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pearlypairings · 3 months ago

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Soaps & Stakes in Sunnydale

spn x btvs crossover || spike & dean, buffy & sam || crack fic, bonding over soaps, canon-typical banter || 2k wc **inspired by a fandom chat with @queenbeedarling

The crypt smelled like black mold and the sickly sweet, coppery scent of old blood that a rare few individuals would recognize. In his line of work, he’d unfortunately come to know it well, and as Dean Winchester stepped inside the tomb, shotgun raised, he noted that pungent smell as a distinct sign he was in the right place.

His senses ran high, eyes drawn to the flickering shadows and the whirring of what looked like an old box fan in the corner of the stone room. The current case had led Dean and his brother, Sam, to investigate the locally notorious haunted cemetery in order to connect a pattern of unusual disappearances in Sunnydale, California.

After they split up, Dean clocked this crypt ten minutes into his search for disturbed soil, pagan altars, or othersure signs of the paranormal. Dirt and grass clippings were absent from the exterior of the door, unlike the other mausoleums and crypts he’d passed on his way; someone had passed through recently and he figured it was worth checking out.

His boots crunched against the stray pebbles on the dirt floor. The EMF reader clipped to his belt flickered weakly, more from the residue of overwhelming supernatural forces than any specific reading. Sunnydale was turning out to be the kind of place that practically begged to be torched, this crypt and its heebie jeebies was no exception.

But what stopped him wasn’t a demon lunging from the shadows or a ghostly scream. It was the glow of a battered old television perched atop a stack of milk crates, the volume being cranked up to eleven.

“Previously on Passions…”

Dean blinked. He was no virgin when it came to daytime stories. Soaps, telenovelas, medical dramas kept him company on the road, bored in motels with ten channels and nothing but time to kill until dusk. General Hospital and As the World Turns were addicting as hell from the dramatic slaps to the complex criminal cover-ups, but apparently this one had a levitating baby and a blind priest ranting about demons in the recap. If he didn't know any better, it was like it was ripped out of one of their own bizarre cases of the supernatural…

“Bloody hell, if you’re gonna shoot me, do it after the commercial break,” a voice drawled from the gloom.

What the hell?

Dean turned sharply behind a solid stone casket, shotgun aimed with precision, only to find the infamous Spike—platinum blonde hair, long black coat, sharp features—lounging in a ripped-up armchair like he owned the place. A chipped mug decorated one of his hands, sloshing about as he shifted in his seat. It was too dark to see its contents from this angle, but based on the coppery smell, he’d guess it was probably filled with blood. He didn’t even look up.

“You’re Spike,” Dean said flatly, stepping forward. “Vampire. Slayer pest. Used to kill people for fun. Heard about you from that chatty bartender who likes to deal drinks for demons.”

Spike smirked, raising his mug in a half-hearted toast, eyes still glued to the TV. “And let me guess, you’re Dean Winchester. Hunter. Drives a pretty car. Also, more than a fair bit of a wanker, according to some demons who’ve lived to tell the tale. You’re the talk of the town, you and your shaggier-looking brother are stirring things up ‘round Sunnydale.”

Dean bristled, finger twitching on the trigger.

“Alright, well, I don’t know what you’ve been told, but I’m not here for tea and gossip.”

Spike finally made eye contact, a glint of the blue light from the television shining. “Course not. You’re here to kill me, all righteous and half-cocked. But you’re about to miss the part where the witch curses the baby with eternal night unless the ghost of his dead uncle finds true love before sundown.”

Dean stared, slack-jawed, at the Mary-Poppins-chimney-sweep-talking vamp before him. “You’re kidding.”

“One thing you should know about me…I never joke about Passions.”

A beat passed. A woman screamed on screen, her commitment echoing a celebrity athlete's faithfulness to their college sweetheart. Standard soap theatrics and acting. Those actors and actresses were always looking for the next best thing beyond their daytime gig. Dean took a look at the show, catching a faulty, Hollywood-ruined pentagram burst into flames behind the older woman.

“I can’t believe you watch this,” Dean muttered, but he didn’t lower the shotgun. Though it was pretty useless against vamp, just a way to buy time to find your wooden stake.

“Oh, come on. You hunt demons, don’t you? This is basically your line of work, just with more bewitched comas and better eyeliner. Admit it—it’s got a certain charm.”

Dean’s jaw clenched. Another shriek came from the TV, and a stuffed doll suddenly turned its head and said something about “the reckoning.”

“Is the doll... alive?”

“Timmy? Yeah, he’s the best character. A thousand year old witch keeps the doll with her everywhere she goes. Little bugger’s got more soul than half the cast.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Against his better judgment, Dean took a step closer. Then another. Finally, with a curse under his breath, he sat down on a rickety crate, holding the shotgun loosely in his hands. He felt at the breast of his own leather jacket, confirming his trusty stake from Baby’s trunk was tucked there. The show had moved onto the next storyline: a young couple arguing over who slept with the concierge on their honeymoon. They were cursed by the concierge’s aunt, who happened to be into voodoo spells, apparently, since the couple complained about their unnatural bad luck since they returned home to Harmony.

“Ten minutes,” he warned. “Then I stake you.”

Spike grinned, fangs just barely showing. “Deal. But you’ll stay for the orangutan, the nurse with special powers.”

Dean grunted in disbelief. “Monkey nurse, huh…”

“There’s beer in the mini-fridge,” Spike said, leaning back into the ratty armchair.

They sat there in the dark of the crypt, homed in on the supernatural soap opera like it was the universe’s best kept secret. Dean finished two brews before the end of yesterday’s rerun, and he cracked open his third at the start of today’s new episode. Spike, his strange vampire combatant, had finished his mug of reheated blood and started in on a bag of microwave popcorn. Theater butter, he argued, was the only way to go.

Tabitha, the old bitty witch, was in the middle of her resurrection spell when a spotlight of sunshine pierced the cozy crypt, along with the friction of the stone door opening. Dean reluctantly went for his shotgun, turning away from the intense scene against his better judgment. The vampire he should have ganked by now took a defensive stance in front of the television, as if protecting it from whatever danger lurked at the only exit/entrance.

A petite blonde girl, barely beyond legal voting age, squared up like she was a goon from Fists of Fury. Her scrunched nose and narrowed gaze relaxed when she scanned the two men and the TV. Both hands dropped to her side, palms facing up out of exasperation.

“Okay, Spike. What the Hell?”

A taller figure emerged from the crack in the door, one Dean knew all too well. He moved to sit back down on the crate and watch the rest of the swirly whirly spell before the commercial break. Introductions and hand holding could wait.

“Can you keep this spat down? Tabby's about to go nuclear on the evil head honcho.”

“Are you seriously watching a soap opera... with a vampire?” Sam’s question verged on disappointment and incredulous simultaneously.

Spike took his place beside Dean, back in the chair, and the hunter opened a bottle of beer and passed it to the vampire without looking. Spike waved the intruders off. “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it, Little Winnie. Passions is television gold, it is.”

Feet shuffled behind them and the stream of light from the door disappeared when Sam and his new friend shut the crypt’s door with a loud scrape. Spike turned up the volume another 4 notches to compensate for the noise. Dean took a long sip of his beer, not wanting to deal with his brother’s constant complaints about his behavior as of late.

The girl showed up in front of the TV set first, crossing her arms and tilting her head at Spike.

“I thought you’d have done something stupid, like try to kill this hunter. But this? This feels soooo much ickier.”

“I thought you’d be happy that I’d waited to kill him. A show of patience, Buffy.”

“You’re supposed to be evil. Oooh William the Bloody, scary.” She put a hand on her hip like a mother scolding her impressionable teen that gave in to peer pressure. “How am I supposed to react to this? It’s usually the same song and dance of ‘Spike does something bad, Buffy catches him in the act, Buffy kicks his bony, vampy ass.’ Are you possessed or something?”

Spike shrugged, trying to peer around her slender frame. Sam strolled in from the other side of the chair and took his place as father scolding his other bratty kid, that annoying furrow stuck between his mangy eyebrows. He gave Dean a long, horrified look.

Dean gestured at the screen behind them, then back at Spike. “What? The show’s more evil than he is right now. I made a judgment call.”

Sam rubbed a hand over his face and sighed heavily. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“You could be mad at the goat ,” Spike suggested helpfully. “I’m still not convinced it’s not the Devil.”

“That’s not the Devil. I think it’s the priest. He talks too much. No one ever suspects the priest.”

“That’s devious…. I like the way you think, Dean.”

Sam watched on in disbelief, shaking his head. “Don’t you think our case of disappearances trumps a stupid show? Or aren’t you the least bit interested in the lore behind ‘The Slayer’? This is Buffy Summers, and she says she’s the current Slayer. There’s innocent people missing and we can team up to figure out how we can save them and kill the thing responsible.”

His focus shifted to the vampire on the couch. Dean returned his look with a “come on man” tilt of his head. There was no way Spike was responsible for a dozen kidnappings. He would've heard someone moaning or groaning by now if someone was trapped in that crypt.

“Hey man,” Spike said, wearing his offense on his face. “I’ll have you know I was a pretty Big Bad, but this soddin’ chip in my head has been really screwing that up for me. I’m clean as a whistle for the moment.”

Buffy closed in on the vamp, knocking him out of the chair and landing a hit beside his head and breaking the wooden post instead.

“You know who’s behind this, though, don’t you?”

Dean was torn between the show and watching this Buffy girl whoop some serious ass. It’d been a while since they’d met someone on the road who could surprise him, but Blondie had some serious skills in the hand to hand combat department.

“Yeah, Gerry from the bar said there’s a sphalynx demon collecting minions for his rejuvenation ritual. They like underground rivers, reminds ‘em of home.”

Spike didn’t flinch at being manhandled by a girl half his size. Must be commonplace for them to be doing this interrogation tango. Dean gulped down the rest of his beer in the meantime.

“Oh God, gross. You mean they’re in the sewers?” Buffy gagged, letting Spike go. “Sam, I think we can get access across the street from the Magic Box shop.”

“…Is that a talking doll with a knife?” Sam asked, focus distracted by what was on the screen.

Spike lit a cigarette and puffed clouds of smoke, replying through tight lips. “That’s Timmy. He’s complicated.”

Buffy groaned and turned on her heel. “I’m getting the calvary on task for ritual research. You boys can either be in and kick some ass or be out and watch your stories like a bunch of middle-aged moms.”

Dean raised his bottle, winking. “See you after the credits.”

*dividers by @strangergraphics

#supernatural x buffy the vampire slayer #supernatural #btvs #spike btvs #dean winchester #buffy summers #sam winchester #sunnydale setting #dean & spike bond over passions #banter #crack fic #spn x buffy fanfic #it's for fun!#and morale!#spn dividers

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