Grey Gardens of Shadowed Rapture - Complete

http://vampires-kiss.net/order/home.htm

Author: Holly (hangingavarice@hotmail.com)

Rating: Up through NC-17 (For language, violence, and adult situations)

Timeline: Season 4 post ‘Something Blue’ of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Season 1 post ‘Celestial Navigation’ of The West Wing

Summary: A rogue Slayer is on the run.  As the Scoobies follow reports and sightings that lead them further into the Old South, President Bartlet prepares for a speech in Vicksburg while Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman is assigned a project that will unwittingly change his life.

It was Friday night at the Bronze, and the entire town had decided to celebrate. Not for any particularities, of course. In Sunnydale, excuses were never of the needed when it came to putting on one’s party hat. Being alive was miracle enough. And if you survived the week: even better.

And what a week it had been. A long, eventful, and magically disastrous trial of endless excursion.

It amazed him that the people of this town readily refused the helping hand of change. He had seen it all; watched as people grew older, fatter, balder, lost their ambitions to the wayward understanding of life’s petty limitations. Granted, Spike hadn’t been in Sunnydale long enough to successfully diagnose the pragmatics of everyone’s inability to cope with their various obstacles and revelations; he simple knew what he knew based on all he had seen. Disappearing for twenty years at a time and requiring no help pinpointing old faces at the same old hangouts. People who pissed away years of their life trying to find their life.

The Bronze would become that someday. They all inevitably did. But for now, it was as it always was. A place of bright lights and bad music. Good food of little food value. The place where the lonesome and the trendy collided, shoving their differences aside to dance the night away as though the world would end come morning.

Spike snickered at that and tossed his head back with a drink. Bloody typical. These wankers didn’t know what they had; didn’t know what it was like to lose the one thing that demanded dependency. The one thing taken for granted as years of idle waste ticked by to little extent of anything else. He did. He knew all too well. And unlike everyone else here, he didn’t have a choice.

There was nothing—condemned by technology to stand at the bloody sidelines while the whole world passed in front of him. He had endured as much as any vampire could vouch for, and it wasn’t getting any easier. Of course it wouldn’t get easier. Why, that would be…well, easy.

Especially with what had happened recently. Happened and commanded every waking thought thereafter.

Over the smoke-filled crowd, his leering gaze wandered; landing, as always, on her. And while logic told him there was no sagacity in tormenting himself, his sense of masochism evidently disagreed. And no one liked logic these days. He was merely bending himself over to accommodate the rest of society, and he was doing a hell of a job.

And where had it gotten him? Abso-fucking-lutely nowhere. To the point where he couldn’t look but to see her face. Couldn’t close his eyes but to have hers haunt him, even if they were separated by miles.

Nights were plagued with the thought of her.

Ah hell, who was he kidding? Days, too.

That wasn’t even the worst of it. It was wrong. It was so bloody wrong. At first, he had given way to the possibility that the chip in his head had finally gone over the proverbial and not-so edge and was finally giving him delusions of grandeur. And sure, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t thought about it. Dreamt about it. Fantasized a thousand or more times…but such yearnings had always remained void of sentiment. Of any sort of feeling. The type of castles in the sky that were always plagued with sieges and bloodshed. The way castles were supposed to be. Not like this.

There wasn’t supposed to be feeling. And the notion disturbed him.

Rightly so.

It was all Red’s fault, he decided. Red and that bloody stupid spell of hers. After all, a man whom had never known the touch of such radiance similarly couldn’t know to miss it, right?

Spike’s eyes drank her in as she moved, and he felt all sorts of naughty parts spring to life.

Oh yeah. Definitely Red’s fault. He was killing himself over and over again for something so wrong. So deliciously wrong. And there she was; moving provocatively, grinding against mindless co-eds; completely oblivious to the torment she was willing upon him. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she knew she was driving him out of his mind and the entire spectacle on the floor was to perpetuate his torture.

Fucking brutal bitch.

Spike snickered dryly to himself, lifting his glass to his lips. Rupert would be expecting him soon. Not for any reason other than the tedium of habit. Wasn’t that perfect? He was William the Bloody, goddammit. The Slayer of Slayers, of the Order of Aurelius, and he was shacking it up with the Slayer’s fucking Watcher, of all things.

Better to finish up here and head back, regardless of temperament. After all, it had been he who came to them in the first place. Furthermore, thanks to Red’s spell and the Slayer’s perpetual mission in life to make his existence miserable in any way she could, there was no use in trying to escape. She would find him. She always did.

She did, and he had Buffy taste in his mouth as a result.

The Slayer.

Bane of his existence.

He missed the dance most of all. With her. With anyone, really, but mostly with her. He had never known anyone who could make it all so…interesting. She moved like she was made for him. As though the dance commanded everything she was, whether or not they were entangled with each other.

Now she danced by herself. Herself and with the occasional vamp. Not him. Never him. His days of dancing with her were over.

Spike smiled wryly to himself and raised his glass to his lips again for one last gulp before he consigned it over the balcony railing. There was no use in wasting time here. Here where everything, even getting the girl, was nothing more than a lonely spectator sport. And while fighting remained an improbability, he could at least get his rocks off by studying blokes who were more miserable than he was.

Buffy was moving in ways that would embarrass Madonna. Yes, it was definitely time to leave.

With some difficulty, he tore his eyes away from her and made a steady path down the stairs while shuffling through his duster to find his cigarettes. He had named this carton Xander. The boy was never the picture of demon tolerance, but this week had been especially patronizing, and thus he exacted revenge the best way he could. The only way he could without hurting the Slayer: he named a pack of ciggies after him and imagined that every one smoked signified a portion to a horrible death.

Sad thing was, it helped. Not tonight.

Not with Buffy out there giving every willing body a free show. Every willing body excluding his own.

He had to get out.

It would be his misfortune to run into the very object of his desires as he tried to make his way toward the exit. They collided rather brashly—her scent smacking him with sudden brevity that it had lacked while separated by an entire room. And—ohhh—there she was. Right there with him. Against him. If he thought the sight of her was torture, the feel of her body pressed against his had to be his ultimate undoing.

The collusion had been an accident, he knew. Something he wouldn’t have cheated himself out of for anything. Still, in such circumstances, it served better to blame her.

“Oi! Watch where you’re goin’, luv.” His eyes danced over her body without inhibition. Being this close to her, despite the further of his torment, did have certain advantages. “Wouldn’t want some nasty creature to get too up close an’ personal, would you?”

There was a long pause; Buffy blinked at him in confusion. It was a look he was accustomed to. A sort of bland ‘and you’re talking to me, why’ flavor that had grown old too fast. The same he doubted she would tire of anytime soon.

And then…no. It wasn’t. Something was different. She was different.

It only lasted a second. When she gave up trying to place him, she threw her hands in the air and backed off with a dismissive snicker. “Sorry, buddy,” she said. And that was that. She had turned before he could even attempt to keep up and was on her way to the bar without another word.

Spike stood dumbfound for a minute.

“What?” He pivoted sharply at the heel, frowning his frustration. God, she was the most evasive little bitch in the world. “So, that’s it? No quibble? No jibe? No witty poke at my manhood?”

Oh how he wished he hadn’t mentioned his manhood. Said manhood, once acknowledged, practically leapt at the opportunity to be noticed by a coveted female. More precisely, the Slayer. Buffy.

It was twisted. It was unnatural. It just plain sucked. And yet here he was, upping his self-torment for no other peculiarity outstretching the region of boredom.

Buffy turned to him slowly, cocking a brow of expectation. “What do you want?” she snapped. “A medal for copping a feel? Sorry, Junior. Not interested. Why don’t you go annoy someone else?”

It was an unprecedented occasion when Spike found himself whiplashed to the other side of the world by the hand of surprise alone. For a long minute, all he could do was stare in blank wonder. Had his heart been in such condition, he was sure it would have stopped. As though all authority that came with vampirehood was stropped and he was nothing more than a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Granted, if there was one person who could render him so, it was the Slayer.

More specifically, Buffy Summers.

But he wouldn’t admit that. Not in her lifetime. Not in the next twelve.

“What?”

“Well, really,” she continued, shrugging as though it made little difference. There was irritation behind her eyes, but it was far placed from the customary ‘Oh God, it’s you’ glare that he had too-often found himself on the receiving end of this month. “I got plenty of better things to do than hang here and warm your hands, Snappy. So move along before I take you over my knee—and trust me, that’s something you don’t want.”

Judging by the feral in her eye, Spike was inclined to agree with her. Even if kink was something he was known for appreciating.

But this was different. It was wrong. Something was very wrong. While he was accustomed to being at the bad end of the Slayer’s puns, she had never been so forward in her insinuations. Never come close to acknowledging the attraction that had been there from the beginning. Oh no. Wouldn’t that be telling?

It was wrong. Something was wrong. And it took less than two seconds to pinpoint.

It wasn’t Buffy.

The vampire’s eyes narrowed. Either it wasn’t Buffy, or she was under some wonky spell; and judging by her ever-so wise selection of friends, he wasn’t too hasty to rule out option number two. But one could never be too careful, especially when one was toothless in a hell-town with Slayers and all sorts of other anti-demon yuppies running around, so he relaxed and exhaled deeply. Better to play it cool and get to the bottom than suffer Wrath O’Slayer next time they ran into each other.

Though hopefully, his cock pleaded, not literally.

“You feelin’ all right, Slayer?” he drawled, voice dripping with condescension. He realized the next second that he had never found his cigarettes and he moved to rectify that immediately. “You’re lookin’ a li’l pale. What’s wrong? Life got you down? Run out of my friends to kill?”

A typical Buffy statement would have been one of the following:

This Buffy, however, reflected none of her usual hostility. She stared at him for a few blank seconds before realizing that, yes, he had made mention to her line of work. Said mention likely meant that he was on the in of the secrets of vampirehood. And hey, come to think of it, he did look a little pale for a hot guy of the Southern-Californian climate-persuasion.

However, whatever lapse she suffered, she made up for admirably. She shimmied her hips a bit before resting her hands against them, quirking a brow at the blatant misdirection of his attention. “You’re a vampire,” she stated obviously.

Oh yeah. Definitely of the not right.

And Spike, not being one for patience, decided to stop playing along. This was ridiculous.

“What the bleeding hell has gotten into you, Slayer?” he demanded, tossing the unlit ciggie to the ground without much thought. Bollocks. “Did the bleach finally go to your head?” His eyes followed to her hair and he smothered a chuckle. “Knew it was eventual.”

“And who exactly are you to be talking?”

That one was a walk-in. He had opened the door and walked right in. Which was fine. He wasn’t the one undergoing an identity crisis.

“Right. Make all the jokes you want. Jus’ answer me this.” He cocked his head to the side with a patronizing glare. “You remember my name?”

The look she gave him in turn was a near-Buffy look, but no cigar. “Name?” she retorted. “What? I don’t just call you Vampire? Well, consider yourself in sector of special treatment. Happy? Now get out of my way.”

That was it. That pinched it. This girl was in Buffy’s body, but she wasn’t Buffy.

Even in the wonkiest of spells, he wagered Willow wouldn’t be daft enough to make her victims forget essentials like names.

At least, not intentionally.

Unless Buffy had asked her to do a spell to make her forget the whole ‘engagement’ thing, and really, he wouldn’t put it past her.

But a bloke never could be too sure.

Thus Spike did something that some might deem colossally stupid; he stepped forward and grasped the small blonde by the arm, effectively catching her off guard even if it wasn’t the strongest game plan. She fumbled awkwardly against him and the look that crossed her eyes could make coffee nervous. And if the vampire that presumed to be so bold had any sense about him at all, he would have released her at once and stepped back to give her much-needed space.

This vampire did not. At least, and especially, when matters concerned the Slayer.

His Slayer.

“You might think you can fool the Scoobs, luv,” he told her lowly, eyes taking full advantage at the eagle view his grasp on her allowed. This Buffy was strong, yes, but she shivered against him all the same. Looked at him with something that was not quite disgust. As though she was lost and he was the one that would help her back on her way. The prospect was rightly laughable, but that didn’t mean his anatomy reacted unfavorably. “But the vamps in this town…they know the Slayer. They’re made to. Whatever you’re playin’ at’s not gonna swing.” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “You sure you know what you’re doin’?”

A few heated seconds pressed between them. She watched him closely without really looking at him. Trying to place him without making a true effort. And for the briefest instant, she reflected the lost gaze of a rabbit caught in headlights. It only lasted a minute, of course. Whoever was steering Buffy—or regardless of whatever wonky spell she was under—knew the true Slayer enough to emphasize her status and reap it for all its advantages. From uncertain and hesitant one minute to manipulative and elusively seductive the next; she switched shoes without bothering to check what she was wearing.

And she did so admirably.

Thus Spike’s eyes nearly boggled outside his head when he felt her press against him in a matter of guarded intimacy, the look crossing her face suggesting nothing more than what he had been denying he wanted ever since Red’s spell came to terms. Good God, this was not supposed to be happening. His own confidence abandoned him without much persuasion, and he was left an unsure stuttering shell of a confused vampire. He was unwilling to play until he knew where exactly the pawns were, and what losing the game would cost.

It was his bad luck, in that regard, that Buffy decided she didn’t want to waste time with dawdlers. Oh, no. Something primal had crossed her eyes, and she wasn’t going to let him walk until she had what she wanted.

And at the moment, it seemed that what she wanted was him.

This had to be dream. Spell or no spell, Buffy could not want him like this.

Okay, so, Buffy couldn’t want him like this twice in one week—spell or no spell.

“Oh, come on,” she was saying; rubbing provocatively against him in time to the incredibly judicious song the band was playing. Bollocks, there were nights he was sure the Powers set things up with the sole purpose of fucking with his head. “You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it…once or twice?”

Another three seconds and she was going to be bent over the bar counter.

For whatever reason, that thought brought logistics screaming back, red flags and all. The vampire’s eyes widened in horror and his hands came up with diplomacy. “Slayer,” he growled. “This ‘s me, right? Spike. You remember me, don’cha? You better, ‘cause you’ve all people oughta know I don’ start somethin’ without finishin’ it.”

His words lent her pause and she pulled back just a hair. His body cried in protest at the loss.

“Spike,” she said a minute later, as though testing the sound of his name on her tongue. “Spike. William the Bloody, jonesing for the Slayer. Of all the fucking irony. I kinda love this town.”

Jonesing? Was he that bloody obvious?

“What? Are you off your bird?”

Buffy shook her head, amazingly self-confident. “Nope. I really don’t think so.”

“You’ve got some nerve—”

“And you’ve got some wood.” And the next minute, the world came crumbling down around him. Her small hand reached for his cock and squeezed him tantalizingly through his jeans, nearly bringing him to his knees with nothing else. Shock willed his body frozen, but he could not stop the long-winded moan of pleasure from rushing through his lips. “Ohhh…big boy.”

“Slayer—”

She squeezed him tighter. So tight it bordered on pain. But, oh, pain was delicious. “My name,” she spat. “Say it.”

No need to ask him twice. “Buffy!”

A sadistic smile drew across her face. “You’ve wanted me for a long time, haven’t you, Spike?”

“God…”

“Right sentiment.” Another agonizing squeeze. He was panting needlessly but could not stop. “Wrong answer. Care to try again?”

“Yes!” The word hissed through his teeth; a dirty word for what it meant for him. For the love of everything, he couldn’t tell if he wanted to fuck her or kill her at the moment. Vampires were known for perversions in the bedroom, but he was more than a vampire. He was William the Bloody. He was one of those vamps that new vamps looked up to. And yes, since his breakup with Drusilla, he had been known to take a trollop or two to bed—but he never conceded the high ground. It was about control. About who had it. And right now, Buffy had it. Buffy had it in spades. His desire for her was fogging his senses, but anger in these situations was an overwhelming ally. And he knew still that she was not in her right mind. Buffy, standing in the middle of the crowded Bronze, grasping his cock? Definitely something wrong.

But her grip on him tightened, and he suddenly wondered why he cared at all.

Her scent had neared tantalizingly. She was right at his ear, teasing his skin with her teeth. Ooohhh… “I thought so,” she said. “Bet you’ve dreamed of it, right? Of driving hard into me. Dreamed so hard that you came in your sleep. And judging by your enthusiasm…” She clinched the word by dipping her hand below the waistband so that there was nothing separating her fingers from his flesh, and the slight caress nearly had him undone. When she had her first touch, she smiled coquettishly and lowered the zipper so that he sprang fully into her hands, concealed by the propinquity of their bodies and the hazed apathy that surrounded them. “You came a lot. And you should. After all, you know what I could do to you? Your dreams wouldn’t do you justice.”

That was a wager he wouldn’t mind seeing through. But still he said nothing.

“I could ride you at a gallop until your legs buckled and your eyes rolled up,” she whispered, her hand taking cadence up and down his length. Sparks of pleasure coiled his insides, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t. With as much as he wanted her, this was not the way it should be. Buffy was either crazy or under the influence, and he didn’t particularly fancy waking up with a stake in his chest. Thus, he wouldn’t do what his body begged. He wouldn’t. He would wait this out, go tell the Scoobies that their fearless leader had lost her mind, then go home and have a nice long wank.

Regardless of the fact that he had a warm, willing, and very wet Buffy wiggling against him, her hand grasping his erection, and her tongue playing laps under his ear.

But he wouldn’t let her win this last over him. This was about more than carnal sins. His scathed pride was on the line, and with everything she had managed to rob him of since returning to this pissant town, he would be damned even more so before she took that as well.

“I've got muscles you couldn’t have dreamed of.” Her thumb brushed against the leaking head of his erection and swirled the moisture she found, pinching when it was at her pleasure and eliciting a long-suffering coo from his anguished body. “I could squeeze you until you pop like warm champagne and you'd beg me to hurt you just a little bit more. Whaddya say, Billy? Wanna take it out for a test-drive? You know how I get when I don’t get a good slay in. All wound up—tighter than a fucking drum. After I’m through with you, you’ll have nothing left to dream about.”

“Buffy,” he moaned, cursing himself for his weakness and thrusting his hips forward. “Oh God.”

“You’d like to know how my mouth would feel around you, wouldn’t you?”

Just the thought caused his body to propel forward needily. The disgust coiling within his stomach was mounting but lust shoved it aside. There would be time for self-hatred later. Right now…oh god, right now.  “Christ!”

“You’d like me to lap at you. Take you as far in as I could and swallow you up.” She clutched him tighter, scratching her thumbnail over the head of his cock again. “But I wouldn’t. I don’t give like that without getting my own first. You want some, you give some. You’d have to eat me out, Spike. Stick your tongue in me. All the way. I don’t do cheaters.” Her eyes danced maliciously. “But you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh Jesus…”

Her hand tightened again. “Wrong. Fucking. Name.”

No point in arguing with the lady.

“Buffy!”

And it was over the next second. He knew it before the scent hit him. Before any of it came to terms. He heard a voice he had never heard before, but the sound of it, the tenor of it, rang so bloody familiar that he didn’t know whether to growl his frustration or weep his relief. Another second, and he would have been a goner.

The voice said nothing spectacular or notably groundbreaking. Just two words. Two words that brought everything to crashing reason.

“You called?”

The Buffy standing right in front of him suddenly caught sight of something over his shoulder, and her eyes went wide. “Perfect,” she hissed.

Spike utilized the opportunity to seize the Slayer’s wrist and pull her against him, twisting her arm until she turned fully in his hold, her back pressed against his chest. It would have been a more menacing grip had his raging predicament not been stabbing her lovely buttocks, but he had bigger things to worry about at present.

More notably, the stunning brunette glaring at the blonde in his grasp. The brunette whose eyes were far too familiar to credit with coincidence.

Even if that didn’t add up at all.

He cocked his head curiously to the side. “Buffy?”

The brunette nodded. “Almost hate to break up this party,” she snapped, “when it appears you two were having so much fun.”

“What can I say?” the Faux-Buffy in his arms replied. “Thought I’d take your boy for a ride tonight. Gotta hand it to you, B. Get a feel of the cold hard between your thighs and you swear off heartbeats for good. Am I missing something, or is this just some sick fetish?”

“You’re disgusting.”

The blonde spitfire shrugged with a coy smile. “Don’t throw stones.”

Buffy made a Buffy-like face of disgust which looked bizarre on the mask she was wearing before her eyes found his again. “Zip up, Spike.”

He had the decency to be embarrassed. After all, she had just caught him with herself doing something in public. Or rather, having something done to him in public, so really—no blame. Though knowing her, she wouldn’t see it that way. “Slayer—”

“Don’t talk. Just do it.”

“Ohh, he’ll like that.” The Faux-Buffy was smiling kittenishly. “This one likes being told what to do.”

Spike sniggered at that, though he astutely did follow the Slayer’s request. Funny how the sound of a zipper being raised could echo across the mass volume of music and the chatter exchange between mindless coeds. “I wasn’—”

“Shut up.”

“Whattaya gonna do, B? I trashed the other one. ‘Less you really like being stuck like this and just wanted a glance at how to really use your body. Spike here really didn’t mind.”

A growl rumbled through his throat; he merely looked at the real Buffy for answers. He was as confused as hell, but that didn’t mean he would step aside and let the mystery-bitch get away with what she had nearly gotten away with. He couldn’t stand people fucking with his head. And his head had been fucked with to the uppermost degree.

“Next time,” the brunette depiction of the Slayer was saying, “don’t pull a stunt like that in public. And really don’t try it on people who have witches for friends. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Oh, is that right?” the Faux-Buffy demanded, struggling a bit in his grasp but not enough to register on the chip. Evidently, whoever was inhabiting his Slayer’s body had not gotten the memo that foretold escaping him would be more than easy if she willed it so. Not that he was complaining. No, the feral in the true Buffy’s eyes only nudged the anger rushing through his own. “And how exactly does it work?”

Another revelation with two simple words. The true Slayer held up a small, seemingly homemade object and offered a patented Buffy smile, cynicism and all. “Like this.”

Though he had absolutely no clue what sort of power Buffy wielded this time, he knew immediately not to take it for granted. Especially when her imposter’s eyes widened and her struggles became more intent. So intent that the chip finally kicked in and he was forced to release her with a long-winded ‘oaf.’ The blonde darted into the crowd—the brunette following sharply. And slowly the lot of them poured in. Giles from the front, crossbow in grasp. Willow and Xander rushing in from the balcony, evidently without arms but he knew that the former had no need for modern weaponry.

He knew all too well.

So the cavalry was here to save the day. Right. That was swell, but bugger all if he was going to stand here. No bitch mucked with his head like that and got away with it—sod the chip, sod bloody everything.

The crowds had parted accommodatingly at the first hint of a scuffle, herding like obedient sheep to their respective sides in hopes of getting a good view. He found Buffy and the imposter facing off in the center of the Bronze. The Watcher was within range, but he knew the old man well enough to acknowledge that the last thing he would do was fire that crossbow unless a diplomatic solution couldn’t be reached.

The Faux-Buffy’s back was to him, though. And he knew an opportunity when he spied one. Thus, without preamble, he leapt forward and seized her by the shoulders, nodding urgently to the Slayer as the chip started to go off.

Pain was a funny thing. He knew it when he felt it. He liked it at times and hated it more than often. The shocks the government’s implant was sending to his brain were more excruciating than any Disney movie Drusilla had forced him to sit through in her delirium. More so than Darla’s relentless torture of him—an activity she had once pursued actively when she became bored. And yet, he held firm. The chip would likely fry his brain and turn his insides into liquid shit, but outrage at the minute refused to waver. He watched through hazed eyes as the real Buffy raced forward and touched the device she held to her imposter’s hand.

Something shook the room and the music came to a definitive standstill. Spike found himself thrown back with the impact, but the body in his arms stopped struggling and rather relaxed against him, as though consigning herself to what he offered. Then she was gone again, leaping after a dashing blaze of Slayer speed.

He tasted blood on his lips.

“Is he gonna be all right?” one shadow asked. One…Red. That was Willow. The little Witch. He focused as well as he could—making out the hazy figures of four surrounding him.

Buffy answered next. Buffy, the real Buffy, in her Buffy voice. He pried even further, desperate to see her Buffy face with her Buffy eyes along with everything else, but his own gaze would not comply. His head was aching into tomorrow and his nose was bleeding fountains. Rational thought was beyond reproach.

“We should get him out of here,” she said. He would have liked to believe there was an ounce of compassion behind her voice, but accredited that to disorientation. “Back to Giles’s.”

“And Faith?”

There was no answer to that. Not that he heard, anyway. Faceless shadows continued conversation, and at some point, he felt arms under his—hoisting him up again. But he wasn’t paying attention. The voices around him had muffled into one sound; the lights blurred into distant nonbeing.

And then there was nothing at all.

“Donna!”

The bellow was nothing she would not have expected from him, but the fact that she was standing directly behind him did lend itself to worthy aggravation. It had happened times before, of course; after all, when Josh went into work mode—even with her over his shoulder—he seemed to possess the ability to block out everything until he came across something that he didn’t understand.

Still, being yelled at when in the room? Not exactly her idea of progress.

“Right here. And no, I am not canceling that meeting.”

The Deputy Chief of Staff whipped around quickly, eyes bulging as though she had conjured herself at his side out of thin air. “Don’t do that.”

“Answer you? Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“You need a bell, you know.”

“That threat just loses steam every time you bring it up.” She scowled. “And, in case you didn’t hear me, I am not canceling your meeting on the Hill.”

It was amusing in that funny-adorable sort of way; watching the face of the third most powerful man in the country crumble as he danced on the edge of a temper-tantrum. This was also not something alien to Josh, and despite her objections, she found the expression endearing. 

“Why not?” he whined.

“Because this will be the third time this week. One lunch isn’t going to kill you.”

“Donna, these guys wanna take me out just so they can beat me up over 182 while they know perfectly well that there’s nothing I can nor am willing to do about it.” He shook his head, turning his attention back to a pile of memos that could not go ignored all day.

“So you figure just to put it off until the vote is over?”

He stared at her blankly. “Well…yeah.”

At that, she couldn’t help it. When he was in these moods, Josh was all but begging to be ridiculed. “Aww, are you afraid of the big bad politicians?”

“No. I’m afraid of wasting an hour to listen to something I could care less about in loo of doing something that’s, well, productive.” He shook his head. “You can’t let these people slap you around, Donna. Someday they’ll come to terms with the fact that we won and we’re not going anywhere for a while. In the meantime, I’m sure there is actual work to be done around here.” 

“Which reminds me—”

“You’re canceling that, too. Get back to work.” The words would have sounded clipped coming from of anyone else, but Josh was Josh and she had come to terms with that a long time ago. 

She had barely had time to step out of the office before Sam came calling to see if he had a minute.

It wasn’t as though he was upset to see him; if anything, Sam among the other high-ranking officials in the West Wing—and he counted Donna in that, whether or not by intent—were of the few people that he could tolerate for extended periods of time. In that regard, he at times considered that he had one of the best jobs in the world. Mostly secure, well-paying, and he genuinely enjoyed the people he worked with. 

Josh merely got irritable when things didn’t go his way.

“And it never ends…”

“Hey,” Sam said in manner of greeting, tapping lightly on the door before stepping inward. “Did you hear about the thing?”

“Which thing?”

“The Vicksburg thing.”

A frown creased the other man’s brow. “When did that become a thing again?”

“Charlie told me. It was finalized just this morning.”

“Finalized? I didn’t even know we were considering it.”

Sam smiled lightly. “Well, I don’t believe we were seriously until the President went to the Residence last night and read a report on the—”

Josh held up a hand, eyes falling shut. “Wait. Wait. Are you telling me that we’re going to Vicksburg six months late because of one of the President’s late night whims?”

“The Mississippi vote is very important, Josh.”

“The Mississippi vote doesn’t come for another three years.” He blinked. “Call me stupid, but doesn’t that mean there are three more chances to make it up?”

Donna was suddenly in his line of peripheral vision again; leaning back in her chair to cast a coy, “You’re stupid,” into the room before she returned to work. The interruption was so commonplace that she earned nothing more than a smirk she didn’t see before the men redirected their attention toward each other.

“They’ll remember this.”

“You think we’d stand to lose seven electoral votes over the Vicksburg thing?”

“I think that snubbing them last July was a bad idea, yes.”

Josh’s eyes went wide and his voice raised octaves. “We didn’t snub them! There was no snubbing involved! We just had to postpone the trip—”

“Indefinitely—”

“Indefinitely because of Kuwait. And then by the time that was over, we still had the country to run.” He shook his head. “And since when did we start having a panic attack over seven electoral votes that we could just as easily get from, oh, I dunno…somewhere that doesn’t complain about postponing photo-op events for actual National emergencies?

Sam snickered. “And you berated me for selling off entire states. It’s not up for grabs, Josh. The President wants to do this.”

“Why?”

“Well, because he’s a history buff. And a National Parks buff—”

“Really don’t need to remind me about that one.”

“And he thinks it would be a good idea to take some media attention away from Leo right now.”

Josh blinked stupidly. “We really think that a trip to Hicksville USA for a speech in some town that half the people in this country have never heard of is going to take away from a drugs scandal in the White House?”

The other man shrugged. “Every little bit helps. Anyway, it’s really not worth arguing with me about. I think Leo’s going to call a meeting to announce it to everyone before the day’s out.”

“When are we leaving?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

Josh collapsed wearily against his desk. 

“Anyway,” Sam said, shaking his head with a small laugh. “Just thought I’d drop by and give you a heads up. Oh.” He stopped at the door as though swayed by an afterthought, twisting in place to face his friend as the other man looked up wearily. “It’s more than just Mississippi’s seven electoral votes. As we found in Texas, making the South angry is not a good thing, especially with a President who’s already not altogether popular down there.”

“You’re thinking Domino Effect.”

The dark-haired man nodded. “We lose Mississippi, then Louisiana might follow. Then Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina. Florida, we’re not going to win anyway, and Texas…well…we don’t know what sort of dent we would take, but it might be enough to cancel out the Hoynes pull. Either way, that’s ninety-six electoral votes that we’re looking at. Counting Mississippi brings the grand total to one hundred and three.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Because of the Vicksburg thing?”

“Could be.”

Josh nodded slowly. “We shouldn’t piss off the South.”

"This is what I’m saying.”

“Right.” There was a moment of composition before he nodded again to himself and turned his gaze back to the stack of memos that still had not managed to answer themselves. “Right.”

“Anyway,” Sam said, heading again for the door. “I’m gonna go back and work on this thing.”

“You had to pull up the old speech?”

“Yes, but because it’s no longer the Fourth, I’m starting over.” 

Josh cracked a grin. “Toby must be on the edge of breaking his window. And in that, can’t say that I blame him. Throw in Leo’s thing and the Mendoza confirmation and you have yourself the eleventh plague. You have to have this done in two days?"

“Four. The first day is going to be more of a ‘sightseeing’ excursion.”

“And the news just keeps getting better and better…” A frown fell across his face. “What exactly is there to see in Vicksburg, anyway?”

“Other than the battlegrounds and the homes? I’ve heard the courthouse is very nice.” He paused as though remembering something. “And I believe one home has a cannonball lodged in the dining room wall. I can have Ginger look up—”

“Sam…go back to your office.”

There was a nod of consent. “Right.”

The ever-revolving door to Josh’s workplace did not disappoint. There were some days, more than often, when he swore the staffers tag teamed who would interrupt him next. Today seemed to be solely in the hands of the Deputy Communications Director and Donna—not really a surprise in any regard. They again met in the doorway, nodded and exchanged civilities, and had effectively swapped places in all of ten seconds.

“Leo wants to see you,” his assistant told him as she added another memo to his desk. 

That much was to be expected. “Okay.”

And, as always, it couldn’t be left at that. Not that he would have it any other way. Oh no. There were days—quite a few of them—that bantering with Donna served as his only means of continued existence.

“So, we’re going to Vicksburg?”

“Looks like.”

“Great. There’s this place down there that’s supposed to serve amazing bread pudding.”

Josh looked up wearily. “You can’t get bread pudding here?”

“Not Vicksburg style, no.” She flashed a grin. “The restaurant I looked up got five stars in their local newspaper.”

“That’s probably because it’s the only restaurant.”

“Josh!”

“Beggars can’t be choosers, Donna. And what were you doing looking up Vicksburg restaurants, anyway?”

“It was before when we were going in July.” He merely looked at her. She shrugged. “I wanted to find a place with good bread pudding.”

“What is it with you and bread pudding?”

“I’m a Wisconsin girl, Josh. We don’t have those kind of delicacies where I come from.”

“Yeah, but on the upside, you have teeth where you come from.”

Donna shook her head, moving to follow him as he darted out of the room. “You’re impossible.”

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

“Do you know why Margaret sounded nervous on the phone?”

The random change of topic didn’t faze him, either. Such was the way of things.

“Because she’s Margaret?” Off her stare, he shrugged, eyes going wide. “I don’t know! Maybe Leo didn’t take a vitamin or something that she set out on his desk."

“Margaret sets vitamins on Leo’s desk?”

“I don’t know about that, but I do know she brings him coffee regardless of his employment status with the President.” He grinned. “Actually, it might be about the thing. There’s been some noise about the cat.”

Donna frowned. “The cat? What cat?”

“With any luck, your roommate’s.”

“Josh…”

“The cat, you know? The one that’s supposed to haunt the Capitol Building?” When he received nothing but a blank look, he shrugged and waved a dismissive hand. “It’s nothing.”

“Josh!”

“It’s dumb. There’s this cat whose sighting allegedly precedes a time of National tragedy.”

“A ghost cat?”

“Yeah. It was spotted right before the JFK shooting and around the Watergate scandal—stuff like that.” Josh shrugged. “It was spotted last night by some senile janitor and got an honorable mention in the Post. It’s nothing big, Donna. Don’t worry.”

She stared at him. “Don’t worry? Don’t worry? There’s a satanic cat in the Capitol building and you just now tell me about it?”

“And one wonders why I would have any such qualms in the first place…” He shook his head as they came to a stop outside Leo’s office, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We don’t talk about it because it’s a non-story, okay? Margaret probably just saw the special on haunted places that they play on the Travel channel or something. We don’t talk about this sort’ve thing here. Grown-ups work in the White House, Donna. This isn’t the place for fairytales.”

And then, as always by cue, Sam appeared at the end of the hallway. “Hey! Do either of you have a copy of Cinderella by the Brothers Grimm lying around anywhere?”

Josh looked up wryly. Anywhere else, he would have asked, but nothing was off the table where they lived and worked. Especially when it came to speechwriters and their penchant for making use of obscure references. A trait that Sam excelled in to the point of non-redundant redundancy.

Though why anyone would think that he had Cinderella just lying about at his disposal was a laughable notion.

“You two are in the middle of a thing,” the man decided with a nod. “Okay.” He was gone the next instant, calling for Bonnie to see if she had found anything.

With a sigh, Josh glanced back to his assistant and shook his head. “I gotta go meet with Leo now. Get back to work.”

Donna nodded but gave him a look that promised they were anything but done with this conversation. The expression was so familiar that he had to smother a smile from making its way to his face. That was one of the things he liked most about her. They had discussions that could outlast Lent.

The Chief of Staff was on the phone when he stepped inside, berating the Majority Whip from the sound of things. The call concluded with some rapidity, and Leo obligingly rose to his feet. 

“Hey,” the younger man said, shuffling forward to hand him a folder. “From what we’re hearing, 481 is going to sit for the week.”

“I figured as much. Take a seat.”

Josh arched a brow. “I’m not in trouble, am I?” He didn’t think so, but one could never be too certain.

“Nah. I just want to bring you up to speed on a few things.”

“This is about Vicksburg, isn’t it?”

Leo nodded. “Sam talked to you?”

“Well, he told me that we’re going.” He shuffled a bit as though he was anxious to pace. “And about that, are we sure this is a good idea? The country is looking at us for answers about other things—”

“My problem, Josh. It’s okay to talk about it.”

He didn’t think so, but the pardon was appreciated nonetheless. If anything, he preferred to only make mention of the scandal if something even more incriminating was going to make its way into the news cycle or if he was proposing a way to make a bad situation better through comparison. There were a lot of preconceived notions floating around out there right now about Leo, and every one of them made him sick to his stomach. And at such times, it was infinitely better to ignore them and focus on what really mattered—helping the man that had done so much for him and all of the Senior Staff—just as Leo would help them should the situation be reversed.

“Well, what I’m saying is, is it a good idea to go for a photo-op to Mississippi while Congress is looking to issue out the subpoenas?"

“The President’s mind has been made up.”

“How did this become a thing again?”

“The way everything else does.” Leo grinned ironically. “He was reading a report comparing the annual rainfall percentage of several of America’s more tropical states to the numbers of a hundred years ago and—”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why was the President reading a hundred year old weather report?”

The Chief of Staff shrugged. “For fun.”

Josh bit back the remark that begged to be released at that. He should have known better than to ask. President Bartlet was nothing if not whimsical. If only he could figure out a way to balance the budget by exercising the same method of research.

“Anyway, CJ’s announcing the trip with the next briefing. But that’s not why I got you in here.”

“Oh?”

“There’s no other way to break it to you, kid, so I’ll just come out and say it. You’re not going to Vicksburg.”

A small smile crossed Josh’s face. “Well, I could say I’m sorry but we both know that would be a lie.”

Leo nodded grimly before dropping the other shoe. “You’re going about an hour and a half south of Vicksburg to Natchez where you will meet with Senator Davis about 197.”

There was a long pause. “What is this? Appease-every-obscure-town-in-Mississippi-week?”

“So it would seem.”

“Leo, there’s no way 197 will be passed in the House…or the Senate, for that matter.”

“I know that, you know that, and Congress knows that. More over, the Senator’s no dummy.”

“So I’m meeting with him to, what? Pass the time?”

The elder man shrugged. “He wants White House support, Josh.”

“Does he really think he’s gonna get it?”

“No. And so we’re back to why you’re going to Natchez to meet with him.” Anticipating another interruption, he held up a hand in silent request for cooperation before moving to explain. “Davis is a prominent member of the Democratic party whose ideas are good but still about a hundred and fifty years too soon. Not only does he carry a lot of influence from other respectable Democrats on the Hill, he has done nothing but good things for this administration; we like to keep our friends where they are, since we are not exactly rolling in them at the moment. The very least he’s earned is an hour sit-down so we can explain why supporting 197 publicly, despite our accordance with the idealism behind the bill, is not something the White House is prepared to do.”

Josh paused, frowning in confusion. “So basically you want me to make a trip to make sure we still have the support of African Americans in this country even after we bitch slap them back to the nineteenth century?”

“Pretty much.”

“Why Natchez?”

“It’s Davis’s hometown. He’s gonna be there, we’re gonna be there—it works.”

“Isn’t he the Senator from Illinois?”

“Well, yes, but he had to move if he wanted to be a senator. Chances of him being elected had he run in Mississippi are not exactly favorable statistics.”

Josh held up a hand. “Yeah, yeah.” A long sigh hissed through his teeth. “So, I do this and get out of the Vicksburg thing?”

“You do this and evade a day of the Vicksburg thing.”

“Leo!  You said--”

“I know what I said.  That was misleading of me, wasn't it?”  The older man grinned before shrugging his apology.  “It’s the best I can do. At least the President will be through the bulk of the history and National Park trivia.” He smiled wryly. “I’m not going, Josh. The President and I both decided that it’s for the best, and he will need you in my absence.”

“Why aren’t you going?”

The elder man’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll give you three guesses.”

Right. Stupid question. “Yeah.” He paused uncomfortably. “Is that it, then?”

“Yeah. Go back to work.”

Josh gave a solemn nod and retreated again into the hall. He flashed a grin at Margaret, who was busy phoning everyone she had access to in order to inquire about National Security and the like—anything that could potentially send the economy into another Depression because of the cat spotting. He liked Margaret—she was eccentric, but then, they all were in their own right. Most importantly, she was loyal to Leo, and he needed people who were loyal right now.

It was his fortune to be surrounded by them in spades in the workplace. He couldn’t think of a single person who worked in close proximity with the man who held anything but the highest respect for him.

When he approached the bullpen, he found Donna surfing the net on local legends about Washington buildings and the like. A grin tickled his lips. So now she had a thing for the week. He couldn’t say the day hadn’t been productive.

“Donna?”

She looked up.

“I need you to book us a couple rooms in a town called Natchez, Mississippi.”

“Natchez?”

“Don’t worry—they’ll have bread pudding there, I’m sure.”

“Why Natchez? What’s going on?”

Josh nodded at the phone. “Just do it—I’ll give you the run through in ten.”

“Change of plans?”

He smiled grimly. “It’s always something.”

Always something. Funny how that was quickly becoming the understatement of the year.

The past two days had sucked beyond the telling of it.

It was amazing how quickly the fiber of routine could crumble without preliminaries. Without warning. She had been content—molded into the fabric of her self-constructed tedium of world-saveage. And yes, while the repetition of a much-feared same old had danced on the sidelines of outward threat, finding everything she knew challenged without warning removed her from her safety nook.

And dammit, she had to have that safety nook.

Patrol was slow tonight. Hell, it had been all week. The demons in this town were simply not interested in quelling her boredom anymore. Which was fine except for times like now. With the excitement the week had entailed, she could use an excuse to beat up on something without the added bonus of consequences.

Flatly horrible week.

Two days. Two whole days since Faith awoke from her coma and resumed her life’s mission of ruining everyone else’s without missing a beat. She awoke from her coma and quickly reminded those that had moved on without her why they were so glad to have been rid of her in the first place. Just looking at her made the world of hurt that had been the previous year come swarming back in sordid detail. Divulging beneath the lines of moving on and reacquainting herself with the very cause of her misery. 

Granted, things were better now than they had been even a few weeks ago. The Riley-factor was playing up. Becoming something that Buffy could see herself getting interested in, even if he remained duller than a sack of potatoes. He was nice; there was no denying that. He was a swell guy. Reliable. Sturdy. Overly-friendly even if his sense of humor was bland at times. He was everything she should want, and yes, while she saw qualities in him that she valued in herself, their conversations were lacking and often times seemed forced. He was adorable in his pursuit of her—doing everything a good boy should do for the girl he potentially wants to take home to Iowa and meet the Fam. She liked him, she did. 

But that was where it ended. A flirtation based on obligation. He was Joe Normal, and she liked that. She liked him. But she wasn’t interested. She wanted to be interested. He was sincere and intelligent and, unlike Parker, hadn’t made any unwarranted attempts to travel south of the border. He seemed genuinely interested in her as a human being, and she appreciated that more than anything.

But God, he wasn’t what she wanted. He was what she was supposed to want. He was everything she was supposed to want. From the boyfriend who was as bad for her as smoking and heroine injections to the potential boyfriend who came with his own bottle of sunscreen and environment-friendly petrol. No transition. No middle ground. No attraction. Not on her side.

She had told Willow she was over the bad boy thing. She was lying through her teeth. 

Thus the past week up until three days ago had been an exercise of both berating herself for her non-attraction to Riley and getting over the wiggyness that was being Spike’s fiancé for an hour. That was, of course, until Faith decided it was time to wake up and make her life even more complicated. She was fortunate that things hadn’t gotten more out of control than they did that night. Heaven knows what would have happened had the other Slayer been in possession of her body any longer than she was.

Well, judging by how she found the little harlot, guessing wasn’t as off the mark as she would have preferred it to be.

Buffy’s stomach was in knots in merely considering what she had walked in on. The past two days had consisted of futile attempts of placing it as far from memory as possible. 

And the funny thing was—the really funny thing…she couldn’t blame Spike. Not really. If there was anything she had learned about Faith over the past year and a half, it was the undeniable notion that if there were something the Slayer wanted, nothing short of the hand of God would prevent her from acquiring it. In the end, Spike was a guy. More over, he was a vampire. A vampire with a twisted perversion for chasing after Slayers. Buffy was neither naïve nor stupid. The way they had been avoiding each other since Willow’s spell was a clear indicator that the events of said spell had unnerved him just as much as they had her. 

What she had witnessed at the Bronze was not a dueled response to mutual attraction. Granted, she had not been there to witness the whole thing, but she did know that Spike had put up a hell of a fight. She had known him long enough to categorize his facial expressions and the way his eyes flared in accordance with his temperament. What she had seen was a clear strain of self-loathing and projected hatred for the woman inhabiting her body. His actions thereafter only supported that claim.

Spike might have liked pain, but he was no masochist. And he had held Faith tight enough in his endeavor to make sure that she got hers to knock him into the next world. He had been a wreck. More than his nosebleed and red-rimmed eyes. The Scoobies had hauled him with unspoken empathy back to the comfort of Giles’s duplex, doing their best to ignore his unconscious and near-incoherent rumblings that detailed exactly what he thought of Faith and what he wanted to do to her.

And, needless to say, his plans did not involve candles and champagne.

Hell, with the way he went on, they would be lucky if they had enough of Faith left to have a funeral.

Of course, that was a no-go. Spike was still Chips Ahoy and thus consigned to the dreary world of wishful thinking.

He had put her in an awkward position. While her previous hostility for him remained unchallenged, there was something about what had occurred that made her disposition soften in the slightest of degrees. There was more to him and all things previously construed than he ever let on. And she felt bad for him. Bad in a I-Shouldn’t-Feel-Bad-Right-Now way. He was a bloodsucking fiend. He was the bane of her existence. He was every wrong thing in the world times ten. 

But he didn’t deserve what had happened. He didn’t deserve Faith making a fool out of him. Stripping him of whatever self-esteem he had left. In that, he was the lesser of two evils. At least Buffy could bank on her unlikely vampiric ally for honesty. For being exactly what he was without ulterior motive. For simply being. With Faith, nothing could ever hope to approach that county line. 

Spike was a man—a vampire—and it was common knowledge that both men and vampires often relied on their libidos for thought. Faith had exploited that in the worst of ways. The same way she had with Xander the year before and who-knew-how-many other guys. And from what she had seen, Buffy knew enough to retract the blame from the peroxide pest and cast it on the shoulders of her evil twin. There were no other means to fair.

She hadn’t seen the vampire since he had awakened. Out of something she would hesitate to call obligation and never call concern, she had helped Giles and Willow tend to him as best they could without knowing the extent of the chip’s neurological damage. While none of them had any reason to believe the shock had been that severe, there was always a chance. After all, they still didn’t have any idea what they were dealing with. So, between the three of them, they cleaned Spike up well. Washed the blood from his face, doctored the wound across his brow that was acquired god-knows-how, and did their best to make him comfortable.

Without him, she wouldn’t have her body back. And Lord knows what all Faith would have done with it.

Faith. 

That in itself was another lonely matter of delayed acknowledgment. Faith was gone—presumably to Los Angeles—and she had the fun task of bringing her back. The Scoobies had decided unanimously that no matter the crime, last thing the rogue Slayer needed was to be handed over to the Council. The Council was corrupt enough.

Buffy did not believe in Faith’s ability to seek redemption through successful rehabilitation, nor did she confer entirely with the group’s consensus. However, she hated the Council with the fire of a thousand suns and blatantly refused to do anything for them that might be considered helpful.

They needed to find Faith. And fast.

If anything, to get this entire embarrassing ensemble behind them. While absolutely not downsizing the massive in-sideness that Spike was, thorn-wise, she found herself missing his company. Missing it in that ‘I need someone to argue with, now!’ way. 

Only that in itself was wrong. Because missing arguing with Spike? Not of the good. Just a testament to how pathetic her life had become. Buffy the Vampire Slayer—banterer of all local demons.

With a sigh of concession, she found herself at an abrupt halt, not seeing the virtue in pursuing a hunt for a perpetual nothing. Other than a few vagrant vamps, the last few patrols had not amounted to much. She continued them out of needful obligation, of course—an outlet to prevent boredom. Xander was constantly with Anya now and Willow was still in the post-Oz-leaving mopeyness. She had attended a few coven meetings of campus witches but found nothing of substance. 

The post-graduation drifting was setting in big time. The same she had promised would never happen.

Thus, twirling her lonely stake, Buffy turned to head back to Giles’s.

Spike was sitting on top of one of the mausoleums, evidently lost in thought. His hair was somewhat ruffled and a cigarette was wedged between his lips. If he had seen her, he did not make it known. Rather, the expression coloring his features reflected what she had been feeling for the past forty-eight hours. Troubled, angered, and unsure exactly what to make of it.

Buffy felt an unexpected flush surge across her skin. This was the first time she had seen him since bringing him to Giles. The first time that he had been awake since what had not happened between them.

And she couldn’t erase the image of her own hand, navigated by Faith, wheedled inside his trousers. Regardless of his subsequent outrage, there was no mistaking his more immediate urge at that moment. 

It was weird knowing that she could have him if she wanted. Not that either one of them were particularly thrilled with the notion, judging by the afterward, but it was weird nonetheless. She didn’t know of two beings on this planet that hated each other with equal fervor. The thought of him in that capacity was something she had never allowed herself, but since the Bronze, it had been an inevitability. Even more so than following Willow’s spell.

Because what she had seen at the Bronze was real. The spell was not.

Spike’s eyes met hers and held. She didn’t know how long he had sensed her there; a color of both surprise and expectation flooded his gaze. That and something more. Something she had never seen before. And it touched her in a way that was most surprising.

She shrugged it off just as easily, but the thought remained with her long after.

He looked at her for a long minute. Then stamped out his cigarette, pivoted promptly in his seat, and was strolling in the opposite direction within a blink.

The move alone should have persuaded her to turn and follow suit. It was the thing to do. And yet, for whatever reason, her feet remained firmly planted—her feelings almost hurt by his casual negligence. Despite how things were between them, Spike had never before exhibited qualms about speaking with her. Never so blatantly gave her the cold shoulder. And yes, while there was a small part of her rejoicing after the fact, the larger part demanded retribution. After all, it wasn’t as though she had done anything to upset him. His resentment in this was completely unjustified, and she intended to tell him so.

However, if it was blood she was after, she pursued its taste in entirely the wrong fashion.

“Hey,” she called, not realizing that she had run after him until she paused to catch her breath.

The ocean of blue that answered her query was not looking to impress. His eyes sized her in a manner that was nearly condescending, but otherwise left her in her own regard. He hid himself well when he wanted to, and though the notion was all but insulting, she knew enough to recognize a need to hide from his own humiliation rather than own up to what had occurred the other night.

It was strange to see him so vulnerable.

“Hey,” she said again. “Ummm…I just wanted to…ummm…”

His gaze narrowed expectantly.

“I…with what happened with Faith…I just…thanks for all your help.” An inner grin tickled her compulsion. The look on his face, if possible, drew even more exposure. As though she would brandish the metaphoric stake to drive that point home, or nail it with a particularly nasty ‘but’ clause. The very thought merited its own brand of humor. “Well, the thing is,” she continued, “I wouldn’t have…she would’ve gotten away if you hadn’t done what you did…and I never got to say thanks. So…thanks.”

A lame conclusion to an admittedly lame nod of gratitude, but he did not call her on it. If anything, the measure of awe coloring his features brightened with bewilderment, and he regarded her as though he had never seen her before. As though the light surrounding her persona had altered colors, and she appeared to him a picture of radiance. Someone never before granted access on a plane such as this.

Then, slowly, humor reached his eyes. Dry. Disbelieving.

“I tell yeh, Slayer,” he drawled. “You are a piece of work. I’ve been waitin’ for days for you to do me in rightly. This is almost a disappointment.”

She crossed her arms. “Oh, really?”

“Note the ‘almost.’”

“I figured.”

He shook his head. “You sure you’re…I’ve had a recent unpleasant experience with a chit wearin’ your body but steerin’ someone else’s noggin’. Gotta admit to bein’ slightly gun-shy. The Buffy I know would never lower herself to even acknowledge that I was there, ‘less I was doin’ somethin’ unlawful, an’ she definitely wouldn’t let me walk after what she saw.” Spike took a step forward cautiously. “You all right, luv? Din’t hit your head or stumble out of your skin an’ into someone else’s, right?”

“Been there, done that. We try not to air reruns around here too often.” She shrugged with a wry grin. “But, as long as you’ve brought it up…yeah. It was strange and more than a little…well…just…seeing me and…and you…doing that…from a third person point of view? Not of the good. But—”

Spike glanced down obligatorily. “Yeh. Buffy—”

“I understand. I do.” He was giving her that skeptical look again. “Well, Faith has always had power over men. That’s what she does. She sees something that she wants and she takes it. And if that something just happens to be conscious and with functioning…parts…she makes him want it, too.”

A grin tugged at his lips. “‘Functionin’ parts’, eh?”

Buffy’s eyes went wide and her cheeks flushed. “I didn’t see anything.”

“’Course not. Only naughty Slayers peek.”

The cheekiness in his tone was enough to draw her back. The humor dancing in her gaze faded, and she favored him with a peeved glare. “I didn’t see anything because I didn’t look. Didn’t really need to. It was obvious to anyone what you were doing. In public. With my body.”

“Ah. Here it comes.” Spike sighed fruitlessly and reached for his cigarettes. “Look, ‘f you think gettin’ felt up by some Buffy-wannabe’s my idea of a good night, you need to do your vamp research, luv. That girl fucked with my head. She—”

“I know.”

“An’ then—”

The Slayer held up a hand. “I know. I didn’t mean to…what you did helped me more than you can know. You didn’t have to. Hell, you’re probably lucky that chip didn’t fry your brain more than it did. And yeah, again with disgust and the…just, blehness that was watching…that. But you did help. So thanks.”

He cocked a brow. “You really think it was for you?”

“Well—"

“Don’ flatter yourself, pet. ‘S a romantic’s notion. I don’ give out migraines for nothin’. That bitch took somethin’ from me; it was only fair that I take somethin’ back.” The look on her face must have drooped in disillusionment, for the shine in his own paled as well as though he had said something he hadn’t meant to. And in a manner that was completely alien to him, he stepped forward with a façade of warmed indulgence and hissed a sigh through his teeth. “Okay,” he said softly. “So ‘s better to have you around than a two-dollar trick that’s only worth half a shilling, ‘f that. Leas’ you’re original, luv…an’ your psychological problems aren’ nearly as difficult to diagnose.”

Her eyes narrowed, though she was biting back a grin. “Hardy har har har.”

Spike smiled almost softly, sticking his hands in his duster pockets and rolling on the balls of his feet in a manner that was so little-boyish that it nearly reformed the entirety of his countenance. “So…” he began slowly. “What happened with the mega-bitch? She hauled back to Wankers Anonymous, or did Rupert decide to—”

“She got away.”

His eyes bulged. “What?”

"Not for long,” she amended quickly, as though she owed him an explanation. “Faith’s not the type to keep quiet for long. And Will’s working on a location spell.”

“Big comfort there, pet.” He favored her with a wry glance. “We all know how productive Red’s spells can be."

“Hey!” His eyes narrowed. She balked with a pout and a shrug. “It’s all we have, all right? Besides…she’s getting better.”

“I’ll remind you that you said that when she accidentally wipes out western America.”

“She should start by sewing your mouth shut.”

Spike’s gaze twinkled. “An’ deprive the world of my sexy voice? Never.”

“Dream on.”

“Don’ have to, luv.” The picture of her flustered discomfort must have been amusing, but he jutted his chin in a manner of unexpected diplomacy and arched a brow. “So, the lot of you haven’t the faintest idea where your rogue bird is headed, I take it.” 

Buffy glared at him a minute longer before sighing her concession. “We followed her to the train station where she hopped one to LA.” She shrugged helplessly, kicking at the dirt. “I kicked her off as it was beginning to move, we duked it out, yadda yadda…then she disappeared in mid-fight. Just up and vanished.”

Spike snickered. “Pathetic excuse for a Slayer. Bailin’ in the middle of the dance.” He shook his head. “She oughta be ashamed.”

“We’re thinking she caught up with the train. It wasn’t too far ahead, and she has the whole super-speed thing going for her.” The young blonde shrugged as they turned on virtually the same beat, heading without say in the direction of Giles’s place. “It won’t be long, though.”

“Findin’ her, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Because of Red’s spell?”

She nodded and cast him a narrow look, daring him to poke fun at her blind faith. “Willow can do location spells,” she said. “She has before…without nasty side effects or repercussions."

“Breakin’ my dainty heart, luv.”

“Truth hurts, don’t it?”

He smirked. “’F you’re suggestin’ that spell was at all fun for me, you’re off your bird. Trust me, Slayer, this is one vamp whose list of hobbies far exceeds playin’ tonsil hockey with one of Angel’s hand-me-downs.”

The air went still; Buffy’s feet dragging her to a halt, her gaze widening with shades of angered hurt. For the curse that filled the air, it wasn’t difficult to decipher Spike’s own regret, but it was too late to take it back. Creatures like him often went for the kill, no matter whom he hurt in the process. And, as always, if it was her—bonus.

The look in his eyes vouched for the opposite, but she had long ago given up reading people based off expressionism alone.

“Look,” he said as she opened her mouth to voice her deserved and undoubtedly nasty rebuttal. “That was outta line, but you weren’ exactly buildin’ me up, buttercup. Can’t help it ‘f the hide’s still sore.” He glanced to the ground before she could reply. “So you an’ the merry lot are off to Los Angeles? Innit…oh what’s the word…opportune?”

If possible, her eyes darkened. “This has nothing to do with Angel.”

“But you’ve called him, haven’t you? Seems the only humane thing to do…what, with a wacked out Slayer on the loose.” He stepped forward, scrutinizing her to uncomfortable degrees. “’Specially ‘f the bird’s headed in his direction an’ has the track record that the lot of you talked about nonstop while playin’ nursemaid to the sick Big Bad.”

“You were awake?”

He shrugged. “Drifted in an’ out.”

“You’re lucky that chip didn’t fry your brain, you know.”

“An’ you care, why?”

She shifted awkwardly. “I don’t. I’m just saying.” A pause. “And yeah, we’ve called Angel. Just to let him know. But believe me, after the iciness of our last meeting, he wasn’t exactly happy to hear from me.”

“Nothin’ worth sheddin’ tears over.” Spike expelled a deep breath. “Look, Slayer, not that I don’ appreciate the sudden an’ much unexpected warm front comin’ from your usual frosty self, but what’s goin’ on? You’re actin’ as though what happened the other night din’t happen—or worse.” He frowned and took another step forward, subconsciously setting them on their way again. “Red din’t pull an anti-bitchy spell on you, did she?”

She rolled her eyes. “I swear, you’re the only person in the world who would object to not fighting.”

“Only ‘cause I know that I’m gonna get the shit end of this deal whenever you come to your bleedin’ senses.” He shook his head. “I don’ enjoy bein’ your personal punchin’ bag, but at leas’ I know where I stand there. Buffy, you know what you walked in on the other night, right? A bird dressed in your body with her—”

“I know. I know!” She shuddered. “Yes—I am majorly wigged and…grossed out…and eww! And yes, I did consider swathing my hand in alcohol to rid my skin from any Spike-related impressions. And—”

“What? Don’ tell me the Slayer is afraid of cooties.”

“But you didn’t do anything…that I should…” Buffy sighed and combed a hand through her hair. “You didn’t do anything. That’s the point. You didn’t take her up on her offer and…do things with my body that I would have had to stake you for. And that’s the thing. You’re a guy—more over—you’re an evil vampire that would love nothing more than to see me suffer…but you at least knew enough to…respect me that much. So…I’m grateful."

A long, confusing beat settled between them.

“Buffy,” he said a minute later. “I din’t know it wasn’ you. Well, I had my suspicions, but there was a part of me that—”

“There’s no way you could’ve known otherwise. What? Were you supposed ask for proof of identification?”

“An’ ‘f I had shagged the bird an’ used that as an excuse?”

Buffy licked her lips, brow furrowing in thought before she offered a solemn shrug. “I don’t know. But you didn’t. You didn’t and then you helped me—helped us…and despite your own justification, it was the reason that I got back into my body. So yeah. I’m grateful. And it’s a weird feeling that I would like to have gone as soon as possible."

Spike smiled gently. The first true smile she had seen on his face all night—perhaps ever. It was strange to think that she and the vampire understood each other, but nothing these past two days could provide suggested otherwise. “Well,” he replied, “I’ll get on makin’ your life miserable as soon as I can work it into my schedule.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“My pleasure, Slayer.”

The air settled around them like an overbearing timekeeper. Settled and stressed the standard of shared realization. Issuing the subtle reminder that in no way should she be fraternizing with what she would usually think of as her prey. Spike was a mystery to her. A mystery. When had that happened? He had always simply been Spike. A vampire that couldn’t seem to take the boot in the way God intended. A vampire unlike any other—a vampire that forged alliances with Slayers in the namesake of love. A vampire that broke said alliances, granted, but behaved like an outed member of her circle of friends, even if he would deny any such allegation. He was a vampire still, regardless of what had occurred to make it otherwise.

With the implant or whatever the commandos had done to him to make him helpless, they had seemingly also stripped away his hostility. Not toward her in particular—they fought as regularly as ever. It was in that regard that the spell that had thrust them together just last week tugged at her insides as such an unruly abomination. No, Spike hated her as vocally as he had before. Perhaps more so: his desire to see her dead, however, had died along with his ability to make any such notion a reality. If he wanted to, unraveling her life would not take much at all. Spike was a respected vampire in these parts. He had cronies that were still loyal, she knew. Just because he was unable to see to her death personally did not mean he was not in the position to be its cause all the same.

Whether or not he even realized it, he had taken to helping her. Spike was helping her. And she didn’t know why.

“Anyway,” Buffy said suddenly, returning to herself. “I better be heading back. I was just gonna do a quick patrol and get back so we could—umm, figure out what to do about this Faith thing.”

The vampire snickered. “Yeh. Rupes’s really bugger all brassed about that. He had to phone a shag-buddy from the motherland to tell her now’s not such a good time to drop in for—”

“Stop.”

“What?”

“Just stop talking. The last thing I need to know about—ever—is the regularity of Giles’s…” She made a face. “I just don’t need to hear about it.”

“His sex-life?”

“And again with the gross. Thanks very much for listening, Helen Keller.”

Spike grinned. “What’s wrong, luv? The old man deserves to get his rocks off on occasion. He has you to tend to, after all.”

“I swear to God, if you don’t want me to stake you, you’re really going about it in the wrong way.” She shook her head as they set off again in the direction of her Watcher’s duplex. A frown tickled her mouth when she noted he had not taken the hint and scampered off in the other direction. “Where are you going?”

“With you.”

“Why?”

He favored her with a long look. “’Cause, unless I’m mistakin’, my stuff’s still at Rupert’s.” 

“You have stuff?”

He shrugged. “Carton of smokes an’ a box of Weetabix. Couple bags of blood.”

“Uh huh. And does Giles know that the Weetabix is yours?”

“He will once I eat it.”

Buffy shook her head. “When are you gonna move out?"

The vampire chuckled shortly. “You really are off your game tonight, aren’ you, pet? Make it sound like I’m a guest at the bleedin’ Ritz. I can’t move out, remember? Every time I try to leave, he sends you an’ your merry lot out to find me.” Spike bristled at that. “I tell yeh, this is not where I thought I’d be at my age.”

“Hate to break it to you, buddy, but at your age, you should be in the ground…stinking the place up.”

He smirked at her. “Been a demon a lot longer than I was a man. Tend to not think like one on those levels.” He shook his head. “Fifty years ago, ‘f you told me I’d be shackin’ it up with the Slayer’s Watcher of all things ridiculous, I woulda—”

“I don’t see what’s keeping you from moving out,” she said again. “Giles told me he didn’t think you were dangerous anymore.”

A dark scowl befell his face. “I am so dangerous!”

Buffy just paused and looked at him.

Then she burst out laughing.

“Stop.” He was pouting. And oh my god, Spike pouts? He was strangely and—very wrongly—appealing when he pouted. Appearing for everything in the world a normal man. A man. “’S not funny.”

“Oh no,” she agreed between chuckles. “It’s really, really not. Come on. Say it again, and this time I’ll pretend to believe you.”

“’m thinkin’ ‘s not a good idea to brass off a powerful vampire, luv.”

“And you notice just how badly you scare me with those big words."

He smirked, his face drawn humorless even as his eyes danced. It was strange. Strange and discomfiting, but oddly familiar. As though they had been doing this all their lives. Not fighting. Not being as they were—mortal enemies and beyond. Just this. It shook her foundation. As though cutting Spike a break because of what he had done also entailed stepping down from the platform to make way for the more surprising reform. 

“Remember this when I get the chip out,” he forewarned in a manner that was almost naturally teasing. No, no. This is not good at all. “I’ll make you eat those words.”

“Right.” Buffy released a long breath and shook her head, grateful when Giles’s front door was suddenly in view. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The scene upon entering the duplex was not the most encouraging sight she had ever stumbled across. 

Granted, it didn’t take much to get the Watcher riled. Not these days, anyway.

“You monkey-scots git!” He was screaming into the phone, drawing a laugh from her companion and duel blank expressions from Willow and Xander, who sat on his sofa in survey of the television. “What nerve do you…oh, right. I see. She’s suddenly your responsibility. How silly of me. Need I remind you that the last time anyone had a word in bringing…Yes; I believe that is the point, actually. No, you cannot—”

Buffy sent a quizzical look in Willow’s direction, who mouthed obediently, “He’s talking to Angel.”

That was it. The vampire at her side burst out laughing.

All in the room paused to stare at him, drawing up his sobriety with haste that he would usually ignore. “’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

It lasted all ten seconds before he was laughing again.

“Angel’s sending someone from his staff to help us,” Willow explained over the verbal reprimands and the laughter. “Make sure that we get to Faith before the Council does.” 

“From his staff? That little Irish guy?”

Xander shook his head. “Nah. Actually—and here’s the really funny spin—it’s Wes.”

Buffy blinked. “Wes. Wes as in…I’m-The-Reason-Faith’s-Such-A-Screwup-Wes?”

“The one and only.”

A frown beset her countenance. This was not of the sense-making. “Whoa, wait. Hold it. Does he not think that we can do this by ourselves?”

"And hence why Giles is yelling at him,” Harris concluded.

Willow nodded, her eyes wide and apologetic. “Actually, Buff, I think he thinks that you and Faith mixed together is of the bad…being the reason why he wants to send someone from his team.”

Xander waved a dismissive hand. “Feel good, you two. You’re in the know. I didn’t even know Angel had a team.”

Spike recovered from his hysterics long enough to send a dancing look in Harris’s direction. “You din’t? You’re kiddin’!” Another blurb of laughter escaped his lips. “Angel’s gone industrious, mate. He’s a Vampire Detective.”

The other man’s gaze went wide. “A what? Oh holy moly, that is just too good for words.” His amusement drew up quickly enough, glowering a bit as he realized he had nearly laughed aloud at something the very disliked platinum vampire had to offer. “And what’s Evil Dead doing here?”

“Do I really need to remind everyone that I happen to be livin’ here at the moment?”

“Ah, that’s right. The Chipped Wonder has taken up the study of bum-hood.”

“So says he makin’ the leap in baby steps into the real world from mummy’s basement.”

“I’m still ahead of you.”

Spike snickered. “’F you’re talkin’ your admitted uselessness, you’d be wrong, mate. You still run around like a Slayer Groupie.”

“It’s called a job, Pasty. You’re off the juice, you gotta pay for the plasma somehow.”

Buffy rolled her eyes and shook her head. “So,” she intervened sharply. “About Faith? We have any leads?"

That was all it took. In an instant, Xander and Willow were tugged from the morbid draw that was arguing with a soulless vampire to matters of actual relevance, though the former looked a bit scorned and the Cockney at her side was all sorts of unhappy. Giles was still on the phone, but had evidently relocated to the upper level where he could form an argument without prompt distraction.

“There’ve been news reports,” the redhead confessed. “She’s left a trail.”

The Slayer pursed her lips. She had been afraid of that. “Bodies?”

“Some dead. Most beaten.” Willow glanced down. “Buff, she’s not going to LA. Wherever she disappeared to the other night…I think that train, from what I got from the schedule and departure times…she’s in Mississippi.”

Spike arched a brow. “Mississippi?”

The Witch nodded. “The train she hopped was headed to Jackson. Early morning shipment. The last sighting was about an hour north of a town called Vicksburg. She beat up a woman at a gas station and stole her SUV. Two kids in the back—they were dumped at the next pull off.”

Buffy shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Mississippi?”

“From the sound of things, she’s heading south. Fast.” Willow expelled a deep breath. “The location spell results were inconclusive because of that—”

“Told you."

The Slayer shook her head, not needing to look at the vampire to know that he was smirking.

“—for a couple hours after the first report.” The redhead shot a nasty look over her friend’s head. 

“Then she stopped. Just stopped.”

Xander shrugged. “Ran out of gas?”

“Coppers mighta caught up with her,” Spike suggested.

Buffy didn’t look convinced. “No. No. That’s…the police couldn’t hold Faith. No way.” She raised her eyes slowly. “Where did she stop?”

“Uhhh…well, from what I could tell…there’s a town south of Vicksburg. Hour and a half to two hours away. Her vibes are strongest there.” Willow licked her lips. “It’s a tourist town. I have no idea why she would stop there of all places…especially going as fast as she was to just…well, stopping.”

“And now we must wait until Wes graces us with his oh-so-desired presence before we bust a move on this thing.” Harris heaved out a breath. “Then we get to go down under.” 

“It doesn’t take too long to drive from LA to here,” the redhead observed. “And, last I checked, Australia wasn’t an hour and a half away from Vicksburg, Mississippi.”

Spike snickered.

The Slayer held up a hand. “Well, regardless of how not-happy I am with this, it is better that we get Wes on the case than chance the Council catching up with her.”

Xander shook his head. “I’m not seeing the half-full of that. Someone please remind me. We hate Council, we hate Faith…why do we care if Council gets Faith?”

“Spite?” the vampire offered. “The enemy of my enemy an’ all that?”

“Question being, which enemy do we want to make a friend in this scenario?”

The Cockney shrugged. “A Slayer or a bunch of stake-happy old wankers who take the callin’ more seriously than any of the callees? You really need a vote on that one?”

Harris sighed in aggravation, hands dropping to his lap. “Who exactly invited you to this meeting, honestly?”

Spike favored him with the two-finger salute and rolled his eyes.

“He helped us out a couple days ago, Xan,” Buffy offered with a shrug. “And he’s probably gonna go wherever we end up going.”

“I am?”

“He is?”

The Slayer smiled wryly. “Unless you wanna be left here to a bunch of disgruntled demons and the commandos who put that implant in your head to begin with.”

The vampire frowned. “Why do you want me to go?”

“Excellent question,” Xander concurred with a nod. “Why do we want him to go?”

“Because two nights ago, Faith gave him a reason. Vendettas produce results.” Buffy drew in a breath. “I think everyone here can vouch for that. And I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d like to be in and out without screwing around. Besides…” She caught Spike’s gaze briefly. “He has her scent. Vamp senses make for easier trackage."

There was a moment of consideration. No point in arguing with the truth.

“So,” Xander said the next minute. “We catch Faith…what’s next?”

“I’ll think about that bridge when it’s in sight, Xan. As of now, it’s not.” 

He nodded. That was fair enough.

“Good. Good.” Buffy expelled a deep breath. “Once Giles is through yelling, we can sit down and actually talk about this. Will…starting with where we’re going?”

“I pinpointed the town on the map,” the redhead replied. “Can’t remember the name. Rhymed with matches.”

The map indicated was strewn across the Watcher’s dining room table alongside a variety of herbs and spices. Buffy bit her lip. They must have just missed the big action of the evening.

Which was just as well.

And there it was, as specified. One word, circled in blue ink. The name of a town she had never before heard of. The name of a town she would never forget. 

“Okay then,” she said after memorizing its placement. “Okay. I guess we have some packing to do.”

“This is not happening to me.”

“Before the Depression, Watergate, JFK’s Assassination, Pearl Harbor, Lincoln’s Assassination, Waco, Reagan’s Shooting, Kuwait, and the Oklahoma City Bombing.”

“It’d be a little more impressive if you could list those in order, Donna.”

“What are we doing about this?”

“About what?”

“About the cat.”

Josh blinked and glanced up from the memo that detailed 197, something that somehow—in his personal opinion—took precedence over the significance of a bedtime story. And yet, for the look on his assistant’s face, there seemed to be no option but to set aside meager governmental affairs and address her incredibly valid concern about what impending national catastrophe loomed over their heads, unmonitored. “You’re asking me what we’re doing to solve the myth of the cat.”

Donna nodded. “Given the cat’s track record, I don’t think it is completely out of question to do a little investigating.”

“Hold on. I’m still on the first thing. You want to know if the federal government will spend time and money trying to crack the case of a ghost cat.”

“Yes.”

A long pause settled throughout the Deputy Chief of Staff’s office. The halls were all but vacant—most of the staffers having retired for the evening. Not him, though. And as long as he was here, not Donna, either. With the President, Charlie, CJ, and the Washington Press Corps flying halfway across the country for a photo-op, he thought it better to stay here until the last possible moment to do stuff that some would consider work.

For work, Donna was invaluable.

Only she was worrying about a cat, thus negating the work part of his plan.

“Let me ask you, is this conversation that we’re having serious?”

“Josh—”

“Are we having a serious conversation about the pros and cons of spending tax dollars to investigate an urban legend?”

“Would you rather wait for the White House to blow up?”

He blinked again. “Not researching the cat means the White House will blow up?”

“Well, with all that’s happened, it certainly seems to be next on the list.”

“Donna, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this thing that I’m doing is actually, oh what’s the word, important.” He turned his eyes back to the memo and stifled a yawn. “Senator Davis is gonna pitch a fit and he’s gonna pitch it at me while the President smiles and waves at a bunch of barn-county yokels—in the middle of which, Leo’s being indicted by Congress and you’re worried about a cat?”

The blonde scowled. “Well, looking at that list, you’d think there might be reason to be worried.”

He sighed in aggravation. “Look, the cat was probably a stray. The guy who saw it was supposed to have retired seventeen years ago and his vision isn’t exactly twenty/twenty. Moreover, it was late, it was dark, and it’s a human-interest story that has gullible people like you bent out of shape. Get over it. There’s—you know—work to do.”

“How is it a human-interest story?”

“Huh?”

“How is the cat a human-interest story?”

That seemed more than obvious. “Humans find it interesting, Donna. What do you want from me?”

“It’s either an urban legend or a human interest story, Josh. You can’t have it both ways.”

“Humans find urban legends interesting, don’t they?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, there you go. Get back to work.”

“There is no work. In case you’ve noticed, it’s a quarter to midnight.” Donna sighed emphatically and collapsed into the seat across from his desk, aware but unconcerned of his wary appraisal. “The only other person here is Sam and the only reason he’s here is because he’s waiting for Toby to get back from the thing.”

“Then go bug Sam.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I get paid to bug you.”

“You’re fired. Go bug Sam.”

“No.”

Josh’s head nearly collapsed on his desk in frustration. “Why not?”

“Because if I am no longer on your pay-roll, then there is no good reason why I should listen to you.” Donna flashed an annoyingly bright smile. “Besides, you’ve read that memo a thousand and one times and don’t really want me to go because that means you’d have to read it a thousand and two times. And you like me being here because it kills time until Toby gets back from his meeting.”

A small smile quirked his mouth at that. “You know what you are?”

“Endearing?”

“I was going more for insufferable, but take that as you like.”

“Remind me again why Toby’s meeting was scheduled so late?”

A sigh hissed through his teeth. “Because, much like myself, the Minority Whip has important work to do. And we didn’t know we were going to be introducing a policy change until this morning, and in order for us to actually—you know—introduce the change, we need to make sure it’s okayed by the people in Congress who still like us.” Josh shook his head. “Is it too late to order takeout?”

She paused. “It’s almost midnight. I’m pretty sure that most takeout places close at nine.”

“Right.”

“Why is the President announcing a policy change in Vicksburg?”

Josh sighed and caressed his brow. “Because he wants it out there as a thing while, at the same time, not making hay over it. We’re already spending a good chunk of the taxpayer’s money on education reform, which as a whole, everyone’s usually in favor of. This is something he wants and he wants done right. You know how he feels about education.” He glanced down. “It also means restructuring some of the deals we made last week in a way that will ultimately be better, but it’s still a good idea to mention it in passing rather than holding a press conference over it.”

“He doesn’t think this will hit the news cycle?”

“Hit, yes. Dominate, no. It’s a small policy change and we wanna keep it that way.” Josh grinned sardonically. “You’d be amazed at how touchy people can get when you throw money into the mix.”

“Yeah. Amazed.”

“So Toby and Sam are grounded until they get the okay from our guys on the Hill to finish the speech that should’ve been done yesterday, the President’s landing in Jackson, and all the while I’m reading this memo for the thousandth and second time and I’m still not seeing why Davis thinks this bill has any feasible way of making it’s way through the House—let alone Congress.” He sat back with a groan. “And, to top it off, it’s too late to order pizza. My night is complete.”

“Don’t forget the cat.”

“Ah yes, the cat. Who could possibly forget the cat?”

The knock at the door was more for courtesy than need. The West Wing was all but vacant save for a few assistants and Sam. However, such diplomacy was in Sam’s nature, and he preferred prefacing his entrances rather than flatly assuming a right. Even if it was well past work hours.

“Hey,” he greeted. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“I cannot stress how much you are not,” Josh replied. “’Sup?”

“Toby is coming back from his meeting.”

“We okay?”

“We’re okay.”

“Does he need me?”

“No—he said whatever it is can wait until tomorrow.” Sam waited patiently as his friend collected what he would take home. “We’ll be working on the speech until it’s time to leave, but everything was pretty open/shut once the meeting actually started.”

Josh motioned at his assistant, who was up finally and following suit. They began in uniform fashion for the exit, nodding to the appropriate security guards and bidding goodnight to the staffers whose names did not escape them.

“Just out of curiosity,” Josh continued a minute later, “where in Vicksburg is the President staying?”

“Charlie didn’t tell you?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve been busy with this thing.”

“Grand hotels being rather lacking in Vicksburg, I think he’s staying at Cedar Grove, which incidentally is the house that has the cannon ball lodged in the—”

Donna’s gaze went wide and she hurrahed her victory. “See? I told you it was a good idea.”

“What?”

Josh rolled his eyes. “We’re staying at a bed and breakfast as opposed to the perfectly acceptable lodging establishments that are not run by some small town nutcases who will make me eat grits while telling stories that make the President’s anecdotes seem like State business. At least I get paid for that.”

“Grits are good,” Sam replied reasonably.

“Grits are not good.”

“He told me to book us rooms, I booked us rooms,” Donna intervened with a shrug. “He never specified that it had to be a hotel. And even so, the place I found was adorable and the owners are not nutcases.” She shook her head with a sigh, leaning to the other man conspiratorially. “He needs the cultural experience.”

“I do not.”

Sam smiled. “That’s cute.”

“It is not cute.”

“I’m inclined to agree with Donna on this one. The change in atmosphere will be good for you.”

“What if this is what the cat was warning us about,” Josh suggested, eyes dancing as his assistant’s face paled with speculation.

Sam tilted his head curiously. “The cat?”

“The cat that haunts the Capitol building.” Donna scowled and whacked her boss across the arm. “Don’t do that, you jerk.”

“What?” The other man blinked. “I missed something, didn’t I?”

Josh smirked unworriedly. “There was a sighting the other night,” he explained.

“I heard about that.”

“Yeah. Margaret’s been going on about it in a way that only Margaret can, and as a result, Donna has decided that the government should fund an investigative team to see if there is a conspiracy in the world of the supernatural.”

She was still pouting. “You see, when you say it, it sounds dumb.”

“There’s a reason for that.”

“Ah.” Sam nodded as though the justification was perfectly acceptable. “You know, the cat’s appearance has foretold such notable events as the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the JFK Assassination. There are some people who take it seriously.”

Donna grinned at him in victory. Josh rolled his eyes again.

“The cat didn’t foretell anything,” he argued. “Someone saw it and blamed it on something that happened in the country. Two isolated incidents that people now tie together because of one unfortunate whack-job. This isn’t something for the Smithsonian. And people who do take it seriously should really not be working in the White House.”

“Perhaps not take it seriously,” Sam agreed, “but seeing as a sighting has preceded many of our national tragedies, I don’t believe it would be presumptuous in exhibiting some caution in…” He frowned. “Maybe it was about Leo.”

Josh sighed and shook his head. “I can’t believe we’re talking about this.”

“Maybe the cat’s appearance has something to do with the hearings.”

“You’re talking about a ghost cat, Sam. Listen to yourself.”

“You and Toby are the superstitious ones. What’s the harm in inquiring about the ghost cat?”

Josh expelled a deep breath and caressed his brow, sending a glare in Donna’s direction that she shrugged off without missing a beat. “You see what you’ve done?”

Her hands came up neutrally. “Hey. Don’t look at me. You’re the one who didn’t let me in on it.”

“In on what? There’s nothing to be let in on.”

“All I’m saying is, Margaret knew about the cat.”

The three reached the parking lot with expected routine. Josh nodded his goodbyes to Donna on a note of whimsy. It was a rare occasion when they left the building together, but even so, he preferred it this way. There were times that he reckoned she didn’t realize how dangerous the city could be. And with the late hours that he made her work, walking out of the most prestigious building in the world when the sky was dark and the wackos were out could be somewhat intimidating.

He watched her car pull out of Dupont Circle, turning back to Sam as an afterthought with a small grin of denied affection tickling his mouth. “You shouldn’t encourage her, you know.”

Sam shrugged. “She’s good at keeping you on your toes,” he observed. They watched tacitly until she was completely out of sight and, in peripheral view, safely on her way home. “Tell me about this thing with Senator Davis.”

Josh breathed a long sigh. “Basically nothing more than what’s floating around. We’re meeting to talk about 197 and all the reasons it’s not going to become law.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“It should.”

“Should what?”

“Become law.”

“Well, thanks for the input. Take Sam Seaborn to Congress based on that alone, and there’s no more argument.” Josh shook his head wearily. “It proposes good ideas, but it’s not going to be passed in the House. It’s just not.”

“It’s a good bill.”

“I’m not saying it’s not…in fact, I think I just told you the same thing. But it’s not going to happen.”

Sam sighed. “It should.”

Josh’s brows arched and he smiled a bit. “This is more than a matter of opinion, you know. We can’t support a citizen’s right to burn the Flag in protest while at the same time saying it’s wrong to display a flag that’s so central to an entire back-culture of our country. In case you didn’t notice, we’re Democrats. We don’t get away with hypocrisy.”

The other man shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

“You don’t?”

“Well, there would be objections—”

“You think?”

“But we could win on one basic principle.”

A sigh ran through the air. Like the President, it was often not a good idea to encourage Sam when he jumped the tangent train of all things ethical. However, it was late and Josh was feeling indulgent. There was no harm in hearing a preset to what he would be lectured on in two days. “What’s that?”

“It’s wrong.” Sam jerked a hand through his hair and heaved a deep breath. “It’s wrong, and they know it.”

“It’s wrong, and they don’t care. And since when have we won anything on the principle of right and wrong?” Josh chuckled wryly and shook his head again. “It doesn’t work this way. This is more than fixing a few state flags and removing bumperstickers from every hillbilly vehicle from here to the Pacific. This is introducing a thing that would enable the federal government to fine individuals for the display of something that is considered highly relevant to—”

“That flag promotes racism and you know it.”

“I never said it didn’t!”

“Have you talked to Charlie about it?”

Josh sobered. “No. Have you?”

There was a long sigh. “No. I didn’t want to…no. But I don’t see how anyone could argue…I just don’t see it. That flag represents the cause for the secession of seven states based on the ideology that holding a man and his family against his will is a fundamental right that every American should employ. Every time it is waved, it sends that reminder to the black community. It is the reason we have homeland terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and quieter movements like Southern White Pride. The fact that we have done nothing about it in the hundred and thirty years after a war that caused the deaths of over six hundred thousand American lives is an abomination. And under a liberal administration that stresses equality in race more than any we have seen before it, the bill should be allowed more than a quick dismissal.” Sam released a long, quivering breath. “It’s wrong. It’s just wrong.”

Josh licked his lips; studying his friend for a long, quiet moment. “There are many aspects of free speech that Congress disagrees with,” he said. “That the people disagree with. That’s why we call it free speech. The bill is good—it is. It makes a strong point and an even stronger case…but it’s not going to happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not. Because too many people feel too strongly about it.”

“Tell me, what are the chances that this bill would even be a thing if Bartlet weren’t President?” Sam’s brows lifted. “This is an opportunity—”

“It’s not gonna happen.” Josh heaved a sigh. “Look, you were the one telling me what a bad idea it is to piss off the South. Who do you think this is gonna piss off if the White House even suggests support, moral or otherwise? We’d lose the Southern states plus some just for threatening the first amendment. It’s not gonna happen, Sam. It can’t.”

The other man exhaled deeply and looked down, expression measured and guarded. “Yeah,” he conceded after a long moment. “Right. Right.”

“It’s a good bill. But it can’t happen.”

“Right.” Sam glanced up and shifted a bit. “Look, I’m gonna go home and work on this thing. See you tomorrow.”

There was a brief silence; Josh studied his friend for a moment before nodding in agreement. “’Kay.”

It was difficult to tell with these things what was and was not measured by radical persuasion. With such heavy opinions swaying the bill and a trip on the horizon, not getting personally involved was something that grew a little more impossible the deeper they submerged.

Not personal. Business.

Only business was personal to him. To Josh. To everyone he knew.

Otherwise, it wasn’t business.

*~*~*

“Here.” Josh practically dumped the gift shop bag into Donna’s lap as the plane began to speed down the runway. “Stop bothering me about the cat.”

There was a comment waiting on her tongue. He knew it simply by looking at her. Somewhere between antagonism and gratitude. Such was Donna.

In the end, she opted to ignore his heartfelt declaration of said gift and turned her attention to seeing what he had gotten her instead. The bag was heavy enough for anything, and she hadn’t noticed him lingering around the gift shop all that long. He had wanted a copy of the Post and the New York Times for the ride. Whatever else was purchased had somehow remained concealed up until now.

Though, judging by the size of the book, she didn’t know how.

“The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits by Rosemary Ellen Guiley.”

“Second Edition,” he added proudly.

“Josh…I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll stop bothering me about the cat. That’s all I ask.”

Donna pursed her lips. This was usually where she would give him a hug, but with the plane making its ascent toward Mississippi and the ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign in solid place, she settled for a kiss on the cheek instead. “You’re such a jerk most of the time,” she said, earning a dubious grin that really wasn’t dubious. “Thank you for the book.”

“You’re welcome.” He loved surprising her like this. Seeing the look on her face made all of the above worth while.

Though with the way she began to digest the first few pages, he acknowledged that encouraging this interest of hers could prove a very big mistake.

Oh well. It made her happy.

And despite what he would say to the contrary, Josh loved nothing more than making Donna happy.

It was amazing how many things could go wrong in subsequent order. From the moment Buffy decided that the best game plan entailed capturing the rogue Slayer hands-on to the moment of departure, any number of incidents were up for grabs and failed miserably at the chance of producing actual expediency. A heated debate about seating arrangements in the variety of vehicles they were to employ resulted in Giles’s concession of his credit card to rent a Winnebago—to which Xander claimed a bizarre undercurrent of vujà de, the notion that somehow none of this had ever happened before. Then he had coughed something incoherent and went on with business.

No one really anticipated anything different from Xander.

There was the expected bickering about Spike’s involvement and the lack of understanding at Buffy’s insistence that their resident bloodsucker lend a hand. Said resident bloodsucker was wary, himself. The Slayer’s behavior since the Bronze notwithstanding, the entire situation was a bit odd for the wearer and none had the slightest idea on how to handle it.

Such couldn’t last, though. It didn’t. Within a half hour on the road, Spike and Buffy were engaged in a very loud screaming match over the virtues in traditional rock’n’roll compared to the sodding drivel that popular music stations featured nowadays. Giles’s input as driver clinched the deal, and for the first seven hours he and Spike commandeered the radio dial, playing all the classics of the way-back-when.

It was strange watching them get along. Discussing favorites and trading stories on rock-legend encounters—Giles gazing at the Cockney in awe as Spike detailed one of four meetings with John Lennon and Paul McCartney. At the rest stops, they would avoid each other, as though tainted by enjoying one another’s company. Watcher and vampire.

The other Watcher had not been welcomed with open arms, and for the most part took to the back where he engaged in idle small talk with Willow and Xander. On request, he detailed how things were with Angel and Cordelia in Los Angeles and went so far as to insist that he was there as a diplomat and not on part of Angel Investigations. He wasn’t even a part of the team, as far as he knew. More an independent demon hunter who bartered information with them when things were particularly slow.

“So, you’re working for him?” Xander had asked in a plea for clarity. At which point, Wesley mumbled inarticulately and changed the subject.

Yes. It was all very strange. A road trip with the Scoobies. A road trip in which nothing could be agreed upon—rest stops, dining options, air-conditioner settings, or space evaluation. Nothing.

Thus, following logic to conclusion, the sleeping arrangements were anything but a mild steppingstone.

“Okay,” Xander said slowly, caressing his temples. They were currently stopped in a café in Vicksburg, though were having to make quick work as everyone was gearing up for some political rally. “Lemme get this straight. We already have reservations?”

Willow frowned. “We’ve already discussed this at least twice. Were you napping?”

“Let’s not rule that possibility out.”

“It’s a start,” Anya observed with a shrug.

Giles nodded. “Yes. And that is only because of Wesley’s connections.”

The former Watcher flushed with a silly grin and turned his eyes to his plate of half-consumed bread pudding. “The couple that owns the place was very grateful,” he replied, not trying to hide the slight of boast that skimmed his tone. “Evidently, they had never seen a Kfagna demon before.”

Spike snickered and rolled his eyes. He was lounged rather comfortably, elbow resting on bended knee and supporting a cigarette that indifferently defied the non-smoking sign at the restaurant’s door. And, though the waiters and waitresses had definitely made note of him, no one had asked him to put it out. “You’re kiddin’ me,” he drawled. “An’ by the twentieth century, I’d’ve sworn everyone woulda heard of a Kfagna demon.”

“They were deeply religious,” Wesley continued, sending a glare in Spike’s direction that went answered by an uncaring shrug. “And thought that they were being targeted as a result of having a witch as a houseguest.”

Willow frowned. “Hey!”

“Understand, their impression of witchcraft is far from the actual—”

The redhead pouted and sank back into her seat, batting a hand of casual neglect. “Yeah, yeah. Only wish you hadn’t waited until now to tell us you’ve booked our rooms in witch-hunting territory.”

“Well,” Buffy said reasonably, munching on a biscuit. “Don’t wear your ‘I’m A Witch, See My Craft’ button, and we’re all set.”

Spike snickered again and cocked a brow. “Oh,” he replied. “’Cause ‘s as easy as that, is it, luv? I thought the purpose of this li’l minibreak was to snatch the big bad Slayer, right? An’ we’re relyin’ on Red here to work her hocus-pocus an’ point us in the right direction. When these blokes walk in an’ see candles floatin’, they’re gonna want an explanation.”

She sent him an unrepentant glare. “Someone please remind me who asked Spike to join our conversation.”

Willow cleared her throat conspiratorially. “Ummm, Buff…that would be you. With the—you know—inviting him and everything. And Xander’s been issuing a variation of that question ever since we left.”

Spike merely smirked in satisfaction.

“I haven’t been complaining about conversation,” Harris objected with a confused blink.

“And thus why I chose the word ‘variation.’”

“Oh.” A flush rose to his cheeks and he chuckled humorlessly before turning to Anya, who was listening but very obviously unconcerned with the direction of the matter at hand. “I got a C- in English. My vocab aren’t this good.”

“Are not your grammar, neither,” Buffy replied, smothering a grin.

The Cockney’s eyes widened. “’Scuse me, Slayer, but did you just criticize someone else’s grammar?”

“Yes, Spike, I did.”

Giles sighed longingly. “Oh dear.”

“As I was saying,” Wesley intervened, clearing his throat. “I do not believe that the tenants of the Winsel House will be scrutinizing any of us to any such degree that could comparatively match a previous guest. I have a vouch of good faith that we will be left alone in that regard.” He turned specifically to Willow. “You have nothing to fear.”

That was well and good, but the Scoobies were far too experienced to be bought with simplicity. And for all the ridiculing he had done in the past, Spike knew them well enough to identify such without delayed measure. He cocked his head curiously. “How you figure, mate?”

“Because she does not wear sacrilegious attire, sport any number of visible tattoos, actively dye her hair stark black, listen to overbearingly loud death metal, or display piercings where no person should ever be pierced.” Wesley offered a satisfied though self-conscious smile. “Anyway, point being, I spoke with them before we left Sunnydale and they were able to, in that time, empty two rooms and the townhouse to accommodate us.”

The table went still.

“What?” Xander echoed.

“Just two rooms and the townhouse?” Buffy demanded. “There are seven of us.”

Harris shrugged at that, objection wavering. “Seven? We’re including Spike? I just assumed he was left out of that equation. Doesn’t Natchez have any nice cemeteries or something to house their dead? Why does he have to stay with us?”

The vampire rolled his eyes. “Y’think this is any fun for me? ‘m bein’ carted halfway across the bleedin’ country to help the lot of you worthless sods clean up your mess before the great granddaddy wankers find out that the kiddies have been very, very naughty. ‘m with you or I’m not. You can’t go ‘round changin’ the rules in the middle of the game. Doesn’ work like that.”

“For the record, I didn’t want you to come.”

“Now, there’s the surprise of the century. Pull the other one.”

“Guys,” the Slayer growled, slamming a fist against the table and earning what had to be the twelfth wary glance from some local who was dining across the café. “Xander, look. Spike is here because he can help us.”

“And what makes you so sure that he will, Buffy?”

There was a pause at that. Her eyes met the Cockney’s on a delayed beat of unwanted recognition. He was almost smirking at her, but there was something else behind his gaze. Something he wanted to keep hidden but couldn’t. A look of half-doused perceptivity. A drive to be understood. And yes, while tensions were mounting in ways she did not at all endorse, she couldn’t allow herself to forget what he had done not too long ago.

Something that had brought them this far. He claimed it had not been for her, and she believed him. But there was more to it. More buried under levels of guarded acknowledgment. More. Always more.

“Because he hates Faith just as much as we do.”

The shine of a true smile reached his eyes but not his lips. The look he betrayed remained mordant and not at all touched. Instead, he snickered dismissively and batted a hand, raising a bite of pecan pie to his mouth. “Don’ get ahead of yourself, Slayer,” he berated. “’m here for the food.”

Giles smiled with sardonic diplomacy, removing his glasses for a routine polish session. “Yes, well,” he began, nodding at Xander. “While we may exhibit a series of…irreconcilable differences, Buffy and I have discussed and reached a decision. Fact remains that Spike is in my custody, and I am not prepared to allow him run around town unsupervised.”

The vampire’s brows arched at that. “Does Spike get a say in this?”

In a moment of stilled hilarity, the entire table sent a brief glance in his direction and answered on the same beat. “No.”

“Bugger all. ‘m not under anyone’s bloody custody. Has everyone here gone completely daft? I’m old enough to whip the lot of you.”

“And yet, mercifully unable to,” Xander chided.

“Spike is not older than me,” Anya argued. “No one here is older than me.”

The Cockney’s eyes twinkled and he leaned forward with stern condescension. “Might not be older, pet,” he purred. “But again, I’m not the one who traded in my brawn for an internal timer.”

“I did not trade in my brawn. I lost my brawn.” She frowned. “And besides, you can’t hurt me. Or Xander. Xander and I are impervious to your threats.”

The elder Watcher released a long, controlled sigh. “The fact remains,” he said slowly, “that we are traveling to a town that none of us have ever toured before—”

“I have,” Wesley objected.

Xander rolled his eyes. “Great monkey’s uncle, you passed through one night and were there for a grand total of forty-five minutes. That does not exactly make you the mayor, Wes.”

The other man flushed decently. “Ah, yes. Well. It’s all relative.”

“Spike is staying under my custody,” Giles continued, voice raising octaves to be heard over the squabbling, “because of the circumstances that I have outlined. The last thing we need is a vampire running loose in a town we don’t know…especially when we don’t know what to expect.” A grim smile crossed his features. “There are times, I believe, when trying to predict the future is just as dangerous as charging into a lion’s lair dressed in zebra skin.”

“You’re all off your rockers.” The vampire shook his head heatedly. “I don’t bloody need to be kept. Got it?”

“Respectfully, Spike, I am speaking on your behalf.” At that, there was nothing else to say. No objections to voice—nothing but a dry understanding to coincide with confused wonder. When he saw he was not going to be interrupted again, Giles turned to Wesley and nodded. “How many rooms does the townhouse have?”

“Two. Two, and one of those sofas that can become a bed.”

“I am sleeping with Xander,” Anya announced loudly.

Harris coughed. Spike snickered.

Willow rolled her eyes. “Who here didn’t see that coming?” She turned to Buffy and shrugged with a smile. “Guess that leaves the Fab Three in the townhouse.”

“Actually,” the elder Watcher intervened, “I believe that it’s better if Buffy and I assume the townhouse. We’re going to need to discuss strategy.”

The Slayer pursed her lips and sent her best friend an apologetic look. She and Giles had discussed this before they left Sunnydale. Based on Wesley’s description on where they would be staying—and what needed to be done in order to apprehend Faith in a manner that would hopefully not raise too much attention to the out-of-towners—a plan of some kind was of the very good.

Willow looked disappointed, but there was understanding in her eyes. Understanding that did not quite drown out the flavor of her sudden apprehension. She tossed Spike a nervous glance, and stilled when he flashed a particularly evil grin and waved at her.

That was all it took. Comprehension dawned on Xander, and he flew out of his seat with stern protest. “Whoa! Wait a minute! Hold the phone. You’re going to make Will room with the—”

Buffy bit her lip. Her friend’s outburst was attracting more unwanted attention. “Xan—”

“Absolutely not. The bastard can stay—”

“Xan, calm down. Spike isn’t staying with Willow.” The Slayer expelled a deep breath, doing her damndest to ignore the way the peroxide Cockney’s eyes danced at her discomfort. He had to know what was coming. He had to have known it from the start. “He’s staying with me and Giles.”

If possible, the weight of Harris’s objection intensified. “Staying with…why is he staying with you?”

“Because we don’t want the Council anywhere near us.” Buffy’s eyes fell on Wesley with guarded apology, but she offered nothing more than a shrewd shrug in consolation.

The former Watcher’s mouth drew into a tight line. “I understand your concern, but I am no longer employed by the Council.”

“Yeah. They fired you. Angel gave us the low down. Sorry if I can’t find that comforting.” She leaned forward with stern condescension. “You see, from where I’m sitting, I think Faith looks like a nice ticket back into acceptance-ville. It’s not that we don’t wanna give you credit, Wes, but you gotta admit that your track record’s not up to par.”

Masked hurt fogged his eyes. “You think I would call the Council?”

“Well, I don’t know. But we’re really not looking to find out.”

Spike grinned, barely able to contain his mirth. “What they’re really sayin’, mate,” he drawled. “’S that they trust me. Not you.”

Buffy’s gaze narrowed. “I wouldn’t push it that far. But Spike does have a vendetta against Faith. And he knows how quickly I would dust him if he decided to do something without group consensus. You, on the other hand, don’t come with that reassurance.”

There was a brief silence. Wesley sat and stared insolently at his half-consumed bread pudding. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “For that. For giving you just cause.” He glanced upward, meeting Giles’s eyes. “Rupert?”

The elder man nodded without preliminaries. “Again, Buffy and I have discussed this. While we did not know exactly how the sleeping arrangements would fall, we both decided that, given my current living conditions and your somewhat questionable past with the Council that this was the best approach.”

Anya nodded reasonably. “The Slayer, the Watcher, and the vampire. Sounds reasonable.”

“I smell a sitcom,” Xander murmured.

“And this means that Wes will be staying…” Willow’s eyes widened. “With me?”

Buffy nodded again sympathetically. “Unless Anya is willing to forgo…her…umm…just forgo, that is. Are you okay with that?”

The Witch blinked. “No. No! No, I-I’m not…okay with that. I’m in delicate post-Oz mode right now. And you’re rooming me with…with a…a guy?”

Wesley glanced down awkwardly. “Willow, I assure you that I will not make any untoward advances. The last thing I want is to make you uncomforta—”

“I am not forgoing my orgasms,” Anya argued. “I need my orgasms.”

The local at the other side of the diner was flat out staring—no thought to discretion.

“Can’t imagine why you’d be roomin’ with Stay Puft, pet, ‘f that’s the case,” Spike observed with a coy grin.

“Speaking of discomfort,” Buffy grumbled.

Harris’s eyes boggled in offense. “Hey!”

“Xander’s penis is quite capable of giving me many orgasms,” the former demon declared.

Now the waitress was staring, too.

“Good Lord, woman,” Wesley gasped in astonishment. “Have you no tact whatsoever?”

“None whatsoever,” Willow agreed.

A heavy, awkward beat settled across the table. It was a minute before Xander cleared his throat in a wry attempt to draw attention away from his girlfriend. For as much as he loved her—and yes, still reeling in the wowness of that revolution in itself—he didn’t think he would ever get used to her candor. “So,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Let me get this straight. Will is rooming with Wes, and Evil Dead gets the townhouse with Buffy and Giles in party funk central. In so many ways, I’m about to call shenanigans.”

The Slayer shrugged. “Well, sorry. This is just something you’re going to hafta deal with on your own. Giles is right. We need to form strategy, and we can’t do that with Spike running around unleashed.”

Something struck out at her from under the table, coinciding with a sudden cry from Spike as his head crooned back in pain.

Ignoring the outburst completely, Xander shrugged with temperamental indifference. “So, why not stick Wes and Spike in the same room? Then you’d have two brains and the Slayer working on the case. Problem solved.”

Buffy glanced to her friend with sudden sharpness, her gaze drawing from where she had been glaring at Spike for his underhanded attack. “What?”

“I said, Wes and Dead Boy should stick together. Two annoyances, one stone. No more problem.”

“I like that,” Willow volunteered, holding up a hand.

The former Watcher froze, his eyes widening in objection. “Ummm…I do not. Evidence of Spike’s handicap notwithstanding, I am not entirely comfortable sharing living quarters with a vampire.”

Harris sighed heavily and shook his head. “And we wonder why the Council didn’t want you facing the armies of darkness.”

“There’s more than one army of darkness?” Buffy asked, head cocked curiously.

“Oh yes,” Anya replied. “There are several thousands. In the Glakupha dimension alone, I believe there might be—”

“You’re not comfortable sharing quarters with a vampire?!” Willow erupted, effectively ruining any hope of discretion they had been reaching for upon entrance. “You work for Angel!”

Spike licked his lips, eyes twinkling. “’F I may,” he began, raising his hand.

A long sigh hissed through Giles’s lips. “Oh dear Lord…”

“I do not work for Angel. I am a rogue demon hunter. I do highly important freelance work—”

“—in fact, I remember receiving pleasurable and copious orgasms from a general in the dimension of Trykilak—”

“Ahn, can you not talk about this right now?—”

“’F the lot of you are bargainin’ for my help, you’re not roomin’ me with a Peaches hand-me-down wanker.”

“Spike, we’re not gonna room you with—”

“Oh, yes you are!” Willow leapt up, pointing a finger at Wesley. “I’m shaky and vulnerable and I don’t want to be anywhere near that…that…man!”

Wesley’s eyes widened. “What did I do?”

“Nothing. Nothing! I just…nothing!”

Spike rolled his eyes and stamped out his cigarette, rising slowly to his feet. “Look, I can solve this li’l dispute right quick.” He drew in a diplomatic breath. “Wes, you spineless git, are you gonna ravish Red the minute our backs are turned?”

The former Watcher’s eyes went wide. “No. No! Of course not. I would never presume—”

“Fan-fucking-tastic.” He pivoted sharply to Willow. “Satisfied? The sod’s prob’ly not even into what you have to offer, judgin’ by his not-so manly posin’. Seems to me to be a bit more for the timber. So there, pet. Your virtue’s safe with him. Stop your bloody bellyachin’.”

Nodding his satisfaction, he sat back down and took a hearty bite out of pecan pie. “There. Problem bloody solved.”

The table grew surprisingly quiet, and the soundless impact drew the entire diner to a standstill, watching them as though expecting an explosion to cap the awkwardness. But there was nothing.

Nothing, then Willow’s begrudging, “I don’t wanna room with Wesley.”

“Bloody tough,” Spike replied. “’Cause I’m not. We have this settled.”

The Witch looked to her friend for support. Buffy pursed her lips and shrugged helplessly. “It’s the best plan,” she conceded, not daring to look the vampire in the eye for reasons she refused to examine. “I’m the Slayer…Spike’s my responsibility. And if we want his cooperation, we’re gonna need to—”

“Bow to his every whim?” Xander asked, perking a brow.

The Cockney smirked. “You catch on quick, Harris.”

“I’m not bowing. There is no bowing.” Buffy’s eyes went wide and she gestured frantically at her Watcher. “This was all Giles’s idea!”

The elder man conceded a long sigh. “Yes, sadly, I am the one to blame. And Willow, I had considered all the possibilities. I know that you’re in a condition right now that…well…I suppose I don’t…well, I have every confidence that Wesley will not try anything to make this any more awkward. And…” He nodded at his Slayer. “Buffy’s right. Spike is a vampire, she is the Chosen One. On this particular excursion, it’s better to keep him rigidly supervised.”

“There’s that word again,” the Cockney drawled, head leaning back.

“Get used to it,” Giles advised. “Now…I want it perfectly clear that further displays like these…we have a job to do. We are not going there to sightsee or, or…whatever it is you bloody do in these tourist traps. As far as we can tell, Faith is still somewhere in that town. When we get there…it’s business. Is that quite understood?”

It was then that the Scoobies seemingly remembered that they had not chosen the most discreet location for such a vocal argument. With a low, incoherent group murmur of agreement, they nodded and tried to make way with apologies. Well, all except Anya and Spike, who watched everyone else with amusement.

The Watcher noted such dryly but did not think to care. “Right then,” he drawled. “We better pay up and leave. I’d like to be in Natchez by nightfall.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Wesley commented.

“Good. Then let’s get out of here before the traffic backs up.”

Buffy frowned. “Why would the traffic back up?”

Spike’s brows perked as he rose to his feet. “Political rally, remember? Some big brew-ha-ha with your nation’s fearless leader. Bloke’s a bit of all right, but won’ be sorry to miss that, all the same.”

“Oh,” Willow grumbled. “As if Tony Blair is anything to brag about.”

The two Watchers stopped virtually on the same beat. “Hey!”

Xander pointed at the table. “Uhhh…anyone gonna leave her a tip? I would offer, but my poverty-stricken self would have nothing to offer but a napkin that reads, ‘Don’t pet porcupines.’”

Giles rolled his eyes and tossed a twenty to the wooden surface. “There. Let’s go.”

Buffy’s gaze widened. “Wow. You gave her like…seventy percent, there.”

“After us, she deserves it.”

“Right,” Spike nodded, sticking another fag between his lips. “Lot of you know how to make life hard on the middle-class. ‘S one thing to go out, mates. ‘S another to disturb the soddin’ peace.”

The Watcher groaned. “Oh, enough with it, you dull-witted termagant. It’s time to leave. Let’s go!”

“’m movin. I’m movin’. Like the wind,” the vampire agreed, deftly slipping the discarded twenty into his pocket. “Like the bloody wind.”

*~*~*

Accommodations in Natchez were uncomfortable at best.

It was one thing and a million things. From Willow’s excited outburst at seeing a large antebellum home to their immediate left before entering the town to Spike’s offhand comments of the local yuppies they passed. Giles had remained in a foul mood ever since the diner and didn’t seem to be in the mind frame to let himself go. The town itself was impossibly difficult to navigate, especially with no predetermined knowledge of its geography. And after weaseling Wesley for hard-pressed information—his memory having suffered a stroke upon entry—they were able to find the visitor’s center for directions.

That in itself proved problematic. The miniature model of the town that greeted guests upon entry served well enough for their purposes, and other than the directions themselves, proved to be the only benefit in the stop. Willow mapped the design into a gem, which she hoped she could conjure at her disclosure. Anya, however, lost herself in the gift shop, and Xander followed shortly thereafter. Wesley made a run for the men’s facilities while Buffy thumbed through brochures. Spike thought it better to sneak into the mini-theatre and catch the last fifteen minutes of the documentary on Natchez, detailing how the small, obscure town played such a vital role in history.

Giles was about through with pleasantries. After re-collecting his traveling companions, though, travel to the Winsel House was brief and efficient.

And, to the comfort of Willow and the Watchers, adjacent to a bookstore.

Business came first, once all was settled. The Witch enacted her magic and helped her friends haul their belongings onto the second floor of the home while Giles, Buffy, and Spike settled into the townhouse. The townhouse itself was not exactly the grandiose establishment that had been envisioned. It was modest, school-red, and a little on the shabby side. There were porches to don both entrances; a small dining room next to the kitchen upon entrance, a den connected to the first bedroom, which was similarly connected to the hallway. A bath and a room tucked in the back with a slant ceiling. The hall itself opened up to the kitchen as well, and one could not take a step without the floor announcing that someone was on the move.

No. It wasn’t what any of them had envisioned. But it was comfy, for the most part. And that was all that mattered.

Giles assumed the room in the far back, leaving Buffy in the larger but less private bedroom. Spike found himself on the couch, though he had notably not expected any special treatment.

With the fatigue from the drive on their backs, the Scoobies met in the living quarters of the townhouse for a quick location spell to determine that Faith was still in town. Results were positive but full of loopholes—it failed to detail a specific pathway to find the rogue Slayer.

However, for everything they had been through that day, the conclusion was more than agreeable. The actual search would initiate the next day when much-needed sleep had been obtained.

And that was that. A unanimous decision. The first since leaving Sunnydale.

They slept.

*~*~*

Willow awoke with an arm draped across her middle. The room was still dark and her mind was too foggy to form a coherent thought, even though a distant warning bell sounded that she should not be as comfortable as she was.

But why not? She missed this. She missed this more than any of her friends could ever understand.

And for now, she had him back. Daniel Osbourne. Her Oz. Her cuddly werewolf.

Thus, she snuggled with contentment, hugging the arm that nestled her, and murmured her boyfriend’s name.

Only the voice that answered was certainly not her boyfriend.

Willow’s eyes shot open and she twisted in bed, finding Wesley’s face far too close for comfort, half-dazed and murmuring something incoherent in his sleep. He seemed a step away from consciousness, but with the drapage, that could only mean one thing.

Well, not only, but massive bubble space being invaded.

“Ahh!” she yelped, firing to the other side of the bed while promptly rolling the young former Watcher off the mattress. “Get away from me, you big…guy!”

There was an ‘oaf’ and a moan of pain. A flash of guilt shimmied up her spine as the warning bell had begun to sound that she was not only unreasonable, but also insane. Wesley hadn’t meant any harm. She knew that, of course. No harm whatsoever. The room had only had the one bed, and though spacious, accidents were prone to happen.

Irrational Willow wanted charge, though. He was a male, and men right now could not be trusted.

“Out!” she cried, pointing to the door. “I want you out!”

Wesley blinked sleepily and gazed up at her. “Willow—”

There was something in his voice that quelled her irrationality down to a small flame. It was all she needed. The Witch hardly allowed herself to cross that bend into what she would respectfully call ‘Buffy madness’ when it came to men. Believing sides only existed in extremes with no middle ground. Sane Willow wanted another crack at it. He looked so miserable.

But Hell would freeze before she let him back into the bed.

“I’m sorry, Wes,” she said earnestly. Shamefully. “I just…I can’t have you…in here…right now. Here…let me go try and see if Anya will trade rooms with you.” She shrugged. “Depression is served in such large portions. Might as well pass it around until we’ve all had our fill.”

“Willow, I didn’t mean—”

She had slipped on a fuzzy pink robe as well as bunny slippers and was heading for the door without another thought. His voice coaxed her to turn for the final round, and she nodded her understanding. “I know.”

And she did. She really did.

Though that didn’t stop her from heading straight to her best friend’s room and pounding loudly on the door.

It was Anya who answered. Anya with puffy red eyes and crazy bed hair. She was wearing a skimpy nightie that Xander undoubtedly thought was sexier as hell, but judging by the sleepiness in her eyes, no nasty mating rituals had been interrupted.

The former demon blinked stupidly. “Willow?”

“Hi,” the redhead replied, doing a little finger wave. “How you doing? Good. Well, you’re probably wondering why I’m standing outside your room at four in the morning. You see—”

“Willow…why are you standing outside our room at four in the morning?” Her eyes dropped to the ground and bulged; mouth flying agape as she leapt what had to be a foot and a half into the air. “And wearing bunny slippers! Bunnies! Is this some sort of sick joke?!”

Of all the… “Of course not!”

“Then why are you interrupting my period of rejuvenation to frighten me with bunny slippers?”

“I was getting to that. You see, I need you and Wesley to switch rooms.”

A low moan rang from inside. She could see Xander peeking up with interest. “Did he actually hit on you?” her friend asked.

“No. Well, when I woke up, he was extra drapey, but that was not really his fault.”

Anya held up a hand and shook her head. “You come here in the middle of the night with your inhuman perkiness and scary bunny slippers and tell me that you want me to forgo periods of copulation because he takes up the covers?”

Willow flushed, bit her lip, but gestured to the room with a shrug. “You guys look pretty orgasm-free tonight. Please?”

Xander was sitting up completely now, looking at her sympathetically. It was a reassuring sight. There wasn’t much that she could ask of him where the answer would be ‘no.’ Life long friendship worked wonders like that. “Ahn, we could let her—”

Unfortunately, the former demon wasn’t bought. And any sentence that began with concession to her was doomed to veto.

“No, Xander. This is ridiculous.” She whirled back to Willow; fatigue seemingly vanished from her eyes. “Have you had your post-relationship orgasms yet?”

The bluntness of her question should not have surprised, but the redhead flushed all the same. “I—uhhh—”

“That’s what I thought. You deserve post-relationship orgasms. They make you feel better.” She pointed heatedly in the direction of Willow’s bedroom, ignoring the shadows of two men that had poked their heads into the hallway from separate rooms and were studying the trade in dazed fascination. “Go back to Wesley and demand that he give you orgasms for taking up the covers.”

Willow all but stomped her foot in frustration. “I don’t want orgasms from Wes—ohh—erm—you know what I mean! I can’t…do that. Not like…well, not to name names but, you. I need—”

“Oz. Yes. We all know.” Anya shook her head and stepped back into her room. “Go get orgasms. You’ll feel better.”

The whoosh of the door was not unexpected but it did happen quick enough to nearly tan the skin on Willow’s nose. She stared at the blank whiteness for a long minute, shaking with the task of going back. Wesley likely thought she was nuts, and rightly so. And if two other guests in the bed and breakfast had heard the trade, she had no trouble believing that he had, as well.

With a sigh, she shook her head and turned around. The men were still looking at her, but more with sleep-deprived confusion and morbid fascination than any desire to make an offer. And though she was usually the shiest person she knew, Willow couldn’t find it within herself to care.

A sigh sounded from up the hall. “I can already tell this place is nuts,” one man declared, turning and shutting the door without further prompt.

The other man was looking at her with soft compassion, sympathetic but not overbearing. And though his small, “Are you okay?” was perfectly harmless, her men-hating persona found a way to twist it into an unwanted innuendo.

“Fine. Leave me alone.”

The man stepped out of his room in cotton boxers and an undershirt. The hall was dark so his features remained encased in shadows, but it wasn’t difficult to tell that he was one of those guys that likely needed no career other than to stand in front of a camera and look pretty. Willow groaned an inward groan. Just what I need. Rooming across from Mr. GQ.

He stopped awkwardly in front of her, casting a hand through dark strands of thick air in what appeared to be nervous habit. “I’m not—this is not me making a thing toward you or anything. Really. If you knew me, you’d know I’m the last person to ever do that kind of…I just wanted to…” His voice cut off when he caught the look in her eyes before fumbling for a quick, friendly smile. “Hi. I’m Sam.”

Willow stared at him for a minute longer. Then walked to her room and closed the door. And it didn’t end there. Couldn’t. Wesley was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at her with a mixture of fear and understanding. And God, she couldn’t take it.

“You,” she said, pointing to him. “On the floor.”

There was no argument. No room for debate. He merely nodded and did as was told, murmured another apology, and left most of the comforters to her.

Like a gentleman, which only made her feel worse.

Didn’t matter, though. The night would soon turn to day.

And the cycle, as it had since Oz left, would begin all over again.

A half hour later, and his head was still spiraling.

Granted, having a job of such prestige and recognition was bound to come with the added promise of restless nights. This was the year for restless nights. First with the mess with Laurie—fighting his frustration with the innate assumption buried beneath his knowledge that having such a relationship would never bode well for a man of his position. Never mind the fact that they weren’t sleeping together. Never mind the fact that the most he did was buy her lunch and offer advice on how to better her situation, whether or not such interference was welcome.

It amazed him how small-minded Americans could be. Give them an expert on CNN and they still believed what they read in the tabloids. The story had yet to break, of course. CJ and Toby had done their damndest to keep it from the press. Danny Concanon sniffing around, finding what God Himself could not find, but cutting him a break because he was a good guy.

Well, that wasn’t necessarily fair. Sam had not been too discreet when it came to seeing Laurie. And therein was the problem. People didn’t care about the truth, and when the story about his relationship with the call girl inevitably broke, they would discard the truth to see nothing but a sleazy politician and his whore.

Sam couldn’t stand that. And the thought that he had to hand over the file detailing every aspect of his personal life upon entering the White House still made his blood hot.

That wasn’t all. One thing or a million things. Anyone was welcome to step up to the plate. Right now, the man he respected as a father was being torn apart in the media, by Congress; by every fundamentally and radically conservative movement in the country. And all because six years ago, he had endured a problem with alcohol and Valium. It wasn’t so much that Sam didn’t understand why it was wrong—but six years had passed. The man had willingly put himself through rehab and gotten his life back on track. And all for what?

Soft on crime. Soft on drugs. In favor of burning the Flag in protest. In favor of putting condoms in schools while throwing Bibles out the window. High taxes, new taxes, reform bills. Every this, that, and whatever that could be criticized was. And not because they were wrong; because they were who they were.

It was the soft on drugs that was killing them this time around. Republicans had it figured out. Hard on drugs, so when it came out that many influential members of the party enjoyed—or had in the past—the same illegal narcotics that they were putting people away for, it was forgivable because they recognized the error of their ways. Because they were hard on drugs. Unlike the Democrats in the White House who were soft on drugs merely in order to protect one of their own.

It amazed him how ignorant the American people could be to hypocrisy. The Bushes in Florida and Texas could get stoned, eat, drink and be merry without a blink from their constituents. Leo McGarry, though, who had been clean for six years was an evil man and not fit to walk the streets.

Perhaps it wasn’t because they were ignorant. Partisan politics was unavoidable by modern standards. Perhaps people were so set on being right that they failed to see where they were wrong.

The trip wasn’t supposed to be difficult. It was supposed to be quick. Introduce a policy change, take some of the spotlight away from Leo and his problem, then go back to work. The nights here weren’t supposed to be restless. And yes, while no business in the White House aside Big Block of Cheese day was taken in stride, Sam had not anticipated being bombarded with a dilemma so soon—and of this magnitude.

Of course, he had also not anticipated getting lost.

“I think I offended her,” he said aloud, eyes glued to the ceiling. “I think she thought that—”

There was a rustle beside him. While Toby had not been asleep—nor anywhere near such a state—he did look suitably annoyed at his companion’s unwillingness to let this particular topic go.

“I mean, if you were a woman, how would you take it? She knows that I overheard her conversation. She knows that I purposefully came out of my room with a mind to seeing her. She knows I’m a man. And…what? This stranger approaches her in the hallway and asks if she’s okay?” Sam shifted slightly, worry lines scattered across his face. “That sounded like a line. It had to sound like a line. She probably thought I was offering to give her…” He paused, suddenly painfully aware of the other man’s blank and frankly uncaring stare. “She probably thought I was offering myself as the solution, like her friend suggested. Or that I was assuming she was a…well, you know.” Another silence filled the room; he sat up with sudden conviction and tossed the comforters aside. “I have to go apologize now.”

“Sit down.”

“No. I have to let her know that I had absolutely no—”

“You’re obsessing a little bit.” Toby rolled his eyes. “Besides, you think that showing up at her doorstep in the middle of the night, half-dressed, mind you, is going to make a positive difference?”

Sam frowned and glanced down at his person. He was wearing boxer shorts and a white undershirt. “This isn’t half-dressed. This is more than I—”

The other man held up a hand. “I know what you’re going to say, and believe me when I tell you that any visual of the kind is not appreciated.” He breathed a small sigh. “We have more important things to worry about than your first impression on a girl you’ll never see again.”

“When you put it that way…” His gaze fell on the door again, focused and intent. “I have to go apologize.”

“You talked to her for thirty seconds, for crying out loud, and she obviously has more problems than that if she’s having an aneurysm over some guy accidentally bumping her.”

The worried look refused to waver. Sam stood in firm defiance of his position, shifting his weight from leg to leg. “No. No. We’re leaving tomorrow, and I might not get a chance to apologize. I don’t want her to think that I was trying to take advantage of a vulnerable situation and—”

“Sam, the girl was outside arguing about orgasms. You really think she gives a damn whether or not you were propositioning her?” Toby looked off with a short, dry laugh. “This trip was not supposed to be complicated. The President’s giving a speech in less than forty-eight hours, something that will be highly difficult if he doesn’t have the speech to give. I am not going to let you waste time about what some girl thinks about a guy she doesn’t know. We are above passing each other notes in the hallway. Go to sleep.”

The younger man paused again, heaving deep breaths of acknowledgment, even if his conviction remained resolute with that distinguished Seaborn style. However, despite all else, there was a certain measure of logicality in Toby’s observation.

The speech was what was important.

He drew his hands through his hair, waited, and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah.”

There was nothing he could do but return to bed. The modestly-sized honeymoon bed that he was sharing with the White House Communications Director for the night. Never say life wasn’t funny—it had certainly been rolling in the punch lines these past two days.

And that was behind them. They had a busy few days ahead.

A busy few years ahead.

And yet…

“I should really go apologize.”

Toby groaned, turned over slowly, regarded him with tested frustration, and then hit him over the head with his pillow.

“Yeah,” Sam continued, voice muffled slightly. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

There was no reply, and he was not expecting one. He released another deep breath. All else aside, it was time to go to sleep.

Only he really should apologize.

*~*~*

“Aha! I found it!”

“Found what?”

Josh glanced up, grinning at the look on his assistant’s face. “I’ll tell you, but first, you gotta call me Your Majesty.”

Now she was looking at him as though he was insane. “What?”

“You must call me Your Majesty, for I am the King of the Road. I am the Road King. Keeper of the streets, changer of the tires, and pumper of the gas. Such is the way of the King.”

“You’re a king, huh?”

“The King. Don’t you forget it. Finder of things obscure, fixer of state business. Don’t mess with the King, Donna. From now on, you’re calling me Your Majesty. For I am a King, and such is the way of Kings. A kingly way, if you will.”

“Question—can the King get me my money back?”

“Nope.”

Her face fell with familiar playfulness. These were moments he lived for. “Why not?”

“The King’s a Democrat.” He was having a hard time not laughing at her expression, and instead turned her attention to the map that was sprawled over the car’s hood. “I know where we are.”

The relief that poured through her eyes was well-shared. He had begun to have his doubts that Vicksburg existed—forget what history books and the like had to say about the matter. The car itself was stalled by the side of the road thanks to Sam’s navigation over a discarded nail. He and the Communications Director had turned to walk the couple miles back to the last three-house town they had passed, hoping it wasn’t as far as they remembered.

Trust rental car companies in this state not to provide spare tires.

“Well?” Donna asked impatiently.

“Well?”

She was giving him one of those looks where she either wanted to strangle him with his tie or go home and watch chick flicks. “Where are we?”

There was no reply. He merely cocked his head at her, grinned, and waited.

It took her a minute to catch on; then her eyes narrowed in frustration. “Where are we, Your Majesty?”

The smile refused to waver, but he shifted a bit so that she could follow his explanation on the map. “We’re here,” he said, pointing somewhere that looked much further south than she thought they should be. “The last town we passed that’s on the map was Brookhaven, and that was about an hour ago. Then we got off on 84, and now we’re in this general vicinity.”

She nodded. “Okay. Well, that’s good news, right?” He looked at her and waited. She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Good news, Your Majesty?”

“Well, yes and no. See…” He shifted again. “Here’s Natchez. That’s the good.”

“Okay…where’s Vicksburg?” Another pause. “Your Majesty?”

His finger trailed a long line upward, and her eyes boggled when it landed. “Right here,” he said. “If we’d’ve gotten on 20, we’d’ve been there hours ago.”

“Oh my God, Josh.”

“Yeah.”

“How did this happen?”

“Well, I’m thinking it’s probably because Leo told me Vicksburg was south of Jackson, and Leo’s never been to Mississippi before.” He shrugged. “Mistakes happen. Anyway, I’m thinking when we get the car running again, we just go to Natchez, stay there the night, then Sam and Toby can get a move on to Vicksburg.”

She frowned at him suspiciously. “Why aren’t you freaking out about this?”

Josh shrugged again. “’Cause the President’s speech isn’t for two days, and he usually gets the final draft seconds before he actually gives it. Natchez isn’t that far from Vicksburg—we get there, we sleep, they get another car, and that’s the end of that.”

There was nothing to contest. Donna bit her lip and nodded, wrapping her arms around herself and hopping in sudden impatience. “I don’t like this,” she said, gesturing to their surroundings. “It’s creepy out here. With all the…” She frowned, glancing around. “Trees. And the…did you see any lights when we popped that flat?”

He cocked a brow at her. “I knew. I knew two seconds after I gave you that book that it was a mistake.”

“I saw lights.”

“Yeah, on the head of a car.”

“No. It was different—the book described something called an ignus fatus, which are these phantom lights that get travelers lost at night.” The funny thing was, she actually looked worried about this. “Are you sure we didn’t see any lights? Because I think I saw lights, and—”

“I swear to God, Donna, I’m gonna get a bill passed that prohibits you from reading.”

She paused, then smirked. “Oh sure. Congressman Lyman.”

“First the cat, and now phantom lights?”

“The book mentioned the cat, too.”

His eyes rolled up, but he couldn’t keep the instinctual smile from crossing his lips. “Oh, by all means,” he drawled. “It must be true.”

“And the White House is haunted. Did you know the White House is haunted? Not surprised—it is kind of eerie at night.”

“You couldn’t possibly tell me more about this, could you?”

She scowled at him defiantly. “Abigail Adams, to name one. And Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln haunts the White House.”

“Yeah. Wonder where he was during the Regan administration.”

She glared at him.

“Well, what did you expect? Listen to yourself.”

“I think that my concern is completely justifiable, especially when you consider the Southern states are rumored to be more haunted than the rest of the country.”

“That’s a great point you’re making there. Really. Not crazy at all.”

Donna scoffed and placed her hands at her hips, eyes seething with indignation. “You’re telling me that you’re so unbelievably small-minded that there’s absolutely no way within the realm of possibility that we popped that flat because of the ignus fatus?”

Josh paused a moment, considering. “Well…yeah.”

“What if Sam and Toby go missing? What if we never hear from them again? We’re out here in the middle of nowhere, our phones are getting no reception, there’s an ignus fatus out there somewhere, and they—”

The sound of a loud horn broke through the stream of her rant, followed by the quick flash of oncoming headlights.

“Oh no,” Josh whispered erratically. “It’s the ignus fatus! Run for your life!”

“Shut up.”

The ignus fatus was apparently a large Chevy truck. Sam and Toby were in the back, the latter with his arm draped over a large tire, eyes dull with the bouncing weight of the vehicle as it came to a halt.

Donna breathed a sigh of relief.

“And you were worried,” her boss murmured teasingly.

“Shut up.”

Josh grinned but said nothing, instead turning his attention to his coworkers with a note of cynicism. “Took you long enough!”

“Sorry!” Sam replied, hopping out of the back as he and Toby rolled the tire to the concrete and over to the car. “It took a while to remember if we’d gotten off on Exit 187B and then—”

“We were on foot,” the other man observed dryly. “The fact that we’re back here at all should be commendable.”

“Bubba helped us pick out the tire.”

That was it. All the Deputy Chief of Staff could take. Without a thought for tact, he burst out laughing, hitting the side of the car in a display of mirth. “Bubba?!” he howled. “You actually met a Bubba?”

Sam nodded, eyes going wide. “Yes, and she was kind enough to drive us back.” With that, he began gesturing emphatically to the driver’s side door of the Chevy with his head.

Oh, this was priceless. In Mississippi for one day, actually meet the notorious Bubba, and discover that Bubba’s a little more—or less—than the stereotype had colored. It took all that he was to keep his laughter from bursting all over again.

Thankfully for all, Donna was there. “All right. All right. We have the spare. Thank Bubba for us, okay? Let’s fix this and get moving. Josh knows where we are.”

Toby stepped forward at that. “Where are we?”

“Nowhere near Vicksburg.”

At that, the man looked ready to murder someone. “Are we still in Mississippi?”

“Yeah. We got off the wrong exit in Jackson, thanks to Leo’s nonexistent sense of direction, or map-reading, for that matter.” Josh pinched the bridge of his nose in thought, leaving Sam and Donna to pay regards to the Chevy driver and thank her for her time. It wasn’t implied, but he always preferred not to be the ‘hands-on’ person with the locals, if at all possible. Especially women named Bubba who lived in Mississippi, even if the concept in itself was too tempting for words. “Look, we’re actually not that far from Natchez. Once this is fixed, we’ll head there, sleep, and you two’ll head to Vicksburg tomorrow.”

“The President expected us today, Josh. He expected us six hours ago!”

“Yes, and I will explain what happened once we get there. Really, this is nothing that merits an overreaction from anybody.”

The words had barely escaped his mouth before Donna’s accusatory, “What do you mean, you don’t know how to change a tire?!” flew out at a flustered and rightly ashamed Sam, who glanced to the ground and kicked idly at the pebbles.

“It’s just…nothing my father really pulled me aside and taught me how.”

Josh and Toby turned to the duo wearily.

“Sam doesn’t know how to change a tire?”

The man in question frowned before pointing a finger at the Deputy Chief of Staff in blatant accusation. “Neither do you!”

“Huh? How do you know?”

Donna’s eyes widened. “Josh!”

“Because the last time you had a flat, to my knowledge, we were in the car together and had to call a tow truck.”

“Josh!”

“Donna!”

“King of the Road, Josh? Changer of tires, Josh?”

“So I might’ve been boasting a little.”

Toby rolled his eyes. “Oh, for crying…”

Josh wet his lips and turned to the Communications Director in search for a quick way to redeem himself. “Well, do you know how to change a tire?”

There was a significant pause at that. Toby merely stuffed his hands in his pockets and smiled ironically.

Donna rolled her eyes and began rolling up her shirtsleeves. “Someone get me the jack.”

The three men stopped to stare at her.

“You know how to change a tire?”

“Yes. Unlike three of the most influential men in the world, I was not born in a barn.”

“When were you going to tell us this?” Josh demanded.

“I wasn’t. I was sort’ve hoping someone else would have to be the man. Where’s the jack?”

“On it.” Sam had the trunk popped and was busy throwing practically every piece of luggage they had stored onto the pavement. “What’s it look like?” At the collective groan that arose from the group, he raised his head and offered a small smile. “Kidding.”

Josh snickered and tapped his assistant on the shoulder. “I know what a jack looks like.”

She blinked at him before offering a condescending nod. “Yes. At some point, I suppose you’re going to have to come to terms with the fact that you are a grown man.”

“Uhhh, Donna?” Sam was holding up a small can of travel-sized hairspray. “I’m guessing that this isn’t it?”

It took a minute to digest.

“There’s no jack?”

“Not unless it’s called the Superhold Three X.”

Another full minute went by; the four travelers exchanging a series of annoyed and panicked looks. It took them another thirty seconds to realize that it was still dark outside, and the truck that had delivered the tire was becoming a distant speck down the stretch of obscure highway.

And so it was that the Deputy Chief of Staff, the Communications Director, his Deputy, and Donna Moss started running as fast as they could after it, waving their arms and yelling for a return as night settled around them, and the threat of ignus fatus grew ever closer.

*~*~*

Sam had waited for a good ten minutes for the door to the young lady’s guestroom to open. He had already exchanged awkward pleasantries with the man she had been rooming with, a British gentlemen that Josh had first confused for Seaborn upon exiting his room with Donna chirping away the day’s schedule behind him. Sam supposed they did look alike, but his mind was otherwise occupied by many means.

It had to be strange for his friends, sharing a room. He knew they had done it before under a variety of circumstances, but he thought it had to be strange all the same. There were no two people on the face of the earth who knew each other as well as Josh and Donna did. And yes, while others talked, it was well accepted and—furthermore—an undeniable fact that her relationship with him was nothing of what the people would expect. They were friends. Good friends. And so helplessly in love with each other that there was nothing to do but firmly ignore it. So yes, it had to be strange for them to share a room. But the Winsel House had been booked when they arrived; Donna had forgone her room so that Sam and Toby would not be forced to seek lodging elsewhere.

He had not been able to sleep. While he and Toby were leaving after breakfast for Vicksburg, he couldn’t stand the fact that somewhere out there, someone would be thinking ill of him. Even if she hadn’t given him a second thought. Even if she didn’t know his name, or his business. Even if she thought he was the wackiest of the wackos. It didn’t matter. He could not in good faith not apologize for his shabby introduction and even shabbier attempt at consolation.

It seemed forever had passed before the door opened again.

And Sam’s world stopped.

He had not gotten a good look at her the night before, but he had seen enough to know she was pretty. And in the morning light, pretty struck him in the face for being too weak a word. She was quite unlike anyone he had ever seen. Young, to be sure, but there was wisdom in her eyes. Her eyes that met his with a flush of embarrassment and curiosity before darting down to examine the carpet scheme as though it was utterly fascinating. Her red hair was darling and curved just at her chin, complimenting her rosy face in a way he didn’t think Shakespeare could describe.

This was not good.

Not good. And strange. Sam was not blind; he knew many attractive women in his line of work. Moreover, he wasn’t exactly chopped liver himself. He knew many attractive women, and they often paid him the respect admiration for his physique in the subtle ways he did for theirs. And even if he never actively pursued any offers or notes of interest that might come his way, that didn’t mean he didn’t see them.

He more than saw this girl.

“I…uhhh…” And, of course, despite all the speechwriting talent in the world, his customary bumbliness had a way of interfering with the simplest tasks, and he fell all over himself. “I bet you’re wondering why I’m out here. And I have a reason—a good one. You see, I just wanted to apologize for last…I really didn’t mean to—”

The girl held up a hand and offered a kind, however forced half-smile. “Really. No. It’s okay. I’m sorry I woke you up.” She gave a little nod and moved to push past him. “I have to go to breakfast now.”

She was gone in half a blink. And he was left alone in the hallway.

“Well,” Sam murmured dejectedly. “That went well.”

She awoke in a strange room.

It was nearly reminiscent of the mornings in LA. Slowly coming to oneself in a state of delayed actuality. She remembered the room; remembered the smell of breakfast cooking upstairs and the fights the noisy couple on the third floor broadcast to the full of the building’s occupants. Remembered the sinking feeling of self-abhorrence as the stark reality of where she was sank in. As the drifting recognition of the reason she had run away in the first place attacked with memories that she did not want. A life that was no longer hers.

Awaking in the Winsel House, while similar enough to draw the memory, was also incomparable. A note and a nod—nothing else.

It didn’t take long to pinpoint what had awakened her. Giles was up and about, and from the sound of things, not making any attempt to execute his morning routine with a mind for his current housemates. Buffy rolled her eyes and sat up slowly, stretching her arms over her head and releasing a yawn that nearly knocked her back to sleep. She had known that agreeing to room with her Watcher would mean late nights and early risings—she just didn’t know that it would start immediately.

Even if his modus operandi made sense, seeing as they didn’t want to be here all that long.

“Buffy,” he said, vaguely surprised to see her as she walked into the kitchen and sniffed at the coffee he was brewing. “I didn’t expect you up for some time.”

“Ah, yeah,” she replied with a sleepy grin, stretching her side. “These floors thought differently.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I—”

“Ah, no big. Don’t worry. Besides, early bird and all that.” She propped herself up on the kitchen counter, swinging her legs with calm casualness. “So, what’s up? Game planning-it?”

Giles smiled and raised his coffee mug to his lips. “Well,” he said. “If you want to eat breakfast, I believe they serve it at eight; you have a half hour to get ready. After that, I suppose it will be a matter of guess and check. We should try another location spell, but if last night’s conclusions were at all reliable…we might be looking for her by a good old fashioned combing of the city.”

Buffy shrugged, stifling another yawn. “Well, it’s not exactly like Natchez is, you know, huge. If we do have to search for her, it still shouldn’t take all that long.”

“Provided she stays here, within reason.”

The Slayer nodded. That enough made sense. “The best game plan, if that’s the case,” she said, “is for me and Spike to take patrol at night. I have no idea where the cemeteries are around here, or if there’s more than one, but we might as well be productive. And if Faith can’t be found by a simple location spell, she might be working some mojo of her own.”

“I had thought of that. You’re right, of course. Willow’s spells have been known for their…well…glitches, but she is rather talented at performing location sanctions. If Faith has contracted herself to a higher power to keep us from finding her…” Giles sighed and settled against the kitchen table, crossing his arms. “We cannot afford to be here for long, Buffy. Not with the Hellmouth unguarded and the unidentified group that evidently caused Spike’s handicap running around and doing God-knows-what.”

She pursed her lips in thought, a frown marring her brow. “So…if things don’t go well…we just let Faith go?”

“No, of course not. But the Hellmouth—”

“Is there. And will always be there. Whoever those commando guys are…I don’t think they’re trying to cause trouble.” Off his look, she shrugged helplessly. “Well, yeah, we need to get to the bottom of it—I’m all for that, but if we have to be here longer than we thought, I think they can keep the Hellmouth under wraps. I mean, they targeted Spike because he’s a vampire, and from what he’s told us, there were others.” She paused at that, biting her lip in thought. “Maybe we can have Angel watch over—just to see if anything happens.”

Giles’s eyes narrowed at her. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Would you rather there be no one there?” Buffy drew in a breath. “If we knew more about the commandos, I’d feel a lot better. But, bottom line, we don’t know how long this is gonna take. And—”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves already. I propose we see how today fares. Who knows?” A weary smile drew across his lips. “Perhaps we will be on our way home before nightfall.”

Buffy tossed him a wry glance. “You really think so?”

“No. Of course not. After all, when has anything ever come across that easily?” He stood to cross the kitchenette and dump the rest of his mug down the drain before making his way toward the door. “In the meantime, though, I fully concur with your idea to patrol at night. Spike has her scent, so that will work in our favor.” The look in his eyes became serious, and he turned again. “It will be up to you, Buffy. I do not trust Willow with magic far enough to allow her attempt to apprehend Faith in such a manner. She is not yet at that level, and I believe you would be the first to agree.”

Naturally so. While her friend had come amazingly far in the past two years, she was still very young in the practice. Whatever spells that had been conducted often purchased with them nasty side effects or results so far from the intention that the incantations were subject for review. Throw Willow and binding into the mix and she might teleport Faith to some torturous hell dimension—and despite whatever had passed between them, Buffy couldn’t hate her. Not fully.

But she was so close that the line between irony and humor was becoming more and more blurry.

“Well, I’ll leave you to your business.” The Watcher pulled open the front door and paused. “If anything comes up between now and breakfast, you can find me in the bookstore.”

“Naturally,” the Slayer replied. “Where else?”

He tossed her a pertinent look but was gone without rebuttal. And she was left to her morning routine. She showered, dressed, tended to more superficial cares just in case she met Mr. Right at the breakfast table.

Hah. As though her Mr. Right would be waiting at the breakfast table. As though her Mr. Right existed. The men she met on her everyday agenda were just unappealing. She tried—she had tried and failed with Parker. And failure was not something that Buffy took well.

Even still, it was there and there was nothing she could do about it. The entire Parker incident had made her motivation in active pursuit of a love life something of the forced nature. There was something monstrous about human men. With demons, one couldn’t expect any differently. That simple knowledge was enough to drive any rational Slayer insane with overly fastidious expectations that made the fall even harder to survive.

She had thus consigned herself to the bitter understanding that meeting men in Natchez was a likelihood confound by the acknowledgment that she was indefinitely cursed.

She was running a few minutes behind—Slayer speed notwithstanding. It didn’t really matter, of course, but she wanted to prove to someone that she could be at one place when she needed to. There was something universal about the Slayer stereotype that consigned her to the dud line when it came to punctuality. Once, just once, she would like to prove all self-imposed expectation wrong.

Not that Slayers had a stereotype. She didn’t know if that was possible for secret superheroes.

She had just reached the door when a sharp feeling of the neither good nor bad variety attacked her subconscious. It was nothing out of the norm, but similarly incomparable to anything she had experienced with sub regularity. For a minute she stood, unsure of what to do. Stood until her spider-senses made the obligatory leap forward and convinced her to turn around and peek in on Spike before leaving him alone.

The picture he presented nearly coaxed a warm smile to her face. It had to be the most uncomfortable-looking sofa in the history of uncomfortable-sofas. And yet, he hadn’t complained about the arrangements. The look in his eyes the day before in the diner was enough to attest his surprise in even being included. After everything he had done for her, it didn’t seem right to not accept him. Even if his claims remained that his actions were based on pride alone. It didn’t matter.

Things had changed since the night at the Bronze. She didn’t know what, but she couldn’t look at him in the same light. It was bizarre. He had always been, well, Spike. That annoying vampire that just didn’t know how to leave her alone. A pest. A nuisance. Something to stake if she got too terribly bored. Spike.

And yet, on the extremely rare occasion, he did something that reminded her that he was a man once. That he was more a man than the demon inside. That in itself was something she had never thought to admit—not to herself, and certainly not to the vampire in question. But she was the Slayer. She was in contact with demons hands-on every day. She had seen them all. The good, the bad, and the very ugly. And after five years of professional slayage, she knew how to call them.

There were the evil ones. The weak ones. The strong ones. The harmless ones. The souled ones.

Then there was Spike. In a category all by himself, there was Spike. Spike who was neither monster nor man—but played the part of man so well that it often took several attempts to remember what exactly he was and how artfully he colored history red.

And despite however much she wanted to believe it, whatever had happened to him to make his dining on humans a non-possibility wasn’t where he stood out. There were so many things he could do if he wanted. Things he could use others to do for him. A respected vampire such as he should have no difficulty in manning a small squad of cronies. But he didn’t. And instead of turning to his evil brethren in his time of need, he had come to her.

Spike was with her now. In the den of the townhouse. In a town to catch Faith.

All because he had said no. Because he had respected her that much, even without realizing it.

It was impossible not to see him in a different light after what had happened.

And the shades of variety were shaking her foundation. There was no justification to feeling this warm candor toward Spike, regardless of what he had done.

But she did, and if she had to take it to her grave, that was what she would do.

A low moan hummed through the air and the Cockney in question shifted upward, coming three more inches closer to tumbling off the sofa completely. She didn’t know why he hadn’t bothered to unfold the trundle bed. It looked as though he had simply collapsed with no thought to personal comfort.

Which she could believe.

It was strange. She had never seen him asleep—never really given thought to the concept that Spike slept. He looked so…normal. Not smirking. Not sneering. Not driving her up the proverbial wall. Just a guy who was as exhausted as any human, given what he had been through the past couple of days.

She shouldn’t be here. Should he awake and find her staring at him, he would undoubtedly call her on it. And she would have no good explanation other than the plain admission that she was emerging from a two-year blindness and seeing him as a person rather than a vampire. The notion itself was something he would rebuke, but true nonetheless.

She shouldn’t be here, but she couldn’t tear herself away. There was just…something. Waiting for these feelings to go away had proved futile. Her gratitude and her slow acceptance of him was growing more in depth and feeling every day following what had transpired. She was seeing him, and she couldn’t help that.

Only she had to. Because if he knew some of the thoughts that had been running through her mind, he would laugh her out of the house. It was preposterous. She knew it—hell, up until two weeks ago, she had been preaching nothing but. This was Spike. Spike as in gross. Spike as in vampire. Spike as in—

He murmured again and turned in his sleep, shirt riding up to expose a sliver of alabaster skin at his abdomen.

This was so inconvenient.

Buffy licked her lips and forced her rapidly growing one-track mind onto other venues. If anything, what had happened was an opportunity. Yes—an opportunity to change the nature of their relationship. To build on hostility and turn more into candor—no, forced. Forced was much better—acceptance. Business associates. That’s what they were. Buffy and Spike, partners in…well, not partners. Partner was such a complex, multi-level word and she couldn’t afford to conjugate the variety of meanings. Not now.

No, no. Not ever. Forget the now part. It was never going to happen.

But still, she did want something more than what they had been trading. Ever since the Bronze, their association with each other was at a bizarre crossroads. They wanted to snark, and had, but without the usual venom which made their mutual comments awkward and forced. When he looked at her now, there was softness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

Thus, at looking at all the available evidence, there was no conclusion to meet other than he was willing, if not eager, to move their relationship from the hate phase into the forced-tolerance phase.

If she wanted to be truthful with herself, she would have upped the notch to looking-away-quickly-so-you-don’t-catch-me-staring phase, but such was so far from the realm of acceptable outcomes that she ignored its cry altogether.

Peace-offering. I’ll bring him back some munchies. Yeah—he’d like that. Spike likes food. Oh god, what if he reads something into it? What if ‘croissant’ translates to ‘wild-monkey-sex’ in Spike-lingo? What if he thinks…okay, Buffy. Calm. Slow breaths. In and out. A croissant is hardly a marriage proposal. Besides, been there, done that, and so not doing it again. She frowned. Though throw hashbrowns in the mix and that’s an entirely different story.

In the meantime, she decided there was no harm in trying to make the guy as comfortable as possible. She moved for her room, never taking her eyes off him, which was simple since the den and her guest quarters were adjoining. The large armoire that housed all the additional pillows and blankets was about three feet away from the foot of her bed, pressed against the wall. She could still see him; he hadn’t moved, hadn’t given any indication that he was awake—and if not for the occasional shallow breath that he indulged—alive. A soft baby-blue comforter and a pillow were at her disposal; she moved back toward him, warier than she would have like to have confessed.

A snake ready to strike. That’s what he was.

A lean, muscular, snake.

Giles had assured her the night before that she didn’t have to be quiet on anyone’s benefit. He was accustomed to sleeping the night through regardless of circumstance—only jarred if someone shoved him out of bed. And Spike was even more so of the same regard. To quote her very politically incorrect Watcher, the vampire slept like the dead.

Based on what she was seeing, though, it was feasible.

Buffy drew in a breath and tried to push him back onto the couch so that he was no longer in danger of falling to the ground. The action persuaded a low murmur through his throat, but nothing more. When she lifted his head to situate the pillow beneath, he purred appreciatively and shifted, but did not awake. And when she settled the blanket over his taut self, he crooned and relaxed, as comfortable as ever.

There. First move made. Though she knew he would be able to tell just from the scent whom had affixed his accommodations, there was some satisfaction in getting away with the job before he awoke. That way he could choose to mention it if he cared to, or ignore it properly and let her know where exactly they stood. If the hate was behind them. If they were ready to behave like adults.

Thus, with a nod of satisfaction, she turned promptly at the heel and made her way for the main house. She was gone before he could turn over in his sleep and clutch the blanket tighter to him. Inhale the scent that fragranced its texture. Recognize her, and address her with a long whimper of her name before succumbing to deeper slumber.

*~*~*

Buffy was surprised to see Willow traipsing down the stairs as she pushed the front door open. The redhead was committed to schedules and order, almost more so than Giles—thus to see her as such was almost cause for panic. The Slayer’s own tardiness notwithstanding, it was a rare day in Hell when her best friend was not punctual to a fault.

Then again, rare days were coming in leaps and bounds. Had someone told her this time last week that the Scoobies would soon depart for Mississippi, she would have laughed that someone out of the room. And yet, here they were.

“Hey,” Buffy called, waving a little. “Everything all right?”

Willow glanced up and blinked, then offered a tired, wan smile. “Okay. I think I scarred Wesley for life when I freaked out in the middle of the night, but other than…” She shrugged and shook her head. “Yeah, everything’s rosy. Peachy keen is me. I’m just a big ole bowl of keen peaches.”

Yeah. Uh huh. Buying that. “What happened?”

The Witch’s smile thinned even further and a long sigh escaped her lips. “Nothing. Sadly, a big whole lot of nothing. Wes accidentally got up close and personal and I wigged to the ninth degree. Then I embarrassed myself even further by making the colossal mistake of assuming Anya has a heart and would take pity on me in a time of need. Instead, she was all with the making me even more uncomfortable and said that I should sleep with Wes as a step of getting-over-Oz.” Her eyes dulled and she shivered a bit. “Then, to make a long story even longer, this guy who’s staying in the room across from mine evidently heard the entire thing and came out to see me.”

Buffy’s gaze widened. “He came on to you?”

“Well…no.” The redhead sighed. “Really, really not. In fact, he so didn’t come on to me that he felt it imperative that he meet me outside my room not five minutes ago and list the many ways in which he did not.” At the look on her friend’s face, she nodded in wry concession. “Yeah. I know. Hypocrite. There’s just times when I think that I’m ready…I mean, I’d like to at least be acknowledged. And yeah, I’d’ve hit him or…or something if he’d tried anything, but what’s wrong with being hit on? Really? I’m mopey and post-relationshippy and I need some confidence, dammit.”

“Will, I’m sure he didn’t—”

“Yeah. I know.” She blew out a deep breath and shrugged. “It’s okay. Really.”

It obviously wasn’t, but there was nothing that the Slayer could do but nod her empathy. “You sure?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Willow gestured to the parlor. “Tummy’s all with the grumblies. Time for breakfast, methinks.”

Buffy was far from satisfied, but nodded all the same. Though while all evidence pointed to the contrary, she had thought the redhead past the part of moping all the time and finally getting around to what was important.

The parlor led to one of two entrances to the dining room, and given all, it was the easiest measure. Quiet chatter filled the air—awkward and forced—and just seconds before the Slayer could fully enter the room, her friend emitted a sharp gasp and hastily shoved her to the connecting wall where they were out of sight.

“Will—!”

“Oh my God, Buffy. Oh. My. God.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you see him?”

Given the fact that there were several ‘hims’, the Slayer opted for no. “What are you talking about?”

“Either I’ve finally gone off the bend or…” Willow paused and turned to peek slowly into the dining room, where they were undoubtedly attracting an audience. “Okay, no bend-going-over. I’m sure now. That’s him.”

“Josh Lyman.”

Buffy just looked at her expectantly.

“Josh Lyman?” The redhead was saying the name as if it meant something. “Deputy Chief of Staff?” She looked quite convicted. “In the White House? Honestly, Buff, don’t you ever watch CSPAN?”

The Slayer’s eyes bulged a little but she opted with a shrug. “I already deal with demons, Will. I don’t really need to add politics to the mix.” She turned to glance into the dining room. “So, he’s important?”

“Important? Did you not hear me say Deputy Chief of Staff?”

Buffy looked back and shrugged. “So…important?”

The Witch never got the opportunity to reply. A man had entered the parlor and was strolling toward them at his leisure, evidently having caught the tag of their discussion enough to add a quick, “Yeah, but don’t spread it around. It tends to go to his head.”

Willow was staring at the newcomer hard, eyes wide and skin pale. “Oh God.”

“You know,” came a voice from the dining room, “seeing as we can all hear you, I think it’s safe to come in now.”

Buffy glanced back to her friend, shrugged, and did simply that. Giles, Wesley, Xander, and Anya were sitting at one side of the table; two men and a blonde at the other. Judging by the oddly pleased look on the younger man’s face, she decided he was Josh, gave him a once over, and shrugged again.

Willow and the man filed in slowly after; the former looking numb.

It was Giles who broke the silence, delving into his eggs and adjusting his glasses with needed diplomacy. “So…you work in the White House?”

“Yeah,” Josh replied, still grinning at the notion that he had been identified. “We don’t really like to announce it when we go out, but yeah.”

“Oh please,” groaned the girl at his side.

“I would’ve expected you to recognize at least one of them,” Willow grumbled as she reached for the ham-steak. “You’re supposed to know everything.”

“Excuse me if my powers of deduction do not reach the standards of American politics,” Giles retorted good-naturedly.

“It’s okay,” the blonde woman was saying. “Really. We’re more a behind the scenes operation anyway. Sam and Toby do the speechwriting…Josh is, well…you know. And I’m his senior assistant.”

Willow’s eyes widened and she sized up Sam considerably. “Oh God.”

The elder, balding man cracked what seemed to be the first smile of the day. “That answers my question.”

“What question?” Xander asked. He was looking rather pale, himself, but similarly not wanting to be left out of the loop.

“Which one of you was the one in the hallway last night.”

“Oh God.”

Giles frowned. “Last night?”

The Witch whimpered as her face fell into her waiting hands. “Don’t, please.”

“Willow came to our room last night because she did not want to have sex with Wesley,” Anya said without blinking, her tone and bluntness drawing a series of interesting looks from the other side of the table. “I told her that she should go back to him as to acquire her necessary post-relationship orgasms in order to proceed to the next stage of her emotional recovery.”

Buffy just stared at the former demon, unsure whether to laugh at the reaction she was mounting or feel bad for her friend. Xander reached out to pat his girlfriend’s hand and mutter something about the proper etiquette when speaking with strangers in public. It was the Deputy Chief of Staff, though, that broke the ice, rising to his feet to reach across the counter and shake Willow’s hand. “Hi,” he greeted. “Josh Lyman.”

“Josh,” the blonde berated as she tugged him back into his chair. “Leave her alone.”

“At least I apologized,” Sam mumbled.

Buffy’s eyes widened. “He’s the one?”

“Oh God,” Willow moaned.

Wesley pursed his lips and cleared his throat. “So,” he said. “I trust you are in Mississippi for the speech in Vicksburg?”

At that, Sam and Toby released a collective groan.

“Josh is actually here for something else,” the blonde replied coolly, evidently the elected spokesman for the party. “They’re supposed to be in Vicksburg for the thing, but we got lost coming in from Jackson and ended up much further south than anticipated.”

“Which was Leo’s fault,” Josh clarified. “He’s never been to Mississippi.”

“Ah,” Wesley replied with a nod. “Myself, I have only been here on one prior occasion. To this very town, point of fact. If you would like, I could—”

Xander stomped on his foot, evoking a shrill gasp from the former Watcher. “You don’t wanna do that,” he quickly advised. “Wes isn’t exactly Galileo when it comes to navigation.”

Toby looked ready to open his mouth and comment when a crash sounded from the front of the house. The front door flew open with a struggle, and the smell of slightly scathed leather tinted the air. For the string of heated profanities that followed, the Scoobies released a series of sighs and muttered advanced apologies.

All except Buffy, who tensed especially as the peroxide vampire marched intently into view, tossing his blanket aside before anyone could voice a question. His eyes caught hers immediately, but he looked away with much of the same. “Mornin’ all,” he said, nodding before pulling up a seat next to the Slayer. “So kind of everyone to wait.”

“Oh God,” the blonde said. “There are three of them.”

Spike glanced up, eyes wide. “Three ‘f what?”

A pert smile crossed the elder Watcher’s face, and he removed his glasses for a customary polish session. “It seems that Miss Moss, here,” he said, “has an affinity for British men.”

The vampire merely grinned and nodded. “Ah. ‘S nice to meet a crew with good taste. Name’s Spike, luv. What’s yours?”

“Donna,” she replied with equal flirtation.

Buffy wanted to kick him under the table, but dared not risk it.

“Spike?” Josh echoed. “What kind of name is that?”

The Cockney merely glanced up and grinned. “No worries, mate,” he replied, “not lookin’ to intrude on your turf. Jus’ introducin’ myself to the lady ‘s’all.”

“My turf?”

“Spike,” Willow said quickly. “I don’t know if you…well, care…but these guys work in the White House. So…you know…manners.”

He favored the Witch with a cocked brow. “Don’ roll out the royal carpet for many, Red. Gotta be more than a glitch in history ‘f you’re lookin’ to impress. ‘Sides, I knew that.” He tilted his head, studying Josh for a minute. “Aren’ you that bloke that invented a secret plan to fight inflation?” He waited until the other man’s face fell accordingly before barking a laugh. “Nice goin’, mate.”

That was all the motivation Sam, Toby, and Donna needed to burst out laughing simultaneously.

The redhead’s eyes widened respectively at the vampire. “You watch CSPAN?” she demanded.

Spike shrugged easily, reaching for the hashbrowns. “On occasion. ‘S usually the bird talkin’, an’ she’s a bloody hoot, so I’ll catch a few minutes ‘f it strikes my whimsy. ‘Sides, Rupes’s flat’s so bleedin’ dull that it makes watchin’ your government funny.”

“Can I clarify that I did not invent a secret plan to fight inflation?” Josh demanded. “I was joking with Danny and the press took it seriously.”

“Yeah,” Toby replied. “Because there’s only so many ways to interpret, ‘Yes, we have a secret inflation plan.’”

Willow turned to Giles. “Spike watches CSPAN and you don’t?”

He took her comment in stride but did not reply, his eyes settled instead on the vampire. “My flat is not dull.”

“Yeh, from your standpoint. It wasn’ until last week that you stopped chainin’ me up in the tub.”

Toby’s eyes widened and Josh was staring at them in all out shock.

Buffy chuckled nervously and elbowed the vampire in the side. “That…that’s just some…uhh…British slang. ‘Chains’ and ‘tubs.’ It’s all the craze over there. In…ummm…England.” She met Spike’s gaze, his glittering with amusement. “Isn’t that right?”

“Whatever you say, pet.” His eyes landed on her plate and he made a face of disgust. “I swear to God, Slayer, ‘s gonna be your bloody appetite that does you in. Here…” He turned and grasped the serving dish that held the grits and dumped a hearty portion onto her plate. “Try somethin’ new. Won’ kill you.”

She glared at him. “Say,” she said loudly without drawing her gaze away. “Is there anything with extra garlic?”

“What,” Josh drawled, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “You gonna cut her meat for her, too?”

“Stop it,” Donna intervened. “It’s sweet.”

“It is not sweet,” he objected.

“All I’m saying is, I wouldn’t mind special treatment like that from my boyfriend.”

Buffy glanced up, eyes wide. Giles smothered a snicker. Xander began choking on a piece of bacon. Willow just laughed.

To the Slayer’s great surprise, he did nothing to discourage the notion. Rather, Spike apportioned the rest of the grits to himself before reaching for the pancakes. “Sorry to say, pet,” he retorted, “but your honey’s prob’ly too concerned with his hair—or lack thereof—to give much of a damn ‘bout your diet.”

“Hey!” Josh yelped, reaching to feather his thinning brown curls at the allegation. “First of all, I’m her boss, not her boyfriend. Second of all, anyone who looks like a walking Ken doll shouldn’t be making jokes about other people’s hair.”

“Oh dear,” Giles mumbled with a sigh.

“Can I just clarify that Buffy is so not Spike’s girlfriend?” Xander asked, raising his hand.

Toby turned his eyes to the Slayer and quirked his head. “Buffy?” he asked.

“I know, mate,” Spike said, nodding in agreement. “Rightly awful name.”

“So says he whose name is a verb used when someone pours alcohol into punch.”

“Nickname,” the vampire retorted darkly. “An’ not exactly how I got it.”

Buffy’s gaze widened appropriately. “Spike…”

“What? Wanker asked. ‘m tellin’.”

“Oh no,” Sam said, trading a sympathetic glance with Giles.

However, Toby did not follow up. He merely delivered a long, stern look before breaking off with a dry chuckle. “I cannot tell you,” he said to Josh, “how glad I am that Sam and I are getting out of here today. This is exactly what you deserve.”

“We have to give the President the speech,” the younger man clarified.

Willow moaned at that. “The President.”

“What I deserve?” Josh demanded.

“An’ what?” Spike drawled, eyes dancing as he sopped his helping of food with maple syrup. “Curly here not get an invitation to the party?”

The Deputy Chief of Staff’s eyes widened. “Curly?”

“No, he’s coming,” Sam continued, unhampered. “He just has a thing first.”

“A meeting,” Donna clarified.

Xander nodded encouragingly. “Oh,” he said, desperate to edge away from the animosity that seemed to follow Spike wherever he went. If nothing else, leaving a good impression with the President’s people seemed to be a plan of reason. “What kind of meeting?”

“A meeting of the government,” Josh barked before whirling to Toby. “How do I deserve this?”

“After this year? So many reasons.”

Giles nodded and cleared his throat, wiping his mouth and scooting his chair away from the table. “We ourselves must be departing as well,” he said, shooting Buffy a long glance. “We’re not exactly here to sightsee.”

“Oh,” Donna replied, earnestly interested. “What are you guys here for?”

“We’re here to find Faith,” Anya said.

“Oh…well…that’s good. Faith’s always a good thing.”

“I wouldn’t mind a little faith right now, myself,” Sam agreed, eyes glued to his plate.

Spike chuckled wryly, dipping his toast into the pond of syrup he had before him. “Trust me, mate,” he retorted. “You’d mind.”

“Sam,” Toby said suddenly, rising to his feet. “Come on. We gotta go.”

The man blinked slowly and looked up. “What, now?”

“No, of course not. After all, the President’s speech is probably not that important. Just tell me when you would prefer to leave and—”

That was all it took. Sam cleared his throat and jumped up. “Right.” He turned his eyes awkwardly back to the table. “Well…it was interesting. And…I hope you are successful in finding your faith, though I might suggest looking at some of the more—”

Toby was at the door, staring at him, deadpan. “Sam.”

“Right.” The man nodded at Willow. “Again…I didn’t mean—”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Yeah. No, it’s okay. It’s really, really okay. I…yeah, it’s okay.”

He smiled slightly. “Well, thank you. We have to leave now.”

“Yeah.”

“So do we,” Josh said, swallowing his last bit of scrambled egg, nodding after the Communications Director as he disappeared from sight. “Gotta drive them to the car place so they can rent another. And then we have the thing.”

“The meeting,” Donna intervened, following suit.

“The meeting. Of the government. It was…interesting meeting you.”

“I’m sorry,” Giles said simply.

“’m not,” Spike objected.

Buffy kicked him under the table.

“Ow! Watch it, Slayer. An’ eat your grits.”

Josh and Donna paused at the door and nodded. “Yeah,” the former said. “’Kay.”

Then they were gone. The Scoobies sat in awkward silence, staring at the four places that had been abandoned in such a rush that, were they anyone else, they might have had grounds for offense.

“Well,” Xander drawled. “We have just discovered the reason we never leave the Hellmouth.”

“Because we might run into the President’s guys?” Willow replied.

“I didn’t like them,” Anya said. “Their administration is in favor of raising taxes and stealing my money. In a society established on capitalism, how is one supposed to acquire any capital if they are taking my money?”

Harris patted his girlfriend on the back. “It’s called democracy, sweetie.”

“I don’t like democracy,” she argued. “Communism is so much easier to understand.”

“This being the reason they don’t allow former demons to run for office,” Buffy observed before turning her attention to Spike, who was using his last few pieces of pancake to absorb the rest of the syrup. “And the reason we don’t allow vampires to socialize.”

He shrugged unapologetically. “I don’ bend over for governmental types,” he replied. “Don’ bend over for anyone, come to think of it.” He paused at that and raised his head to look at her. “But ‘f you really want me to, luv, all you hafta do is ask real nice like.”

“Someone remind me why we invited him,” Xander asked.

No one had a chance to reply. Sam had popped his head back in, eyes centered on Willow. “I really am sorry if you—”

“Sam!” Toby yelled from the front.

“Okay,” he continued. “Well…I just…bye.”

And that was that.

Buffy pursed her lips and glanced to her dumbfounded friend. “So that’s the guy who came onto you?”

“He didn’t,” she said slowly. “As he has told me numerous times.”

“Still…works for the President. You could do worse.”

“Oh, and I’m sure I will.”

“Might I remind everyone why we’re here?” Giles asked reasonably. “After that display, and our astounding lack of people skills so radically highlighted, I suggest everyone return to their rooms and prepare to start the search. Willow—”

“Location spell?”

“If you will.” A long, trembling sigh escaped the elder Watcher, and he removed his glasses. “The sooner we return to Sunnydale, the better.”

Buffy licked her lips and nodded in agreement, eating up the last of her grits. That was more than reasonable—the initial weirdness of the morning still hovering over the table like a ready storm cloud, gathering the precipitation in wait for the next meeting.

It was that and so much more than that. Something else had happened here.

The air thickened and she sat back. Skin tingling with that preemptive knowledge that she was being studied. It took a few seconds, but she eventually realized that she had cleaned her plate and glanced up to meet the vampire’s sparkling eyes.

“Told you you’d like ‘em,” he observed. Then, even lower, he added, “Thanks for the blanket, luv.”

Heat pooled in her stomach for no reason other than the burn of his eyes. The sultry purr of his voice for words that no one except for her was supposed to hear. Even if nothing suggestive was mentioned. Even if nothing. And, as though nothing of the past half hour had occurred, she was again standing in the living room of the townhouse, watching him as he slept.

Oh God.

So inconvenient.

Josh was staring at the car as though watching it would convince it to start.

“How did this happen?”

He glanced up warily and cocked a brow at Toby.  “Do I look like a mechanic?”

The other man wasn’t listening to him, having set into a heated pace across the gravel parking lot at the Winsel House.  Not ten minutes had overlapped since departing the dining room, and somehow between checkout and room inspection—self-imposed to make sure nothing was left behind—the rental car had died.

It was the perfect reply to the unasked: What else could go wrong?  And while the Deputy Chief of Staff had been taking everything in stride since leaving Washington, this was the last straw.  The absolute last before the circumstantial bad luck ceased being funny. 

“I don’t have time for this,” Toby was saying heatedly.  “We needed to be in Vicksburg yesterday, Josh.  Find out what’s wrong and fix it.”

“By all means.  Just explain that to the car and I’m sure everything will work itself out.”  The younger man shook his head.  “And for the last time, Leo’s the one who gave me directions.  You can’t blame me for this.”

“Oh, I think I can.  What kind of idiot gets in a car without looking at the map?”

Sam sighed and stood from where he was inspecting the replacement tire, just in case it, too, had decided to spontaneously act up.  “Look, Donna is going to call a mechanic as well as the rental agency.  No need to get antsy.  In the meantime, I can go see if one of the guests from breakfast is available to—”

“No,” his colleagues snapped simultaneously.

The man frowned his displacement.  “Really, I’m sure it’s no bother.  I’ll just go and—”

“No,” Josh repeated.  “We’ve had enough of Monty Python’s Flying Circus for one morning.”

The Deputy Communications Director frowned.  “Well, that’s…they were a little different, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that—”

“Sam, just because you wanna play kissy face with one of them doesn’t make them any less strange.”  Josh sighed heavily and shook his head.  “They were weird and then some.”

The younger man shuffled a bit in discomfort, eyes glued to the ground.  “Well…I don’t think that’s fair.”

“We have more important things to worry about.”  Josh frowned at the uncooperative vehicle and kicked the front driver’s side tire.  “We have to get you and Toby out of here—now.  Fair or not, the last thing we need right now is help from some wacko religious fanatics.” 

The front door to the Winsel House opened and Donna emerged with Xander and Willow at her heel.   

Sam’s head quirked and his mouth threatened to give way to a grin.

“I described the problem to the rental company,” the blonde greeted as she approached earshot.  “They said it sounded hazardous and not to drive on it—but then said to drive on it about three hours east to the headquarters so they could give us a new car.”

Toby’s eyes widened.  “We have to drive three hours in the wrong direction for a new car?”

Xander grinned and clapped his hands together.  “Rental car companies.  Gotta love ‘em.  Lucky for you guys, I got an A in Shop, so everyone can just…step aside.”

The Communications Director was not impressed.  “What’s the Boy Wonder doing out here?”

Donna opened her mouth, but it was Harris who replied, turning promptly as he snatched the keys away from Josh’s waiting hand.  “The Boy Wonder is here to fix the problem.  Xander is my name, cars are my game.  If you’re not a big boy, stand aside.  I’m gonna fix this hunka metal like she’s never been fixed before.”

Josh and Toby exchanged a long look.

“H-he really is good with cars,” Willow offered with a meek smile.  “Well, actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him…work on a car.”  She frowned and stepped up, tapping her friend’s shoulder.  “Have you ever worked on a car before?”

“Well…no.  But I’m guessing my attempts will be far superior to any others.”

Sam arched a brow.  “You’ve never worked on a car, but you think you can fix the problem?”

“No way,” Toby barked.  “Absolutely not.  We are not so utterly desperate that we’re going to risk you messing up our only mode of transpiration even more so than it is already.  No thank you.  We’ll rent another car.”

Willow pursed her lips and offered a sweet smile.  “There are no more cars, Mr. Ziegler,” she explained.  “Because of the…speech…and…President…you know.  Big thing…down here.” She stopped, cheery, false smile growing even larger.  “Sorry?”

“And if you’re thinking about calling a mechanic, well, you’re in bad shape,” Harris informed him.  “They’re all out of town.  For the—”

“Speech,” Josh supplied.

There was a nod of affirmation.  “Right.  So, it looks like the Xan-Man is your man.  Here to at least not make your problem any worse than it already is.”

“I thought you guys were on a mission from God or something.”

Xander turned to fully face the Deputy Chief of Staff, eyes dancing with his customary humor and all previous apprehension seemingly having dissipated from his person.  “No.  We’re here to find Faith.  As in, girl: not belief.  Mean streak a mile wide.”  He gestured for the main house.  “My lovely but very quirky girlfriend has a way of words and using them in sentences while void of tact or concern as to who is listening.”

Sam and Willow’s eyes met and they looked away on the same beat. 

“Faith’s a person?” Josh asked.

The redhead nodded.  “Yeah.  Long story, don’t wanna get into it.”

“She’s a friend,” Xander continued.  “Only not…kind’ve of the psycho persuasion.  A family friend.  Buffy’s insane sister, if you will.  And she was headed this way…we don’t want to get any authorities involved because she’ll react violently to…” He trailed off, glancing to Willow.  “When you said you didn’t wanna get into it, you meant to avoid this, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” she replied with a nod.

“Gotcha.”

Toby pinched the bridge of his nose and looked to the ground.  “You’re telling me,” he began, “that every mechanic is out of town, every rental car has been rented, we’re stuck an hour and a half away from the President with the speech all these people are going to hear, and you want us to give you our only means of transportation to potentially fuck up even more?”

Sam sighed longingly.  “It’s not even a good speech.  Well, the writing’s good, but the content is just filler for the policy change that, honestly, was so minimal that it could’ve been thrown out with the trash on Friday, and—”

“I have my laptop with me,” Willow offered.  “If all else fails, you could email the speech to…” She trailed off at the elder man’s look.  “Or, you know…not.”

Josh licked his lips and turned back to Xander.  “And you’re the only one out of your entire group who knows even the first thing about mechanics?”

He earned a shrug in turn.  “I’m pretty sure Spike does.  Hell, the guy’s been around forever…” A warning look from Willow quickly reminded him that they weren’t talking to resident Hellmouth alums, and he smoothly switched tactic. “But—uhhh—he can’t come out right now.”

“What?” Toby asked.  “Is he grounded?”

“Sun allergy,” the redhead explained hastily.  “Nasty, nasty sun allergy.  Really…you guys didn’t notice how pale he was?”

Donna pouted a bit at that.  “That’s a shame.”

Josh’s eyes widened.  “What?  You were seriously attracted to that guy?”

Xander stared at her, looking a little sick, himself.  “You’re attracted to Spike?  Can I say gross with a side of bleh?”

The blonde glanced to the Witch for help, and they both shrugged on a natural feminine beat to explain a universal truth that American men simply didn’t understand about their women.  “The accent.”

Harris just looked at Willow in disgust.

“What?” she demanded.  “He might be Spike, but I’m not blind, here.”

“Rupert, too,” Donna continued.  “Older men have such sophistication.  He’s older, good looking, and British.  Does a woman really need more?”

“She is talking about Giles, right?” Xander whispered loudly.

Willow offered a wane smile.  “Again.  Not blind.”

Toby rolled his eyes.  “Are we actually standing out here, having this conversation?”

“I don’t think we are,” his Deputy replied.

“Wesley, too,” Donna added, completely unhampered by interruption.

“Oh definitely.”

Sam cleared his throat. 

“Great,” Josh said unenthusiastically.  “Just great.  Well, while you two are going gaga over Mr. Mattel and the other relatives of Sergeant Pepper, the grown-ups have to worry about the actual problem.  I have a meeting with a Senator in less than twenty minutes in which I’m already going to piss him off enough to change parties.  I really don’t need to add selective tardiness for his reason to—”

“I called you a cab,” Donna said before he could get off on more of a tangent than he was already on.  “And yes, before you ask, I mentioned that we might be needing a ride to Vicksburg.”

“And?”

“No help.”

Josh cursed erratically and swung around to kick the tire again.  “Goddamn son of a BITCH, I hate this town.”

“I promise you,” Toby replied, “not as much as I do.”

“I find the atmosphere rather charming,” Sam offered, taking a look at his surroundings.  “Yes, they are a little behind in the times and it isn’t the cleanest place in the world—but, let’s be honest, neither is Washington—there is a rustic, almost folksy feel to the…” He stopped and took in the foray of stares everyone was giving him.  “But yes.  Highly inconvenient.”

Willow grinned, her own apprehension lessening by the minute.  “We can always ask Spike later if Xander can’t help you.”  She swung her arms for a moment and waited for projected criticism, then nodded when no one voiced an objection.  “Okay, well…good luck.”

It took the second until she began back toward the house before it registered that she was leaving.

“Wait!” Sam called.  “Where are you going?”

Josh grinned tightly.  “Kissy face,” he murmured. 

A soft smile crossed Willow’s face; it was impossible to tell whether or not she had heard him.  “Buffy and I have some things to do,” she explained.  “We need to familiarize ourselves with the town…get started and such.”  She nodded to her friend.  “Xander will help you.  It’s all one big bag of good.  We’ll be back in a couple hours, I’m guessing.  Okay then.  Bye!”

That was that.  She was gone.  And they were left to work.

Only that seemed impossible, given everything.

Harris walked around the car, glancing upward at Sam’s fleetingly desolate expression with wary objectivity.  “You like her, don’t you?”

It took the man a delayed beat of recognition before he realized that he had been addressed.  “What?  I…no, she…I ran into her last night and she…”  He trailed off helplessly.

Josh and Toby exchanged a dry, amused glance.

“Aww,” Donna cooed, tilting her head.  “That’s so cute.”

Sam blinked.  “I don’t—I mean, she’s nice, but I…I just wanted her to know that—”

“She knows,” Xander clarified.  “She knows, and then some.  And it’s okay.  Really, she’s had worse.”

“I’d imagine so,” Toby replied.  “If your girlfriend is any indication.”

Harris’s face dropped.  “Hey.  Line.  Couple steps behind you, pal. There’s nothing wrong with Anya.  She’s a wonderfully—”

The air cracked with the whipping slam of the front door as it crashed haphazardly against the outer wall.  An empty beat for breath and then Anya’s shrill, demanding voice filled the morning breeze with all the symptoms of informal defiance.  “Xander Harris!  I want you and your penis in here right now!”

“—insane person that I’ve never seen before in my life,” he concluded without missing a beat, avoiding the foray of awkward amused stares that he received in turn.  “So…you all are having car trouble, huh?”

Josh turned to the Deputy Communications Director as their makeshift mechanic began his inspection by examining the ignition.  “We need to call Charlie,” he said, “and tell him that the President will be receiving the speech through email.  Also, CJ will need to make sure the meetings throughout the week are cancelled and that Ed and Larry have the numbers by Friday, even if we’re not there to bug them every five minutes.”

There was a nod as Xander pulled the radio knob off and landed on the car horn.  “I’ll go see if my phone is charged,” Sam said.

*~*~*

It was like watching a trained chimp juggle hot coals.

Spike was seated by the far window, observing with an eye of great humor as Xander began sputtering an endless stream of automotive jargon—some authentic, most not—as he attempted another venue of approach. It was more than manifest that the boy had absolutely no grasp on what he was doing; it amazed the vampire that one of the men had not stepped in to put an end to this highly entertaining mess before the situation escalated to irreparable proportions. 

Of course, story went that these blokes didn’t know how to change a tire.  Harris was on common ground.

A long sigh hissed through Spike’s lips as he tossed a sideways glance to the blanket draped across the sofa’s arm. Waking in warmth was not something he was accustomed to.  He was, after all, a vampire, and vampires weren’t greatly known for their affinity for comfort.  Most lived underground—in crypts or crypt-like establishments.  A few broke the pattern, but not many.  Vampires were creatures of cold and dark.  This morning, he had awoken in light and surrounded with warmth. 

With Buffy’s warmth.

The last few days had been a jumble of mixed signals and jilted confusion.  Days since awakening, since what had occurred at the Bronze, and he kept waiting for it to end.  This candor unknowing.  The niceties.  The honest trade that was so casual that he could nearly call it friendly.  Buffy was a difficult woman to figure out, and he had always thought himself particularly talented with women.  After all, his study had over a century to its credit.  There hadn’t been a woman that remained shrouded in perpetual mystery until her.  Even Drusilla, with her shadowed mind and dazed riddles that needed untangling before logic could be made…he had known her.  Understood her better than any before him.

Reflections of his dark princess were few and far between now.  That was something he had never thought would happen, especially for one such as the Slayer.  These thoughts he was entertaining were unforgivable for his kind, but no less had in any regard.  With her, there was something he had never had before.  He simply had yet to name it.

They had been enemies for so long.

Not now.  Not anymore.

Something had changed.  They had changed.  They were changing together.  He knew it, she knew it, and they were drawn to an irreprehensible standstill.  They didn’t know how to behave with each other.  What had been before couldn’t be now.  He knew; he had tried it.  Irritating Buffy now nearly seemed to offend her rather than annoy.  They had argued about music on the way up without the usual verve that sparkled their debates.  Nearly forced.  Arguments that were more out of obligation rather than disagreement.  It was embarrassing but necessary.  If they weren’t enemies, they weren’t anything.

And for whatever reason, Spike couldn’t live with that.

It was just strange.  He didn’t know what to expect.  The Buffy he had once known would never have let him this close.  Not into her group.  Not into her quarters.  Not into her life.

This Buffy was reserved, nearly shy around him.  She had placed a pillow under his head and a blanket over his body.  This Buffy hadn’t corrected the allegation that they were more than friends—she hadn’t endorsed it, but she hadn’t corrected it.  This Buffy had flared a spark of jealousy when he turned a cheeky eye to the lovely Donna Moss.  This Buffy cared.

Cared about him.

Nights were still plagued with the thought of her—now more than ever.  Since the Bronze, it was unavoidable.  And the way she looked at him after…in the cemetery, talking to him as though he mattered.  Reaching her on levels that he never thought to measure up to. 

Touching her.  Getting to know her.  Getting to know Buffy.

Erotic dreams were not enough anymore.  These housing arrangements were driving him crazy with blissful torment.  Knowing that she slept just a few feet away.  Knowing that the fortress of protection that had once kept him out was finally lowering its bridge.  It was like coming home to a place he hadn’t known to miss.  Grasping something he had never wanted but now could not live without.  Slipping away just a little more each day into something familiar but unrecognizable.  Slowly falling into her.

There had never been anything but hate between them, and until a couple short weeks before, he had never allowed himself to entertain the thought.  Of course, that didn’t mean these carnal feelings were necessarily new; he had always favored her in the way a man favors a woman.  He was only a guy, after all.  No—the attraction had always been there. 

The other, though.  The feeling, or the want of…that was new.  And terrifying.

And powerful.  So powerful.

The door separating her room from the den suddenly flew open, and Buffy walked out.  A vision.  A golden Aphrodite, if he had ever seen one.  Spike cleared his throat with disorderly inelegance and settled back onto the sofa, turning his attention to the telly.  It was halfway through a two-episode run of Gilligan’s Island, though personally, he was waiting for Andy Griffith.  Daytime television never did anything for him; while here, he was a virtual prisoner.  At least in Sunnydale he could navigate in sunlight when he wished it so.  He didn’t know Natchez.  Not yet.

But something told him that would change.

A small smile crossed the Slayer’s face as she took in the program he was pretending to watch, her hands busy trying to fix an earring.  “You look captivated,” she said.

Spike’s eyes softened imperceptibly.  “One of the great mysteries in life,” he commented, nodding at the screen.  “What exactly does the Skipper mean when he calls Gilligan his li’l buddy?”  He grinned as a chuckle froze in her throat.  “Might as well dedicate myself to an hour or so of research while ‘m stuck here, right?”

“Yeah,” she agreed.  “Because the world is really being threatened by Bob Denver.”

“Never say never, pet.”  His eyes sized her up immodestly, partly for his personal pleasure, partly to get her reaction.  When she didn’t stomp over and smack him, he had to fight a laugh of victory from escaping his lips.  It was this that he was living for now.  The little things.  The signs of possible something-more that she gave him without making a sound.  Without doing anything that exceeded simply being.  “Goin’ somewhere?”

A sliver of disappointment ran down his spine when she nodded.  While it was foolish to hope, especially given the grounds of their arrangement, he had been hoping for more time just to explore whatever this was between them.  He was stuck here all day—it didn’t seem so radical to want company until the sun went down.

The fact that he wanted hers exclusively was an entirely separate matter.

“Yeah,” she replied.  “Will and I are gonna start familiarizing ourselves with the town, figure out the feel…basic stuff.  Then tonight, you and me hit patrol.”

“Patrol?”

“Faith-search, more or less.”  Buffy shrugged.  “We might also try to hit a cemetery or two if it’s slow or whatnot.”

“’d like a look ‘round town, myself,” he agreed. 

“Well, if we see anything really interesting, you and I can go back by tonight.”  His eyes widened and her cheeks flushed; she coughed something hastily and looked down.  “Ummm…but yeah.  Ummm…have you…did Xander come by here?  I was gonna have him…uhh…do something.”

Spike smiled and tossed a quick glance out the window.  Harris’s front was covered with oil and Toby was hitting the hood of the vehicle with what appeared to be a large branch.  “The blokes that work in the White House’re havin’ some car trouble,” he said.  “Stay Puft’s lendin’ a hand.”

“What?  He—”

“An’ judgin’ by the dent that Ziegler git’s leavin’ in the hood, his help’s not appreciated.”  Spike turned back, shaking his head.  “Y’think you can drop by the butcher while you’re out, luv?  Stomach’s makin’ all kind of gurglies.”

“You ate breakfast.”

“Yeh.  An’ it was good.  Jus’ not what I need.”

A sigh hissed through her lips.  He couldn’t tell if she was irritated or not, but didn’t care much either way at the moment.  It was what he was—he couldn’t help that.  “Right.  If I find one, sure.  Anything else?”

There it was.  That blessed edge to the tone.  A palpable look of relief overwhelmed her with reassurance.  As though it was water and she was seconds away from dying of thirst.

Time to knock her off her horse.

Spike smiled again and rose slowly to his feet, ever aware of her pounding heart.  The delicious way her pulse increased with every step he took toward her.  The battle raging behind her eyes between two common enemies.  He didn’t know what he wanted at that moment.  All remained hidden behind a line of ambiguity.

“Yeh,” he murmured.  “Thanks for the pillow, too.”

And that was it.  Her gaze kept his for a minute longer before she swallowed hard and covered the space between herself and the door in short, hurried moves.  She seemed to hesitate before disappearing on the other side but was soon gone.  Gone and waiting on the porch.  In the sunlight, where he could not reach her.

He was not dismayed.  It had been there.  Something had been there.

Something he wanted more than he had wanted anything.  Something…

For all else, it would be reserved until tonight.  Patrol with her tonight.

A smile drew across his lips.  He couldn’t wait.

*~*~*

It took almost two full minutes for Buffy to gather her bearings.  Standing on the wooden porch, hands on the railing.  She had absolutely no idea what had happened inside.  Nothing, if one was looking at the trade objectively.  Nothing to work herself up about.  Nothing.

But that was just it.  There was never nothing where they were concerned.  She and Spike either fought or they didn’t.  This…this was something else entirely.

It was wrong.  It couldn’t happen anymore.  Ever.

“This has to end,” she murmured. 

And it would.  It would. 

Because it was Spike.  Honestly, how long could he possibly keep this up? How long could she? 

It couldn’t last.  It just couldn’t.  They both knew it. 

Somehow, that thought wasn’t as gratifying as it should have been.

Buffy collapsed tiredly into the non-comfort of the Magnolia Grill’s hard oak chair with a deep yawn that took more out of her than she had been expecting. Times like these, she wondered if the reason Slayers had short life spans was due to the wear on their immune system. A blatant exploitation of what happens when people expect the most plus ten out of their so-called defenders.

She was wiped.

Willow dropped her shoulder-bag into the neighboring chair and reached up to draw loose strands of hair from her sweat-laced brow. “Order me a big glass of water, ‘kay?”

The Slayer nodded her sympathy. Where she was wiped, she was amazed that her friend was even standing. The Witch was in no means out of shape, but she similarly remained unaccustomed to enforcing the full of her physical energy on running around as much as they had without a break; not to mention in humidity that was a few state lines south of where they were used to. Sunnydale could be hot; Natchez was a sauna.

“You want anything else?”

Willow shrugged. “Just whatever you get.” Then she was off, sprinting to the nearest waitress in search for directions to the ladies restroom.

Buffy released a long sigh and reached for the basket filled with complimentary salad crackers. The day thus far had entailed a ceaseless familiarization of the town, completely on foot as the only other means of free transportation would involve one of them manning the Winnebago. Naturally, they had to remain in certain sectors without venturing too far out; Natchez wasn’t a large town, but compared to Sunnydale, it might as well have been a metropolis.

There was no sign of Faith anywhere. No help from the locals or tourists. Not that they ran into many: while the town itself was hardly barren, the speech in Vicksburg had notably seized the bulk of their tourism, driving everyone of every persuasion out just to hear what the President had to say.

Partisanship down here was noted. She saw it everywhere she went, and given the nature of the temperament, it was amazing that any of the very right-wingers wanted to hear what a liberal administration had to say outside a need to ridicule. The national attention was likely just as big a draw. For such a small event in a year not controlled by any dominant campaign, the stop was certainly getting more local attention than she reckoned anyone in the White House had anticipated.

But that was another matter altogether. She had a Slayer to catch. And nowhere within the bounds of this very small town to start.

Given perimeters, finding Faith should hardly pose a challenge.

And yet.

She and Willow had passed many grandiose homes modeled with late nineteenth century ideals. The conditions nearly suggested that they had stepped through a time theorem. The people they met were nothing but friendly, of course; somewhere between the stereotypical southern hospitality and characteristics that made them real. And on the same beat, there was the notable pride smothered in the candor of everyday life. The residents of Natchez were proud of their heritage—so much that anything else was an insult seemingly punishable by death.

Buffy reached for her third packet of crackers and barely had time to nibble on the first before the entrance of the Grill opened and the blonde from breakfast stepped inside.

Small world.

Well, not really. From what Willow had said, the woman’s boss—that Josh guy—had a meeting with a Senator about something or other, and likely left her to herself; on call or the like. She appeared alone and more than a little lost; uncomfortable and unsure. Surveying her prospects and quite evidently wishing herself miles away.

The Slayer licked her lips, appalled at the sudden flurry of dislike that twisted her insides. While there was nothing to suggest it, Spike had turned an eye of favor in the blonde’s direction earlier. An eye of favor—nothing more. Nothing to found a basis of aversion for someone she didn’t know, especially for reasons she couldn’t yet admit to herself. There was a feeling. A deep furrowing parasite that gnawed at her insides. It was gross and unseemly—more than unfair, but there was nothing she could do about it. And its route remained shrouded in mystery.

Then again: not entirely. Not at all, really. There was the other. Acknowledging her jealousy over a non-event was dangerous ground. Buffy-logic, when it came to competition, had never been clear or…well, logical. But more importantly—when had she registered herself in a tournament for Spike’s affection? There was nothing there that she wanted. Nothing she would allow herself to want. Not now—not with who she was; who he was. It simply wasn’t an option.

A long sigh hissed through the air. Uh huh. Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

This was getting nowhere fast.

In the end, Buffy couldn’t let her conscience allow someone she didn’t know enough to merit personal dislike sit uncomfortably by herself only on the basis of a vampire’s alleged affections. Especially since she so didn’t want to claim them for herself. Thus, as the waitress instructed the blonde to sit wherever she cared to, the Slayer sat up and called, “Hey!” as loud as she could.

It wasn’t the most sophisticated form of greeting, but it seemed to get the job done. The blonde’s face fell immediately to relief and she flashed a grateful smile. “Hey…Buffy, right?”

The Slayer smiled back and nodded, wishing she had exhibited enough tact to remember her name in turn. “She’s with us,” she explained to the server, clarifying any ambiguities to the extent of open invitation.

The woman’s gratitude failed to waver. She regarded Buffy as though she was her personal savior. Which really, not too far off the mark, but the Slayer would keep that to herself.

“Anything to drink?” the server asked.

“Water,” Buffy replied, nodding at Willow’s vacant seat. “Both of us.”

The waitress nodded and turned back to the blonde. “And for you, ma’am?”

“I’ve heard that you have the best bread pudding in town.”

That comment seemed to please and earned an enthusiastic nod. “You heard right. Best in town. Guaran-damn-teed, or I’m sure we can work in an all-out refund.”

“Great! I’ll take that and a cup of coffee.” The blonde flashed Buffy another smile, shrugging her business jacket off with a look of furthered reprieve. “I’ve been dying for bread pudding since we got here.”

“That sounds good,” the Slayer agreed. “I’ll take two.” She again nodded to Willow’s seat. “And a glass of diet coke.”

“No water, then?”

“Oh no. Bring the water. We’ll drink anything you put in front of us…within reason.”

The waitress nodded cheerily and hurried off to turn in the order.

“Thank you so much,” the blonde said with every bit as much gratitude in her voice as there was in her eyes. “Josh thought his meeting would last twenty minutes or so and it’s been nearly two hours. I’ve been wandering around for…well, let’s just say, I’m going to try to implement the idea of Casual Friday into every workday from now on if it means never looking at heels again.”

“You look too tall to wear heels.”

“If you knew CJ, you’d know how very incorrect that assumption is.” The woman smiled again and flashed her eyes to the table. “So…what do you do?”

Buffy shrugged and bit back the instinctual save the world answer that she was sorely tempted to throw in the face of any self-righteous politician. However, it was more than obvious that present company was a few steps away from meriting any such label. And, if she wanted to be perfectly honest, so were her traveling companions upon first assessment. “I’m a student at UC Sunnydale,” she replied. “Freshman.”

“Oh my God, right out of high school?” The woman’s eyes widened in admiration. “No wonder you look so young!”

“That compliment territory?”

“Oh yes. Spoken only with the highest envy.” She paused thoughtfully. “Though, words of wisdom—and hear me out—find and stick with a major, make sure you graduate, and under any circumstance never move in with a deadbeat boyfriend who wants you to front all the cash in the relationship and eventually forces you to drop out of school.” Another pause. “And after you breakup, never go back to him. Because then on the anniversary of which you came to your senses, your boss will never, ever let you live it down.”

Buffy nodded, brows arched. “Personal experience?”

The woman waved dismissively. “It’s a thing. I’m sure dozens of other kids have told you the same.”

“Check one for extremely no.” The Slayer smiled as her gaze directed her to the approaching redhead, whose countenance looked much relieved from her opportunity to freshen up. More over, she seemed genuinely pleased to have the other woman joining them. “Hey, Will. Thought for a minute that you had fallen in.”

The Witch shook her head. “Do people actually find that funny?”

“There’s a distinct possibility.”

“Sad world.” She turned with a bright grin to their guest. “Hey, Donna! Did Mr. Lyman’s meeting go all right?”

“He’s still in it—and really, I must stress this—there is absolutely no reason to call him Mr. Lyman.”

Willow laughed heartily at that—surprising her friend for the frank openness of her esteem. The redhead’s enthusiasm was nothing but relief. Nowadays it seemed beyond the realm of possibility when it came to making her happy, in any regard.

Then again, heartbreak could do that. Buffy had learned that lesson the hard way, and well. However, in the namesake of consistency, days and nights were no longer filled with longings for Angel. In a span of just a few months, she had gone from utter despair to simple resignation. Thoughts of her first love had somehow dwindled to nearly fond reflection. There were still mixed feelings, but the love she had so fervently felt was gone. Gone with such abrupt punctuation that she nearly lent herself pause at the depth of emotion that had been there in the first place. So heavy and then gone. That wasn’t normal, was it? Not for outstanding, earth-stopping, time-bendy love. Right?

But it was. It was gone. She missed Angel, to be sure. But not for love. Not for love for some time now.

Not since…

Buffy bit her lip and shook her head. There was absolutely no way that Spike had anything to do with it. Huh uh. Out of the question. Can I see the number of ways in which that is incorrect, Alex?

“So, Willow told me that your boyfriend has a sun allergy,” Donna said, snapping her back to the present. “That’s such a shame.”

The Slayer blinked. “Huh? My what?”

Willow’s eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open to contest, but she didn’t make it very far.

“Your boyfriend…or is he not? The guy at breakfast that goes by Spike.” There was a non-predatory-but-interested look in Donna’s eyes that Buffy did not trust at all. “I know there was some confusion…but Willow said he has a sun allergy.”

“Spike’s not Buffy’s boyfriend,” the Witch announced, flashing her friend an apologetic smile. “Oh no. He and Buffy hate each other. You could…umm…almost call them mortal enemies. Polar opposites. The sun isn’t shining here, Mr. Giraffe.”

Buffy wanted to kick her but didn’t dare. The last thing her confused mind needed was further incentive for future random bouts of jealousy. Besides, she was so not jealous. Not of Donna and her crush on the evil, soulless vampire. That just wasn’t happening. Not in this century.

Donna’s head tilted sympathetically. “Oh. Oh. That’s too bad. He seems—”

Okay. That was it. The last thing she needed to know was how Spike seemed to women who were not—oh say—her.

“We…hate is such a strong, bitter…word.” Buffy pointedly ignored the questioning glance that Willow sent her in turn. “I wouldn’t say we hate each other so much as—”

“Loathe one another with the fire of a thousand suns?” the redhead suggested, cautiously exploratory.

The temptation to kick her was growing harder to resist.

“We’ve been…uhh…” The Slayer flushed and dropped her eyes to the table. “Getting along…since…we’ve just been getting along.”

For what it was worth, Donna seemed to take the hint and nodded wisely before Willow could make another observation. There were some things that it took complete strangers to see, and while Buffy refused to acknowledge anything of the sort, she couldn’t help but be grateful at the other woman’s compassion.

“So,” the Slayer continued, leaning back as their order arrived. Regardless of appearance, she was eager to get the topic on safer ground. “What’s Mr. Lym…Josh’s meeting about? Or can’t you tell us?”

Donna nodded. “It’s not a government conspiracy or anything. They don’t tell me those. There is a very liberal senator from Illinois, originally from here—hence the location of the meeting—who contributes mass amounts of support to the President, as well as Democratic leadership in the House and Senate. He might be named Minority Whip after the midterms. Anyway, he has proposed a bill that’s riding his support because it…well, it’s trying to ban the display of the Confederate flag basically everywhere. Cars, buildings, merchandise—the works.” She glanced down. “Our numbers show that if the bill passed, it would be a move in the right direction as far as Civil Rights, but it also challenges—”

“The first amendment,” Willow murmured.

“That’s the big argument. Everything else is politics.” Donna dug into her bread pudding; her eyes rolled back and she made a sound of distinct approval. “Oh my God. I didn’t know that something could taste that good.”

Buffy nodded in agreement. “It’s delicious.”

“So this bill isn’t going to pass?” the redhead demanded.

“It can’t. We know it can’t, and Senator Davis knows it can’t.” She rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t believe how many times Josh has said that in the past week. Anyway, the real reason we’re here is to explain why the White House won’t support the bill. We’re having to sit on this one. We can’t afford to anger African-Americans or the NRA.”

“NRA?” Buffy was lost.

“Go hand-in-hand with the KKK in some regions,” Willow explained. “Some being the word there…not all. And they’d be one of the main groups offended if the bill received support.”

“The South on a whole would be offended,” Donna clarified. “And as has also been the motto this week, losing the South is a political no-no. Besides, we’d also risk losing everyone else who agrees with a strict view of the Bill of Rights. But, on the other hand, we’re—at the same time—offending African Americans by not supporting a cause that would remove a public reminder of their historically economical and socially accepted second-class citizenship. And we can’t do that.” She shook her head. “But Sam is right. Leaving that flag up is wrong. It’s just wrong. We’re above this. The President and Josh and…well, everybody. We’re above this.”

A smile quirked Willow’s mouth. “Sam?”

“He’s been reciting passages from the Declaration of Independence at random. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.’” She grinned. “It was really cute the other day; he said it, then realized that the passage says men without mention to women, and he started arguing with Thomas Jefferson out loud after he apologized to Bonnie and me.”

Buffy grinned lightly. “Willow’s crushing on Sam,” she said. “She doesn’t wanna admit it, but she is.”

“I am not!”

“See?”

Donna adapted a similarly devious look and chuckled. “Sam’s a good one to crush on,” she agreed. “And as CJ has noted on more than one occasion, he can wear a tuxedo—and well.”

“I am not crushing on Sam!”

“Oh, come on, Will,” Buffy teased. “You’re telling me that his big puppy-dog eyes and numerous apologies just don’t do anything for you?”

“I don’t know,” the redhead replied firmly. “Why don’t you go back to telling us how you and Spike don’t hate each other anymore?”

Donna’s brows perked.

Buffy just paled and stared at her plate. “This really is good bread pudding,” she decided. And said nothing more on the subject.

*~*~*

“Scotch. Straight. I see ice, and we’re gonna have a problem.”

The barkeep nodded and gave him a look that clearly defined offense at the implication that he couldn’t pour a straight glass of Scotch. But Toby didn’t care. He rarely did when it came to such things.

“This really is quite good,” Giles said, flipping to the third page of the President’s Vicksburg speech with a nod of acknowledgement. “Really, I don’t come across modern writers with such a grasp of the language all too often. Most remarkable. Your diction is flawless and…this is just very good.”

“Get this man a Scotch, too.” Toby sighed and rested his head against his palm. “Yeah. Shame no one will get to hear it.”

“I thought Willow offered to lend you use of her laptop.”

A small smile quirked his mouth. “You don’t understand the process in which the President prepares for a speech,” he said. “It’s rare if we have the actual final draft to him within two minutes of the address.”

Giles frowned at that. “Really? I wouldn’t have thought.”

“He covers it well.” A pause. A drink. Another. “Most of the time.”

“I have always been impressed. Granted, my line of work doesn’t give me much chance to pay attention to American politics, but when I do, I am never disappointed.” The Watcher glanced down. “I meant to catch the Inauguration speech, but we were a tad busy that year.”

“There have been several since then.”

“We’re a tad busy every year.”

“What do you do?”

Well, wasn’t that the question of the hour? Giles sighed heavily and tossed his head back with his drink, his glass meeting the counter with more force than he intended. What did he do? Right now—at this moment—nothing. Nothing whatsoever.

And when he tried to do something, it resulted in the mess that was that morning.

“Well, in Laymen’s terms, I suppose you can say that I play the part of chaperone for a group of high school graduates who still behave like children while simultaneously regarding me as a guidance counselor, thus demanding leadership and support.” Giles tossed Toby a wry glance. “I love them all, understand. No father could be prouder. And, all complaints aside I daresay that this has been one of our more successful outings.”

He earned a long, hard stare in turn.

“Get this man another Scotch.”

*~*~*

It was nearing sunset, and Buffy had not returned.

Spike had utilized the falling shade to bolt from their accommodations to the main house the minute that his senses told him he would not fry in result. There were enclosed spaces; then there was the townhouse. His living quarters were comfortable enough but much too confining for his taste. And he couldn’t risk taking a step in the place for fear of being overwhelmed with the Slayer’s fragrance.

Not that such displeased him. With every breath, he wanted her more.

And therein was the problem. Buffy was off limits to him.

Or she had been. He had no idea of the ground they stood upon. She was a perpetual enigma. Always had him guessing. Contemplating. And oh god, craving. There were times when he could reach out and touch her; that was something he had never had before. With every beat, she was that much closer to meeting him halfway. Their trade earlier today notwithstanding. And now she wanted to go patrolling with him. She could have gone with anyone else, but she chose him.

Logic told him that his vampiric skills were being exploited. Hope told him that she had different cause altogether.

And time told him that the sun was nearing the horizon and she was not back.

Not home. Not with him.

Not with him in a town that harbored one seriously pissed off rogue Slayer who had a nasty vendetta against his girl. Where Buffy was out in the daylight with no one but a witch whose powers were sometimes highlighted as more than hazardous. She was gone when she should have been back.

And hell if he was going to sit around here and wait. If she was in danger, the time to act had already passed. Which was exactly what he told himself before an incredibly greasy and sun-whipped Xander Harris came in through the front, wiping his nose with the back of an oil-stained hand.

“I might have been overstating it when I said the Xan-Man was their man,” he greeted, shaking his head. “Sam’s about ready to beat me over the head with the car-jack.”

Spike perked a cool brow. “Thought the bird said they din’t have one.”

“That was last night. Anyway, I am here on an act of protest to request with extreme diplomacy that you move your pale ass outside and give us a hand.” He quirked a brow and shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t want to be the reason the President of the United States doesn’t have a speech. And I don’t know them very well, but I can already tell that I’m in trouble if Sam’s the one giving me the ultimatum.”

There was a snicker at that. “Sorry, mate. Wish I could help, but I don’ care very much. ‘Sides, case it slipped your notice, the Slayer’s not back yet from her merry outin’. ‘m on my way out.”

Xander blinked. “To what?”

“Find the Slayer.”

“Why? She’s out with Willow.”

Spike nodded slowly, waiting for him to catch on. “Yeh. In a town she doesn’ know where a bird she doesn’ like is hidin’ out with the means of god-knows-what. You’re s’posed to be her chum, Stay Puft. You do the bloody math.” He paused again. “Well, you wouldn’t want your bird out there alone, would you?”

“Anya’s shopping. I don’t really think Faith’s looking to hit the strip malls.”

“That’s not the bloody point, an’ you damn well know it!”

The air hung around them in a long, unsettling silence.

“Are you worried about her?”

The Cockney’s eyes widened in a classic moment of deer-in-headlights. “What? What? ‘Course not. She’s the Slayer, you git. Vampire, remember? Don’ exactly make habit ‘bout worryin’ over their mortal enemies. Jus’ din’t wanna miss the action, s’all. Bound to be a keeper. Hope the bird trips her intestines out.”

Xander just looked at him.

“An’ then shoves ‘em down her throat.”

“And people wonder why I question the here-ness that is you.” Harris shook his head and turned around to march back outside. “Buffy has never not kicked Faith’s ass, so any gratification you’re looking to get in seeing another Slayer do what you can’t is out of the question, pal. Buffy’s going to open a can and then some. And then she’ll come to her senses, realize that you’re nothing but a colossal waste of space that never gave a damn—vengeance or not—and do what she should’ve done months ago and stake you once and for all. Now, in the meantime, I have to go be helpful.”

“Oh,” the vampire retorted. “You mean by bollixing up their car even more?”

Xander stopped and turned in the doorway, gaze shadowy. “Go to hell, Spike.”

Then he was gone, rendering the other useless in ways that he couldn’t even begin to fathom.

So, leaving was now out of the question. He had pretty much made that clear.

And Buffy was still out there.

“Trust me, Small Bread,” Spike said, striking a cigarette as he collapsed into one of the lobby’s sofas, eyes glistening at the window as they sky grew darker by the minute. “’m already there.”

*~*~*

“I could’ve done that,” Giles decided, slamming his drink onto the hard copy of the speech again, ignoring the way Toby was glaring at him. “I could’ve written, you know. Always received high marks in school. Wrote a play, once. Never got anywhere. I wanted to do a lot of things. Fighter pilot. I would’ve been a fantastic fighter pilot.” He paused, taking another drink. “Or a grocer. You’d be amazed at how fast you learn to bag things when there are pieces of demon just lying around you. That’s the trouble with Buffy—she never cleans up her messes.” He turned to the Communications Director, eyes fogged over. “I mean, how would you feel if you tripped over the head of a Djorstik? Nasty species. Though there are many theologissssts that think they invented the toaster. Isn’t that strange? The toaster.”

He received nothing but a stare in turn, but was far too passed the brink of inebriation to notice or care.

“Yes, sir. I could’ve done a lot of things. But no…have to be a Watcher. Have to uphold family tradition. Told my dad to stuff it, which didn’t do much good. Buffy says this job didn’t choose me like hers chose her. Bloody bollocks, that’s what I have to say to that.” He took a minute as the barkeep refilled his drink, something that Toby had been trying unsuccessfully to discourage for the better of an hour. “If she thinks I wanted to spend my adult life training adolescent girls to save the world…not that saving the world is a bad thing. No. No Watcher could be prouder of his Slayer. She’s the best, you know. The bloody best of all of ‘em. She got an umbrella that said so. No other Slayer got an umbrella. No, my friend. Just mine.”

Toby sighed and motioned for another round. If he couldn’t get the man to shut up, perhaps he could drink him to death.

*~*~*

“Would you guys stop? I’m not saying I don’t think Sam is good looking. I’m just not attracted to him.”

“Then, quite frankly Will, I’m worried about you.” The Slayer offered a luxuriant laugh. “Is it because he’s too tall? I know Oz was short, but trust me, dating a guy who has a few inches to the advantage isn’t a bad thing.”

“As you would know from experience,” the redhead retorted.

Donna was just staring at them. “Do I even want to know?”

The two girls stopped and looked at her. Then realization struck.

“In height,” Buffy stressed, eyes wide. “Height. My ex-boyfriend was tall. Very tall. And, as you can tell, I am very not. I was talking about height. Nothing else.”

The Witch grinned teasingly. “Oh. Are you saying that Angel lacked in a certain department?”

“Willow!”

“Angel?”

“His real name was Liam,” the Slayer explained with a pout.

Donna shook her head and smiled. “Don’t tell that to Josh. He was already going on about your names and how all of your parents must have been hippies.” She paused a second later, gaze large and apologetic. “I don’t mean—”

Willow shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Hell, I’m named after a tree.”

“My real name’s Elizabeth,” the Slayer offered meekly. “And Spike’s real name is William.”

Donna tilted her head in consideration. “That’s a nice name.”

Buffy wanted to agree but didn’t dare open her mouth. She had risked enough strange looks from Willow tonight. It didn’t matter, though. The blonde had switched tactics the next minute, shifting up as her gaze fell to her plate.

“We need more bread pudding over here.”

The Slayer’s eyes bulged. “Umm, no thanks. I don’t think I’m going to eat again for the rest of my life. That stuff is rich.”

“Yes, and I’m poor, so I like the taste. Might as well enjoy it while I can.”

A smile crossed her face. “Well, when you put it that way…”

*~*~*

Spike sat up with hope that rose and died in one fell swoop. The scent hit him just seconds before Josh Lyman stomped into the lobby of the Winsel House, soaked with rain and looking more than a little irate.

“This is what I don’t understand,” he announced to anyone who happened to be nearby. “Rhodes Scholar, graduate of Harvard with a Masters in Humanities and a Bachelors in Political Science—yes, that’s right: both—worked as a political analyst before he got to Congress, wrote two books on the correlation of white and black America along with multiple articles in the Post and the Times about the dangers in the radical approach to racism. The man’s a political star rising to the top faster than any mind of the modern world and doesn’t understand why the White House can’t support a bill that takes the first amendment and puts it in the shredder.” He took a minute to kick the wall, ignoring the rough warning from the owners, from the back where they were preparing supper for themselves. Instead, he whirled back to the vampire, who was reclining comfortably, watching him with dry amusement while keeping his senses on high alert. “The man compared the Confederate Flag to the Swastika while ignoring the fact that the Nazis were in Germany and we don’t have any laws that prevent it from being waved around. You know what the Swastika means?”

Spike’s brows perked. “Other than—”

“It means good luck. It’s a cross, for God’s sake.”

“’S rainin’ outside?” the vampire intervened, taking in the man’s appearance. “Din’t sm—sound like it. Usually have good—”

“Just on the other side of town, naturally.” That didn’t keep his mind occupied long enough. “And yes, I take high offense to it being waved around. Of course I do! The President does, too, and he’s not even Jewish.” Josh shook his head. “But we don’t have any laws against it. The KKK as mandated by the Constitution have just as much right to be here as Neo Nazis and other radical extremists that would just as soon overthrow the government as take in an afternoon matinee. That’s democracy’s fault, my friend. Not mine, and certainly not our administration.”

“Right, ‘cause when there’s a problem, the last person the country needs to look to ‘s their leader.” He chuckled wryly and threw his hands up in neutrality when he received a cold stare in rejoinder. “’m stayin’ out of this, mate. An’ for the record, the Nazis were sloppy. They…” He stopped again. “Never really fancied ‘em.”

“Glad to hear it.” Finally, the man started to calm down, dropping his backpack to the floor and running his hands through his hair. “Where’s Donna?”

Spike shrugged. “Haven’t seen her. ‘ve been waitin’ for the Slayer, myself.”

“The Slayer?”

“Buffy.”

Josh just looked at him for a minute. “You two have cute nicknames for each other, you do.” He released a deep breath and dug out his cell. “I need to reach Donna. Time for us to get the hell out of here and back to where things matter.”

“’F you’re lookin’ to skip town with that hunka metal outside, you’re outta luck, Curly.” Spike snickered and lit another cigarette. “Don’ know ‘f you noticed, but it’s in parts all across the drive. ‘S funny to watch ‘em try to put it back together, though. Think Harris was assemblin’ the steerin’ wheel to the trunk, last time I took a peek.”

Josh was staring at him in numb shock. “And you haven’t gone out there to help? Or at least stop them?”

“What can I say, mate? ‘m bored an’ that’s cheap entertainment.”

“You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that?”

“Am not. I jus’ don’ care all too much. An’ don’t talk ‘bout my mum like that. Woman had a heart of gold.”

The Deputy Chief of Staff looked away as though having to restrain himself from launching across the room. “Donna better get back soon,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of her out in a town she doesn’t know.”

“You an’ me both.” Off the look he received, his hands came up again. “’m talkin’ bout the…’bout Buffy, you paranoid wanker. She’s been gone all day.”

“Away from you? Can’t say I blame her.”

The vampire’s eyes darkened. “Watch it. Don’ take kindly to prats who don’ know what they’re talkin’ about. Have a nasty habit of dealin’ with ‘em in ways that don’ always end up clean.”

It wasn’t like there was anything he could do about it, anyway. What would he do? He could go into game face and scare the git shitless, and while the notion was tempting just for the humor aspect, he decided against it.

The threat fell to deaf ears; Josh collapsed in the seat nearest to the window so he could watch the cars that approached. He attempted to call his assistant and couldn’t get a line through. He hung up, waited a few minutes, and tried again.

“They’ll be back soon.”

Spike nodded. They had to be.

Though if they weren’t in the next few minutes, he was going to tear through the town. Sod reputation. Sod pride. Sod what Harris thought. If the world had to know how he felt about her, that was the way it was.

Nothing was going to happen to Buffy. Not on his watch.

*~*~*

The cab pulled into the drive just in time to see Toby storm through the doors and another take off in the opposite direction. A corresponding crash from the townhouse verified that the Watcher had returned. However, while noted, the girls let it slip without mention.

It had been a good day after all.

“Oh God,” Buffy laughed. “Giles is gonna kill me.”

Willow waved a dismissive hand. “Oh come on. When was the last time you’ve had a vacation, anyway? So you took one day to yourself. He can lighten up.”

The air rang with the sound of another crash. That assumption seemed fair enough.

“Yeah.” The Slayer shook her head with another laugh. “It’s been a while since I’ve had so much fun. But seriously…never eating again.”

Donna nodded, reaching for her key. “I hear you.”

“You’re not going to get in trouble, are you?”

The question lent Buffy pause. The day had been most liberating—just a few hours talking, and it was easy to forget that the company she shared was also valued by men of means, not to mention the President of the United States. And for everything, she didn’t want to have cost the woman her job. After all, there had to be a million other things she was supposed to have complete.

There was no danger in Donna taking Spike. She knew that now.

Well, of course she knew that. But she didn’t care. No way did she care.

“Trouble? Hardly. Josh is probably glad that I found something to do.”

Willow’s brow was marred with concern. “So he won’t fire you or anything?”

Donna just looked at her for a long minute, then burst out laughing. “No. No! God, Josh can’t find his socks without calling me. Trust me, my career is the last thing on the line right now.”

There was a rustle indoors. The curtain in the parlor was shoved aside to reveal the very relieved but similarly annoyed face of Josh Lyman as he yelled through the glass, “Donnatella Moss, you are two seconds away from being out of a job!”

The attempts at the lock proved ineffectual the next second. The door flew open to reveal a very anxious, heaving vampire on the other side. His eyes were flashing with anger and the dying bits of frustrated concern. His hair was ruffled, and his duster was off his shoulders.

Buffy’s eyes widened and her heart rate doubled. He looked…

So unfairly good.

And did she mention the angry part?

“Where the fuck have you been?” he snarled, gaze flaring before he seized her arm and pulled her across the threshold.

“Hey! Hey!” Willow snapped, following them over. “Let her go!”

“Stay out of this, Red.”

“Spike. Now.”

It didn’t matter. Buffy had wrenched herself away the next minute, rubbing her arm before realizing that the chip hadn’t fired during the entire display. And her world froze. Froze until she caught the look on the vampire’s face, nearly horrified at the reddened skin that marked where his hand had been.

The look vanished just as quickly, but she didn’t allow herself to vanish with it. He hadn’t meant to use such force. Spike hadn’t meant to use force.

From where she couldn’t react, Willow had no such qualms. She stepped forward and offered a shove to the vampire that was surprisingly forceful enough to send him back a step. “What’s the big idea, you creep!”

“I…uhhh…” Spike glanced to the ground, suddenly unsure of himself. “Slayer an’ I were s’posed to patrol.”

“Patrol?” Josh echoed. “What the hell?”

“We were?”

The vampire pointed at her in protest. “You said so! Before you left!”

Buffy’s face fell. Oh God.

How could she have forgotten?

“Oh.” Donna clutched her heart and made a sad noise. “And you were that worried? That’s so sweet.”

“Sweet?” Josh echoed. “The guy’s psycho. And where have you been?”

Spike stuttered ineloquently and glanced to the ground. “Not worried. Wasn’ worried. Jus’…jus’ brassed. You made the date, Slayer. You wanna break it? Fine. I’d jus’ like a heads up in the future.”

Willow’s eyes boggled. “Date?”

“No!” Buffy protested. “No date!”

“I was with them,” Donna explained to Josh calmly. “We had bread pudding, talked about work, and how Willow is attracted to Sam but doesn’t want to admit it.”

“Donna!” the redhead protested.

Spike cracked a smile. “Anymore talk like that an’ I’m gonna swear you’re a descendant of Harris’s bird.”

“Descendant?”

Buffy stomped the vampire’s foot.

He yelped a bit and tossed her an angry scowl, but his features softened with more of the same. “Relative,” he ground out. “I meant relative.” He took another minute to look at her before releasing a deep breath. “You all can shove off. Bloody waste of time.”

He blew past her the next minute, the slam of the door punctuating his leave.

“Psycho,” Josh murmured again.

Donna whacked him across the chest.

“Buffy?” Willow asked lowly. “What…are you…what?”

The Slayer licked her lips and released a deep breath. “Nothing. It’s nothing. Spike’s…I guess he…I dunno. He’s just been…there’s…I gotta go.”

Another second and she was gone, too, nearly running over Sam as he made his way into the foyer. Sam, whose appearance merited a double take from everyone in raw surprise. It was more than obvious that he had been working on the car for the bulk of the day. The man was shades away from the speechwriter that he had been that morning. His hair was ruffled; his work clothes had been traded in for faded jeans and a white t-shirt. His skin was dirty and tanned. He looked…

“Well,” Josh said. “That was sudden.”

Neither of the women were paying attention. The floor was irreversibly handed to the slightly bashful man who flushed when he realized he was on display. Donna favored him with a cat whistle. “Someone’s been outside today,” she teased.

“The car is still broken,” he said.

Willow was just staring at him.

“Yeah,” Josh agreed. “And Spike refuses to help us fix it.”

“Xander told me.” Sam released a long breath and combed a hand through his messy strands. “I’ve gotten over the anger part and am more looking for helpful solutions.” His eyes landed on the anxious redhead. “Toby and I might need to borrow your laptop after all.”

“Have you heard from CJ?”

The Deputy Communications Director just looked at him.

“Of course you have.”

“She called me Skippy.”

“Ouch,” Donna commented before nudging Willow. “You’re catching flies.”

Sam flushed again.

That was all it took to nudge the Witch out of her delirium. She coughed suddenly and glanced to the ground, nerves taking her in all forms imaginable. “I…uhhh…have to…I’ll go upstairs,” she said hastily. “Xander agreed to trade rooms with me today. So…I don’t have to…with Wes…and—”

“Wes went out to get us food,” the would-be model for the Playgirl Centerfold said. “He’s been helpful. Very nice guy. He—”

“Sam.”

“I gotta go now.”

And, like Spike and Buffy before her, Willow had vanished the next second—moving like she was attempting to break the world record for speed. She had hardly made it to the upstairs hallway before a door sealed her away from the world.

Sam frowned his confusion before turning back to the others. “Was it something I said?”

*~*~*

The townhouse was a picturesque representation of the Cold War. Giles was at the table in the entry, drinking from a bottle of God-knows-what; Spike in the living quarters, flipping angrily through channels. Buffy had stormed in through the back entrance purposefully. The look she gave him still burned his insides. A look, and nothing more. She had looked ready to say something but evidently decided against it, turning instead to march intently to her room and slamming herself away.

It lasted, all in all, for ten minutes. The door to her room flew open and she steamed back out again, sizing the vampire up with purpose.

“What is your problem?” she demanded.

“My problem?”

“Yes, your problem. I don’t know what you thought that was, but—”

“What that was? Guess it doesn’ matter, does it, kitten? After all, jus’ a vamp here. Your pet vampire. You drag me down here by the bloody collar an’ then—”

“Drag? I’m sorry, but I dragged you nowhere.”

There was a snort from the other room. “Oh, I beg to differ,” a very drunk Giles objected.

Buffy frowned but ignored him. “I thought you wanted to…you said—”

“No, luv. I din’t. I never said I wanted to be your bitch.”

“Make a good play about it, though,” the Watcher commented.

Both blondes tossed a glance in the man’s direction at that. He responded by heaving another drink and making a face.

“Fact is,” Spike barked when they were back to each other. “You blew me off.”

“I did not blow you off. Will and I went out. We ran into Donna. We lost track of time.”

He paused. “So not only did you blow me off, you blew me off to have tea an’ crumpets with Miss Congeniality?”

“Ummm, no. And I did a quick look-around on the way back. There’s nothing there.”

“Brilliant deduction,” Giles said, language more than a little slurred. “’S a bloody wonder you haven’t won the Nobel Peace Prize for all the saving of the world that you do.”

Spike shook his head. “You blew me off, Slayer! Don’ skirt around it.”

“I did not!”

“I beg to differ.”

Giles held up his tumbler and gave it a stern look. “You, Mr. Daniels, are a drink fit for kings. Have another, you say? Well, aren’t I the wicked one?”

Buffy’s eyes flared. “Beg all you want—”

“Yeh.” Spike smirked with a snicker. “Like that, wouldn’t you?”

“It was a mistake. I forgot. Case closed. I did not blow anyone off. There was no blowing!”

A long, quiet pause settled throughout the room. Then Giles burst into a fit of giggles.

The vampire had a thousand things he wanted to say at that, and chances were, his selection wasn’t the wisest of maneuvers. “Why Slayer,” he purred. “Din’t know you were offering.”

It was amazing how rapidly the atmosphere could turn cold.

Definitely the wrong thing to say. The entire argument was the wrong thing to say. The look in her eyes had fallen from angered to hurt in record time, and he fell right along with her.

Even more amazing how everything he had been building them toward—they had been building themselves toward—could seem gone in a matter of seconds.

There was nothing to follow that. Buffy was gone, leaving him with only her scent as the slam of the door once again punctuated her unmoving disposition. He felt something within himself fall from Heaven, and didn’t know whether to rejoice or break the nearest fragile object.

The unspoken option was there, but he would hear nothing of it.

“Oh dear,” Giles drawled, voice bubbling with mirth. “She is angry, isn’t she?”

Spike had nothing to say. His eyes fixed longingly on the door; a trembling sigh passed through his lips. “Good goin’, mate,” he murmured to himself. “Turned yourself into a prize fool.”

The scent of alcohol and tears were heavy in the air. That had happened fast.

He really needed a drink.

 Chapter Ten

It was close to eleven when she awoke the next morning. No thought to the bustle of routine or any bent whim under the guidelines of expectation. She awoke to a deepened state of restlessness, her eyes blinking at the sheen of white that met her vision. Every cell in her body shrieked at the thought of rolling out of bed.

Today was not a day to be seen by anyone.

Even so, it surprised her when she turned to meet the standardized face of the digital clock that sat on the whicker stand next to her bed. While she never let anyone interfere with her beauty rest, she very rarely slept past eight. She very rarely slept when someone else was up and making noise. And she knew from yesterday, that she rarely slept in this house.

It didn’t take long to cast blame. The heavy snores from up the hall provided all the evidence she needed. Giles was still asleep. Still asleep and doing his best subconscious impression of a semi-truck. How she had ever slept through that, she would never know.

The night came rushing back with the intended effect of a cold shower. The crustiness around her eyes attested to much of the same. She had cried herself to sleep. She, Buffy, had cried herself to sleep over something that Spike said. Spike, who couldn’t open his mouth without offending someone. Spike, whose life’s mission was to make her miserable and smother everything she cared about into a nonbeing.

Spike had been himself last night. He had lashed at her with all he could these days—his words. He had been a big, nasty, guy. Nothing to cry about. Nothing.

And yet her eyes were raw and tired. Even still.

Funny how things seemed so much less important in the morning light. She felt like such a fool. She was a fool. This wasn’t her. Buffy wasn’t one to cry over insidious remarks made to her by people—creatures—that didn’t matter. Hell, she dished it out every night. She was the Slayer of Puns: The Punny Slayer. And it wasn’t as though she and Spike hadn’t sparred verbally before. It was all they could do anymore. Technology had made it impossible to fight with their bodies, so they accommodated accordingly. Fighting was natural for them; always had been.

Only not now. Since the Bronze, they had been dancing awkwardly around each other. Last night was the breaking point. Spike finding her weakness and calling her on it. He sized her up with his eyes and made with the sultry voice and acknowledged his gratitude for small favors that were neither small nor favorable, then said things like he had last night.

There was more to it, though. She would have to be blind not to see it. His eyes as he yanked the door open. The almost hurt indictment buried in his voice when he accused her of intentionally standing him up. Of standing him up at all.

This was insane. He was Spike. A vampire. Been there, done that, got sick on the roller coaster. Whatever notions she had been entertaining the last couple days had to be over now. They had knocked themselves back to where they belonged. No more of this candor dancing around each other. She was Buffy. She was the Slayer. He was the bane of her existence: her mortal enemy. He was not some guy. And though her femininity found him utterly appealing on purely a superficial level, she would not allow him to be her next mistake.

Last night was needed. It reminded her why.

Buffy released a deep breath at that. It was eleven. Time to get up. Time to really get to work. The sooner they found Faith, the sooner this embarrassing escapade came to a stop. This bizarre, otherworldly, dreamlike escapade that had done nothing but draw attention from where it needed to be focused.

It didn’t take long to get out of bed after the initial waking up was accomplished. Within minutes, she was in front of the mirror that topped off her rented dresser, inspecting her hair before deciding it would be much too hot to leave it down. It was still slightly damp from last night’s midnight shower—taken because she knew that waking up early was out of the question, even if she also didn’t plan on sleeping too late. She affixed herself with a sloppy but acceptable ponytail, slipped into some denims and pulled a dark green tank over her head.

After she had done all she could within the confines of her room, she tossed a weary glance to the door that separated her quarters from Spike’s. It wasn’t necessary to go that way in order to get to the lavatory; actually, it was rather inconvenient. But she wanted an excuse. Any excuse. Despite the promises of just a few minutes ago that heated her subconscious, she wanted to see him. Wanted to see if things truly were back to comfortable terrain. If it was safe to hate him again.

She was contemplating ripping out the inner voice that screamed protest at the concept of hating him. Hating him was what she was used to. It was familiar. It was known. It was…

Buffy swallowed hard, detesting the fact that even after the ugly trade last night, she couldn’t find it within herself to raise that much animosity. She wanted to. Oh, she wanted to. And he deserved whatever she dished. What he had said to her, what he had implied…oh, it was enough to make her—

Stupid female hormones. Spike was many things, but he was definitely not worth crying over. Especially concerning something so trivial.

It was with that mentality that Buffy decided to embrace the day. Everything would be the way it was before. No more confusing trades, no more upsetting herself because the vampire next door was a jerk and couldn’t help himself. No. She was through. She was so completely over her temporary insanity, and starting now, she would make damn sure that he knew it.

The door separating their quarters squeaked noisily as she pushed herself into the makeshift den. She bit her lip in uncertainty, turned, and closed it without trying to betray too much noise. It yelped again and stuck before it could shut all the way. A sigh of exasperation pressed through her throat. If there was one thing she was learning from this trip, it was a testament to how much she really didn’t like old homes.

Then she turned around and the wind was knocked out of her.

For whatever reason, it hadn’t occurred to her that Spike might still be sleeping. It was late morning, the sun was nearing the crest in the sky, and as a vampire, he had no reason to be awake. Her senses hadn’t betrayed his presence in the thereabouts. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but it wasn’t what she saw.

The trundle bed was out this time. Out but bare. The gray mattress was spotty at best, worn and sickly with the impression of many years’ passing bodies. And Spike lay atop. He was clad in nothing but jeans with the first two buttons undone; his head reclined against the pillow she had given him the day before. However, it was the blanket that got her. The blanket that he had bound and folded, and was snuggling like a lover. Soft fuzzy blue against his face; his subconscious countenance betraying a similarly forlorn disposition. His arm wound her gift into his chest, one leg venturing over to keep his depiction from rolling away from him. There and sleeping. Sleeping the day away.

There was every chance it didn’t mean anything, of course. He might sleep like that; she didn’t know. Had no way of knowing. Just because her blanket—no, the townhouse’s blanket—was being used as a snuggle toy rather than a comfort-inducer didn’t mean anything. He was a vampire. What need did vampires have for blankets, anyway?

Something changed, then. Something small but monumental. Something that made her quicken even more. As though reacting to her presence entirely, Spike shifted on the noisy mattress, crooned kittenishly at the warmth in his arms, and murmured, “Buffy,” before drifting into deeper sleep.

The walls she had spent the past night and the last twenty minutes trying desperately to reconstruct came crashing down.

But no. She knew it wasn’t that. Spike never called her Buffy. Never.

Her mistake came in taking her next step; the floorboard released a loud and boisterous creak, evidently doing more to wake her housemate than had the squeaky door. Spike’s eyes opened bluntly, finding hers with such immediacy that she doubted he had been asleep in the first place.

“Hi,” he said softly.

Buffy drew in a breath. “I…umm…hi.”

Their gazes held for a minute longer before he turned over, stretching luxuriously with no thought to self-preservation. “What time ‘s it?”

“Getting close to 11:30,” she replied. “We…I guess I was sleepier than I…thought. And Giles…well, not exactly expecting him up any time soon.”

A loud snore from the back room sounded out in agreement.

Spike smiled gently, moving to sit up. “Rupert drank himself from one bottle to another last night,” he observed. “Know the feelin’.”

Her gaze dropped to his chest, her mind fighting her eyes to eradicate all confirmations on how yummy he looked without a shirt on. Bad mind, bad! “You slept…in your jeans?”

A wicked smile crossed his lips. “Thought it’d be the courteous thing to do, as I usually don’ bother with anything t’all.”

Oh, double-yum. The images came before she could stop them. Spike sleeping—all skin. Spike in the nude. Spike—

“Well, there’s one picture I’ll have to get surgically removed.”

Buffy licked her lips, her senses flaring. You can say that again.

“Watch it, Slayer. You’re blushing.”

Things grew quiet again—awkward and unsure. It could only last so long. And before she knew it, he had released a deep breath and risen to his feet, regarding her with what could only be called an act of contrition. As though they had suffered through a great falling out. As though last night was the first fight between lovers while on the pathway to self-discovery.

But that wasn’t so. It just wasn’t. Not with them. They were never like this.

“Buffy,” he said quietly, all tease having abandoned his tone. “I—”

“Don’t.”

A flawless brow arched at that. “I din’t say anythin’.”

“If it’s about last night, don’t.” She endured a few seconds of his waiting gaze before turning her own to the ground, releasing a deep breath and shaking her head. “Look, I don’t know…anything, really. Talking to you recently’s been on the side of difficult. I don’t know what to say anymore.”

He could have feigned ignorance if he wanted to. He didn’t. “’Cause of what happened,” he acknowledged. “Yeh, pet. Feel it, too. I jus’ don’ know where I stand with you.”

“Well, I’m not much help in the ‘figuring out of that’,” she replied. “What…I can’t get this…and I’ve tried to be nice. Nicer, even. We have to work together, right? Up until last night, I thought you were okay with being here and helping us out and—”

“Kitten, what I said…you din’t show. I was brassed. I said some things.” He shrugged. “Din’t mean all of ‘em. Din’t…” His eyes darted to the carpet. “You din’t show. An’ what I said…” Another stressed sigh escaped his lips and he looked up again. His mindless repetition of himself nearly prompted a smile to her face. “I don’ know where I stand with you, Slayer. I don’ know what’s safe ground. Not anymore. Not since that night in the cemetery. Blew me off my rocker, you did. After what you saw me doin’…me an’ Faith—”

“You didn’t know it was Faith.”

“I knew it wasn’ you.”

Buffy bit her lip. “Is that why you reacted the way you did? Because it wasn’t me?”

He stared at her as though anteaters had started crawling out of her ears. Thoroughly stunned. Sufficiently blown away. And at a complete loss at how to reply. “I…luv, I don’ know what you want me to say.”

“The truth is always a good thing.”

“The truth’ll get me staked right an’ proper.”

She shook her head. “No. I can’t afford to stake you. You’re too valuable.”

He snickered and stepped back, rolling his eyes. “To what? This? Findin’ your rogue bird. Right bit of value I’ve given you so far.”

“Not to finding…well, I haven’t exactly…” Buffy huffed out a breath and scowled. “Just answer the question, Spike.”

“Why do you need to know? Moreover, what do you need to know? ‘F it had actually been you, you wanna know if I’d’ve taken you up on it? ‘S that it?” A dry, incredulous laugh hissed through his teeth at the look that overwhelmed her face. “I’ll tell you, Slayer, but I guarantee you won’ like the answer.” He stopped again. “No. No. I won’ tell you. This is for bloody ridiculous.”

“What is?” It was barely a whisper.

“This. Sodding all of it. I’ve been on my best bloody behavior since…’cause you gave me a chance to make it up to you. Why I should care, I have no bleedin’ clue. An’ why you haven’t come to your senses an’ tossed me in a nice sunny patch of grass ‘s somethin’ I jus’ don’ get.” He shook his head. “Isn’t like you, Slayer. Not to go to bed upset with me.” He turned to point intently in the direction of her room. “You don’ get upset with me. You get annoyed. You get frustrated. You get pissed. You threaten to turn me into a pile of dust. You play a merry round of Kick the Spike. You don’ go to bed upset.”

She didn’t bother to hide how disconcerted she was. How hard the very notion that she had fallen out of habit had shaken her. It was futile trying to anything from Spike, least of all matters such as these. “I know.”

He nodded, eyes blazing now that he had that much. “So hit me, Buffy. Scream at me. Tell me ‘m worthless. Tell me you’ll…” He broke off at the puzzled look she gave him, nearly wounded in retrospect. “I don’ know how to be the person you don’ hate. I try, an’ I bollocks up. Tried last night—wanted you to hate me a li’l. So yeh, I took a low blow. Somethin’ you would’ve brushed off before. Somethin’…” He sighed and shook his head. “But you din’t…I hurt you.”

The Slayer arched a brow. “Since when have you cared about hurting me?”

“I don’ know. I jus’…I din’t like it.” He waited and looked at her. “An’ ‘s wrong. I know it. You know it. More than soddin’ anythin’. This…whatever it is.”

Buffy pursed her lips and took a cautionary step forward. “I don’t mind not fighting with you, Spike. It’s strange, I’ll grant you, but I’m not missing the screaming matches. And yeah, it is because of what happened. Because you…you helped me.”

“Told you that wasn’ for you, luv.”

“Even so. You could’ve done something. You didn’t.”

Spike stared at her for a moment. “You’re puttin’ a lot on faith here.” Her mouth threatened to give way to a grin. He paused, reconsidered his wording, and rolled his eyes. “Trust. All this jus’ because I din’t shag the bird?”

“It’s more than that.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t I just…do.” Buffy released an aggravated sigh and ran her hands over her brow, palms pressing into her temples to wan away the immediacy of a headache. “It was something, Spike. It was. More than you wanna admit. And ever since, you have been trying. If it wasn’t something, you wouldn’t bother to try. I know you well enough by now to know that. But you have. And last night—”

“I—”

“Last night when I…forgot to come back, you were more than angry. You were worried.”

His eyes widened in protest. “Was not!”

A thin smile tickled her lips. “It’s okay to worry about me.”

“Take that back!”

“Spike—”

“’m a vampire, you daft bird. I’m an evil, soulless son of a bitch. I don’ dawdle with worryin’ about people. I especially don’ worry ‘bout Slayers.” He shook his head again and released another disbelieving laugh. “You’re a piece of work, Summers. Never knew your ego complex was this—”

“Stop. Just stop.”

“Why should I?”

“Because it’s bull and you know it.” Buffy held up a hand when his eyes widened in protest. “Well, come on, brainiac. If you wanted to play that hand, you should’ve traded in your cards a while ago.”

He made a face. “That has to be the worst poker analogy ‘ve ever heard.”

“I could try again, if you want.”

They paused on the same beat and cracked nearly identical smiles.

“Look,” Buffy began a minute later. “I know it’s…it’s weird for me, too. More than weird. But I…this is something I wanna try.”

“What?”

“Not fighting with you. I mean, as long as you have that…thing…where you can’t…” She paused to lick her lips as his eyes darkened in reminder. “You came to us for a reason, Spike. You could’ve gone to anyone. Your fledglings…demons who knew and feared you. You could’ve gone to them and told them anything. You didn’t. You came to us.”

The vampire frowned. “Never thought ’bout it like that.” He was silent for a long minute—pensive, then his eyes drifted back to her. “You’re right, pet. I like this better than the other. Whatever we’re playin’ ourselves up at. ‘S better.” A small, genuine smile crossed his lips then. “So, what now? We stuff our differences aside an’—”

“We work through them.”

“’m not gonna join your bloody gang. Slayerettes Anonymous? Not—”

“I wouldn’t ask you to. I just…”

The peroxide Cockney nodded at that. “Somethin’ else, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeh. I feel it, too. Been drivin’ me bum-shaggin’ outta my mind ever since…” She flushed and looked away. He grinned in spite of himself. “Any ideas what it is?”

“No. I…this is—”

There was no need to say any more. Spike held up a hand and nodded again. “Gotcha, luv. So…until t’night then…what do we do? An’ ‘f you suggest you run ‘round town with Red again, ‘m liable to throw myself outside jus’ to spare another day of boredom.”

Buffy looked genuinely puzzled at that. “You were bored?”

“Here’s a hint: the telly’s a babysitter for kiddies. Not for Big Bads.”

“Since when?”

He grinned wryly at her. “Funny girl.”

Another beat moved between them. The electricity in the air was palpable. Tension alongside shades of desire she wasn’t ready to acknowledge. Her plan of indifference had failed her completely. She saw him now. Saw him, and he definitely saw her back. Buffy wasn’t the most experienced of girls, but she knew enough when that look overwhelmed a man’s eyes. Deliberate or not.

Her hands itched with the sudden urge to touch him. That was nothing she needed.

“Well…I’m gonna go to the house and see if I can scrounge us up some munchies.” Her eyes lingered on his pale chest. She never thought she would be partial to pale skin, but she was. Spike with a tan wouldn’t be as sexy as Spike without a tan, and she didn’t know exactly why.

Of course, she would need to see Spike with a tan before she set up a basis of evaluation.

“Slayer?”

“I’ll just…let you…get ready.”

He cocked a brow. “For what?”

“We’ll figure it out…after…we eat.”

She almost made it to the door, barely aware that she was moving until his voice stopped her. Again as her hand reached for the handle. The soft baritone of his tenor bidding her halt before she could leave him. Before she knew what she was doing, she had turned around to face him.

And immediately wished she hadn’t. While his appearance hadn’t changed, the very sight of him was enough to shake her foundation. He was standing in the middle of the den in nothing but jeans with the first few buttons undone. His hair was ruffled. He had no shoes on. He was vulnerable and strong in the same picture. He was Spike as she was only now beginning to see. A temptation that she could not give into.

“I was,” he said.

Buffy licked her lips subconsciously, not noticing the way his eyes fixed on her tongue the minute it poked out of her mouth. Nor did she notice the deep breath he took that seemed to undulate every muscle in his body.

Well, okay. So she noticed the rippling muscle part. She just didn’t note the reason.

“You were?”

“Worried.” Spike’s eyes were uncannily soft, a small smile of concession playing across his features. “Can’t hide it, I guess. ‘F we’re gonna do this, let’s do it proper. I was worried about you last night. Don’ know why, but I was. An’ I din’t like it. Din’t like not knowin’ where you were…not knowin’ whether or not I could get to you ‘f you needed me. I…” He caught her large, imploring and more than panicked gaze, swore slightly and broke off. “Yeh…I was worried. Jus’ wanted you to know, s’all.”

She did. She had.

She just didn’t know how to deal with it.

That was the second time that she had left the house after talking to him, shaken, breathless, and aroused. And dreading it. Dreading whatever it was that was building between them. Dreading the inevitable pain that came along with it. Dreading the face of her duty as she spared with the needy wants of her desire. Dreading the full of it.

He had called her Buffy in his sleep. Buffy. Not Slayer. Not pet, luv, or kitten. Not anything but who she was. Right out loud. By name.

That thought shook her more than anything. It alone proved that this was real. Whatever this was, it was real.

And she had no idea what to do about it.

*~*~*

The main house was surprisingly occupied for being as late as it was.

Of course, when she saw what they were doing, it was hardly cause for surprise.

The sight was nearly humorous. It was a cold day in hell when the Scoobies met people on the outside who took to them with any degree of hospitality. And true, while their acquaintance with the White House staffers barely exceeded twenty-four hours, the casual demeanor they shared with each other would have easily suggested otherwise. Josh, Donna, and Xander were all on one settee; Anya at her boyfriend’s feet, making a comment here or there about capitalism and how democracy was a failed experiment that she had seen many cultures implore without success. For the most part, she went ignored. Wesley, Willow, and Sam were on the opposing davenport, watching with rapt attention. And Toby was in the back with a cell phone to his ear. He would watch for a few seconds then bark at the unfortunate soul on the other end, stop, and repeat as needed.

For such an outlandish bunch, it almost looked as though they belonged that way.

Buffy’s eyes traveled wearily to the small television set with admittedly crappy reception, a small smile tickling her mouth. “When did he start?” she asked.

“Shhh!” came the collective reply.

Donna met her gaze and smiled helplessly. It was Sam, however, who finally registered that someone had asked a relevant question and turned to her, offering a wan smile. “Sorry,” he said. “We’ve never had to watch him like this and—”

“Shhh!”

“He started about fifteen minutes ago,” the blonde assistant clarified, whacking Josh across the knee before he could berate her interruption again.

Buffy nodded. “You guys finally just decided to use the laptop?”

“All talkers will be bodily removed from the premises,” the Deputy Chief of Staff warned, not tearing his gaze from the screen. He seemingly ignored the fact that Anya spoke when she pleased and his own colleague didn’t shut up for more than thirty seconds at a time.

“Ah, ah.” Toby held the phone away from his ear, other hand in the air in a noncommittal command for order. “Here it comes.”

“What?”

“Shhh!”

Bartlet’s image fizzed a bit as he shifted again. While Buffy was the last person to sit down and watch a Presidential address, she had to admit to herself that the little she had seen of their Commander in Chief had left her impressed. He made public speaking look so easy when it was one of her great fears.

Granted, he was a politician. He was supposed to be verbally smooth.

“One hundred and thirty six years ago on the date of April 18^th, 1863, General Grant led his army from the western bank to the Eastern at Big Bluff and into the line of Confederate fire. With his army joined with Sherman’s, he—”

It was impossible to hear what the President said next. Toby was yelling into the phone.

“What the hell is this, CJ? He went from talking about the progress we’ve made since the inauguration to Ulysses S. Grant?” There was another pause. “He’s skipping it?! What do you mean he’s skipping it?!”

That was all it took; everyone in the room was sufficiently distracted.

Sam’s eyes were large and worried. “What happened?”

The Communications Director was shifting from one leg to the other, his features taut and irritated. “The President is skipping sections F and G.”

“Why?”

“The attachment was blotchy.”

The color drained from Willow’s face. “What?”

Toby quirked his head to the side. He looked ready to break something, which was not good, as the house was old and filled with antiques. “The attachment was blotchy. And CJ couldn’t reach me until this morning.”

“So, what’s he doing?” Sam asked, tossing a brief glance to the television.

The President continued as if spurred by unearthly enthusiasm. “…encircled the town, forcing many civilians underground for the duration of the Federal occupation…”

The elder man took a dramatic pause and huffed a deep breath. “He’s improvising.”

“…news articles printed on the back of wallpaper…”

“What?” Josh demanded. “He’s what?”

“…while the country was drawn into an irrevocable standstill. Lee’s invasion of the North in Gettysburg had resulted in the loss of more than fifty thousand American lives. The siege of Vicksburg ended the next day, and as a direct result, the Confederate army lost control of the Mississippi river. Vicksburg would not celebrate the birth of our nation for another eighty-one years because of this defeat. Because its citizens, your great town’s heritage, stood at the brink of inevitability and watched a way of life…”

Willow shrugged, tossing a cautious glance to Toby, whose expression was stony at best. “He sounds all right to me,” she offered meekly.

“All right? All right?” The Communications Director stepped forward with fierce intent. “The man is the Commander and Chief: he needs to sound better than all right. He needs to sound proud. He needs to sound presidential. He needs to do better than stand up there giving America a history lesson!”

“The speech was blotchy,” his Deputy said.

“Sam, so help me, I will find a way to blame this on you. What?” Toby snapped attention was drawn back to the phone. It lasted only a second. He stopped, rolled his eyes, and turned back again. “Donna?” He waited for her eyes before he tossed the cell across the room.

“…in a war that cost America the lives of six-hundred thousand citizens. Here at the gateway of Mississippi, we stand at the foundation of our Union’s conservation…”

“Tomorrow’s headlines: President stop in Vicksburg and town stops celebrating the Fourth,” Josh commented dryly. “I don’t think he realizes that patriotism down here means something different than where we come from.”

“Ahh, let’s not sell our friends short,” Xander said. “We come from the land of the free, the home of the brave. I think—”

“Yes, CJ, the bread pudding was delicious, I…” Donna trailed off when she realized her voice was being broadcast across the room. She offered a small grin, paused, and tossed the phone back to Toby.

Buffy pursed her lips. Given the sentiment of the group, perhaps it would be a better idea to go across the street to Hot Mama’s Tamali’s. There was every possibility that they sold something edible.

Possible, but unlikely. If all else failed, she could call a cab, or walk to the Rosalie house where the woman had been selling pralenes the day before.

As if sensing her detachment, Willow tore her eyes away from the President for a minute longer. “Buff? Do you need me to—”

The Slayer held up a hand. “Nah. I’ve got it covered. You just…watch the speech.”

“I don’t know. You might want to get up and walk away very fast,” Sam advised, indicating the ever-increasingly fuming Toby. The comment prompted a giggle out of her friend, and that alone told the young blonde what she needed to know.

Her friend was giggling again. She wasn’t about to abandon the source of her merriment so soon, nor would she be asked to.

After all, Buffy had Spike to work with. Work and unfinished business.

It was impossible to tell if the spooling in her belly was anticipation or dread.

Funny how Spike was never too far away from any extreme.

They spent the day together.

It was completely by accident, of course; the way things worked out. The speech lasted until half past noon and everyone, save Anya who had no interest in automobiles, retreated on the same foot to service the car. The former demon was said to have retired to their room for a nap, evidently having forgone the comfort of sleep by complaining about the lack of acquired orgasms all night.

Needless to say, the redhead was seriously reconsidering the sleeping arrangements yet again.

However, before things could get underway, Buffy and Spike were gone.

So was the Winnebago, which made Giles less than happy when he finally awoke.

The day was spent in moderation. A more thorough familiarization of the town after dumping a sufficient amount of that black paint that Spike kept caked on the Desoto’s windshield. The drive to the nearest Wal-Mart had been a tale in itself; the vampire vowed tacitly never to question the Slayer’s reluctance to maneuver a vehicle again.

There wasn’t much to Natchez outside the economy-driven emphasis on tourism. People from all over traveled to the small town just to tour aging homes. If Buffy had to hear another story about how the settlement had once been one of the most prosperous in the Union, she was going to start slaying on the presumption that the same story told verbatim from twelve different mouths was definitely a demonic trait.

She could see why history buffs would be attracted, though. Why Giles thought the town was charming in a rustic sense. There was a feel about it. A something. An impression of the stereotypical Southern way of life that she couldn’t quite shake. And if that was so, the citizens did more than their part of living up to the image. Rather than resenting it as she would have—given the connotations and what Donna had told her the day before—they indulged it. Reveled in it. Profited in it.

The largest downside to traveling with a vampire in Natchez was the notable lack of indoor accommodations. They couldn’t do much in the main bulk of the town until the sun started sinking out of the sky. Thus, they ended up spending an obscene amount of time scouring the mall, the visitor’s center, and outlet stores: all of which produced no results.

It was a waste but not. At least they knew where not to look.

“Y’know,” Spike said as they stepped out of the visitor’s center for the fourth time. “I think we might be lookin’ over the larger picture, here.”

Not exactly the revelation of the day, but the way he said it inspired her mouth to forgo a smile. She had pretty much figured that when Maggie, the kind lady behind one of the kiosk desks, invited them to her daughter’s birthday party the next day. “Oh, really?”

There was no way he couldn’t have caught it. He flashed her a smirk and shook his head as he dug out his cigarettes. “We’ve spent all our time lookin’ an’ lookin’ again in places your rogue bird wouldn’t be caught dead at. The bloody mall, Slayer? She’s here as a fugitive; not to pick out shoes.”

He made with logic admirably. And while, yes, they had been trading the same sentiment back and forth all day; she couldn’t say she was displeased with the way things had turned out. Spending time with Spike was surprisingly enjoyable. Very surprisingly. While she had been making eyes at him for the past couple days, she hadn’t fully allowed herself to acknowledge that there might be something substantial beyond the physical attraction. But there was. Oh, there was. It was amazing how human he could be when treated like one.

He was fun. He joked, he laughed, he talked, he shared, he listened.

And she was in more trouble than she could afford if things continued like this.

“So…what do you suggest?”

Spike sighed and stuffed his hands in the pockets of duster, tilting his head upward as he indulged a long drag off his cigarette. “Most of the town ‘s houses, kitten. ‘F she wants to blend in, which I think our non-productivity has proven, I’d start there.”

She just looked at him. “You wanna tour the houses?”

“No, ‘m jus’ sayin’…’f we wanna find her—”

“It’s not that I don’t see your point. I do. It’s all there with the logic. But…” Buffy glanced down, pouting a little. “It’s boring.”

The vampire’s eyes sized her up, dancing with shades of amusement. “Watch it, pet,” he advised lowly. “You’re reachin’ back to my time.”

“Well, your time was boring.”

“I resent that.”

“You so do not.”

Spike cocked a brow. “Plenty ‘f things happened in the nineteenth century,” he argued. “Days of duels or what all. An’ the bloody kids back then had a lot more respect.”

“Watch it, buddy. Your age is showing.”

He smiled. “Well, ‘f anythin’ else, it’ll be a trip down memory lane.” A pause. “’Course, I din’t come to America till after I was dead, an’ even then, the popular hype in the ‘60s—that’s 1860s, luv, ‘f you’re followin’ me…the popular hype had already—”

“Spike?”

“Ramblin’?”

She grinned. He was borderline cute. “Little bit.”

Spike rolled on his heels and gave himself a slight bounce. “Come on, kitten,” he urged. “Let’s go. Jus’ to one. Indulge me.”

There was no harm, she supposed. And again with him actually having a point.

“Okay…any ideas?”

A wide grin spread across his lips and he reached into his back pocket to retrieve a brochure that she had seen him swipe inside. Spike had swiped a brochure. While she had had her suspicions, seeing it made it all the more worthwhile.

“Well, since you’re humorin’ me, you tell me ‘f any of these look interestin’.”

Buffy cocked a brow. “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”

He shrugged. “’m curious, s’all. We din’t share too much in common with the colonies when it came to politics, but the styles were damn near universal. ‘S strange to think of things that I remember as bein’ on tour.” There was a brief pause and he shook his head. “Don’ think that’ll ever go away, no matter how old I get.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about your past.” Well, of course she hadn’t. She hadn’t been interested before. “Angel never did much, either.”

The vampire’s demeanor darkened slightly on mention of her former. She could have sworn a flicker of ripened jealously flashed across his eyes. “Peaches din’t ‘cause it takes away precious time that could be spent mopin’ ‘bout things he knows damn well he can’t change,” he barked. “I don’ talk ‘bout it ‘cause no one asks. What a sodding waste.”

“Okay, Mr. Defensive.”

He calmed down slightly and flashed an apologetic look in her direction. “Don’ fancy bein’ compared with the Great Poof,” he murmured.

“So I gathered.” Buffy licked her lips. “Well, don’t worry. ‘Cause you and Angel? Nothing alike.”

If anything, that seemed to offend him even more. Lousy temperamental vampires. It only lasted a second, though, before he consigned to seemingly depressed acceptance. “Yeh,” he agreed softly. “Bloody relief, that is.”

“You’re telling me. One brooding vamp per lifetime is already more than I can take.” She smiled when he looked up in surprise, eyes sparkling with both wonder and gratitude. “So…these houses? Just the one, right?”

Spike nodded and handed her the brochure. “Trust me, luv. I might be curious, but I don’ fancy standin’ around all day while girlies in hoop skirts tell me things that I already know. ’S gonna be hard enough not to correct them when they bollocks somethin’ up.” He didn’t meet her eyes, as though shy about his firsthand knowledge. “’S better this way. ‘F Natchez is anythin’ like the pissant towns that Dru an’ I toured in the ‘50s, talkin’ to one staff’ll get the word out.”

She suddenly knew why he didn’t like her talking about Angel. “So,” she said, clearing her throat and redirecting her attention to the pamphlet. “Any of these strike your fancy?”

“’S your choice, pet.”

“I don’t know what to choose!”

Spike rolled his eyes and snatched the brochure back again. “Okay…what ‘bout this one?”

“What one?”

He edged closer so that she could follow his indication. Edged closer so that she was pressed up next to him, so that his scent tickled her senses with refinement she didn’t know he possessed. “Linden.”

“That one?”

“Why not?”

“It’s not pretty.”

Spike released a sigh of exasperation. “Well, for cryin’ out loud, Slayer, whaddya want from me?”

Many, many things.

She opted in the end to not answer. “How about this one?”

“Dunleith?”

“Yeah.”

“An’ ‘s prettier than the other one?”

Buffy bit her lip. “Well, it’s not so much that yours wasn’t pretty, per se…it’s just…this one is all with the big columns and whatnot. It’s…it’s pretty.”

There was a brief pause at that; the vampire’s eyes sparkled mischievously. “Ah,” he cooed. “So size does matter to the Slayer.”

“Shut up.”

“Dunleith’s no good, though.”

She pouted. “Why not?”

“Tour’s only good for the ground floor.”

“And we care, why?”

He shrugged. “Well, ‘f you’re payin’ full price to get in—”

“If I’m paying?”

A smile spread across his lips. “So you caught that, did you?”

“Bah. You suck.” Her eyes snapped back to his and she caught the glimmer of the impending retort before it could think to touch his tongue. With the way things were going, it was infinitely better to stop him before the words touched the air. “And shut up. What about Stanton Hall?”

He offered a cheeky grin. “That one big enough for you, pet?”

“Spike, I swear to God…”

“Jus’ wanna make sure. The last thing I need on my hands is a Slayer with a size complexion.”

“I’m counting to three, then I’m getting out my stake.”

“Hope it’s big one.”

That did it. “One…”

Spike just chuckled and turned his eyes back to the pamphlet. “Stanton Hall, eh?” he mused. “Think that’s one of the locations for that bloody horrible series from the ‘80s.”

“What series?”

“I forget the name. Only Dru was bloody nuts over Patrick Swayze an’ wouldn’t stop watchin’ the soddin’ thing no matter what I…” He broke off when he caught her gaze. Yeah, it definitely wasn’t kosher talking about ex-loves all of a sudden. And they accepted it without mention. Such was safer until they had sussed out why things were different between them.

“Doesn’t it say which miniseries it was in the thing?” Buffy asked, desperate to break the awkward silence.

“No. I jus’ remember Stanton Hall.” At her look, he glanced down and started kicking at the concrete. The tacit rule of before flew out the window just as rapidly as it had been conceived. Spike looked uncomfortable for a long minute before shaking his head. There were certain truths about their respected pasts that could not go ignored. “We had a fledglin’ for a while that Dru made…went out an’ got her blood when I couldn’t. ‘S name was Stanley Small. After the series aired, she’d—”

“Yeah.” The Slayer took a pensive moment and released a long sigh. A moment, then sucked it up and asked the inevitable question. “Do you miss Dru?”

Spike gave her another long look, careful, trying to gage her mood. “Sometimes,” he replied, honest as he could. “Though I don’ know anymore ‘f it’s Dru I miss or jus’…I don’ miss her mood swings, or the wonky visions, or her dolls, or her tendency to speak in riddles or…any of it, really.” A breath shuddered across his shoulders. “I do miss not bein’ alone. A hundred years or so an’ you get used to the company, even ‘f she is a daft loony.” The comment earned a soft smile. He returned it best he could before glancing down again. “I jus’ miss not bein’ alone. Bein’ with someone who understands me an’…”

The words struck closer to home than she would have liked. Buffy worried a lip between her teeth. “I understand you, Spike.”

He froze and regarded her calmly. “Do you?”

“Yeah. I might…I don’t agree with a lot of…well, obviously. Slayer and all. But I get you.”

At that, his eyes softened and an ironic smile crossed his mouth. “That you do, kitten,” he murmured. “That you do.” Another pause. “Do you miss Peaches?”

The Slayer went quiet for a minute. So strange. Had anyone asked her just a few short weeks ago; the answer would have been an emphatic yes. Somewhere, she had faced herself and known what it was to grow up. To put those adolescent teenage dreams behind her. Missing Angel was more complicated than all that. There wasn’t a word, a sentence, to describe her state of nonfeeling. Trying alone was difficult enough. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I think…really toward the end, we weren’t as close as it seemed we were. He left for reasons that were…but I see it now. And it was for the better.”

“You think so?”

“Well, yeah. The same reason Oz left Willow. There were things there that…but she took his leaving harder than I did Angel’s. And…I think it was because she was still in love with him.” Buffy held up a hand. “To clarify, I loved Angel. I still do. I just don’t think…I don’t think I was in love with him then. Especially after everything that had happened—”

Spike nodded.

She smiled and flushed. “But…yeah. Will’s getting better, though. And she’s started looking around again.”

“She has?”

“Sam.” Buffy paused. “Well, I don’t know if she’s serious about that…we really haven’t talked. But there’s definite sparkage.”

The vampire chuckled at that. “Caught between evils, is she?” he mused. “A werewolf an’ a politician. Red sure knows how to pick ‘em.”

“Yeah. But I’m not really one to talk.” She shrugged. “All my men have been vampires.”

She didn’t realize what she had said until she heard Spike’s breath catch. And then there was nothing. Just nothing. It was as though the world stopped. The words left her lips, and the world came to a big old-fashioned halt. Traffic froze, temperatures soared, and everything in between fell from view. The burn behind his eyes was enough to get any woman into trouble. Smoldering and astonished all within the same breath. He had always been unpredictable, but this was the first time she had felt the strain of her heart encouraging him.

She had no way of knowing how he had taken it. It was too late to retract. To pretend it didn’t happen. To anything.

The Freudian slip of the year.

When nothing happened, Buffy flushed and snatched the brochure back, purposefully avoiding his gaze. “Ummm…” she said, ever aware of the tremble in her voice. “So…Dunleith all right?”

There was nothing for a minute. He was still staring at her.

“Spike?”

A second more and he shook himself back to the present, blinking and offering a short smile. “Dunleith,” he agreed. “Right.”

No need to tell her twice. The second his accordance touched the air, she was sprinting across the parking lot for the Winnebago as though all of hell followed.

Spike stood still for another minute, his nerve endings tingling from what had just passed. What had been revealed. How far into herself she was letting him see.

How much.

It didn’t last long. He turned to follow her the next minute, the smile itching his face refusing to stand down.

He would never admit it, but he was beginning to love this town.

*~*~*

There was a note waiting for her when they got back to the townhouse that night.