Fanfiction: He's The Light In Her Fridge

Bigfoot Poem

Faith always rattles the door first. Anything for a chance not to have to take off her gloves and fish for the icy cold key with her bare hands. But her luck’s out, and maybe so is Spike if the door’s locked. Her fingers are clumsy and stiff, and the itchy bored feeling doesn’t help. She really needs Spike to scratch the itch for her, but she already sort of knows he won�t be home. The empty rooms confirm this.

Okay. Faith peels off gloves, hat and scarf, and unzips her jacket, basking in the warmth of the little house. She isn’t taking the jacket off yet for some reason, and if she just waits it out the hunch’ll become clearer. She pauses in front the fridge, thinks of fixing herself a snack, flips on the TV, flips it off again. The restlessness is because of not getting in a good slay, and she should just plunk down on the couch and get some rest, but a deep uneasiness about Spike won�t let her.

Oh. The hunch is about Spike. She zones off, thinking about him, what she wants him to do to her right now, like give it to her straight with her legs in the air. With a shock she realizes she’s been standing stock still in the middle of the kitchen for at least five minutes, gnawing her knuckles all the while.

That settles it. She suits up again against the fiercely chilly Cleveland night air and heads off to his favorite sleazy dive. It’s not like with her mom, who had to be hauled home blind drunk nearly every evening, nothing like, Spike’s just hurting. He needs time to get over losing Buffy, and she’s damn well gonna give him that time. She’d better get his drunken grieving ass home. He can miss B. just as well in their nice bed together, with his sweet dick up her pussy, as he can on a barstool in some provincial wannabe biker bar.

It’s a hefty slog towards the bar, as their home is located for convenient closeness to cemeteries and local Hellmouths and not for nightlife accessibility. Faith is cold and her boots are wet and she’s so tired that she almost turns around. But she doesn�t, because taking care of Spike is still numero uno on her private list, and has been since the Sunnydale cave-in, or the “Sunny Dale of Death� as some newspaper coyly called it. He’s her lodestone, her thermometer, the light that went on when he opened the door of her freezer. As far as she’s concerned, defrosting is a permanent state now in Faith country. She wishes she were surer of what Spike was getting out of their being together. He fucks her long and hard and often, which she was kind of counting on, he holds her tightly in bed, which she’s getting used to, but for the rest, he doesn�t seem to be there so much anymore. He’s lost his taste for violence, and just slouches in front of the TV all day, drinking and smoking. He’s not a lush like her ma, of course, but it still worries her.

She hears the bar before she sees it, tinny disjointed strands of music flying on that fucking chill wind they’ve got going here. When she’s about a hundred yards from the sagging shed the locals call Stinky Ned’s, a macking couple lurches out of the door. The girl, a tiny brassy blonde, leans the guy against the dumpster and unbuttons his jeans, stripping him with practiced hands. The guy’s head is in shadow but Faith would know the big hands that come to rest unsteadily on the girl’s shoulders anywhere. She turns as cold inside as the Cleveland night. So that’s what he’s been up to.

She approaches softly, slowly, reluctant to witness this but unable not to.

Spike pushes the girl down in the snow, obviously expecting a blowjob. Faith suppresses a hysterical giggle when the girl slaps his hands away indignantly.

“Are you crazy? I’m not getting down in the slush with these pants! Your dick’s not worth a pair of pants! Come on, gimme a leg up!”

There’s a lot of stumbling and near falling, and Faith could almost find it funny, this little woman holding up her super strong helplessly drunk vampire, but it’s very unfunny because he’s hers. Or she thought he was. She inches closer, sick to her stomach but needing to see and hear it all.

The girl is standing on a pair of flimsy crates now, and pushing and pulling at Spike’s ass. Spike is shaking his head, mumbling something Faith can�t catch.

“That’s right, you big old stud,” the girl pants. “All the way in. They all said you were the best, and you sure have something big going for ya.”

Faith can’t believe she hasn�t bashed the damn woman to the other side of the parking lot yet. She must be insane, standing here listening to her guy fuck another woman. What’s he saying?

“It doesn�t burn. You’re not her. Are you the right woman for me?” Spike is saying.

Oh, is that so? His hips are moving all by themselves, then, huh? Faith’s had enough. She’s going to walk away and when Spike comes home, she’ll be gone. Cut her losses. He never loved her, obviously. People who love you don�t fuck other people.

The girl moans. Spike moans. He pushes himself away from the girl and fall ass-backwards in the not quite solid slush. The girl tumbles down from her crates as well. Still Faith’s boots seem frozen to the lot.

“Who are you?” Spike says dazedly. “Go away. You’re not her.”

Faith is walking towards him before she realizes she’s going to. Good thing too, because the angry slut is starting to kick her Spike, and Faith really hates that. If someone gonna be whaling on Spike it’s her, not five foot tall fake blondes in pink stretch polyester.

God. Spike looks beautiful, even lying in the snow on his bare ass with his jeans to his knees and his shirt around his ears. His hair looks very yellow against the snow’s dirty grey. She can feel something inside her twitch at the sight of his cock, which is stupid enough to keep standing straight up in the freezing air.

She hauls the chick up by the scruff of her neck and tells her to get the hell way from her man.

“What you want that jerk for, honey?” the bitch yells back, trying to get her ugly pink pants over her puckered blue butt. “He’s been doing half the town!”

Faith wouldn’t really care, normally. People get itchy sometimes, no harm in scratching it. He can have his fun if he needs to, as long as she knows he’s hers. Which she doesn’t, so yeah, this does hurt.

Spike looks at her as if he’s gonna puke. Faith doesn�t think vampires do that. She gets him to his feet, stuffs his dick back into his pants, which isn�t easy, as the damn thing won�t go down. It makes Spike giggle. She doesn’t slap him, which should get her major Brownie points. Vampires don�t feel the cold, but she puts his clothes back to rights anyway. She’s the one that’s gonna suffer from a block of vampire ice in her bed, and she wants to minimize the warming up time.

She spots his stupid bike, and finds the key in his pocket. The way back seems to take even longer than when she was walking up here, which can’t be true, but then she’s being very careful not to slip. Don’t wanna break the precious vampire.

She pushes Spike in the direction of the front door. She puts on the lock, gets out the bike’s cover from the shed and yanks it over it. When she’s done she stomps to the front door, pissing mad all over again because of all these little responsible tasks, which aren’t like her, but which she does for him. Spike’s still standing outside.

Stubborn drunk idiot. Faith pushes him inside, straight toward the bedroom, strips him off and tumbles him in bed, not saying a word. All she wants is to sleep, she thinks, while struggling out of her own cold stiff jeans and boots, but the block of ice lying next to her will make that impossible. She needs to get an electric blanket or something.

She crawls in, in no mood to make nice. Spike’s apparently oblivious to all this because he snuggles up to her with a satisfied grunt, all five foot ten of him stone cold and reeking of beer. Faith holds herself stiffly, not pushing her ass in his groin the way he likes. She’s so not getting any sleep tonight.

When Faith wakes the whole bedroom is lit with an eerie soft grey light, and she can hardly hear the highway traffic zooming past. In bed all is warm and comfy and silky skin against hers, and she feels pure bliss for about a whole second before memory kicks in. She peels off the vampire limpet roughly and sits up with a jerk.

Spike half wakes up, fuzzily grabbing after his living hot water bottle, and then slowly becomes fully awake, no doubt sped up by her furious glare.

“Oh,” he says guiltily.

“Yeah, oh!” Faith snarls back. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

Spike looks very remorseful. “I was drunk?”

“I don�t mean that. Why d’you get drunk alone?”

As soon as she’s asked that Faith realizes the answer. She draws her knees to her chest and clasps them tightly. “You think I don’t know you�re still thinking of Buffy?”

“Faith, I’m�You�re the sweetest thing ever happened to me. But I’m no shining hero. I’m evil. I’m a bad boyfriend.”

Faith knows her eyes are filling up and she turns her head away to stare at the windows. She’d forgotten to pull the drapes last night and she has a full view of the white flakes that are twirling down. Great. Snow. The California bunnies would love it, but she much prefers to be warm. Damn Cleveland. Why didn�t she leave last night? She could have been on a bus heading south right now, instead of letting her guy break her like glass with his sad blue eyes. She’s been broken before, but always out of sight of people she cares about. And she was right; this hurts more than being alone.

Besides, Spike’s lying. He’s not good at that, so he shouldn’t even try. He thinks she wants him to be over Buffy and forget about damn B. already.

“I think you�re the perfect boyfriend,” she says, her voice muffled in her arms. “I just don�t know why you want to hide from me. I know you still love Buffy, that you don�t love me. It’s okay.”

Spike doesn�t speak, just slides up to her from behind and puts his arms around her. He kisses her neck softly, just at the nape, one of her favorite spots to be kissed on. That’s sweet, and when he gently uncoils her from her tight huddle, and makes love to her, it�s very nice. Or even fucking brilliant, actually, because they are amazing together, always. But she just wishes he’d say he loved her sometimes. She wishes he didn�t lie so badly, so she could pretend it was true.

He nips at the place where neck and shoulder join and Faith can�t help arching her back. He makes a small growly sound and, okay, she’s made from KY jelly and just slides around him. She can’t help it, he’s so fuckable. They�re like these little obscene magnet figures; if the distance is small enough they will just click together and fuse. Faith rolls onto her back and makes Spike do most of the work, her new secret joy. He’s the only guy she’s ever met she can count on to look after her pleasure. There’s just this edge of scariness and bad memories about it to make it zing for her. She hoists up her knees as far as she can and grabs his velvet ass. Harder. He’s being mean about it and taking his time, which she know will make it better in the end, but right now she’s short attention span girl and wants it pronto. Not as if he can’t do seconds, or gazillions even. She squeezes her Slayer muscles and sees him close his eyes and his stomach muscles quiver for a moment. When his eyes are open again they’re a darker blue that burn holes in her soul just by looking.

After, Faith is sprawled out on her back, still faintly tingling, while Spike traces poems on her breasts, murmuring them into her neck. The words sound so pretty but she can never remember them. If she could she’d speak poetry back to him, but she doesn’t have the words to capture his prettiness and the feel of his skin or the way he smells of himself and strip caps and hot metal.

Cleveland weather is like Spike’s mood, wet snow and wintry cold one day, back to fall the next. He’s not exactly stopped moping and drinking, but at least he does it in her company, and has even been known to come with on patrol. Right now, Faith’s lower half is enjoying the brief return of good weather on the porch of their house. Faith sits on the ancient swing seat, her bare legs nicely warmed by the slanty rays of the late fall sun, with Spike behind her, playing with the parts of her body the sun can’t reach. He’s mostly an ass kind of guy, but as the sun is claiming it for now, he satisfies himself with her breasts.

“Woohoo!” the train yells as it screeches past on its way to Chicago. “Woohoo!”

“This is a good place, you know,” Faith remarks. “If you need to leave in a hurry, you could hop on a train to anywhere.”

“Not leaving,” Spike says.

“Yeah, well, but if you wanted to you could. No need to feel cooped up.”

“Why are we talking about leaving? Our work is here. We guard the Hellmouth.” Spike is getting irritated.

“I want you to feel free-“

Spike jumps up, depositing her upside down on the swing seat. “I don�t want to feel free! Why the hell d’you think I would I leave you? I was with Drusilla for a hundred years!”

“You left Buffy!”

Spike shrivels like a punctured balloon and collapses on the seat. “Yeah. Well.”

Faith needs to make him feel better. “Hey, my bad. You didn’t really, Buffy gave you to me. She wanted me to take care of you.”

Spike explodes off the seat again and is standing over her in game face before she can even blink. Good guess would be she just made it worse.

“What the fuck? She fucking gave me away like a sodding present? What is it with you bitches? Can’t you leave me alone to decide my own fate?”

The door slams. A flake of paint drifts slowly down from the porch ceiling, landing at Faith’s feet. Oops.

Faith knows she should leave Spike alone, but it’s getting colder so she goes in anyway. The moment she enters the kitchen, Spike leaves it. She can hear him stomp up and down the wooden boards outside. What can she say to him to make things better? If she goes back on the porch, he�ll just go back inside again. She compromises by opening a window and staying silent. She smokes a cigarette, belly firmly wedged against the radiator, upper half hanging out of the porch window. This way she can keep an eye on her angry vampire, who’s pacing up and down the length of their porch as if he wants to make a groove in it. If he were Bugs Bunny, the planks would be on fire by now. He’s smoking moodily and flicking the ashes in the direction of the sun, which is taking its fucking time about setting out here. Unlike in California, where night slams down like a blackout shade, the sun is doing very much a fade-out thing, like an aging jazz-singer who doesn�t know when to stop. He’s on his third cigarette by now, and when Spike has decided he needs to go out and can’t, it makes him cranky.

Faith loves watching the slideshow of emotions on Spike’s face. They should use him for those Special Ed classes for difficult kids, where the teachers think that kids don�t know about emotions and need help to identify them. Faith remembers them with active hatred. She and her peers � because they sure weren’t friends- really didn�t need help to identify anger or disgust. Please. That’s the only emotion they saw around them most of the time. They should have shown love, approval, and amusement, maybe, so they’d recognize them when they saw them. Faith could use some help in identifying some of the things she sees on Spike’s face. Is it love when he looks at her with a half smile and a tilt of his head? Or is it indulgence, like you’d show a bouncy but clueless kid?

The sun reluctantly pulls in her fat ass behind the horizon and it’s as if the temperature drops fifteen degrees. Faith has to admit that fall here is pretty, but she could do without the cold. If she manages to hang onto a job for more than one day, she’s going to buy some clothes, because her Sunnydale tops aren�t pulling their weight around here.

Spike, predictable for once, flicks his cigarette butt away, jumps over the porch railing and heads towards his bike. He’s back within the hour. Faith, who�s been not watching the busy TV, a blanket tightly wound around her body, lets out a breath and loosens her cocoon. Thank God there isn�t going to be a repeat of the dragging Spike out of bars thing, because that was really getting to her. Spike comes in. He closes the drapes and lights the dozens of candles, something Faith always forgets, without saying a word. He plops down next to her and roughly pushes her face into his neck. Faith hugs back hard. Spike looks at her, breathes out with a puff and puts his forehead against hers.

“Mine,” he says against her lips.

“Yours,” Faith agrees.

Normal TV-watching and making out activities resume. Faith tries to gauge why she feels better than before. Because he returned? Maybe, but more likely because he got mad and blew up, like he used to. Yeah. Pissed off is alive, withdrawn is dead inside. He’s dead enough already.

The moment Faith steps outside she knows this evening will be different. The chill November air is awash with strange wispy scents that spell magic to her. Demons. She tries to walk fast through the thick layer of snow, but although her new fur boots keep her feet warm and dry, they don�t give her speed. Spike says they make her look like the Sasquatch, which Faith cheerfully ignores.

“Ever fucked one?” she asks.

Spike has to admit he hasn’t.

“I rest my case,” Faith says.

The boots make big round tracks. The fresh air, on the edge of sunset, is making her giddy, and she has some fun writing “Faith loves Spike” in the snow, jumping like a maniac to keep the words clear of her tracks. When she’s done, the last rays of a garish purple twilight make the snow gleam lilac, and the holes she made in it seem black. It probably looks really nice from the top of a tree. Sasquatches have bad handwriting, which is way too huge for ordinary human beings to read. Maybe Spike could fly over it in his bat-shape and be struck by a sudden bolt of love. But no, Star Trek reruns were more appealing than patrol with Faith. No progress on the love front. Maybe Quark will teach Spike about true love. Probably not.

Faith sighs and moves on to Restfield Cemetery. Jeez, is there a Restfield in every fucking town in the U.S.? No need to win over the customers with inventive names, she guesses. The scent of demons is stronger here. It is nice that the cemeteries here are well lit; she spots them from afar, three greeny blue shapes huddling over a grave. This is going to be fun. Cleveland Hellmouth, located in one of the less wealthy suburbs, has shown a disappointing lack of activity so far. Maybe this is it. Faith is very much in the mood to kick some demon ass, because her demon asshole at home is still trying out the stiff upper lip thingy, which anyone could tell you is a bad trait in boyfriends.

Faith hurls herself at the first demon, who’s been dumb enough to take point. As the fluffy boots hit him smack in the middle she hears a satisfying crunch of bone. One down. She rolls on her back, flips up and is ready for the next one. This is really hitting the sweet spot. How nice of these demons to be here just when she really needs to vent some frustrations. She hollers out a premature victory yell when she mashes her hands through an eye and straight into mushy demon brain. Three down. It’s premature, because there is suddenly another blue green brother connecting his giant fist with her nose. She flies over the tomb and lands badly.

Fuck, she thinks. There were four. My bad. She doesn�t think she can flip up, so she crawls up and just manages to be standing when the two demons storm her. Two? What the fuck? She hears a rustling from behind and there’re three more. This is not good. Faith whirls around and discovers she’s miscounted again. Seven. A sneaky feeling crawls up from her stomach to her throat. This must be what fear feels like, she thinks distantly, before concentrating hard on staying on her feet and staying alive. But really, the odds are so much against her that there’s no point in even fighting. A kick lands in her back, shooting fire straight up into her skull and she smashes hard with her face in the snow. Snow, for all its fluffy whiteness, is nasty and gritty when you fall in it. She thinks of getting up and killing another couple of demons, but that�s as far as she gets. Her body is not cooperating with these plucky scrappy thoughts and goes on strike.

The demons are talking amongst themselves while they turn her over and start opening her up. It seems they all want the privilege of killing her. One of them is even from England. Who knew there could be British demons? She can tease Spike with it when she gets back. Oh. She won�t, she realizes. Well, Spike won�t miss her too much. Now he can grieve over Buffy and drink himself to death in peace. And fuck the rest of the female population of Cleveland.

Tears pool from her eyes and freeze her lashes to the snow, so she must be lying on her belly again. She’s feeling very sorry for that girl lying brokenly in the snow. All alone. Unloved. In a circle around her are the green motionless bodies of giant dead demons. A black shape is picking his way around them. Ah, that must be the boyfriend, who came galloping in to kill the demons and rescue the heroine. She hopes he’ll feel sad over the girl, but you never know. She doesn�t look like a girl who deserves to be loved. She is small and unworthy, lying face down in the snow, wearing these really ugly hairy snow boots.

“Faith! My Faith…please wake up. Please don�t be dead.”

Saying please is enough to make people return from the dead? Not likely. Faith scoffs at please. He’s really gonna need some bigger guns to do that. Magic maybe.

“Please, Faith. I know I shouldn�t have loved you so soon, but I just can’t hold on to her memory. And she didn�t love me anyway.”

“Yes, she did,” Faith says, but she doesn’t want to open her eyes yet.

There’s a very unmanly gasp from the demon asshole right above her. There’s a warm feeling spreading in her middle. Happiness, Faith thinks, but checks anyway with her hands, because of the eyes not opening thing. Shit. It’s warm and wet. No happiness for Faith of course. She remembers this from movies. The hero confesses his love too late, or when the heroine’s just been killed trying to fend off the wolves who wanted to eat the baby. No, that’s not right. That was a dog, and the prince accidentally killed it. Spike would never kill her. He might see her die though if he doesn’t get her to a hospital soon.

Her eyes still won�t open. She can feel he’s carrying her, which is mucho nice. It makes her feel like a princess. It�s a bit like cheating, though. Deathbed confessions and such. She has to tell him that she loves him, just before she dies, in case she hasn�t. That way he would hold on to her memory and grieve over her forever.

“I love you, Spike.”

“I know, sweetheart. And the Sasquatch lady does too. She wrote it in the snow for me with her sodding big feet. A Bigfoot poem.”

Faith tries to laugh. It gurgles weirdly in the wrong place.

His voice sounds off. Very hoarse. She shouldn’t have made him go out in this weather, he’s gonna catch a cold. She’s a bad girlfriend. If she could open her eyes Spike would probably look really beautiful right now.

He reads her mind. A soft warm cloth trails gently over her lashes, unfreezing them. Faith opens one eye. Spike licks off her frozen tears with his lips, which are bright pink with cold, and looks at her with an emotion that makes her so gooey inside that she shuts her eyes again hastily. She doesn�t want to cry. She doesn�t think heaving sobs are going to do any good to those bits of her she saw hanging out just now.

From between her lashes she can see the moon shine on Spike’s face and she’s very glad to have something so beautiful to look at in her last moments. Maybe she’ll see Buffy in heaven and they can compare notes. I had him last, she thinks.

She’s warmer now. She hears murmurs and she wishes Spike wouldn�t jostle and prick her so hard. She feels two Spike hands on hers, and the pricking and hurting still goes on. The snow comes up to meet her, marshmallow soft this time, like snow should be, and that’s it then.

When Faith wakes up she feels really crappy. It�s too hard to even open her eyes. Frozen shut again, she guesses. Maybe Spike would lick them open again if she asked, but it’s still systems down. It feels as if someone is holding her hand. Perhaps she could wiggle her pinkie a little? She’s rewarded with what distinctly feels like a kiss on that same hand, and a voice murmuring something soft in her ear. She can’t make out the words, but it definitely has a British accent. Faith decides that this is enough exercise for the day and drifts off again, feeling very satisfied.

When she wakes up again she’s in a hospital and Spike’s sleeping in a chair next to her bed. His face is all lopsided from leaning on his hand, and he has terrible hair. Popcorn hair is what Faith calls it, all pale yellow exploded curl-shapes on his head.

She moves her head, and it works, even if the room goes all smeary like an overexposed action photo. Maybe she should try sitting up. She can’t, but it does wake Spike. He looks all rumpled and dazed, and he tilts his head at her so sweetly.

“Popcorn head,” Faith says in a scratchy voice.

“Butter me, salt me, eat me,” Spike says.

His voice is not up to its usual grade of chocolate either. Maybe a muesli bar, with lots of hard bits and gritty grains. She would eat him. Later, when she can move more than just her head.

“I fucked up,” Spike mutters against her hand.

“Which fuck-up do you mean exactly?” Faith asks unthinkingly and it hurts to see him flinch and bow his head. “I didn�t mean you fuck up a lot! I mean, the fight or the Buffy-shaped bitch in the bar?”

He opens his mouth and closes it again, looks down at his hands. Clears his throat. “Well. Both. And everything. I should have been there for you. I should bloody well remember, you know, as I called it originally. A Slayer needs a family and friends to beat the odds.”

Faith is ashamed. “I don�t have a family,” she whispers.

Spike shakes his head. “Rupert sent you here on your own. Shouldn�t have taken it. Should’ve held out for a witch and some extra muscle.”

Faith’s chin wobbles. “I thought you were going to be my muscle,” she says. She can barely squeeze out the sound past the lump in her throat.

Spike wriggles his body as close as he can through the tangle of red and white tubes and puts his cheek next to hers. “I’m not leaving you, my sweet� Gonna stick to you like a burr.”

“What’s a burr?”

“City girl! It’s a seed, like living Velcro.”

“Yeah,” Faith agrees sleepily. “We’re gonna stick together like Velcro. Are you the soft or the prickly side?”

“We’ll take turns, my little thorny one.”

Spike’s love is a little like a radiator. White and hard and ridged to the touch, but it keeps her warm like nothing else does.

Friends

Faith opens her mouth widely so she can put on her black stripe of eyeliner without blinking. Her reflection in the mirror looks pale, greenish even. She hopes it is because of the puke green paint on the bathroom door. Her invisible companion, who has decided he needs to be in the tiny bathroom at the same time as she to put in thick gobs of hair gel, jostles her arm. And how weird is it that Spike’s invisibility in the mirror has affected the tube of gel he’s holding?

“Hey!” she snaps. “Watch the arm!”

Now she looks like Crybaby. Kinda cool, but not for tonight. She sees a Q-tip floating towards her in the mirror. She snatches it out of the air and grunts a thank-you.

The council pays them both a small salary, a stipend as they call it, Faith for being the Slayer and Spike for acting as Watcher-In-Training. It doesn’t stretch to houses with big bathrooms or attractive interior decorating, even out here in the middle of nowhere, a.k.a. a suburb of Cleveland. At least Giles pays for full medical, which is more important for a Slayer than a swanky apartment.

Faith finishes her Egyptian left eye and goes on to the right. It’s always difficult to make it exactly the same, so she concentrates hard and ignores Spike’s mutterings. He thinks she should get on with it already.

She gets out her lipstick and paints her mouth, bites a tissue, powders, paints it again. The Faith in the mirror still looks pale. Slayer healing should get its butt in gear, all her other wounds have healed up, although there are still big red zippers all over her belly. She hopes they will fade in time, even if Spike admires them and licks them regularly. He thinks battle scars are sexy. Anyway, that’s what he says.

Rouge. She needs rouge for that healthy all-American glow. As she applies the color, she suddenly thinks that maybe, for Cleveland standards, she has overdone the eyeliner a little. Then again, she has seen what goes for fashion on her few forays into the glittering nightlife of Ohio, and she is sort of sure big hair went out of style when Dallas went off the air.

“Do my eyes, too?” demands Spike.

Faith pictures a raccoon-eyed Spike besieged by the local talent.

“I think you are pretty enough without it,” she says, capping the lipstick tube. “You look like the dude that crashed out of heaven coz he pissed off God.”

The son of the morning snorts and thrusts out his full lower lip. Faith would like to suck on it, but sticks to tweaking his ass, so as not to smudge the lipstick. It’s a really nice color called Deadly Nightshade, courtesy of Sunnydale Wal-Mart. It’s nearly gone, she notices regretfully.

The beauty session is finished. She twirls around for Spike. “You think I look nice? Nice enough to make friends?”

Their mission tonight is to make friends, or meet potential friends, and possibly even witches or friendly demons. After Faith’s close encounter with Untimely Demise Spike has decided he hasn’t taken his Watcherly duties seriously enough and that she needs a team to survive. Faith is afraid she won’t make any, because she never has before. Except Buffy, and look how that ended.

Spike looks at her, chewing on his lip. “You look gorgeous. So do I. But do we look friendly and approachable, that’s the question�”

Faith looks down at her purple corset top and black leather pants. Spike is in dark purple and black as well. The only female member of the Cleveland population whose clothes she’s paid any attention to wore tight pink stretch polyester, and the guys plaid shirts and beards. She’s already doubtful about their friend-finding mission, and this clothes crisis is not helping. She thinks about changing into her ripped blue jeans and a T-shirt of Spike’s, to hide her corset and what’s in it. No, they’ll have to take her as she is.

They go through the rules once more. There will be smiling. Alcohol will not be consumed. They will pretend not to smoke. They won’t mention vampires, Slaying, magic or sex.

“But how will we know if people want to be our Scoobies if we don’t mention these things?” Faith argues as Spike settles behind her on the bike.

He wraps his arms around her securely, which Faith still thinks is very romantic, she and her man on the bike.

“The books say you should look friendly, laugh a lot and your body language should be open,” Spike says.

Spike and his new passion for How-to books. Faith has acquired the habit of making detours around the colorful heaps of paperbacks on the coffee table, Tai Chi, working out, Jane Fonda, top sport, etc. He’s started taking this watcher thing really seriously and is determined to get her in peak condition. Faith doesn�t mind the training thing, she’s always enjoyed pushing her own limits, but the food obsession is worrisome. He watches her eat now and forces pills down her throat. Apparently the doctor at the hospital, when she was wounded, told Spike that she was a little undernourished. Faith thinks she looks as good as ever, but it seems to be some blood thing. A vamp would have an affinity for that, she supposes.

So. Open. “Legs open?”

“It’s not literal,” Spike explains, punctuating the words with an impatient jab in her ribs. Faith can feel his eyes roll behind her back. She likes to aggravate him because he’s so cute when he gets wound up, all wildly disordered hair and waving arms.

“How did you make friends before?” Faith asks.

Spike shrugs. “Play pool, get pissed, beat each other up, drink someone together. You know.”

Faith sighs. “I’d go for that, except the last part. So would demons, I expect. But I meant, how did you do it when you were human?”

Spike’s face falls. “I didn’t have any.”

Faith is faintly disappointed. She has always imagined Spike as one of these swanky heroes on a horse, waving his sword and rescuing maidens, like people did in the past. He has kinda rescued her, after all, even if she’s no Buttercup.

Faith roars off on her gleaming black steed to the first bar. It’s actually an English pub, called the Green Man. Faith has picked it out because of its name, which sounds kind of demony. Spike slips his hand under her jacket and squeezes her breast, which almost makes her swerve off the road. Faith whoops with glee, and they have a great time on the slippery roads, Spike’s icy hands wandering everywhere and letting in winds that bear greetings from the north pole, Faith writing crazy black words on the gray tarmac to get him off her pillion seat.

They leave the black and white road to continue on its own and enter the orderly world of color coordinated parking lots. Their destination beckons to customers with a smiling chartreuse electric guy blinking on and off. The crowd inside couldn’t be more different from Stinky Ned’s. The people are a sea of ice cream shades and sip clear colored drinks from blue bottles with their hungry pastel mouths. Faith thinks she looks like an inkblot on the fancy carpet and checks if she drips black stains. The flowered carpet under the thick soles of her boots cringes but doesn’t change color.

She swaggers over to the slab of gleaming cherry stretching into infinity and plunks herself down on the plump leather of a stool shaped like a pistachio green tampon. She sits with her back to the bar, legs open like Spike said. She can feel the bartender ooze up behind her, coldly swishing a wet cloth around her bare elbows.

“Two tequilas,” she orders without looking at him.

Spike comes up to her, a big smirk on his face. “Lovely place, pet. What made you pick it?”

Faith shrugs. “The name? Kinda demon-friendly.”

“Uh-huh,” Spike says.

Their drinks arrive. They’ve both licked, tossed and sucked before Faith remembers The Rules.

“Fuck! Spike, we drank. Now what?”

Spike doesn’t answer; he grins his sexy grin at someone behind her back. Faith turns. It’s a sleek middle-aged person in a pink dress shirt with a collar like John Travolta. He smiles at them with lots of very white even teeth and Faith bares hers in an instinctive threat.

“I can see you are an adventurous couple,” the guy starts out. “Hi, I’m Jaye. And you are?”

“Not interested,” Faith cuts in, because she doesn�t like the gleam in Spike’s eye.

Jaye hesitates, dancing a little on his tasseled loafers, alternating inviting looks at Spike with hungry forays into her cleavage until he gets that Faith calls the shots and leaves with a sigh.

“Let me tell you, pet, that slagging people off is not going to make us friends.”

Faith rolls her eyes. “Baby, believe me, that guy is not prime friend material. He just wanted us for a threesome or something, or to join him and the wifey. That is so not what we’re here for.”

Spike looks unconvinced. “So?”

“Would you have done him in the old days? You and your vampire Mom?”

Spike makes a face. “Dru? We’d have eaten them, yeah.”

“Let’s split, Spike. People who make good food probably don�t make good friends.”

“Faith, all human beings make good food. We need to be a bit more selective now.”

Three bars later, they’re still being very selective. Everybody who’s approached them wants either to fight Spike or fuck Faith or both. And the other way around in a nightclub called The Pink Zone. Making friends on purpose is hard. How did Buffy do this? Spike suggests taking up a hobby, or night classes for bonding over homework, but going back to school is the last thing Faith’s prepared to do.

“Let�s just go back to Stinky Ned’s and play pool,” she suggests.

In Stinky Ned’s there is really no point in sticking to the ‘no smoking’ rule. No one would notice, and they might die from instant nicotine poisoning if they don�t spread some protective smoke around themselves. There’s a deep beat underneath the music Ned plays, and the pool table beckons. Faith starts to feel more herself. This is her kind of place, where there is the spice of real desperation underneath the bluegrass music and the rough talk. There could be dancing, or fighting, she doesn�t really care which. Spike’s swagger broadens and he stares back hard at the men who swivel their heads slowly around to check out the newcomers. They’ve been here before, but they’re not exactly regulars yet. Ned behind the bar nods at Spike and taps a beer for them. It’s a cheap brand, but it tastes the better for all the ridiculous waters and Diet Cokes they’ve swilled, which are giving Faith a sugar high and bellyache.

The pool table is empty and Faith challenges Spike to a game. She’s feeling lucky tonight. When she’s chalking the tip of her cue, a new bartender comes in and replaces Ned. There’s something familiar about him, but Faith doesn�t know exactly what.

Halfway through the game � she’s losing - a song she likes comes on and Faith starts moving to the beat. She’s the only woman dancing on her own, but what does she care? Most of the men in the room look at her with eyes that would like to touch and grope but Faith isn’t bothered. She’s really dancing for Spike.

From the corners of her eyes, Faith sees Spike circle the dance floor, or whatever you would call the small open space between the bar and the pool table if you were being kind to Ned. His eyes are focused on her face, never wavering or breaking contact. Faith turns her body like a passion-flower following the sun, keeping her face towards Spike as he walks slowly and deliberately through the crowded bar. It’s as if he’s attached a cord from his heart to hers, never slackening the tension that stretches tautly between them. Her heartbeat speeds up and her breathing becomes deeper. It’s foreplay, and he isn’t even touching her. He is claiming her though, very publicly telling the other guys in the bar that she’s his, something she would never have thought she’d let a guy do to her, but with Spike everything’s different. Every inch of her is his, not only all the pieces other guys want, but her heart and guts as well.

The throbbing rock music fades out and changes to a slow twanging number. Faith stops dancing, ready to return to her beer, but Spike is walking towards her, clearly intending to dance. She stands still and waits for him. He puts his arms around her and they fit together like groove and tongue, as always. His knees just above hers, her hipbone below his. Faith buries her face in his neck, unable to keep from giving him a quick hungry nibble on his scar. She feels him hardening against her as they slowly sway to the music’s nasal complaining, ‘Stand by your man’. Her mom used to listen to this until the record had turned grey, and the memory of her Mom’s scent of hairspray and old smoke mixes oddly with the present. Oh yes, she will stand by her man, vamp or not, until what? Until she dies, she guesses, killed in the line of duty. It’ll be a good couple of years, if she’s that lucky. Maybe she’ll have seven, like Buffy, maybe less. As long as Spike is with her, she’ll go at life full tilt. He makes her give everything.

When the music stops Spike walks her to the bar and hoists her up on a stool, slipping in between her legs. Faith feels the roughness of Ned’s bar top under her bare elbows, so different from the smoothness in the downtown bar. She much prefers it here. Spike runs his fingers up and down her leather-clad thighs. Faith lets her head fall back and closes her eyes. She doesn’t need sight to feel this. Her Slayer antennae send strong danger signals of Beware, Vampire! down her spine, Spike’s fingers set off an upward trail of sparks and they meet in a dazzling burst of fireworks halfway.

Dimly through the light show a half-familiar voice says, “Your usual, Spike?” and two shot glasses and a bottle of JD materialize near the trailing ends of her hair on the bar.

Spike’s hands freeze. “Willy? Thought you went down with Sunnydale�”

Willy’s little half whine, half laugh. “Us other citizens got out in time, Spike. Hard to miss the portents. Bought myself a sweet portion of old Ned’s here, he’s retiring soon. Business gonna be looking up, they say.”

Faith lifts her head and checks Willy out. He’s the same weasely guy with the fake smile and the voice from Little Italy.

“Hi,” she says.

Willy’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down. “Hey, Slayer,” he answers without enthusiasm. “I thought you were, um, out of the game?”

So, even the demons know about the Slayer in prison. Faith shrugs. “I’m here, ain’t I?”

Willy nods and turns away. Spike pours them each a shot. Faith can see him think, his eyes don’t see her anymore. It’s a Giles look, a Watcher look, seeking advantage and weighing options. She really doesn�t want to see it on her lover’s face. She grabs his belt and yanks him close, bites his Drusilla scar again.

“Home, James,” she growls in his neck.

His fingers dig into her upper arms with satisfying intensity. He calls to Willy to put up a tab for him and they leave. Spike keeps a light hold on the back of her neck when they walk out, so there’s no single moment he’s not touching her. When they’re home and she’s riding him, moonlight streaming though the window so that Spike is made of pale blue ice, Faith thinks fleetingly of their mission. But who needs friends when there is the perfect lover filling you up to the farthest corners of your mind and body with his cock and his eyes and his love?

When Faith gets home, there is a perky little ladybug on wheels in their driveway. Its red paint gleams with exaggerated cheerfulness in the grey December air and only the black spots are missing. Faith goes in the house ass first, arms full of shopping, and when she turns around, a creature that looks like a pink marshmallow man after extensive liposuction pops its head out of the fridge. It has two of her beers in its dewlapped hand.

“Hi!” it says in a cheery tone. “You must be Faith!”

Faith attempts to slay him with her grocery bags, but as they are full of toilet paper and fat free snacks, this has very little effect.

“Oh! Hey!” the creature chuckles. “You seem really tense. I know we’ve never met before, but Spike and I go way back. Clem? Clement? Ring a bell?”

Faith hollers “Spike!”, and the guilty party comes ambling out of the living room, exuding mellowness and beery breath.

“You two never met? Faith, this is Clem, Clem this is Faith.”

“We got that far, honey bun,” Faith says between clenched teeth. “But what is Clem?”

Spike shrugs. “A friend, and as it happens, a demon.”

“So?”

“Well, I got out of Sunnydale in time, as you might have guessed because I’m here,” Clem says chattily, “and then I finally made that grand tour I’d been promising myself, and looked up some relatives. And then I said to myself, let’s visit my pal Spike. I found that sweet little witch, what’s her name? Like Beech or Juniper or-“

“Willow,” Faith supplies impatiently.

“Willow! That’s it. Sweet girl. Except that one time, of course. Anyway, she knew your address, and hey presto, here I am!”

Spike walks up to Faith and puts his arm around her in that neck-crunching way guys think girls like. “Faith and I were just thinking we needed people to flesh out our team. Because a lonely Slayer is a vulnerable Slayer, right?”

“Really? Another�I mean, you’re a Slayer? How interesting.” Clem takes a few steps backwards. “And what is your position on demons? Because Buffy and me, we had an understanding. I didn’t bother her, she didn’t bother me.”

How the hell is this floppy-eared bumbling thing going to help a Slayer and a Vampire? But then Faith thinks of Xander, and what he did for the Scoobs. Maybe this Clem could get donuts and repair stuff. If he isn’t, like, evil.

Spike reads her mind and says, “Clem here knows just about everybody in demon country, don�t you Clem? And if not, you know their brothers or best friends! He could keep his ears to the ground and we’d be informed of everything that goes down.”

Keep his ears to the ground and sweep up the dirt, more likely. Huh. Faith gets a heavy draggy feeling in her stomach. Demons and people are gonna come over and see her house. Sit on her couch. She looks at her living room, and for the first time sees that its cozy homey feel might be interpreted as fug-ugly and full of junk. Wow. They’ve never even vacuumed since they came here. The curtains are always closed and magazines and food wrappers give the drab room many uncoordinated touches of color. At night, when the candles are the only illumination, scattering little wavering pools of glowing orange, and she and Spike are smooching on the couch, she doesn’t notice that stuff so much but suddenly she sees it as Clem might. Candle-wax everywhere. The cleanest and brightest things in the room are the shiny blue sex toys spilling out of a bag. The closed pizza box on the TV with a date and time from three weeks ago stamped on it is whiter than the walls. If B.’s Mom saw this room she wouldn’t even step inside.

Where have her prison dreams of a pretty, clean house gone? Okay, they didn’t often go further than her getting off her bike, shaking her long shiny hair loose from her helmet and entering a vaguely sketched in white house, a twin of 1630 Revello Drive, but gleaming wood and fresh flowers were definitely co-starring somewhere in there. All she has been thinking about these past months is Spike, sex with Spike and Slaying.

“Gosh!” Clem says, trying to sweep some magazines off the couch, and discovering take-out boxes underneath. “It does have that lived-in look, doesn�t it? Not like your crypt at all, Spike, except the candles.”

Oh. Faith-less Spike was neat. She’d always pictured his crypt looking like Buffy’s basement, bare and dusty and smelling like the pipes had burst some time not too long ago.

Spike comes up to her and puts a cold hand on her back, rubbing it apologetically.

“I’ve been making a real mess of things,” he tells Clem. “Gives me hell about my sloppy ways, Faith does.”

Clem is a real gentleman and plays along. “You know what?” he says to Faith. “I’ll teach this messy fellow of yours to clean up properly. We’ll have a nice early spring cleaning, just in time for Christmas.”

Shit. Christmas. Trees and singing and cooking turkey. The only bird Faith knows intimately is Cold Turkey. She wants to go back in time to take notes of the one Christmas meal she almost had with Buffy and Joyce. She should have paid attention to the food instead of griping about Buffy’s absence and worrying about her present for Joyce.

Buffy could have done this. Hell, she did do it, playing house and taking care of her sister, B had friends and a real job. She and Spike have not made one friend so far, not even an acquaintance, in spite of searching the Cleveland bars thoroughly and repeatedly. And let’s not mention her own failure to keep a job for more than three hours.

Clem sails on, his ears ready to catch a good stiff breeze. “You know what? I could cook a really spiffy Christmas dinner for you guys. Just like old times.”

“You ate dinner?” Faith looks at Spike.

“We ate together,” Spike says and elaborates. “We ate our own personal food at the same time, watching a nice movie or something.”

Faith tries to picture this, coupla demonic guys on a couch, TV, blood, beer. She fails.

“Remember,” Clem says dreamily, “That one time that we couldn�t hear Jimmy Stewart because of the screaming of Spike’s victim?” He bends over and picks up a crackling empty snack bag. “Mm, Cheetos. Got any left?”

“When did you guys meet?” Faith says, fascinated by the blood and Cheetos mingling in her brain.

“You remember that, buddy? ‘25, ‘26? Thereabouts, girl, when there was easy money to be made running booze for humans.”

“So you’re like ancient, too?”

“Got a coupla centuries on him,” Clem says modestly. “I try to keep up with the times, though, not like most of the demon tribes. I live like a human being now, coz, man, booze, TV, microwave dinners, supermarkets? Changed my mind about the little suckers mighty quick, I can tell you. Was a lot less fun when Indians and sobriety were all there was, and you know, all the raising and catching and skinning and marinating you had to do on your own.”

Faith pictures Winnetou and Clem wrestling down a bison, and somehow extricating spare ribs and steak from it. Yeah. She gets that. He sounds okay.

“Hey, Slayer,” Willy says politely.

“Hey, Willy.”

Willy goes on silently with rubbing something goopy and yellow into the bar-top. It smells of her grandma’s house on Thursdays. The wood doesn�t gleam as nicely as Gram’s chairs did, though. The rest of Stinky Ned’s is changing as well. The windows, that Faith never even noticed were there, are open to the freezing air, the chairs are stacked on the table and something misshapen and undersized is on it scabby green knees scrubbing the floor. The demons are taking over Stinky Ned’s, just like they did at her house. What is it with demons and hygiene? She scraped candle-wax off carpets until she couldn’t take it anymore and took off on the bike. She’s never been a Mall kind of girl, so this is where she ended up. Spike and Clem were still vacuuming, dusting, throwing out trash, doing laundry and so on. It�s unnatural and she resents being made to feel it was her responsibility. Male chauvinist pigs. Not as if Spike ever picked his holey black socks up off the floor before.

They discovered Faith has twelve pairs of black pants. Clem is arguing that instead of buying more black leather she should buy a better quality of food. Had Clem been a Home Room teacher in a former life? Sheesh.

Willy shoves a beer towards her, still not speaking. Faith leans her chin in her hand, vaguely enjoying watching Willy work. He goes on methodically waxing the bar top, and then he calmly and precisely folds the cloth, screws on the top of the tin of wax, washes his hands. He turns and puts a CD in the player, and then starts cleaning a stack of beer glasses that don�t look dirty to Faith. The music is oddly syrupy, melancholy and dark, making Faith think of men in pencil moustaches with out-thrust pelvises driving high heeled women backwards over the dance floor.

“How did you get into the demon catering business, Willy?” she asks idly, as a second beer appears just when she wants it.

Willy throws her an unreadable look from those little brown eyes. “Took over from my Dad,” he says, still cleaning glasses.

He doesn’t elaborate. What does she have to do to get the man to talk? “And how did your Dad get started in demon bars?”

Willy shows his teeth politely but doesn�t look her in the eye. “He got laid off from his job as a foreman on a demon farm. He used the severance money to buy the bar in Sunnydale. “

Faith licks the foam of her upper lip thoughtfully. Demon farms? Everything she’s ever heard about demons from her Watchers suggests that demons are the scum of the earth, reaping and not sowing.

“Severance money? Pretty good employers, sounds like.”

“Uh-huh,” Willy nods.

“So, what did they grow?” Faith continues, elbows on the bar, stretching her neck to keep Willy in sight, who’s sort of stroking a yellow cloth over the row of bottles at the other end.

“Demon food,” Willy says cryptically.

A third beer comes up. Faith toasts Willy with it and decides regretfully that she really should get back to the boys in aprons at home. She tosses back the brew and realizes that even the beer has gotten better. Demon beer?

Clem is in the kitchen when Faith gets home. Dinner stress steams from the pans on the stove; pans they apparently possess. Clem’s ears are bright red and stand off his head like warning flags while he furiously stirs something brown and nice smelling. Faith slips past him to the living room.

It is now dust and trash free, and Clem and Spike have uprooted a baby fir tree from the local forest and planted it a corner, where it stands with hunched shoulders against the ceiling. The painful lack of taste and color in the decor is all the more obvious for it. It smells of cold outside air and a scent that is like air freshener, only nicer. Spike stands surveying the room with a frown. He pulls at his lips.

“It needs something more, love,” he declares seriously. “More color and holiday spirit.”

If his bright eyes are any indication, he’s already imbibed a lot of holiday spirit. He suddenly disappears into the kitchen and returns with the trash bag. Under Faith’s disbelieving eyes all the shiny crinkly wrappers they’ve so painstakingly picked up are fished out and stuck on the branches of the silent dark green tree. Well. If you look through your lashes, and imagine candle light, the effect might not be bad. There certainly would be a Christmas ornaments’ store open somewhere, but Faith knows the idea of just buying things would never enter Spike’s mind on its own. Finally he’s satisfied with the overall effect. He picks up an old envelope, draws a crude fanged face on it and sticks it on top of the tree.

“Not bad, Spike, but why the drawing?”

He looks at her challengingly. “It’s tradition, innit, to have an angel on top of the tree?”

Faith was never the lie-abed kind of girl before, but morning has become her favorite time. Staying put in her warm nest, ignoring the pale call of the new day, being surrounded by the solid good-smelling arms of her vampire. Spike nuzzles her neck until she wakes up. Her body is usually a couple of strides ahead of her, already heated, and slicked up where she should be slick. Spike always knows exactly when she crosses the fuzzy line between tingly but half-asleep and raring to go, and in that perfect moment he slips into her. She shifts from Park into Reverse and smooshes her butt into his hips. She’s never gotten her driver’s license, but that doesn’t stop her from smoothly sliding out of the parking lot and hurtling down the highway. Even though there’s lots of changing lanes and violating the speed limit, it�s too early for words yet, and they communicate with traffic signs of little grunts and sighs.

When she finally opens her eyes she really doesn�t want to see just her pillowcase, so she slips off his cock and turns in the air like a dolphin catching the slippery herring and corkscrewing down on it in a perfect dive. Now she can see intent blue eyes, and pink lips that are thrust out in the serious quest for her next orgasm. There’s no such thing as morning mouth with a vampire and she grabs the back of his head and kisses him rhythmically, working with his thrusts. The springy curls under her hands get mashed and spring back, mashed and spring back.

Mmm. Spike’s mouth tastes like it looks, lush and pink, soft and wet and hard mixed like the white of his teeth and the deeper carmine inside. Her belly growls. That’s what you get from making all that saliva.

“Orgasm first or breakfast in bed?” Spike asks, never missing a beat.

Faith closes her eyes for a moment, trying to take gauge the emptiness of her belly, but taking away sight makes the sensation of his cock dancing inside go up several notches in intensity and she digs her thumbs below his hipbones and gasps, “Don�t stop.”

Spike is never cruel to her early in the morning and obliges by driving in against that spot right there and she sees black stars before her eyes when she opens them again. Now she needs food right away, or one of these early morning post-orgasm headaches is going to come on. Spike presses her back into the pillows and hurries to the kitchen. The sound of plastic ripping and a soft rushing remind her of what she’s eating these days and she groans. It’s food, okay, but muesli and yogurt? So not her dream of proper breakfast. But Spike hangs onto Clem’s every word on nutrition as if it�s scripture, and she likes to please him.

In comes cold unappetizing breakfast, but thank god he’s started the coffee. She’s eating giant portions these days coz muesli just doesn�t seem to pack the amount of sugar and grease she craves. When her own eating sounds stop for a moment, she becomes aware of a yammering that she heard vaguely while they were fucking. For a second she thinks it’s a baby crying, then she dismisses it as cats howling, but now she realizes it’s the wind. Its icy fingers pinch her butt and she crawls back under the covers. Spike prances over to the window, buck naked as he is, and twitches open the curtains in death defying motion. Faith’s body jerks; it wants to save him from the lethal sunlight, but the world is gone. There’s just this gray vortex, the perfect accompaniment to the howling music the wind makes. So this is a real Cleveland snowstorm, straight in from Canada, where the people are mellow but the climate is harsh. Or so Faith has heard. She nestles back a little deeper in the warm bedding. They can play around all day.

Spike yanks back the covers and hauls her up. “Come, love,” he says. “We can just go out and get it before I need my beauty sleep.”

What? Out? In this? He’s insane, but as that’s not a new discovery, what’s special today? Oh right, they were going to get Clem a fish for Christmas dinner, which is tonight. Faith isn�t keen on fish, of which there was much in prison, but hey, small trouble for a guy who can’t get into Wal-Mart without dozens of people shitting themselves in fear.

Spike is rubbing his hands. “Haven�t been out in the daytime in ages,” he says. “Cool. Let’s slap on our snow chains and get going.”

Yeah, yeah. Coffee first. Her legs are still a bit wobbly from the recent major zinger and now that she’s standing and feels the come dripping down her thighs, a shower wouldn�t come amiss either.

Spike can never resist grabbing a handful of Faith, and takes a deep whiff. “Don’t bathe,” he says. “What’s good enough for Napoleon is even better for me.”

Isn’t it weird how even the coolest guys give their dicks a pet name? Not as if she ever thinks of her pussy as little Faith or Lolita or something.

The ice stretches away for miles on all sides, black if they look down, white at the horizon, where it meets a gun-metal gray sky. They are lying below the howling winds that are chasing whirling snow bunnies all around Lake Erie, in a little pocket of silence and interstellar cold that sucks the life out of them from below. Someone shoots off a cannon close to their ears and the booming sound races through the water beneath them to the shore, and then returns slower and lower, shaking the marrow of their bones and making Faith’s teeth ache.

“Was that the cavalry, coming to our rescue?” Faith asks with chattering teeth.

Spike shoots her a concerned look. “No, just ice breaking and settling,” he says. “I remember hearing it when I was little we skated on the Thames one winter. Deeply scary to my little boy guts.”

“To my big girl ones as well. If the ice breaks will we be able to get back? Won�t it sink?”

“Ice floats, honey. And it’s about three feet thick. Don�t worry.”

Spike can talk all he likes, but he isn�t the one who’ll be drowning. And who’s freezing her ass off right now. Her ass is the highest part of her, catching the most wind and it won�t be fun at all if it’s gonna break off and shatter into a thousand frozen flesh colored pieces. Will Spike be able to put her back together again?

“Remind me again why we’re doing this?”

“Clem and me, we always hunt our own Christmas dinner. Clem’s doing the meat course, we do the fish course.”

“What’s wrong with turkey?”

“Nothing, but this is more fun!”

Spike’s skin is lilac, making him look like a cartoon figure with his yellow, white-rimed hair and red rimmed eyes. He freezes, the spear in his hand quivering in the wind, and then thrusts the spear down in the cold black hole. He uses such force that he slides along with it and Faith gets her stiff limbs working only just in time to catch a sockless blue ankle. She doesn�t think vampires can drown or die from cold, but wouldn�t it be a drag to have to wait until spring to dredge up Spike and unthaw him?

The fish is hauled up and killed with a blow to the head. Faith is less sure about this venture than before. It doesn’t look like the fish she used to fillet at all. She doesn�t like the way its pale eye stares at her haughtily or the oily rainbow sheen its colorless scales have.

When Faith tries to get up, fish cradled in her arms like a cold slimy baby, the wind blows her legs out from under her just like that. Crawl instead? Spike casts a worried eye over her, drags her over to the bike and lifts her onto the pillion seat. Faith clings to him, her cold face swathed in useless frozen shawls, and buries her nose in the stiffened leather of his duster. Tiny shards of ice break off and are snatched up eagerly by the black day around her. There is no warmth behind Spike’s back, only shelter from the murderous wind. The journey home passes in a haze of miserable sounds, the whiny slipping of their snow tires on the ice, the wind’s shrill scream circling her and trying to pry her loose from Spike.

Ta ta ta dum�It�s Clem’s cheery rap on the door. Faith and Spike are playing poker at the kitchen table. Clem plunks down the big bags of stuff he’s carrying. Suspicious green things are sticking out. Spell supplies, Faith hopes. Could be Christmas dinner though. Clem looks at them and scratches behind his floppy ears.

“Um, guys, why are you wearing blankets? I’m expecting like festive clothing, people! Don’t tell me you didn�t know about that little human custom?”

“It’s washday and we didn’t all have your opportunities, Clem,” Faith says absentmindedly. Spike’s bluffing and she’s gonna take him.

“True,” Clem muses. “My uncle used to have a business near the Sunnydale docks, and he taught me everything about food, and manners, and human customs.”

“Sea food?” Spike says.

Clem hesitates for a moment. “No, more like land food, actually. We catered to special needs. It got too risky coupla years ago, so in 1996 my uncle packed up and moved to a quieter location. I’m actually thinking of opening a place right here, because business is sure to pick up with all the demons that are gonna come in.”

Faith looks up. “They are? Is there gonna be an apocalypse?”

Clem chuckles and starts unpacking his utensils. There are lots of very sharp knives and mountains of things that don�t look much like the foods Faith usually eats. She recognizes some of them from the prison kitchen.

“Oh please, not another apocalypse. You get so tired of them after you’ve seen two or three, and they never get to go through anyway, so why bother to get all excited? It�s just that with the Hellmouth becoming active, I’m expecting a lot of traffic.”

“Thought the Hellmouth was active already, mate?” Spike says. “Watcher told us to come guard it.”

Clem raises several ridges of skin above his eyes. “Were you never paying attention to anything but kittens and Slayers, Spike? The Hellmouth is becoming active because there is a Slayer in town. Her positive energy wakes it up, and it starts calling to demons all over the world.”

Faith can actually feel her jaw drop and snaps it shut with an effort. What the hell? Her presence activates the Hellmouth? She looks at Spike. He’s looking kinda slapped in the face as well. What? Faith mouths to Spike. Spike lifts his shoulders. For the first time ever Faith feels an urgent need to talk to Giles. This can’t be good.

“Here,” Clem offers. “Have a nice piece of celery to chew on while we work.”

Faiths eyes it without enthusiasm. “Aren’t vegetables supposed to be green? This looks kinda pale and bloodless, like a vampire vegetable.”

Clem’s easy chuckle again. His ears wiggle when he does that. “Spike, you remember celery?”

Spike grunts. “Vaguely. Seemed limper back then. I’m sure I remember vegetables need to be boiled a long, long time.”

“Gosh, Spike, you sure don�t keep up with the times, do you? Delia tells us celery is a wonderful crunchy flavorful vegetable that can be eaten raw. I brought dip.”

Clem starts dividing chores. Faith gets to peel potatoes, since she’s done that before, and Spike, who has no cooking skills at all, is salting the turkey skin.

“Prefer my food raw, thank you very much,” Spike mutters.

Clem winks at Faith and offers to leave one leg out for Spike to gnaw on.

“Ta, mate, this dog hasn�t sunk to chicken juice quite yet.”

“Slayer feeding you?”

A shiver runs down Faith’s spine, both hot and cold. Spike is welcome to suck and nibble on every part of her, but not with his real teeth. Yet. Reminds her too much of Angelus and Barry Manilow. It�s the one thing Buffy never gave him, so she does think it over occasionally. She just doesn�t want to tell Spike what it makes her think of, because, hey, Angel, off-limits topic in Casa Spike.

To Faith’s great relief there’s no sitting down at the table kind of Christmas dinner. Wouldn’t it have been embarrassing when a vampire and demon knew the right fork to use and she didn’t? They just sit down in front of the Grinch with plates on their lap. She’s dressed up in her nicest black pants and purple corset. Clem is wearing a tux, which she thinks doesn’t suit his coloring, but she doesn’t mention that. Spike wears a black silk shirt and she has helped him put on eyeliner. The black lines around his eyes make him look both younger and more wicked, like a depraved Greek statue. His shirt hangs open and shows a smooth expanse of creamy white flesh. She hopes Clem won’t hang around until all hours; she wants to lap up that cream from between the black chocolate layers.

The appetizers are crusty shellfish which require a lot of carefully calculated violence to open. Inside there is a bit of gray snot. Spike feeds Faith one of the translucent Jello creatures. It doesn�t do all that much for her, but she’s been in an all-woman prison long enough to understand why Spike really digs the taste.

After the disastrous fish course, where even the cook himself doesn�t manage more than a token bite of the flaky gray-white flesh, Clem doles out a heap of potatoes and a thick meaty sauce. It’s like the three bears, and only Goldilocks is missing. Clem a whole big heap, Faith a middling big heap and Spike a token bit so he won’t feel left out. Faith wants to take a bite but Spike grabs her wrist and asks Clem what kind of meat is in it.

“Hey,” Clem says, affronted. “Spike, you know I wouldn’t�”

“No, no, okay,” Spike says. “Just checking.”

Faith takes a careful bite, and it tastes just like Thai pork. Very nice. If she forgets about the fish adventure, Clem sure can cook, even if his taste in movies is doubtful. After the Grinch comes White Christmas accompanied by turkey, but Faith doesn’t really approve of the combination. The turkey isn’t fascinating enough to make her sit through Bing Crosby, but Spike and Clem know all the words and have a great time. She sloshes more red wine in her glass. She’s more a beer kind of girl, but it does go well with dinner, she decides.

The guys take pity on her and put in Matrix Two. She’s seen it but it’s still cool. That’s more like it. She hardly even notices when ice cream is spooned into her mouth by Spike, on whose lap she’s sitting, she’s concentrating so hard on memorizing the moves. That’s some fighting. She and Spike should try some of these leaps and turns, they’re really awesome. In fact, she’s going to try them right now. She shoves aside the coffee table and leans backwards like Keanu. He must have more muscles than she, because no matter what she tries, she falls ass backwards on the chartreuse carpet.

Spike is laughing so hard his eyeliner is running. It looks even better on him. “It’s done with wires, sweetheart,” he says.

This is a blow for Faith. How is a Slayer to compete against wire? She thinks a bit. And Charlie’s Angels? Them too. That’s too bad, because she really likes Lucy Liu.

Spike and Clem prefer Cameron Diaz. Faith snorts.

“Guys always go for blondes,” she says. It’s not fair.

“I go for you, don’t I?” Spike says.

She crawls over to him, because the thought of standing up makes her dizzy. His lap welcomes her with open arms and she hides her hot buzzing face in his cool neck.

“Um, hi,” a sweet female voice says hesitantly. Spikes’ hands unclasp her and then grip her a little bit too tightly. Faith lifts her reeling head and sees a girl sitting in the chair they never use because its springs are faulty. She’s smiling shyly at them and fiddles nervously with her hands in her ample shocking pink lap. Her oriental gold-edged skirt hangs down prettily, but she doesn�t seem to dent the cushions the way she should. Her face tugs a bit at Faith�s memory strings, but she can�t reach the right hiding place in her mind right now.

“Tara?” Spike says.

“Hi, Tara,” Clem says. “How’s heaven been treating you lately?”

Faith peers again at the scrap of paper with the address on it. This must be it, Tara said so. She hadn’t imagined witches to be rich and powerful, but if they live here� At the start of the driveway the snow abruptly ends. There’s isn’t a speck of snow or even mud on its pebbled expanse, and she feels like a troll in her snowboots. The mansion looming up before her is lit from below like a stage. She stares at the way it cuts out the big spangly stars and the frosty clear night sky. There are double stairs leading up to the front door. She can even choose between approaching it with the left hand stairs or the right hand stairs. Left feels better.

Ding dong, the bell hums politely.

Faith waits. She rocks on the balls of her feet. The rich make her nervous. There are no lighted windows on this side of the mansion, so maybe no one’s home. She’s about to sprint off to her loyal bike when she hears footsteps behind the door. It opens smoothly, without a sound.

In the tall door opening stands a small bag lady. A mean looking, sixteen year old bag lady, with birds’ nests in her dark hair and wearing thirteen sweaters. Maybe it’s fashion when they’re cashmere?

The layered girl says nothing, just stares at Faith, who starts to feel as if she has two noses. She notices there are real birds fretting and pacing in the girl’s hair.

Faith clears her throat. “Um, I don�t know your name, but�”

The intensity of the air between them doubles. “There’s no one here that �” the girl starts, but then checks herself and stares extra hard at Faith. “You’re not from the library, are you? You subpoenaing me because my books are late or what?”

Faith wishes she’d thought this over better. Or brought Clem or something. “Um, no, but a friend of mine detected your use of magic, and we thought you might like to talk to people who deal with that kind of thing on a daily basis.”

The girl barks brief laughter. “Huh. A self help group for delusional witches? No thanks. I’ll deal with my peculiarities on my own terms.”

She must be a witch, she uses words like Willow used to.

“Not a self help group. We fight demons and vampires, mostly. We’re kind of peace keepers.”

The girl stares. Her eyes are an intense violet color that seek a hole in Faith’s skull to sneak in and wreak havoc. Faith takes a step back. She prefers dealing with demons, at least she knows she could kill them without a thought if need be.

“You believe in demons? And in witchcraft?”

Faith nods.

The girl motions with her hand and intones, “Incende!”

Faith jumps off the landing with a shout. There’s a wall of roaring orange fire between her and the girl. Whoa, Willow, eat your heart out. This girl has power. Faith feels her cheeks unexpectedly stretching with a big smile. Tara was right. She could be a valuable member of their team.

“Hey! You coming to meet the demon and the vampire?”

The flames bank. The girl steps over them and leans on the balustrade. The roosting birds in her hair, robins, Faith thinks, twitter agitatedly. “You still here? Not scared off yet?”

“Aw, girl,” Faith says, “I used to work with this Wicca who nearly destroyed the world two years ago, until a friend talked her out of it. So, I think your flames are kinda cool, and we could use ‘em.”

There is silence. The girl pads softly down on felt slippers, staring at Faith with puzzled eyes.

“Well. Okay. Show me the vampire and the demon. Just one?”

Faith slings an arm around her.

“DarkStarPrincess?”

“Please! That’s just my web-ID. Morgan Vanderbilt.”

“Okay, Morgan, there’s tons of demons here, and more coming in every day coz of me and the Hellmouth.”

“Hellmouth? And what about you?”

“I’m the Slayer. I’ll explain later. The guys you’re gonna meet are a friendly demon and a souled vampire. And a former witch.”

“How do I know they’re not gonna eat me?”

Faith is starting to like her. “Good question. Feel the heartbeat,” she says, taking the girls hands and thrusting it under her sweater.

Morgan squeaks and jumps a foot away from Faith. She looks like she’d like to have jumped farther, but isn’t athletic enough to pull it off.

“I’m not too comfortable with touching people,” she says threateningly.

Faith kinda got that. “Abused as a child?” she asks. “Me too.”

Morgan stares at Faith’s black leather. “Yeah,” she says doubtfully. “So what did you do, become a hooker or something?”

“Hey,” Faith says. Miss Seventeen Sweaters should watch it with the sassiness. It’s just her look, okay.

“Here, you can use this football helmet,” Faith says. Spike sent it specially, saying he knows human beings are fragile.

Morgan shakes her head and points at the birds. “Don’t wanna squash them. I’ll wear a small force field.”

Faith, Morgan, the birds and the force field climb on the bike. Morgan’s legs are so short they stick out to the side like in a child’s drawing.

In Willy’s bar Faith takes Morgan to their regular table. Clem and Spike are sitting huddled over their beers. Someone’s joined them, a small dark-haired woman. Girls are always hitting on Spike. Faith pays it no attention.

“Hey guys,” Faith says. “This is Morgan.”

Clem and Spike say ‘hi’ in subdued voices. They don�t make a move to introduce their guest to Faith, which puzzles her for a moment. Then the girl lifts a tearstained face and wanly says, “Hi Faith.” It’s Kennedy.

“Hey, Ken,” Faith says automatically. Huh. What’s she doing here? Cleveland’s already got a slayer, thank you. She almost sits down on the chair Spike got for her, but he jerks his head to remind her of Morgan, who’s motionless, birds screeching and flapping around her head, her muddy designer sneakers practically growing roots as she stares at Clem. And him wearing his friendly face, too. Faith sighs. This whole responsibility ‘n leadership thing’s not exactly her natural mode. She walks back over to Morgan. One of the tiny birds makes a threatening dive at Clem’s head.

“Morgan, get that bird of yours back,” Faith says. “What’s he gonna do, bomb the monster with his eggs?”

Morgan grabs her arms with scared black talons and hisses, “What is that? Is that an alien from outer space?”

“Morgan, meet Clem. He’s a demon, but he’s okay. We don�t kill him and he helps us. The guy with the bleach job is Spike, my boyfriend. He’s a vampire, like I told you. But he’s good too, and he’s got a soul. This is Kennedy. Kennedy is also a Slayer, though generally there is only one per town,” she adds pointedly.

Kennedy opens her mouth to say something, but Spike puts his hand on her forearm and she quiets. That’s new. This is Kennedy, right? The girl who would have staked Spike in a second if Buffy hadn�t been looking?

“Morgan’s the witch Tara said we should look up,” Faith continues desperately, now that everyone is silent and looking at her. The bird is still doing reconnaissance flights above Clem’s head. “Maybe she can help us, she’s as powerful as Willow.”

Kennedy bursts into tears. Oh. So the redhead finally kicked the pushy little bitch out, huh? Good on her.

Morgan still isn’t budging. Faith wants to shove her over to the table, so she can sit down and give Ken a hug, but she refrains from doing that and takes a frayed orange cuff, pulling at it gently.

“I’m not walking past that!” Morgan whispers squeakily. Is she talking about the Fyarl on the left or the necking � as in sipping from each other’s gaping neck wounds- vampire couple on the right?

Clem holds his flaky hand in the air and the little spitfire descends on it with wavery tweets and flutters. Morgan gasps softly near Faith’s ear. Clem slowly brings his other paw closer to the robin and deposits a tiny crumb on the marbled pink folds of his palm. The bird hops around it twice in nervous little circles and then pecks. Its tiny orange throat works infinitesimally; it searches briefly for more and then returns to base.

Morgan’s hand rises slowly above her head, her eyes never leaving the smiling Clem. It’s too bad that his smile, while well-intentioned, doesn�t make him look less scary. The bird rubs its head against Morgan’s finger. The diminutive witch sighs and walks determinedly to the table, where she plunks down next to Spike.

“Okay,” she says, her voice small but determined. “Tell me what you guys do and what you need me for.”

Spike smiles at her and holds out his hand. Morgan takes it. “Hi, I’m Spike.”

“Your hand is cold. Are you really a vampire?”

Faith holds her breath as she slides in next to Kennedy. She doesn’t think it would be a good idea for Spike to prove that right now. He doesn’t. Instead, he just nods. “Really. Show you some other time.”

“Maybe I can tell you a little more,” Tara’s voice says from behind Faith.

Faith starts. As a Slayer she’s so used to knowing when somebody’s behind her that Tara unnerves her when she does this, being ghostly and not moving a molecule of air, or rustling her immaterial clothes. Otherwise, she’s the sweetest, gentlest person Faith’s ever met, and she wishes she’d known someone like that earlier.

Morgan doesn�t notice, Faith thinks, because she says, “Hi! I’m Morgan. You?”

“Tara. I used to be a witch, too. Nowadays I help Faith with stuff.” Tara smiles sweetly at the younger girl, who relaxes a bit at hearing her low, diffident voice.

Faith sinks back in her seat gratefully. Dear Tara, who knows she hates doing exposition and stuff like that. She squeezes Kennedy’s shoulder while Tara is talking, and has a nice stare at Spike, who’s looking particularly lush and finely honed next to the untidy fraying trash bag shape that is Morgan. He’s tipped his chair backwards, in that way of his, balancing it on two legs, his big hands laced on his black Lycra stomach. His pinkies make a one-way sign straight at his crotch. Faith knows it’s a good thing their team is expanding, but she would really like to be sitting with Spike on the couch right now, she’d follow his directions faithfully. The taste of Spike, combined with a swallow of beer now and then is a combination she’s particularly fond of, and Spike says he likes the beer’s fizz against his exposed head. She can see Spike is not noticing her gaze, his eyes are miles away. Faith doesn’t want to know what he’s thinking about and wrenches her attention back to Tara.

Willy walks by and swipes Tara’s stool for a more physically enabled customer. Tara doesn�t notice, but Morgan does. Her birds explode in a cloud of browney grey wings and Spike lifts his hands reflexively to keep them out of his eyes. It does look kinda weird, Tara sweetly and earnestly talking on, floating in mid air, her ghostly ample butt denting just as if the stool were still there.

Faith decides to help Morgan out. “Tara, baby, you need to add a stool to your outfit. And I guess you forgot to mention to Morgan why exactly we need a second witch.”

Tara mends her appearance and scrunches up her forehead at Morgan. “I’m sorry, sweetie, she says,” I should have mentioned that I’m a ghost. No more witchy powers for me.”

Morgan is breathing rapidly. Spike does a thing with his hand in the air at Willy and within seconds a shot glass full of transparent stuff appears. Morgan downs it without blinking an eye. Faith doesn�t mention under-ageness and bar licenses. She has no clue how Willy pulls this off, and if someone high up in Cleveland politics, like the mayor or something, is a demon, she really doesn’t want to know. Her world view has taken more than enough beatings; she’s keeping it in a sheltered spot these days.

Tara goes on, with Spike and Clem helping out occasionally. Faith tries to keep up with the flow of the conversation for a few seconds, but as it�s the past and theory, she just floats along.

She turns to Kennedy, who’s toying with her beer with unseeing eyes.

“You need a place to stay?” Faith says softly to Kennedy.

Ken shakes her head. “No, I’m fine, staying at the Holiday Inn near the airport. Just wanna hang with your gang for a bit until I’ve figured out what to do with myself.”

Faith’s heart sinks. Her posse is expanding at an alarming rate. And they really don�t need two slayers.

“You could ask Giles to give you your own territory.”

“Yeah,” Kennedy mumbles, with obvious lack of enthusiasm.

Faith hides a sigh and takes a swallow of beer. Check. Add one extra Slayer to the mix, complete with uncongenial personality. She’ll have to think of something, like dividing all of Cleveland in two parts, and then Kennedy can slay in the North and she in the South.

Faith looks over her little troupe, or what she can see of it in the erratic moonlight. Kennedy is looking very business-like, patrolling their perimeter, watched by a bemused Clem and Spike, who are making jokes about her state of readiness. This is not Sunnydale as besieged by the First; this is just chilly empty Cleveland, where the vamps are still innocent and unafraid of mankind, making them easy to slay. Tara is radiant in her bright pink sari, and stands comradely next to a shivering Morgan, who doesn’t look as if she’s having fun yet.

There’s a short drum roll of footsteps, a grunt, and when Faith turns she can see vampire dust drifting to the ground, silvered by moonlight like fairy dust.

“Ken!” she says. This really pisses her off. Trigger happy Kennedy should keep the vamps alive until Morgan has taken a good look at one of them.

“Did you not get what we’re doing here or what?”

“Hey! He came at me too fast not to stake them,” Kennedy replies defensively and turns her head away.

Oh shit, she’s not crying, is she? Yeah, she is. Even if the scolding is deserved, Faith kinda gets that Ken might be feeling a little tender after the break-up. She debates going up to her. No, she decides, Morgan is her priority tonight. Ken’s a Slayer, and older than Morgan, and she’ll just have to deal. She can’t be mom to everyone here. She still can�t really grasp that she’s doing this. And when exactly did she agree to the group huggy thing? Spike may think having a team will keep her alive longer, but if she’s gonna feel this irritated and overstretched for the rest of her life she�ll pass, thank you very much.

Her neck hair stands up straight, sending tingly messages skittering to her fingertips. Good, another one. She goes to stand next to Morgan, scattering fake giggles around like Hansel and Gretel breadcrumbs. Morgan stares at her as if she’s gone insane.

“A vamp at ten o’clock,” she whispers. “Act human. Feminine and giggly, they like that.”

The vamp jumps out from behind a tree, his big canines on full display, arms high and wide. He roars. His eyes are yellow. He skids to a halt when he takes in Faith and Tara’s lack of prey-like movement or screaming and sniffs.

“You’re not�no, you’re meat. Lemme�”

The world is robbed of his next words, as Faith whips out her stake and drives it into his heart, stepping neatly aside so Morgan can get a full view of the staking and dusting process.

The moon has ventured out only the skimpiest little sliver of herself on this cold night, so there isn’t much light. The dark blue of the sky overhead is tinged with city purple at the edges. Cleveland style intrudes even on the color of heaven.

Faith turns to Morgan. “Didya get a good look?”

Morgan nods faintly. She makes the mistake of trying to grab at Tara for support and almost falls.

“I saw, I believed, I nearly fainted. I want you to take me home now.”

Faith hesitates. Patrol beckons, and she doesn’t want to give that Kennedy free rein on her turf. Maybe she can ask Clem? Clem and Spike are still kidding around. There are no vampires or demons attacking them, as usual. Without Faith they’d have no fun at all, poor things. Morgan fastens onto her jacket and the violet eyes double in intensity.

“I want you to take me home. Not one of the monsters.”

Faith mulls on this as they slog back to the bike through the snow. “Did you get that I’m a vampire Slayer? And Ken there too?” she says. “Vampire Slayers are a little bit monsters themselves, you know.”

Morgan’s path suddenly takes her a bit further away from Faith. “Do you have a creepy face too, like the vampires?”

“No. My monster is invisible. I mean, it’s just the part that gives me super strength and dreams and so on.”

Morgan perks up a little. “What kind of dreams?”

“Vision dreams, like warnings of things that might go down.”

“Cool!”

“Yeah. But now that you mention it, I haven’t had any for a long time,” Faith says.

“Well, I mean, it’s none of my business, of course, but it does seem kind of strange that you are a Vampire Slayer and your boyfriend is a vampire,” Morgan says.

“Huh. Ya think that’s the cause?” Faith asks. Obviously Morgan is a sharp brain that goes on thinking busily even if she’s scared. “I don’t know. Could be.”

“And the other monster? I guess the vampire sucks blood like in the movies, but what does the wrinkly one eat?”

“Cheetos, mostly,” Faith says with a grin. “And he’s very keen on having me eat Granola type stuff.”

Morgan looks at her if she’s stupid or insane or both. “Yeah, right. That’s what you’ve seen him eat. But what does he really eat, what was his diet before there were Cheetos?”

Yep, she’s a thinker. Faith has no clue, but she figures if Morgan thinks up the questions, it’s her job to find the answers. The rotund little shape next to her is fighting bravely with the knee-deep snow; her birds are keeping each other warm on their nest and Faith feels a surge of unexpected affection.

“Why don’t you come around tomorrow,” Faith says, “and I’ll show you the fat ancient books that you and my Watcher can have fun with together. Also, Willow used to do a lot of web research. You handy with the Internet?”

Morgan casts her eyes to heaven. “Duh. I spend most of my time AIMing with my Wiccan friends, what do you think?”

Faith doesn’t. She feels, mostly. And right now she feels very much like a grandmother who delicately asks her granddaughter about a first kiss and gets an answer back full of pills and condoms.

She drops the witch off at the start of her half-a-mile driveway. Morgan slides off, adjusts the nest and waves a thick mitt at her, unraveling cashmere flapping around it.

“That was fun. See ya tomorrow!”

She trudges off, a tiny bundle of rags on short legs, accompanied by sleepy bird tweets. Faith guesses they have a new witch on the team.

From Dusk to Dawn

Faith checks her arms; stake and knife, check; steel-toed boots, yes, vampire: almost ready. Said vampire comes out of the bedroom, shrugging on his duster. He looks happy, grinning widely in anticipation of their nightly patrol. Hunting’s been good lately; Clem’s predictions of business getting better have come out so far. One patch of Spike’s hair is still greenish from last night’s fight, when a Mazeltoth demon slimed them both from top to toe with his green sperm. They successfully interrupted a mating that in a matter of days would have covered Cleveland with billions of little froggy demons, but Spike�s hair’s still grass after several washings, so it will probably have to be re-bleached. It makes his blue eyes turquoise and his cheeks almost rosy in comparison. Faith tucks her arm in his and they make for the bike.

The moment they shut the front door a whining starts up.

“That the phone, love?” Spike asks.

“I guess,” Faith says. “Have you seen it lately? Haven’t touched it since we moved in.”

Faith finds her key and they get back in, in search of the phone. It keeps ringing obligingly somewhere in their bedroom, but in spite of its shrilling it can’t be found. The ringing goes on, relentlessly frazzling their jacked-up pre-patrol nerves. Spike finally kicks the door of the closet and yells, “Shut up or show yourself, bloody useless piece of technology!”

The door crumples from the impact of Spike’s sturdy boot and supernatural frustration. It reveals a heap of somber-hued sweaters and jeans lying on the bottom of the closet, since the shelving gave up its hold on life almost immediately after they arrived. Spike starts rooting around in the pile, the clothes flying up behind him like clods of dirt from a dog after a bone.

“Hey! I thought I lost that sweater,” Faith says happily, holding up a purple bat-sleeved object.

Spike grunts. At last the phone becomes visible, hooked up to a plug inside the closet.

“Oh, yeah,” Faith says, “I remember. That was the only working electricity I could find the first day.”

The phone is still ringing. Spike hands it to Faith with apprehensive fingertips. “Giles”, the phone blinks furiously. “Giles, Giles”.

Faith swallows. A summons from the Upper Watcher. Can this be good?

She presses the little green button and says, “Um, hi, Giles.”

“We were about to leave for patrol; just lucky we heard you in time.”

“Dawn? Here? Why? Um, let me check with Spike?”

Faith covers the phone with her hand and says to Spike, “Giles wants us to take Dawn for a couple of weeks while he goes to England. What do you think?”

She doesn’t particularly like Dawn, but as she’s Buffy’s sister she can hardly say no, can she? She does dread boring visits to the zoo and the mall. Maybe, since Dawn was all research girl, she can be parked at the library all day. This lightens the dread a little. Also she’s gonna buy Dawn earplugs, since no way can she and Spike lower the noise level of their fucking.

Spike is slow in reacting. His face gets that wooden suffering look she associates with Buffy. He lifts his hand absently and runs it through his freshly gelled hair, which rises up in pale yellow and green spikes. He clears his throat, shifts his duster more comfortably around his shoulders.

“Well, yeah, ‘course the Nibblet is welcome if she wants to come.”

“Well, it’s not Dawn on the phone, it�s Giles,” Faith says. “You wanna speak to her? You can ask Giles�”

“No, no, that’s fine,” Spike says hastily.

Although Giles accepted Spike as her Watcher, they are not exactly on speaking terms. Robin Wood and Giles conspired somehow to have Spike killed, and she sort of thinks she shouldn�t have slept with Robin because of that. Nobody touches her Spike.

Giles rattles on and Faith is dancing with suppressed slaying lust when he finally finishes talking. A nest of vampires, which they know about courtesy of Clem’s information network, urgently awaits destruction and their anticipation is honed to a fine point by now. They escape the nagging phone with a roar, diving nose-first into the murky grayness outside. Morgan has prepared a portable fire spell they want to use because it looked so cool when they tried it out, incinerating a trembling aspen from their garden as a vampire stand-in.

Faith is still lying in bed and being deliciously pampered. On last night’s little outing the biggest vampire tore a whole tombstone from the ground and used it as a Faith-bat, and although Spike dusted him at once, a fair amount of damage was done. She’s now a mottled purple-black all over her left side. Kennedy and Morgan took over the rest of the night for her. In spite of a slight panic attack at the thought of letting her hatchlings fly free, she has to admit she couldn�t have made it. So she’s lying back in the pillows, idly playing with her good hand in Spike’s still multicolored hair, when a rumbling in her belly announces an appetite more urgent than coming one more time.

Spike looks up from between her thighs and wipes off his mouth. “I’ll get it, pet. What do you fancy? Muesli with yogurt? Fruit juice?”

Pancakes with syrup would be really nice, but Spike’s culinary talents, although unfurling hesitant little wings, don’t stretch that far yet. She’ll have to ask Tara to show him how. For now she regretfully settles for muesli and coffee. According to Spike all this healthiness has improved her fighting and her scent, so there must be some point to it, but she herself hasn’t noticed any difference.

She closes her eyes, the better to enjoy the sounds of Spike wrestling with the fridge and the coffee machine. He’s on bad terms with them both right now, because he thinks they spoil his blood and boil his coffee on purpose. He refuses to take responsibility for his own role in the vampire-machine relationship and the three of them are really going to have to talk about it before permanent damage occurs.

A shrill sound makes her sit bolt upright in her bed, which aggravates her bruised ribs and sore butt. What the hell is it? A door opens and a man’s voice sounds. Faith stiffly levers herself off the bed and after slinging Spike’s duster around her shoulders goes to investigate.

It’s Giles. A sheep-skinned Giles in her kitchen, his neck hidden in pale yellow cashmere, looking annoyed and tired. Spike is making googly eyes at the tall Goth girl Giles has in tow. He’s forgotten he’s buck naked, and the girl stares back with great interest at the expanse of cream colored vampire skin behind the Corn Flakes box.

When Faith limps in, Giles’ eyes slide to her partially visible breasts first and she’s never disliked him more. He’s not supposed to look at her like that, he’s a Watcher and not as young and cute as he used to be. His face puckers up in distaste and the unfairness in that makes Faith’s blood boil. Ogling first, disapproval second, huh? Giles’ eyes slide around the kitchen furtively, no doubt discovering subtle signs of debauchery she can’t identify. Maybe it’s her dirty dishes stacked haphazardly on top of the counter, showing off their blemished bellies unashamedly. Well, she’s not ashamed of them, or her body. She folds her arms under her breasts and registers Giles jerking his head away with glee. What is it with the Watcher sneaking in unannounced and all?

The Goth girl squeaks like Dawn and of course, she is. She’s towering over Faith and her black-ringed eyes caress Spike’s naked form in a very grown up way. Spike stumbles a step forward, like a puppet on strings attached to Dawn’s eyes.

“Li’l Bit!” he says hoarsely.

“Spike!” Giles barks. “Go dress yourself, man, this is not appropriate.”

Dawn giggles and Spike obeys stiffly. Faith cannot imagine Spike obeying an order like that and looks at Giles suspiciously. Is this a spell? What have they done to the confident smiling guy who was eating her and making breakfast?

“Giles?” Faith says. “What are you doing here?”

Giles manages not to look at Faith’s half-clothed body again, but doesn’t meet her eyes either.

“I did call, Faith,” he says, frowning.

“Well, yeah, but you didn’t say you were coming today!” Faith protests. Or did he? Her mind might have been more on patrol than on arrival dates, but still.

Giles’ eyes shift away again. Something’s not right there. Dawn plunks down a carryall on the floor and settles herself on a kitchen chair, fishnetted legs crossed brazenly. Her vinyl skirt is both short and slashed, showing alluring glimpses of more Dawn than Faith has ever seen. Her legs are long and shapely, and when Faith wrenches her eyes away from them she meets Giles’, who must have been looking at the same spot she was. Ew.

Although Faith is glad that Giles hightails it almost immediately back to the airport, she still thinks his haste is a little bit insulting. They and their guest take their coffee in the living room. It looks halfway decent, although the Christmas tree is shedding badly. The Cheetos and Reese’s decoration scheme looks sad instead of inventive in the harsh light of day.

“Gee, you don’t often see a Christmas tree this time of year,” Dawn says perkily. “Cool. If you wait you can hang Easter eggs in it.”

Faith is kinda waiting for Spike to defend her and the tree, but he’s just staring at Dawn with this awe. She gently pushes his jaw in place when she walks past him. Spike gazes on, managing no more than a distracted nod. And Dawn just sits there, glowing with being gazed at.

The weapons room, also known as the second bedroom, is hastily restored for Dawn to its former identity. Dawn politely thanks Faith for letting her stay, but isn�t subtle enough to hide her dismay at the dusty, cramped room without any pretensions of it being a teenager’s dream. Or is it deliberate? Faith is a little shamed for thinking this. Dawn is Joyce’s daughter; she wouldn’t try to put her down.

“Hey, Dawnie, howya been?” Faith says. Lame-o, she thinks. “Still going to school?”

“Sure,” Dawn says. “I’ll need good grades to go to the Watchers’ Academy, or Cambridge maybe.”

She flips her black, purple tipped sheet of hair.

Dawn a Watcher? Scary, scary thought. But then, she was big with the Sumerian and the Turkish.

Dawn has brought a Grateful Dead poster, which she insists on hanging in the kitchen. It clashes with their yellowing wallpaper, but what wouldn’t? Faith resists the temptation to draw a big red circle around the day she’s gonna leave. She doesn�t know why Dawn is getting her riled so badly, she didn�t used to mind her. Anyway, Dawn is Buffy’s sister, she owes her hospitality.

Dawn and Spike return to their gaze-fest, and Faith decides to go shopping. Somehow Wal-Mart, usually empowering and comforting, really, totally pisses her off today. It’s full of mothers and kids obstructing the aisles and all the pristine packaging stares boldly back at her, daring her to buy them. There is nothing she wants, and when she returns a coupla hours later, sans groceries but with a great thundercloud hanging over her left shoulder, Dawn and Spike have only slightly changed position. They�re now turned towards each other, and sit talking softly, nodding and murmuring like delayed mirror images.

Faith joins them, but all they can talk about is Buffy, Buffy living, Buffy dying. Faith absolutely still thinks of Buffy now and then, but hey, she wasn’t a saint or something, just a girl with a mission and a hard life. The reverent words, endlessly repeated, start to grate real soon and she changes to go running. This could be a long visit.

Another snowy vampire filled night in Cleveland. She envies the monsters on nights like this; none of them seem to feel any pain from the weather. The human and more or less human members of the Faith gang are bundled into so many layers of clothing that they look like three of the seven dwarves. Faith is Grumpy and Morgan Sneezy, with Dawn standing in for Snow White. She’s dressed in expensive pale blue skiing clothes, which are light as air and keep her perfectly warm on patrol, even if she usually doesn’t contribute anything beyond comments on demonic languages. For the rest, Morgan throws combustion spells at vamps, covered by Kennedy; Faith kicks ass and dusts them; Dawn hangs out with Spike and Clem.

Her little gang is turning into a smooth fighting machine, but still, patrol is less fun these days. Faith is busy keeping her flock together, Spike is busy keeping Dawn happy, so there just doesn�t seem to be time for them to slay together like they used to. Thank God she’s only staying a month.

The house is always full now. Apart from the gang, Dawn is there all the time, which means they can’t fool around too much in bed or at all on the couch, and she needs breakfast and dinner and lunch at regular hours, and can�t get about on her own so she needs to be driven everywhere. Faith grits her teeth and tries to enjoy the company.

She gets back from an unsuccessful job interview one dark afternoon and finds Dawn and Morgan ensconced on the couch, forcing her to retire to the uncomfortable chair. She’s happy that Morgan has someone her own age to talk to, but it’s a drag to be odd wheel out.

“Baden-Powell’s, like, the major text on fire spells,” Dawn is saying to Morgan.

“I use Booth,” Morgan counters. “Less force, more subtlety.”

Both Baden-Powell and Booth are thick flaking tomes which exude musty smells and contain vellum pages full of illegible lettering. Faith yawns.

“What’s this, Faith?”

Morgan is holding up Clem’s nutrition book. It’s only slightly thinner and newer than the spell books.

Faith flaps a tired hand. “Cook book,” she says. “Full of healthy veggie goodness. Don�t bother.”

Morgan opens it anyway. ‘How to keep your humans’ hides healthy and glossy’, ‘Treating skin sores’, ‘Encouraging conception’, ‘Maximum weight gain’, Do you know what I’m thinking?”

Spike breezes in, so Faith will have to take a rain check on Morgan’s thoughts. Suddenly there is enough room on the couch, next to Dawn.

“How are my girls?” Spike asks no one in particular, and bends over to peck Dawn on the cheek and pat her hair.

Morgan meets Faith’s gaze and does an eye roll. Faith rolls hers back, a little relieved that she’s not the only one to notice the ickiness.

Faith has exhausted herself batting Morgan’s fire balls at targets, because although Morgan does a nifty ball of fire, she has no aim and needs a Slayer to get the damn things in the right place. She walks straight to the fridge, thinking about taking a long hot shower on her own, and gets out a carton of milk. The cold milk is glugging satisfyingly down her throat when she hears people talking in the next room.

“�come on, Dawn, this is so about Buffy! You don�t think he’d�.”

“I liked him first, you know!”

Faith lets the fridge door slam a warning and Kennedy stomps into the kitchen. She colors up when she sees Faith. She fiddles about in the fridge, first picking up some sweet&sour pork leftovers, then a piece of moldy cheese, but doesn’t settle on anything. Faith’s milk turns to ice cream in her stomach.

“Faith? Come outside for a minute?”

“Okay.”

It’s nice outside. The sky is hazy, flimsy clouds are gathering mass for some serious snowing later on, but for now there is a watery yellow sun peeking through. Planes hum cheerily overhead, trains chuff by, with the highway adding the base note to the city music.

“Hoo-ee!”

“Jesus!” Kennedy leaps up and claps her hands to her ears. “Doesn’t it drive you crazy, these trains yelling in your ear all day?”

Faith looks up in surprise. “No, I kinda like it, kinda homey, you know.”

Kennedy looks at her long and thoughtfully. Faith thinks she might as well have ‘wrong side of the tracks’ tattooed on her forehead. She doesn�t care, but she thinks it matters to Kennedy.

“So, um, how long is Dawn gonna stay?” Kennedy asks, looking away from Faith.

Faith swallows. If even self-absorbed Ken has noticed something, it must be really bad. She kicks a heap of slushy snow into chaos. “Another two weeks, why?”

“Nothing.” Silence. “Want me to take her to the mall tomorrow, get her out of your hair?”

Faith blinks. Bit of dust in her eye. “Yeah. Thanks. That would be cool.”

She looks up to find Kennedy’s eyes on her, dark brown with serious tidings. Ken nods jerkily and claps her hand on Faith’s arm. “Take care. See, I actually knew that Will was going to break up with me for a long time, I could see her psyching herself up to it and not making it, but I didn�t wanna know. So I get what you’re going through.”

Shit. Kennedy should just have stopped after ‘take care’. Faith was actually grateful until then. Now she’ll have to admit something to herself she doesn�t want to.

Faith wakes up in the middle of the night because someone is crying. It can only be Dawn. Spike sighs a soft breeze against her neck hairs and gets up stealthily. Faith falls asleep again. Not her concern.

She wakes up again when the door opens softly and a very silent Spike comes in the bedroom again. She has no idea how much time has passed. He walks around the bed and slides in. Faith is almost asleep again when she realizes the body nestling against her is warm. Her body careens into overdrive and she is immediately chilled to the bone, heart banging against the door of alarm central to wake her up. She doesn’t move a muscle, but she knows that Spike will have noticed all these little signs of agitation. Dawn. Her fingers drill into her pillow in a rage so hot that she’s surprised that her cover doesn’t catch flame. What the fuck does that little bitch think she’s doing with her guy?

She turns on her back. Spike is motionless. Vague illumination from the streetlights show a light spot in the bed where his bleached hair is. That means he’s not looking at her.

“Spike?”

White flashes from eyes opening. He doesn’t speak. Faith puts a hand on his still warm stomach. Her hand twitches.

“Spike? What happened?”

Spike doesn’t answer, just lies there clenching his fingers. Now Faith has to believe the worst.

Something on his face is catching a glimmer of light. Faith reaches for it. It’s wet. She doesn’t need any more clarification. She yanks the covers away from Spike and gives him savage kick.

“Out!” she says. “Out now!”

Spike bends his head and she almost dies when she sees how humble and boyish his neck is, ghostly pale in the dark room. He gathers his clothes silently and leaves the bedroom. She can hear him dress and use the front door.

She lies staring at the ceiling for the rest of the night, eyes dry and painful from not crying. Her heart keeps hammering away and her stomach churns and spasms. So this is how it feels like. Having your heart broken is like when you drink too much coffee or eat something bad. She’s so stupid. If she hadn’t acted like a love-sick idiot, pretending to be all normal girl with a guy and friends this wouldn�t have happened. She’s gonna go back to lone wolf Faith right now. No more lovey dovey stuff. Ditch the gang. Disappear into the wilds of un-Watched America, doing good anonymously, driving off into the sunset on her trusty bike. This picture of the new lonely Faith finally makes her break out into silent sobs, silent because Dawn doesn�t need to know she’s crying. And why the hell is she lying here waiting for the sun to come up? She has nothing to fear from the night.

She dresses, stomping around and banging closet doors, hopefully depriving the little bitch in the guest room of some sleep. She doesn�t feel like eating anything; drinks from the tap and explodes from the front door, suddenly really worried if the bike will still be there. She’s halfway across the yard when she realizes there’s a dark form sitting on the porch steps, his head in his hands. Well, she’s not gonna look back. An image of a guilt-ridden Spike, sitting on the porch until he bursts into flame niggles at her. She just can’t make herself think of something else, but there is the little victory of not looking into her rear mirrors until she’s sure she can’t see him anymore. Too late she realizes he never shows up in any mirror.

So, where to go? She didn’t bring any of her stuff. Huh. Since when has she needed things to slow her down? She’s bad, she’s mad and she’s back. America, here she comes. She’s gonna ride until she drops. For no good reason Kennedy’s hotel suddenly appears on her right, and before she can decide to ride on past it, she’s parking her bike and hurrying through the lobby. At this hour, nobody is alert enough to stop her and she’s pounding on Ken’s door with her sight gone strangely blurry.

Ken, sleepy and disheveled, needs only one look to open up her arms. Faith has an out of body experience right then and there, looking down on the girl sobbing on Kennedy’s shoulder. Kennedy pats her back and murmurs soothing things. Mad bad Faith is not in charge, wet soppy Faith is.

It’s strangely peaceful to lie on Kennedy’s bed with a wet cloth over her face and listen to her call room service and putter around, probably dressing. She’s amazed at Ken, who seems to know exactly what to do. She has another heaving, tearing crying jag, and then Ken feeds her a giant breakfast, which seems to settle at least half of her floaty detached feeling.

When Faith is done with her third cup of coffee she starts shredding a croissant so she won�t have to look at Ken’s eyes, which have gone dark and serious.

She grabs Faith’s hands. “What happened, Faith? You two have a fight?”

Faith doesn�t want to say something out loud, because that might make things even worse, but then, could they be?

“He came back to bed all warm,” she says. Her voice is as broken as her illusions. “Means he musta been pretty close to the little bitch.”

She sees Ken swallow and tear up a bit. It’s sort of awesome to see someone cry on your behalf, like you�re important and loved. It sets her off again as well.

When they’re both calmer, Ken says, “And when you asked him what happened? What did he say?”

“He wouldn’t say, and I just kicked him out of the house! What do you think?”

Kennedy bends her head and strokes her arm. “So you’re not sure he actually slept with her?” she says slowly.

Faith is scornful. “What does it matter? He looked all sorry and sad, so he thinks he did something bad. And anyway, I should have done it before. You know what the last weeks have been like, all big puppy eyes and panting, close on little Miss Summers’ heels.”

“Yeah. Like watching him trail after Buffy herself,” Kennedy says. “Barf-worthy. You two were fun together, like partners, not like mistress and lap dog.”

Faith giggles. It�s a very small, sad giggle, but it’s a start. She devours some more breakfasty things.

“So, you gonna go back and kick her out, too?”

This makes Faith pause. Ken is right. Why should she leave? She’s got a cool job here, and friends. Let them fuck off and be unhappy somewhere else.

The phone rings. It�s Morgan. She tried Faith’s house and got no answer. They decide to go to Morgan’s place. Faith gets a warm kind of feeling in her stomach. It’s like she’s Buffy. People care about her, they rally for her.

They find Morgan in a sea of pastel colored maps of Cleveland. Her printer is spitting out sheet after sheet of something. Her face is smudged with ink and tiredness, but her cheeks are pink and her hands dance while she’s talking.

“See, I found these transactions, all by the same person. Someone’s buying land around here, big chunks of arable land, under different names, but if you track them through records it�s all the same company. Guess who owns it?” she says triumphantly.

Faith has no idea, but she’s too sweet in her zeal for them not to try.

“The mayor?” she offers.

“Arnold Schwarzenegger?” from Ken.

Morgan looks at them in scorn. “Have you been paying any attention to my research? It’s Clem and Willy. Don’t you get it? They’re buying land! They’re starting up the family business again.”

Faith shoves a map off the couch and sits down. She’s not feeling too bothered by all this.

“And this is evil how?” Kennedy says.

Morgan brandishes Clem’s cookbook. She needs two hands for it. “A recipe for baby liver p�t�? What does that tell you?”

Kennedy goes up to Morgan and whispers. Morgan colors. “Sorry, Faith, you’re in no mood to hear this now, I know. You can go grill them later. It’s not as if I expect you to do it today, okay?”

A flash of shocking pink in the corner of Faith’s eye grabs her attention. Tara materializes. Morgan must have contacted her. Tara blows her a kiss and mimics stroking her hair. It’s like she’s really being touched, and of course she starts dribbling snot and tears again, but she’s past shame by now. They know the score anyway, so there’s no need to hold up a cool front. She’s not cool, she’s lukewarm and sodden with crying, but she doesn�t care. They have a nice crying foursome and it feels surprisingly good.

“I thought you loved Dawn,” Faith says to Tara.

“I do,” Tara says, but she looks stern. “But I don�t think she’s doing the right thing. I understand that they’re both sad about Buffy, but that’s no reason for Dawn to come between you and Spike. And Spike’s still mourning Buffy, I get that too, but it’s wrong to use Dawn as a substitute.”

Tara explains it all so simply. And yeah, it’s more sad than evil, and not about Faith at all. Her eyes get all clear and she just has to hug these girls to show that she loves them. She even forgets about Tara and her arm goes right through her. She knows exactly what to do now. It’s her name on the lease, she’s gonna go back to the house and tell them to clear out. The sadness won�t go away that easily, of course, but she�ll deal.

The girls come with her, all piled into Kennedy’s car. Tara rides along in a show of solidarity, although she could just wink out and materialize at her destination. Faith really appreciates it. The house is empty. Dawn’s stuff is gone and her bed is stripped. That’s cool, because who needs painful confrontations anyway? They order pizza. After the gorge-fest they go out again to the mall and pick out some clothes for Faith. Morgan has great taste, which you would never guess looking at her moth eaten pastel shapelessness. Morgan claims it’s her disguise. Whatever. Faith is not inclined to feel critical of them at all today.

Kennedy wants to go to Willy’s Bar & Grill to question Willy, but Faith doesn’t feel like kicking ass today. After drinking champagne and watching a very soppy British movie at Kennedy’s room Faith decides to go home, alone. They all offer to sleep over, but Faith really wants to do this. They’ve been awesome, but Faith just wants to be by herself for a minute, rehash all those feelings and decisions she made today, see if they hold up when she’s on her own.

In her bedroom she finds that Spike’s duster and clothes are still there. He must have forgotten them in his hurry to go away with his new love. She’ll dump them tomorrow.

She makes a giant batch of popcorn and tries to watch another movie. For some reason the kid reminds of her Spike, with his sharp little face and the way he cares for his crazy mother, and she can’t suppress a visual of him and Dawn holding hands on a plane, looking happy and beautiful. Stupid movie. She turns to another channel, a truly horrible movie she’s seen before, but at least she’s sure there is no Spike in there. But there is a jilted lover and Faith turns off the TV. She gets it already, she’s not the only one to go through this. The point is, watching all those dumb movies doesn�t make her feel better when she’s the one starring in her own weepy story.

The popcorn is cold when she remembers it again. The fridge is almost empty, and to top it all the fridge light is dead. This makes Faith cry. She’s lost count of the amount of times she has cried today, and she isn’t even drunk. Hey, booze would be a good thing about now. The beer is gone, but she finds a bottle of JD in the cupboard. The living room looks utterly bleak without the TV and the vampire. In a surge of angry energy she wrestles the ugly dead Christmas tree out to the yard and sets it on fire. There, at least it’s doing something useful now. The tree gives off a nice smoky smell, only slightly spoiled when a forgotten Cheetos package flames up and dies in a puff of black smoke. Ugh.

She stands in the yard watching the tree burn up and the last red ember glows out. Too bad her achy heart won�t burn out that easily. She trudges back inside. The living room looks even worse now, so she takes the JD to bed. Hopefully she�ll pass out soon. The first taste is bad, and the second no better. What do normal people, who can’t slay away their frustrations, do when there is nothing on TV and there is no one in their bed? Drink and drugs, is the only answer she comes up with. Well, maybe tomorrow. Just plain old sleep will do for now.

Her brain won�t fucking stop replaying every Spike and Dawn picture it has stored, and she wishes she could switch it off like the broken jukebox it resembles. If Buffy had to go through this a coupla times, no wonder she preferred to be dead. Maybe she’ll follow her example and jump off a bridge or something. She gets up, finds one of his unwashed T-shirts and puts it on her pillow. The scent fills her nose with musk under comforting pepper and powder and she can be weak this once.

She has fallen asleep, apparently, because she wakes up with a shock when someone starts tapping the front door. Who can that be? Finally, when she’s shuffled up sleepily on her bare feet, the tentativeness of the knocking clues her in. Here comes repentant lover. She doesn�t know what she’s gonna do, or say, all her girlfriends’ admonitions have flown out of her brain. She’s just gonna take it as it comes, she guesses.

It is the repentant lover. He’s standing there, hands jammed in his jeans pockets, eyes downcast, pale and small against the looming darkness. He left the duster, Faith remembers. Was that a signal that he would return? If so, she’d been too numb to pick up on that. Subtlety not being her thing.

“Is she�?” Faith jerks her head in the direction of the dark yard.

Spike shrugs almost imperceptibly and bites his lip. “I put her on a plane,” he says. He still looks at his shoes, not at her. “Can I come in?”

She opens the door. He hesitates on the threshold, looking at her from under his brows. He thinks he might need to be invited in, Faith realizes. She could have thought of that, it’s like changing the locks on a human lover, but she didn’t. If it�s about him she just doesn�t think.

She waits until he takes a deep breath and slowly lifts one foot into the house space.

She wants to ask, if Buffy dropped out of Heaven right now, would you go with her? But she doesn�t, because she knows the answer, always has. She lets go of the door and walks to the bedroom.

“I was sleeping,” she says, and crawls into bed without looking back.

Faith waits for what must be at least a minute, and he’s still not there. She can’t do the waiting thing anymore, turns her head and lifts the comforter.

“Well?” she says impatiently.

He’s standing there in the door opening, one hand in his hair, his other hand splayed against his dark shirt. He shrugs it off quickly, takes his shoes off with jerky movements � she hears a shoelace break � and slithers out of his jeans. The clothes lie where he stood and he gets in bed, slow again. Faith turns her head away again and hears him settle carefully a few inches away from her body. She sighs. Men. She wiggles backwards until her ass is in its usual position against his belly. He hesitates, she can feel his icy hand hovering over her hip, and finally decides to clasp her as he always does. His face comes to lie against the back of her head.

“Faith�” he says in a low rough voice.

“Shh. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

They shift around a bit and settle finally in the grooves they’ve worn against each other. He warms up quickly and Faith sleeps.

Faith wakes up like always, warm and safe, nose against Spike’s backbone. After a second of sleepy stretching memory kicks in and she freezes. She lies down again with slow soundless movements. Spike is still sleeping. There’s lots of ways they could do this. Talk now, fuck later. Fuck first, talk after, what’ll it be? Her instinctive decision from last night, to let him back in, doesn�t feel wrong, but she wants to chew on it a bit more before she swallows. She can feel the sun outside demanding to be let in, and she can’t let that happen, so she’d better get outside and meet the sun on its own turf. Even though the bedroom is on the north of the house, she closes the curtains extra securely. Sneaky sun might try to get in anyway. Faith leaves the nest with its familiar comforting sleep smell and the still warm drowsing vampire, silently gets her clothes and dresses in the kitchen.

She stuffs in a quick breakfast and walks outside chewing. The air outside shoves sharp needles of cold and brightness up her nose. With her head turned aside she walks into the yard until her eyes stop streaming and she can appreciate the sheer exhilarating sparkle of the morning. After months of grey skies and shadows, the sky and the snow seem to explode with pure new color, straight from the paint tube without any murkiness or doubt. The sky is bluer than Spike’s eyes, the snow as white as his skin and the sun competes with the yellowness of his hair. Faith takes in a few deep chilly breaths through her nose, eager to savor the non-smell of a world this fresh and young. Even Cleveland is pretty now, all her blemishes covered with a flattering layer of cushiony white, like a wedding dress.

There sure is a whole lotta snow covering their almost lawn, hiding all the unpleasant reminders of neglected gardening, of not even knowing where to begin gardening. Clearly making a snowman’s in order. Faith has only the haziest memories of making one before but it can�t be too hard if a kid can do it. She huffs and she puffs, rolling the rapidly growing ball on a zigzag pattern across the lawn. The snow under her boots triggers more winter memories of youth, that popping crackling sound your footsteps made, so that you knew by your ears alone if the snow was good for making missiles and men.

Her exertions have made her hot and sweaty, while at the same time she feels the cold biting the skin of her cheeks. The tips of her fingers are bright red and throbbing with life-giving blood. She knows that if she goes on too long, Slayer energy or not, they will turn white and dead with the onset of frostbite. She stuffs them in her pockets.

Spike the snowman is still bald and sightless. Faith looks around for materials to use for his hair and eyes, and is attracted by a flash of yellow from the black anorexic trees at the back of their lot. She tramps towards them through the knee-high snowdrifts and enters the woods. Fifteen feet in, the whole atmosphere has changed and Faith stops walking to take in her new surroundings. She isn�t in a suburban lot on the bad side of a big city any longer, but in the middle of wise and ancient nature, waiting patiently for spring. All sounds are muffled, and Faith can no longer identify their origin without thinking.

She puts one foot forward. The sound of her boot breaking through the snow is like a gun shot. A small white animal shoots up a tree and disappears. Faith tries to remain completely still, hoping to lure the little magic creature out of hiding again. At first her own breathing and the slight rustling of her clothes annoys her, as she can�t seem to stop them, but then she finds the right mindset for this. She pretends the sunny wintry forest is a moonlit graveyard, and the little pointy-nosed thing a demon, and then she has no trouble staying Slayer-still. A tiny pink snout inches forward around the bole of the tree and Faith, mouth open so she can keep motionless and not even blink, sees it snuffle and run back down the tree to disappear again under the snow. Faith wishes she knew anything about animals, like its name for instance. Other things she can guess, like the fact that it’s a predator, with its sharp little teeth and nervous speed.

She plods forward, looking for something yellow and something blue to make her Spike-man pretty. A tiny point of something thin and bright pokes through the snow. She kneels down to brush away the white powder and uncovers a five-pointed bright yellow star. It’s beautiful, and next to it is an even brighter red one. She can’t use that though, it’s the wrong shape to use for a mouth or bloodied fangs and she doesn�t want to tear up the beautiful thing.

While she’s kneeling there, she sees tiny tracks in the snow. They seem oddly spaced. Two identical prints of furry feet close together, then two bigger feet a little forward from that, with more space in between. Approaching these tracks in a V from the right are different tracks, four identical feet spaced one by one; a four footed thing setting its feet down one on the left, one on the right. Faith tries to mimic how the first animal must have walked, and ends up putting her hands side by side in the snow, using them to jump off and ending up with her two feet a little in front and by the side of it. It has to be like a frog or a rabbit, she deduces. Somehow frogs seem unlikely in this setting, although she doesn�t know why she thinks this. She follows the tracks. The other animal crosses the rabbitfrog tracks and there has clearly been a tussle, for the snow’s disturbed in a circle. Faith sees a few drops of blood, and then a dragging spoor though the snow. Good guess the other animal’s a predator, although she doesn’t know what kind. It’s won, anyway.

Thoughtfully Faith retraces her tracks. Rabbits and predators. A fox, or a wolf, maybe? She feels that she and the predators, little or small, are very much alike. They’re fierce and fast, and she imagines cracking a little neck with her teeth and feeling the hot blood spout into her mouth. She’s like them, a she-wolf.

She reenters the semi-civilized world of their suburban lot. No, she isn’t a wolf. She isn’t preying on a herd of sheep; she’s defending them against predators. She’s a sheep dog. This image is distinctly less cool and evokes bad hair days, but it still feels right. Yeah. Faith, defender of the pack. No, herd. Wolves run in packs. But dogs are descended from wolves, aren’t they? Wolves turned to the light side of the Force. It feels Slayerish and right, attuned to life and the rhythms of the wild world, and somehow out of place in this spot, a tiny patch of nature surrounded on all sides by smelly heavy industry and shrieking trains.

And what is she doing with Spike exactly, associating with a wolf? Or could Spike be classified as an honorary sheepdog? A picture of Spike with bed head surfaces in her mind and she smiles, her cheeks stiff in the frosty air. And Buffy, always pretending to be a sheep, and unhappy at the thought of being a dog, or resembling a wolf. Hmm. How did Buffy’s deal with the Scoobies, clearly all sheep related creatures, work? And why would she, Faith, need sheep around her? Well. Maybe to remind the shepherd dog that she wasn�t a wolf, so she wouldn�t run away into the wild and join the pack again, huh? For the second time in two months, she wishes she could talk to Giles right now. Not the embarrassed Giles who came in to bring Dawn, but the real one. He might have something to say on these matters. Or even Wesley. Wesley had kinda unsheepified the last time she’d seen him.

She puts the hair on her snowman Spike. There is too much contrast between the bright yellow leaf and the dead white snow. Real live Spike has creamy skin and paler hair, and he has much more life in him than this cold white frozen water.

Faith has successfully evaded thinking about yesterday so far. Now she can’t keep it in any longer. Her stake is always in her pocket, and she gets it out and stakes the snowman. He’s the kind of vampire that doesn�t turn to dust right away, so she kicks him to little pieces and stamps the pieces to powder. She kicks and kicks until she’s created her own little snowstorm, a whirling hot fury in the middle of a tiny white vortex. She takes a deep breath and looks around the yard. It just looks tussled and no one would know there was a snowman standing here a minute ago. She tosses the stake into the woods. Bad stake.

Spike is standing in the kitchen door bare chested, like a dollop of Kool Whip against the bluish snow, looking on with his face tight and closed. She walks up to him, shoulders roughly past him to get in. She peels off her outdoor clothes and tosses them away from her. There’s coffee. Good. She drinks a cup silently, warming her frozen heart and hands. She sets the empty cup down with a click. It cracks.

“So,” she says.

Spike swallows. “How mad are you?”

She smashes him up against the wall and rams her forearm against his throat.

“Pretty fucking mad!” she says, but pressed up against his body all she can think of is loving, not killing.

He’s limp and penitent in her arms. He turns his head away and spreads his arms. “Okay,” he says. “Do it. I’m sorry.”

“Aw, fuck. I’m not Buffy,” Faith says and lets him go. “Get your martyr kick somewhere else. Just tell me why.”

She sits down at the kitchen table, gets up again to get two new mugs and pours coffee. Spike sits down across the table from her, not touching her.

He takes a deep breath and blinks rapidly. “She just�she just smelled so much of Buffy. I know it was wrong, but�”

Faith holds up her hand. “You made me no promises. I just want to know�this is hard. I don�t wanna go through it again. Will something like this happen again?”

“No, it won’t.”

This talking thing is tricky. What she really wants to know is, did you fuck her, how many times and in what positions? It’s on the tip of her tongue, but she stops it from falling out. Because if she ask this, and he answers, other things might come out that she won’t like. Does he love her at all?

They like to drink their coffee hot, dark and strong like themselves, but it’s tepid by now because they have waited too long. Faith can’t stand the way he looks at her anymore, the blue of his eyes so dark it�s grey, that pretty mouth that should just kiss and swear all serious and tight. She gets up and clambers on his lap. It’s awkward, like she doesn�t even know him. She has to get away from his eyes and hides her face in his neck, where the skin is unblemished and pearly white. No hickeys or bites from former girlfriends, whatever they marked him with doesn�t show on the outside. Faith licks the skin, but he is clean and almost tasteless. She nibbles the tendon under the ear, then gnaws at it in earnest. Spike shivers and leans his head away to give her better access. She can feel under the tips of her fingers that Spike’s eyes are closed.

“You want to brand me, Faith? You don�t have the teeth for it,” he growls low in his throat.

That means he thinks it’s sexy, Faith knows. So does she. She sits up straight again, keeping her hands in the soft curls of his neck, and looks at him again. He looks steadily back. He often looks at her like that, all open and willing, all ‘take me I’m yours’, but what does it mean, when he really hankers after another Slayer, or worse, her little sister? She doesn�t know. It has to mean something that he’s here with her and not with Dawn.

She bends over to him, he’s almost warm under her hands now, his body eager to take on her heat, and kisses him with her eyes still open. There’s a head rush from feelings, so many of these feelings crowding in her head, she can’t name half of them and they make her hands tremble and her eyes burn. Aw shit, there’s gonna be another of those dumb crying things. Spike holds her neck and the small of her back tenderly and kisses her ear. Fuck, all the tenderness is not gonna make the crying time any shorter, but is kind of a relief to do it on his shoulder for a change.

Spike is just lifting her up, and Faith is mostly okay with the idea of sex in a minute, when the kitchen door opens noisily and someone comes in. Not now, she could scream in frustration, but doesn�t.

“Hey buddy, Faith,” Clem burbles. “Howya doing? I brought beer and dip!”

Morgan told her something about Clem, but Faith can�t remember what. Spike squeezes her hand, which she takes to mean that there will be sex later. No surprise there. Clem has come to watch some silly rerun on their TV, and Faith realizes the whole drama thing has passed him by.

“Where’s Dawnie?” Clem asks, and Faith feels sorry for him when Spike throws him a very dark look.

“Back to LA,” Spike says curtly, and thankfully Clem has sense enough not to pursue it.

They settle on the couch, and Faith wraps around Spike like spaghetti round a fork and plays with his fingers under the plaid. She’s actually sort of fine with this, maybe just cuddling was a better idea than fucking like bunnies right now, when she’s still kinda shaky on her own feelings and Spike’s.

She feels nothing but Spike’s lips, doesn�t look, just imagines them pink and swollen and tasting sweeter than spun sugar. She’s sinking into a happy kissing coma, drinking and licking from his mouth, when there’s a disturbance outside. A car stops, girlish voices shriek with excitement as they approach.

Faith freezes and hides under the blanket. More people, and now? But you can’t blow off the friends that were majorly kind to you, so she uncovers herself and tries to look friendly as they burst in. First in is a kind of Christmas sausage, which reveals itself on closer inspection to be Willy wrapped in glowing spell cords. Faith stares, too surprised to move, as a small black shape hurtles at Clem and socks him a big one on the jaw.

“Ha! Got them!” Morgan shouts and Kennedy makes a triumphant fist over the unconscious demon.

What the fuck? What are the girls thinking of, laying out and capturing these guys? Clem’s a friend and Willy’s a harmless acquaintance, and human.

“Ken, what the hell did you hit Clem for?” Faith asks.

“Faith, I told you yesterday, I’m sure I did!” Morgan protests but then she remembers yesterday, with Faith in less than receptive state, Faith can tell by her face. Her cheeks are bright red with cold and agitation, as red as the breast of her birds, who tweet and flutter like maniacs.

Kennedy finally registers the entwined Faith-Spike creature and several emotions flit over her face until she decides on caution.

“Hi Spike,” she says neutrally.

Only Faith feels the tremor in Spike’s voice when he says, “Hi Ken.”

Kennedy fiddles with her stake, and what she’s doing with it Faith has no idea, because it sure won’t work on Clem no matter where she sticks it. Morgan and Kennedy look at each other. Morgan pushes the living wurst on the uncomfortable chair and clears her throat.

“Spike, Faith,” she begins formally, “we have discovered that Willy and Clem were about to embark on a horrible crime.”

It’s like CNN. Spike and Faith sit up straighter. Faith notices a twitch in Clem’s left ear. He would like to know what he’s done, too, she guesses.

“We have irrefutable evidence that these two have been buying land for their new business venture.”

Yeah, and?

“We’ve found out what kind of business they were starting up. You see, Clem’s family used to raise human beings for slaughter, back in the old days. Right, Spike?”

Spike shrugs and nods. “‘S what he told me. Business folded before I knew him. Too many people came to California in the Goldrush, not enough isolation to make it work.”

“Willy’s family were like Kapos, they were overseers for the demons, and they got well paid and possibly some lifespan extension,” Morgan continues.

Kapos musta been some kind of traitors. Faith always knew Willy was a weasel.

Morgan flourishes printed schemes with lots of lines and squares and little numbers on it. “We’ve even found the blueprints, with plans of stables and drinking troughs and hatcheries!”

“You may not be aware of this, pet,” Spike says calmly, “but human beings don�t procreate by means of eggs.”

Morgan curls her lip at him. Their faces are at the same height, and the idea that Spike would ever fear this fluffy little ball of pluck makes Faith almost giggle. “Of course we do, Victorian ignoramus.”

Prejudices are starting to show through and it ain’t pretty. The leader must now intervene.

“There will be no slagging off of each other,” Faith says sternly as she gets up. “We will hear the evidence of both parties, stated calmly, with no calling of names.”

She’s watched these court movies often enough to know how it’s done.

Spike revives Clem with a splash of beer and helps him onto the couch.

“Gee, young lady, you wield a mean right hook,” Clem mumbles, rearranging his disordered wattle carefully.

“Clem, Morgan and Ken here think you’re starting up a human meat farm for demons. They’ve got pretty good evidence, whaddya say?” Faith says, in her role as judge.

“What?” Clem bleats and waves his ears and arms around, folds flapping like a middle-aged lady’s flesh. “Are you insane? What have you done to Willy? You know we’re good guys!”

“Better tell the girls what kind of cattle you were gonna raise, mate,” Spike says patiently.

“Ostrich!” Clem says. “Ostrich, it’s, like, the new beef! Why didn�t you find my purchase of ostrich eggs on the web, huh, and the trouble I’ve had importing them and the bribes I had to pay the city officials, human city officials, I might add. I’m an honest business man. I gave up eating human flesh a few lifetimes ago. Have you ever seem me eat human?”

He has a point. And he has as much right to do wrong and repent as anyone else, of course. But Ken wouldn’t be Ken if she didn’t find new bone to pick.

“So you ate my ancestors!” she says threateningly. “Assisting the white man in genocide, were you?”

“Please!” Morgan says. “Is eating Indians worse than eating Irish?”

“Some of them were Spanish�,”Clem starts, but sensibly doesn�t finish the sentence. Spike’s elbow in his ribs might have helped to bring that point home.

Faith does the summation. “So, guys, until we have further proof, we’re assuming Clem and Willy are innocent, right?”

Morgan and Kennedy nod reluctantly. Morgan waves her hand and her biggest bird flies up and pecks at a strategic spot in Willy’s bindings. They darken and fade away.

“What the fuck where you Powerpuff cunts doing?!” Willy says angrily. “Don�t think I’m ever gonna serve you�”

He’s cut off by Clem’s rubbery paw on his lips. “Hey, buddy, don�t go saying things you might be sorry for,” Clem says, with remarkable composure for a guy who’s been rudely hit and splashed with beer in the past ten minutes. “Mistakes were made, coulda happened to anyone, right?”

“Yeah,” Faith says. “It was a good piece of research, very clever thing you did, Mor. And you knocked him out just right, Ken. Unconscious, no permanent damage.”

Faith is kinda sorry for the girls. They spent a lot of time on this, and she should have noticed it before and put a stop to it, or asked Spike or something. Because she and Spike must have been pretty spectacularly unavailable for consultation on this. It’s really her fault, too, so she gets up to make coffee to atone, apologizes to Willy and Clem, finds cookies and is real busy with it.

Spike is slouching on the sofa, not really joining in the relieved talk, and she plunks down next to him, to indicate once again that he is totally forgiven. At least as far as the gang needs to know.

Tara materializes with a ping in the middle of the room. That ping is so thoughtful of her, but that’s just how she is. She looks tired and drawn, which must be a conscious effort on her part, a message.

Spike vibrates under her arm, but it takes seconds before he starts to talk. First he checks out Faith’s face, as if asking permission, then rubs his hands on his jeans. Faith may not be the smartest cookie in the basket, but by now she has gotten through loud and clear what the question is gonna be about.

“How’s Dawn?” he asks quietly, but it happens to coincide with a lull in the conversations, so everyone hears it anyway.

Faith can see Morgan and Kennedy rev up, but she yanks out their ignition-cables with a look. Her business. She’s shared all her woes with them, but they’re not the boss of her heart issues.

Tara rubs her forehead. “She’s not fine, of course, but sort of okay. We talked, and she realizes she needs help. She’s very confused, right now, and she’s been through a lot.” She looks sideways at Spike. “There had been something similar�some trouble with Mr. Giles, which is why she went to stay with you. So, you don�t need to feel it’s all your fault.”

Spike�s cheek muscles clench visibly. He does think he’s to blame, Faith supposes. Well, so does she, at least in part. Whatever Dawn tried on him, he was wide open to it. But if there’s one thing she believes in, it’s that people make mistakes and they have the right to try to do better. Because if not, she wouldn�t have any right to exist.

Morgan tells Tara all about the Willy and Clem cock-up, but the mood is gone. The gang dissipates like smoke, leaving Faith and Spike to watch TV by themselves, which she doesn�t mind at all. It’s hard enough to deal with her own feelings about Spike, she doesn’t need the girls judging eyes adding to it. She puts her head on his shoulder and he presses a brief kiss on her hair. She doesn’t want to look at him right now, the feeling of his hand in hers is enough.

The road goes ever on

It’s kinda weird, but they haven�t fucked since Dawn left. Hardly an hour has gone by without them touching, but it�s been all kissing and holding hands. Faith knows she’s the one holding it off, but she’s feeling almost shy and very horny by now. The very idea of fucking gains an importance it hasn’t had for some time. When they return from patrol, having blissfully shed the gang on the way home, she decides there’s gonna be no more waiting. Spike wouldn�t be Spike, however, if he wasn�t already there waiting for her.

He grabs her hand and kisses the palm, which makes Faith feel special, like a lady.

“You’re my girl,” he says.

Faith wishes very hard that it’s true, or that she can make it come true. “Are you my guy? Only for me?” she asks, although she hadn’t planned to beg for it.

“Only yours. I’ll make you feel it,” Spike says, like guys do.

She lets him push her to the couch and sits down. He holds her hands over her head, which is fine by her, it’s sort of fitting that he’s doing all the work for a bit. She’ll play along until she thinks of something better. No part of his body is touching her, just his big hand easily holding her two smaller ones imprisoned. He smiles at her, contemplating her face so intently, his blue eyes dark in the dimly lit room, that she’s creaming her pants and arches off the couch, aching to touch him.

“Uh-huh,” Spike shakes his head. “Not yet. Gotta look at you first.”

He skims a finger over both her eyebrows, from her nose to her temple, and then back to travel down the bridge of her nose. Faith half closes her eyes in bliss. His knuckles slide over her cheeks, just barely touching the down on her skin. He blows a soft breath over her lips and as she opens her mouth to capture his, he backs away an inch or so and brushes his soft lips against her mouth. Faith relaxes and stops trying to get at his tongue. She’s rewarded with a tantalizing finger flicking the base of her thumb and a real kiss, his tongue slipping in so slowly, dipping in so gently over her own it’s almost torture.

“You’re beautiful, looking so good I could eat you�”

Faith’s breath hitches as a terrible idea is born, blooming like a desert flower after the first meager drop of rain. She opens her eyes and he’s looking down on her like a cat licking his chops and she moans, she wants to be his canary. He narrows his eyes for a second and he breathes in. She’s so focused upon him that the slightest of his movements sets off a shiver deep in her belly.

“Keep your hands like that,” Spike says, and Faith does.

He slides her T-shirt over her head slowly, making it a caress. Faith is already floating on wavelets of pleasure rippling away from his fingers. Spike bends over her breast, so that she can’t help thrusting up in his face and closes his mouth over her right nipple through her bra. Hot shoots of pleasure flower from her breast to her pussy and she opens her legs. Spike presses them firmly back together with his knees and that is good too.

Spike sucks harder on her nipple and she can’t stop wriggling and arching her hips towards his, succeeding in humping the bulge in his jeans. Spike breathes in harshly, she loves hearing him breathe and lose control like that, but he bats away her hands as she tries to undo his fly buttons. He opens up her own pants with slow teasing fingers, smiling evilly at her writhing and moaning. He slides her pants halfway down her thighs, so that her legs are bound, and bites down hard in the crease of her hip. It’s so hot that Faith almost faints with straining her hip in the direction of his mouth, but he holds her down easily with one hand. The other one fondles his cock through his jeans, something Faith wants to be doing. At last he relents and gets off her jeans, and his own.

“What do you want?” she says, lying there splayed open before him, everything in full view, hot and throbbing and waiting for him. She’s his cream dish, she’s waiting for the lapping to start.

“Everything,” he says starkly.

“So do I.”

She wriggles out of his slackening grasp and walks to the kitchen. Her breasts jiggle with every step, they feel heavy and taut with desire, the lips of her pussy swollen with heat, brushing against her thighs as she walks. She comes back with the steak knife. Spike frowns when he sees it.

“Don�t want you to cut yourself, baby,” he says.

“I won’t,” Faith answers and lays the blade flat against his smooth white neck. The flesh cringes and puckers into goose bumps. “I’m gonna mark you.”

His cock slaps against his belly. She pushes him on his knees in front of the couch and sits down before him, wrapping her legs around him. She slides him in with her hand, and he falls forward with a groan, clenching his abs hard, his face against her neck, which is just where she wants him.

“Okay, honey,” she says softly, very sure what she’s gonna do now.

She puts her heels against the couch and her hands on his shoulders, loosely dangling the knife in her right. She gets good leverage like that and she wriggles until his cock hits just the right spot and works them both up until she’s on the brink and Spike is closing and opening his hands rhythmically on her arms. The smell of her own arousal is overpowering in her nose, shellfish and raw beef. She brings up the knife and slices through the skin, near but not on the big artery, she hopes. Spike moans between clenched teeth but doesn�t come. He sucks the big tendon on her side of her neck hard, shuddering against her.

“Do it, Spike, bite me,” Faith says. “I want you to.”

Spike shakes his head against her sweaty skin, no. She thought he’d say that and brings down her lips on the superficial cut she made in his skin and sucks hard. Images slam into her at roaring speed, black red roses black old woman dark girl Angel girl dark girl blond girl Buffy Anya Buffy Faith Buffy Dawn, making her gasp with the pain of knowing, running blood spouting tearing devouring black red blood spatters fucking drinking draining killing red blood fuck her, she springs, brings down the prey, her teeth break the skin, she’s sucking the life blood out, she’s Spike, she’s not, she’s Faith again. Spike’s chest goes up and down like a bellows and she hears the creaking tearing sound of his vampire face, which he almost never shows her. She lifts her wet face for a moment to say, “Come on, take it. Fucking do it! Show me I’m yours.”

He bites, convulsing in orgasm immediately after and so does Faith. It hurts, but as she thought, the blood and the pain and the bite transport her to a whole different plane of orgasm, which goes on an on, knife sharp and thin like a scream.

She must have blacked out, because when she opens her eyes she’s lying in bed, on her back, feeling lightheaded and strange. It can�t have been long though, because she still feels the all-over tingle of a recent coming and now that she thinks of it she quivers with another little spasm. Spike is bent over her, his mouth bloody, his eyes glazed with lust and something like pain. His face may be uncertain, but his cock is dark purple and straining against his belly.

Faith hauls up her rubbery knees with her arms; they don�t seem to want to work on their own. “Fuck me, baby. I need you.”

Spike is beyond words, she guesses, and he places a thick pillow under her hips and pushes in silently. Her hands feel numb and clumsy, but she lifts them up and fingers the oozing bite wound in her neck. It really happened. He must have taken a lot, because she’s feeling woozy and overheated. She holds up her hand to look at the blood. Spike moans in agony and turns his head away. His muscles are rock hard and quivering in his legs and belly, like cables under the skin in his neck and shoulders, he’s looking like he’s about to explode. His face works and he shakes his head, fighting against he vampire mask that threatens to slip down his face at every thrust into her slippery pussy.

Faith’s heart flutters and hastens on, arousal and fear mingling until her skin feels too tight like a sausage, if she’s pricked she�ll burst, and oh god, she does. Spike’s eyes roll up in his head and he half sinks down her, carefully on her unmarked side, but then he stiffens again and continues to pump on blindly.

His eyes look through at her and he growls deep in his throat. His teeth grind against each other and she’s so getting off on this. She’s weak, she can’t defend herself, if he loses it he could drain her dry, this is what she wants, to be all his. She doesn’t really want to die, or be a vamp, even if she could be with him for eternity, but it’s the danger of it all, it’s the hottest thing she’s ever done, dancing on the edge of the blade until her feet are bloody.

She closes her eyes as another orgasm burns through her. Her pussy is in exquisite agony, his cock velvet sandpaper rubbing bare nerves, and she’s shaking and shuddering like a broken wind-up toy. Won’t be long before she blacks out again.

She puts her hand on his chest, accidentally brushing his nipple and Spike’s head whips back and he roars like a lion in full game face. She spasms helplessly against him, his rock hard cock driving on down.

“Spike,” she says, and her voice is small and strained.

“Faith,” he answers.

That’s good, he still knows it’s her. His eyes come back from wherever they were and look at her, his eyes screwed up with the effort of not letting go. His head comes down slowly, warily, a predator bending his head to the pool to drink, and he laps with his unexpectedly rough tongue at her neck in one long, slow stroke. Faith twangs like a releasing catapult and loses herself again for a few moments. When she she’s back they’re bucking against each other, groaning rhythmically. His teeth are not in her throat, they’re clenched shut against her cheek, and she’s both relieved and sorry.

It’s getting to be too much, too good. She knows she could go on coming, but she’s really sore now. She pushes against Spike’s chest and he looks confused, and after a long pause manages to wrench out of her and rolls sideways on the bed, his back turned to her. He doubles up, groaning, and lies there shivering.

Faith carefully puts her hand on his shoulder blade. “Spike. What do you need?”

“Something I don’t want,” he says in a muffled voice.

She’s so glad he doesn’t really want to kill her, she knew that, she trusts him. She uncoils him gently and takes him in her mouth. He feels hot, from her blood she thinks with pride, even if it wasn’t a wise move, and she tries to get him off quickly, working him as fast as she can leaning on her spaghetti arms. It doesn�t seem to help yet. He comes, and relaxes for seconds, but then is up and panting for it again. She sucks and jerks him off until she drops, far from pleasure by now, and at last she collapses beside him.

Before she falls asleep she opens one heavy eye to check on him. He’s lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, breathing evenly. He still radiates warmth.

She wakes early, when it’s still dark. Spike is lying against her, limp, his fingers loosely curled in her hair. She stirs, and he opens his eyes lazily.

“Bloody hell, Faith.”

His mouth is the only thing that moves. He looks tired and satisfied, and Faith’s cheeks fall in a smile, slack from happiness. She still tingles all over and her muscles ache. It was good. It could have gone wrong completely, but it was so good, the risk is what made it good. She broke him a little bit, but he heals right back up, and now she knows he’ll go this far for her. She made it happen.

The next time she wakes up she looks straight into Spike’s eyes, which are their daylight blue. He’s lying on one elbow, smiling at her. He tucks a strand of hair out of her face and Faith rubs her face against his hand. The bed’s a mess, sheets streaked with blood and come, and so is Spike’s face and neck. There is no blood on her breasts, so guess who licked it off?

Spike slides his knee between her legs against her ass and hauls her up to him. Her breasts snuggle into his hand. Faith strokes his face, too full of feeling to speak.

“Good morning, love. How are you feeling?”

Now that he mentions it, crap. She’s sore all over, and very thirsty, with an awful taste in her mouth. She butts her feverish forehead again his, she doesn�t want to leave the bed now. How are they? Has something changed after what they did? She touches the crusted wound on her neck, and then Spike’s thin red stripe of a scar.

“Was it good for you?” she asks hesitantly.

Spike’s smile is crooked, and he runs an absent hand up and down her thigh, making her shiver with the beginnings of arousal.

“It was brilliant, sweetheart. Risky, that, playing with vamps and knives. Don’t try it again. Having a soul means bugger all to a vamp once he’s got his teeth in your neck.”

He bites his lip and kisses her, his hands noticeably warm still around her ass cheeks. Faith is not sure what he means. He didn�t kill her, she knew he wouldn’t. She wants to ask more but he presses her face down in the pillows and starts to massage away the knots and aches she feels everywhere. He always knows how she feels, and she always has to guess about him. He’ll have to tell her. She opens her mouth to speak, but he whispers against her neck, “Love you”.

It’s a good thing that her face is invisible, because, you know, crying makes you ugly and he said she was beautiful. He turns her muscles into sweetest pudding with his skillful kneading, and when he pushes up her butt, knowing thumbs in her pussy and ass, she’s ready for him. He holds her close from behind, as tight as you should hold someone you love, and licks her wound again, which makes her more certain she did the right thing last night. This must be love.

Business seems back to normal. Spring has arrived everywhere but in Cleveland, and the demons keep on coming. So there Faith is, as usual, slogging through a snowy Eternal Gloaming, tailing a coupla guys her radar tells her are demons. She and Spike are lagging behind, on the pretext of overseeing the others, but it’s more a case of keeping Kennedy and him apart. Kennedy, Clem and Morgan are sneaking up on the targets, who have become the focus of the latest batch of the research & gossip soup Morgan and Clem have cooked up. From the back they don�t much look like demons. The shorter one is dressed in Salvation Arm’s finest, style circa 1984, the other one in gleaming too big sports duds. It’s only when his tail comes out and scratches his butt that it’s obvious he’s not some homeboy dealing drugs in a really isolated spot.

“So how come you didn’t get me the season ticket for the Browns, man?” the shorter demon whines. “You promised, you owe me.” He dives into his giant crackling bag of snacks and stuffs some in his mouth.

“I know, I know,” the taller one says and scratches furiously. “But, you know, Harry, Betty had to have braces and then Wade needed glasses, so I just don’t have it right now. You gotta give me time.”

His hands scrabble in the bag for a handful of chips. His tail whips spirals over his head and then dips down to his butt again. Faith is kind of glad he doesn’t eat with his tail, because, ew.

“Yeah, you think I don’t know about Luanne’s egg sac implants, huh?” Harry grouches. “Trying to pass as human, on my money? It ain’t fucking fair, dude!”

They sound so ordinary, so human. Can they really just go kill these guys? Faith signals Kennedy and looks at Spike.

Spike lifts his hands. “What?” he whispers.

Faith motions him closer. “We don�t need to kill these guys. They’re just�people.”

Spike bends over and retrieves a fallen chip. “Oh yeah?” he says and holds it close to Faith’s face for inspection.

It�s a human ear, baked crisp and brown, with a clear bite taken out of it. Faith gets it. She nods to Kennedy and the little team runs after the still squabbling, eating pair with their axes ready.

The demons don’t put up as much of a struggle as Faith hoped. The guys could get in a rut that way, if they don�t get enough of a challenge on a regular basis. They hide the bodies in their usual tomb. You’d expect it to be pretty full by now, but there must be some kind of demon clean up squad, or just plain scavengers, because there is always room for their disposals.

The successful trio trudge back to Spike and Faith. Faith’s boots are leaking. She musta paid twenty dollars for the fuckers, and only five months service. Spike is still holding up the ear, studying it intently, sniffs it, and then decisively moves it to his mouth and takes a bite. Faith hurtles towards him and knocks the remainder out of his hand.

“Are you out of your mind? Spit it out!”

Spike obeys, laughing. Faith does not find it funny. “Dude, how can you do that? You’re supposed to be reformed, and it�s just plain fucking gross even if the owner is already dead!”

“Yeah, well, when the owner was still happily clinging to his mother root in the moist earth he must have hated the idea of being eaten. It’s potato, Faith. Sorry.”

Faith is still pissed. “Sorry? I’ll make you sorry! We just let them kill two perfectly harmless beings!”

“Hell, no! They were dealers, sweetheart. Corrupting demon youth with their magic powders. We did the demon community a service. And besides, we can’t keep second guessing Clem and Kennedy, Faith. They gotta know we trust them to do their job.”

Spike is right. Kennedy is a Slayer in her own right, and should have already had a territory of her own. Clem’s an ancient demon, and Morgan has twice the brains Spike and Faith have between them. They don�t need her supervision.

The next night they’re all eating their pre-patrol pizza. Faith gets up to get some more Coke, but when she’s in the kitchen she still feels cooped up so she sneaks outside to join Spike who’s smoking on the porch. The gang inside shows no break in the fun without them. The sky is the usual Cleveland whitish gray, already turning vaguely purple in the west.

Spike looks up from his moody stare and Faith holds up her finger. “Listen. What’s that sound?”

A million little tinkles and poppings sound all around her. The air feels soft and yielding against her face, even though it isn�t as nice and sunny as yesterday.

Spike molds his body against her back and fastens his hands across her belly. “It’s spring,” his voice pours chocolate down her neck. “The ice is melting.”

A gang of big fat birds streak on by overhead, on their way to the lake. They make the ugliest, most un-bird like sounds Faith has ever heard.

From inside the house irregular snatches of soft talk and occasional laughter can be heard.

“They sound happy, don’t they?” Spike says.

“Yeah.”

They do. Faith is proud of them. They slayed pretty good last night, and the sleuthing out of the Willy/Clem consortium, even if it turned out not to be completely correct, was awesome. And now it’s just about perfect, she and Spike standing out here quietly by themselves, not really listening to the others and letting the sounds be white noise. When it gets dark in half an hour or so, they’ll go slay again. It would be nice to patrol again with just Spike. Well, why not? Kennedy can handle herself.

The unspoken question whether they themselves are happy still hangs unanswered in the air.

“Spike? Let’s go patrol alone tonight,” Faith says. “It’s been too long.”

“Brilliant idea, love. Why wait?” Spike says without moving an inch, and sliding his hands down her pants.

“Coz the sun ain’t down yet?” Faith says, and leans back more heavily on Spike. He’s got her.

They just stand there, seeing the sunset color the melting remnants of snow a brief pink before the whole cloudy sky turns lilac and the street lights in the distance wink on. Time glides by without noticing and she only comes out of her dreamy content when it’s completely dark.

“Let’s go.”

They walk hand in hand to the bike and Spike rides in front, Faith snuggling closely against his black leather back.

“Happy Hunting Grounds or Twilight Rest?”

“The longest ride,” Faith says.

Spike turns his head to show white teeth at her. The bike starts up with a cough and they skid on the gravel for a moment before they enter the black even flow of the road. The world starts sliding by faster and faster, a blur of malls and factories and parking lots, decorated with festive stripes of fluorescent lettering that is smeared into illegibility by their passing.

In a few moments they will have to turn off for Twilight Rest, but Faith doesn’t want the world to slow down and come into focus. It’s just perfect the way it is right now, she and her man sitting motionless on the bike while everything else passes them by.

“Spike? Let’s just ride on. I wanna go somewhere warm, and just us.”

The view stutters but then speeds up its flow past them.

“We’re already heading south, baby, we’ll just go on then. What about the others?” Spike asks.

“They’ll be okay by themselves, without us hanging over their little shoulders. I just wanna be with you, okay?”

Spike writes a loopy poem of happiness on the road and they hurtle on into the black maw of the night.

FINIS

Eliza Dushku - Faith Lehane

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Fanfiction: He's The Light In Her Fridge

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