action brought him perilously close to falling out of bed. Grabbing the clothes, he shoved them up behind him, onto the mattress, and then paused as he assessed his position. He ran his right hand down his ribs to his waist and discovered that his bloody hips had flopped over, dragging his useless legs with them and he was stuck, chest down, hanging over the edge of the bed.

Placing both hands on the floor again, he pushed against it with all his strength, relieved beyond measure to feel the touch of the mattress against his skin, when he eventually got his lower chest back up over the edge. Shifting his hands to the mattress, he managed to push himself further back so he was lying on his front with his head still hanging over the side. His arms were shaking from the effort and he rested for a moment, until the tremors passed.

It was a whole other operation to haul himself over onto his back again, using the slats of the headboard to pull against, and yet another to get back into his original sitting position. Cursing freely, he dragged his t-shirt out from under his arse and pulled the tangled sheet free of his legs, bundling it up and chucking it to the floor in disgust.

The t-shirt was easy to pull on, as was the red shirt that went over the top, but his jeans once again presented him with a problem. For a full minute he studied the logistics, then, leaning forward and using both hands, he lifted his legs apart, one at a time, so that there was about a foot of mattress exposed between his knees. Holding the jeans by their waistband, he shook them out and gave them a flip, so they landed flat on the mattress between his legs. He pulled the fly wide to expose the inside and took hold of his left thigh with both hands, lifting his knee up to his chest and lowering it when his foot lined up with the opening in his jeans. Again, he paused, holding his knee vertical as he assessed his position. Shoving his knee away, forcing his leg to straighten, did nothing but push the jeans down the bed. He needed three hands. Or maybe he needed legs that bloody worked! Gritting his teeth, he tried again, holding the jeans in place with one hand and pushing his leg straight with the other. His foot slipped smoothly down, inside the leg of his jeans.

With one leg in, getting the other in place was easier. Pulling the waistband up past his hips was a different matter. He forced his left hand under his back and hooked two fingers though a belt loop. Bracing his right hand against the headboard, he did his best to bend his left arm and pull his jeans up his body, while simultaneously pushing his body down the bed by straightening the other arm.

When Dru finally deigned to appear, he was exhausted and still only half dressed.

She crossed the room to his side and looked down at him, titling her head to one side as she studied him, an amused smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. He glared back at her. "Bit of help here?" he snarled.

Dru grinned, grabbed his legs and swung them around so they flopped to the floor, guided his arms around her neck and stood up, pulling him with her. He hung from her as she pulled up his jeans and fastened them.

Scooping one arm under his knees, she picked him up and carried him over to his chair. As she settled him in place, she planted a light kiss behind his ear. "I'll make it all better for you, my love," she promised. She sounded gleeful, like she had before Prague and the part of his mind that he could spare from his own concerns was glad. "Things are stirring," she whispered. "Something new is worrying at the web. The air is shifting, because she's powerful, but unlearned. I smell jealousy and loneliness and pain."

Spike looked up at her. "Yeah, my pain," he growled. "Caused by you spending all your bloody time with his nibs. If you can smell that, and it offends you so bloody much," he suggested, "you know the solution."

"Not you, silly." She tapped him on the tip of his nose with her forefinger. "The other. He's full of confusion. And it's going to get worse, come the Saint's day." She laughed, a wild, happy sound in the dead air of the room. "And he thinks she's going to help him." She smoothed a hand over his hair, as if he was a big cat. "I'll make it better for you, my poppet. You know I will. For all the affection and jealousy we share."

"It's called love, Dru."

Dru straightened up and looked at him down the length of her nose. He'd offended her. "That, too," she agreed. Her secretive smile bloomed and she bent stiffly at the waist, like a marionette, bringing her lips close to his ear. "I need some of your blood," she whispered. Reaching into her cleavage, she pulled out a silver perfume vial. "I'm going to dip my finger in the pot, stir it around, and we'll all have syllabub for tea."

*****

The knock on the front door dragged Amy's attention away from her books and she carefully hid them under her homework before she went to answer it. Clattering down the stairs, she gave the hall clock a quick glance. It was too late for any of her friends to be calling. If her Dad had forgotten his keys again it could be him, although it was early for him to be coming home from evening shift at the plant.

It wasn't her Dad. The woman waiting on the porch was no one she'd met before. She would have remembered. "Yes?" she asked.

"Is your Mum in?" the woman replied. Her accent was as exotic as her clothes and she was studying Amy with an expression that Amy couldn't identify. It could have been sympathy, but it could equally have been amusement.

"No." Amy knew that she'd spoken more sharply than was polite, but there was something about the woman's gaze... something she couldn't put her finger on... something that caused the patch of skin between her shoulder blades to itch. It made her wary.

The woman's mouth pinched and her brow furrowed in thought. "Oh," she said. She sounded disappointed. Then her face cleared and she smiled slightly. "No, she wouldn't be, would she, deary?" She took a step closer and leant forwards. "I heard, see?" she whispered. "She played with magic, but she didn't know the rules, so it bit her back and swallowed her up." Amy found that she had also taken a step forward, but she pulled away sharply when the woman continued, "Could happen to you, that could. So easy to take a misstep, when all you've got is books." She made a dismissive gesture with her hand and Amy found herself watching the way the light spilling out onto the porch seemed to flicker between her fingers. "But that wouldn't be right," the woman continued, "when with a bit of help, it would all be so easy. Want to know the secrets, don't you?"

Amy nodded and started to pull the door open wider, but the flicker of some new expression crossing the woman's face made her hesitate. "What do you want?" she asked.

"I've come to show you how it works." The woman smiled and it transformed her face, making her appear both younger and more ordinary. She was still beautiful, but her beauty was no longer so strange. "You want to know how to make the threads fall how you want them to, don't you, my dear? It's not hard, if you know what you're doing. Your mother got what she deserved. But you... you could do wonders." She reached her hand into a velvet bag that hung from her wrist and pulled out a small silver flask. "I have potions to give you, so you won't make the mistakes your mother made."

With one more check of the hall clock, Amy opened the door and invited her visitor in.

*****

Three days later Xander watched as Cordy walked away across the floor of the Bronze with his silver heart pendant in her hand.

*****

In a warehouse across town Dru looked up from her cards, eyes unseeing. "There he is," she breathed.

Chapter 1